Fashion Monday with JJ Lee

This week's column focuses on dinner jacket faux-pas and rules to follow if you're renting a one. If there's a space at the back of the neck of your jacket, it doesn't fit you. Try to rent one size smaller and, if that doesn't work, go for one-button jackets which are cut tighter. Don't wear a cummerbund - do you really need something that's described in The Oxford Concise as a loin band. If you want to simplify the point where the pants and shirt meet, wear a satin sash...on second thought, forget about it. Rent it if the body fits and the sleeves don't...sleeves can be adjusted. Never rent the shirt. Never show more than three buttons or studs on your shirt when your jacket is buttoned. It's supposed to be a shirt not an elevator control panel. Frills never, pleats not good, plain front shirts just right. Belts or suspenders, neither. Your pants should fit you without either. Use the side tabs for comfort as the evening goes on. Show an inch of cuf...

JJ Lee tours a memorial garden designed to address the history of abuse at the Woodlands Institution in New Westminster. The Woodlands Institution in New Westminster originally buried dead patients in an on-site cemetary. It's believed 3300 bodies are there. Most of the buried were patients at the asylum and many were children with physical and mental disabilities. While the Woodlands has been closed since 1996, a provincial inquiry concluded in 2002 there was a history of sexual and physical abuse at the institution. The deceased at Woodlands were treated no better. Back in the 1970s the burial ground was designated a park and most of the tombstones were removed. Many stones were recycled for use in the staff barbeque pits and to line drainage ditches. Some were unceremoniously dumped and buried as waste. But this summer, the site is being transformed into a memorial garden. Driving the rehabilitation is series of residential developments on the old Woodlands grounds. Erik Lees h...

Last week, Vancouver by Design reviewed an exhibition called, Some Assembly Required . The Vancouver Art Gallery is presenting the traveling show from the Walker Art Center, Minnesota on contemporary pre-fab housing (that review will be posted soon). One of the goals of the show was to feature architects who designed contemporary or modern-styled prefabs. It also underscores how modern design ideas are at work in new smaller homes and suites no matter what style the come in - neo-Craftsman, Palladian stucco, or high-rise slick - it doesn't matter. Open plans, which means not parceling space into small rooms (living, dining kitchen) and the extension of visual space by using lotswindows and views to bring the outside into the home are two obvious examples of modern architectures contribution to domestic home design. But what are the other ways to make small homes, both apartments and single-family residences, look and feel bigger? This is especially relevant to the Vancouver market ...

The Whitecaps' proposal to build a new soccer stadium received a red card from the Vancouver Heritage Commission today. The VHC declared it "detrimental" to the heritage values of Gastown on Monday afternoon. The decision, while not binding, is one of several negative responses from advisory commissions who report to Vancouver's city council. The football club wants to build a 15 000-seat stadium over the railyard between Granville Square and Cambie Street. It would have to be built 10 metres above the tracks creating what some fear would be a giant wall on the northern edge of Gastown. Commissioner Cheryl Cooper said, "It flies completely in the face of what the Heritage Commission has been trying to achieve in Gastown and would disrupt the neighbourhood and the quality of life." VHC member James Burton said, "It would obliterate what you see from the water." Another member, Cam Cathcart, said the scale of the project "appalls me." But n...

(This column originally aired on CBC Radio One AM 690, On The Coast, April 3, 2006) A recent exhibition called "Graphex '06 - Do The Thing That You Do - Canadian Style" at the Pendulum Gallery in Vancouver asked, "Is there such a thing as a Canadian graphic design aesthetic?" The Graphic Designers of Canada organized the show as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations. An international jury including Rick Poynor, an influential design writer and founder of Eye magazine, selected over 60 works from over 600 submissions by Canadian graphic design firms. Representing the best works from 2005, a great local winner was Rethink. They're mostly known for their cheeky ads (a personal favourite is Rethink's TV campaign for Junior Achievers of BC featuring ethically-challenged business people teaching school kids shady, Enron-like practices and the tag line, "Teach kids everything you know about business...Well, almost everything.") but the agency has...

(A radio version of this column aired on Monday, Feb. 27) Monday morning at the airport, Jason Trotzuk is off to Quebec City. Next week it's Hong Kong and China. Global conquest in the world of denim requires logging lots of flight time. But that's the price you pay, when you design jeans that make women look, as Trotzuk says, "smoking hot." As founder and designer of the year-old company, Fidelity Denim, Jason Trotzuk has had a dizzying 2005. When women like Cameron Diaz, Lindsay Lohan, and Michelle Kwan don your dungarees, the media takes notice. Trotzuk says, "It's been a frenzy." With mentions in the New York Times, Elle, and Fashion proclaiming Fidelity "must-have" pants, Trotzuk is capitalizing on the public relations ride but he's also working hard to back the hype up with a strong product. "People in the press like to focus on the fit," he says. "But there's also the fabric and the finish." Trotzuk, who sees ...

According to the blog http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com, Lloyd Kahn is on his way to BC. Kahn is best known for his advocacy of do-it-yourself homebuilding. He will be documenting structures for his upcoming book, Builders of the Northwest Coast . In 1973, Kahn published the iconoclastic work, Shelter . It captured the world of counter-cultural constructions of the 1960s, including yurts, sod roofs, geodesic domes, and recycled shacks, decades before "green" architecture became a catch-phrase. Along with building theorist, Christopher Alexander, Kahn exerted a powerful influence on socially-conscience architects and architecture students at the University of British Columbia. Keep visiting for updates as Vancouver By Design is working hard to bring Lloyd Kahn "On The Coast."

The Design Exchange mailed the below in its Express newsletter: Oops! We Made a Mistake! Our recent Express alert included a teaser announcing an upcoming project with Culture.ca. This project is only at the conceptual stage and no decision to proceed has been made. We apologize for any inconvenience the announcement may have caused. For further information, contact: Paola Poletto, Senior Director, DX Programs. paola@dx.org

A competition sponsored by the Department of Canadian Heritage has raised the ire of graphic designers. The contest is called My Canadian Cultural Gateway Webpage Competition. The Design Exchange, a design museum in Toronto, is running the open call to redesign the website, Culture.ca. Culture.ca is a gateway into Canadian cultural content. It provides links to Canadian architecture, film, graphics, literature, arts and culture in Canada. It also has links to the CBC archives and Radio 3. There’s design news and a listing of festivals and events across the country. The redesign contest will consider all entries. A committee will pick the top three proposals and there will be an online vote. The winning project team will receive $2500. So what’s the controversy? Mark Busse, design director of Industrial Brand Creative of Vancouver, is infuriated by the whole idea. He says, “The open competition solicits free work from anyone who cares to call themselves designers.” He says, “It’s not th...

(A radio version of this column aired "On the Coast" on February 6.) Last week, John Furlong, chief executive of the Vancouver Organising Committee (VANOC), said the cost of venue building for the 2010 Olympics has gone up by $110 from $470 million to $580 million. Furlong wants B.C. and the federal government to cover the shortfall. Furlong also added that VANOC had already cut $85 million to keep their building projects under control. They already stopped the construction of an international broadcasting centre in Richmond, B.C. Instead, it will be rolled into the press centre housed in the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre. But what impact will cost increases and project cuts have on the design of the remaining Olympic buildings to be constructed in Vancouver and Whistler? Their costs are going up. Will it lead to weaker design? It may be hard to calculate. For example, take the Richmond Olympic Oval which many consider the signature building of the Vancouver Olym...

CBC Radio 3 Farah's War A young Iraqi-Canadian photojournalist embeds with extended family in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq. The first time you hear about Farah Nosh is during the invasion of Iraq. Her parents, whom you interview about watching the war on TV, tell you their daughter, Farah, is in Baghdad. You call her on her cell. You spoke only for a few minutes. Then she has to go. Bombs are beginning to fall.

CBC Radio 3 Monumental Bust: A Soviet Realist in the Suburbs A feature article about a Soviet social realist living in Surrey, BC.

CBC Radio 3 Piercing the Pencil-Pushing Patriarchy A woman in the boys' world of comic book art This feature story transforms interviews with Vancouver comic book artist Pia Guerra and integrates it with her art. In effect, it is an online graphic tale that recounts her rise in the business of mainstream comic books.

CBC Radio 3 The Way of the Jaks Legendary punk-rocking skaters are enshrined in a Vancouver Museum exhibition. Edit August 2015 This new link should work http://archive.cbcradio3.com/issues/2004_04_30/story_skate/ But it uses FLASH-based, so iPhones or iPads won't cut it.