Snake America Twenty-Nine
Snake is a bi-weekly newsletter comprising letters you can use on news you can not. This one: Eames La Chaise ripoff chair and an Air Force original sheepskin parka, including pants. Subscribe
Craigslist: Eames La Chaise knockoff chair: One of the more out-there Eames institutions--made for lounging, but more accurately, by Charles and Ray for a 1948 MOMA competition--gets knocked off, which raises some questions. First thought is: what's the production process for these--for any--knock-offs of well-designed/executed/etc. pieces of furniture? IE things more involved to make than, say, Balmain sweatpants. Are these made in Michigan or something at the Miller factory, like the bootlegs licensed stuff at DWR? Would be great if the fakes were a Luger burger equivalent--use the plastic trimmings from the real-deal Chaises made the night before to make the bang bangs. But that's giving them too much credit. The comparison can't be made. At the risk of digressing, the Luger burger is the best deal in America after the Sunday New York Times, compare that to this chair, which, aside from the cool hole, is rough. La Chaise translates as The Chair, but is named after a sculptor whose joints would fit well in the chair. The sculptor goes by, no fooling, Gaston LaChaise, which translates as Gary TheChair in French, making him an actual French equivalent of dog food magnate Hank Petchow. His art:
(1)
I always assumed you stuffed sweatshirts into the hole. I know the Conan promos when he went to TBS had him and someone else--maybe no one else--trying to sit comfortably sur La Chaise. Also cool is that a contest entrant--as good an example of amateurism as there is--with 60 years patina and pain exposure to the elements looks better than a brand-new "high end replica." A replica is professional, the opposite, something someone with factory access and lots of money gets produced to make more money. Is it inversion? Or just art? Or just dumb grandma furniture? I remember running across a pair of Nike Air Carnivores on eBay about 10 years ago but I wasn't sure they were real. The hole in the heel looked off and the seller said they fit smaller than most Nikes (a common characteristic of bootleg Nikes). Could they be fake? My friend AJ said probably not. Why would someone bootleg a shoe no one wants? My hat is tipped to anyone who coordinates illegal production of obscure and unwanted anything. But La Chaise n'est pas ca. This thing isn't fun. I'd sit on this listing (get it?). Maybe get this instead, it's cooler.
eBay: 1941 Sheepskin sweatsuit parka: I had a standing rule to watch Prometheus (USA 2012) to term whenever it was on, but halfway through the second viewing (first on HBO) I bounced and broke my rule. I try to not break my rules--other movies included in the law include You Don't Mess With The Zohan (USA 2008, rule still stands) and the two recent Batman (USA 2008, 2012) movies. Bane, the main guy in the last one, wears a jacket similar to the above-mentioned. I have a Japanese magazine(2) that breaks down all the military jackets America made and this one isn't in it(4). Most old military jackets take a standard name structure--A-#, B-#, etc.--so when I forgot the name it only took about two-dozen eBay searches to find it. If you Google-search Bane parka, or Bane coat, you really get a host of awful results. Nothing that helps at all. This jacket also comes in leather (but not old). I think the pants are the ticket here. They can be worn well both by the obese and by the non-. I'm not sure why a pilot would wear these pants in his plane unless it was open-bottom, like the ones that need a running start. He'd probably get really sweaty. I wonder if sheepskin coats being produced now will hold up as well as this thing has. It looks great for 73. There's really only one way to find out: buy a current-production sheepskin parka, and also a sack of sheepskin trimmings (as a control) and put each somewhere dry(4) and forget about them. It can't hurt to check in on some actual sheep now and then, too. Or you can get another new joint and hike a lot in it, maybe go camping. After 20 busy winters, it'd be equivalent to 73 years of Montana basement dwelling. Only then might we know if the reserve price here is too high.
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Snake
(1) "That's gotta hurt" - George Costanza, Seinfeld (USA, 1989)
(2) Lightning Buzz Rickson compendium for f/w 2010 or something. Whatever
(3) Men's Fudge (another Japanese magazine that covers the same beat more or less) would never boof it like this.
(4) or not