Till noise do us apart

Ela’s column appeared in 7sky Magazine, Issue #86 «Silence»

Thanks to a study published by the WHO last spring, I know now that noise represents the second greatest health hazard amongst environmental factors. Every night, 20% of the European population sleeps exposed to 65 decibels, which corresponds to the sound volume of a television. Sleeping to a television?! Yeah… Not cool! Furthermore, during daytime, an inhabitant of Zurich is constantly exposed on an average sound volume of 50 decibels, which again corresponds to the volume of a normal conversation. Sounds enormously annoying? Well, it exceeds also the WHO recommendations by 15%.

Knowing all this, I’m no longer surprised that my cool-urban friends and I have quite an uneasy relationship to both noise and silence. The following three examples shall show what I mean. Firstly, I cannot imagine leaving the house without my iPod. My ears need music, everywhere, all the time. Yet, an MP3 player can generate an acoustic charge of 120 decibels, which is the equivalent of a jet plane passing. Of course, I am not stupid enough to listen to my music at max volume, but still, I need music in my ears, or apparently just anything that resembles the passing of a jet plane.

Ela wearing the White Water Dress. Photo by Iouri Podladtchikov.

Secondly, I like living in the city, but actually, I am more in sync with nature and I genuinely appreciate silence. Chances are here that one day, I will pack my suitcases, move to a deserted island and start a little goat farm. I was recently talking about these plans with a hip acquaintance of mine who looked at me quite funny and said that she most definitely would be scared of the amount of silence that could be found on a deserted goat farm. Which brings us directly to our third example. I have noticed in both my fellow human beings and myself a sincere rejection attitude towards silence every Friday night. Why? Well, Friday night is the time when we either pee our pants because we haven’t made any plans for the weekend yet, or we have already successfully identified ourselves as pitiable victims of an ‘enormously stressful week’ that really need to switch off their brains by getting wasted in some night club. In such a night club, the sound level can reach up to 100 decibels. This corresponds to a reputed machine called jackhammer, which stands in particular for ‘switching off’… Aha!

In ‘The Age of Absurdity’ (my current favorite book), Michael Foley (my current favorite author) mocks exactly at our strange relationship to silence. He describes our generation as a voyeuristic kind that finds its raison d’être in life through company, conversation and noise. I must say that it does sound reasonable to me that our constant subjection to noise on one hand makes us completely incapable of handling silence on the other. To teach it to ourselves anew, we unite once a week in a yoga lesson and celebrate in a group the kind of silence we cannot find by ourselves anymore. The cost: 35 bucks. Easy. But kind of expensive in the long run. To not have a whole generation wake up bankrupt one day, the Federal Office for Health should seriously consider a half-hour of silence training per day as mandatory for my fellow hipsters and me.

In order to improve my own silence ability, I have already come up with diverse training methods. In one of them, I force all the people I meet to undergo a moment of silence with me. Amazing! Firstly, it’s a very efficient way to improve my ability to stand silence, and secondly an amazingly intimate pastime that shows immediately whether I am compatible with the other person or not. If the silence becomes unbearable, the person isn’t made for me, I can guarantee this much. The success rate of this method is actually captivating. I already found my future husband with it. Maybe you know him? His name is Ryan Gosling. Since three weeks, everyday, I spend half an hour in company with his naked upper body on wallpaper, completely silent. It works so well between us that I accepted frenetically nodding when he proposed to me the other day. The wedding will take place next summer and you are all invited… Till noise do us apart.

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Ela’s column from 7sky Magazine, Issue #85 «InRhythm»

The expression «to be out of rhythm» amuses me enormously. First of all, because of its similarity to «to be out of fashion» which always makes me think of this husband that carries his wife (that has gone out of rhythm due to some midlife crisis or something) onto the attic like an old garment that has grown out of fashion. Secondly, I find it enormously ironic that my German-speaking fellows and I even dare to use this expression in the first place. Without wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings: But why exactly do we think we can be out of rhythm, while we’ve never really been in it?

Ela wearing Swan Bloom Dress Photo: Timo Jarvinen

Here you go with some examples: I searched YouTube for «Dancing Swiss Baby» and I found this clip of a Swiss infant with visible motor problems whose spastic aerobics looked more like a beef roulade trying to jump than dancing. Then I replaced «Swiss» by «Brazilian» in the search criteria and fell upon a little prince in diapers dancing Samba in a way that make Shakira’s hip movements look like a gym lesson in a retirement home. One can now say that the right music education may help – well, it doesn’t work in the Swiss case, as our Yodel choirs, nota bene our model musicians, show. They might know how to stand up as straight as the Queen’s Royal Guard, but were they to participate in the Olympics, they would have a better chance of getting points in synchronized swimming than in any rhythmic performance. The same thing goes for me: Although my parents invested half of a fortune in my rhythmical education (14 years of classical ballet and seven years of piano) a pair dance party I involuntarily attended in Lisbon showed, that I hadn’t an ounce of rhythm… I kept stepping on my dance partner’s feet like a clumsy idiot until the poor guy found himself forced to tell me that I should just relax as he didn’t want to make babies, he just wanted to dance… Well, big ouch!

The facts are there for us Swiss: our arrhythmia is of a genetic disorder and sooner or later, the same destiny as old clothes growing out of fashion awaits us. Salvation is maybe hiding in mixing with other nations that do not suffer from the same genetic shortcomings. From that point of view, I should’ve probably had children with my Portuguese knight in Lisbon. Well, you snooze you lose. Instead, I decided to fall head over heels for a Swedish guy with Spanish origins. Brilliant. Roxette meets Flamenco to a rhythmic delectation, which is why I didn’t hesitate for a second and went to visit him in his home away from home at the French Atlantic coast to celebrate this crescendo of cultures. Oh well. My Helvetic roots even managed to ruin this bribing rhythmic potential in less than 12 hours and I felt that I had no other choice than preparing myself for my apparently inevitable dislocation to the attic.

Some weeks later, I went on a shopping spree to New York City, mainly to make sure that the clothes I would soon lay in a box with were of good quality. It was the encounter with a certain Alicia then, that should change my life forever. Alicia works in a boutique in the Lower East Side. She sells, most likely with commission, indecently expensive shoes. In this kind of shoes I found myself pacing back and forth, not being able to decide whether or not to take them. Alicia, with sentences like «They look so good on you» and «You really shine in them», reliably at my side. Needless to say, her un-subtle selling technique hadn’t really convinced me, I was about to put the shoes back on the shelf when she suddenly came up with the deal changing line: «They are so timeless, too, they will never grow out of fashion…»

Boom! Game, set, and match! I had just found my lifelong companions that will keep me in rhythm and out of the attic forever. With them on my feet, I left the boutique a good two minutes later… Cured and in waltz time, of course.

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Now, a good 10 years later, I have actually become the exact kind of person that my 14-year-old version would haven been absolutely disgusted by to say the least. I may have worked for a snowboarding magazine. Yes. But that was about it when it comes to the realisation of my 14-year-old freestyle dreams. I never did live in Whistler, Mammoth or Tahoe. Likewise, the flight to the southern hemisphere never happened and the Grenade Crew are no longer of appeal since Danny Kass didn’t answer my e-mails for about three weeks during my time as a snowboarding journalist and like this, almost robbed me of an interview (he was living it up freestyle lost somewhere on the road… Go Pura Vida! Go Pura Vida!). And as if all this failure were still not enough of a let-down for the 14-year-old Ela, my boss* commented a short while ago that I really had great administrative talent and that I should actually count my blessings that I had a little tiny bit of a writing talent, because otherwise I most likely wouldn’t have ended up in a much better position than the one of a personal assistant…

Great administrative talent! I’ve been racking my brain ever since as to whether this was a compliment or an insult… Unfortunately I must admit that my boss isn’t altogether wrong. I kind of do have a soft spot for Excel sheets. I like how they bring structure to my life. How I can sort things chronologically, by date or alphabetically and how everything runs according to plan. So if you were to ask me today about the meaning of ‘freestyle’? Ha… Pura vida and hang loose, my ass!

starring the Brewster slim boyfriend, a 2011 Quiksilver style

Of course I don’t make such declarations without the nostalgic element within me crying for my laid-back, easy-going 14-year-old self to return. I do observe with a certain level of concern that my development, which – if it continues the way it is going right now – will most likely lead straight to a petit-bourgeois bore. I even found myself in a major ‘freestyle’ identity crisis for a brief period. And if it weren’t for two old ladies in the tram recently, who talked about a newspaper report that said wearing our pants too low would lead to adverse health effects – who knows what my boss would have been guilty of provoking with his comment. ‘I always said these snotty little gits should pull up their pants…’ Ha! And I always said that perspectives and values might change, but the adverse health effects of wearing your pants too low stay for a lifetime. And just like that, they are my free ticket to life-long freestyle. Pura vida and hang loose, hell yeah!

*Ironically, Ela’s boss is the Head of Event of an action sports event called «freestyle.ch».

I remember a moment when I was about 14 years old and my pants were hanging so low that, when I was running to the bus stop, it almost made my blood flow strangulate. I still ask myself today, a good 10 years later, how I could have been so ridiculously stupid. Back then I thought I was ridiculously cool. Baggy pants below my arse, gigantic hoodie hanging from my shoulders, a beanie down over my face, and nothing but snowboarding on my mind.

Back then my parents were totally lame, my cross-country-running sisters all the more, and the world did actually belong to me. I had lots of awesomely cool things planned for my life. At various points in time I wanted to spend a year in Whistler or Mammoth or Tahoe as these places seemed so magical on the pictures in my favourite literature at the time (aka Snowboard Magazine). This was where life was at. Snowboarding and parties. All day long. These places were home to the Wildcats, Forum 8, the Grenade Crew and whatever all those snowboard gangs were called. That’s where the world was still ‘freestyle’. Or than another plan was to work for a snowboarding magazine. I obviously was already aware of my moderate snowboarding abilities and that they would hardly lead me to the easy-living lifestyle of a pro career. But as I knew already then that I did have an absolutely captivating talent for writing, I wanted to go for this to guarantee myself my taste of ‘freestyle’.

I also told myself that after my 18^th birthday (legal age seemed to be the ticket to ‘freestyle’ at the time) I’d spend every summer in the southern hemisphere, so that I could actually snowboard every day and all day. Yep… I had big plans. ‘Freestyled’ plans. If you were to have asked me back then what ‘freestyle’ meant for me, I would probably have answered with something like ‘pura vida’ or ‘hang loose’.

(Ela’s column featured in the spring issue of 7sky Magazine)

Has anybody ever noticed how many Self Help books an average Swiss bookshop exhibits? A hell of lot, that’s how many. «Self Confidence In 7 Days,» «Discover Yourself» or «Women’s Self Help.» Well, my opinion of the whole «Self Help» trend is pretty low. Primarily, this is because I’ve read that this whole «focusing on ourselves» debacle is one of the biggest problems in the wealthy western world and that it contributes greatly to our high suicide rate. But, in spite of my aversion to the self-trend I do find browsing through self-help books very amusing and so, I’ve already found myself reading lines such as «Love Yourself And It Won’t Matter Who You Are Married To» or «Listen To Yourself – this will help you build a relationship with the most important person on earth – yourself.» This sentence was pretty much to blame for my decision not to write about my green aunty, who helped introduce specific waste disposal bags in Zurich in the nineties, in my column «Listen To Your Earth» (even though I truly honor my Aunt’s achievements!). No, I decided to undertake a self-test myself.

Listen carefully: Ela spending time with her Earth (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

The initial reason for my self-test was this: a guy that I had never met in my life before, was going to be in a City that lies a good six hours away from Zurich for 12 hours and he suggested that I go and meet him. One could call it a blind date for blithering idiots, as it is pretty nuts to travel six hours on a train, to spend 12 hours with a potential jerk. But then again, I did have a column to write and this self-test I wanted to carry out. And so without even asking, my Earth suddenly started speaking to me. «Do it!» she screamed and «do something irrational and spontaneous you bore!» These may not have been her exact words but even so, the blind date felt kind of right all of a sudden. You know, backed by Mother Earth, fate and all that. At most, this was going to be the wonderful beginning of that amazing love story this guy and I would tell our grandchildren in 50 years to come

I was «acquainted» with this mystery man online. The fact that I chat with complete strangers online probably won’t boost my reputation, but organizing a blind date in a bar does kind of not work per definiton. However, I already knew that he and I had mutual friends, that he shared my passion for board sports and that he was, indeed, attractive. I was – thanks to my Earth – absolutely certain that my self-test was going to be a great success.

Well. The guy seemed to come down with an acute bout of flu the minute I arrived. Whether this was an actual physical condition or simply a reaction to me, we will never know. Anyway, over the next 12 hours, he felt the need to blow his nose every two minutes and his head must have felt like the inside of a pressure cooker. In retrospect, it probably would have been nothing but fair to call the date off. But our return journeys were already booked and so we decided to go ahead with the whole thing. Pretty idiotic really. This guy did turn out to be a jerk, which wasn’t really surprising considering his condition. Yes, I could have shown more understanding but I simply didn’t feel like it as I had just spent six damn hours on a train and all I wanted was a little unconditional romance.

I could not wait to get back on the train to Zurich and curse my Earth as much I could. She retaliated, again unasked, by sticking her tongue out at me, so I responded by beating her up. Then, crying, she admitted that she only did this to me because I was abusing her for my self-test. Her and I ended up having a little talk, which really helped. We are friends again now. Having carried out my self-test now, however, I have come to the conclusion that one should never abuse their Earth, because apparently she is latently unforgiving and she likes getting her own back…

On that note, if you listen to your earth, you have got to listen carefully.

To read more of Ela’s story in German and French go to onto the websie of 7sky Magazine.

We just recieved this inspiring photo and story

for our “Summer Stories” Contest from our brand ambassador Ela!

AMAZING!!!

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«Summers are all about sandy beaches, palm trees and coconuts. Growing up in the heart of the Swiss Alps meant that I either had to spend my summers dreaming of the Maldives or learn how to cope with the situation. Surprise or not, it didn’t take me long to realize that there is nothing as nice as going for a hike on a warm summer day, enjoy the quietude of the alpine highlands only interrupted by cow bells and cool yourself down at the end of the day by jumping into a freezing cold mountain lake… As nice as summers at the beach may be, there is simply no place like home.»

Photo: Ela Boner

Submit your own “Summer Stories” on our facebook page for a chance to be published and win clothes from the new collection!

As a child I had a terrible habit of staring at people. Not really a bad thing to do in principle. Children are usually forgiven for doing things like that. When kids stare the general opinion is that it’s kind of cute and you tend to stare back and smile.

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Then you say something along the lines of, «Hello there, who are you then?», and usually the child is too bashful to answer so the mother chimes in and says, «Tell the lady who you are, tell her your name is Patrick». So the kid mumbles his name «Pattllick» and continues to stare and you smile back and say, «Nice to meet you Pattlick», or something like that. Anyway, Pattllick is allowed to stare for as long as he likes. But as soon as Pattllick becomes Patrick and starts to grow a beard, his staring is no longer considered as cute; on the contrary. People respond with disgusted looks, his environment reacts with explicit demands that he stop staring immediately. Awful staring pervert! All of a sudden Patrick is socially ostracized for something Pattllick was admired for.

Ela during a shooting in Prague: Let her stare! (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

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Okay, so I didn’t grow a beard, but I went through pretty much the same thing. Somewhere along the line I wasn’t encouraged, but reprimanded by my mother when I started to stare. Why, I do not know until this day, and that is probably why I am still considered as a rather scary crazy woman by the general public; terribly unfair in my opinion. You see, I only stare because I want to study my subjects long enough so that I can make up stories about them in my head. For instance, I start to imagine what their homes might look like, what colour their toilet paper is and whether they would be any good in dancing Salsa. Or I choose an occupation that might suit them and paint a picture in mind of what their family situation is like, or where they might next go on holiday. Most of the time – and I am absolutely certain about this – I make their lives look much better in my imagination than they are in real life, and I think that is a very nice thing to do.

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For example, I was sitting at the airport recently where I noticed a mother and her two daughters. All of them were of Hispanic heritage and because of this I decided to name them Dolores, Arantxa and Carmen. The mother, Dolores, was an androgynous type of woman with a moustache, a rather unshapely behind and her boobs were just a big as the large paella stomach beneath them. Arantxa took after her mother, only she was about 31 sizes smaller. Carmen, I realized, could only be, A: Dolores’ niece or, B: be the daughter of Javier Bardem, because with her 10 and-a-bit years she was more beautiful than the red poppies of Aragon. An older woman sat to the right of Carmen. She was the type of woman that you would never describe as «an older woman» to her face. She was wearing sunglasses that covered her whole face from her chin to her hairline (and we were indoors!) she was talking non-stop on her mobile in impeccable Oxford English. I named her Lesley-Jade. A man in tortoiseshell spectacles was seated to her right; he was about the same age as Dolores, only without the facial hair, but with double the amount of acne scars. His name was Max.

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At one point my imagination got carried away and the following happened:

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Arantxa tripped over Max’s feet and spilled her super sugary Coco Cola all over him and Lesley-Jade. Lesley-Jade jumped up hysterically and accidentally hit the beautiful Carmen. At this point Lesley-Jade discovered Carmen’s incomparable beauty and asked if she could adopt her. Dolores, who desperately needed the money for her facial hair removal procedure, gave her consent. Tortoiseshell-spectacles- Max continued to stay calm in spite of the Coco Cola incident and this impressed Dolores so much that she instantly fell in love with him. They got married only three weeks later and moved to the country taking Arantxa with them. Carmen and her sort-of-Stepmother go and visit them once every month…

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And Voilà! In no time at all I had created an atrocious yet exciting family drama out of a small group of boring people just by staring at them; and at the same time making their worlds a whole lot better. How generous of me. So much for stopping staring, I should be thanked for it!

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Read more of Ela’s columns published in 7sky magazin in German and French on their Website.

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Why is the world constantly stressed out? I know that this is probably not a new trend, but within my circle of friends and relatives this is still taking on a new and slightly alarming form. I call it stress promotion. It’s almost like stress prophylaxis, only different. Contrary to stress prophylaxis, stress promotion does not serve to reduce stress levels. It is more of a self initiated stress enhancement – or at least it appears that way. But who would be so nuts and want more stress? Ha. Self-understanding, my friends! Just recently, Mrs. Ela found herself in the midst of stress promotion, which went something like this: When questioned about my wellbeing, “Phew…” (Rolling of the eyes), “Good!” (Forced smile), “But stressed out…” (Strong exhalation through the mouth combined with shrugging of the shoulders). Done. And it was only then that I noticed, that I wasn’t actually that stressed out, and that the question could have simply been answered with “Good”…

Ela not all that streesed out for once during a shooting with Quiksilver in Prague wearing the Evolution Jacket and the Maritime Slim Straight Jeans (photo: Timo Jarvinen).

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It’s not that I completely deny the possibility of a latent personality disorder, but for this misconduct I clearly blame the temporary fashion of a young, dynamic and successful society, instead of blaming myself. Stress promotion has planted a worm into our social life, which tries to make us believe that being stressed out is chic. As proof, here’s a replay of a meeting between four friends: Hello, hello, peck here, peck there, and the mandatory question round about everyone’s wellbeing. Watch out: This is where the story gets more tragic than Romeo and Juliet. As before, it all starts with “Phew…” (Rolling of the eyes), “Good!” (Forced smile), “But stressed out…” (Strong exhalation through the mouth combined with shrugging of the shoulders). And, as this was a group gathering, three “Oohs…” followed in unison, (compassionate smiles combined with rolling of the eyes) “Me too”. By the way, stress victim no.1 was me, and since we have already clarified my neurosis, it remains to be said that stress victim no. 2 spends three afternoons a week on the golf course, stress victim no. 3 just got back from a long wellness weekend and stress victim no.4 studies journalism without a side job. Oh what stress they must be under.

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Even if stress is a rather subjective matter that cannot be generalized, I still wonder where golf course, wellness and journalism studies without a side job get the idea of being stressed out. And this is where my theory about stress promotion comes in. Namely, I claim that our generation defines itself through the level of stress. It has become a status symbol, so to speak. Something along the lines of “I stress, therefore I am”, and, of course: “the more stress the better.” It’s only recently that I’ve read about young urban people being under such constantly high stress levels that they long for deceleration, which they believe to achieve by falling back on traditional values and rural symbols. Supposedly, we should therefore wear more cow belts, farmer’s frocks and felt hats and go to the mountains. Sounds nuts, but does occasionally help, as my self-test proves. The one about the felt hat is rubbish, probably an evil marketing gag. I did put one on, but the stress promotion remained. Going to the mountains, on the other hand, was very helpful. Up there, people still answer with “Good” when being asked about their wellbeing and don’t look at you in a funny way for not mentioning stress. No kidding. They’re really relaxed up there. It’s about time the snow came, so that golf course, wellness and journalism studies without a side job have a reason to visit the mountains more often.

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Find more of Ela’s columns published in 7sky magazin in German and French on their Website.

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PS: Find the Maritime slim straight jean and the Evolution jacket on sale now!

Being able to inspire someone is a great gift. One of the few people who have inspired me along the way is Bara Prasilove with her breath taking yet simple photography. And although Bara has this wonderful and profound personality, our connection has always been based on our adoration for each other’s work. It had been in the plans of both of us to team up and see if we could complete her photos with my texts and vice versa. When she contaced me this summer and asked me if she could use my texts to fulfil the installation of her photos for Quiksilver at this year’s Designblock, I couldn’t have agreed more. This should be an easy task for me, I thought, her pictures would do the talking – I just had to listen…
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A few weeks later I found myself next to Bara walking into an old building that used to be one of Prague’s bigger hospitals. It was gigantic, including a massive entrance hall and a huge stair case that lead to plenty of little rooms. All of them served as exhibit places for anything one could associate with design – scented candles, glassworks, porcelain restoration, degradable cutlery, hookahs, jewellery and right in the middle of it all a room full of Quiksilver Women’s clothing. And there they were, Bara’s pictures and my texts. And just as I had expected, while her pictures did the talking, my texts stood next to it and listened…
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I recently had an insight into my life: it’s like non-modern art, a kind of art created at a time when there were no surrealists, expressionists, futurists, pop artists or who ever else had a wish to polish up reality by unrealistic squiggle and supernatural excitement. My life is a picture that comes from a time when artists still had the balls to brutally hold up a mirror to mankind and portray reality just as drop dead boring as it is. Just think of Michelangelo or da Vinci’s work. Mona Lisa mega perfect and the Sistine Chapel super serious. Boom! Humanity, here you have it. There is no extra creative scribble or painted knick-knacks in these pictures. Just desolation and monotony, and it’s almost so sickeningly boring to look at that I personally, at times, end up crying in front of non-modern art, as it shows so clearly how terribly humourless our world is.

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Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the genius movements these doubtlessly inspired and smart men made. But I simply wouldn’t mind living in a modern art piece, something that has less structure and more surprises in it. Something that is a little less serious and more unexpected. But when I look at my life I dare to say yours isn’t that much different. I wouldn’t say it’s all boring, but as a matter of fact, if one would reconstruct an average day within my 24 years of existence, there wouldn’t be much extraordinary happening. There would be an alarm clock that goes off at 6.30am, an Ela who would refuse to get up, most likely arrive late at work, drink bad 50-cent office coffee to get through a day full of computer work and a bad sandwich lunch. Then, leave the office to return home again, maybe read a book, write a column or admire my absolutely captivating walk <in closet with all the great Quiksilver pieces in it (this actually is my daily highlight!), eat dinner, brush my teeth, go to the toilet and sleep just to get up to the same deal again the next morning… Hallelujah! That’s what I mean, just as boring as an ancient piece of art.

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Since this insight, I have regularly been picturing myself on the knees of Mona Lisa, and suddenly, it struck me that the only way to add more spice to my life was to have this Mona Lisa look a little more unblemished. Now I have been thinking of any kind of interference that would bring consistent inconsistent to my life. Some sort of red splash I would regularly paint on Mona Lisa’s forehead. Something that would simply make my days a little less monotonous… Now what if loudspeakers in trains would announce recipes instead of the names of the next stops. Or what if fast food restaurants would show instructions of washing machines instead of these ugly neon sign photos of their menus. Or what if flags would hang up side down in public places. Or if some people would dance from A to B instead of walk. Or how about some that would answer their phones with the current weather forecast instead of simple “hellos”… Call me crazy, I just wouldn’t mind some more scrawling in my life…

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Ela

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Scrawling for a better life. Ela in the Evolution Jacket, the Complications Shirt and the Maritime Slim Straight Jeans (photo : Timo Jarvinen)