In Honor Of The Orion Spacecraft…Some Fashion For Mars.
December 4, 2014 § 2 Comments
If all goes well tomorrow morning NASA’s Orion spacecraft will launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Watch: First Test Flight for NASA Spacecraft That May Take Us to Mars – Wired
One Step for Space Fashion, One Giant Leap for Astronaut Safety
Source: http://urbantaster.com
Note: Jerry Pankin was a shoe designer in Manhattan. I remember hearing his name growing up and found the above copy while doing research on my grandfather, Ben Benjamin. I asked my mother about Jerry and she remembered he was a lot of fun. She recalled him telling her once in jest he was going to design a refrigerator a foot deep that covered the length of a room, that way you could always find what you were looking for. Genius!
Source: spacecollective.org
Share
A Few Photos…Of Me.
December 2, 2014 § 12 Comments
So many fashion bloggers put themselves in their blogs – literally. For someone like myself who devoted a large part of their youth to a career in the performing arts I’m surprised by my own reticence to doing this and can’t see myself modeling my favorite shoes or clothes. Maybe it’s where I’m at in my life — raising my son and trying to find that all too illusory balance between family and work or perhaps it’s my innate fear of the power and danger of the Internet and the loss of freedom that goes with that. Who knows? Maybe it’s also because I’m not sure where I fit in? Is this really a fashion blog? Whenever I write a post there’s a place to click category. For almost a year now every post has been checked uncategorized. It’s only recently that I’ve started to try and figure that one out. Maybe it’s also because I am a mom and my focus has now shifted off of myself to taking pictures of my son or that really I’m the one that likes to take the pictures rather than pose for them! In addition there’s nothing like motherhood to make one lose their sense of vanity. I’m sure most mothers out there know exactly what I mean. I’ve gone whole days without looking in the mirror. Something that would seem so shocking to my 20 something self…so, I decided I would try and find a few different photos through the years to post and found I actually had much more than I thought. Here’s a sampling — so what category would you choose for my blog?
Photo by Carol Benjamin
St. Petersburg Times.
The Atlanta Constitution
Photo by Norine Perreault
Family | Photo by Carol Benjamin
Selfie
Share
CONVERSE
May 29, 2014 § 8 Comments
The Converse Rubber Shoe Company was founded in 1908. In 1917 they created a shoe called the All Star and in 1921, basketball player Charles “Chuck” Taylor joined a basketball team sponsored by Converse — The Converse All Stars. Taylor became a salesman for the company and made improvements to the shoe.
These days Converse appears to be a style choice.
…and Nike dominates the neighborhood basketball courts.
Ironic.
Photo: Arthur Rothstein, Sept. 1935
Sneakers: Where Can’t They Go? – New York Times
Converse.com
Share
Arthur L. Benjamin
May 24, 2014 § 18 Comments
Memorial Day is a time I think of my dad, Arthur L. Benjamin. Growing up I sometimes wished for a younger dad, but never a different one. Since I started this blog I’ve learned some new things about him. I always knew he went into selling shoes because he loved people and loved to travel, but I didn’t know that he had worked as a shoe designer and stylist for Minnehaha Moccasins (a contemporary of Minnetonka) and Golo Footwear. Before entering into the family business he also loved photography and in WWII worked as a photographer for the Army. He entertained us with his Army stories and we were in awe. Stories about following Patton around in a jeep and dinners with King Farouk.
He told us he had enough experience for a lifetime in those 4 years. The government kept his negatives, but he made his own prints and they were kept in his green Army photo boxes up in our hall closet. The Yalta conference and the great pyramids. He was about to be sent back to the states to teach photo intelligence when he visited Cairo on R&R. When he saw the way the army was living there, the hotel they had taken over, the villas and suffrages he decided that’s where he wanted to be. Some things though were hard to get him to talk about, like being one of the first people allowed into Dachau after it was liberated because he was Jewish. He still remembered some Arabic and used it whenever he had the chance. My grandfather told us a story about how my grandmother knew where he was when she recognized the back of him taking a picture in a photo in The New York Times.
Photo: Arthur L. Benjamin
Photo: Arthur L. Benjamin
Photo: Arthur L. Benjamin
Photo: Arthur L. Benjamin
Photo: Arthur L. Benjamin
Photo: Arthur L. Benjamin
A true Renaissance man he could play any instrument by ear and had a beautiful tenor singing voice. After the war when he lived in California he had his own radio show.
He taught us how to make pinhole cameras and when I was older he gave me his Yashica 2 ¼ which I still have.
Women's Footwear in America 