B EAST Magazine website

Sep 23, 2009

At B.East we have tended to celebrate the spontaneous hedonism of an Eastern Europe unfettered in the last decade. Dr. Evil’s bloody portraits, Prague’s backstage porn shoots and Warsaw’s naughty strip bars were hailed as the Beasts of the East. However, in the last few years, B.East itself has become a rallying cry especially in East London, which has taken over from New York’s 80s downtown scene and East Berlin’s mid 90s techno madness. The Beautiful Freaks show photographed by Raf Obergfell, www.ralfobergfell.com opening this Friday in London’s Dalston Superstore, is like scooping ice cream into a junkie’s brain. The wild, gorgeous, transgressive images capture the flaming pink flamingos of East London’s zany nightlife. It includes a private view, curated by artist and set designer, Tony Hornecker where the freaks themselves perform behind pinholes, two-way mirrors and other devices, creating a horror house feel. For more information, check them out on Facebook. Beautiful Freaks Facebook Group

June 15, 2009

French-Yugoslavian Mikael Vojinovic—better known as Mix—is an old skool B.East, sending us highly-charged, shot-from-the-hip fashion shoots since our inception, all featuring an endless parade of uber-sexy, young models. Though we tended to diss him at first as a ‘mens-mag-clicker’, his leery, dripping-with-sexuality aesthetic is a refreshing change from the overwrought images that pass as fashion in most magazines. As porn and fashion have merged in recent years, with the advent of Terry Richardson, Mikael has emerged as one of fashion’s new criminals, with New York mags saying he cocks the camera like a gun. He has been called a mixture of Charles Bukowski and Keith Richardson. Having moved to Paris from New York last year, has only amped up his output. And, yet again, whether Manhattan or Paris, he finds the freshest, sassiest & naughtiest models out there.

The Kontakt. Fashion award, sponsored by Austria’s Erste Bank, yearly recognizes an emerging fashion talent from Central & Eastern Europe. With an editor from this magazine on the jury, yeah, it was decided to grant the prize to Tanja, whose collections showed strong promise and a strong, yet subtle aesthetic. She will be awarded 4.000 euros and will present her collection at the Austrian Fashion Awards night during the 9 Festival for Fashion & Photography (www.9festival.at), which runs from end May to early June.

Hailing from Split/Croatia, Tanja Bradaric first studied fashion at the University of the Arts in Split, then at the University of Textile Technology in Zagreb before graduating from the Fashion Department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Raf Simons and Veronique Branquinho. She has won several awards including the L’Oreal Award and the INDIE Magazine Award for the best collection 2008. She is currently doing an internship at Balenciaga, Paris.
Tanja Bradaric tries to capture the timelessness of nature with essential viewpoints. Her work aims to trigger an emotional response in the wearer and observer. She pays particular attention to the texture and volume of the material. Her aesthetic moves within the sharp contrast between human softness and the hardness of futuristic robotics.