I was looking forward to Nom-Con all week and with press pass in hand, I trundled through the double doors to Ireland’s newest anime convention. One of the first things I noticed was that over 80% of the attendees at Nom-Con came decked out in their finest cosplay gear. I caught sight of characters from Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Ouran Host Club, Dante from Devil May Cry, Peter White from Alice In The Country of Hearts (with an over-sized pocket watch) and of course Naruto and Lolita fashionistas. Everyone took pictures of each other’s cosplay outfits, it was great to see and feel a community spirit of like-minded fans.
The Trade Hall was doing impressive business too with attending companies such as Beez Entertainment, Zen Pop and Genki Gear just to name a few. I picked up the second volume of the manga Alice In The Country of Hearts for €8 and the entire season of Cowboy Bebop for an impressively cheap €30 price-tag. The Trade Hall was filled with people throughout the day, when I asked traders they said ‘Business was okay.’ This is a slight understatement as people were laden down and clutching onto their purchases.
(l-r) Claire Thompson, Autumn McCullogh and Emma O’Neill cosplaying as members of Ouran High School Host Club.
I called down to the anime screening room and managed to catch 20 minutes of Trigun and fell in love with the series. It’s been on my list for some time but I never got around to watching it. Vash the Stampede and co. has been bumped up in line for purchasing and I’ll end up with a fatal case of the lol’s. I managed to catch another series called Angel Beats! which left me confused and bemused about it.
Ducking out from Angel Beats!, I managed to catch the Zen Pop Panel about publishing comics and breaking into the industry. I was surprised to find that at least one of their members create their comics all by hand with no digital editing or rendering software whatsoever and that another member of the group is to sit her Leaving Certificate next year.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s line-up at Nom-Con with Lolier Than Thou, a gameshow-esque to find the biggest fan of Lolita fashion at Nom-Con this year and of course the gaming and anime screenings running all day.
Sharon Nolan as Charmander, everyone’s fave Pokémon.
We’re looking forward to Nom-Con, a brand new Irish Anime Convention kicking off in Dublin this Friday for a whole weekend. It’s taking place at the D4 Hotels Ballsbridge Inn and Towers just off Pembroke Road. There’s all day anime screenings, an artists’ alley, a Pokémon Tournament, cosplaying, serious gaming and a maid and butler café and that’s only tidbits of what’s on offer. If you’re heading along to this, expect to be entertained into the wee hours of the morning with an anime murder mystery and other creative things.
A weekend ticket costs €35 and a day pass will set you back €20. We’ve managed to wrangle a media pass for this event and we’ll report to you what we make of Nom-Con throughout the weekend.
Lilly is holding a lovely competition for five issues of Homemaker Magazine dating from 1959. Vintagey lovely. There’s still time to squeeze in an entry.
Just back from a jaunt in Temple Bar. Industry Design in Temple Bar (at the end of Cow’s Lane) is nice but way too expensive and maybe a little to desigery for me. €60 cushions. Lovely cushions, but still €60 a pop. I might pop back for a chair or a clock though.
However, I bought a lovely new tea set for €30 in Lucy’s Lounge on Fownes Street. Owner Dee was delightful. Going to put the kettle on and make buckets of chamomile tea this afternoon. Flaunt your imperfections, as Dee said. Lovely Lucy’s. Thank to Catherine for the tip!
This couch cannot by very comfortable. All those hard square lines. It’s a great novelty but we still prefer comfy couches, right? Or is it deceptively comfortable?
The Space Invaders themed couch was designed by Igor Chak.
Front view of couch.
Space Invaders couch from behind. Argh, aliens!
Via Technabob
Some nice tidbits have been floating around the web this evening about Google’s new project colourfully dubbed GStyle. GStyle wants to pick the brains of bloggers to see how they consume media and how Google could empower them to become better at blogging. An innocuous enough move?
This is more about Google trying understand more about how interesting trends are picked up by fashion-conscious brains, how they turn these around and the tools they use.
Fashion magazines are much like statues. Implacability is their forté. Predictability of publication, reviews, the odd sex quiz, the perfume sample. When the web came, the magazines bought domains and stuck up some of their offline content on it. And maybe if there was a budget, add-on interview specials and wee fashion bits and bobs.
A compelling reason for Google to get GStyle off the ground is that traditional fashion magazines haven’t found that formula to translate print popularity to the just in time nature of the web. When so much effort is concentrated on the physicality of magazine – from shoots all the way up the publishing food-chain to the daily rushes and the final product – the idea of turning around a feature on a fashion show or a niche find in a shop within an hour is horrifying.
This contrasts starkly with what’s happening in blogging. Like I need to tell you, but as we both know, information is moving in chaotic clouds. It’s bouncing ideas, trends and critiques 24/7. More and more people are being influenced by what’s happening on the web. Last night’s red carpet event webcasted and liveblogged. Photoblogs of upcycled clothes. Lookbook.
Imagine being upstaged by tweenie blogger? We can’t all be Tavis but her meteoric rise could never have happened in Magazineland. She’s an ingenue of the medium. A once-off.
But we shouldn’t knock the magazines too much. Magazines have web editors of their own, but every piece of content up there needs to be that September Issue and it needs to be fresh. Many fashion magazines just do what they always did but on the web. It won’t stay like that forever. That’s where Google come back into our story.
Google are not a technology company. They are *the* Marketing Animal. Just this morning, Google reported a profit of $1.84 billion for the last quarter ending June 30. That translates into a 24% increase in profit for that quarter over the same quarter last year. You can bet your danglies that this move into building a GStyle product or platform is all about figuring out how people are consuming fashion trends and what this means for sharing and marketing into the future.
Photo – Elle’s August 2010 cover
Season Four of Mad Men is just a few weeks away and news travels to ITM HQ over the weekend that the designer for the show, Janie Bryant is designing a special line of MM-inspired mod line for QVC. It’ll be decidedly more Joan than Betty especially with the mod leanings. And if Joan is the muse here, exactly how Quant is her look?
2010 is shook-up vintage whether it be Moschino’s Depeche Mode street princess or Anna Sui’s patchwork group on acid for the Autumn. With the timelessness of the show weighing on the line, is mass-marketing the look and feel through telly-shopping, the right way to go – a la Rachel Zoe?
In extra helpings, props to Charles for sharing a linky with ripe MM S4 pics. Teaser le tease.
PPS. Glamour 12 questions Janie Bryant on the costumes of Mad Men.
Picture remains the property of AMC