Gypset Archives - the Numinous

Sagittarius season is an invitation to explore our innate wildness, and expand our personal Universe, say Cara George & Bess Matassa of Mojave Rising…

Sagittarius season hoists us up from the underworld and sends us racing out onto the open plains of our own exuberant BECOMING. The zodiac’s expansive equestrian spills her blossoming vines over walls and across the borders of previous limitations, as she urges us to extend our adventuring to off-road spaces we couldn’t have imagined even in our wildest moments.

So pack your carry-ons, saddle your ponies, and let the wind throw back your hair. Your wildness cannot be broken or tamed or lost or found, but is constantly being born through the very air that you breathe. Fall in love with the blood coursing through your own veins and then let this love run faster and faster out across rich golden fields under carpets of pink stars.

Because baby you were born to run. And where we’re going, there are no roads.

The keyword: Locomotion.

The song lyrics: “Oh girl, dancing down those dirty and dusty trails/Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness/Around the world the trip begins with a kiss”—The B-52s, “Roam”

Check out our Sagittarius season playlist, complete with wide-open anthems, road-trip rockers, and exploratory psychedelia.

The color palette: Nomadic hues fit for a full-on bacchanalian feast. Saffron, mustard, glitter-dusted taupe, and gypsy jewel-toned amethysts and rubies.

The style: Traveling circus performer meets Rio carnival queen on Route 66. Feathers, sequined unitards, untameable patterns, rich tapestried fabrics, and body-con mobility complete with cowboy boots and Canadian tuxedos.

The scents and flavors: Spiced, smoked, and hedonistically heated—warm curries, smoked trail mix, campfire, beef jerky, ancho, cinnamon, and cedarwood.

The healing: Exuberantly excessive and exploratorily expansive. All-night dance parties, adventure traveling, lost weekends, multi-course meals, and urban scavenger hunts.

Sensuous Invitation of the Month: Dance party! (by sign, below).

With Chiron stationing direct, and Venus joining Mars in Aquarius, Sagittarius season 2016 is infused with a call to face our pain head on and shake it out onto the dancefloor to be transformed under strobe lights. This month marks a radical opportunity for moving energy through our bodies, re-envisioning “the way things are,” and rediscovering deep meaning in places of seeming hopelessness.

Each sign can sample its own brand of kinetic expression as we let our bodies collide and celebrate the sheer exhilaration of movement and ever-unfolding change. Let’s werk!

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ARIES
Sagittarius season invites you to relinquish some of your single-pointed focus as you journey towards the joyous buoyancy of infinite possibilities. Dance Party: Parkour. Solitary, assertive explorations that also rely on feedback from the built environment.

TAURUS
Sagittarius season invites you to infuse your deeply sensual pragmatism with some grand futuristic schemes and dreams, however eccentric. Dance Party: Belly-dancing. Getting low and getting down with a fully-embodied practice that’s both rooted and nomadic.

GEMINI
Sagittarius season invites you to go even further in your curious search for information, as you sample far-flung philosophies and belief systems, and begin to take a stand. Dance Party: Break-dancing. Responding to street culture and pledging yourself to the pavement.

CANCER
Sagittarius season invites you to take your looniness out of its shell as you experiment with sharing your creative process with the wider world. Dance Party: Pole-dancing. Sensual self-pleasure that’s unabashedly unafraid.

LEO
Sagittarius season invites you to share your generous, pulsing heart with people outside of your usual circle and to let yourself be changed through these collisions. Dance Party: Roller-disco. Hot-blooded, glittery glamour on wheels complete with rainbow lights and necessary negotiations between sequined skaters.

VIRGO
Sagittarius season invites you to let it all come undone as you leap headfirst into the experience without painstaking preparation. Dance Party: Irish step dancing. Intricacy and rapidity that springs into action from the ground up.

LIBRA
Sagittarius season invites you to rock the boat as you push towards complete honesty, even when it’s far from diplomatic. Dance Party: Synchronized swimming. Idealized aesthetics meet rugged physicality and strong-willed teamwork.

SCORPIO
Sagittarius season invites you to mix your darkness with light as you trust into both the gravity and levity of this luscious adventure. Dance Party: Flamenco. Raw intensity that harnesses the glorious sensation of passionate living.

SAGITTARIUS
Sagittarius season invites you to both revel in your wildness and seek committed conduits for your restlessness. Dance Party: Wedding dances. From the electric slide to the macarena, sampling the full-range of party moves while celebrating romantic loyalty.

CAPRICORN
Sagittarius season invites you to experiment with some healthy excess as you relax some of your ascetic measures and feast on the world around you. Dance Party: Ballroom dancing. Structure, tradition, and classical cool take to the floor with opulently majestic gowns and footwear.

AQUARIUS
Sagittarius season invites you to release from what’s “right” or what “should” be, and dive into the experience of unfolding meaning without creating calcified rules. Dance party: Modern dance. Interpretive, fluid maneuvers that push the edge of what’s possible in an embodied form.

PISCES
Sagittarius season invites you to fully release into the sensation of boundarylessness as you break down the walls between yourself and the world. Dance Party: Crowd surfing. Giving your body over to the intangible faith that you will always be supported.

Discover more about Mojave Rising and their work at Mojaverising.com

Naz Onderoglu of Williamsburg’s new global style hub Soot & Tusk gets the spiritual scoop on Ilgin Utin’s India Trippin’ collection. Because it’s always about the journey…

If an open door beckons to you, please stumble in. On a recent stroll through Williamsburg, BK, we did exactly that, and soon found ourselves in fashion heaven – aka Soot & Tusk, a new boutique bursting with cool creations from independent designers across the globe. Founders Naz, Noyan and Veranika are as international a line-up as the clothes that lines the racks, and leads come from everywhere; “we travel, ask our friends or search all over the internet to find like-minded labels. So spread word, we’re looking for new designers all the time!” says Naz.

Designers like Ilgin Utin, whose incredible India Trippin’ collection is featured in this post. Erm, obsessed much? We asked Naz to reach out to Ilgin (modelling her own designs here) to get the inside scoop…

When were you last ‘India Trippin’?
“I spent four months in India this winter, searching for what money can’t buy and finding my lost spirit, which it’s easy to forget about in my Western life. I had come to a point where I’d lost all interest in material life and my career goals had become meaningless. I realised I had been living in future, not in the moment, and my India trip helped me reconnect with the ‘now’, as well as my creativity.”

How does the country inspire you as an artist?
“Initially it helped me remember the artsy mood of my childhood, but I also found a spiritual connection there which made everything meaningful again and I came to a conclusion that I had to integrate my spirit with my material work. In India, the colourful, fancy and extravagant material expressions are reflections of inner beauty, infused with this ancient, immortal culture of imagination. Seeing real people applying this creativity in their lives, I also figured out that you don’t need to do any research on the internet to be able to understand everything.”

What’s the most mystical experience you had there?
“I had this foresight that I’d find a guru who will lead me on a mystical tour to unknown places and states of minds. But it wasn’t about this. There was no big mystery, I simply felt more grounded and connected to nature, as well as the consciousness that we are all a part of.

Really, no stories?
“Well okay. I was traveling alone in Coorg following my passion for spices and herbs, and I ended up staying on a mountain homestay with a local family. When I met the guy he told me I was the only Muslim traveller that had ever come there, so he was so excited to introduce me his family. I went their 100-year-old house on the mountains, where there were no neighbours, only nature. On meeting his amazing family, I ended up stayed there for a whole week as they insisted.

“I quickly fell into remote village life, speaking Hindu with the mother, being a sister to his son. At nights we had deep conversations about life, and he would tell stories which were basic and pure, but also so illuminating. Of course, he didn’t know I was in a search of guru, but he told me ‘you can stay here as long as you want, we don’t expect anything in return you, but take me as your guru!’ This made me understand that everybody is a guru, from whom I could learn self-realization.”

Describe the woman you are designing for – who is your muse?
“A woman with lots of confidence, with no hesitations and who doesn’t want to hide in the crowd. She likes to be noticed, but she shows up as her inner self, her child spirit. She is very much optimistic, colorful and enjoying life. I don’t have muses, but imaginary characters that I design for. She’s the woman that I want to be.”

What’s your astrological sign, and how does it help define your aesthetic?
“I’m an Aquarius, and I think defines my personality, my lifestyle and my mentality. I believe I am really creative, free spirited, independent, reliable, outgoing, sophisticated and individual because of my sign. I know I born this way. My aesthetic is something I’ve developed by visiting and experiencing so many different cultures, and I’m always in progress and expanding my vision.”

Getting dressed in the morning, what’s your ‘fashion mantra’?
“I never prepare my clothes the day before. So my mantra is; ‘put on your mood!’”

For more information about when Ilgin Utin’s India Trippin’ collection will be available contact [email protected]

@ilginutin

Gypset

A SENSORY EXPLORATION OF SAGITTARIUS SEASON

INDIA TRIPPIN: DRESSING THE INTERNATIONAL GYPSET

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