Between now and June next year, Lost and Found will arrive in convenient ‘snapshots’ every six weeks. With three short sections, pics and guest editor insights, it will create an entry point to the latest creative spaces and interesting events in Melbourne. Insider knowledge, underbelly happenings and intimate understanding from creative people who know best. This snapshot’s guest editor is Ingrid Verner: award-winning co-founder of Melbourne-based fashion label TV. When Ingrid isn’t brainstorming new ways to wear lycra, she likes drinking white wine with co-designer Monika Tywanek, dancing to freestyle disco and digging for apples.

Ingrid Verner
We’re heading to Paris Fashion Week in ten days to show our collection so it’s mega-hectic in here at the moment. The new summer range is in store now too – heaps of colour, ‘20s future sport tweed frocks, summer knitwear. It’s vintage sports inspired – we have a hundred old trophies in the shop. And a lot of lycra of course.

Moni and I haven’t been out recently. We’ve been chained to our desks! But we love Hells Kitchen on a Friday night – it’s like a reunion in there every week. Moni and I are both Queensland bogans at heart so we drink a lot of white wine. Near our shop in Prahran we go to Borsch, Vodka and Tears which is perfect for a quiet chardonnay or two.

Moni and I have the same shopping preferences. Alice Euphemia in the city and Gertrude Street. All of the FAT stores. Our favourite store, which has just opened, is Digging For Apples in Sydney Road, Brunswick. They have this awesome Alice in Wonderland vibe going on.

When I go out, I love seeing Hot Little Hands. We saw them play at Miss Libertine recently, which was good because there’s lots of dancing room. We’re going to dress the band for their album launch. We’re taking the TV vibe and applying it to menswear, but we’ve kept it quite unisex. Getting a good fit for men can be hard – most things are cut for ‘men’ men. We’re concentrating on really good, slim fits. (That doesn’t mean the Hot Little Hands aren’t manly though…)

The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival
Sure, a festival draws together numerous artists in one, user-friendly, finite program. But this can render even the most intrepid arts fan an indecisive wreck – glassy eyed on the couch, overwhelmed by choice. The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival is guilty of this. In its 25th year, the 2007 festival promises more shows than ever, involving over 3000 artists in more than 100 Melbourne venues.

Why not start with a man who has never been wracked by indecision? Faced with a passion for superceded Casio home keyboards, CasioNova simply collected them all. His show, CasioNova & His Ceaseless Miracles, is a geek-chic festival of its own, featuring pogo sticks, video games and the fruits of a thousand bedroom autochord experiments. They call him ‘the hardest rocking nerd in Northcote’ – the very obsessiveness of it will calm you down.

The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival,
26 September – 14 October,
tel: 03 8412 8777
CasioNova & His Ceaseless Miracles,
26 September – 13 October, excluding Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays, Northcote Town Hall

Brother Baba Budan
When it comes to addictions, it’s always nice to have someone to blame. Tobacco farmers, for instance, or the lady who sold you your first pair of Manolos. With coffee, the culprit is easy to pinpoint. Brother Baba Budan was a 17th Century Sufi who smuggled seven beans from the port of Mocha in Yemen to India, from whence the rest of the world caught the caffeine bug. Melbourne’s own sage of espresso, Mark Dundon, has dedicated his latest café to Budan and, as you would expect, every extraction is a tribute to the Brother. All the beans come from St. Ali in South Melbourne – Dundon’s roasting headquarters. At BBB you can choose your bean, then ogle the temperature-controlled heads on the Synesso machine. While you wait, admire the coffee-scoop door handle or buy a commercial-grade single-group machine for the road. Who said addiction was a dirty word?

Brother Baba Budan, 359 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, tel: 03 9606 0449

Claude Maus
Melburnians have, shall we say, an intimate relationship with their denim. In some cases this is due to a lack of oxygen buffering skin from skinny jeans. In most cases, though, it’s because of guys like Rob Maniscalo, whose denim goes way beyond anything Levi Strauss had planned when he stitched in his first rivet. Maniscalco’s label, Claude Maus, has had a dedicated following through stockists like FAT for the past eight years. Lucky for them, Maus fans now have a new hole to call home. The Claude Maus city store opened last month on Manchester Lane. Ranging from t-shirts to leather jackets, the current collection seems slightly overwhelming, dangling as it does under heritage ceilings. But if the plastic can take it you’ll pick up some signature leather that, as one reviewer put it, you’ll ‘want to shoplift right out of the store’ (note: Rob would prefer you just paid at the register).

Claude Maus, 19 Manchester Lane, Melbourne, tel: 03 9654 9844