Founded on much the same spirit as Toms Shoes, sunglassier Warby Parker donates a pair of optical glasses for every pair of sunglasses sold.  Warby Parker has available 27 limited styles and one monocle. www.warbyparker.com

Wildfox premiers their brilliant debut swimwear line for resort 2011. Wildfox’s Swim collection “draws inspiration from bombshells of the past including the unforgettable Brigitte Bardot, Marylin Monroe and Raquel Welch.” Photographed by Mark Hunter. READ MORE….

photograph by Walker Evans, 1950s

Painter Lucian Freud dies in London at 88.

In 1946, Norma Jean, later known as Marilyn Monroe, starred along side an anonymous actor in a 6 minute long nudie flick.  In the possession of a Spanish collector, no one knew of the film’s existence, until he died, and now his children have decided to auction it off. It is now on sale for a base price of half a million dollars and will premier this August at the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival in Argentina.

San Francisco….Free Gold Watch

www.galenpehrson.com

Matt W. Moore, the brain behind MWM Graphics–a design and illustration studio based in Portland, Maine–just released his numerically controlled poster series; a collaboration between engineer Aaron Panone, Paper Fortress Films, and MWM Graphics. Aaron Panone, who engineered the jig explains, “Vector graphics are converted into a tool path and then a machine language which controls a 3-axis CNC Machine retrofitted with a special fixture that holds a marker [a sharpie] and mimics hand pressure during the act of drawing. Thirty-three mechanical drawings in three designs were produced using this process.” Each drawing comes with one of the Sharpies used.

www.mwmgraphics.com

Photographs: © Tierney Gearon www.tiernygearon.com

Trout Fishing in America is not at all about trout fishing. Trout fishing is merely an ambiguous metaphor. The cover of the book is a photograph of Richard Brautigan and a friend identified as Michaela Le Grand, whom he referred to as his “Muse.” The photo was taken in San Francisco’s Washington Square Park in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue. The first chapter of the book is an extended and fanciful description of this photo. Richard Brautigan was a seminal figure in 196os literature. He died of a self-inflicted .44 Magnum gunshot wound to the head. He left a suicide note that simply read: “Messy, isn’t it?”

[NY TIMES....]