The potential loss of a collection is a sad thing. If the NSW State Government sells off the old Tempe Tram Depot, which currently houses the Bus and Truck Museum, another piece of Sydney’s fast disappearing history will be lost, quite possibly to be replaced by another future slum apartment development.

Sydney removed trams from its streets in the 1960s. Only a handful of the tram sheds that housed the trams remain. The Tempe shed is believed to be the most complete. Check out the Bus and Truck Museum’s website. It’s a wonderful collection of the history of transport in Sydney.

You may hve picked up my dislike for apartment developments in Sydney, especially those by Meriton. At the hands of Meriton (owner Harry Trigaboff once claimed that Australia should use the US dollar as it’s currency), unique and beautiful buildings have been demolished and replaced by cheap, bland and quite frankly, ugly buildings bereft of any architectural merit. I was particularly disgusted when a Gothic influenced, sandstone row of shops, once home of Odeon Records, was demolished. It was one of few of this kind of building left in Sydney. Very sad. The link to collecting, you ask? Back in 1996 I made a collage that reflected my disgust, Meritonitis.

Objects are like small visibile time capsules. Their physicality speaks of the era they are from, the material used, perhaps the colour and the marks left behind from previous owners. The collections I make are not interested in the ‘mint’ state. The mint state is for dealers, dealers who are not collectors, but facilitate collecting for some collectors, agents if you will.

For me stains, scratches and chips tell of human experience, they give the object the sense of a life lived. Once their use has past and the collector has become interested in their form, the objects enter the collection, a kind of retirement home for objects. Here they sit is specially made display cases, ready to be ogled by the interested, their stories about to be told by the collector. For the collector is a storyteller of sorts.

On the ABC News this evening a story about child labour was filed suggesting that GAP clothes were being manufactured in India by children. Gap has apparently moved quickly to get to the bottom of the allegations and has reportedly destroyed the clothes in question. And here is the conundrum. Why destroy perfectly fine garments? Couldn’t they have been given to people who need the? Or returned to the workers perhaps? Destroying the clothes is wasteful on two points, it is disrespectful to those who ’slaved’ over them and it wastes perfectly fine resources. Were they made from cotton? We all know how water intensive the manufacture of cotton is so why destroy?

I don’t usually buy The Sydney Morning Herald, or Australian newspapers for that matter, but today I did as a little experiment of how much I read or find interesting in a paper. Here’s what I discovered:

- The 27 October 2007 issue clocked in at about 1,545 grams.

- I immediately discarded the Sport, Domain, My Career, Traveller and Drive sections weighing about 740 grams.

- There were at least 486 pages of editorial and ads, some repeated like the ad for The Sun Herald’s free Aria’s CD, 5 times.

- Of the 486 pages I didn’t even look at 246 pages, more if you consider the next line.

- I considered less than half of Weekend Business, the first half of Spectrum and not much of Good Weekend as it was their annual 52 Weekends Away issue of sheer boredom.

If you’re wondering why I am writing about this the answer is waste. I’ve been buying the nifty The Guardian Weekly which costs twice as much as The Sydney Morning Herald and weights just 80 grams. Of it’s 48 pages I read all but 6 and a half. It’s physical size is about half of Spectrum. It scores highly because its design is elegant, it is concise and to the point and it allocates just a page and a half to sport. You don’t have to read around ads or have your eyes assaulted by mismatched design. Hurrah.

When we are so concerned about the environment and the use of resources you have to wonder why a paper like the Herald is so large. Consider the energy required to ship it around the country, the paper used and the water consumed in the process. It doesn’t make much sense to me.

I’ve recently joined Squirl, a beta site for collectors. On it I’ve placed some initial photographs of some objects I have been collecting for about six months now. I’m interested to know more about them so please if you know anything, get in touch. I know that none of the ones I have are real Hummels, many are made in Taiwan. However that doesn’t make them any less interesting. You can find the link to them under external links on the right hand side of this page.

Society is increasingly accepting of fakes. We no longer question lip-synching pop stars, plagiarising media or corporations like Coca Cola who bottled tap water, palming it off as ‘pure’ mineral water. Deceitful politicians are rewarded with second, third, fourth and potentially fifth terms.

1st for Louis Vuitton is a fan website featuring interviews with collectors and owners who share their experiences about their love affairs with the bags. Additionally it supplies price guides, reviews and tips on spotting fakes as well as information about LV. They never, ever have sales.

If mimicry is the highest form of praise, then Louis Vuitton should feel honoured as being among the most copied. Visionary Coco Chanel advocated mixing fake with real in a fashion context, and to some degree that is what is happening on the streets. Whether the bag is fake or not doesn’t matter, as long as status is denoted, like driving a Mercedes, BMW or Jaguar, a current generation of women are happy toting fakes. Stephen Sprouse’s Graffiti bag had a long waiting list and so was heavily copied. Victoria Beckham AKA Posh Spice famously queue jumped to avoid waiting. Baudrillard refers to modern culture as being obscene and obese with information, is it difficult to tell the real from the fake. To the untrained eye, fakes are hard to distinguish.

By the 1980s Louis Vuitton’s cachet plummeted. Counterfeiters had hijacked the famous logo placing it on cheap purses, baseball caps and tracksuits. The UK’s Burberry has suffered a similar fate with it’s iconic check appearing on cheap scarves, trainers and even Nana shopping trolleys. And Chanel was outraged in the 1990s when cheap copies of their famous pink check skirt suits were worn by Hong Kong prostitutes. LVMH has taken a harder line on fakes with a team based in Paris monitoring fakes worldwide. In 2003 convicted forgers faced a combined jail term of 54 years, though there has been little decline in forgeries. Chinese nationals visit Louis Vuitton stores to purchase accessories to take back to China, have copied, mass-produce and sell. Linger for a few moments on the sidewalks outside Louis Vuitton and you’re likely to be approached by Asian men with wads of cash asking you to go and buy a particular Louis Vuitton piece for them. Sitting in between the Authentic and the Fake is the Inspired By. New Woman in it’s current reincarnation is more like lad mags FHM and Ralph than the feminist title it was in the 1990s. New Woman says “fake all the way”. Why wait and spend big on accessories that will only be fashionable for a season. They wholeheartedly embrace ‘inspired by” creators Pink Corporation founded four years ago. ‘Inspired bys” are lovingly ‘reinterpretations’ of current ‘it’ bags, displaying their own logo and using ‘quality’ materials, say ordinary cow leather instead of two month old hand-reared, corn-fed Angora kid. Fakes never acknowledge their maker and use cheap materials.

I have held a fascination with celebrity for some time. Why do people feel better when they compare themselves to celebrities, either favourably or not. What is so alluring about it? How does following in the footsteps of a celebrity, often at great personal cost, make you feel better? I don’t have an answer yet, though obviously big brands know how that appeal works and what it does for their bottom line. Harper’s Bazaar’s Addiction column focuses on of-the-moment desirables providing information on designer, waiting list, where/or if you can get one, and who’s been seen with it, bringing consumers a presumed degree of separation closer. Magazines have been acting as curators for some time, bringing to consumers attention the latest must-haves. A book review by Oprah means instant best-seller. A recent phenomena in magazines is to ditch articles and completely focus products. Lucky, Cargo, Shelter and Australia’s own Shop till you drop are really magalogue’s, shopping editors bring together the latest it things. The trend is known as curated consumption. Taking it further is a London business Microzine who’s philosophy is about selected products, displaying them in a living room installation and informing potential buyers of the object’s story and why they should buy it. It seems that the notion of provenance, so important to collectors, is also desirable to some modern consumers.

Lauren Bacall and Marlene Dietrich were the original Louis Vuitton Princesses. Madonna, Kylie, Chloé Sevingey, Elizabeth Hurley, Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Campbell, Sharon Stone, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor are all Louis Vuitton aficionados. Boys too. Elton John is a major collector, while David Beckham and Jude Law sport monogrammed bags. Seductive advertising campaigns feature style-conscious ‘It’ girls Uma, Scarlett and J Lo.

The bag phenomena I not fuelled by advertising alone. Editorial articles, advertorials and TV shows push consumer urge. Sarah Jessica Parker’s Manolo Blahnik shoe fetish was much publicised both on screen in Sex and the City and off screen on the red carpet. Blahnik’s are also highly collectible. Designer bags aren’t cheap. A Louis Vuitton Multi-colour Monogram Speedy bag retails in Australia for $2,700. Special editions can fetch $10,700. Another luxury brand, Hermes has their famous Birkin in a limited supply starting at $10,400 and going to as much as $40,000. Apparently you simply can’t walk into a Hermes store and buy one, you have to first build a relationship with the manager before you can even be considered to own one. No wonder fakes are popular.

Art and fashion have been acquaintances for years. Designers have been inspired by works of art and reinterpreted their vision into new designs and artists have responded to fashion in similar ways. John Wiech, editor of Art Review in the Art a la Mode: Fashion Loves Art issue notes: “…fashion can be artistic and contemporary art can be fashionable…they remain fundamentally disparate in both departure and scope. With a few exceptions fashion is driven by seasonal trends and is ravenously commercial. With a few exceptions, contemporary art is driven by ideas and covetously not.” Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian dress of 1965 captured not just the essence of a Mondrian painting but also the style and mood of the sixties. In 1999 Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum purchased a gown from Sophie van Rood’s collection of vintage fashion for $6,000. It was a 1930s Elsa Schiaparelli adorned with embroideries by Jean Cocteau. Warhol experimented with pop-printed paper dresses. Their have been collaborations between Prada and Damien Hirst, Versace and Lichtenstein, and Helmut Lang and Jenny Holzer. Marc Jacobs recent ad campaign shot by Juergen Teller featured Cindy Sherman. The Independent style writer James Sherwood sees vintage accessories as the next big thing in fashion.

Collectors choose objects based on any number of reasons, many personal and quite often derived from childhood ideals. Russell L Belk discusses the sacred, how objects once chosen take on a sacred quality. They are valued and held in high regard. It doesn’t matter that the object is a tossed away piece of paper, say a shopping list or an old bottle top. It could equally be something generally considered more valuable, say figurines or hats.

I am interested to know how people choose the objects they collect. Please post a comment and let me know.

There is considerable literature written on the topic of collecting. Much of it suggests that the urge to collect begins in early childhood in both boys and girls alike. Some will lose interest in collecting and never take it up again whereas others will pause for a short while only to continue with an all-consuming passion later, often not too much later, in life.

The following questions are aimed at getting an idea of what kinds of objects kick-started collecting interest. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Did you collect anything as a child?
What did you collect?
Can you remember at what age you began collecting?
Do you know what happened to the collection?
Do you have anything you would like to add about your interest in collecting?