First, my favorite outfit:

Made from vintage slips, worn with bloomers made from a tshirt, and a close up:

Then some flashier stuff:

Looks sort of like a Catholic school uniform, but with sequins? It’s Made from an American Apparel tank, sequin top, a pink skirt and some nail heads. And:

Chain mail top from Allison, my neighbor, and a sequin skirt I made. Next:

Made from a sequin tank top, sequin black stretch material, and salvaged satin. Finally:

Made from a vintage bathing suit, a blouse and vintage trim

And a close up of the necklace I’m wearing:

Made from strands of beads, pearls, hardware store chain, and gold and silver chains

Finally, not really a Burning Man “costume” but a gift for my friend that is letting me stay with his camp:

Modeled by the amazing Daniel Ajl Kitrosser, made from a “vintage” Brett Favre Packer tee from the good old days

I know there’s only 5 outfits, and I’m going for 7 days, but I plan on trading my outfits for other outfits the next two days, stopping by the “Kostume Kult” camp to pick up a costume, and checking out the “Burning Man boutique” where they just hand out clothes to anyone. Sounds soooooo cool.

One other thing: Let me know if you’d like a post card, I hear I HAVE to stop by the Burning Man post office because the “employees” there are a trip. So I’ll be making my way there.

Email me if you’re going and want to meet up there! I’ll be at the Volcano Worshippers camp, come say hi!

But now? To hell with responsibilities and commitments. I just received a check from a little company called Nike since I did a soccer commercial, so I’m going to Burning Man.

Though I’ve never been, I hear it’s a very sharing-is-caring type of community where everyone hands out food, water, costumes, bikes, tattoos, massages, and whatever you’re into, either for free or for trade. Since I want to have something to give/trade, but I can’t pack too too much, I decided I would make these little scrap fabric cuffs:

They’re made from scraps of fabric, vintage trim, and secure with snaps on the end. Hopefully people on the Playa will like them! And for guys I’m going to make some dust masks or something. Stay tuned for a post with photos of those, as well as the outfits I’m making myself to wear. They’re going to be pretty crazy!

As for my agenda, I’ve been receiving emails with the activities and events taking place and I already know which ones I want to do. The number one thing I want to do is:

Earth Guardian’s “Eco-Friendly Re-Fashion Runway Show” A fashion show full of clothes made out of old clothes! I already contacted the organizers and am definitely participating!

Also, I want to:

Do a Big Blue Marble interview: From their website: “Big Blue Marble is an environmental non-profit going to Burning Man to film interviews with artists looking at the connection between environmental awareness and creativity. BBM seeks to educate others on environmental issues through art and creative mediums.” I’m all about that!

Third most importantly:

PLAY BURNING MAN 2010 WORLD CUP SOCCER
The Burning Man World Cup “is an interactive art project that represents a colorful and psychedelic miniature version of the FIFA soccer World Cup, with games played mainly at night. A small soccer field will be set up, delineated with EL wire. The format will be 3 vs 3 players, wearing glow-in-the-dark uniforms and using a lighted soccer ball.” Glow in the dark uniforms to play soccer in every night! I can’t possibly contain myself.

And other than those main MUSTs, I have a list of more things I want to do. If I can remember/am not asleep/can find these camps, I want to see improv comedy on Tuesday, do “dust yoga” on Thursday, watch the “Mutant Vehicle” art car parade on Friday, and Wednesday’s looking very busy:

Wednesday, Sept 1
*8am- Black Rock City 5K Run - Get a little exercise in as I do an incredibly early desert run

*11am-2pm- Black Rock City Naked Bicycle Pub Crawl - I won’t be participating, but I want to make it to one of the pub crawl spots to observe!

*4pm, Miss Black Rock City 2010, a pageant! But not the type of beauty pageant I protest. From their website, “All women and men of any (or no) sexual preference and/or identity are welcome. Plastic surgery, an eating disorder, Vaselined teeth and double-sided tape are not required.” Sounds amazing.

And finally, the other ongoing camps/art I must see:

The “Got Sticker Camp”: They have “1000s of stickers. Feel free to dig through our boxes and find just that one sticker you have been looking for.”

See the Pigeonopolis: Tons and tons of paper mache pigeons made by multiple artists, so I’ll sort of feel like I’m home in New York.

See the Illuminatrix: Not totally sure what it is, but the makers describe it as “a 2D array of 256 (16×16) ping pong balls each of which has an RGB LED that allows it to be illuminated with any colour of the rainbow.” Sounds good to me.

CAN’T EVEN WAIT.

Hi Kate,

You don’t know me, my name is Bonnie Ludwig, I’m 30 yrs old and live in Michigan. I just saw your story on HLN with Robin Mead. It’s 7 am, I’m still in my pajamas, drinking my coffee and I HAD to write and tell you how excited I am that you opened a store like this!! I am FOR SURE going to be ordering from you soon as I already went on your website and LOVE your designs and creativity. It’ so refreshing to see someone do something good for the environment and living their dream at the same time!! I totally support you and plan to tell all my friends about you and your store.

Good luck and I will continue to follow your success.

Bonnie

———————–

I absolutely love what you’re doing. Outside of the environmental benefit, I think what you create is art and uniquely human. I don’t know if you are familiar with the Philosophical concept of the lightness and heaviness of being, but I think reusing things that others have appreciated makes life more meaningful; which sort of transcends the pitfalls of both theories. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but either way, thanks for doing what you do.

Best,
Kayla

———————–

And on top of that, a few days ago, a sweet girl named Carmen Wang stopped in wanted to take a photo because she likes the store so much. How flattering! Plus, she has a fashion blog called “Haute New York” where she called AuH2O one of her favorite boutiques in New York! Check out the post here. Unfortunately, the photo’s a little blurry, but here we are behind my desk:

Thanks Carmen!

Here are the performers in their outfits before the show:

Leanne Linsky, improviser of Miracle Baby and host of the Sexy Summer Soiree, in AuH2O Designs

Nicole Alesi, improviser of BFF, in AuH2O

Jamie Skinner, improviser of BFF, in AuH2O

Improvisers of BFF in AuH2O

Alexis Saarela, improviser of Taco Supreme, in AuH2O

Improvisers of Taco Supreme in AuH2O

stand-up comic in AuH2O

Emily Bryan, improviser of Miracle Baby, in AuH2O

Melanie Gurton, improviser of Miracle Baby, in Gosh Darn Seamstry

Nicole Cascio, author of “Desk Rage,” in Marina Del Monte (AuH2O’s summer intern)

Samantha Gurewitz, in AuH2O, and Matt Horton of the band Dangerpin

Thanks ladies (and a few gentlemen) for participating, and thanks to everyone who came out! Hope to see you at the next event!

A little about the Surface Design Journal:

A full-color, 76-page quarterly magazine, the Surface Design Journal inspires the imagination through features on innovative artists and emerging issues in surface design. Insightful articles include interviews with prominent people in the field, reviews of exhibitions and books, and an Exposure section showing members’ work. Every issue explores a theme–e.g., Stitching, Creative Process, Pushing the Edge–that allows for in-depth coverage of different aspects of surface design.

So that’s exciting. Check out more about Surface Design Journal here: http://www.surfacedesign.org

Here’s what happened. I got an email from my soccer coach Tuesday afternoon saying Nike was looking to cast 20 athletic, soccer-looking women between the ages of 18-30 with “crazy soccer skills” for a commercial featuring Hope Solo, the keeper for the US Women’s National Team. The commercial was also supposed to have Lebron James and Adrian Peterson in it, and I think they’re kind of famous. The casting call was the next day, Wednesday, from 3-8pm at a studio on 37th street. If we got cast, we’d be playing soccer on camera on Sunday in Philadelphia, and would get paid serious money. Now, I look pretty athletic and soccer-y, I’m 26 years old, and I’ve played some soccer in my life, so even though it meant closing up my store for a few hours, I decided to audition. I showed up at the studio, which was an official-looking place packed full of athletic-looking people, at about 4:30 and was assigned number 53, meaning 52 women had come before me. And the casting was still open for another few hours! Once our number was called, we went into the little filming room and answered a few questions, took a few photos, did some one-touch passing, juggled the ball a little bit and that was that. I couldn’t have been more nervous- I was sweating bullets, unable to stop talking, going on about how much I love Hope Solo but I’m a little jealous because my boyfriend thinks she’s hot, etc. Not very professional, but very enthusiastic! Dan, the casting director (super nice guy), asked me to take my hair out of its usual curly high knot-looking bun-mess and show him what it looked like in a low pony-tail because there would be a Brazilian team playing the US, and maybe I could pass for Brazilian? To be fair, I get that all the time. No, that’s obviously not true. But it was then that I thought I might, just might, have a chance at getting a role as a Brazilian National Team player for a Nike commercial. He told us they’d contact us if we were chosen, so I left the studio holding my breath.

Two days later, I got a text from Dan from Atmosphere Casting. It was the most serious text I’ve ever received, saying I was “officially booked” for the Nike Commercial, we’d be leaving at 5am on Sunday morning outside Penn Station. Good thing I was having a fashion show the night before that would last until midnight. Oh well!

So, Sunday morning my alarm went off at 4:20am, I somehow woke up, and somehow shuffled out the door and onto the train. I got to Penn Station by 5am exactly, checked in, and met up with a few friends from my team that were also cast, Julie and Veronica. Our bus took off at 5:15, which was, most importantly, when our pay clock started. We were getting paid an hourly rate that was more than what I paid my intern for that day. Just writing that makes me feel bad. She’ll get a bonus when I get my Nike check. Anyway, below is everyone getting on the bus at the crack of dawn:

I wish I could say I slept the whole bus ride, but I was too riled up from the show the night before, going to bed at 1am, and the upcoming day. I slept a little though, and we arrived at the Philadelphia Union stadium at 7:30am:

Once there, we registered, filled out some paperwork, and found out our roles for the day. Julie, my friend from my women’s team, was cast as the SWEEPER FOR THE US! She was going to be HOPE SOLO’S sweeper- SO LUCKY! OMG, so jello! So totes lime green jello! I don’t really talk like that, but I mean… what were Veronica and I cast as? Oh, bench players for Brazil. Not only was I on the losing team, but I was on the bench. Sort of felt like a loser. But super nice Dan from Atmosphere Casting said we were “hand selected” by the Director to play that role, so we shouldn’t feel bad. Plus, we got to be in the warm-up scene, and we had very important roles on the bench. Like sitting and cheering. And warming up on the sidelines. Very important!

Anyway, if you’ve read this blog before, you may know that I’ve always coveted movie set food. I’ve had it once, and it was good, but this commercial set food was the best. There were omelets, waffles, fried potatoes, fruit, bagels and donuts:

After breakfast, we went to wardrobe. I got outfitted in my Brazilian jersey, shorts, socks, shin guards and cleats. Here are my “teammates” with their uniforms. As you can see, all of the players on Team Brazil were tan and had brown hair. We were definitely typecast.

Amazingly, we got to keep everything but the jerseys, so FREE CLEATS. These are my precious new Nike Mercurials, and really made me feel like I was playing barefoot. LOVE:

Also, there were 200 fans/extras who would be sitting in different parts of the bleachers decked out in red, white, and blue, some had face paint, some guys with their shirts off, flags, posters, the works:

After breakfast and wardrobe it was still only 9am, so we hit the field to start practicing all of our plays. We weren’t actually playing soccer, we were playing choreographed soccer- we were told exactly who does what when. She passes to her, her defender dives, she gets by her and shoots, etc. There was going to be an entrance scene, one breakaway save scene, one upper ninety save, and one corner kick save all featuring Hope Solo. We had to rehearse all of the plays so that we’d have it down before Hope got there at noon, since we only had her for six hours. We rehearsed for about three hours, and of course it was one of those heat wave days, so it got nice and sweaty. I didn’t have to rehearse any of the plays since I wasn’t a field player, but I was in the entrance scene that shows all of us in the background warming up as Hope is introduced and steps onto the field. Here’s Hope’s stand-in, Laura, rehearsing the entrance scene where she walks through a crowd of officials, trainers, coaches and important people, while the fans in the stadium scream and go crazy, and we warm up in the background.

After rehearsing for awhile, we had lunch, which was just as delicious as breakfast. Then Hope arrived, and she started filming the warm-up scene that we’d rehearsed. We did about 75 takes, literally, and not like when people say “literally” and don’t mean it, I mean it literally, without exaggeration, we did the same thing over and over and over for an hour and a half. Some people were playing 4v1, some people were passing and moving, and I was doing high knees and butt kicks with two other players. The scene didn’t actually make any sense at all, because why would both teams already be warming up when she’s just being announced? No. Everyone warms up first, then everyone gets announced and everyone lines up for the National anthem and then the game starts. But whatever. Here’s a photo of me in my uniform, or “kit” as it’s so common to say now that the World Cup just ended and everyone’s been using soccer, or should I say “football” terms, as if they’re European.

Unfortunately, that’s my last photo since my phone died mid-way through the day. Though it turns out we’re not allowed to post any photos of Hope anyway because… something about her contract. But I swear I met her and have photos with her! And she was really nice!

Moving on, after we finally, finally, finally did the entrance scene successfully (wrapped it?) and went on to start the next scene, it started to rain. We couldn’t shoot in the rain for continuity’s sake, so we had to go in and wait out the storm. We all walked inside the locker room, laid down on the cement floor, put our soccer bags under our heads, and went to sleep. We must have looked like puppies, all sleeping on top of each other. I think that might have been my favorite part of the day- crashing on the floor with 20 girls I’d met that day.

Long story short, it stopped raining, we went back out and shot the remaining scenes (each one took another 75 takes) and I did a lot of running up and down the sideline. High knees, butt kicks, karaoke, sprints, etc. Hope had to leave at 6pm on the dot to make her flight back to Atlanta, so her stand-in Laura had to dive and make saves in her place after she left, even though she’s not a keeper. Poor Laura. Then we went on filming until about 8pm when we wrapped the shoot, had dinner, packed up and got on the bus back to New York. We got back to Penn Station at 11:30 at night, so you know, just another 17 hour day filming a Nike commercial. As they say…

Just do it.

In case you like regular text as opposed to the pretty flier, here’s the info again:

Check out our facebook invite, and invite friends: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138054256214145

Hope to see you there!

modeling my Spain dress

the Spain flag dress

detail of the crest

Spanish flag that I modeled the dress after

GO SPAIN! VIVA ESPAGNA!

pre-painting: nail polish and fake nails all lined up

painting the flags and soccer balls- I do two sets for when I lose a nail playing soccer… seriously it happened last night

Final product: Thumbs up USA!

I’m going to wear these with my USA dress on Saturday for the big game against Ghana! GO USA!

GO USA! USA USA USA!

Just finished my USA dress to wear to watch the World Cup tomorrow morning. USA better win because I want to wear this dress again! Numerous times!

It was made from a vintage salsa dress and a blue American Apparel leotard donated from friends, salvaged lace trim, and a military eagle patch. Recycling, fashion and the World Cup, all in one dress.

GO USA!