Janaka Basnayake, de 24 años, muere después de tratar de establecer un récord mundial del mayor tiempo enterrado vivo. El joven de Sri-Lanca lo enterraron a las 9 y 30 de la manana del sabado y lo sacaron a las 4 de la tarde inconciente. En el hospital dicen que llego muerto.
BAY THE CAST-OFF QUEEN; Long before the A-list made vintage clothing the norm for the red carpet, Bay Garnett – top fashion stylist and co-editor of cult magazine Cheap Date – was obsessed with ‘thrifting’.
The Mail on Sunday (London, England) May 9, 2004 Byline: JANE GORDON Bay Garnett moves with total ease between two very different worlds.
Pulling on her treasured old army jacket in an office in Vogue House (home to Vogue magazine) that is littered with next season’s couture clothes (mostly Chanel and Givenchy), she prepares to lead the way to the Central London branch of one of her favourite shops.
While the rest of her colleagues on the glossy magazine are heading out of the building towards the smart stores of nearby Bond Street during their lunch break, the 30-year-old contributing editor – currently working on a shoot for the next issue of the ‘fashion bible’ – is treading her own path to the Salvation Army thrift shop round the corner in Princes Street.
‘Thrift is a style choice for me. It’s not economise, economise, economise – it’s great that it’s cheap, but it’s about more than that. It’s about looking different, it’s about hunting things down, it’s about the thrill of the find. Last week I was working in New York and I bought the most beautiful Yves Saint Laurent 70s top with puffy sleeves for $12, and it’s worth about $250,’ she says with a fervour that can only be described as revolutionary.
Indeed, although Bay sees nothing strange or subversive in working for both Vogue and another somewhat less glossy but no less fashionable publication, it has to be said that the images she produces as co-editor on the cult magazine Cheap Date are radically different from the exclusive, designer-dominated pages of Conde Nast’s flagship magazine. For example, while Vogue is full of advertisements for the most influential fashion houses, from Burberry to Yves Saint Laurent, the pages of Cheap Date feature witty spoof campaigns using thrift-shop clothes and cleverly altered logos, Christian Dior becoming ‘Charity Donor’ and Bulgari becoming ‘Budget’, for example. site cheap date ideas
The magazine was founded in 1997 by Kira Jolliffe, a schoolfriend of Bay’s older sister Daisy (now working as a commissioning editor on Vogue), as a celebration of thrifting and an anti-consumer statement. But somehow in the intervening years, after the magazine moved to New York, re-launched and attracted a raft of well-connected names to its staff (Marlon Richards, son of Keith, for example, Poppy de Villeneuve, ChloI Sevigny and her brother Paul), Cheap Date is now regarded as so cutting edge, it is threatening to make anti-fashion victims of us all.
Bay Garnett’s interest in thrifting started long before the magazine. The youngest daughter of former Vogue journalist Polly Devlin and her industrialist husband Adrian Garnett (as well as Daisy, 31, she has an older sister, Rose, 33, who is married with two young sons), she grew up in Somerset and attended boarding school in London.
‘My mother has a great eye and she used to take me when she went antiques hunting. I can vividly remember dressing up in my mum’s gear when she was still working at Vogue – she had some really pretty things. But I am the only one in our family into thrifting and I don’t know where it came from. I guess you just develop hobbies and thrift shops are mine,’ she says as she turns a perfect, practised blue eye on the merchandise in the Salvation Army shop.
After a history of art degree at Exeter she went to work at the Guggenheim in New York, returning at about the time that Kira, daughter of illustrator Gray Jolliffe, was launching Cheap Date. But it wasn’t until several years later, when she was back in New York, that she became actively involved with both the styling and editorial of the magazine, because by then her love of thrift (she studiously avoids the word ‘vintage’) had become an obsession.
‘When I first went to New York I was obsessive. When I wasn’t working – that was all weekend and every lunch hour – I used to go round the charity shops and I would come back with bin liners of clothes every day. Then I would go on thrifting weekend trips with friends: we’d drive to Connecticut.
The charity shops in America are fantastic, particularly on the Lower East Side in New York where the “ladies who lunch” donate their clothes. I am not a snob when it comes to labels.
I don’t set out to get a “good” old label or the kind of “vintage” stuff that Virginia (a Notting Hill-based vintage shop) would sell for hundreds of pounds. It’s not one-upmanship, it’s just something I like – it can be anything,’ she says as she pulls a printed hippy shirt off a rail, shakes her head and puts it back.
Bay’s devotion to her work as a stylist is such that she has precious little time in her life for anything else and most of her downtime is spent in her flat in Earl’s Court.
Wonderfully pretty, she wears no makeup and avoids the kind of artifice that a lot of women use to attract men (she can’t ‘do’ high heels, short skirts or low necks). Which probably explains why, she says with a self-mocking grin, she hasn’t had a boyfriend since she broke up with Paul Sevigny last year (they dated for three years and remain close friends). ‘I was talking to Kira the other day and I was saying, “I just want a boyfriend, it’s all I want,” and she said, “You are just too ambitious to have a boyfriend,” and I was, like, “My God, what if that’s true?” Because I realise now that I am much more ambitious than I used to be. I would like to be involved in a mass-market fashion line that would be thrift inspired. And I’d really like to earn some more money – until now Cheap Date has been a labour of love and I think that should change,’ she says. this web site cheap date ideas
Her well-honed instinct for a good thrift purchase and her own extraordinary style has made her a muse for contemporary fashion labels as diverse as Matthew Williamson, whose shows she styles, and Topshop, where they recently sold a limited edition of customised clothes ‘inspired by Bay Garnett’. Her reputation as the fashion stylist’s favourite stylist – as well as co-editor of Cheap Date – is such that she even persuaded the ultimate fashion-label consumers, the Hilton sisters, Nicky and Paris, to pose for a spoof photo cartoon or ‘photo novella’ in which they were given a ‘thrift’ makeover that turns them from drab schoolgirls into glamorous young women.
‘I told Nicky about Cheap Date and how I’d love to do something with her and she gave me her number. When I called she said she would do it on one condition: that Paris was involved as well and I was, like, yes! On the day of the shoot, these couture houses kept delivering all these clothes the girls had called in – Givenchy, Dior… Finally, I said, “Look, you can’t wear these things – this is about a thrift store,” and I just threw these bags of my clothes on the floor. But they were pretty cool because we had no budget, so they did their own hair and makeup and they wore my clothes. They were really sweet and called up later and said, “We loved our story – it was so cute.” But I am not sure they “got” what we were doing.’ The great advantage for Kira and Bay, when they are producing Cheap Date (there have been 11 so far, the most recent sponsored by Jigsaw), is that they have a core of fashion celebrities prepared to work for little or no budget. Bay is a close friend of models Jade Parfitt, Erin O’Connor, Karen Elson and Minnie Weisz (younger sister of Rachel), all of whom have featured in the pages of the magazine. The network of friends and family that they can call on include Marlon Richard’s mother Anita Pallenberg (a thrifter from way back) and Sophie Dahl. ‘Sophie is one of my best friends. I love Sophie. She lives in America and she really doesn’t like thrift clothes. We always tease each other about our style. I remember her packing her bag one time to go on holiday and I was, like, “God, it’s funny watching you pack: you have clothes that I would never wear. You dress like a mother at a school open day.” I did a shoot for her on Vogue where I tried to make her look different with a fringe. She is a great girl – clever and lovely and just dear.’ Doesn’t Bay worry that the whole idea of Cheap Date – to illustrate that it is possible to avoid the usual dictates of the commercial fashion industry and dress brilliantly in cast-off clothes – is somehow undermined by the elitism of the people involved in the project? Many of whom, like Bay herself, are so important to the workings of the mainstream fashion world that they are given clothes and accessories by the big design houses (Bay reveals that ‘the lovely people at Chanel gave me this wonderful bag’ because she loves a ‘posh’ bag).
‘Yes, I guess it’s true that the people involved would seem to be a little bit exclusive themselves. But that’s not what it’s about – it’s not contrived. If glamorous people are attracted to thrifting, then it just shows that thrifting can be glamorous,’ she says, pausing to examine a cashmere jumper before continuing. ‘What staggers me is the power of branding and how companies build up a brand until a label becomes a lifestyle that they are selling you. Then they charge huge amounts of money for merchandise that is worth a fraction of that cost. I think there is something gross about that. I see what we are doing at Cheap Date as not so much anti-consumerism as a game. We are saying look what I got at a thrift store: a Burberry trench coat for [pounds sterling]10, or this floral cashmere jumper that came from Harrods 30 years ago for just [pounds sterling]4 – perhaps you’d like to try it, too. Because, you know, who wants to look like everyone else?’ Cheap Date is sold through selected art stores and museum bookshops priced at [pounds sterling]5 BAY’S TOP TIPS FOR FIRST-TIME THRIFTERS 1 Don’t be squeamish.
Most cast-off clothes have come straight from the dry-cleaner’s or the washing machine.
2 Use your imagination. Thrift shops don’t use the same sales tricks as real stores so you will have to imagine the garment in the right lighting and with the right accessories.
3 Adopt the same mindset for thrifting as you would for any other shopping trip.
Think about the type of clothing you want – a top or jeans or whatever – so that you have something to focus on.
4 Persevere. Thrifting is like treasure hunting because wonderful bits of clothing can turn up randomly anywhere.
One day there will be nothing, the next you will find a gem.
5 Pick shops in affluent areas because you will have a greater chance of picking up quality cast-offs.
WHERE TO START?
Bay’s London favourites are: Salvation Army/ Cloud 9, 9 Princes Street, W1 and The Geranium Shop for the Blind, 8a Earl’s Court Road, W8.
But every town in Britain has at least one charity shop and you never know what might appear.
