Twin Times Two

Silly and forgetful me.  A more in-depth review of issue one of Twin was supposed to come after founder/creative director Becky Smith very kindly gave me a copy after our talk we did together at the Sketchbook talk (I did a stand-alone one on Thurs… hope people who came enjoyed it!).  It was definitely essential to revisit it after having only seen some previews because the hardback plain black cover of Twin conceals so much.  It's weighty in terms of written content, depth and physical weight.  The re-review was due because I got so much more out of Twin than I had actually expected both image and text-wise.

Now, issue two of Twin is upon us and having sifted through some PDFs, I think a plain purple hardback book will be joining the black one soon.  The fact that there is no shouty cover and the way it is divided into chapters just consecrates the idea of the bi-annual being more like a book than a monthly magazine and any sniff of 'news/time sensitive' items are battered out so that Twin, the book, is as considered and curated as it can be.  It struck me when we did the Sketchbook talk together, that Becky Smith had a desire to create Twin to unleash something that was more grown-up than Lula, where she was creative director.  I'd say that whilst Lula has done much to empower girls with whimsy and a freewheeling desire to dream, Twin goes beyond that and empowers that girl into action by featuring women.  There's something more weighty and substantial about both the subjects Twin features as well as the way they are featured even if grit and weight ultimately makes for a beautiful tome…

A profile on Lina Scheynius – Come on, 'fess up, who DOESN'T love her?

Marking 40 years of the Women's Liberation Movement, five feminists assess how far "we" have come (yes, that is a collective feminine we there…)… I had never seen this Stigamot (Icelandic women's organisation for victims of sexual abuse) poster which is a visual representation of the phrase "piece of meat"… still quite pertinent now of course what with all this hoo-ha…

The legendary art director Ruth Ansel (art directed US Vogue, Harper's, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine etc etc in the 60s…) talks about working with Richard Avedon and Diana Vreeland…

Three artists consider the impact of Louise Bourgeois on their work…

Parisian actress and singer Joana Preiss talks about her directorial debut…

Paul Wetherell shoots model and artist Christina Kruse…

Love the accompanying film to this shoot Kentucky Rain, shot by Boo George and styled by Celestine Cooney…

Speaking of film, Smith also mentioned in the talk that she was frustrated with Lula
(where she was creative director) for not having a website and at
present, it still is a bit of a shell.  This has been rectified at Twin where blog, video content relating to the book come together to form the missing link.