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judy smith Aug 2016
How you know him: Gurung’s label, established in 2009, reimagines traditional textiles with a sportswear attitude. January Jones, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey have taken memorable turns in his fiery red gowns.

What’s new: Gurung is teaming up with Toms this month with exclusive designs to raise funds for Nepal’s recovery from the 2015 earthquake. For each pair of shoes sold, $5 will go to Gurung’s Shikshya Foundation to support education and relief efforts.

What does heritage mean to you?

When I left Nepal and told people I wanted to be a fashion designer, they thought I was crazy. I didn’t know anyone here. But I still remember coming up to the Midtown Tunnel and seeing all the skyscrapers for the first time, and I finally felt that I was home. I became myself in America, but Nepal gave me my core. The reason I am grounded and pragmatic is simply that I was brought up this way.

What was your childhood like there?

I was born in Singapore and grew up in Nepal, where I went to an all-boys Catholic school. I was different and made aware of it. It was a challenging time, but I had an incredible relationship with my family that helped me. Trekking became a kind of escape, and I was always inspired by the Patan Museum, near my house. I still go back for the memories attached.

How is Nepal reflected in your designs for Toms, and also your foundation work?

The ikat pattern is called dhaka, a hand-loomed weave that I wanted to modernize as a digital print. Black, white, and red are very typical of Newari women [from Kathmandu Valley] and my favorite colors, which I used in my first collection. Five years ago, when I started getting all this attention, I started Shikshya with a focus on education as a way to give back. Since the 2015 earthquake, we have raised more than $1 million to help rebuild, but the process is slower than people think, and the world’s attention turns to someplace else. So it’s my job with everything I do to keep awareness alive.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses
Mateuš Conrad May 2021
for those yet, imagining themselves alive...
i "kwa'ight"....
quiet... quite...
         acquitted...
if there's a rock to be lived
under:
i'll just be the rock... i once had a faint
notion that i was alive...
i had what might be congested in a summary:
a thirst... a willingness...
summary and all those
broken things... "things"...
within the enraged solo
projects of solipsists...
self-"betterment" up a cul
de sac... has... infiltrated my
breathing: crease... count in german:
eins zu zehn
jeden do dziesięć...
   kurwa jebana mać...
poor traffic... thd ******* blinkers are
on... a turning right done awry...
ein(s)... one... jeden...

eine ein eins jeden raz one
zwei dwa two
drei trzy three
vier cztery four
fünf pięć five
(pięść is a denotes a fist... a faust)
sechs sześć six
sieben siedem seven
acht osiem eight
neun dziewiendź nine (nein nein)
zehn dziesięć ten....

mind you...
be drop the pointless diacritical marker
on the iota... we'd see more "punctuation"
markers: where, otherwise: we wouldn't...

i congested myself with counting
in three languages to somehow...
ease-up...
ten? informant: he / him!
ta? informant: she... shimmy(?!) her's...
hisses of his'...

i will not bring the Iberians into
this discussion...
what's left, though? scraps
of language and language policing...
******* and bells...
twang... death to the ditto... blah blah:
bleach and mythological blondes...
scraps i do one job good for you...
most... better... will not trace lineage...
no smear...

          t"they" never think less of
the Yugoslavs... i'm tired of being a punching bag of a people...
of all "people": the Irish not 'ard enough to
challenge the English have to find...
come the Soviets come the Nazis simultaneously...
looks like integrating into English society
didn't allow me to forget...
this zunge doesn't erase the ******* blows...

rich, though... no surprise that the Reesh
would squander and throw their *******
potatoes like monkey **** at...
oh i guess: shelved "life"... peoples...
if i were living back among my brethren...
i don't think i'd be living at all...
what would i do with not being
agitated concerning... minor... qualms?

the ******* leprechauns... priests...
are less than the english...
but are somehow tier above the pollacks?
it's no offence when it sounds proper...
in a foreign babble...
dzida...

          i'd just ask the Eire son...
so... ahem... where's your ******* Celtic?
gone... non-existent?

aon, dhà, trì, ceithir...
   còig (what's wrong with co'ig?)
sia,
seachd, ochd... naoi... deich...
so the grapheme CH = X of greek origin...
a ******* hark?

the Irish like the ******* Arabs...
the British did this to: oos...
it's impossible to live with these
go-to-party "solipsists" to begin with...
integrate? into... or for what?
rot? that's a-plenty...
but when some spaghetti monsters
and those potato jargon-fiddlers start
their usual **** about a fellow
european people...

it's not like the Croats or the Serbs are
ever mentioned...
they vent to h'america and youz zee...
zese irish and italliano guinnea pig-me-ups...
kwoss-eyed... you know...
best bitterest better...
inbreeding... takes a chunk of coal...
chalk and cheddar...
mustard...

  inbreeding mentality... superiority complexes...
no reimagines parmesan cheese like
it's not... shredding... old skin
off of heels...
talk stinkiny witchy with a missing R...
this massive ******* gloat of "riddle"...
that suppose: it's also a man...

       while the world... "also" happens...
these little: belittling interferences...
as if we were all supposed to be crowned kings
or queens... it's not that i'm even elevated
above these concerns...
but that i must have them...
must: if i were a king... i most probably wouldn't
even entertain the sense of hearing
on their existence!

in a society of sociopaths and solipsists...
a massive get together
of protest happens once in a while...
i get drunk and dump ****** words
onto paper...
i'm not alone in this "adventure":
yet i'm beginning to be...
more and more sorry for having
such... indigestions to sorrow over...
moral relativism is out
in the words of the choicest
of the choiciest...
   i'm looking for something beside
the superlative adjective: choicest...
the diminutive "concern"...

which doesn't exist in english...
and i can't exactly introduce it using my:
mutterzunge either...
correct spelling?
look at it... choiciest vs. choicest...
the most most choosey...
to pick of calculus exponentially incremental
details of observable shifts...
the exponential aspect of detail...

how many of the Irish still speak
their Gaelic...
apparently there's a Scotch version
of the tongue...
but... the Scots will not speak it...
completely submerged in their union...
they'll just exfoliate in how distinct
they are from a Loon'don'er
speaking the same language...
you could probably rewrite trainspotting
using that linguistic language
embedded in the dictionary
of:

   how i met your mother, the mute...
/ (haʊ) /
       / (aɪ) /
                 / (mɛt) /
               / (jʊəp) /
                               / (ˈmʌðə) /,
                        / (ðə) /          / (mjuːt) /

i wonder... and what if we started writing
like this? proper... phonetically...
like linguists?
the side note of /(x)/ though...

the written word is doubly ambiguous...
to the point of no return concerning
the sufficiency of its practicality of use...

ʃeɪk  ænd
                ˈʃætə...

if i had the time and *******' worth of
writing a poo'em like a linguist...
if i had more love for the Irish...
sowwy... all love spent on the Scots...
from these Isles at least...

sheikh who? shake your: *****?
that's ******* fwank zapp'ah...
      
but it's not that... i have qualms with
the Irish over the stature and seriousness
when occupying the "underground"...
i won't rap: god forbid i...
"**** someone": my catchphrase
wouldn't be:

allahu akhbar... it would be that teutonic chant
of: gott! mit! uns!
if that Norwegian hyper-smart terroroist
chanted those words...
what words? these words:
gott! mit uns!

   but around these isels...
you'd think there might be a sense of solidarity...
among the catholic irish and the
catholic poles...
but no... tępy ajrysz...
  blunt-irishman...
                  one side arguing for the other sides
dislodging of "i.q."...
same with those spaghetti swindlers...
the...

mind you... ****** is not a racial slur...
it's actually better to denote a pole a ******
since... not kinh john: lackland...
the whole hiss-tow-stowwy...
i'm not pole: positioned...
i'm not...

    divorced from "my" people:
and the "mother" land...
                  Warsaw the last great end-venture...
keeping it up...
mawa: little old gone...
         in the hunch fabric of
lessening the diaspora approach...
you don't think i mind the missing links...
when there's a collected agenda for the purpose
of a purge of the intelligensia...
now... because only the Jewry suffered
a historical lineage of tonguies
towing complaints....

         **** it: the russian sayingly... newly invented:
**** me?! ******* too!
but in the english realm who's the lesser
******* among the polacks and the irish?
who's less gingerbreadman?
my side... most probably...
how will we ever let the 20th century become
past?
oh **** me... we will need another
war... but chances of that are...
sort-of-slim...

             no? it might begin with:
bypassing loan-words...
and how self-help gurus and famous psychologists
refrain from infiltrating lost hybrids of
focus, that there might be a clearaance to
discover society outside the realm of pop!
saavvy?
i don't like this...
psychological testimony of:
what's an alpha male?
not me... what's a beta male?
not me... what's a malaise?
what's an omega man?
everything that an alpha male is...
in that... there's an antonymous discharge
of needs... requests...
demands...

how many Irish still speak their...
diego / alfonso magic "whisker" ****?
that ******* Gaelic?
so much for aardvark "typo" in Scotch...
because it just so happens...
you speak an over exfoliation of lettering...
the aesthetically bogus: claim of...
no... no "originality":
i'm not even going to bother the higher
tier of diacritical markers to
instigate "something"...

but this whole: i'm a lesser "european" when
it doesn't suffice in north american parlance...
i'm sort of... em.... ******* bothered?
history seems to be a lesson
in teasing small-**** and the infinite
summary of infancy... last time i heard...
because the Mongols never made it to... "x"...
because the Turks never had ownership of Vienna...
because it took both the Nazis and the Soviets
to make me bow...
in England? the invention of snooker...
tennis... football... rugby...
bored people... obviously...

how: else: woudln't you have capacity...
need... to invent so many coliseum...
distractions to mind: and take seriously...
if you knew: you were an island dwelling folk...
and you staged your pride in not being
invade-prone...
a bit like the whole of east London's
pakistani-land...

wake up 40 years from now... from...
little bengali land...
the Pakistani grooming gangs of the supposed...
while i'm getting more and more irrritated
by paying for ***...
having Bulgarian ****** pretending to be
Romanian....
you see the grit in my use of teeth that aare never used to
nibble and conjure...
a "drying of bones"?

i will complain about the Irish as i will about the
tail-tan'ohs...
******* spaghetti slurppers...
we of the same European origins and the same
brain-drain... because the anglo-saxons
fiddled out a mechanism for...
a "coming together"... of...
a people... just like germany was confederated...
into a federality...
wow!

  the pope receding... on paper...
the Irish make complaints against the Polacks...
the Irish demean the Polacks...
nice nice... here's to me equipping myself with
Haitian "nouns"...
you, *******... ginger: knuckle-fiddle-numb...*****!
what Celt wishes himself to have
a Cyrillic ancestry?! almost all...

have your little i.r.a. memento...
       i'm only concerned about
a pomeranian, conrad... quest...
aren't the czechs / hungarians locked into
that... posit of being: without an access to
a "window"... hardly... that the baltic...
already is... Samaritan....

porsch monkey: among the slurrs... "poet"...
pshek in... denotative lingo...
it's a: thank you...
i call you worse:
    karot... burak... syberik....

thankful though: it's hardly a slur...
king John was known as lackland...
given the shrinking of the Angevin empire...
thus "we"... shrunk to the duchy of warsaw:
a satellite of Napoleon's ambitions...
then the Warsaw Pact...
pandering to the Bolsheviks...
blah blah: now more pandering to
woke ha-ha-h'americanacancan...
the mythological blonde: always on my mind...

the first words in my language
they managed to speak and they somehow managed to
call it a slurr... and polish: paul-leash isn't?
pole position, heading north?

say strawberry in ******?
TRU-S-KAWKA...
     paul's on a leash of nibbling on the quarters
and halves of would be barons of pandemonium...
we were teenagers once...
and once upon in an Ilford mall...
we bought compact disks...
rival schools... fugazi...
coal chamber's dark days...

  those where somewhat architecture days,
though...
you can't make this **** up...
you probably have had to live it, sort of.

- otherwise who can't forget the flight of the Jewry
from the area...
once there was a makeshift synagogue on
Coventry Rd.,
now there's a 7th day evangelical war band
gathering pulpit... source...
i was expecting a mosque: in all honesty...
it's a common suggestion:

now first comes the flight of the Jewry...
the whites are somehow 2nd...
but as i explained to my mother today...
i feel sick in a monochromatic...
homogeneous society...
i went to Cheltenham once...
to hussle my own self-published book...
i felt ill seeing so little minority
representation...
it's not like i'm brainwashed...
but among these minorities in Loon-dune
i'm a ******...
back in Warsaw i'm a feral animal...
among "my people" i'm zero-punkt-zero-nic...

the vagabonds of the world decide to congregate
in Loon'don... for some reason: ulterior or
altogether "other"...
the world has congregated:
is this still about the English having their
nationhood infringed?
perhaps from a perspective
of the Midlands... Birmingham...
but over 'ere...

funny that... i live in England...
but i probably interacted with more Irish
and more Scots than the supposedly
demographically first...
i probably encountered more Pakistanis too...

so what's the difference between
a Samaritan and a Sarmatian?
you're running? i thought i ran...
i might run... who's running?
is it raining?
is that... ****'ite iconoclasm?
sign me up...
            
but living among the Irish who are
not living in Ireland...
a tired old bunch... sometimes...
it's hard to fathom their identity crisis
since a whole swab of them
spoke a zilch of Gaelic...
it's like with these over-impressed
succcess stories of "integration"
from olive-pound land /
****** copper...

the parents want to integrate...
that **** backfires...
the grandson retains the tongue
to his grandma to speak
back to her her native...
yet his... "in-between"... "integrational english"
becomes a sick joke: stereotype...
almost a cul de sac accent...
the sort that has to breathe into a phrase:

oi oi! bown and bwead!
  em... bone and bread?
how does that work?
i guess it must work "miracles" from places
where the ingestion of gelatin is
foreign... transcending "foreign":
too alien to compose...

yes... detailing the promises of pork, pig...
the most economically sound
animal: beside the hoofs...
you can utilise almost... "almost": all of it...
one way of the other...
an animal that can never be a waste:
unless you're into dabbling into a cannibalistic diet...
plus... lamb... lamb: *******: stinks...
the aged lamb...
plus... how would you herd pigs...
pigs aren't herded...
it's a theological anger at...
camel-jockeys being unable to... harvest
the only potential of farm-food... via the pig...
pigs aren't herded:
i've only heard of a herd of pigs
and that's when there came a time
to treat a trough like an array of teats when
the porkies were 'ung...
is it a despised animal?
a despised animal because:
and the devil reimagined himself as a pig?

so god looks like a mythological blonde...
the devil looks like a piggish minotaur...
why this demise of pig?
why this gratification in the islamic mirror
of words looking accessible: i.e. dog | god...
my all mighty: allah: blah-lah...
fork in the road: are we 'appy... "now"?

but when you live among the diaspora of the Irish...
you'd sort of suppose... what's the gaelic for green?
now that the internet is here...
i can find out for myself...

why demean the pig? was the pig created by
the ******* devil?
or is this one of those Abrahamic ploy-toys...
rigidity structures...
to leave you surrendered...
go against anything else: beside the pig...
it's such an economic model, creature...
you can utilise almost all of it...

not all of us were born Afghan sheep
herders... savvy?
that eating pork is somehow signature
of inbreeding and s schizoid tinture...
wh'ah?! i lost the TAU along the way...
o.k.?!

it's a waste of time having arguments
with... oh forget: rag-muffin'...
inbreds... i wass thinking about ***...
i picked a spot... Rotherham...
Pakistani grooming gangs...
oh... right... here's a lollipop... here's some dosh...
i'll get a hard-on with a girl who didn't mature
into prostitution wtih a crack-******* 'abbit...

chances of me ******* low i.q. is like
zilch then? i imagine the tirades...
the knife-insinuations...
**** a barrister: **** for life...
settle down: solve **** concerninng:
immmovaable objects:
the sun still has "egotism" to rise
and call it tomorrow...
and her ******* own too: to boot...
imagine that!

why go after the pork 'n' pie?
why pet a dog?
why pet a cat?
     i've already mentioned...
sometimes lamb: just stinks...
lamb kidneys?
STINK... SCHTINK!
but you also can't keep pigs
in an environemnt where you also use
camels instead of horses... no?
no one is talking about this...
because... it's probably too obvious to have
to stress this ******* argument....

came the Ottomans... the Mongols...
the Soviets for a while...
came the Nazis...
why weren't we the people who championed
each other at snooker...
why didn't we invent football...
tennis... cricket...
rugby... i don't want to blame the English
for their race...
but they have been privileged in:
intra-"whiteness" terminology...

what English soldier ever stood ground
on ****** soil?
i've heard of ****** pilots having dog fights
for the battle of Britain...
how the enigma machine was not merely
the work of Turning...
etc. etc.
gravesend: i'm here reduced to "biasing"...
yet i'm giggling at the remote prospect
of "gravity"...

i have clues to concern myself over...
ownership...
          a hierarchy of a cascade...
time follows time...
this solo project of "individuality"
was never going to... "work"...

pending...

   connlach dearg...

    but the welsh still speak welsh... no?
i guess that Carlsbeg moment of:
probably the best'ly integrated people in
the world... the Welsh are...
they still exfoliate in having a punching bag
of their tow-tongue...
unlike that most, supposed... oppressed people
of the... anglophonic world affair...
the Reesh that speak no ditto of Gaelic...

who are, you, you people?!
a headline, a title, an instant self-commissioned
to live on, sponsored by these dying times,
a new poem, a different rabbit hole, a reflective surface
of in-between spaces, that separates letters, I am
that man, charter member, a voting citizen of the

The City That Never Sometimes Sleeps

the new traffic patters, i.e. no traffic at all,
messes up circadian rhythms, no trucks honking,
even the ambulances silenced, asking what’s the rush,
this year the cicadas, them too, took the seventh year off,
the strange silence wierded them out,
so they sheltered in place

our device, informs, it has been employed
20 hours 42 minutes of the last twenty four cycle,
don’t disagree, wonder only where the heck I was for
the 3 hours 18 minutes unaccounted

wasn’t sleeping, of that ‘rest’ assured,
must have been unconsciously
writing poetry, a voyage to my
beloved holy dark,
where nightly
he reimagines when things were
normal and empty streets were
a refreshing sight, a welcome change,
not a harbinger of the visible separation
between the living and the dead
Boris Cho Nov 11
The vintage shop sits quietly, unassuming in the heart of a small and beautiful town surrounded by a body of water and cliffs, its timeworn facade a gateway to a world where old becomes new under the hands of a gifted fashion designer. Inside, the racks are draped not just with garments, but with stories; threads of lives lived, meticulously chosen and revived by a woman whose creativity knows no bounds. She is not just the store’s curator but its alchemist, turning faded fabrics into expressions of something bold and modern.

Her ambition is clear in every stitch and seam. She reimagines each piece, blending the charm of bygone eras with her own artistic vision. To her, these are not mere clothes; they are canvases, waiting for her touch to bring them back to life in ways that honor their past but fit seamlessly into the present.

Her dedication is evident, from the way she moves about her shop with a discerning eye to the late hours spent sketching and sewing in her workshop. In her hands, something as simple as an old jacket becomes a quilted statement, a reminder that beauty, when crafted with passion, never fades; it evolves. Here, in this vintage store, old souls are reborn, one design at a time.



In the heart of Elora, she weaves her threads,
A seamstress of stories, where vintage is led.
With eyes that see beauty in worn-out seams,
She stitches the past into tomorrow’s dreams.

Her hands know the fabric, each fold and line,
Crafting with patience, her vision divine.
Upcycled wonders, they whisper of care,
Each stitch a promise, each garment a prayer.

In the warmth of her shop, the old comes alive,
Threads of yesterday help futures to thrive.
She’s more than a tailor, she’s more than a name;
A creator, a giver, her kindness untamed.

— Sincerely, Boris
Extreme docility summarily
characterized demeanor,
when yours truly
pip squeaking little lad
the loudest sound,
this then pint size kid

generated courtesy
snapping, crackling, and
popping on quisp
and quake cereal
dems mighty good
eat'n snack food

straight out the box
this the most egregious behavior
exhibited by otherwise
extremely obedient sole son,
who feared never
venturing far from home

linkedin, albeit voluntarily
thank mother's durable apron strings
content self absorbed
taking especial attention
to surrounding flora and fauna
marveling at whirled wide webs

oblivious arachnids exemplified,
which near picture perfect dutiful son
a ***** fussy dorky dude,
now reimagines chock full
of mischievous deeds
epitomized, couched, applied

to fictitious unrepentant rapscallion
named Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore
brainchild made manifest destiny
obscure poet christened
William Brighty Rands
(British writer and major author

of nursery rhymes of Victorian era)
Google aforementioned name
if least bit curious
said crafted little
persona non grata
gangsta rappa if alive today

unleashed rather lame pranks
compared to golden opportunities,
no name brand garden variety
envious impish ragamuffins,
or even well groomed youths
respectable looking

albeit precocious progeny
need not leave comfort
of home nor hearth
what with wreaking havoc

freeing, loosing, releasing
veritable rainbow coalition
gender neutral binary rapscallions
across borderless cyberspace
itty bitty doggone petty files.

— The End —