Mile High City

Just returned from a quick weekend trip to Denver, USA. The air was very dry.

Winturd

↑ Private

Here I am, sporting a thin veil of patience while I wait for the arrival of Spring. If this waiting game were a visit to the doctor's office, I would not be getting a "GREAT JOB" sticker at the end of my check-up. In a month or so, I'll be knocking pollen out of these old cushions and sharing a sunny spot next to the dozing neighborhood cat. Yes, I can almost hear the tinkling of ice in my Campari...

Also, I cut my hair! I wanted to look like a little German boy. It looks like a mushroom cap / Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber / early Beatles mop.

Orange Ya Glad

↑ Ivan de Pineda and Lonneke Engel by Bruce Weber, VERSUS s/s 1996

Spring is coming, it's almost here! This winter was dark and brutal, like an enchanted sword made out of black ice. Everyone on the island got sick at the same time this year, myself included. Everybody died! (Just kiddin'). Collectively,  everyone seems as excited as I am that the sun is getting stronger and that our bodies aren't laying prone on scraps of carpet in freezing makeshift quarantine tents. (Not really, that didn't happen).

↑ Kirsten Owen by Mario Sorrenti in "Suburban Outfitters" for W Magazine, July 1998

The Space Lady

With the voice of a crystal bell chiming in outer space, Susan Dietrich aka Suzy Sounds aka The Space Lady, is street-music legend!  Equipped with her Casiotone and signature winged helmet, Suzy emitted extra-terrestrial harmonies throughout the streets of 1970's Boston and 80's San Fransisco. Ms. Soundz has recently emerged from retirement to compile an amazing album with Night School Records (digital) (vinyl). Of her early street sets, only one recording was made, self-released originally on cassette and then transferred to a home-made CD. "The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits"(LSSN021) features the best of these recordings - mostly covers but with some originals. via Night School

For further reading check out The Space Lady in Dazed Digital and at Boing Boing.

Strange Voyage

Mid-century illustrator Peter P. Plasencia had an great eye for storytelling and perspective. His illustrations for Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented the Future (1964) by Franz Born are so engaging. I love how a perfect little stippling of gouache can render so many different shades and shadows. I love them all, but my favorite is the one with two men dashing downhill.

↑ via brain pickings

Very Special Gift

I have no words. I can't believe it! Froghammer made me this!:

Observe!

I love to see the insides of a final product! So, needless to say, I am utterly amazed at this eight hour behind-the-scenes SHOWstudio production of a full work-day on the set of W Magazine's October 2012 editorial "Sweet Escape". Also, I am totally fascinated with this simple observational style of cinéma vérité.

It's refreshing to see a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the fashion world without all the stupid vanity and frenetic post-production riffs, soundbites, and quick cuts. I am interested in fashion culture well enough, but what I most appreciate is its craft. Editorials are vast appreciations of clothing as art. This is what I love about fashion: the ways that we present, admire, and wear clothes.

      (via SHOWstudio):
      "Karlie Kloss dies an elegant death in Nick Knight and Edward Enninful's arresting couture editorial for W Magazine. The pair drew inspiration from the kind of macabre, nightmarish illustrations that litter childhood fiction, offering up a vision which is part Grimm's fairy tale part mature Parisian opulence. The final images - which see Kloss clad in the best haute couture from A/W 2012, including pieces by Dior, Givenchy, Chanel and Iris Van Herpen - straddle dark and light, combining symbolism that is both sweet and sinister.
      Continuing his exploration of contrasts, Knight juxtaposes the delicate vintage-look images with pithy modern 'death app' films that see Kloss suffer various violent deaths, all while clad in couture. The striking images in this editorial mark of the start of Knight's investigation into fashion illustration."

Pairs [no.1]

It's a new year! For your enjoyment... here are four pairs of pictures! I'll be doing little installments like these throughout the year - I tend to try and associate images with others when I see them, so this little project is sort-of a representation of the way I mentally archive and enjoy media.

↑ 1: unknown via bolshenebudet

2: WEIRD GIRLS ep.7 by Sara Vilbergs
3: unknown
4: unknown
5: Zuma Series (1977) by John Divola
6: Zuma Series (1977) by John Divola
7: shoes by Martiniano Lopez for MARTINIANO
8: Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love (1963)

Scènes De Nada

A dozen odd shaped speckled brown eggs from down the road, a messy flannel sheet bed, Leeloo Dallas multipass, and an Australian opal crystal, a Hobbit's breakfast.

Sea Maid

      Kristen McMenamy runs a fever in W's December 2013 editorial "Far From Land". This conceptually dark editorial tells the story of a languishing sea-maid wasting away from unrequited love à la Hans Christian Anderson's lurid classic "The Little Mermaid".

I love the dark styling of this forlorn mermaid. Pearls, rockweed, a Balenciaga sweater and a heavy and forbidding Alexander McQueen dress. Her brow-less bloodshot eyes are set perfectly in sockets sculpted with a touch of cool grey. I've never seen the application of red to the eye quite like this. It's awesome! Everything about her has a warning quality, a nocturnal animal out at midday. "If you cannot make the prince fall so much in love with you that his every thought concerns only you, then, the first morning after he has married another, your heart will break and you will become foam on the ocean...   It was the last night that she would breathe the same air as he, or look out over the deep sea and up into the star-blue heaven. A dreamless, eternal night awaited her, for she had no soul and had not been able to win one." from Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid"

mmm

Photography:  Tim Walker Styled by:  Jacob K Hair:  Julien d'Ys Makeup:    Stephane Marais

Reminds me of these photos of Sasha Pivovarova by Higashi Ishida in Madame Figaro, Setember 2004:

Efteling

Young Kate Bush made her television debut in 1978 on a Dutch TV special produced by the Efteling theme park in the Netherlands. (Efteling had recently opened their haunted castle Spookslot and wanted to show off the park's new attraction). Kate is such a clever and sincere artist. I think she is pure magic.