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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.