designer q&a: stolen girlfriends club

Stolen Girlfriends Club is a pop culture label built on vision and creativity. Their innovative ideas are based on the influences of fashion, art and music. Youthfulness, irreverence and a tongue-in-chic attitude are the driving forces behind the New-Zealand made brand. This attitude has earned the Club a celebrity following that includes Juliette Lewis, Kate Bosworth, Daisy Lowe, & The Cobra Snake alongside cool kids everywhere.

Co-founders and directors Marc Moore, Luke Harwood and Dan Gosling want people to interpret Stolen Girlfriends Club in their own way. "It’s a way of life – the brand represents a lifestyle we live and share with our friends”. All three come from a background in the commercial surf industry – Marc and Luke are both ex pro surfers – and all have worked with international fashion forward brands. In time the boys outgrew their boardies (surf shorts), each taking their attributes in creative marketing, distribution, and business knowledge to form Stolen Girlfriends Club in 2005.

IDLM - Skeletor or Hordak?
Marc Moore - Skeletor, mainly because I don't even remember Hordak so he mustn't be that memorable.

When and how did you become interested in fashion?
About 4 years ago. I grew up in this tiny seaside surf town called raglan. I decided to move up to the city for work. And from then on I got really inspired. There was so much going on, all these different people with their own forms of style and expression. I got pretty hooked!! I started experimenting with art and that soon turned in to fashion. Making clothes that me and my friends wanted to wear. 4 years on and it is now more than a hobby - but we still have a lot of fun!

Where did the name "Stolen Girlfriends Club" come from?
It came from my first art show. Stolen Girlfriends Club was the theme and title of that exhibition. It sold out on the opening night which was amazing! Everyone seemed to love the name so we thought it was the obvious choice for our brands name.

How do you sleep @ night?
Well mostly, I sleep well. Except when it's coming up to range release. I get pretty stressed out with new collections. It always seems like your running out of time - there's such an urgency to it!! Once the collection is complete I sleep much better!! We are about 2 weeks from finishing our next collection so I'm a walking zombie at the moment.

What famous designers have influenced you, and how?
Hedi Slimane influenced us early on. Mainly because we felt we could relate to what he was doing. He wasn't just a fashion designer. He was heavily into music, art, his photography. We also loved the aesthetic and detailing of his work. So polished and refined, yet had this gritty rock & roll feel that was very wearable and timeless.

What’s the most played song on your iPod?
At the moment it would be 'Now Wow' by The Kills.

How would you describe your personal style?
Hmm that's a hard one. I kinda change depending on my mood/feeling. A little bit rock & roll, a little bit nerdy/preppy, and a touch fruity.

What brands or designers are currently on your radar?
Christophe Decarin at Balmain, Ricardo Tisci at Givenchy, Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent, and Alber Elbaz at Lanvin - all seriously nuts!

Describe the Pretty Vacant collection in a Haiku.
The rebellious
grunge punk sensibility
ripped plaid leopard lace

Outside of fashion what inspires you?
Music. Escapism. Romance.

What's your favorite childhood movie?
E.T. I cried like a mofo.

In your eyes what makes a good collection?
Beautiful fabrics, good shapes, wearability, clever detailing, a clear concept that runs right throughout, with a bold identity.


View the Stolen Girlfriends Club collection in the store.

Visit the Stolen Girlfriends Club Website.

warhol does the grand palais

“All my portraits have to be the same size, so they’ll all fit together and make one big painting called Portraits of Society. That’s a good idea, isn’t it? Maybe the Metropolitan Museum would want it someday.”


Warhol, credited with single-handedly reinventing the portrait, once spoke of his dream to have all of them combined in one spectacular piece of art; although his dream could not be recreated exactly as he wished, the exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris is the closest anyone has ever come. In “Warhol’s Wide World,” which is on display starting this week until the middle of July, 140 of Warhol’s portraits were put on display, some of them emerging for the first time from private collections. Warhol created about 1,000 portraits during his career, either of persons of interest such as Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong, or those who commissioned him for $25,000 a piece.

Absent from this showcase will be the portrait of Yves Saint Laurent, who was previously placed in the “Glamour” section near other designers like Armani and intended to be a focal point of the exhibition. However, his former partner Pierre Berge found this placement catastrophic. In a letter to the Le Monde, Berge explained, “To show the portraits of Yves Saint Lauren with personalities from the fashion world, even if some of them have talent, was unthinkable… To put Saint Laurent in the ‘glamour’ section would be to show disrespect for his oeuvre and to mix him up with the ‘beautiful people.'"


For visiting information check out the Grand Palais.

tara donovan

Tara Donovan is an artist with enough talent and creativity to make plastic straws seem interesting. Her specialty is taking many copies of an everyday object and transforming them into something phenomenal. Enter her world and, in “Colony,” chunks of pencils transform into, depending on how far away you stand, either an array of skyscrapers or an infectious fungus spreading over the floor. In a 2003 installation called “Haze,” Donovan used over two million plastic straws on a 40-foot gallery wall to create an aesthetic effect both cloudlike and ephemeral. She has used Elmer’s Glue, Styrofoam cups, paper plates, and toothpicks in astronomic quantities create the last thing you ever thought you’d see from disposable kitchenware. Donovan, who says she thinks “in terms of infinity,” is refreshingly unique in her courageous and innovative ability to create large-scale marvels out of the commonplace.

Untitled, 2003
Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue
6'(H) x 20'(W) x 19' 2"(D)
Ace Gallery New York

Artist’s Statement:
“My investigations into the properties of different media each address a specific trait that is unique to a given mass-produced material. By experimenting with the more phenomenological aspects of a material, my process develops through a kind of dialogue that leads to a specific repetitive action (e.g. stacking, bundling, heaping, etc.) that builds the work. The breadth and diversity of the consumer landscape has expanded to such a degree that the supply of materials that can be adapted to an artistic context seems limitless. The idea that art can be manufactured or that it can radically complicate the standard notions of value attached to mass-produced objects is no longer a point of serious contention in contemporary debates. I think the new fertile territory, for myself at least, encompasses a range of practices that capitalize on the iconic identities of commercial and industrial materials by pressing them further into the realm of abstract seduction. I prefer the phras e "site-responsive" to describe the affiliation of my works to the spaces they inhabit. While this term makes a convenient allusion to the chameleonic visuals I prefer to exploit, it also suggests a dependence on the architectural particulars and lighting conditions of a given space that environmentally impact the growth of my work in terms of scale, direction, and orientation. This reliance on spatial conditions is primarily responsible for forming the understanding of my works as "fields" of visual activity, which have been compared to everything from landscapes to biomorphic forms and even cellular structures.”

Untitled, 2003 (Detail)
Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue
6'(H) x 20'(W) x 19' 2"(D)
Ace Gallery New York

what's your favorite scary movie...?

“Let the Right One In” has just been released on DVD! The Swedish film is equal parts teenage romance and vampire gore. It tells the story of a bullied twelve-year old, Oskar, and his budding friendship with Eli, his oddly pale neighbor who only comes out at night. Oskar soon discovers that Eli is a vampire, but not before he has grown too entranced with her to tear himself away. Check it out!

oscar wilde

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” From this quote comes the name for Company of Thieve’s latest album Ordinary Riches, and from the author comes the song title for their newest music video: Oscar Wilde. Company of Thieves, a Chicago-based band, is comprised of lead singer Genevieve Schatz, guitarist Marc Walloch, and drummer Mike Ortiz. In the music video for “Oscar Wilde,” Genevieve takes on the quirky task of embodying Max Fischer, the precocious and extremely involved teenager from “Rushmore.” With gawky glasses and a schoolboy tie and blazer, she channels Max Fischer in a montage of his various extracurricular activities: JV basketball manager, yellow belt in the kung fu club, and choirmaster of the second chorale, to name a few. Genevieve’s androgynous transformation competes with her compelling vocals for attention, so be prepared to watch it a few times to catch the full effect of both.

sexual revolution

Harri Peccinotti, who served as art director for Nova, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Vogue before he quit to become a photographer, is known for leading the movement in non-traditional pin-up images and introducing black women into fashion photography. Harry Peccinotti’s new book Sexual Revolution suggests female seduction in its most primal form; close-up images of a cigarette wrapped between full red lips, the beads of perspiration on a sunbathing woman, and images of models nibbling on candy dominate the 228 pages, which was compiled of over forty years of his work from fashion magazines, book jackets, and his 1968 and 1969 contributions to the famous Pirelli calendar. Available at artbook.com.

lissy trullie

Performing TONITE! Lissy Trullie, whose hipster credentials read like a list of places to be seen: she’s DJed at Beatrice Inn, performed at Bungalow 8, and graced the stage at the Mercury Lounge.



Thursday, March 12th at 8:00 PM
Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey Street
Lissy Trullie (opening for The Soundtrack of Our Lives)
$15 cover