Gothic: Dark Glamour

"The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) will present Gothic: Dark Glamour, the first exhibition devoted to the gothic in fashion, from September 5, 2008 through February 21, 2009." "The main gallery space will be designed as a labyrinth, featuring iconic themes such as Night, with black evening dresses; the Ruined Castle, with fashion inspired by gothic images of the Dark Ages, ruins, and fragments; and the Laboratory, where futuristic fashion "monsters" are created." (2008, www.fitnyc.edu)

Gothic Dark Glamour features designs from many other international designers, some included in the show are: Alexander McQueen, Ann Demeulemeester, Comme des Garçons, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Hussein Chalayan, Christian Lacroix, Gareth Pugh, Kei Kagami, Thierry Mugler, Rick Owens, Anna Sui, Olivier Theyskens, Jun Takahashi of Undercover, and Yohji Yamamoto.

Will we see the fashion old guard turning out goth-like Chanel suits for their ladies who lunch? Eek! But it will be exciting to see what Pugh, Theyskens, the amazing Jun Takahashi (Underworld), and the others pull off.

link

STEAMPUNK

A Retro Design Movement That's All About the Future

Whether you love it or hate it, it's here to be mainstream-ed. The New York Times profiled it last weekend.

Steampunk style clothes and designers have been around for a long time as have authors, performance artists, and musicians (DeVotchKa, Rasputina, Abney Park) around the world. The local Burlesque reviews and caberet shows are appearing in most every town across the country. Some people are over it and think it's silly but I like the return to this bygone era and admire the beauty and creativity.

Kat Bret has a nice photo portfolio and you can see how she pulls from different periods so skillfully. She really captures the clothing and style of that dark, mad max melancholy, steampunk, whateverthefuckyouwannacallit genre. You're welcome. NSFW

"The term "steampunk" is a play on cyberpunk, a type of near-future science fiction where rebellious hackers use handmade tech to wage virtual warfare with corporations and governments. Steampunk was a term used almost jokingly as a name for science fiction that was set in the Victorian era as opposed to the virtual future, but which still featured rebellious protagonists utilizing strange technology. In steampunk, the punk is not a computer hacker, but a mechanical one. I do believe the pendulum has swung."



Abney Park

for more on Steampunk:
Workshop | PaperMag | Wired | Jake von Slatt | Jeff Vandermeer | Datamancer | Treehouse | Flickr | More Flickr | Maker Faire

Tiffa Novoa 1975-2007 Costume Designer, Performance Artist.

Tiffa was not just a fashion designer, she invented an entire aesthetic style. She was not just one of the founding members of a notorious performance troupe, she helped to create an entire subculture.

She wasn’t just a visionary artist, she was a force of nature whose ripple effects inspired, and will continue to inspire, her closest friends and countless, thousands, of people who are likely not even aware that this is the woman responsible for their inspiration.

El Circo [is credited] with creating the postapocalyptic fashions that many now associate with Burning Man. Most of the original El Circo fashions, which convey both tribalism and a sense of whimsy, were designed by member Tiffa Novoa, who has since hit it big with her Onda Designs.

Tiffa Novoa, the legendary Bali based mind behind fine and exotic couture was teamed up with Evan Sugarman to form the now infamous fashion system, ERNTE Fashion Systems.

via

An Example of Her Work

NOKI'S HOUSE OF SUSTAINABILITY

NOKI did not disappoint at London's Fashion East show with a melange of thrift that appeared to be styled by Edward Scissorhands.

Jonathan "JJ" Hudson is a club kid cum music industry stylist who goes by the name NOKI and he states that House of Sustainability is not for sale. Something of a recluse you'll rarely see pictures of him (then only with trademark mask) and he doesn't want to sell you clothes.

The Noki House of Sustainability (NHS) is about inspiring everyone to have a bash at customizing and recycling their old stuff. You don't have to go nuts attacking an old bridesmaid's dress with scissors and pvc- try altering necklines and hemlines or head to a haberdashers and get some beads to tart up a plain top.

Appropriately enough, both Gareth Pugh and his mate, BoomBox founder and current patron saint of London drag queens, Richard Mortimer, were in the front row.



Via: Inhabitat | MySpace | More »

I'm passionate about alternative design. And I like that D&B has introduced riding crops in their collection. (Dominatrix, party of one?) Can't you see scores of women casually carrying a crop?

W E B T R A I L

Prada Rehab Rock - Damien Hirst and his ex-junkie friend Antony Genn team up to rock out Fashion Week (soberly). link

Stripes, Harlequin, Rubber, Vinyl are themes of Designer Gareth Pugh. His creations are more akin to fetishwear than fashion, but that's a bad thing, why? The old guard aren't sure whether to salute him or shoot him. Fall/Winter 2007 collection hereand Spring 2007 here.

Big City Orchestrae will be heading to Europe in September for their first tour overseas in six years! Great news, Ninah Pixie! link

Dave Nitsche - Conceptual Photography link

This graying hippie makes the nightly, winding climb 18 feet to her cozy bedroom. She wakes to roosters' crows and the scents of dewy soil. Over breakfast, her view is a jungle of towering trees, no hint of hustle and bustle.

Shawnee Chasser lives in a treehouse above a secret garden in the middle of Miami. For 15 years, she has lived atop the 1.5-acre nirvana of green trees and farm animals behind a row of houses 10 minutes from downtown. And she advertises on Craigslist and rents out rooms for $380 a month. Really. link

Fuck the DNA - The evolution continues with the return of Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV link

Revenge of the Weirdos? The decidedly nonconformist Animal Collective takes New York. link

The intelligent want self-control; children want candy. --Mevlana Rumi (1207 - 1273)

***UPDATE: Wow! I had the title (W E B TR A I L) set on font 150 instead of 150%; hope I didn't make anyone go blind.

FESTIVAL WEAR

"Festival Wear" these days must be an ass kicking money maker. While we were still twisting one up behind the main stage, evidentially someone was planning a whole line of festival wear for us festival lovers. The whole big bonanza superfest scene has become a tad bit crass where once it was almost pure-- in a non-virginal way, but pure of music and with the purest of intent.

Wasn't part of the whole festival concept in the beginning to share, trade, and barter? (I'll trade you my embroidered vest for your pipe) The music and the love was the fucking thing! Everything else was incidental. Extremely low maintenance. I know that clothes weren't very important, if you even wore them at all.

Websites and catalogs are now devoted to festival clothing, hats and other accessories specifically for the festivals and beyond. There's even a Burning Man Clothing Swap August 5. Illuminated clothes are fun. You may see a window display of "wellies" proclaiming "hip festival fashion" for any well respected festival goer. (Thanks, Deborah)

Lotus Moon, who is about as ethical as a company can be, has a trademark on those "Pixie Pockets" and Heretika has some similar pixie belts you may also see at gatherings. I'll cop to getting one for my sweet husband once but it was gifted to me. You can't fault a business for answering the call of what the market wants.

It's always about change. Burning Man is (some would say has been) going corporate. America's biggest counterculture jamboree is also a $10 million business. Now, Business 2.0 reports, it's trying to leverage its brand -- and save the planet -- by (gasp!) inviting corporate participants.

link | via

So, is change good when it's profitable? Does money fuck everything up? Will Lassie find Timmy in the well?

Smith and Tibetan monks at Carnegie Hall Monday night. Photo: AP

Death loomed large at the Philip Glass curated benefit concert for Tibet House U.S. Monday night at Carnegie Hall, when a parade of legendary talents - among them Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Michael Stipe - performed numbers in honor of deceased friends. And as if that weren't depressing enough, when the thrilling succession of reimagined hits and covers stopped, we suddenly realized that all our idols onstage talking about death will die, too. Oh, God.

There were chanting monks, a beautiful, minimalist set from Sigur Rós, and Ben Harper. Debbie Harry happily danced to an acoustic version of "Heart of Glass." And then came Lou Reed, the first to sing about getting old. Ray Davies harkened back to the Kinks' glory days, getting the crowd to sing along with "Lola," "Sunday Afternoon," and "Dedicated Follower of Fashion." He admitted to being foggy about why, exactly, he was there: "This is a great event. I'm not sure of all the details, but the spirit moved me." And then he, too, got wistful about age. "Being in a band at this point in my life is a separation anxiety of the worst sort," he said. "We never know when we'll meet again.

"A very chatty Stipe sang a duet of "Everybody Hurts" with Smith; then he performed "Chorus and the Ring," written in honor of two dead friends, Kurt Cobain and William S. Boroughs, and dedicated to Karin Berg, the A&R rep who'd originally signed R.E.M., the Cars, and Television, who died in 2006. "I've never sung it live before," he said, "other than with my band in my apartment yesterday."

It may have been the best concert we've seen in years, and the night belonged to Smith. She did an amazing cover of "Within You Without You," in honor of George Harrison's birthday on Sunday; she rocked "1959," the rousing antiwar anthem she wrote "addressing the rise of the Beats, the takeover of Tibet by the Chinese, and the beautiful Chevy Impala"; she and Glass gave an incredible tribute to departed friend Alan Ginsberg. Back in 1995, a few months after her husband's death, Smith explained, Ginsberg had brought Smith out of her seclusion to perform at a Tibet House benefit. Every year since Ginsberg's death, Smith and Glass have performed his poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra." Monday night it rose on a slow crescendo till Smith intoned in strident staccato, "I declare the end of the war!"

If only it were that easy. —Jada Yuan

Stipe sang the R.E.M. oddities "New Test Leper," and "Chorus and the Ring," which he said developed after conversations he had with the late beat poet William S. Burroughs. The latter song has never been performed by R.E.M., according to Stipe.

All of my favorite people were there --must have been really great. Let's see if I can find a podcast or mp3 link of the music.

link

Uma? No. It certainly looks like Uma Thurman. It's Nena Von Schlebrugge, Uma's mother, as she gets ready to wed Timothy Leary. (She later divorced Leary and married Tibetan scholar, Dr. Robert Thurman.)

Nena was 28 when she met Leary, who was then 45, at his annual Fourth of July party upstate in Millbrook. According to Robert Greenfield (who recently wrote a bio of Leary), she told the mind-altering Harvard professor that she "wanted to go to India to seek ultimate wisdom, not to mention the secret sexual practices of the Orient."

"They took LSD and three days later they decided to get married," recalls Leary's ex-girlfriend Peggy Hitchcock.

Their Millbrook nuptials were a "phantasmagoric, magical mystery tour, the first real big coming-out party for all the A-list, jet-set, high-fashion beautiful people from New York who had recently discovered LSD," writes Greenfield. "Guests lined up to present the newlyweds with hash, grass and psychedelic mushrooms, as well as snuffboxes filled with LSD and cocaine." The wedding cake was crowned with the Hindu deities Shakti and Siva having sex.

You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You
By D A Pennebaker
1964, 12 minutes, Black & White

Watch Video (Quick Time)

It's way past time to give out the Dickhead Award and I decided on Dick Cheney for his pure detached insensitivity.

While tens of thousands of Hurricane survivors were left homeless and hungry (that is, if they were lucky enough to not be dead), Vice President Dick Cheney decided it was a great time to go mansion shopping. You heard me right: mansion shopping. These assholes aren't even trying to look like they care anymore. According to the Washington Post, Dick Cheney was checking out real estate in St. Michaels, a tiny resort town on the Maryland's Eastern Shore. Apparently "Cheney's house," which is listed at $2.9 million, "backs up in spectacular fashion to an inlet of the Chesapeake Bay." How charming. But I suppose it is possible that I am being too hard on the Vice President. Given the timing of the purchase, I think there may be something else going on here. Maybe Vice President and Mrs. Cheney were so distressed by the stories of displaced families from New Orleans that they are buying the property in order to use it for emergency housing for hurricane survivors. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Then after the guy in New Orleans who yelled Go Fuck Yourself, Cheney, got handcuffed by his Cheney's 'aids', he just seemed like the right choice for latest my Dickhead Award. via

And if he doesn't like it, he can go Cheney himself.

Tilda Swinton To Play Nico

"Asylum" and "Young Adam" director David Mackenzie has selected Tilda Swinton to play Nico in his upcoming biopic of the same name, from a script by David and Janet Peoples (Blade Runner) according to Suicide Girls.


Nico (born Christa Paffgen) was a fashion model, actress, and composer. She is best known as the female lead vocalist (along with male lead Lou Reed) on the 1967 debut album by the American rock and roll band, The Velvet Underground.

The date and location of Nico's birth are disputed. Most sources state October 16, 1938, Cologne, Germany. However, at least two other sources have put her birth date at March 15, 1943, in Budapest, Hungary. She died in 1988.

Link

.....very interesting, if disturbing.

A startling report has emerged this weekend that the U.S. has used napalm fire bombs in Iraq and then lied about it to the British government.

According to The Independent, the U.S. used 30 MK77 firebombs – a new generation of incendiary weapons - during the initial Iraqi invasion between March 31 and April 2 2003.

Like white phosphorus ammunitions, napalm has a strategic role when used against civilian populations. Napalm not only produces a sticky burning gel that adheres to the skin as it burns through, leading to loss of blood pressure and eventually death in a short period of time, but it also releases clouds of carbon monoxide that can kill by asphyxiation. (Everyone will remember the Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the naked girl in Vietnam, running down the road screaming as her skin burned with napalm.)

A 1980 UN convention banned the use of napalm against civilians - after those pictures shocked the world.

America, which didn't ratify the treaty, is the only country in the world still using the weapon.
[more »]
* * * * * * * * *
It is now time for the international community to hold the White House and the Pentagon responsible. In particular, those in the Bush administration and the top ranks of the military who approved the use of such weapons and then knowingly lied about it need to be help accountable. Our leaders need to know that we the citizens of the United State do not support the use of chemical weapons in any fashion and categorically abhor the enrichment of ammunitions with depleted uranium.

And if the U.S. will not take responsibility for its actions, then the international community needs to hold them accountable.

Freiheit und Wissen has a thoroughly researched post and add'l info.

Alice Cooper and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick discuss their struggles with drug dependency in The Harder They Fall. The book, which was co-authored by Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill, features extensive interviews with 21 celebrities who have overcome addiction to lead "more successful [lives], free of drugs and alcohol." The Harder They Fall hits shelves April 1.

March 18-20: Global Days Of Protest on the two-year anniversary of the Iraq war. End the war. Bring the troops home now. Visit United For Peace to find an action near you. On Tuesday, March 15th the House of Representative is scheduled to vote on the president's request for an additional $82 billion for the war in Iraq. Just a few days later the 2nd anniversary of the beginning of that war will be marked by protest activities in at least 300 cities around the country, and scores of other places around the world.

J. Lo has a nasty habit of shamelessly flaunting furs, from her mink eyelashes down to her rabbit-fur footwear. Read more for the lowdown on the gruesome, bloody fur trade. "Many of the great designers, including Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood, Todd Oldham, and others have turned their backs on fur and created synthetic alternatives that are hip, humane, and easily available and don't turn animals into fashion victims."

Today's Quote: "Wal-Mart puts down roots in the shadow of the Pyramid of the Sun in San Juan Teotihuacan. Is the global leviathan any match for Quetzalcoatl?"
~~ John Ross, Wal-Mart A La Mexicana

What happened? I thought I posted this Saturday.

I ran across a blog today by R Crumb. More precisely, it appears to be written by Aline about their daily lives, events, and appearances She speaks of making art, attending the Paris fashion show with her friend, the weather, life with Robert and surviving a recent media blitz at their home. The site, with news and the weblog is in conjunction with his new presentation, The R Crumb Handbook, which is out now, March 2005.

The R Crumb Handbook, is 440 pages in hardback, including hundreds of drawings, cartoons, photographs, a free CD of Crumb music and never before seen material from his personal archives, The R. Crumb Handbook is the most comprehensive presentation to date of the life, trials and ideas of one of the most influential artists of the last 40 years. It's gotta be great! Crumb Blog

Producer Don Was has said to Billboard that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have been writing together and that what they have come up with is magic and they hope to release an album in mid-2005. Was said: "Mick and Keith are writing songs together in a collaborative fashion that probably hasn't been seen since the late '60s. Getting better with age, you know. more »

Today's Quote
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.~ Maori Proverb

saturday morning me//
hazelnut coffee #2/vitamins/
½ krispy kreme cheesecake dognut--too rich/
drawstring pants/olive henley/black long vest/yoga flats/
my christmas tree looks so lovely/
if only someone would bring it in from the porch/
listening: kashmir by led zeppelin/
so how about you?/

Everybody who's ready for the holidays, please form a line on the right and wait for your spanking.

Five years ago, Tanya Gold was admitted to the Priory with a catastrophic alcohol problem...

I realised I was an alcoholic the day I mounted Brian Sewell. It was deepest lunchtime, one Tuesday in 1999, and I was working as a gossip columnist at the London Evening Standard. I was drinking vodka from a Pepsi can and writing about dog fashion shows. Then, out of the fractures of my brain, burst a "rock-bottom". I looked across the office and saw the art critic, sitting at his desk.

I decided to "take" Brian. I lunged, straddled him - and the newsroom gaped. As I was peeled off, a pale Sewell said, "If I was ever unsure I'm a homosexual, I'm not now," and I was dispatched to the Priory Hospital, a Victorian Gothic mansion just north of Richmond Park. With battlements, en-suite bedrooms and a jewellery shop, the loony-bin of tabloid lore looks like the Savoy spliced with Broadmoor. It costs £3,000 a week.

To find more about Tanya Gold and to see if Brian Sewell made it out alive, read [more»]
{a nod to - tmftml who notes most rehab stories are boring; this opening is interesting} Not only do I find it interesting, it's gutsy as hell. And a little too familiar. Believe it.

I see it everywhere I go: "Firecrackers Ahead!" "Fireworks For Sale!". Little roadside stands selling fireworks now dot the landscape.

I see the Crazy Bob's Fireworks tent and pull in. Husband and wife tag-team modeling the latest in Fourth Of July fashions give me a nod as I step out of the car. Upon closer inspection I believe Uncle Sam threw up on them both, leaving no appendage unadorned.

Ignoring the 'No Smoking' sign, Mrs. Crazy fans herself with a dirty flyswatter and two small children climb her frame for a sip of her Big Gulp.

"Can I hep ye?"

"Yes, ma'am", I say. "I'm looking for sparklers. Do you have those?"

"A-yep. Ri-cheer," pointing to a display of sparklers.

Shuffling towards the cash register she calls out, "Zat gonna be it?"

"No, I'll take some of those M-100's. Aren't those things illegal?"

She's swatting flies and kiddies; I select a few more items, pay Mrs. Crazy and go.

I'm so ready for the Fourth Of July weekend. 'Cause nothing says "Let Freedom Ring" like blowing shit up on the Fourth.

{Clock Of The Long Now}
Some of you know about Stewart Brand's Clock Of The Long Now. If not, you may want to see what this visionary has been up to lately.

Brian Eno recently released a cd of bells sounds he designed for the 10,000 Year Clock and profits will go to the Long Now Foundation. You can hear the cd here.

Also initiated by the Long Now Foundation, The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to develop a contemporary counterpart of the historic Rosetta Stone.

He does everything in such grand fashion.