Twineth reminded me this morning of something I’d forgotten about… The Cockettes. I think she did some stuff about them at uni and as her conjoined pal it obviously filtered through.
The Cockettes were (are?) a San Francisco based psychedelic drag queen troupe from the 1960s (obv) who basically did show tunes and interpretative performance… shall we say. I’m on borrowed time right now so will revisit this post but for now… Amazing pictures from Bud Lee.
Let’s take a break from fashion for a minute and consider Axl Rose. Once upon a time, Axl looked like this:
Babe central, ability to knock dead an entire stadium of women with just one squeak of his leather trousers, right?
Axl has changed. Prepare yourself, because this pretty much blew my mind right out of my ears and onto my computer screen and I wouldn’t want the same to happen to you. Here goes:
I know what you’re thinking. That’s Meatloaf at a costume party. Reader, it isn’t. That’s Axl. Metal Hammer provided an excellent commentary, with highlights including the exceptional picture caption, ‘Appetite For Liposuction’. What the hell happened? I haven’t been this disappointed since he got cornrows.
!!!Fashion fun times!!!
The latest Barbie incarnation is Barbie does art like proper art from the old days art. There’s Babs as the Girl With The Pearl Earring, Babs as the Mona Lisa… Babs as everything. Pretty funny but I was ecstatic to see Barbie in The Portrait of Sylvia von Harden. A-Mazing. Go look at them all, it’s wholesome fun.
Introducing… the Street Style Memory Game. Also A-Mazing. There’s only 25 pairs which I think means limited fun but it’s a nice idea and way better for kids than the Noah’s Ark Memory Game of my youth. You could make your own anyway I expect but alternatively you can buy it right here (soon).
Yo rain/snow/slush/ice/wind.
Be gone.
I wanna wear my favourite new dream outfit. I have so far only been able to wear this dress in the house and that’s not how it was meant to be. At least the party I was planning on wearing this all to has been cancelled because of the weather.
That’s MAC Snob, obvo and clearly not my lips.
Speaking of adverse weather… Southern trains, this one goes out to you. A sprinkling of fairy dust snow does not adverse weather make. An earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale does. Donate here.
Around this time last year there was an Alexander McQueen ring that I had my beady eye set firmly upon. By the time I’d summoned up the strength to part with my cash, it had sold out everywhere on the planet. Lesson learned.
This new ring from Mr McQ is pretty dreamy and has the added bonus of Swarovskis. Now just need to deal with the monetary side of things. Hmmmm. £180 at Net-A-Porter.
Are crystals the new gold Casio? The youth seem to love them. Everyone seems to be swanking around crystal pendants or t-shirts with graphic crystal prints. AM I MISSING SOMETHING? Is it the new diamond icon??
I have no answers, but I am keen to add fuel to the fire with this Crystal Brass Knuckle from the artist Debra Baxter. Wait, brass knuckles are pretty cool too, right? Man alive. I just like this, it seems like something a stylish super hero might wear to punch people in the face. There’s also the additional pro plus that the piece is called, “Crystal Brass Knuckles ( I am going to realign your chakras mother******)”. Wow, what a lot of punctuation in a row, makes me feel uneasy.
Here’s what Debster Baxter (I’m sure she’d be OK with me calling her that) has to say;
“It is sort of a superhero tool/weapon. Most of my work is about engaging the body in some way. Calling the body to do something. My work embraces failure and fragility…though you won’t know that seeing this piece. I have been fascinated with crystals since high school where I did a [talk] [sic] about their potential powers. Explaining how my grandpa who was an electrical engineer made a quarts crystal radio utilizing the “vibrations” of quarts. As much as I am not new agey or woo woo, crystals do have energy and powers. They seem to amplify what is already there. Crystal Brass Knuckles ( I am going to realign your chakras mother******) is dealing [with] [sic] this, the dichotomy of a weapon and healing device in one. And just how completely ridiculous and contradictory that is. They are made to fit a woman’s hand. There is a feminist/grrl power piece to this…and to all my work. Women engaging in their power and sexuality.”
Right on! Now it’s time to raid my dad’s crystal drawers, heat up the glue gun and ~craft~ the night away.
Words, pictures, love via My Love For You Is Like A Stampede of Horses
Jon’s post about grunge yesterday coincided nicely with the decision I’d made earlier in the day to only listen to Greg Sage and the Wipers for a 24 hour period. Not sure why, just thought it’d be nice music to get back in the work zone to. It was, thanks for asking.
Anyway, while I was listening to the Wipers I was, of course, compelled to find this poster of old Greg (not that one) with his incredible hair that had been buried on my hard drive. His cut is identical to Agyness Deyn’s at this stage in her (now absent) career. No wonder they called him the Draco Malfoy of punk. Oh wait, they didn’t.
…But they should.
I’m sure that as intelligent, astute human beings you’re familiar with the marvellous Madame Yevonde. I first came across her work when I was doing my photography GCSE evening course but I have to admit that I’d forgotten all about her until I stumbled across one of her portraits in a book I’m reading.
Madame Yevonde, or Yevonde Middleton to use her birth name, was a pioneering photographer of the 20s and 30s who popularised the use of colour in photography with the Vivex process. She was a total progressive who joined the suffragette movement and following an apprenticeship with Lallie Charles, the leading society portrait photographer of the day, set up her own studio at the wee age of 21. Her poppa was a printer and creative too and totally spoilt her, helping her set up the studio with a bit of his own moolah. She gave herself the more swanky sounding name ‘Madame Yevonde’ and made a name for herself snapping her society friends.
Sticking with the portraits but exploring her creative side, she introduced props, costumes and poses to jazz up her shots. By 1921 she was well established and started working for fashion mags and advertising agencies and was soon one of the decade’s rising stars as well as a megastar hardcore feminist. She had been elevated to the ranks of the Professional Photographers’ Association and became the first ever woman to address one of its meetings. She used the opportunity to talk about the subject of ‘Photographic Portraiture from the Woman’s Point of View’. She used the presentation to put forward the fairly revolutionary view that women would always prove to be better portrait photographers than men because of their innate sympathy, patience and intuition. Trufax!
Anyway, there’s no holding a good woman down and she was soon bored of black and white work. Luckily for her, colour photography kicked off on a commercial scale in the 30s and she got stuck into the world of Vivex with aplomb. This nifty but boring to write about process involved using separate cyan, magenta and yellow plates to create a full colour image which could be retouched and edited. Yevonde got totally involved with Vivex and produced piles of vibrant, surreal, highly original imagery. During lectures, she again brought up the idea that women were better at handling colour shots then men because it played an integral part in their daily lives through clothes and soft furnishings, lolssss.
Anyway, the highlight of her work in this field was the Goddesses series of images from 1935, which you can see in this post. Photographing society’s most influential women as Greek goddesses, nymphs, fauns and other figures from classical mythology. None of them would look out of place in Vogue Italia today, right??
Madame Yevonde continued working in Vivex until the manufacturing and processing plant was closed owing to the threat of the war. She was totally dependent on it and its closure marked the end of the era for her. Although she continued working throughout the war and worked right up to her death in 1975, she never found anything that replaced her beloved Vivex and considered all other processes far too crude in comparison. What a woman! You can read her entire biography at the supremely indepth Madame Yevonde website, which is also where all this pictures are credited to. You can buy used copies of the Goddesses book on Amazon at the moment and I promise you it’s worth investing in.
Pics from top:
Self Portrait with Image of Hecate, 1940
Lady Bridgett Poulett as Arethusa//The Hon Mrs Bryan Guinness (Lady Diana Mosley) as Venus
Mrs Charles Sweeney (Margaret, Duchess of Argyll) as Helen of Troy//Mrs Longdon as Persephone
Gertrude Lawrence as the Muse of Comedy//Baroness Gagern as Europa
All pics c/o Madame Yevonde c/o MadameYevonde.com
Without wanting to speak too soon, I think an overdose of Superdrug Max Strength Cold & Flu, a good night’s sleep and a litre of orange squash may have set me on the road to recovery. One thing’s for sure; a day of catching up on other people’s blogs has me itching to put my brain back to good use, so let’s run with it.
Iso wrote this morning about Times Sqaure, a film set in New York in the 80s, but as far as I’m concerned there’s only one winner in the 80s NY party genre and that is, of course, 200 Cigarettes. I’m aware that if you know me you’ll have heard me talk about this film on an almost daily basis and I’m also aware that most people think it’s a pile of shit but frankly they’re wrong. Oh, I also wrote about 200 Cigs about two years ago to the day, but that’s not gonna stop me dredging it up again. It’s New Year thus it’s relevant. Over the past 12 months this blog has grown exponentially which means that there could well be folk out there that haven’t seen this piece of cinematic gold and I’m the one holding them back. For their benefit, then, here we go. 200 Cigarettes is a 1999 film set in 1981 following a vaguely associated bunch of losers around New York as they head to a party for New Years. You can, I’m sure, imagine the japery that they encounter as they make out/get gradually drunker/fight/listen to Feliz Navidad. I’ve never really understood why it’s so widely panned, but then I know fuck all about films. All I know is that features Ben Affleck and Courtney Love in their only good roles, has a stellar soundtrack curated by Devo and an even more astounding range of costumes. Click on the links in the text for more (better) pics!
Val (Christina Ricci) and Stephie (Gaby Hoffman) have escaped Ronkonkoma, NJ for a night in the big city. They’ve told their parents (as all good teenagers do) that they’re staying at each other’s place but ho ho, this is indeed a lie. They’re heading to Val’s cousin Monica’s party but en route bump into Tom (Casey Affleck!! In a tiger-print shirt!!) and Dave, a pair of vaguely seedy punks. Val and Stephie arguably have the best outfits of the entire movie; ridiculous fur coat, bright yellow Timberland-style boot heel things and accessories to die for. Costuming aside, their storyline is vaguely average apart from the line about crossing onto Avenue B.
It will come as no surprise to you that Janeane Garofalo is annoying in this film. She used to date Paul Rudd, who we see here in a state of undress after a toilet escapade with Courtney Love. Annoying as she may be, she does get to utter the immortal line, ‘I’ve dated enough narcissistically neurotic men to know that you are all just a pack of roving babies in search of a giant teat from which to suck the lifeblood out of me until I am a hollow shell’ which earns her a round of applause. Her wardrobe is as boring as she is. Next!
Martha Plimpton, Catherine Kellner, Brian McCardie in their respective roles of Monica, Hilary and Eric are possibly the greatest people in the entire film; wardrobe, one-liners and storyline inclusive. Eric is an artist who paints vaginas (flowers, whatever) and is terrible in bed, Hilary is sort of a non-entity who has an exceptional party dress with lace collar and cuffs and Monica, dear Monica is the host of the party to which the entire cast are headed. She has typical host issues that no-one is coming, has trouble with relationships and gets supremely drunk and passes out before any of her actual guests arrive. She also does a brilliant dance to Feliz Navidad and shouts the immortal, “I hate you motherfuckers” at Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal in Love Story.
Disco Cabbie as played by Dave Chappelle holds the story together as narrator and the coincidental one cab driver that everyone seems to come across at some point. Man he’s wise. And he has tiger-print seats, an all-denim wardrobe and a soundtrack of Kool and the Gang, thus making him the taxi driver we have all dreamed of. Caitlyn is played by the marvellous Angela Featherstone and she basically gives her number out to a lot of guys. She has incredible hair. Forgive my shortness, but it’s just become apparent that there is no mention of Nicole Parker as Caitlyn’s partner in crime/BFF Bridget; basically Grace Jones in a pill box hat. Here she is. Swoon!
Right so back to Courtney Love. She is brilliant in this film and just a little unhinged, which is the way she’s supposed to be, right? She has an amazing animal print swing coat and this insanely perfect amber coloured hair. Her and Paul Rudd are meant to be together, both in the film and in life. Seriously, I think he’d have a good effect on her.
And last but not least, we have Kate Hudson (Cindy) in a role that I think is better than most other things she’s done and Jay Mohr as horrible jock man ass hat Jack. Look at his face. Punchable. Although I just read he voiced Joe Pesci in Family Guy so maybe I’ll turn down the hate. Anyway Kate and Jack are on a blind date and she’s some kind of princess in a ludicrous amazing pink coat with dog shit all over it. She ends up with (shh look away now for a spoiler) with Dave the punk, which tells you everything you need to know about how her date with Jack goes.
So that’s pretty much everything you need to know. The film never made it out in the UK but you can get it on Amazin obviously. If you’re my friend or trying to be, you should get it because it’s one of my main topics of conversation when I’m drunk and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Great clothes, amazing soundtrack, funny film. What’s not to love, Rotten Tomatoes? Why the piss poor reviews? I guess I’ll never know, but fuck it, I love it.
