NONSENSE ON STILETTOS

R.I.P. Eiko Ishioka (7/12/1939 - 21/1/2012)

2012-01-26T13:13:00.000-08:00

Being a shameless lover of both movies and clothes, it's not really that surprising that I am a complete nut for costume design, be it sumptuous or slick. And the work of the late Eiko Ishioka, one of the most brilliant and original visionaries in the field, has been my favourite thing about the films she did costumes for for over a decade now - even when they were otherwise rubbish, the chance to see her clothes up close on a 70mm theatrical screen alone made it worth the price of the ticket. To those who are unfamiliar with her, here are some samples of her designs in film:

Dracula (1992)

Below is Lucy's green dress in the film - the detail shot shows that it was embroidered with snakes all over (a classic Ishioka touch, especially considering the film itself)

The Cell (2000)

The Fall (2006). I won't even attempt to hide how happy the butterfly-wing patterned coat made my eyes.

An early illustration of a costume side-by-side with the actual costume itself.

That headdress would probably make the late Isabella Blow proud.

The hyper-theatricality of her work may not be everyone's cup of tea, but there's no denying that her twisted, almost surreal take on classical costumes is extraordinary to look at. Ishioka's costumes were often designed to be more evocative of a feeling than a particular period in time (she created the costumes for The Cell without a single literal reference point) and especially perfect for the science fiction, fantasy and horror films she designed for.

Although costume design might have been the field in which she was best known, Eiko Ishioka was a visual artist whose talent was never confined to a single medium , whether it was directing a music video for Björk or designing the costumes for the Cirque du Soleil and the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics. Her latest - and last - work as a costume designer is on the upcoming Mirror, Mirror, a decidedly campy-looking take on the story of Snow White whose costumes do not let their creator's reputation down and are at least 75% of the reason why the film looks like it's going to be a visual treat. I'll be going for this one as soon as I can, not only to enjoy myself but also for a last chance to see her genius blown up on a 70 mm screen. May she rest in peace.

Mirror, Mirror (2012).

** image sources: The Costumer's Guide, eiko_ishioka.livejournal.com, io9.com.

Corinne Day, "The Long Story" Vogue UK June 2002

2011-03-25T03:35:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favourite editorials ever to feature Gisele, not least because (in classical Corinne style) it couldn't be more different from the Glamazon Glory mode magazines usually choose to put her in. It's rather nice to see fashion taking a model with boobs and letting the boobs not be the entire point of the editorial.

Hair: Neil Moodie
Makeup: Max Delorme
Fashion editor: Kate Phelan
Model: Gisele Bündchen
scans by me

Spot The Resemblance: Swans and Rebels* Edition

2010-12-22T12:39:00.000-08:00

Again with the Black Swan things, but surely I can't be the only person who thinks that this beautiful poster, below:

looks a lot like

the symbol of the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars? I find it hilarious, given that Natalie Portman actually had a starring role in the (dreadful) prequels.

*misbegotten twist on the title of one of my favourite books of all time. Do read it if you haven't already!

Goodbye, Carine

2010-12-17T14:22:00.000-08:00

I can't believe Carine Roitfeld is actually quitting Vogue Paris! On one hand, her logic in favour of going out while she's still on top, and when she's completed a nice round number of years- ten- as its editor, can't be argued with (she'll leave once she's done with work on the March 2011 issue). On the other, I'll miss the frequent cheek and oddly impeccable naughtiness she brought to Vogue Paris*, and whoever succeeds her (Emmanuelle Alt?) will have some major shoes to fill.

Ah, well. From one humble fashion blogger to the woman who is practically the icon of the "Fashion Insiders As Style Inspiration" movement, good luck for the future.

*I will say it though, I'm not a fan of photographs like this one.

On Girls, Gloves And The Art Of René Gruau

2010-12-17T03:33:00.000-08:00

...though I suppose it's not quite right to call them girls, given that René Gruau never drew female figures without a strong hint of slink and sophistication, and 'womanly' is very much the appropriate adjective for the general vibe of his illustrations (see another one in this post)

I've always been more than a little in love with the boldness and flourish of his work, combined with the sparse composition- his work (for Jacques Fath, Dior and others) was never short of impact.

If anyone takes a close look at these or larger images, you'll see a spiky star-shape above Gruau's signature in several of his illustrations- after an inkblot fell on his work and he doodled it into the shape of a star, he liked it so much that he adopted it as a motif.

Cruella?

2010-12-16T13:38:00.001-08:00

I'm aware that, as per pop culture, the hair really should be white with a black streak (e.g. Daphne Guinness), but really, how was I expected to resist?

Spot The Similarity: The Bear Edition

2010-12-11T04:08:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the styling for SM2's Winter 2010 collection is a touch more muted than what it reminds me of, and the model is taller and less tubby, but be that as it may, blue duffle coats like the one below:

will always remind me of this:

Paddington Bear doll, c. 1980

(incidentally, SM2's is also one of the most charmingly styled and shot winter collections I've seen this season, with the added benefit of the fact that most of the outfits actually look like they fall on the right side of warm and comfortable- more about that some other time, and check it out here.)

Star Power a.k.a. Another Edition of Spot the Resemblance

2010-12-10T10:13:00.000-08:00

There's been a bit of talk at The Fashion Spot about the similarities between Miu Miu S/S 2011 and Miu Miu S/S 08. The resemblance is there, no doubt*, but one particular recurring detail made me think Miuccia Prada might also have been referencing a very slightly older collection: Spring/Summer 2006. I mean, look at the print on these dresses:

and then, look at Miu Miu S/S 2011, below.
For what it's worth, I liked the original (S/S 06) iteration better, though I'm quite taken with the fact that the S/S 11 star prints look a little like explosions in comic books.

images from style.com and The Fashion Spot's Miu Miu S/S 2011 thread.

*I also thought S/S 08 looked like it had inspired some aspects of S/S 2010- those collars! And now, the illustrations of harlequins from that season have turned into illustrations of a snake and a swan in this one..

Coming Up: Brighton Rock

2010-12-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

While the world spent the last week gasping over Black Swan, this humble blog finds itself much more excited by the imminent release of a film that manages the double feat of being based on one of my favourite books and being set, via what looks like judicious adaptation, in one of my favourite eras, fashion-wise (three words: Mods and Rockers).

The updated adaptation isn't due for general release for a while yet, but the trailer looks promising- Sam Riley is more than a decade older than Pinkie in the book, but is baby-faced enough for that not to bother me too much (also, I remember how good he was in Control). And even though I do love a sharply-dressed bit of celluloid featuring Crombie coats, parkas and vintage scooters, the fact that the costume designers exercised some restraint and didn't go all-out with the 60s costume on Rose (Andrea Riseborough) is something I appreciate, given her character- she is supposed to be a bit naive, not all that worldly-wise, and it does make sense that she isn't enough of a fashion plate to dress in head-to-toe Mary Quant that early in the decade.
And now, for stills:

Mods out in full force. I love the souped-up rides and the parkas..

And the sharp dressing of what looks like every man in this film- this still looks like it could well be from the 1930s in which the book was originally set, instead of the 1964 of this adaptation.

Helen Mirren proves that it isn't just youth making clothes look pretty here- the clothes are that good, and I'm more than a little floored by the combination of red hair, lipstick and coat.

Scarfing Art, Ascher-Style

2010-11-27T05:43:00.000-08:00

I've never been much of a girl for silk scarves, but in the wake of Hermès going on a mission to give its own silk squares an image makeover, my interest was piqued enough to go digging around the Internet for more info on scarves that served as something other than a clichéd feature in most people's image of Parisians.

The story of Ascher's artist scarves (as they're known) began during World War II, when Lida and Zika Ascher of Ascher Textiles began asking leading artists of the day to collaborate with them on the design of a series of silk scarves. This, as a concept, isn't exactly a new one: one could imagine that scarves provide artists with more flexibility to work in two dimensions than, say, a dress, and art/fashion collaborations weren't unknown (e.g. Dali and Schiaparelli, Chanel and Cocteau, Dali illustrating covers for Vogue...) . What is staggering, however, is the roll call of some of the 20th century's greatest artists who designed limited-edition (probably by necessity, since finding materials for the line in post-war London in the era of rationing can't have been easy) scarves for Ascher, which went on sale in 1947. The artists, you ask? Take a deep breath first: Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, Feliks Topolski, Cecil Beaton, Jean Cocteau, Zao Wou Ki, Graham Sutherland, and Henri Matisse, among others.

Eighteen of the scarves were reissued in different colourways earlier this year in limited editions (which is how they came to the attention of the wider public recently), and even though they're staggeringly expensive, I'd still recommend taking a look- here, because that is how fabulous they are.

all pictures from ascherstudios.com. Images, top to bottom, 1. La Mer, by Alexander Calder 2. Le Jour et la Nuit by Oscar Dominguez 3. Nocturne, by Jean Denis Malcles 4. Landscape Fantasy, by Andre Beaurepaire 5. London 1944, by Feliks Topolski 6. Black Trellis, by Graham Sutherland 7. Visage, by Jean Cocteau 8. Echarpe no. 1, by Henri Matisse 9. Paysage Bleu by Zao Wou Ki 10. Contrabandier by Pedro Flores

Of Guts And Gore(y)

2010-11-24T05:37:00.000-08:00

This is probably the oddest post I've ever written, but any Edward Gorey fans among the miniscule number that read this, should definitely have a look over here. (it's not that often that vintage fur coats acquired and worn by Edward Gorey himself over the course of three decades- from 1950 to the 1980s- are put up for auction by his estate, as will happen on the 9th of December this year).

Given the fact that the 14 coats in question are described as 'well taken care of' and belonged to the great Gorey himself- in fact, coat no 10 in the lineup at the link is the spitting photographic image of the coat on the gent in the above picture- I reckon they won't go cheap. But fur isn't completely evil here- one of the beneficiaries of the auction proceeds is the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, which works to benefit animals.

If you're still squeamish about fur and/or don't have the money to spend on Gorey memorabilia, there are other things getting auctioned that weren't once alive and which you can view at the pre-auction exhibition on the 4th and 6th-8th of December at Bloomsbury Auctions in New York- namely, Edward Gorey's illustrating pen, a couple of hand-carved figurines and- deep breath here- around 50 signed editions of his books.

image copyright of Edward Gorey

For Which I Should Be Faceplanting

2010-09-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

Scene from February Some Year, a.k.a. How To Embarrass Yourself Completely Without Having A Wardrobe Malfunction, A Nervous Breakdown In Public, or even Being Seen By Anyone You Know:

1. Re-watch The Hairy Bird (or whatever title your DVD says it's got) for the 1000th time.

2. Begin craving prissy school-uniform-like clothing as a consequence, especially the pleated skirts.

3. Go on an mission to find and buy pleated skirts to wear.

4. Fail miserably because the local clothing store buyers are probably secret school uniform fetishists at heart, as a result of which every pleated skirt on the rails of a commercial clothing store is far too short to prevent knicker-flashing if one leans down to tie a loose shoelace, and resembles slutwear more than schoolwear. ( also, any actual schoolgirl in one of these would be sent straight home to change before being allowed over the threshold of a classroom)

4. Give up in disgust.

5. Go home to visit parents, and notice that there is a girls' school next to their house.

6. A girls' school with pleated-skirt-featuring school uniforms! (the skirts in question blessedly go all the way to the knee, just like in the picture above. Unlike the one in the picture above, however, they are worn by girls, not boys).

7. Unfortunately, they're actual school uniforms. Only to be worn by their students.

8. You are not a student of the school in question. You are also too old - much too old- to be a student. 20-something years old, to be exact.

9. That doesn't stop you.They are nice, eminently prim knee-length things with a very handy pocket in the side.

10. Prepare a long-winded cover story for the tailors to explain why a non-student wants a school skirt (because no one's going to believe the truth, let's face it), involving an absent younger sister- I have none- needing a new uniform, and handing over measurements and payment with preferably minimal fuss and no investigation.

11. Rehearse the story a couple of times, for good measure.

13. Have the plan fall flat on its face once the tailor asks, without even allowing you to get to the sister story, which class you are in, and therefore need a uniform skirt for.

14. Much to your own horror, play along with the mistake, but not without major redface and the expectation that your nose is growing at a speed to beat Pinnochio's. It's one thing to finagle a uniform skirt out of the tailors under false pretences, quite another to have to pretend to be an actual high schooler to get it.

15. Feel like an even bigger fraud when you actually get the (very reasonably priced, entirely innocuous-looking) skirt in your mitts a week later.

16. But since fashion has the collective memory span of a goldfish, turn completely shameless and wear it anyway.

image from www.tokyobopper.com

It's Not Really A 90s Revival

2010-09-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

...until someone ties their sweater around their waist, stretched-out sleeves be damned (especially if, as in my case, those sleeves happened to be the sleeves of one's school cardigan).
image from fabsugar

The Artsy Fart Focus: Ronald Searle

2010-09-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

I've never made a secret of the fact that I'm a huge fan of Ronald Searle's work, and St Trinian's in particular- the first post I did about it led to the words "stocking tops" becoming the top search leading people to this page. But despite how much people- self included- want to be the bloodthirsty, devious little (and adolescent) monsters who were the heroines of those books(and God knows, I like seeing girls wielding weapons and whacking their antagonists), the artist himself has never been as well appreciated as he should, IMO, be. Hence the cartoon above, which sums it up more or less perfectly.
So, onwards to the point of this post- the pictures.

"I'll just die, then you will be sorry."

Ronald Searle does a New Yorker cover! Just like one of my other favourites, Michael Sowa!

The spindly limbs and shambolic, chaotic lines of his characters' figures kept me hooked to his work even when it wasn't a set of cartoons about a pack of cheerfully weird, murder-happy schoolgirls (the younger they are, the more murderous they turn out to be).

I had to put the last two pictures above into this post- they are illustrations Searle drew as an accompaniment to an article by Peter Mayle (whose accounts of Provence, where he and Mr Searle both live, are among the best things I've ever read). For more, I suggest checking out ronaldsearle.blogspot.com, which is a tribute blog that is brilliant.

Whatever

2010-09-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

I dare anyone viewing this page to listen to the song above and not have immediate warm happies, no matter how uncool you think Oasis are (though I admit to bias, they were my first-ever favourite band).

photograph by Jill Furmanovsky from www.guardian.co.uk

Another Ad I Love

2010-08-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

Yohji Yamamoto, AW 1998-99
Photographer: Nick Knight
Model: Susie Bick

Images like these make me wish Yohji could put out more ads for his main line, (yes, despite last year's bankruptcy) and not just Y-3. The PC police will probably go nuts about the cigarette, but the smoke swirls and louche, slouchy pose turn the starkness and elegance of the clothes into a combination that is nothing short of amazing to look at- not just a magazine advert for clothes.

R.I.P. Corinne Day (1962-2010)

2010-08-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

I've just read the incredibly sad news that Corinne Day has passed away after a long struggle with brain cancer. As a longtime fan whose fashion sensibilities owe a lot to her images and the radical revision of the concept of beauty they brought about in the 90s, I can only say she will be immensely missed- it's even sadder considering she died so young.

image: fromDazedDigital

New Favourites

2010-08-28T17:29:00.000-07:00

After a month of careful consideration to think it over, I'm pretty solid on the fact that this is indeed my new favourite image from the AW2010-11 ad campaigns (I mean, it's Zidane*. Modelling for a collection designed by Yohji- as if I needed more reasons to love Y-3).
And I must say, I rather enjoy the layering and the fact that the model- I still want to giggle a bit at that- is a slightly older man, even if he happens to be a celebrity.

*my first-ever football hero, 2006 World Cup final headbutt notwithstanding

image from kickette.com

Audrey Kawasaki

2010-07-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

I'm no art critic, and when it comes to the work of one of my favourite artists of all time, the oft-cited references to her style being a mixture of Art Nouveau and shoujo manga are things I can't refute or outdo. But Audrey Kawasaki's astoundingly beautiful, surreal, eerie portraits of girls (and some boys) with heavily-lidded eyes and no worries about what a potentially prudish onlooker might think of them, are a treat for the opticals- make no mistake about that.

Octogirls (2006)

Dishonest Heart (2008)

It's hard to put my finger on just what it is that I love so much about Audrey's work- its beauty goes beyond the obvious, beyond the lines and the details, to the attitudes of her girls (and boys). The mere fact of prettiness isn't what makes them so appealing- the allure has something to do with these beautiful would-be innocents who really don't seem to care that much about what they should be like, being frequently charged with obvious undercurrents of things that are darker, deeper and not pretty at all. Erotica, grotesqueness and the alternate-universe atmosphere created in part by the grain and natural lines of the wood Audrey paints on, coexist in apparent, if somewhat uneasy, peace in each work. This is something that not everyone is comfortable seeing, if the odd spot of online criticism (absurd, IMO) claiming that her work encourages child pornography is anything to go by.

Linger (2008)

Hyakki Yakou (2009)
Doodles. No less lovely than her finished work..

Audrey's latest pieces, which were engraved wooden brooches designed by her, are on sale now- to those of you who like her work, I suggest getting yourself a brooch. And to those of you who can't buy it and aren't too familiar with her work, I suggest looking at Audrey's website or her livejournal, or following her on Twitter if that's what you like. As for lucky people who live in Melbourne or Sydney and are reading this, do visit Audrey's show at the Outre Gallery in either city in October. I'm only sorry I can't be there.

pictures taken from i-seldom-do.livejournal.com and audrey-kawasaki.com, used with the permission of the artist.

Boredom Speaks

2010-07-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

It's an odd thing for a fashion blogger to say, but fashion has been boring me for a while. Given the extreme speed at which one set of collections follows another (Pre-Fall, Menswear and now Couture Week- how are the designers even breathing?) , I must admit to feeling mildly glutted and tired of it all (not that what I think actually matters to the people involved).

And bizarrely for a girl with zero interest in sport, it happens to be exactly the thing that has an iron grip on my brain at the moment, specifically in the form of football. Or maybe football just seems more special than fashion right now because the World Cup comes along once every four years as opposed to every other month, and Paul the Octopus doesn't do trend forecasts, only match forecasts. Is anyone else excited for the final?

Of Shocks and Context

2010-06-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

At first sight, I reckon the jacket on the left is an unlikely candidate for being one of the most controversial garments of the 1990s, or for belonging to one of the most controversial collections of that decade. Sold on eBay a handful of years ago and photographed about as plainly as a piece of clothing can be, even the label wouldn't really give away much unless you happened to be (like me) a bit of a fashion geek. And nine out of ten people would probably think "what's the fuss?"The fuss in question might become slightly more apparent on seeing the picture below- the good garment in question takes its provenance from none other than Jean-Paul Gaultier's A/W 1993 collection, famously known as the Hasidic collection.

Contrary to what many people might think, it wasn't the act of putting clothes modelled on those of orthodox Jewish people on the runway that raised people's hackles- it was the fact that the clothes - traditionally worn by men- were being modelled by women. (women including Naomi Campbell, Nadja Auermann, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista, among others). And given that cross-dressing is taboo to Hasidic Jews, it was considered a sacrilege that Jean-Paul Gaultier had encouraged exactly that. Hence, the furore.

On some level, mindless cultural appropriation by fashion (see: every time the so-called "tribal" or "ethnic" look swings around on a runway, or even keffiyehs a few years ago) makes me uncomfortable, partly because of the blind one-dimensional idiocy it's done with (both by designers and wearers- see: keffiyeh) and partly because of the connotations of someone's heritage and the aesthetics associated with it being a "trend"- which also means that it can be demode six months later. But this collection doesn't fall prey to that particular trap- the almost commonplace look of the clothes when considered individually (like the jacket in the topmost photograph) is a good lesson in how anything, in the right context, can be exotic or shocking- even the relatively familiar.

pictures from eBay, TFS and the New York Times.

My (World) Cup Runneth Over

2010-06-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

Sports, as I have said before, has never been my bag of chips- but in honour of the World Cup finally kicking off today, I do rather fancy (in my dreams) wearing these, courtesy Comme des Garçons SS09 : They're hardly standard WAG-wear and might be likely to get me kicked by an enterprising football hooligan who mistakes me for an old-school ball (not the more aerodynamic FIFA model), but given that the chance for these to be entirely occasion-appropriate hardly ever comes along, I'd say carpe diem.

Spot The Sock

2010-05-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else see what I do, i.e. a clear resemblance between what Stella Tennant is wearing in this W editorial from September 1995:

and these (below):

Prada A/W 2010-11

It's not as if socks or tights worn with heels are anything new (the aforeshown editorial shot proves that), but something about the insistence that they are indeed new and a 'trend' puzzles me. Unless it's fashion exhibiting one of its classic traits- the approximate memory/attention span of a goldfish*- yet again. Besides, the Prada legwear and shoes look much too similar to the Stephane Kélian shoes and Holland & Holland shooting socks on Stella for me to pass up making this post.

*note on its history in the early 00s: There are ElleGirl editorials dating from 2004-05 and a runway trend page from the April 2004 issue of Vogue UK open in front of me right now showcasing this particular styling permutation. I think the look started showing up on streetstyle blogs a lot c. 2007 and 2008, but my pedantic side needs to state that it did exist before that .

image 1 from The Fashion Spot, image 2 and 3 from style.com

Shaolin Soccer

2010-05-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

In the regular course of things, I'm not a sports fan- the things that get called sports that I like, are things I simply don't think of as sport because in my head, they're too pretty (e.g. figure skating, gymnastics and the equestrian events at the Olympics). One major exception to that, though, is football- specifically World Cup football, or soccer as Americans like to call it.

And given that one of my favourite films of all time is a rather unorthodox football fantasy, and we are thisclose to the next World Cup, I thought this was probably the perfect time for me to talk about it here. Ladies, gentlemen and disgruntled blog-readers who are sick of me, I now present: Shaolin Soccer. (I'll let the 'soccer' bit slide for now, since Shaolin Football sounds so much less alliterative and sibilant).

The story is a fairly simple one, really: a former star football player who sold out by throwing a match attempts to turn a family of down-on-their-luck, reluctant (ok, all but one of them are reluctant) Shaolin experts into a prizewinning football team. Sounds clear enough, eh?
The genius, though, lies in the fact that Shaolin Soccer is- as its name indicates- more Shaolin and less soccer. It's a kung fu comedy through and through, quite cheerfully crude and silly in places (any Stephen Chow fan should probably know to expect that out of his films), but it doesn't lack its moments of seriousness, particularly in some scenes involving the team's coach or the love interest played by Vicki Zhao, who is an absolutely awesome character in her own right.

more Shaolin and less soccer (above and below). See what I mean?

On reflection, it's much more than plain old martial arts slapstick- at its heart, it really is a story about the characters (especially Sing, played by Stephen Chow)- about the brothers and how they repair their own fractured relationship, the coach and his attempt to redeem his past mistakes, and the fact that every single one of the protagonists is an outcast from society in a major way and the game is a chance for them (especially Sing) to get people to respect their way of life. The other thing I really love about the movie is the fact that, for lack of a better term, it's absolutely 100%. No half-assed attempts to be ironically clever- it owns its silliness, and is, in spirit, a lot like another old favourite of mine: Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.

Classic trope for an epic scene (good guy strides in in slow motion to join a do-or-die mission with his long coat fluttering behind him in the wind), done Shaolin Soccer-style as shown above (the man is in his undershirt and boxers, and what flutters in the wind is a bathrobe). I couldn't not include these stills- goalie Empty Hand dressed like Bruce Lee in Game of Death!Below is a still from one of my favourite of the matches shown in the movie, featuring a cross-dressing Cecilia Cheung and Karen Mok and some fantastic acrobatics. I can't say more about why it's my favourite without giving out spoilers, but I will say it has something to do with their facial expressions and the goalkeeper in the two stills above.
And there were moments- quite a lot for a comedy, really, especially where the good guys are playing a football team that is actually named Team Evil- when I looked like the good coach in the above still, minus the yellow jacket.

*screenshots taken by me, everything else from metacafe.

A Portrait Of One Great Artist By Another

2010-05-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Matisse and his Doves (1944)

On Skin Tones and Looking "Indian"

2010-04-14T03:50:00.000-07:00

Vogue India, let me be blunt, has never been one of my favourite magazines- a cluttered layout and frequently-boring covers/editorials being two of the main reasons. When they do place models on the cover (in place of their usual choice of a vapid Bollywood starlet with an accompanying gushy puff piece inside), it does tend to be a bit of an event- and more so here, since the April 2010 cover intends to 'celebrate' skin tones that aren't on the fairer side of the colour spectrum here in India. I have a fair bit to say about this- firstly about the cover itself and what it's trying to do, and secondly about the reactions it seems to have provoked from news outlets outside the country. Look away if you don't want to read me getting bitter and angry, please.

First off: fair skin is a part of the beauty standard in India*- and in most of South Asia too. Being dark-skinned, even among people and communities who tend to be just that, isn't for the most part considered attractive. If one can't be fair, the ideal is to be as fair as possible- or at least to ensure that one can't be described as 'dark'. It's acceptable to be described as 'wheatish' (a common euphemism for "not that dark-skinned, but not fair either"), but being dark-skinned- any shade of dark-skinned- is automatically= ugly. Note: if your features are otherwise conventionally dead gorgeous but you happen to be somewhat dark, then you might be lucky enough to be stereotyped as 'sexy'/'sultry'/ fill in the blank with some cliché about dark-skinned women and their purported hotness/sex appeal.

Case in point: the cover above. The models are a fair bit darker than Vogue's average choice of cover girl, and some of them (Nethra Raghuraman, far left, and Tinu Verghese, the bleach-blonde one) have been successful models for a decade or more. In my eyes, they're not really dark, but they're hardly considered fair-skinned by an average Indian newsstand buyer either. So some part of me doesn't really get the self-congratulatory patting on the back, with the coverline The Dawn of Dusk, accompanied by pictures of dark-skinned models in bikinis. Sure, they look great, it's April and it's hot here- but frankly, I'm tempted to yawn very widely at yet another reminder of the only way in which us dark women are considered attractive (ie if we're half-naked or close). And I find it mildly funny that they're all the same approximate shade of brown/tan, but nothing's perfect, I suppose. If I had to sum it up, I'd say the cover celebrates tanned Indian women- who are, by the way, considered 'dark' out here.

The cover itself inspires nothing but very mild irritation in me, but my second major beef is with the number of reactions across the Internet, mainly in the comments section of places like NYMag and Jezebel, claiming that the cover models don't look "Indian". Some of the reasons cited are that they look more like "tan Europeans"**, that all the Indian people the commenter knows are darker than that, and that the models look "nowhere near 'dark' by Indian standards", that they look "western and light skinned", that "each one could pass for Spanish or Portugese" and so on.

See, here's the thing. I'm used to people making ignorant, clichéd statements about India online, even ones that are meant to be complimentary (about colours, textiles, food, blah blah). But who on earth is some random commenter (not living in India) to pontificate about what does or doesn't look Indian? Does anyone have any idea of how offensive it is to hear this?

The cover shows up a small, imperfectly represented sample of Indian women- just because their faces don't fit someone's preconceived notions about what an Indian female looks like, doesn't mean that they can't look like they came from India. It's a country of 1.2 billion people spanning a large geographical area that contains people of a massive range of colours who look like they could belong to several different races. That diversity isn't anywhere near being well-represented in popular culture, but that doesn't give people the right to negate my- or anyone else's- heritage on the basis of our appearance. I mean, excuse me for my face and skin colour not fitting into your stereotyped notion of what people from the same area of the world as me, should look like.

* and seems to have been for millennia- this one did not originate with the colonial era.

**Really? Somehow, I doubt that.

This Is Not An April Fool's Day Joke

2010-04-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

*WARNING*: Harry Potter geekery ahead.

I feel like an ancient decrepit broken record just saying this, but I love Harry Potter to bits. The only thing that ever really grieved me about the books (apart from the deaths, and Harry's sad childhood) was the cover art on the UK editions. Apart from the art for the first book, none of them really did justice to the story inside- they looked far too childish for a story that was rapidly becoming anything but.

Which is why the news that Bloomsbury is republishing the Harry Potter paperbacks with brand new covers (above and below) to, in their words, "appeal to the next generation of readers who did not 'grow up' with Harry Potter and who have not yet experienced the thrill of life at Hogwarts"* makes me feel simultaneously very old and very excited. Old because I practically grew up with Harry Potter, which ran in tandem with my own school life as far as Book 4- in fact, the end of Book 7 felt like the true end of my adolescence - and thrilled because, well, the covers look absolutely gorgeous. Clare Melinsky's linocut illustrations are not only beautiful, with not a line out of place, they've also managed to capture the most crucial moments of each story in a way that almost makes me want to cry about why these couldn't have been the first-edition covers for the books. If there are any Harry Potter fangirls reading this, I suggest clicking on the pictures to see them full-sized (the actual books won't be on sale till November 1st of this year though) . Especially the last one. It feels so final, in a way the current cover for Deathly Hallows just doesn't.
* That's what they say. I'm just glad someone at Bloomsbury decided that the current covers suck enough to need replacing.

images from www.mugglenet.com

Vilsbøl de Arce

2010-03-27T02:06:00.001-07:00

In my head, clothing- or anything wearable- has two functions: to contain and protect the body, and to express the personality of the human being inside the body. Vilsbøl de Arce has always been a label whose collections seem to call most strongly to these two objectives- which is inevitable, given that Prisca de Vilsbøl and Pia de Arce, the designers behind the label, state that fashion is art that revolves around the human form.

I'm not sure whether I agree with that statement completely- IMO fashion can be art, but not always. But in the case of Vilsbøl de Arce, it's easy to see that the human form does indeed take centre stage in their designs. In a way, it's almost like having a different take on the concept of body-consciousness- Vilsbøl de Arce's designs simultaneously echo and defy the lines of the human body and its interiors, which is interesting to see.

images from http://news.vilsboldearce.com and Dazed and Confused (image#3).

Cakes, 1963

2010-03-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've always been more of a cake person than a pie one, even without this Wayne Thiebaud painting- it didn't convert me, just reaffirmed by love for all things edible (speaking of which, even this blog's daft url).

I've never been a fan of that many pastel shades in a clothing palette, but something about the texture of the painting (the detail shots show paint laid on the cakes almost like icing, which is mildly reminiscent of what a certain Vincent Van Gogh used to do)- the presentation of the colours in the context of such simple shapes, perhaps? just calls out to me to recreate it one day, with actual food. When that day comes, I'll photograph them, I think.

image from artinthepicture.com

Colour Me Obsessed

2010-03-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

As a kid (around age 7-8), the two things I wanted most were
a) a tiger cub to raise at home (apropos of the fact that this man was my childhood hero)
b) a set of Colleen double-ended colour pencils, round ones if possible (i.e. not faceted hexagonal).

The latter are a much more achievable and likely object of schoolkid desire than a carnivore cub, it's not hard to see why. The quality of the lead was superb, which meant prettier pictures during art class- and it helped that the entire thing was packaged so beautifully. The real draw, though, was the fact that there were so many colours- and the double-endedness meant each pencil carried a minor colour juxtaposition that informs the way I mix colours in my clothes, all the way into my twenties. I mean, just look at the pictures:

It also helped that the colours were meticulously named on each coloured half of each pencil (see below). There are colour combinations in there that are incredibly happy-making to look at, even today (lilac and leaf green, carmine and magenta, yellow and green, red and purple, and blue and brown are just a few).

The pencils, which are a Japanese brand, got a relaunch about two years ago, which makes me very happy- I hadn't known they were out of production in the first place, but I'm glad I won't have to miss them any more, even if I am no kid and colour pencils have no justifiable place in the life of my drawing-challeged self except to help me pick out the right shades of lilac and leaf green to wear together.
images from penciltalk.org and hois.evilsmile.net

Paul Harnden: This Sweep Is As Lucky As Lucky Can Be

2010-03-18T05:33:00.000-07:00

It's more or less a given that fashion thrives in equal measure on throwbacks and futurism (however one might choose to understand the latter term- it doesn't only refer to the angular shapes that Courreges et al made so popular in the 1960s), and is positively vampiric for change. Which is why it's hard not to find it gratifying to come across a designer like Paul Harnden, whose commitment to his aesthetic seems to be consistent to the point of unyielding- I've heard it described as 'Victorian chimney sweep', and find myself compelled to agree- the wrinkled, lived-in quality of the clothes and shoes (induced by burying the latter for a year at a time) and the look are certainly old-fashioned on first glance, but appear completely modern in their styling. As is obvious, they're a far cry from anything that might be considered traditionally 'sexy' for a woman, but to be honest, I find that refreshing more than anything else.

It's also rumoured that he works somewhat in the tradition of an old-style artisan, with a production team of just three people and a large part of the handwork done by the designer himself.

pictures from the Paul Harnden thread on The Fashion Spot.

Telephone, a.k.a. Lady Gaga and Beyonce Go Bonkers

2010-03-13T04:46:00.000-08:00

Quite apart from the fact that the song is refusing to vacate even the smallest inch of space in my head, I love the video for the number of random associations it seems to be setting off (also for the fact that it features a little homage to Kill Bill: Volume 1, which is one of my favourite movies of all time), and for the copious use of major cat-eye-inducing eyeliner.

However, off the top of my head, I can't help thinking that the makeup is a massive factor in why Gaga looks so much like a peroxided Amy Winehouse.

Not that that is a bad thing, but it's fairly unmistakable:

My favourite part of the video- it involves mass murder in a diner, and Beyoncé + Gaga proceeding to dance it off in stars-and-stripey costumeThe killer detail here is the flag manicure on Beyoncé.

Which reminds me in a big way of Chanel's SS08 collection (pic below)- which was equally OTT Americana and featured an abundance of stars and stripes and blue denim- even Gaga's bikini above looks like it could have come from there- though I do realise that the inspiration wasn't necessarily Chanel, just the patterns we associate with Americana.
My other favourite bit: A Kill Bill homage! To the Bride's post-coma getaway car, no less.
screenshots taken by me

Blooming X-Rays

2010-03-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

Floral radiographs are among my favourite things to look at in the world- it's hard not to love the eerie starkness of floral and leafy shapes when their internal structures are laid bare by x-rays. There's a purity and beauty to the resulting pictures that I probably wouldn't have felt in pictures of live flowers, and the manner of their presentation leaves me feeling a bit like these are a floral post-mortem of sorts.

I knew they reminded me of photographs I'd seen before, and spent a while racking my brain before I remembered: the late Irving Penn's photographs (see Dandelion, below) did feel a bit like this when they were in black and white)

Steven Meyers photographs from http://www.xray-art.com, Judith McMillan photographs from www.art.com

Issey Miyake AW2010/11

2010-03-06T05:22:00.000-08:00

Loops and lines and chaotic colour that graduates to grey angularity and structure- there's something about the geometrically-inspired (by William Thurston's geometrization conjecture, no less) collection and its play on volume, texture, colour and shapes that I think is going to make it my favourite of Paris Fashion Week so far- and maybe that something is the fact that the inspiration isn't literal, or even overtly used.
Also, it never, ever ceases to be refreshing to see a show that truly is all about an idea, and not about its Statement Shoes (or before them, It-Bags).

pictures from style.com and style.it

Peachoo+Krejberg AW2010/11

2010-03-06T03:49:00.000-08:00

Given that their clothes seem to be known for a brand of dark romance which isn't that far away from the œuvre of Owens/Demeulemeester/Yamamoto, I guess it's not much of a surprise that I rather love Peachoo+Krejberg's AW 1010/11 collection. It's impossible not to appreciate the simultaneous ease, toughness and even seeming fragility to some of the looks, or the fact that the subdued colour palette isn't allowed to turn boring (one clever texturing device: fabric cut into leaf/feather shapes). And it doesn't hurt that it appears beautifully styled, with the exception of the necklace overload- which, to me, looks silly, distracting and rather out of place on the clothes.

pictures from TFS

Michael Sowa

2010-03-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

Diving Pig

I've loved Michael Sowa's work ever since my first introduction to it almost a decade ago. The Amazon description of his book compares his work to Vermeer and Magritte, which seems about right given the combination of humour and what looks like a painstaking attention to detail (the animal elements, however, do draw my thoughts toward a third artist-Donald Roller Wilson). What draws me in is not only the frequently anthropomorphic quality of his animals, but also the restraint in the way he paints them- which of course makes it even easier to invest them with human qualities- occasionally silly, yes, but also capable of great dignity.
Also, it's fun to play Spot The Resemblance. Like School of Fish, belowTo Golconde, by Magritte(below)

Animal figures, as mentioned before, do tend to populate his work: whether in Sharks of Suburbia (below), Diving Pig/Kohlers Schwein (top picture), or the December 2002 cover of the New Yorker (2nd picture below).

Or, of course, in what are, in pop culture terms, the most famous of his paintings, by virtue of the fact that they decorated the bedroom of Amélie Poulain and talked over her head as she slept at night.

(L-R) Filmhound, Fowl With Pearls

The Catorialist

2010-02-27T07:28:00.000-08:00

I have finally lost (nearly) all faith in The Sartorialist*. Though of course, there is always the possibility of redemption, as of the last several months I've been rather taken with this cat-focussed pisstake on his blog (the most accurate description of it would be Lolcats Meets The Sartorialist), created by a gentleman named Maxwell Krivitzky. Want evidence that it is indeed a pisstake? Have a look at the screenshot below. Better yet, go to the blog itself.

Sadly, Mr Krivitzky is a touch on the mysterious side (a google search yielded an artist's site that doesn't seem to have any artwork on it, and a request for an email interview has gone unanswered so far) and updates sporadically. But I do admire the fur in every shot, and PETA would be churlish to begrudge his subjects the wearing of it. Though the ultimate kicker, IMO, is the Feline Apparel ad on the left of the page.

*obviously, I am a nobody whose opinion is inconsequential. Also a nobody who was quite a fan of the blog for four years, bought the book, and can pick up a tabloid if she wants to see pictures of reality-TV D-listers.

Boys Should Make Passes At Girls In These Glasses

2010-02-25T13:52:00.000-08:00

Prada A/W 2010/11

Marilyn Monroe in How To Marry A Millionaire.

I know people rushed to compare the collection to Mad Men- but honestly, could you ever picture Joan Holloway in glasses? Or Peggy Olson in these glasses? Which, by the way, I love, and always have- a good quirky accessory never fails to send a tingle down my spine.
I love Joan, Peggy and Betty too, but every set of smart late-50s/early 60s-inspired clothing out there shouldn't automatically be linked to the show, it amounts to lazy visual shorthand for an era.

Anonymity, Anon (LOTS of text here, lazy readers look away)

2010-02-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

WARNING: THIS POST IS TEXT-HEAVY AND RANTY. IF YOU CAN'T/DON'T WANT TO READ, STOP RIGHT HERE.
One solid week after the unveiling of the true identity of LibertyLondonGirl, it's a late reaction but I couldn't help thinking about anonymity and blogs in general. You see, circa 2007, LLG, Disneyrollergirl and Mrs Fashion made up a fantastic trifecta of of anonyblogging fashion insiders. By mid-2008, LLG had stopped blogging because of her job- she resumed in 2009- and Mrs Fashion set her blog to private, partly thanks to, I believe, anonymity concerns (she made it publicly viewable again in late 2009 and then went back to readers-only Blogger mode).
There are loads of professional fashion journalists and writers who blog, both anonymously and under their real names out there (Colin McDowell and Justine Picardie are just two among the many I've read and enjoyed). For those who choose to blog under nom de plumes (nom de blogs?), the reason why is obvious- being able to speak your mind without immediate and damaging consequences inflicted by a client or employer, or even without the baggage associated with your real-life professional ID, is a good thing. And frankly, I've had it up to here with anonymous people being tarred with a single, fat brush as cowards.
First off, it's kind of hard work to stay anonymous if your blog has developed something of a following.* I realised this last year after posting a package to Sasha, which she then wrote about on LLG with a link back to here- which in its turn led to a few days of minor bombardment with emails asking who she was (since sending stuff would have been impossible if I didn't have her name and address- they wanted the former). Ignoring and deleting all those mails worked. It did, however, get me thinking about what it is to be an anonymous blogger or author, and just how weird the Internet can get.
I'm small fry as far as blogs go. I update when I can be arsed to do so, haven't got a custom domain or even a url that matches the name of my blog. I'm still paranoid about not using my real name anywhere online, not because I'm afraid of the fashion police, but because my love of design and style is something that's personal and private to me. It's not to be discussed with the plebs who make up most of my 'real-world' experience. The same goes for my love of Harry Potter (yes, Twilight is trendy now, but I'm an oldie, see). Or even the rubbish I type into a locked livejournal with a miniscule friendlist.
It's mildly scary to be told that people who read your blog have figured out where exactly you live, and frankly distasteful to be linked to from the awful, shittily-written blogs of people you know in real life and despise. Sure, there's nothing I can do about the latter. But no matter how much I admire the fearlessness of people who blog as themselves, the things I love aren't things to be shared with people who don't matter to me. I don't care for them to be laid bare to the eyes of some curious c*** who sits three seats away from me and decides to amuse himself using the power of Google. They know my name. They know very little else. And if I can be so bold as to paraphrase, what's in a name- once you've dissociated a bit of yourself from it, that is? In any case, hats off to Sasha for choosing to openly claim LLG as her blog identity. Good on you, really.

*case in point: Petite Anglaise. Or even Girl With A One Track Mind.

Parallel Worlds

2010-02-18T10:34:00.000-08:00

installation at Ji Lee's home

closeup of installation at Ji Lee's home

Ji Lee's latest project, Parallel Worlds, was born out of the observation that modern-day ceilings are 'dead space'- undecorated and neglected, in contrast to their treatment in past centuries (eg. the Sistine Chapel, for a start) or even the care taken with the decoration of interior walls and floors today. The results- miniature installations made to scale, created in the image of things in a room, and fastened to ceilings- are amazing, and not only because of the unexpected quality of their scale and placement. I suggest going over and having more of a look- here.

Rhino Meets R2D2

Rhino meets R2D2- detail shot

images from pleaseenjoy.com

Sometimes

2010-02-12T09:24:00.000-08:00

.. this is what I would dearly love to do.

RIP Alexander McQueen

2010-02-11T20:05:00.000-08:00

It's been just over twelve hours since a friend in London texted the news over, and it's just beyond me. The idea of suicide- the apparent cause of his death- is an unbelievably sad one. But much as I will miss having my mind blown as it so frequently was by his work , it's not a choice I want to judge anyone for making. I don't know what else to say, really. RIP.

"The whole streetstyle thing these days is like a job, it's all planned and thought up in advance..."

2010-02-05T03:00:00.000-08:00

"....it's not as though you just 'happen' to run into one another."

Anna Dello Russo, telling us something that isn't exactly a surprise: fashion editors- and probably other streestyle photog favourites too- don't exactly throw on whatever's on the nearest shelf of their wardrobes and walk blithely out of their houses/hotels (whichever is applicable to Fashion Week attendees).

It's not as if this hasn't been discussed before- many of the Sartorialist's commenters have been grousing for years that he primarily shoots people who work in fashion and therefore, have more access to it. And I've never been under the illusion that streetsyle photography is purely 100% spontaneously born at the moment when well-dressed people run into a person on the street holding a DSLR camera.

In fact, it's no secret that even the fabled streestyle shots of Tokyo aren't a chronicle of the outfits of well-dressed ordinary (i.e. non-fashion) people- I can't post this without linking to this post by Néojaponisme which talks about just how many of the people we see in FRUiTS etc* are, in fact, fashion professionals in one capacity or other. Not that there's anything wrong with that- it's probably only natural that people whose professional lives are lived in the fashion industry will keep a sharp eye on the way they dress.

Ultimately, it's not as if I have a beef with the planned-ness of streestyle, besides the fact that - unlike most fashion magazines- it presents itself, however inadvertently, as something born of a single moment and the snap decision before it to put on whatever walked out the door on your body. I know perfectly well that's not always the case, and it's good for fashion eds and stylists to show off their skills on themselves and get the exposure. But when up to six months of planning and calculation for camera-friendliness goes into the making of whatever ends up on a streestyle homepage, the magnitude of it all leaves me just a tiny bit more disillusioned even if I do appreciate her honesty in coming out and saying it. Though it doesn't mean I'm giving up on Dropsnap or Garance Doré etc anytime soon...

photograph by Feri Lucas from guardian.co.uk

Here Be Dragons

2010-02-05T01:57:00.000-08:00

Katsushika Hokusai, The Dragon of Smoke Escaping from Mount Fuji (I don't really have words for how much I've always loved the way the dragon looks almost invisible against the smoke)

makes my mind take the straight road these days to thinking of

Temeraire, by Naomi Novik

I'd been looking for something to fill the post-Harry Potter void in my soul for almost two years last August when I saw this and its sequels sitting in the sci-fi/fantasy corner of my local bookstore (the exact same corner that used to house Twilight, god help us). The name was the thing that first caught my attention- I was a pubescent Turner fangirl, and The Fighting Temeraire inspired some of my most fervent fangirlisms. Deciding to have a crack at browsing it, I picked the first book (pic above) off the shelf, sat down on the nearest stool, and what happened was as follows- with thoughts in italics:

*reads one chapter*

hmmm, this sounds good...Napoleonic-era ship deck?

*reads a bit more*

Napoleonic-era sailors and dragons? I'd better finish the chapter, then I'll put it away and leave.

*reads still more- well beyond the promised chapter limit*

Oh my goodness. The dragon is a character. A living, breathing, funny character. Not some shitty, Eragon-type derivative. I'll just finish this chapter with the dragon....

*is glued to the book by now*

oh, fuck it. It's almost closing time, and I don't want to stop reading. I want to read about the other dragons, too. I'm taking the book- and while I'm at it, I'll take the sequel along with this.

*heads to sale counter with two books - after coming in with the express intention of buying nothing*

I still can't believe pap like Twilight (sorry to anyone who is a fan) gets such massive hype when books as amazing as this go practically unnoticed- ok maybe not so unnoticed, since Peter Jackson was planning to make a movie based on the series. But I gobbled up all five books in the series within two weeks, and am now starting to get rather impatient waiting for the sixth (out this summer!!). And if anyone is reading this: try the books. Really. You won't regret it.

Flaunt This

2010-02-03T00:56:00.000-08:00

It's not every day that I get sent magazine spreads featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg, and this one, from Flaunt magazine's Art issue, has a muted, relaxed quality to it that isn't entirely unlike Charlotte's music (which I love. Heaven Can Wait is officially my favourite song of 2010 so far).

Also, it must be said- I love the cover image (a white peacock! Who'd have thought?).

Sweep Away

2010-02-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's just my childhood fascination with long dresses coming back, but I do adore the contrast between the potential scruffiness of the jacket and the almost old-fashioned charm in the way the model holds up her skirt.

Image from Marie Claire Japan December 2006

Finding The Feu

2010-01-29T05:35:00.000-08:00

This seems to be the season for me to find new blogs from Japan - though in this case, it's the identity of the blogger, as much as her style, that's making me go starstruck thinking "Holy *swearwords*!". The girl in the mirror, you see, happens to be none other than Limi Yamamoto, the brains behind Limi Feu, blogging- blogging! here. Love the classic fashion-blogger face-out-of-picture pose, and the polaroid-ish presentation of the other pictures on the blog. It's not just clothes, though- koi fish and what looks like Limi's desk, also get the treatment. Go have a look, already- here's the link.

photograph from limifeu.weblogs.jp

Maya's Agenda

2010-01-29T04:35:00.000-08:00

The subject of today's post isn't exactly an unknown, given that she's been featured in Jalouse years ago*. But I'm really thankful that Maya of Maya's Agenda (pics above and below) decided to leave me a comment on one of my previous posts- without it, I would never have found her blog. Which would have been sad, because she started it early this month, and I love it.

Maya lives in Tokyo, Paris and New York (currently in the former), works in fashion (she's done shoots for Marie Claire and Elle Girl Japon), and has an amazing wardrobe. One of the things I love most about her outfit-sharing is that she photographs herself out and about in Tokyo, instead of just against the bedroom wall like most girls do- though I like that too! And she seems as comfortable in a feather coat at the supermarket as most people would be in jeans and a t-shirt.

It isn't all personal style though: Maya also shares snippets of Tokyo experiences, editorials and images she likes, images from her sister Luiko's sketchbook and (my favourite) sometimes ends her outfit posts with cute little cartoons like the one below.

*November 2006, to be exact.

All photographs from mayasagenda.blogspot.com

Under-exposure, by Corinne Day featuring Kate Moss- Vogue UK June 1993

2010-01-23T00:43:00.000-08:00

Consider this the followup to Libertylondongirl posting that Corinne Day/Kate Moss 1990 editorial for The Face after finding the magazine in her house. Given that this editorial for Vogue UK's June 1993 issue (photographer: Corinne Day, fashion editor: Cathy Kasterine) is almost as famous, and that most people (as in the case of The Face photoshoot) don't know it in its entirety, I thought it was well worth posting especially considering how the images transcend the trends they were meant to be showcasing.

It's also interesting to observe the early-90s influence starting to creep into mainstream fashion: the cover of this issue, shot by Sante d'Orazio, featured a wet-haired Claudia Mason (here) looking fresh-faced in a way that no self-respecting 80s fashion publication would ever have allowed. But of course, the editorial below pretty much overshadowed everything else inside in terms of influence.
Corinne Day later said that she took the shot below on a day when Kate had been crying after a fight with her then-boyfriend, resulting in the vulnerability that turned this into one of the most iconic and controversial images produced in the 90s (on, of course, the charge that Kate was too thin, heroin chic,etc). It's the most reproduced image of the entire editorial, but the clothes (pink Liza Bruce vest and Hennes- now known as H&M- chiffon knickers) are rarely remembered, or credited.

pics from TFS

Bye, 2009

2009-12-31T02:10:00.000-08:00

Here's to everyone kicking up their heels tonight like the Toulouse-Lautrec-inspired lady in the picture...or not, if, like me, what you really want is some noodle soup and an anime/movie marathon. Either way, have a lovely time, and I hope 2010 will bring you good things!

illustration by Rene Gruau from artnet

Speaking of Amelie (no, not THAT Amelie)..

2009-12-29T23:06:00.000-08:00

I'm so used to fashion photography these days being high on gloss and the occasional slightly OTT-storyboarded-fantasy*, that I think my eyes actually let out a small sigh of relief when they spotted these images by Amelie Chassary in the fashion section of her website. Their vibe swings somewhere between the dreaminess of an open-air swing in summer and the energy of small children on sugar, and whatever she's doing with the lighting (cool in some pictures, beautifully filtered in another- though I know little to nothing about photography) is lovely. I'll also take the opportunity to say that I love the way she uses the backgrounds in her images- they complement the subjects (and clothes) so well...

*though I love those too. Life would be a bit dull if there was no gloss.

all images by Amelie Chassary

Seriously Underrated 90s Movies: The Hairy Bird, aka Lots Of Other Stupid Titles

2009-12-24T07:29:00.000-08:00

I've said it before (and mentioned the subject of this post in passing, too) - I have a serious soft corner for school stories, especially boarding school stories. I'm also a bit of a 90s teen movie junkie, and will admit to the blasphemy of not giving a shit about Molly Ringwald . Which is why a pre-Christmas rewatch of one of my favourite horribly underrated early-00s loves is prompting me to write this, in the hope that someone, anyone, will actually read the text of this post, and leave the movie a tiny bit less unknown- even if it is just by one person.

For starters, there's the name: this movie goes by not one, not two, but three of them. In descending order of how much I like them, they are- The Hairy Bird (the best, and true, one, based on a snort-inducingly crass joke between the characters), Strike! (not as funny, but still ok) and All I Wanna Do (sounds like it should star a Disney Channel starlet- ie, like a generic godawful teen flick). The plot is simple: it's 1961 and teenage Odette Sinclair's parents banish her to boarding school to get her away from an unsuitable boyfriend. The school in question, Miss Godard's, is in New England and all-girls, aka Hell as per Odie. But her mostly WASPy classmates- played by Monica Keena, Heather Matarazzo, and Kirsten Dunst, among others- turn out to be, to use an archaic Wodehouseism, good eggs who are nicer than Odie assumes at first sight- and much less stuffy too.

So far, there are more shades of St Clare's* than St Trinian's to the story- until the school's headmistress, Miss McVane (played by Lynn Redgrave) is forced by financial necessity to agree to a merger with a nearby boys' school. The news of this is greeted with outrage by a large chunk of the student body who feel like it's just another attempt at male domination and violation of their space +preparation for their subjugation in later life, while others like the idea of having boys at the school. In the middle of all this, ('all this' including a pervy male teacher and a snotty prefect played well enough for me to want to slap her face by Rachael Leigh Cook) is the attempted loss of Odie's virginity and the stories of the other girls, along with a planned rebellion against the merger. But the real magic lies in the chemistry between the girls, and the dialogue (sample: "Real life is boy-girl-boy-girl!" "No, Tinka, real life is boy on top of girl!").

It's really, really rare these days to find movies that discuss gender-related issues even obliquely, and even rarer for such movies to be targeted at teens. This one has had criminal injustices inflicted on it- first that horrible name, then a very limited release which means that, ten years after it was originally made, hardly anyone knows about it. It's probably too obscure to even have cult status, which can sometimes be pretentious and stupid but is at least one way of getting a good movie known.

Re: the acting, Gaby Hoffman (who plays Odie) does a nice enough job, but she's not enough to carry an entire movie. The real sparklers of the cast are her co-stars, particularly a then 15-year-old Kirsten Dunst, and Heather Matarazzo. Also, anyone keeping a sharp eye out will probably spot Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser aka Connor from Angel, and Hayden Christensen in a bit part. And if you like the idea of a movie that feels a bit like Dead Poet's Society+St Trinian's with a 60s setting, do watch.

Not a sight expected in your regular chick flick

*Enid Blyton fans should remember this

Comme Again, Store It All Up

2009-12-22T00:46:00.000-08:00

I'm not normally a fan of store/business-run blogs, mainly because 9 times out of 10, they're devoid of character and full of badly written puff pieces (this goes for certain magazine-run blogs too). Tokyo Bopper, which I discovered via momus in 2007, is one of the shining exceptions to that rule. It might be written by the staff of a Tokyo shoe shop with a clear agenda to show off the shop's offerings as modelled and styled by them (see pic immediately above), but still manages to look like it's a blog by people, and not by a shop*.

My other recent find of a blog-truffle has had a very, very recent start on the other end of the world from Tokyo- this month, in fact. The BLACK Comme des Garçons store in New York has only been open for six months now and is only intended to last until the recession lifts. The blog written by the shop employees- who don't identify themselves by name but blog as BLACK Comme des Garçons- is mainly about the merchandise, and beautifully-taken shots of it as well as of The Girl With The Topknot (I call her that because I envy her ability to do that with her hair and have no idea what her name is). It'd be very easy, under the circumstances, for this to be just another collection of pretty pictures- but I admire The Girl With The Topknot's styling a great deal, and in fact it's her presence in blog pics that made me take a prolonged look at it all in the first place. I do hope the staff keep on at this- I'm not at all averse to looking at lovely pictures, and I have high hopes of future enjoyment from this blog.

*It also helps that Yama-sama (in the first pic), who models most frequently for the blog and is- like her coworkers- a FRUiTS regular, is unafraid to go against blogland trends, which more often than not feature a sea of high heels. And as a longtime fan, she must get points for consistency on that score.

pics from is-mental.blogspot.com and the BLACK Comme des Garçons blog (pics used with permission of the authors- I was so kicked to get the mail telling me I could use them)

Great Reads, Gorgeous Looks: My Favourite Dress

2009-12-18T08:10:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows me even vaguely probably knows that I'm an absolute nut for a good read, and even more so when the reading material in question concerns clothes. Which is why, when the blog email inbox was found to contain an offer from Michelle at glassloves to review My Favourite Dress by Gity Monsef, Samantha Erin Shafer and Robert de Niet, it didn't take me longer than a preliminary flick over the text and a few images to say yes, please, I'd love to.

Hamish Bowles, Chanel Printemps – Été 1926
Diane Pernet, Haider Ackermann Autumn-Winter 2009-10
Margaret Howell, Spring-Summer 1982

The concept is a pretty simple one: the authors ask a wide range of people (male and female) involved in the fashion industry(predominantly, the British fashion industry) just what their favourite dress is, and why it is so. A picture or illustration of the garment in question, the date when it was created/acquired, and the material used to make it, accompanies each interviewee's contribution.

Giles, "Carwash" dress, Spring-Summer 2009

Peter Jensen, Spring-Summer 2009

Joe Casely-Hayford, Spring-Summer 1987

The names involved are some of fashion's greatest and most interesting: a tiny handful of the people whose favourite dresses are featured include Alexander McQueen, Daisy de Villeneuve, Diane Pernet, Louise Goldin, Oriole Cullen (of the Victoria and Albert Museum!), Issey Miyake, Mary Quant, Stephen Jones, Boudicca, Bernhard Wilhelm, Romeo Gigli, Rick Owens, Roland Mouret, Hamish Bowles, Vivienne Westwood and Zandra Rhodes. As would be expected, the accompanying photographs (of each person featured, as well as of their dresses) are beautiful, but the real joy lies in two things: the accompanying explanations, which explain the choice and meaning of the dress, and the sheer width of the range of dresses chosen. Not only do they span different styles, from Peter Jensen's almost t-shirt+skirtlike SS2009 pick to the ethereal floatiness of John Galliano's 1996 couture piece and the cagey beauty of Romeo Gigli's choice, but also a long, very long period in time- from the 1920s (Hamish Bowles's winkled-out truffle of an unlabelled Chanel dress from 1926!) to this very season (Haider Ackermann, included courtesy of Diane Pernet). It's quite a lot to take in all in one go, which is fine by me because it's nothing short of an absolute treat- and very importantly, not faffy-sounding like the average coffee-table book. I'll be heading back to some happy browsing after this...

Romeo Gigli, Autumn/Winter 1992-93

Boudicca, Autumn-Winter 2003 "Darko" dress.

In Which I Skewer Incompetent Reportage

2009-11-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

My expectations of the Times of India (TOI) on most days, are pretty low. I've called it a tabloid disguised as a broadsheet staffed by idiots and twits with questionable journalistic ethics before, and that opinion still holds good*. Most mainstream media in India, in my experience, have no idea how to deal with the existence of blogs, or how to report on them, or any form of technology-related new developments really.

Which is why the Tabloid of India's attempt to show that it is indeed with the times is not only badly botched, but flat-out laughable. The article in question was a piece about fashion bloggers, which ran in the TOI's weekend edition in Bangalore last Saturday. Leaving aside the supposed tendency to 'narcissim' of people who 'are trying to inspire by 'mixing and not matching', I found it astounding that, in a piece that made constant references to about five different blogs, not a single url was mentioned. It's all very well to tell your readers that the fashion features director of Vogue India blogs, but where the fuck at? It's the online equivalent of, IMO, writing a restaurant review and leaving the address of the restaurant completely out of it. In addition to which, not all the blog authors mentioned are even based in India- the writers of High Heel Confidential write about Bollywood outfits, but they're US-based.

This goes above and beyond the incompetence of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times in their blogger coverage, as pointed out by LLG a couple of months ago. In that case, the WSJ failed to mention blog names and blogger handles in a piece that was about blogs, and both papers made glaring factual errors. The TOI just went one step further by leaving off the urls. I'm happy to know that there are other Indian fashion blogs out there, and it's good that they're getting attention. I just wish the bloody TOI had done its job properly (always a pointless thing to hope for, I've found).

*following an incident at a book launch some years ago. The book in question was edited by the mother of one of my friends, and was an anthology of the work of a dead author. At the event, S (my friend) was cornered by a reporter who wanted to know if she could get an interview with the author.
S: Er, it's a posthumously produced work.
Reporter: Yes, but can I get an interview with the author?
S: *has a hunch, decides to follow up on it*
S: Are you with the Times of India?
Reporter: Yes!

Real-Life Style: In Which I Introduce TC

2009-11-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

I've wondered, in the past, why most of the people Vogue and Elle India etc cite as style inspirations of any sort come across as fashion victims whose idea of style is piling one big-name label item of clothing over another, and then adding expensive accessories(answer: they probably are). Most real-life people of my generation don't quite have the label-whore tendencies (can't afford it) but tend to dress in a rather formulaic and unimaginative manner*. Which is why, when I find a style 'bright spot' of sorts, they must be appreciated- like in the picture above. Blog readers, all eighty-odd of you per day, meet TC.

It's not hard to say why exactly I've had a bit of a style crush on TC (my classmate, so nicknamed for her own initials and those of Top Cat) for years. Her look is as varied as it is distinctive- she's dressed as everything from girly to rock chick to relaxed to preppy to whatever, and looked at home in all of it- and she has an excellent eye for colour, silhouette and detail*** (if you don't believe me, look at the picture). Also, in a campus full possible death traps and hilly, pebbly ankle-twisting terrain, it really, really helps that she rarely wears heels. Which flies in the face of fashion wisdom- she's petite- but can make for awesome style. As does the fact that her wardrobe isn't crazy designer expensive stuff - just well-chosen. For the sake of my own eyes, I hope she keeps on with it.

* sample boywear: t-shirt+jeans/baggy pants (maybe a button-down shirt for the adventurous). sample girlwear: kurtas/kurtis/tight t-shirts with skinny jeans or harem pants. I could be missing something, but people here really do all dress alike.
**casually used to the point of seeming instinctive- I've hardly ever seen TC with a fashion magazine....

***picture from Facebook, taken at a concert of sorts. Used with TC's permission. Just so it's clear, the girl in the picture is TC, not me.

RIP Daul Kim

2009-11-20T07:28:00.000-08:00

This is heartbreaking news. She was one of my favourite models, not just for her wonderful, unusual looks but for her attitude and ability to express herself- her personality, really, and the fact that she just seemed so interesting - something rare in models these days.

I loved her cartoons (the ones she put up on daulmonster until it became invite-only) and poetry, and the fact that she was so opinionated and unafraid to speak her mind- whether it was to tell off racist show casting policies at Undercover, to weigh in on the question of which was better-Murakami for Louis Vuitton or James Jean for Prada, to talk about Korea, or even to tell off people who called her pictures for i-D pornographic and criticised her for dyeing her hair blonde......she will be missed. My heart goes out to her family and friends- it's always horrible to be the ones left behind.

UPDATE: Daul's blog has now been set to 'private'....way too many irresponsible journalists were taking quotes from it out of context. It's hard not to feel sad about that- the fact that she blogged so much and so often (for a busy model), right till the day before her death, makes it feel like we've lost one of our own even if we didn't know her personally.

Pics from I Like To Fork Myself (Daul's blog) and Kingdom of Style.

Yohji Yamamoto Files For Bankruptcy, Is Saved

2009-10-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

It takes no genius to know that the recession absolutely blows for fashion- these are hard times for everyone. But truthfully, being smacked on a Friday night with news of Yohji Yamamoto filing for bankruptcy was a hard blow- hard enough to be the first piece of fashion news to ever bring me close to tears- and I'd have been well over the verge if the article hadn't confirmed that his firm can operate as usual since it found itself an investor.

The NYMag piece said nothing about what was to happen to Y-3 and Limi Feu (I wasn't clear whether the lines were owned by Yohji or not), so I decided to do a little digging around on Integral Corporation, the firm named as the aforementioned new investor. Turns out Integral is a Japanese corporation, and is indeed going to invest in both Yohji Yamamoto Inc. and Limi Yamamoto Inc, allowing them to continue business while the restructuring takes place .

It's rather a huge relief, really. Not only is a rather important design legacy going to carry on, but on a personal level, I'd have been heartbroken if Yohji had to close down while some other houses hired possibly-coke-addled starlets to give "artistic advice" to trained designers and sold unimaginative perfumes and leather rubbish ... but all's well that ends well, and I shall have my wardrobe of romantic angularity and non-traditionally sexy clothes to look forward to when I earn a salary to pay for them with...

And here is the press release announcing the entire thing (click on the link to read the PDF)

PDF version of Integral Corporation press release

Also, RIP Irving Penn.

Inspirations and Preoccupations

2009-09-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

The result of stupid weather that can't make up its mind (scorching in the afternoon, rainy and cold all night), discovering the best adventure/fantasy series I've read since first discovering Harry Potter, being left little-toenailless by a freak accident with my doorstop, and being sleepless and almost 25. Also, somewhat underwhelmed by a lot of New York Fashion Week, and by pastels- though they might grow on me yet, and I rather like the braided hair that's been showing up all over the place.

Image credits: (clockwise from top, L-R) The Sartorialist. Jill Furmanovsky, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, Style.com, Corinne Day via foto_decadent, wikipedia. So-En magazine, fashionologie, Style.com, Audrey Kawasaki.

Spot The Resemblance, Yet Another Edition

2009-07-31T23:20:00.000-07:00

Ann Demeulemeester SS07 Menswear
Screencap from Roswell , episode #1.0 (Pilot)

I suppose it'd be beyond bizarre to think that Ann Demeulemeester, of all people, decided to take inspiration from a long-extinct teen TV show about everyone's favourite silver-handprint-leaving aliens, but the thought was too funny to pass up. Besides, I watched Twilight a couple of weeks ago and honestly cannot see what the fuss is for- if anyone wants sensitive forbidden small-town teen love between a one-part-human, one-part-not-human couple that is absolutely impossible and all the more desired for that, it was done ten years ago, and better -Season 1 is still one of the best things I've watched on TV, ever*.

And as for Cedric Diggory (I cannot think of Rob Pattinson as any character but that, blame my Harry Potter addiction), if anyone has got this far down the post you should definitely watch the video pitting Edward Cullen against another of my 90s/early 00s TV loves- it's brilliantly put together and funny too.

*admittedly, Season 2 went a bit haywire with all the alien stuff- I couldn't bring myself to like it as much, until the end. But it was still Roswell, and I still loved it for that.

picture credits: nymag.com (Ann D.) and crashdown.com (for the screencap)

Ad Campaigns AW09/10: BURBERRY

2009-06-09T05:39:00.000-07:00

Given that I was actually not looking forward to the rumoured idea of Chanel ads featuring Emma Watson a while ago*, the above shots of the Burberry AW09/10 campaign featuring, in what's probably become classic Burberry format, that very same young lady decked out in trenchcoats and bags by the Thames, came as a bit of a relief. I can't help thinking she's really a much better fit for Burberry than she'd have been for Chanel- Young London seems like a good thing for her to represent, methinks, if she really has to model (Young Posh London, seems like). And she looks much better here than in a pile of other magazine shoots in couture clothes- more herself, maybe, as opposed to Hermione Granger dressing up - I adore Hermione, but I think outside of the movies, it's nicer to see Emma. And the pictures have a nice London-in-early-fall/winter vibe which I really like, notwithstanding the house checks, which I am no fan of. Besides, it's also probably good publicity for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I'm rather excited about.

On a side note: I can't be the only blogger to have got this stuff in the inbox (and this is for a blog that went two months without being updated). I know more people got this- what do you guys think of getting all the PR emails and ad stuff? I honestly wasn't planning for this to be my first proper post in donkey's ages, but it just popped up and begged posting about, given that I whinged about the prospect earlier.

*Just to clarify, I think she's lovely. Just maybe a little young and doesn't seem sophisticated enough for a Chanel ad yet.
And if anyone wonders at the teeny-tiny size on the pictures, the email containing them all but ordered all manner of copyright acknowledgements (which I'm happy to give), and the squitty resolution. Fair enough, I guess.

One of those notes I hate leaving..

2009-05-31T22:35:00.000-07:00

If anyone is still reading this, posting will resume in ten days. It's been hard of late, given that all my free time seems to have disappeared into a black hole and nearly all the fashion-related news I've been reading is bad (i-D- i-D- going bimonthly instead of monthly, Veronique Braqinho- whose clothes I always dreamed of owning once I started earning a salary I'm now increasingly doubting I'll ever get to- thank you, recession- is closing down, and doom and gloom prevails). But The Force remains with me, and this blog will restart posting fashion-related things soon, instead of silly notes like this one.

Steampunked Up

2009-03-31T12:20:00.000-07:00

I can't pinpoint when exactly I developed a soft corner for steampunk (the why, however, is easier to figure out: apart from the obvious aesthetic merits, it was introduced to me by someone I'm really fond of). At a time when anything futuristic was generally imagined as clean lines and pale colours in the vein of the average modern Apple product, I rather liked the throwback feel to it and the slightly rougher, less sanitised look all the gadgets had. It was just a pity I had no idea where to get to see things looking like that in real life, and even less of a chance to acquire them.

Which is why it came as quite the surprise when, on flipping through old articles on Pingmag (my favourite online magazine, and now a victim of the recession- RIP), I found a feature on Haruo Suekichi, real-life maker of steampunk-style timepieces, whose watches are not only beautiful and unique, but innovative too- I bet not too many other watchmakers make watches that don't need two hands to strap on. And even if I can't buy them, I do appreciate the fact that they fulfil the one condition any watch MUST fulfil in order to be loved by me- large faces! It's a wonderful lot to lech at, even if they're not sold outside Japan..pics are above and below.

pics from pingmag.jp and chiefmag.com

In Which I Vociferously Object To Internet Snobs

2009-01-21T22:50:00.000-08:00

It isn't exactly breaking news to anyone who's been to Chictopia in the last couple of days, but I was really rather kicked to know that three of the site's users (Karla, Melissa and Linda) had been picked to feature in an American Apparel campaign run in collaboration with Chictopia. I'm not a regular user of the site, but there's no denying that a lot of the girls on it are really incredibly well-dressed, and (as with most personal/streetstyle sites out there) complimentary comments on the outfits invariably follow. And the fact that a lot of bloggers use it as a way to share outfit pictures makes it a fun site to browse- I haven't really see Go Fug Yourself-ish fashion criticism on anyone's pictures. And although American Apparel has more than its fair share of controversy (esp. regarding sexual harassment charges against CEO Dov Charney and their rather, erm, risqué adverts), there's nothing about the Chictopia-collaboration shoot- or what's been seen of it, anyway- that makes me think the images are exploitative, or otherwise suspect.

Which is why I was more than a little surprised to find this post on Jezebel- longtime anti-AA stanceholders, if I remember correctly- with the enlightening caption 'American Apparel Now Sponsoring Bloggers And Porn Stars'. Turns out the 'porn stars' bit of the title referred to some ads run by AA in December, featuring three girls who actually were porn stars, in a rather more advanced state of undress/non-dress than the average American Apparel ad. And I'm not even going into the whole objectification-of-women argument in that particular part of the post, so I'll just (finally) cut to the chase and bang on about why that post irritates me so much.
Simply put, the answer is that it's bloody patronising. Please do tell me if you could read the following lines any other way:

"Chictopia, a fashion social networking site whose genius idea is that users can upload pictures of their outfits for other users to comment on so everyone can feel comfortably supported in her precious online fashion-maven status"

"Chictopia is one of those places where the internet telescopes and distends to the extent that being on Chictopia for other people to comment on and rate becomes prima facie evidence of supposed fashion expertise, which supposed fashion expertise becomes a reason to be on Chictopia for other people to comment on and rate. "

"The entire vain and mindless feedback loop was aptly (though unwittingly) summed up by Mashable, which noted newly minted American Apparel model, Chictopia girl Karla "is a beautiful stylista actively pursuing her passion via Chictopia and creative expression on her own blog." Actively pursuing, people!" "And just as blogging and uploading self-taken pics of your original hipster creations is an ersatz kind of fashion activity.."

"It's unethical to paint this experience as some kind of entrée into fashion modeling. It's just another chance to get your kit off for Dov Charney, only now to even do that, you're expected to be an internet Somebody who can write a gushy post about it."

I suppose the writer really intended to call out American Apparel for exploiting women in its ads (and I can see her point there), but the wording of everything I've placed in italics is just IMO horrible, snobbish and when taken in conjunction with the title, misleading to boot- the post was illustrated with two sets of NSFW photographs of the AA ads featuring porn stars, with no images of the Chictopia shoot- so anyone reading the post could probably assume all the images were like that, if they wanted to. And outfit photo sharing is nothing new- TFS, MyStyleDiary, Modepass and a whole range of sites including personal fashion blogs have long been places for people to do exactly that.

But what really surprised me was the snarking about the Chictopia participants themselves- none of whom were directly quoted (even if someone else's gushy post about Karla was used as evidence that Karla needs to be snarked about, too). That, and the bitchiness about Internet outfit-sharers. Apparently our vain, mindless feedback-loop-stuck wannabe hipster fashion-maven selves (wow, we wear a lot of hats don't we? though I must admit, I'm no outfit sharer) haven't any business engaging in 'ersatz fashion activity', and somehow active pursuit of one's interests via a blog isn't really active pursuit, or any kind of creative expression, at all. By the time I got to the middle of the post (which is where the last line quoted came from), I was wondering just why the writer sounded so bitter- and then I scrolled up and discovered that it was Tatiana, The Anonymous Model, Jezebel's (it's self-explanatory, really) anonymous contributor who is in fact a real-life fashion model.

To be honest, it makes a whole pile of sense that someone who is a professional model would feel annoyed that a bunch of regular girls with nothing more than their cameras and computers, are doing something that resembles her job (posing and making clothes look good) and doing it well enough for a large clothing company to sit up and take notice. Sure, maybe no one's getting a modelling career out of this, as Tatiana pointed out, but it's well and truly possible that no one even assumed that this was going to lead to anything of the sort. And IMO it's rather blindingly obvious that the 'ersatz fashion activity' Tatiana seems to hold in such contempt is intended to stand- at least, so the article seems to imply in direct contrast to Tatiana's own- more legitimate, by inference, given her professional status- 'genuine' fashion activity, the kind girls with cameras don't (and shouldn't, is the feeling coming off this) get to engage in.

I'm all for questioning suspect professional ethics and the objectification of women, and sexual harassment in the workplace is not cool AT ALL. But frankly, Tatiana's post on Jezebel seems to direct more bile at Chictopia and at the bloggers from there who participated in the campaign, than at the murky workings of American Apparel- and I don't buy the bullshit that any of it was somehow cool, or feminist in any way. I've enjoyed many of Tatiana's behind-the-scenes accounts of what it's like to be a model and a girl working in fashion, but this time, really, shame on her, and shame on Jezebel.

picture from Chictopia

Hoods Up

2009-01-19T09:32:00.000-08:00

I've always been a big fan of hoods on clothes, and living in a place with next to nothing by way of a proper winter tends not to be a good thing if one is fonder of wearing winter clothes than summer clothes. Hoods have had a bit of a bad name in recent years thanks to their sweatshirt avatars (which I love anyway, so-called chav/other associations notwithstanding), but a slightly structured hood is, IMO, one of the coolest ways to add drama to an outfit while simultaneously letting it be practical. In fact, no one puts it better than Dreamecho, who once said, in response to my drooling over the lovely Prairie Underground hooded jacket she'd showcased on her blog:

"The drama of the hood...where at one moment we can cloak our faces in shadow and at another be visible to all the world."
That pretty much sums it all up, really- it's odd that a simple attachment to a garment has so much potential to look austere (I keep thinking of monks) and relaxed at the same time. And I suspect this dichotomy is what keeps my fascination with hoods going (that and the fact that they saved my ears from freezing off through five successive North Indian winters), and it's unlikely to stop any time soon. Spring might be not too far away, but large chunks of the Northern hemisphere are still cold, and sometimes hats are just too much of a pain to take on and off.
And now, in pictures:

Needs no explanation, really: probably the first character one thinks of when thinking of the word 'hood'.

Though I bet Queen Michelle could kick a wolf's ass: the hood might not have been the main focus of her outfit here, but I do prefer her version of the look for its lack of 'scared little girl' vibe.

Hoods are whimsical, cutely worn, and above all, they look warm.

And dramatic, too (L: by Michelle Lowe-holder, R: by Prairie Underground)

And who says they're for girls/winter only?(Yoshio Kubo SS09)

pictures from: (1: elfwoordart, 2: Kingdom of Style, 3:The Facehunter, 4: pic from Michelle Lowe-Holder via Bored&Beautiful, pic from Prairie Underground via dreamecho, 5: pic from The Imagist).

And Look Who's Back..

2009-01-09T16:55:00.000-08:00

LLG returns! I'm grinning like a loon at the thought of one of my all-time favourite bloggers making a comeback to the blogosphere...2009 is awesome :). And if you've read this far, click on the link already!

A string of paper submissions, viva voces, and now exams in quick succession have officially shot my resolution to blog (like, actually blog) more into little bitty pieces, but someday when I'm less tired, I shall blog (and now I understand why Fops and Dandies shut down on heading off to law school, though my law school is nowhere near as taxing as hers).

Keeping The Faith

2008-12-20T11:47:00.000-08:00

YE GODS it's been a long time since I posted (and the interval between posts just seems to get longer and longer...paper submissions at this time of year absolutely suck). But I'm back for now if anyone still cares, and Paloma Faith is a much, much more interesting topic of blog discussion than my boring life. It's not as if prettily retro-styled singers are entirely a novelty on the music scene * coughKatyannoyingPerrycough*, but the reason Ms Faith piques my interest, besides her admittedly fantastic dress sense (one cannot help but love the way she wears her stage clothes - with love and fun in equal measure- if you need proof, look no further than the pictures), is the fact that her music really is amazing, and that is not something I say lightly. I'm guessing a whole pile of UK people probably know who she is already, since one of her songs was apparently featured in a recent anti-alcohol campaign and she's been doing live shows for ages, but I do hope she gets an album out soon- this stuff (do watch the video at the end of the post) is awesome, and I want it on my iTunes.

http://www.myspace.com/palomafaith

PS: It's a little odd to realise she played an emo girl in the St Trinian's movie too...

images from Google Search. Not mine!

2008-11-29T21:25:00.000-08:00

Again, another set of events for which I don't quite have words. It's not as if India isn't used to terrorist attacks, and this isn't even the first time this year that we've had them, but it makes me sick every time, and it needs to stop. This is the third time this year that bombs have gone off, or attacks happened, in places where my friends or I would almost certainly have been, had we been in the cities in question at the time. And to top off one of the worst weeks ever, someone I know- one of the sweetest, kindest girls in a place where people like that were rare- has died (not in the attacks). I'm about ready for November to end, really.

I'm sorry to turn this into a quasi-diary entry, but Nonsense on Stilettos will be back on the fashion jabbering, and soon. I've just got a few exams to get out of the way first..

2008-11-07T03:30:00.000-08:00

...I can't find the words to think of a vaguely smart-sounding title for this (and I know I'm WAY late), but- to all the lovely American fash-bloggers out there that I've been lucky enough to read and know, especially those who were old enough to vote (including WendyB, ENC, Rumi, Karla, Ambika, Lulu, Rhiannon, Dreamecho and The Clothes Horse)- congratulations! I hope you guys like your new President-elect :).

picture from lastnightsparty. I thought it seemed apt, a non-American fashion-connected person being in it and all.

Tagged, I Am

2008-10-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

A Dreamer tagged me a clear two weeks ago, but a combination of travel, Internet deprivation and laziness prevented me from actually doing the tag till just now...so here goes, if anyone actually wants to know(and sorry for the delay!).

4 things I did today:

1. Trimmed my fringe.

2. Ate three cough drops and an orange (and other things, but the first three were an attempt to cure my cough/cold).

3. Realised I haven't worn a skirt in almost a week (v. unusual for me)

4. Stared at my bookshelf for half an hour before choosing one of my roommate's books to curl up with.

4 things on my to-do list:

1. Clean room

2. Get laptop cleaned of viruses.

3. Look for my dictionary.

4. Stop feeling like a tubercular corpse-to-be.

4 guiltiest pleasures:

1. My seamed black fishnet tights (they're not quite the slutwear they sound like).

2. Living out of a suitcase.

3. Livejournal.

4. Storing old text messages from people I'm particularly fond of, and opening them to read when I feel like it.

4 random facts about me:

1. I have a rotten memory for names, but an excellent one for birthdays (sometimes leading to situations like me realising that today is someone's birthday...but not knowing just whose birthday it is).

2. I've lost approximately one pair of (fat,black) glasses a year since I was sixteen. Last week, I managed to lose Pair No. 8 (or was it 9?) within three days of delivery- a new record, even for me.

3. I hate being photographed. Hate it.

4. One of my DIY skirt projects (pink, brocade) has been lying unfinished since APRIL. Oh, the shame...

I now tag (only if you want to do it, please)

Yumiko of Trials and Tribulations-Yumiko

Spot The Resemblance, Yet Again.

2008-10-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

Hair and makeup at Christian Dior SS09 (boring rich-girl clothes, awesome hair+makeup)

Yuuko, the Witch of Dimensions in xxxHolic, Volume 4.

This isn't the first time I've thought it, but if CLAMP ever took to offering styling services/designing clothes for real girls and not just manga ones, I'd probably be first in line among the screaming fangirls to get them. I love me a nice wardrobe... even a two-dimensional one.

Adams Extraordinaire

2008-10-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

Obesity Can Kill / L'obésité tue

Balloons/Les Ballons

Steve Adams's work is something I've been a fan of for a while (the picture in this post is one of his), and it's a bit hard not to be a fan, to be honest- the appeal of his work lies in the fact that his pretty, gritty artwork isn't just lovely to look at, it's also more often than not bitingly clever (I think I can safely say no one who's picked up a newspaper in the last three weeks will fail to appreciate it). Which isn't surprising, considering that the publications he's contributed to include the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review...do check out more of his work at his site, it's well worth a look.

Government Generosity/Générosité gouvernementale?

What's Hiding Behind That Smile?/Que cache ce sourire?

Running for Coverage/À couvert!

All pictures from adamsillustration.com

Models And All..

2008-09-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

Fifteen days is a long time to be MIA from a blog especially during Fashion Week (no point me trying to say anything about it, others do that better and at least this time, I'd rather wait till it's nearly over before putting out opinions- I'm no Suzy Menkes or Susie Bubble, after all).
I don't know how many people reading this remember this picture. It was the foldout flap of Vogue India's first cover, which featured two actual models as opposed to Bollywood heroines, and somehow the Photoshop that was so liberally used on it didn't quite manage to make one of the models, Lakshmi Menon, look quite as blank or dead as the other people on the cover.
She ended up opening Givenchy's couture show and featuring in their campaign for this season, which looks rather fantastically cool (and it's nice to see her getting more attention, though it's kind of odd to see someone who's been on jewellery adverts all over Bangalore for half a decade getting called a newbie to modelling like I've seen in some posts on TFS). But the news that she'd been picked for an editorial in Paris Vogue was what got me really happy...pictures follow. (the rest of the shoot featured Yasmin Warsame, but I don't have the time to upload the rest of the pics).

This feels a bit like they got their inspiration from M.I.A...

And this one above reminds me of Susie Bubble's sheer trousers..

Cuteness, Of The Non-Clothes Kind

2008-09-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

It might sound slightly berserk to be yammering on about non-fashion things in the middle of New York Fashion Week, but it would be criminal of me not to share the absolute cuteness that is Chii's Sweet Home, a manga by Konami Kanata about a lost kitten who gets picked up and adopted by a young family, whose attempts to feed, bathe, entertain, immunise, toilet-train and conceal Chii (the last being necessary thanks to a building prohibition on keeping pets), all seen from the PoV of a kitten, are about fifteen kinds of adorable and howl-inducingly funny, not to mention a must-read for anyone who's ever had a cat (and seriously, go have a look at it. You wouldn't want to make the kitty cry, would you?)

picture copyright of Konami Kanata, from doki-doki.

Spot The Resemblance.

2008-09-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

Rodarte, AW08-09
reminds me of

I can't believe I didn't point it out the last time around, but given that Rodarte did cite Japanese horror movies and slasher flicks as inspiration, the comparison isn't too far off the mark...

painting by Fuco Ueda, A Demand 1 (2002).

2008-09-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many people reading this have already heard of the fuss created over the Vogue India editorial that featured poor people as models for designer accessories, and the reason I haven't posted about it for so long was simply because I wanted to get a few thoughts in order.

First things first- irrespective of the idea behind the shoot, why on earth did it take nearly a month for anyone to notice it? The editorial ran in the August issue of Vogue, and nothing was heard about it till the very end of the month. If it was really such an utter outrage, I'm rather sceptical of the idea that someone wouldn't have caught on and complained sooner.

Secondly, I've seen the editorial (but I didn't buy the issue thanks to the people they put on the cover) and truth be told, the problem isn't with the images themselves- the people who are featured as models are much more front and central, for lack of a better term, than models usually are on a fashion shoot. And truthfully, on first sight it didn't even look like an accessories shoot at all- I wouldn't have known what the things being modelled were if Vogue hadn't used text to indicate them, it looks like they're just there by accident and happen to be expensive. Fashion magazines do worse than this all the time, if one really wants to talk about the ethical issues behind using poor people as the subjects of fashion photography- what about all the 'background' locals on fashion shoots set in 'exotic' places? Vogue India's not the only magazine to do it.
Which brings me to my next point- the text. Which is the single most problematic part of the entire thing. Magazines often choose not to name their models on the page, but in a situation where I know most of the models' names that doesn't really anonymise them too much. Choosing to use actual people in a shoot and then not naming them- but using the text to name the accessories, loud and clear (well, of course, since it's an accessories shoot) was just plain wrong, IMHO. I get that it's all about the advertisers, and in one way it's a score for Vogue India because the images are much more interesting than anything else I've ever seen from them, but it could have had a lot more meaning if they'd, I don't know, done a short interview with each of the people being photographed? I know I'd much rather read that than yet another gushy puff piece about some socialite with X private jets. I've criticised Vogue India often enough in the past, but really, they could have done so much better. And Priya Tanna's (the editor-in-chief) response doesn't make it any better, really.
Lastly, about the opinions being quoted in the New York Times article in the link. I understand fully well that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but having seen Kanika Gahlaut's column in the Mail Today and her book, I'd take the opinions of a wannabe third-rate chick-lit author with a large pinch of salt- she's about as bad as Liz Jones in the Daily Mail. Her writings about fashion, as far as I've seen, have tended to spew venom on the field (sure, we know it's silly and takes itself a bit too seriously at times, but outright condemnation is a bit much, hmm?), and really, if you want to see a sample of the kind of things the lady writes, look no further than this place- it might be of particular interest to girl bloggers. And if anyone wants to talk more about India's new economy and the fact that Vogue even exists here, mail me.
image from the New York Times

When Odd Resemblances Strike

2008-08-30T15:09:00.000-07:00

Frilled Lizard, on a rock somewhere wearing its own skin

Jourdan Dunn, on the cover of POP wearing Prada.

Of course, one could also say the headdress on the cover looks a tiny bit like a Queen Amidala costume, but the lizard was what first came to mind for me.

Foot Fetishist, Stop Emailing Me Please

2008-08-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

I apologise to everyone else for not updating in so long (things have been a bit busy this end), but opening up the blog's inbox for the first time in three weeks led me straight to this gem:

______

hi, id love to hear more about your stocking feet sometime

telboy92@yahoo.co.uk
_________

I'm well aware that a clear twenty-five percent of the Google searches that lead people here come from the words 'stocking tops', 'stockings' or some permutation thereof, but this is the second time I've been hit up with a query like this, and by the same person too, so please will some kind blogger let me know if you've also been getting messages like this (which will lead me to put it down to spam waves) or if it's just me being a freak magnet in cyberspace? Either way, the stupidity is really quite funny.

Thank you all very much

Blue Floppy Hat

Comme Again..

2008-08-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

So, pictures of the Comme des Garçons for H&M line are out (they have been for a while, plus there's an interview with Rei Kawakubo in this month's issue of W), and I must say, it doesn't look bad at all- and it most definitely does look more Comme-ish than anything in the LV collaboration. The pictures below probably make the clothes look less than spectacular, and there is the odd item that does look more H&M than Comme (e.g. button-down shirts and a trenchcoat, (though the polka-dot shirts remind me ever so slightly of Comme's AW08 collection), it still has a fairly recognisable influence of Rei Kawakubo about it. And truth be told, a lot of potentially-interesting details don't seem to be too clear in the pics below- is that a hint of deconstruction I see on what looks like a skirt in Picture #3 below?- though methinks the drop-crotch shorts and side-fastened jacket in the pic above and white shirts with sleeve detailing in Picture #2 below, the zippered jacket in Picture #3, and the tailed tuxedo-style jacket in Picture #4, and last but not least, the frilly Goth Loli-style dress in Picture #1, just below, would make for intriguing additions to most wardrobes (though the last is a matter of my personal taste, and everyone might not agree).
It's a pity there's no H&M in this country- I'd have loved to see the clothes up close, and the line is set to be carried only in a few stores (reportedly at a higher price point than previous tie-up collections, and, unlike what was reported in April, it doesn't feature children's clothing since the designer shot that idea down)- but as a collaboration between one of the most left-of-centre designers I've ever known of and a brand like H&M, it certainly is an achievement.

Somewhat Wide Of The Mark

2008-08-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

Is about the only way I can describe the Comme des Garcons collaboration with Louis Vuitton. I hate to open this month's posting with a grumble, but these bags are beyond me- and by that, I don't mean beyond my budget, I mean beyond my understanding. According to nitro:licious and everywhere else, the collection was supposed to be inspired by Rei Kawakubo's memories of 1978, when Louis Vuitton first got to Japan, and the general giddy feeling of having a great store nearby (at least that's the way I interpret it- the last bit, I mean).
To be absolutely truthful, the problem with the Comme-LV collaboration is that there's simply too much LV to it, and not nearly enough Comme (case in point: Bag 1, below. The handles are Comme-ish, but nothing about the rest of the bag is. They're cool handles, handles I wouldn't mind seeing on a bag that is fit to have them, but handles alone do not a good bag make). The bags aren't all heinous as far as shape goes, and I'm sure they'll be very well made, but I can't help thinking it could have been so much cooler without the logo OD (and I admit to being biased against logos, but this really is a bit too much IMO). All in all, to put it bluntly, it's hideous. And not even hideous in a Comme way (which is really the letdown, and more of a letdown because Rei Kawakubo- as I never tire of saying- is one of my fashion heroes). But I'm still optimistic about the H&M collaboration...

Images from nitro:licious.
PS: all comments on the last two posts will be answered tomorrow. I'm sorry to be slack about this, but I am tired..

On Blogging, And The Stoppage Thereof.

2008-07-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

Blogging these days isn't exactly free of hiccups along the way (major samples of said hiccups including storms that blow out my Internet cables and, at college, a firewall that won't let me see this blog because evidently, it contains 'forbidden'- read pornographic- material). It's also sometimes tough just to tear my eyes off what feels like the half-zillion other things I do online (thankfully, I'm too old to really be into Facebook etc- being glomped by zombies doesn't bother me) , or to stop reading other blogs long enough to post on my own.

Which brings me to the point of this post really, the point being just how sad it can be when a blog you read shuts down. It's not that I disagree with anyone's right to stop blogging, but it's still downright depressing that no less than four of my favourite blogs have been deleted, discontinued or gone underground in the last two months, or are headed that way in the near future (namely Style Bytes, LibertyLondonGirl, and Mrs Fashion respectively, with LC of Fops and Dandies shutting down soon because she's headed to law school in a matter of weeks). I don't mean to sound whiney or ungrateful, because heaven knows a new job- in LLG's case- and law school- in LC's- are time-consuming things and blogs can be tricky, privacy-wise, but I guess all I really wanted to say is, I miss these blogs rottenly (or I will). One of the best things about having a blog is getting to know other bloggers and their thoughts- if I were to liken the round of blog-visiting and commenting to anything, it would be a series of pretty tea parties (though someone I know compared them to slumber parties, I think a fash-blogger interaction would be slightly more dressed-up). Either way, I'm grateful to Agathe, LLG, Mrs Fashion and LC for letting me in on their take on style, even if it was just for a bit. And if any of them do start writing again, I'd be a very very happy girl indeed...
*header images from Libertylondongirl and Fops and Dandies.

Tit For Tattoo

2008-07-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

In times when my blogging mojo deserts me (helped along by the lightning that blew out my Internet cables for nearly a week), the things that get me going again are any of the following:
a) something really interesting to blog about (at least, I think so).
b) sheer annoyance, leading to a rant.
This post probably falls into the latter category, triggered by this article in the Telegraph. (to anyone who doesn't want to be bothered with clicking the link, it's basically a long whine about how tattoos are ugly and disfiguring, and apparently Angelina Jolie's tattoos are a 'violation' of her from the neck down. The article went on and on in the same tone, and I wasn't exactly sure what Becky Pugh, the writer of the article, had against them- until the second page and end of the article, when she revealed that she'd got a tattoo she regretted during her gap year (I presume) in New Zealand.
Very honestly, as a person who's been inked (albeit discreetly) for three years and wanted to be for six years before that, I don't see what the bloody fuss is about. Admittedly, a tattoo requires a good deal of thought beforehand since it's permanent, can be expensive, and will probably remain on your body until you die or fork out a lot of money to have it lasered off . But if I'm the one who chose to get it done, I don't see why some woman who feels bad about her own tattoo because she got it done for what sounds to me like a pretty stupid reason (rebellion? gap-year boredom? seriously?) has the right to call judgement on mine, or to say that I, or any woman who gets a tattoo, is 'blighted' by it. Blighted, my foot.
I suppose tattoos are a strange subject for a fashion blogger to be going on about, and I don't deny that I can and do get annoyed by what seem to me like stupid-looking tattoos or overly ostentatious-for-the-sake-of-it ones, but at the end of the day, it's a choice- just as much as what we choose to wear. It's possible not to agree with another person's choices, or to make them for ourselves in the same situation, but surely condemning them out of hand isn't the way to go? And if our bodies are our own, choosing the clothes we want to wear each day, or the markings we choose to wear permanently- are those really such outlandish, unthinkable concepts? It's food for thought, I say..

Cute As A Button-Down

2008-07-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the decade since I hit puberty, I've always been a girl who favoured skirts over trousers. There's hardly a skirt form on earth I haven't worn or won't wear, with the exception of crinkled gypsy skirts*, but it wasn't until a recent wardrobe cleanout that I was reminded of one rather peculiar kind (I say peculiar only because I literally never saw anyone else wearing it) that I'd loved like no one's business at age fourteen- the zip-up/button-down skirt. It wasn't a love that stopped at that age, either- a pale, pink-and-green- flowered denim button-down went to uni with me and got more than a few wears- at least till the year before last, when I accidentally cut it a couple of inches too short for dress-code regulations. It's still around somewhere...and one of my lost cupboard loves was a pale blue Benetton button-down with a wide waistband and shiny silver buttons- I went into a two-hour fit of the sulks when I realised, five years ago, that it was nowhere to be found (kind of an occupational hazard of moving house thrice in a year).

In any case, I've had button-fronted/zip-fronted skirts on the brain for a while now, and no way of getting my fix other than wearing an oversized man's shirt as a skirt- I rather enjoy the puffy-hip effect, and the way the 'hemline' gets slightly uneven...and I can always get my vicarious fix of VFA aka Visible Fastener Action via my favourite source- fashion bloggers! Susie, Dreamecho and The Clothes Horse wear their skirts with the buttons and zips (and what a zip it is, on Dreamecho's awesome Michele Lau number) in very different, though equally stylish, ways. It almost makes me want to get out the scissors and thread for a DIY on one of my existing skirts- I want some buttons to fiddle with- until I remember that my last attempt at sewing has resulted in a pile of stiff pinky-purple brocade completely failing to take the shape of a skirt. Still, I'm happy looking at these girls and the Ellegirl Korea online shop...(for some reason, it has button-down skirts. In a fair few shapes. Just when I want them- only it's a pity I don't understand anything on the page)
*heaven knows why they seem to be a staple of so many college-girl wardrobes in India. They're bloody unflattering, and sloppy to boot- not even in a good sense. Also, it's no fun to wear a straight-line skirt that drags in the dust...

photographs from (L-R) Style Bubble, Dreamecho and The Clothes Horse.

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head- Or Not!

2008-07-02T04:17:00.000-07:00

It might be officially summer for the rest of the world, but right where I am, it's been pouring rain for a while- which means only one thing- umbrellas ahoy! My bad habit of losing them means I don't get any but the plainest black ones, but if I were slightly more careful with my possessions (and if I actually knew where they came from! Romeika first posted them, here and here), the three in the pictures below would be top candidates for acquisition by me:

I particularly fancy the idea of scaring people with the cat one, being just juvenile enough for that...though Mary Poppins (the book version, not cheery Julie Andrews) would most certainly disapprove of umbrellas being used for such frivolity. And speaking of frivolity, I rather fancy a parasol too. And I probably fancy them even more after seeing this image off The Sartorialist:

It's a far cry from your average guard against the rain, but with that light behind her and the contrast of the spokes against the rest, it really does look slightly like a halo on a saint..
EDIT: I am so technologically inept, I have no idea at all how a blank post is appearing just below this one- and Blogger isn;t even letting me delete it! Did our latest power cut cause it?

Extra! Extra! Spot The Blogger (Click To Enlarge)

2008-06-29T03:51:00.000-07:00

When Rumi of Fashion Toast put up her latest post, about getting featured in Vogue Girl Korea, my first reaction was a big 'w0000t!'. And then I took a slightly closer look at the World Fashion Blogger feature she'd scanned along with her interview, and realised I recognised more than one person on the page besides Rumi herself- not least The Clothes Horse, Rhiannon of Liebemarlene Vintage, and Kirsty of That's Just My Vibe (all circled and named in my MS-Paint messup of Rumi's scan). And I think I'd be sure of the identities of more of them if the pictures were bigger, but it's quite a kick to see people on your blogroll featured in the pages of a magazine, more so when they wear their clothes so amazingly.

PS: Does anyone recognise more of the bloggers on the page? I think I recognise some of the outfits, but can't quite name the blogger (which is embarrassing for me!)

picture from Fashion Toast.
EDIT: As a kind reader pointed out, I named one of the bloggers wrong, so I edited the name out. My bad...

The Art Of Amy Sol

2008-06-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Wake Up Again, Gomo (2007)

The Clovervine Slumber (2007)

Cloud Blossoms (2006)

Your Meadow, My Ocean Floor (2007)

Blue Bouquet (2008)

Flying Fish (2008)

The Math Book That Never Opened (2007)

Amy Sol's detailed, dreamy manga-influenced artwork isn't what I'd call easy to lay hands on (her prints emerge in limited editions only), but it's most certainly wonderful to look at- the muted colour palette and melancholy Alice-in-Wonderland feel of her paintings, not to mention the quirky animals who accompany her subjects (mostly female, for some reason all the artists whose work I'm loving these days mainly paint girls) are unique and lovely. I suspect they'd be even better in real life, so lucky people in LA should definitely check out her latest exhibit at the Thinkspace Gallery (4210 Santa Monica Blvd Los Angeles) before it closes on July 4th- that is, if you have the time. Which I hope you do. Those who won't be in LA or anywhere near the gallery, however, should very definitely head on over to her site for a look at more of her work, or look at work in progress on her blog.

Hello, Sea Pony (2007)

all images from Amy Sol's website. Not mine!

My Seven Songs Of Summer

2008-06-28T22:37:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, I took a tag off The Internet Goddess of Red Lipstick (aka WendyB), to name seven songs I was listening to this spring. The spring bit is rather redundant (my corner of the world has gone past summer and into a very rainy season already), so I think I'll just name seven songs I've been listening to a lot lately:

1. Whatever, by Oasis. Quite simply put, one of the most happy-making songs of all time- I can't believe they didn't put it on an actual album. Oasis, to me, is the musical equivalent of comfort food. And this six-minute plus version is pure brilliance.
2. Running Up That Hill, by Chromatics. The original's brilliant, but as covers go, this one is really quite good. Though the video has about a minute and a half of faff before the song even starts (this doesn't happen on the actual track), so if you're impatient I wouldn't recommend it.

3. Daddy Cool, by Placebo. I love disco music (which is an embarrassing thing to admit to friends), and I love Placebo. And even if you don't like disco, Placebo's Boney M cover is awesome in its own right. The video is kind of crazy, though- I'm fairly sure Placebo didn't make it, but I like it just the same.

4. Summer Wine, by Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra. It's one of my playlist constants, and is going to stay that way for a very long time..
5. Life In Mono, by Mono. I love this one not only because it's unbelievably lovely, but it also happens to be the theme song for one of my favourite films of all time- the 1998 version of Great Expectations. It's been a clear ten years since I first heard it, and my love for it hasn't diminished any..
6. Dark Chariot, by Peer Raben. I can't find anything for it on Youtube except an excerpt from 2046, so no links.
7. Roads, by Portishead. I couldn't find a video for this one, either (and the reason I'm linking videos is because fileden won't upload my files to share). On a side note: I'm so glad to have a new Portishead album, at last...it's been far too long.

The Flowers Bloom For You..

2008-06-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

I've always been a big fan of putting random things in my hair - hair ornaments fascinate me no end, and I've said it before. However, the traditional kind (at least in India, and I'm guessing in other places too) aren't easy things to wear despite their beauty, which is why my interest is more than slightly piqued by the fabric creations of Japanese artist Yonuko*. Yonuko's creations are worlds away from your run-of-the mill Alice band, being a take on traditional Japanese hair ornaments or tsumami-kanzashi (she makes them from vintage kimono fabric) that manages to make them look completely wearable but without ever entering the territory of oversimplification or kitsch. And wearable they might be, but ordinary they most certainly are not- the pictures should stand as proof enough of that (I'm actually inspired enough to look up kanzashi tutorials online, despite the fact that I will almost certainly bungle the making of anything like these). But there's much potential in the idea- hair is such an underaccessorised thing these days...

EDIT: To those who like kanzashi and won't be able to get your hands on Yonuko's pieces because you can't figure out how to buy them, I strongly recommend a look at Gochemoche's Etsy shop- she does absolutely lovely kanzashi as combs, snap clips, brooches and even pendants made out of kimono silk.

*just a quick heads-up to everyone who clicks: the site is entirely in Japanese, so it might not be that easy to navigate.

all pics from http://www.a-yarn.com and http://www.himeko-no-kazari.com.

Here's Looking At You, Cyd

2008-06-23T20:54:00.001-07:00

Cyd Charisse (1922-2008)

This might be belated, but rest in peace...and thank you for all those lovely dance numbers in the TNT movies I used to watch as a little girl.

Boudoir Pretties...

2008-06-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

Although there's no dearth of high-fashion glossies pushing the latest news about European/American labels entering the Indian market, I often wonder why we don't get to know more about designers from Asia*. It's probably got a lot to do with not having the PR machines to get their stuff known, but it's a real shame because there are too many really good designers whose work ends up flying under the fashion radar altogether.
One such designer (she's from Thailand, though not that unknown, going by her press page) is Disaya Prakobsantisukh of Boudoir, whose collection is a dolly-girl's dream, though it wouldn't be too hard to imagine other girls going for it too. It's simple and pretty, but not toothache-inducingly so, with a strong emphasis on dresses (this is the AW07 collection I'm looking at)- and the frill-less presentation of the clothes makes it really easy for me to imagine pulling a piece out of context and de-prettifying it by adding a parka or a beatup pair of boots to the mix (which is my first urge on encountering anything pretty-pretty). Though the ultimate surprise for me was the star-print dress on the right in the second photograph- turns out I don't really hate all star prints except one after all...

*most of my info about designers in Asian countries besides India, Korea and Japan has ended up coming off fashion blogs written from Asia.
all pictures from Boudoir.

Topshop Comes To Town...

2008-06-17T04:38:00.000-07:00

I really should look at newspapers earlier in the day...today's Economic Times tells me that the Arcadia group (they own Topshop) is apparently tying up with real estate developers DLF to open up a Topshop franchise in India, and that space for stores has already been blocked in an under-construction mall in South Delhi, among other places. There's no definite date attached to a possible opening- the only thing that gave me any clue was the line 'DLF has started blocking space for Topshop at some of its projects that may hit the market late this year,'. Which means..there could be a Topshop store in this country by the end of the year. (I'm hoping for an online store too, but am I getting ahead of myself?)
On one hand, I'm thrilled with the news- finally, a potential source of decent clothes that won't make me look like some pseudo NGO pillock (*coughFabIndiacough*), and won't be mundane enough to drive me to tears (Westside etc- ugh!)! But on the flip side, I'm worried about the designs being watered down to 'suit the Indian market'*, and also overpricing**. I suppose a lot depends on how the chain wants to position itself, too- whether it's setting itself up as the cooler, more fashionable alternative to the horrible high-street shops in existence today, or as yet another 'premium' brand from the UK (that was M&S's excuse for its own ridiculousness). And given that another article tells me that Zara could also open shop here by 2010...my clothes choices could get interesting- or more interesting than they are now, anyway.
*this is where I have nightmare visions of cheap Lycra 'clubwear' and caftans on the rails, and the more interesting designs never making it here at all.
**Mango, which has been around for a few years, sells camisoles- its cheapest items- for over a thousand rupees (that's about £ 12.50- £15 , which mightn't seem like a lot in the UK but is a lot here). M&S also used to overprice truly horrible clothes some years back, but I haven't been near it for a while.

Dreamworlds Are Not Just Pretty Places

2008-06-16T03:30:00.000-07:00

Aquarium (2005)A Demand 2 (2002)

Door (2007)

Tea Party (2006)

A Demand 1 (2002)

Garden Of Idea (2006)

The Time Of The Chrysanthemums (2003)

Reading In Afternoon (2003)

They Welcomed 1 (2006)

There's something about looking at Fuco Ueda's paintings that always gives me a feeling akin to listening to Air for hours on end- the dreamy detachment and extraordinary skin tones of the girls she paints, combined with their near-complete absorption in the frames they inhabit and a seeming disregard of onlookers no matter what those onlookers are witness to, make for a strangely compelling, provocative experience. She paints on canvas as well as cloth on wood using acrylic, shell powder and powdered mineral pigments, and her subjects are nearly always female, with plant and animal life rather prominently featured, though 'featured' is really the wrong word- they're much, much more than just background. And checking out more of her work, here, is highly recommended.

I could have sworn I'd done this post six months ago, but it's better late than never...though I deeply regret not doing it at least ten days ago- she had a show on till the 7th of this month at Roque La Rue Gallery in Seattle..

Symbiosis (2007)

all images from http://www.geocities.jp/uedafuco/.

I Don't Get This...

2008-06-16T01:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure what to make of the news that Chanel has actually taken on Emma Watson to be in its next set of adverts. On one hand, it'll probably be good for the publicity when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince gets released, it's refreshing that she's a normal girl and can dress herself decently enough without a stylist, and it's great that she hasn't reduced herself to bobbleheadedness yet. On the other, she's barely eighteen and is known only for her work in the Potter series (not exactly groundbreaking, but at least the last three are watchable) plus a BBC production of Ballet Shoes.
I don't know if that's even a proper ground for being circumspect about this, but I'm not a huge fan of actors-as-models (apart from Kirsten Dunst for Miu Miu, and heck, even Keira Knightley had more of a CV), and it might just have made more sense if they'd waited a couple of years. Also, following in the footsteps of Vanessa Paradis, Kate Moss and Nicole Kidman (and I wouldn't call myself a fan of the last two, but one can't deny their stature in their respective fields) calls for just a bit more of, I don't know, something, than what Emma's got at the moment.
EDIT, two days later: Turns out it's not true, and Miss Watson isn't fronting up any Chanel campaigns after all.
Bleargh, I'm going to go post about something else now. Celeb-focused posts are not my forte..

Away With The Fairies

2008-06-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

Queen Marie posted about babastudioprague's work before me, but happily we're in full agreement that their bags deserve a good talking-up, because they are beautiful. I'm not a fan of evening bags- they normally feel far too 'ladylike' for me, but the sheer whimsy and panache of these little shoulderbags has me hooked- especially their fairy bags, whose prints are based off actual story illustrations and even tarot.

Fairies By Night. There's very little chance of something getting nicked out of this (admittedly not large) bag if I owned it- I'd probably be staring at the front more than half the time. And I love the blue-green tones...

The Fairy Hunt. Title says it all, really- those are some scary-looking goblins in the print! But it's a really pretty drawstring bag...

Make Cakes Not War. I don't like slogan tees much. Slogan bags aren't often much better. But when the slogan is actually funny, an exception is well worth making. And I'd much rather have cakes than war.

Vintage silk-fronted messenger bag (phone not included!. The above two are gorgeous, though not quite practical for a life like mine (i.e. carrying everything but the kitchen sink in my bag). But if I really had to pick a babastudioprague bag to work for me, it would be this one, not least because messengers are my bag shape of choice, and I love the graphic print- and the idea of having one partly made out of vintage kimono silk is something I find more than a little appealing. And I'd advise checking out their other messenger bags too- these are VERY far from ordinary.
all pictures from babstudioprague's Etsy shop.

DRUMROLL, S’IL VOUS PLAÎT!

2008-06-13T18:42:00.001-07:00

Fashion bloggers and streetstyle watchers have loved her style since she was first photographed by the Sart last August, and now Louise -who needs no last name for instant recognition, and who has been previously mentioned here and here- has started her very own blog! It's every bit as lovely as one would expect (I seriously hope I'm not coming across as some kind of crazed fangirl here, even if I kind of am..). I'm also highly interested in her art posts,and hope she does more of them in the future..and why is anyone reading this far down the post, sane people should click on the link and be gone at once!
photograph from misspandorapandora.blogspot.com (totally not mine, sorry for borrowing but it had to be done!)

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream..

2008-06-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I flat-out fall in love with furniture, but my mind's eye is already seeing pictures of me asleep in this piece of loveliness, preferably with a few vines outside my bedroom windows too. Though its price tag is going to ensure that those pictures remain in my mind's eye only...
The picture and bed are both from Shawn Lovell Metalworks.

..............

2008-06-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

No, really, when will this madness stop? Even though Ali Michael already blew the whistle on just how common unhealthy weight-loss/dieting practices and eating disorders are in the fashion industry, it's still horrific to hear it corroborated by another model - this time Coco Rocha, who had a fairly busy season in Paris, so no one can accuse her of sour grapes now. (I'd suggest reading this, this and this). And I'm not really sure what to say any more, but one can't help but wonder just what it'll take to change things.

I'm not advocating total revolution (it's far from realistic to expect size 12 girls on the runway as a standard), but just enough change that a 5'10" girl weighing 108 pounds- which is approximately 49 kgs, for those who are more used to that unit of measurement- doesn't have to be told to lose more weight, doesn't have to be told to 'look anorexic', doesn't take diuretics to 'prepare' for show seasons and doesn't have to be told by her agent to throw up after meals to look even skinnier. It's not enough to say the girls aren't being forced to model, and they can walk away if they choose - which isn't entirely true. Models aren't the only working people who can ruin their health for their jobs in the name of doing them properly, but I don't think too many other fields require you to do so.
And if all these discussions and meetings about changing the status quo (and this is just sizism- racism now, that's another can of worms altogether) are really just hogwash, maybe a models' union wouldn't be such a bad idea after all (and I suspect not much will change in the immediate future, despite the fact that three top models have now spoken up about their own experiences- Natalia Vodianova last year, Ali, and now Coco. But seriously, would it really kill the designers to make their samples just a little bit bigger?).

Baby, The Stars Shine Bright

2008-06-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

By and large, star-printed clothes annoy me (though there are exceptions), not least because they're so damn twee (and then they turned trendy too. Heaven help us..). But then a random eBay browse led me to the following beauty by Hanae Mori, currently in the possession of Couture Allure Vintage Fashions:

The $249 that it's going for, here, isn't anywhere within my budget and I'm not sure that I'd stump up that much for just the print, but I love the constellation effect of the whole thing (that's how the seller describes it, and I agree. But it looks more like a coatdress/coverupdress than an actual dress), and the red moon combines with the scattering of the print to make it rather sweetly imaginative instead of emo. In any case, I've rediscovered my love of five-pointed star doodles, which isn't such a bad thing really.

Ack!

2008-06-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

Re: the news that Keira Knightley might be about to play Eliza Doolittle in a remake of My Fair Lady, my thoughts ran more or less as follows:

a) A remake? Of My Fair Lady? Sabrina was bad enough...and remakes of anything are nearly always crap. No, actually they're always crap.
b) Oh God, Keira Knightley as Eliza? She might be an authentic Londoner, but what about her pouting....and the singing...and the acting..
c) If they really have to do this, is Keira Knightley the only young actress in the UK aka the only name Hollywood can come up with to fill the role of a Cockney? I know Audrey Hepburn was also cast for commercial reasons, but she's Audrey Hepburn.

d) Whatever. I'm just going to watch Shimotsuma Monogatari again (the Japanese title sounds much cooler than Kamikaze Girls- this one's joining Amélie on my list of movies that will never fail to make me grin from ear to ear. It really is brilliant).
e) *BFH spends next couple of hours laughing her head off at aforementioned film*. I'll take Rococo Lolita+Biker Chick over a rehash that will probably be as bad as all the other rehashes before it, any day.

Kamikaze Girls aka Shimotsuma Monogatari

2008-06-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

Films that involve or acknowledge fashion* aren't things that get made all that often, or by too many people**. But I really wish more of them were like Kamikaze Girls, the one I just finished watching after an email from a friend who raved about it. The eponymous girls aren't suicidal as the title might have suggested at first, but a Rococo Lolita going through culture shock in the small town she's moved to with her yakuza dad, and a biker chick (whose bike isn't exactly what one would conventionally expect on hearing the words 'biker chick', though her behaviour certainly is - inclusive of headbutting! And spitting!). The two lead actresses have fantastic chemistry, and the first half is a riot- I don't think a minute went by without me laughing, and the funny special effects (a yellow cloud for a fart, a cross over a kanji error), along with a crackpot animated sequence on the history of the gangs, are brilliant. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the fashion is fabulous (and how can it not be, with two protagonists like that?). And just in case it isn't clear- this is a must-watch. Especially if you happen to be a bow fetishist, or like movies about female friendships (and there aren't nearly enough of those). Pictures follow.

Ichigo (left, looks vaguely like Shirley Manson IMO) and Momoko(right). The white thing on Momoko's head is a giant bow..

Ichigo's biker outfit (which I think is massively cool). And her bike (partly hidden by her).

It's not quite obvious in the picture above, but Ichigo's long skirt is pleated.

Which reminds me, were Japanese motorcycle gang outfits the inspiration behind Yohji Yamamoto AW08-09? This just makes me even surer of it..

Momoko loves her head bows, even when she isn't in full Lolita kit (I want one, now..)

The pink scooter (sorry, I still can't get over it!)

*note: I don't mean fashion as in runways, photoshoots etc. I'm talking about the things of six posts ago, just the process of getting dressed and giving that some thought for your own sake.
*and I'm not talking about stupid rom-coms with heroines working at a 'fashion magazine' or some such thing. Or SATC.
Screencaps by me, except the last one. Yohji runway images from style.com.