Audrey Kawasaki

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

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

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

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

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

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

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