ISSUE 024

Vaquero Chino

With tasting notes of a new Poolsuite mixtape, how to make a tiny house exceptionally beautiful, Apple old and new, vintage watches, cult cinema, a timeless essay about that feeling called the opposite of loneliness and living with objects we love.

The good life beckons once more!

CURATE WITH US

Our question this week is:

What advice would you give to feel more creative?

Let us know in the comments 💭

Further down in this issue, we’ll share the life-changing books discussed last week!

Hot Hyperlinks

☼ Poolsuite Presents: Mixtape 16, an hour of summer with DJ Holographic

☼ Periscope is a gorgeous, light and airy home in Australia of just 84m squared. Its artful sky windows and refreshing wood help turn this narrow space into a delightful sun bath

☼ Revisit what the Apple store website looked like in 1999, as well as what the 2023 store would look like if we reinstated the iconic Garamond typeface prominent in the 90s

☼ Brynn Wallner is shining a light on the mysterious and alluring world of women’s watches

☼ Marina Keegan tragically died in a car crash when she was 22. Over ten years later, her heartwarming essay “The Opposite of Loneliness” continues to strike a chord

☼ How to Live With Objects is a joyful anti-decorating book championing a new approach to interiors — simply surrounding ourselves with objects that we love

☼ No weekend plans? Here’s a nearly endless library of cult cinema classics you can watch for free on YouTube

☼ The classic Camaleonda sofa reimagined by Joe Mortell experimenting with new AI techniques. For the story behind one of the world’s most recognised sofas, dive in here

☼ One of the most undeniable movie wardrobes is that of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet (1996). The film’s costume designer Kym Barrett takes us through the process and also went on to style The Matrix (1999)

SUMMER-ENHANCING PEOPLE

Feminine Mystique: Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola hails from a cinematic dynasty. Despite this, she has proven herself to be one of the leading directors of our time, producing cult classics like Lost in Translation and Virgin Suicides through her distinctly dreamy and feminine lens and stellar dialogue, earning her plenty of accolades that have seldom gone to women.

Her fantastical childhood involving growing up around glamour, featuring in films like The Godfather directed by her father Francis Ford Coppola, interning for Chanel aged 15 and befriending Marc Jacobs certainly give her a flavoured backstory. Never solely a director, Sofia Coppola is also known for her pared back and irreverent style serving as a 90s style icon, her fashion photography in Japan and dabbling in design.

A unique visual voice and expert crafter of subtlety and mood, we explore the evocative universe of Sofia Coppola.

Highlights

• On her beginnings: “For me, photography and film are two totally different things. My filmmaking begins with images from photography, so I think of it as a starting point for making a film. I wasn’t planning on being a filmmaker, but when I read Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel The Virgin Suicides (1993), I loved it and thought I would try adapting it. I ended up writing the script and putting a book of visual references together — photographs — to show how I wanted to make the film […] At one art fair, I first saw the photographs of Bill Owens — his series on suburbia — so when I started working on Virgin Suicides those Bill Owens pictures became a reference. I bought one print — an image of girls at a school dance with stars hanging from the ceiling. That picture was definitely in my mind when I worked on the film.”

• Unpacking the hyper-feminine, dream-like lens of Sofia Coppola: “A dream-like quality is to Sofia what symbolism is to David Lynch, or perfect symmetry to Wes Anderson. Watching a Coppola picture is like being immersed in a beautiful hallucination, with the long drawn out shots and slow zooms often telling you more about the protagonist than the director's minimalistic dialogue.”

• “The best career advice I’ve gotten is not everyone’s going to like you” and 29 other things you might not know about Sofia Coppola

• A conversation between two films: Lost in Translation (2003) directed by Sofia Coppola and Her (2013), directed by her ex-husband Spike Jonze are two poignant and timeless meditations on modern life. They each won Best Original Screenplay for their films which both feature Scarlett Johansson. If you’ve never delved into the parallels between them, submerge yourself in different dimensions of the same universe

• The Sofia Coppola Uniform and 7 of her most iconic looks showcasing her casual street style

• Also known as “Lost on Location”, dive deep behind the scenes of Sofia’s cult classic Lost in Translation. Sofia also details its making in a conversation here

• On style over conventional beauty: “I always had a big Italian nose but I broke it, and I went to a doctor to see if he could reset it. And he said, ‘You’d be a pretty girl with a nose job.’ Somehow I had enough confidence that I didn’t do it. And I remember Anjelica Huston told me when I was 13, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll grow into your nose.’ She was a big influence on me. When I was a teenage kid, my parents had these interesting European friends who were glamorous and didn’t look like the all-American ideal. I always thought, When I grow up, I want to be like them. I was more interested in style than conventional beauty.”

• On finally making a New York movie: “I wanted the story to have romantic, classic New York places. Bill’s character Felix is from another era, like those places, the last of that kind of gentleman’s world, before athleisure”

• Sofia Coppola deconstructs some of her projects and shares the images, artifacts and references that have influenced her

• Inside Sofia Coppola’s wooden holiday home in Belize. Its architect Laurent Deroo shares: “Two years before, Sofia Coppola had shot a scene from her film Lost In Translation in the Harajuku district of Tokyo, in a boutique dressed in wood that we had designed for the label A.P.C. The following year, while in Paris to prepare for the film Marie-Antoinette, she visited one after the other a house and an apartment that we had also designed. These three projects really made an impression on her. I expect that the seeds of the idea of us collaborating on her holiday home were sewn then and there.”

• MilkFed is a clothing brand by Sofia Coppola started in 1994 and sold exclusively in Japan. Partnering with the “inventor of the baby tee” Linda Meltzer, she revealed “I always wanted to be a designer, but I didn't think I knew enough. When I helped Kim Gordon and Daisy von Furth put on the X-Girl show in SoHo, I discovered they didn't know how to sew, either. I realized I admire people who just jump into things and do it.”

COMMUNITY CURATED: LIFE-CHANGING BOOKS

Last week, we inquired about books that changed your life. Check out the comment section for a full list. A few titles recommended:

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris

“It completely reshapes the way you look at business and helps you realize how simple it is to share your unique perspective, skillsets, and solutions with the world.” — via Sam L

Love by Leo Buscaglia

”He was a professor in the 70's who offered zero credit courses in love. I discovered the book in a pile of throwaways at a used book store after I'd just left a significant relationship. It was one of those moments where it felt like the book found me, rather than the other way around… I decided the book was so sweet and worth so much, I bought many copies to keep in my backseat for whoever could use a little love.” — via Alana

The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

A recent one that boggled my mind. On my third read, I realized last year how much more value you get from great books if you re-read them. — via Sam

Hop in the comments this week as we discuss what advice you would give to feel more creative.

SUMMER-ENHANCING ART

EXHIBIT A: Lac du Bourget (2022) by Tom de Pekin • EXHIBIT B: Airbrush Art (Late 80s) by Masao Saito • EXHIBIT C: Group Think (2022) by Khoi Pham

JOIN US

🌴 Tune in to our ultra-summer radio, Poolsuite FM, on iPhone & web

🌴 Follow us: @Poolsuite on Instagram & Twitter, plus @PalmReport on Twitter

🌴 Discover our Hour of Summer mixtapes on SoundCloud

🌴 Say hey, or drop leisurely content you’ve discovered in the comments below!