According to the Volkskrant, only one student has registered to study Frisian this year at the University of Groningen, the only university in the country that offers a Bacherlor’s and Master’s degree in the country’s second official language.
Professor Goffe Jensma said on a local radio show in Groningen that new rules allowing universities to set their own fees for second degrees was at the heart of the problem. Grytsje Nicolaij, who already has a degree as a musicologist, was planning to study Fries on the side to keep up with family and friends who spoke the language better than he did. If the university does not attract more students (how many, we don’t know) before October 1, Grytsje will have to brush up on his Frisian elsewhere.
What does Frisian sound like?
Frisian Duo Twarres had a huge hit with ‘Wêr Bisto’ (‘Live, with a Dutch translation). The girl is the guitarist, the guy is the back up singer and they are childhood friends:
Frisian model Doutzen Kroes (L’Oréal, Victoria’s Secret) promotes her mother tongue:
The fashionistas of daily newspaper De Pers predict the return of Speedo-like swim wear.
Swim suits are already out of fashion for women the paper concluded while prowling the Bloemendaal beach where bikinis, especially the ones with triangular patch tops, were in an overwhelming majority.
The brightly coloured swim brief is already replacing the Bermuda for men, which only accounted for 65% of the sales.
A fairly recent fashion among both boys and girls is to wear underwear beneath swimming trunks, with the underwear brand name prominently exposed. In 2008 public pools started outlawing the combination, citing hygienic concerns. Underwear manufacturer Björn Borg told De Pers that it saw an increase in sales of microfibre shorts, which dry faster. The brand has also started to produce its own line of swimming trunks.
Candidates include actor Tom Hofman, DJ Erik de Zwart (photo) and musician Frank Boeijen. The election is part of a campaign for the brand’s line of hair colouring for men.
Voting is simply a matter of studying 10 photos (one per candidate), clicking the Stem (Vote) button, and filling out and submitting your e-mail address.
It is not clear to me when the voting period ends, so vote quickly. The results will be made public at the end of April. According to the website’s disclaimer, the cosmetics people may use your e-mail address to spam you, and they will become the owner of everything you send to them, so be careful about what you submit.
While the first ever Latin American same-sex couple recently got married in Argentina and another one got arrested for doing so in Malawi, Amsterdam will hold its first ever wedding fair for gays and lesbians on February 14, Valentine’s Day 2010. The fair will feature some 50 stands at the Westergasfabriek in West Amsterdam. Already married same-sex couples can visit the fair for free upon showing their marriage certificate.
Since 1st April 2001 gays and lesbians have been allowed to marry in the Netherlands and it was the first country to allow same-sex marriages.
United Nude, the design agency run by shoe designer Galahad JD Clark and architect Rem Koolhaas has expanded its on-line shoe store with an off-line version on the Spuistraat in Amsterdam. No, that is not the Rem Koolhaas, it is Rem D. Koolhaas, his cousin.
Koolhaas told De Pers it took six years to open a bricks and mortar store because only now is the collection big enough. Also, the crisis made the rent right.
Filed under: Design,Fashion by Branko Collin @ 8:11 am
This merry-go-round coat rack by Wieki Somers won the overall prize for the best Dutch design project at the Dutch Design Week 2009. It is already in use at the Museum Boijmans – Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Other winners were the rain barrel by Bas van der Veer that we wrote about last week, which won the René Smeets award, the prize for the best project of this year’s Design Academy Eindhoven graduates.
Other interesting designs were those of Digna Kosse, who experimented with how much material you can leave out of a dress and still call it a dress (may be NSFW), and Austrian Eindhoven Design Academy graduate Sonja Bäumel, who experimented with clothes that grow themselves in the areas of the body that most need the warmth by letting bacteria do the heavy lifting.
To protect the privacy of stewardesses (and stewards, I imagine), pilots and ground personnel, KLM has decided that they won’t be wearing any nametags anymore as of April 2010. Apparently, there’s no rush to protect them — odd. Their ‘title’ will still be displayed on a pin they’ll have to wear.
KLM personnel will also be getting new uniforms, as the ones stewardesses (and again stewards, I imagine) now wear date from 1990.
Yes, this is a silly picture of two co-pilots in an old DC-9 cockpit.
The ‘Colour-In’ Dress by Berber Soepboer and Michiel Schuurman comes with a set of textile markers included, assuming you are willing to part with 238 euro. The dress moved from concept to product quickly when the blogosphere picked up on it earlier this year.
If you can trade in your old car or your old computer for a new one, why not your old bras? Thanks to Dutch lingerie brand Triumph, you can get 5 euro back to put towards the purchase of a new bra.
“It’s a tasteless stunt,” says Kledingbank Limburg (‘clothing bank’ for the poor in the southern part of the country), reminding us that underwear is the only thing you throw out and buy new. Underwear OK, but bras?
The more open-minded clothing bank in Haarlem thinks it’s a good idea because a new bra is very expensive and the used ones are sought after.
If you google around, you’ll see that tons of people do it and that it’s pretty common. Or they get creative and stuff them with plants.
It’s tough enough having to deal with this item of clothing that crawled back out of the gym and came back on to the streets, but now you can have cool leggings with nasty Dutch words on them like ‘kut’ (cunt, used as an exclamation like shit!) and ‘lul’ (dick, used more like dickhead, although they have words for that, too). Brazilian-born Amsterdam-based designer Bea Correa of Mind What You Wear has leggings and other trendy items like ‘skorts’ (a skirt and shorts combo), wool hats for penisses, and fake Louis Vuitton bags that were pulled off the market after LV got legally upset with her.
The fashionistas of daily newspaper De Pers predict the return of Speedo-like swim wear. 
A cosmetics brand is looking for the 
