This USPS X Vans collab is officially licensed, but employees still can’t wear it on the job
Plus: Now that Britney is free, her attorney is working to free artist Peter Max
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Hello, in this week’s issue we’ll look at…
This USPS X Vans collab is officially licensed, but employees still can’t wear it on the job
The “Afghan Girl” from the Nat Geo cover has been evacuated from Afghanistan, and it was funded by NFTs
TIME’s Top 100 Photos of 2021 list is out and I’m so tired
Now that Britney is free, her attorney is working to free artist Peter Max
This USPS X Vans collab is officially licensed, but employees still can’t wear it on the job
The U.S. Postal Service calls them “first-class kicks.”
The USPS’ collection with Vans dropped Monday, and the officially licensed collab includes shoes, shirts, a hoodie, and a beanie with retro U.S. mail logos and a color palette that draws on postal employee dress blues. The shoes are sold in shoeboxes designed to look like Priority Mail boxes, and I really dig the stamp graphic used on the tongue of the shoes.
USPS licensing manager Amity Kirby said in a statement the Vans X USPS collection is “a fun, unique way for everyone to show their postal pride,” but the agency told employees the apparel isn’t part of the official uniforms and shouldn’t be worn on duty (k, but what if it’s allowed just on Fridays?).
The USPS previously released collabs with Forever 21 in 2019 and Anti Social Social Club last year.
The “Afghan Girl” from the Nat Geo cover has been evacuated from Afghanistan, and it was funded by NFTs
Sharbat Gula, who was photographed as a young refugee by Steve McCurry for National Geographic’s famous 1985 cover, has again been displaced.
In a statement Friday, McCurry announced Gula, now a 49-year-old mother of four, has been evacuated safely from Afghanistan to Italy, where she hoped to seek asylum with her family. Women’s rights activists worried Gula could be targeted because of her high profile since the Taliban took over following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The evacuation was done with support from the British-American charity Future Brilliance and Metagood, an NFT social good platform, which donated the proceeds from its OnChainMonkey NFT sale, McCurry’s statement said.
Gula was a 12-year-old when her photo was taken at a refugee camp on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Known as “Afghan Girl” or “Afghanistan’s Mona Lisa” until she was identified in 2002, she lived in Pakistan as a refugee without legal status for three decades until she returned to Afghanistan in 2016. The following year, she was given a home in Kabul by the Afghan government.
TIME’s Top 100 Photos of 2021 list is out and I’m so tired
Remember when 2020 ended and we thought things would get better (lol)? TIME’s annual list of the best photos of the year shows a 2021 racked by war, COVID, and the climate crisis. The photojournalism is great, but man, this year’s been rough.
The magazine has four covers for their December double issue: 1. Scott McIntyre’s shot of Zaila Avant-garde winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee, for the New York Times; 2. Konstantinos Tsakalidis’ shot of a woman standing in front a wildfire approaching her home in Greece, for Bloomberg; 3. Christopher Lee’s shot of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, for TIME; and 4. Fatima Shbair’s shot of a Palestinian girl standing in her bombed out home in Gaza, for Getty Images.
My four favorite photos from the list give me goosebumps: 1. Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman at her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee over the FBI’s investigation into allegations of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse, by Anna Moneymaker; 2. a single hand coming up over the U.S. Capitol wall on Jan. 6, by Peter van Agtmael; 3. refugees floating in international waters in the Mediterranean, by Santi Palacios; and 4. President Joe Biden flying in Marine One over In America: Remember, by Kent Nishimura.
You can view the full list here.
Now that Britney is free, her attorney is working to free artist Peter Max
Attorney Mathew Rosengart, who helped Britney Spears terminate her 13-year conservatorship on Nov. 12, has joined the legal team for German-American pop artist Peter Max.
In 2015, Max’s wife was granted a guardianship over the artist, who has Alzheimer’s disease, but other family members don’t support the arrangement. Max’s daughter Libra requested for the guardianship to be terminated in September, writing in a letter signed by her and other family members that the guardianship had “depleted his hard-earned life’s earnings by over $16 million, with millions being paid, without his permission, to the court-appointed guardians and attorneys who now control all aspects of his life.”
Rosengart said in statement to Variety that Max’s guardianship “typifies the type of guardianship that merits judicial attention and potential state and federal legislation.” Libra Max is petitioning to end the guardianship today before the New York State Supreme Court.
Max’s work includes a 1974 USPS stamp about environmentalism, an official portrait of former President Bill Clinton for his 1993 Inauguration, and the 1994 World Cup poster.
Dang
That barbed wire one, man.
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