Blog
Famous Artists On The French Riviera: How Art Shaped The Myth of The Côte d'Azur, And How The South of France Influenced Modern Art
Just whisper "French Riviera", and you'll hear sighs, see eyes glaze over with dreamy, far-away gazes into the distance, and perhaps an accompanying "ooooh", "aaaah" or "oh-la-laaaa"... Do it, and you'll see. But have you ever wondered why?
Sailing Misadventures in the Canaries
There's nothing I would love more than to tell you that my first sailing trip was a wonderful amazing adventure that was even more amazing than my most amazing fantasies. That it exceeded our dreams of sailing off into the sunset armed with sardines and generous rations of wanderlust. I would rather tell you this, than the truth: my first sailing trip will most likely be my last. A trip that inspired my nautical collection Yes To Yoga, No To Gravol Everyone I told that we were going SAILING!!! had helpful advice (bring gravol), questions (WHY?), doubts (are you...
Sicily: Short, Sweet, Intense.
If Italy is a big open air museum overflowing with culture, orgasmic food, stunning landscapes and passionate people, then I would say that Sicily is just like Italy – except on crack. Thousands of years of history, a merge of cultures from Greece, the Orient, Africa and Europe, breathtaking nature, arts, architecture and zipper-busting cuisine, all concentrated in a relatively small mass of land in the middle of the Mediterranean: intense. I've travelled to Italy many times, as it is the country that calls me back again, again and again. I've eaten my way through its North, its South, motorcycled through its...
The AWOL Models: The Real Deal
We live in a more visual culture than ever before. We are bombarded every second with instagram stories, images, pinterest boards, snapchat snaps, youtube, ads, and ads about ads – everyone has a platform, and they're sometimes falling off cliffs to get more likes, followers, and instagrammable whatever. When it comes to travel (one of the most real, unpredictable, and sometimes UNcomfortable experiences you can have), somewhere along the way (yes Instagram, I'm talking to you) we've lost the authenticity behind actually travelling.What I see on Instagram over and over are perfectly posed, perfectly made up, and immaculately coiffed...
Moving Mosaics
I've had an obsession with mosaics ever since I can remember: there's something so intricate about making things out of little shapes that somehow all seem to fit together perfectly to form something bigger than themselves. I could go all philosophical and Gestalt-theory on you here, but I won't. Let's agree that they're stunning to look at, and admire the work, time and vision that goes into making them, and call it a day. Before mobile phone cameras, Facebook and smartphones, before I became a designer, and before I knew how much more of the world I would discover, I went...
About Me: The Long(ish) Story
Hi, I'm Alex. I'm a designer, art director, creative director, artist and traveller. Travel fuels my creativity, and my curiosity feeds my compulsive need to explore new places. I split my time between creating, and travelling for inspiration. I've always been an insatiably curious person, hungry to know everything, experience everything, see everything...and make cool things. Lots of them. Art has always come out of my hands, and travel has been an essential part of my life from my late teens, as essential to my creativity as breathing. The world is my muse. But it wasn't always like this. In...
The Italian: Making Of A Collection
People always ask me where I get my inspiration from, and if I ever run out of ideas. The answers are: from everywhere, and running out of ideas is not the problem. The problem is having too many ideas, and not enough time to make them come alive. As a professional designer for over a decade, the thing I (still) find the most challenging is the element of choice. To choose where to focus my creative efforts, choose what direction to move froward with, to push and to refine, leaving all the unexplored possibilites behind by necessity. The truth is...
Awol Goes Awol: The France Escape
After a long winter and an unsettling (for lack of a better word) claustrophobic spring spent in Montreal pacing around our downtown apartment, Jeremy and I decided to go back to France for the summer. Not only for the sake of our mental sanity, but also for a much needed change of scenery. He wanted to see his family, and we both badly needed to trade our downtown concrete views for a dose of space and nature. Like everyone else on the planet, we were affected by the 2020 pandemic in ways we could not have imagined a few months...