You know you're a Nerd Girl when....

... you start getting your fashion inspiration from the library website.


The Royal Danish Library has been known as a closed up, dark and very nerdy place . But in the last ten years things have started to change. In 1999 the architecture was updated with The Black Diamante, a huge glasslike black building with an amazing view over the Copenhagen habour, new and more modern reading rooms.
The original library building dates back to the really early days of The University of Copenhagen - that's in the 1400s and it really shows . The old reading rooms look like something out of Harry Potter.
Now the latest new development in the modernisation of The Royal Library is an online gimmick featuring all the catalogues of the legendary Danish department store Daelles Varehus. And it is so much fun to look through and very inspirational.
The department store does not exist anymore, but was from its beginning in the early 20th century a popular place for Copenhagen ladies to shop. The website has all of the catalogues online, from the very first in 1914 to the early 1990 when Dealles Varehus closed. I actually remember looking through some of the x-mas catalogues as a child in the 1980s, but I do think that the older ones are more fun to look at now.

Iittala espresso cups

There is nothing like a good cup of coffee and I’m a big fan of strong espressos. And what better way to enjoy one, than in one of these beautiful cups by Iittala. The illustrations are by Klaus Haapaniemi, a really interesting Finnish illustrator who has worked with, among others, Diesel, Levis and Marimekko. Looking at his other illustrative work it becomes clear to me that he usually works with much more elaborate and colourful motives and that the owls and curvy details on these espresso cups might be a bit simple for his usual style. Among other things he has created a beautiful set-design for Cacharel catwalk:
Homemade biscotti
With espresso steaming out of these beautiful cups, you need a bite of something sweet to complete the coffee experience. On that note I made my own biscotti with almonds and chocolate. I did my best to make sure they did not end up being too hard to chew and at the same time still crunchy enough to dip in the coffee without it leaving a soup of crumbs in there.

Nicloe Kidman will play Lili Elbe

This is pretty big news. I just read that Nicole Kidman is to star as Einer Mogens Wegener, in a movie about the Danish painter who was the first man to have a sex change operation. Charlize Theron will be playing his wife the very talented painter and illustrator Gerda Wegener.
It is according to the hollywoodreporter.com that the story of this fascinating couple will be turned into a film with such heavy leading ladies as Nicole and Charlize. Based on a fictional bestseller by David Eberstorff about the couple, I wonder how much of the actual story we’re gonna get from the film. But any how it will be interesting to se.

Einer was married to Gerda Wegener and they were quite a famous couple in living in Copenhagen in the 1920s. Apparently Einar’s female alias Lili Elbe was created when Gerda, lacking a female model, asked him to pose for her as a woman – and he from then on developed as the transsexual Lili Elbe with the support of his wife.This is Lili Elbe after the sex change operation:
Gerda worked as a painter and illustrator creating beautiful painting and drawings for among others French Vougue.

Inspiring illustrations

The young and very talented artist Nan Na Hvass has worked in many fields and blessed many things with her drawings. I’m a total fan of her work for all the life and colours in that bizarre supernatural universe.
She has made the video for the Danish band Efterklang’s Mirador and also the cover for their album ‘Under Giant Trees’ - as you see above - these are really good examples of her style. But Hvass has done munch more than that.
She’s also the artist behind a great mural at VEGA nightclub here in Copenhagen and has created illustrations for t-shirts and this bag that I especially like.
I guess, what I find inspiring about her work is the many dimensions she can add to a single picture – it sort of pulls you in, in a weird almost surrealist way. Her style reminds me of a mixture of Danish artist HUSK MIT NAVN and the ever so cool Kitsune Noir – and then maybe just a little bit a Dali -without all the odd sex fantasy stuff though.

A trip down designer memory lane

Here is a small post about my visit last week to the Danish Museum of Decoration and Design here in Copenhagen. I decided to pay a visit to the museum because I haven’t been there for ages. It is a bit of an old fashion museum in the sense that after Danish Design Centre opened a few years back The Danish Museum of Decoration and Design has become more of a historical museum looking back in time. What’s on display here is the history of Danish design and general design and it only pays little attention to the ongoing developments. The standing exhibition is therefore a very large part of the museum and there are only few and rather small special exhibitions. This is the reason I guess why I haven’t set foot in the museum for quite a few years; seeing it all again now was a lot of fun, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back to see the permanent exhibition any time soon.

However it brought back a lot of childhood memories of the homes of my grand parents; many of the designer classics on display there were and are still parts of Danish homes today. Hans Wegner chairs and Verner Panton lamps are still very popular today and a lot of Børge Mogensen’s furniture designs were not that expensive in the 50s and 60s. The legendary lamps created by Poul Henningsen and the B&O radios were part of both my grandparents’ and my childhood home. Seeing this standing exhibition was therefore fun and sort of historically educative, but it did not show me anything about what’s happing with Danish design these days and I missed that a bit.

Copenhagen in illustration

I have always been very fascinated by Danish old school poster design. The visiting exhibition shows posters and illustrations by Danish illustrator Ib Andersen . Although I at first thought I didn’t know him, he has created many of the well known posters for example for Tivoli:

With the same brilliant perspective on street life and everyday scenery as Touslouse-Lautrec Ib Andersen also made illustrations for newspapers such as Politiken and Berlingske Tidende in the 1930s and onwards. These examples show how he both captures the city's loneliness and isolation, and can turn shapes and shadows into artistic master pieces.

But Ib Andersen's illustrations are also legendary in other less acknowledged ways – he is the guy behind the illustrations on the old Danish 20,50,100 and 1000 kroner bills. I know it seems silly to get all sentimental about illustrations on money, but for some reason I really think that they deserve greater artistic attention. These days when we're all using our credit cards more and more and a lot of cash becomes rare I think it would be cool if we could take time and look at the bills - they are small pieces of artwork.