Related #3: Do it like a Dude

Yesterday's post dealt with women who dress like men, or don't (Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, I'm a-looking at you) to assert their power.

But where there are Queens, there are Kings...

And where there is power, there is also subservience...

So, to veer insanely from one end of a spectrum to another, here are some pictures of women who dress like men to show their love for a man.  Like a king.  The King, in fact. 

These photos were taken by Grey Villet in 1957 for TIME Magazine.  They show a day in the life of Susan Hull, who has decided to take the plunge and get an Elvis-style pompadour, joining the thousand strong ranks of girls and women in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who love Elvis so much that they want to look like him. 

If you want to put it in a modern context, imagine thousands of femme Justin Beiber fans, all with the same, super feathery, peekaboo, come-hither (but not too close, I'm a good Christian) hair*.  Just for the love of the Biebs.  Have you shuddered?  Has an icy cold finger of revulsion crawled down your back?  Good, let's look at the pictures.

All captions from the original article (because they're hilarious)



Susan Hull looks apprehensive as beautician prepare to form lock into Presley sidecurl




IN NEW GLORY: Nancy Hull happily shows off Presley cut.  Beautician who created style stresses convenience for girls who like swimming without caps.




CONFRONTING FATHER outside the beauty shop.  Susan Hull (left) and her sister Nancy, 20, display haircuts.  He was noncommital about new style.




COMFORTING MOTHER, Susan promises not to have her brown hair dyed black.  After showing cut to family, she gave ponytail to 4-year old brother.




CONVINCING SWEETHEART, Susan explains her coiffure to her beau Lew Potter in Motorcycle shop.  At first he threatened to break their next date.




CLIPPED GALLERY sits for a group portrait in Didgson's beauty shop.  The sideburns are standard but the number of stray locks on foreheads is optional


Read the original article here.

*Lesbians who look like Justin Beiber notwithstanding.  The Lesbiebers are awesome.

Some things are better in black and white...

...like film noirs, for example.  Imagine The Big Sleep in Technicolour. Oh no no no.

With pattern, black and white can sometimes have a higher visual impact than the full prismatic experience.  Black and white are two absolute opposites.  One could not be more different than the other.  It's the ultimate contrast.

Even better than black and white patterns are black and white patterns that are shot in black and white.  Excuse me if I'm getting too Brechtian here.  Case in point - these pictures, taken by Nina Leen for the March 1958 issue of Life.











Source: Life Photo Archive



This photo is unrelated, but I love the monochromatic goodness the picture adds.  I wonder what colour Barbara Streisland and Marlene Dietrich's suits were in real life?

"If you wear a ringer, you're Indie Rock. Period."

Wise words, Daisy von Furth, wise words.

X-girl is the sister to Japanese label X-Large and, as I type, is only available in Japan. In 1994, when the label was launched, the brands directors were Daisy Von Furth and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth *cue fangirl squeee*

While is lasted in it's RIOT GRRRL format, it was pretty darn cool. With all the clean lines and simple tailoring, it reminds me of a no boys-allowed Fred Perry.

X Girl editorial for Vice Magazine 

Did you notice a very young Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola in the video? And Chloe Sevigny was their original fit model. ANDandand and and... *fades into silence*

EDIT - While we're on the subject of music in fashion, you can watch a video of myself and Dawn of Skinni Peach talking about fashion in music with our playlist on the Teen RTE (think Irish BBC) website .  The video will be on the website for a week, so have a click and see what we like!  You'll get to see me move and speak (a bit like an Irish Daria Morgendorffer) and display abysmal posture.  What an incentive.

John Galliano - or is it?

What fashion blogette worth her salt doesn't have Fashion Gone Rogue on her reader?  Everyone has their reason for clicking; their favourite models, labels, stylists and photographers are all there.  I'm not the biggest fan of editorials, but I do love their Morning Beauty feature - chock full of notable picks that you might not have seen the first time around.

Here's part of a shoot from Vogue Paris' Dec/Jan '06/'07 issue - Dans la Peau de John Galliano, photographed by Peter Lindbergh, styled by new Vogue Paris editrix Emmanuelle Alt and starring Sasha Pivovarova as, er, John Galliano.  The resemblance is uncanny.

2010 Roundup - favourites, highlights and everything in between

It's that time again.  Sluggish bloggers, slowed down into a cosy Christmas chrysalis are sloughing off the excess of too many mince pies and slices of blue cheese and evaluating the year in order to burst into 2011 a beautiful blog butterfly.  Like the alliteration?  I wrote it just for you.  Here's my 2010 'best of' blog mixtape.

Blog Highlights:  I started this blog in March with the aim of sharing what I liked and meeting a few like-minded people.  In the space of a few short months, I've racked up readers from around the world, landed a fashion column, learned a hell of a lot about the fashion industry, joined the Vice Blogging Network, went to London Fashion Week, networked like a mad thing, was mentioned as one of Ireland's most influential bloggers and made some truly exceptional, hilarous and supportive friends.  All of this due to blogging aspersions.  So, to my readers, I'd like to say a massive THANK YOU!  You guys are the best.  Seeing all your comments really brightens up my day.

(source)

Click 'Read More' to, ehm, read more, look at nice pictures and watch some fashion films...

Bonnie and Clyde '10

Thankfully, I'm not referring to Jay-Z rehashing 'Bonnie and Clyde '05'.  Oh no.

If 2010 was a series of 'moments', the story of Bonnie and Clyde (or more specifically the 1967 film; the real Bonnie had a limp and severe scars from burns towards the end of her crime career) has definitely had it's moment within the past twelve months.

The real Bonnie and Clyde - Phographer unknown

This year has sprouted not one but two editorials that pay obvious homage to the public's favourite outlaw couple (Mickey and Mallory Knox from Natural Born Killers coming a close second).  The first to appear was shot by Peter Lindbergh for the March issue of Harpers Bazaar, the second shot by Aram Bedrossian (no idea which magazine though, let me know if you know please) this month.  Inevitably, people are writing that Bedrossian's shoot is 'following in the footsteps of Lindbergh', which is fashion code for 'might be blatantly copying Lindbergh'. Though, with such iconic source material, how could they not be equally derivative?

Spot the difference 1 - Lindbergh

Spot the difference 1 - Bedrossian

Spot the difference 2 - a still from Bonnie & Clyde (1967)

Spot the difference 2 - Bedrossian

Spot the difference 2 - Lindbergh

I'm not trying to be a party pooper or the girl who cried plaigarism.  As I said before, it's hard not to come to the same aesthetic conclusions when you're drawing inspiration from a film with such a strong image.  Both editorials have some amazing, totally original images.  They also have different moods.  The Lindbergh shoot is full of movement, while Bedrossian's work is more contemplative and static.

A super cool action shot from Lindbergh



A beautifully composed shot by Bedrossian


It's a very close call, but I prefer Lindbergh's shoot. Which one do you like best?


All photos via Fashion Gone Rogue

Russian Dolls and Harlequin Romance

I love this editorial, shot by Tim Walker for Vogue, which carries all the typical Walker trademarks of being utterly bonkers and utterly fantastic at the same time.

This editorial is inspired by the Ballet Russes and especially the Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes  Exhibition at the V&A in London, which has garnered a lot of attention from the fashion pack since Erdem Moragliou has cited his work on the exhibition as an inspiration for his Spring/Summer '11 line ( I talked about it here )

Here's a few of my favourite shots.











Pics from Fashion Gone Rogue - click for the full editorial

Hells Angels - not your typical Old Ladies

One of those authors that I always felt that I should get into, and yet never did, was Hunter S. Thompson. I studied him as part of a New Journalism class in college and really enjoyed it, but I hit a massive stumbling block with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I read one chapter, then put it down. At this late stage it's like telling a friend that you'll call them for coffee, but you end up forgetting, then when you meet them in town there's this frosty silence... It's a bit like that.

I tried to read Hells Angels too, I really really did. But I just ended up forgetting about it as well. When I think about it I can see Thompson as one of those authors that you're supposed to like, but not everyone does. Case in point - I was seeing a guy on and off for a few years and throughout several house moves he always had a copy of Fear and Loathing beside his bed. As far as I know, it's still there. And I bet he still hasn't finished it.

The photos below (excuse the arrows on either side, the images are screen grabs) have nothing to do with Thompson, but a lot to do with Hells Angels.  More specifically, the wives and girlfriends of the Hells Angels, charmingly titled the Old Ladies. The pictures above and below were taken by Life photographer Bill Ray in 1965, but have never been published or seen by the public until now.  I love looking at the Old ladies and their mix of mannish clothing with bouffants, eyeliner and a smidge of amphetamines.

Maybe this will help me to finish Hells Angels after all... but then again, maybe it won't.

"New York is everything" - Marc Jacobs

LAZY POST ALERT!

Ah, V Magazine. Why can't I buy you in Cork? Is there a V embargo in Easons? Don't you like us enough to ship to Ireland? Why, V, why???

'Scuse me. Here's the main editorial from this month's issue, populated by the great and good (of New York, that is. And even then, no Jay-Z? No Naked Cowgirl ?), including Lady G, Marc Jacobs, Jake Shears, DEBBIE HARRY (so good she's in caps) and Lady Bunny, whom I mistook for Jayne County .

R.I.P Corinne Day

L - The Face, 1990.  R - British Vogue, 1993

Channeling Richard Avedon in British Vogue, October 2007

Although I knew that Corinne Day was battling a particularly aggressive brain tumour, it still came as a horrible shock to see that Italian Vogue had confirmed this morning that she died on Saturday.

Corinne Day was a photographic visionary, a woman who was not afraid to tear up the rulebook and invent something new, brave in both her professional and personal outlook.  Although she is widely credited for discovering Kate Moss and popularising heroin chic, she will be remembered more for her photography, which blew away the 80's look of pneumatic, heavily made-up, over coiffed supermodels right out of the water.

Day's early work was clean in many respects, models were freshly scrubbed, colour palettes were monochromatic or kept to a minimum and lines were totally fuss free.  Her autobiographical aspects and knack with portraiture, the subjects often exposing a rawness or vulnerability, makes her comparable to Nan Goldin or Larry Clark.  In truth, her work reminds me of Edgar Degas, who was obsessed with photography and often included aspects of it in his paintings.  Both Degas and Day were masters and innovators of the 'unposed' pose - something that is now widely copied by many photographers.

Before she died Day was in talks with the V&A to show a retrospective of her work.  I sincerely hope that this goes ahead, because it's the kind of tribute that a photographer of her calibre truly deserves.

This scares me.

From here

Not Kate Moss and Johnny Depp. They don't scare me.

I wonder what kind of love they had that made them able to open themselves up to the world, to show such intimacy to everyone with such ease.

I'm the opposite of the ideal woman, in that I'm very vocal, but seldom seen and I have a serious aversion to photographs. You'll probably find about three pictures of me on this blog. I'm also not a huge Moss or Depp devotee.

But there's just something about this picture. It perplexes me. I just don't understand how pictures like this come about. But I'm glad that they do.

P.S - In direct contravention to what I just said, you can follow me very publicly on Bloglovin!  Just click on the wee icon on the right.

A massive roundup (with bonus giveaway section!)

I've been pretty much incommunicado due to travel and 'fat finger' syndrome from eating too many of my sister's delish cookies, cakes and brownies from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.  That, and I'm spending the next week in the hometown, clearing out my old room and attending the excuse for drinking on the street that is this monstrosity.

So, here are a few things I missed in the past week or so.



The trailer for The Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman and a hell of a lot of Rodarte costumes.  It's got high fashion, psychological intrigue and slightly gross bird transmogrification going on, so something for everyone...



Speaking of birds, Cheap Monday have gone for an 'oil-on-water' look at Stockholm Fashion week.  I'm not a massive fan of the jeans on the catwalk, but the cuts are great and the tops are a perfect mix of sheer and slouchy.  Mostly, I just want to know where I can get those plazmoid boots.  Waterproof and I have to force myself to wear matching socks?  Excellent. (Fashion Gone Rogue)



New favourite editorials ; Josephine de la Baume gets sacrelicious for Oyster, German Vogue's massive triumvirate trend spread and Cintia Dicker having a modern West Side Story moment for Marie Claire France.



Moschino - one of my absolute, all-time, top 5 favourite labels, cross my heart and hope to die (exhale... phew) has collaborated with Gabriele Muccino on a short film, titled Senzo Tempo.  And it's only beautiful.



You can throw a load of blood diamonds at Naomi Campbell via Super Fashion Stars.  Unfortunately, it's just a flash game and not real life.


SUPER DUPER BONUS GIVEAWAY SECTION!!

Ok, less of that.  Typing in caps makes me feel like I've just climbed a hill.

1)  The lovely Ms LolaDee of Things I Fell in Love With Today is hosting a giveaway of her incredibly cute handmade accessories for her 300th commenter.  Just go to http://www.loladee.com/ and leave a comment.  It's that easy.

2) If you happen to be in Cork, the Lewis Glucksman Gallery is giving away free posters from the Mixtapes exhibition to all it's twitter followers today.  There's three designs - I really want to get a hand on the Linder Sterling punk ladies poster - don't suppose anyone wants to pick one up for me?

3) I'm a big fan of Nina Chakrabharti and her whimsical illustrations and have blogged about her amazing book, My Wonderful World of Fashion before.  You can win a signed illustration and a copy of the book just by displaying your best colouring efforts here.

P.S You can read my newest Licentiate column, only in The Cork Independent, out today!  It's about leggings - they're not trousers, so cover your shame.

Decades Festival Inspiration

This weekends marks the second year of the Decades Festival, a massive dress-up weekend that is centred around the many pubs and clubs in Cork City.  The premise is simple - pick a decade in the 20th century, dress according to that decade and see which pubs are putting events to which decade.  Events include 80's raves, dignified dos with flappers and cocktails and (my favourite) a 50's bowling event with milkshake cocktails.  Mmm, cloying...

I've been fantasising about what I might dress up as and, as usual, I've picked the two decades most unforgiving to a real body type, the 60's and the 20's.  Here are some shots from some great magazine editorials.  The first is Face Of '66 for September's L'Officiel Singapore, which is all lithe limbs, Vidal Sassoon hair and meticulously outlined eyes.










Here are a few pages from a much larger spread in TEST.  Shot by Nicholas Lawn using vintage photo effects, it's atypical of the 20's styling we'd usually see (like OTT almost baroque Galliano homages to the Bright Young Things) but it's a good source for inspiration for those who want to do the twenties a little bit differently.








Images via Fashion Gone Rogue