Morgan le Fay

      Clad in chain-mail, structured armor, leather, and lace, Kristen McMenamy broods like a hellion in W's September 2012 editorial "The Dame of Thrones".

I love how barbed wire and a conical Philip Treacy transparent head-piece (#4) give this Medieval Britain thing a whole Seam-In-Time feel. I remember hearing an interview with Monty Python's Michael Palin that a lot of the chain-mail worn in The Holy Grail was actually just knitted creations spray painted silver (sounds soggy). Craig Lawrence's metallic yarn chain mail shirt and pants (#3) are very convincing and wearable... something maybe Daphne Guinness would don to check out a litter of dalmatian puppies (or whatever it is that she does with herself). Her inspired silver glove by Shaun Leane (#8) certainly seems useful for glancing blows from little doggie paws.

mmm

Photography:  Tim Walker Styled by:  Jacob K Hair and Headpieces:  Julien d'Ys Makeup:    Val Garlande

 

Watermelon

      Pretty much all I've accomplished today is eating an entire watermelon with a spoon and listening to Ben E. King records.

↑ Private

      I love watermelons and I don't care how sticky I get when I'm eating them because, you know, it's summertime.  You know who else loves watermelons? JAPAN!

↑ $300 square watermelon. Photo by laughlin

↑ $230 portable watermelon cooler keeps your melon cool and can even heat it up. Via JOYBOND

↑ Gas tank in Tomisato, Chiba prefecture. Via This is my brother!

      Lastly, a scene from the film Kikujiro (1999). Takeshi Kitano plays a totally gauche but endearing grump who finds himself playing guardian to dorky little Masao. They have lots of weird adventures out in rural Japan enroute looking for Masao's mom. And they eat watermelons.

Happy eating, friends!

Life On Mars

        Ground control to Spaceman David Bowie! Can you hear me, you crazy post-modernist? A real-life robot named Curiosity has landed on MARS. Martian exploration is the most refreshing thing to hit my shores this week. I dedicate this one to girls with the mousy hair everywhere: May you find your life on Mars!

↑ Curiosity rover, scootin' around on Mars. (Image taken by the Mars Reconnasince Orbiter)  NASA/JPL-Caltech

↑ Dark dunes and steep mesas at the foot of Mount Sharp NASA/JPL-Caltech

↑ Me, standing next the the blast marks made by the rover during its descent NASA/JPL-Caltech

↑ Gale Crater and evidence a fluvial system; a stream bed meanders down the crater wall NASA/JPL-Caltech

↑ Curiosity. A self-portrait NASA/JPL-Caltech

        And here's a little special something for all you science geeks out there: exclusive never before seen footage of NASA building the Curiosity rover:

Deep Thoughts

        Class is now in session, kids.

↑ "Bill Murray"

Mugler Constructs

     These Mugler Resort 2012 collection droids by Nicola Formichetti and Sébastien Peigné could very well be the sets of porcelain harlequin theater masks that hang in your new-age aunts living room.  Even though they haven't moved since she hung them there in 1982, they always seem to have shifting expressions and agendas; one visit they're spirits of Samurai wearing Hakama pants and the next they're flag-bearing Olympians.

     Formichetti and Peigné cited the work of American illustrator Mel Odom, whose print "Kabuki Kiss" is featured in this collection, as a focal inspiration. Odom's subjects are most often dolls with a fascinating lacquered sheen or melancholic fragmented people charged with mysterious and erotic thoughts. Your aunt is a huge fan. She has this one hanging up in her boudoir.

↑ "Kabuki Kiss"

↑ "Sunken Woman 2"

↑ "Laura Elisabeth"

↑ "The Rain Queen"

↑ "Graceland Gate"

↑ "Lowell Jones"

Supernatural Women, part 1

      Hello Milla Jovovich, supernatural babe extrordinaire! This woman sure does know how to work in front of a camera. Here are some screen-tests for Luc Besson's The Fifth Element (1997) in which Milla is portraying supernatural 'Fifth Element' Lee-Loo. Watching her work as this unknown element / supreme being is like witnessing her mining the stuff out of space rocks or something.




      Then, of course, there's Jean Paul Gaultier.  For me, it's his freakiest stuff that's the best; on the runway, I love his languid females in rubber nurses outfits the best.  In The Fifth Element it's apparent that he's had his hand in a dystopian futuristic honeypot and touched every outfit in the film.  Here is Milla on camera in what would someday become Burning Man's most signature outfits. (Hello Day-Glo orange rubber suspenders! Gold scuba pants! White Bandage Jumper!!)

Teens, Dentists, Olympics

        Kerri Strug's coach Béla Károlyi seems to be a very intensely passionate man, like he probably insists on things needing MORE INTENSITY a lot. 1996 was the year that my dentist kept insisting that I looked just like Dominique Moceanu as I received a filling without novocaine.

        I love the Chemical Brothers' music video for Elektrobank directed by Spike Jonze.  Sofia Coppola's sidelong glances remind me a lot of a young stuffed doggie, sitting in a dentist chair.