Tuesday, February 8, 2011
“League of Two” Duckie Brown on VBS
“Duckie Brown is the internationally renowned duo of fashion designers made up of Steven Cox and Daniel Silver. Based out of New York City, the pair bounce around their West Village studio bickering, jesting, and designing menswear that keeps pace with the most important brands on the planet.”
Urban Nudes: Shane Perez' Stripped Industrial Decay
Click Image to Enlarge
Photographer Shane Perez has been documenting the abandoned crevices of New York for over a decade. Born in Miami, the Bronx-photographer draws his inspiration from the decaying, hulking ruins of the city and juxtaposes them with comparatively beautiful, fragile subjects -- nude women.
"Primarily the figures serve to add a narrative element to the images," Perez tells HuffPost, "giving them a bit more depth than just being derelict machines and buildings."
I recall one shoot where we inadvertently held up construction on a condo building about a block away for a good 30 minutes. We were shooting on some abandoned oil tanks and when I looked over the entire construction crew was on the roof passing around a pair of binoculars. The model waved to them and they all cheered. Eventually the boss showed up and made them go back to work.
"Primarily the figures serve to add a narrative element to the images," Perez tells HuffPost, "giving them a bit more depth than just being derelict machines and buildings."
Nudity makes the figures vulnerable to both the elements and the environment. It forces a return to the world we inhabited before the invention of handrails and warning signs and all the other things we use to protect ourselves. Humans are fragile things and I'd like to think that my photos serve to illustrate that as well as our distance from our natural state.Perez says that finding and shooting at such spaces can be dicey, but that neither he nor the model have ever been in dangerous situations, and often find people who discover them quite agreeable.
I recall one shoot where we inadvertently held up construction on a condo building about a block away for a good 30 minutes. We were shooting on some abandoned oil tanks and when I looked over the entire construction crew was on the roof passing around a pair of binoculars. The model waved to them and they all cheered. Eventually the boss showed up and made them go back to work.
Paris Haute Couture: Karl Lagerfeld on Chanel's spring/summer 2011 collection
via The Telegraph
Hilary Alexander pays homage to Karl Lagerfeld's latest magical collection for Chanel.
Hilary Alexander pays homage to Karl Lagerfeld's latest magical collection for Chanel.
BY Hilary Alexander | 25 January 2011
There was magic in the air at the Chanel spring/summer haute couture show in Paris today.
It wasn't the stardust sprinkled by the constellation of front-row celebrities - including Vanessa Paradis, Diane Kruger, Pedro Almodóvar, and Jerry Hall. Nor was it just the enchanting, wearable appeal of the new dropped-waist silhouette with flat shoes; the modernist layering of crystal-strewn T-shirts and 'jeans' with the classic Chanel 'jacket' - now more than 90 years old, but still as fresh as a just-picked camellia - or the 'cloud' skirts, frothing below the knee in beaded silk tulle.
No, the magic was down to the unerring accuracy and delicacy with which the Chanel couturier, Karl Lagerfeld, gathers a million and more possible fleeting thoughts and references - before alighting on a theme which he then conjures into a spellbinding collection.
Video: Hilary Alexander interviews Karl Lagerfeld at Couture
Lagerfeld, now in his 70s, joined the house of Chanel in 1983, presenting his first haute couture collection for spring/summer in that year. That's 28 years and 56 couture collections alone. Lagerfeld told me not so long ago that he gets his best thoughts "almost by magic", in the few moments between sleep and waking. He keeps pencil and paper beside the bed to 'capture' them before they vanish.
In this case, some time in the last six months or so, he had a vision of Marie Laurencin, the French painter and muse of the poet, Guillaume Apollinaire. "Not so much the shape, or clothes she wore," he explained when I visited him at the Chanel atelier on Sunday, "more the colour, the fragility; soft, light."
Chanel spring/summer 2011 couture collection in pictures
I watched as he supervised a "dress parade" of the designs which would make up the 66 looks in the couture show. He sat at his desk on the fourth floor above the boutique which Mme Gabrielle Chanel opened in 1910. Behind him is a large, broad-brush impression of "Coco" by the German painter, Klaus Otto Paeffgen.
Nothing escapes his attention. Hawk-like, he spotted a silken ribbon choker; "too low, it should be up here," he pointed to his own throat, "and tied into the hair at the back."
"You see," he indicated the flat, triangle-toe shoes, fastened with almost invisible straps, on one of the models. "The proportion is new. It must be flat."
The embroidery - he called it "embroidery of light" - glistened like spiders' webs in the morning dew. Small, rounded sleeves caressed the shoulders; seams were detailed with shimmering beads and metallic threads.
Seen up close, the workmanship is astounding. Lagerfeld himself is still marveling, when we meet backstage before today's show.
"How do they have enough patience to do it?" he wonders about the hand-work of the 'petit-mains' who have laboured over these exquisite examples of the couture art and craft. "Some of these tops have 400,000 pearls and crystals. Can you imagine? I couldn't do it for five minutes."
The show opens with the aristocratic Scottish model, Stella Tennant - the granddaughter of the Duchess of Devonshire is now 40 and a mother of four. She shows the new silhouette: a short Chanel jacket with just a whisper of 'tailoring'. Detailed with gossamer embroidery, the jacket is teamed with a short skirt over gleaming, wet-look, crystal leggings, ruffled-up and zipped at the ankles.
It sets the fairytale mood of the entire show. Tweeds twinkle with crystals, collars and cuffs gleam with beads and sequins. Occasional flashes of jet-black, tangerine and a deep azure blue punctuate the dreamy palette of blush-pinks, ivory and a shadowy-grey. The use of feathers, mixed with pearls and crystals, is echoed in the web-like edges of the layered tulle ballgowns.
The veteran catwalk star, Kristen McMenamy, makes a surprise appearance as "the bride" (it is traditional for a bride to close couture shows). Wearing a pink crystal sleeveless top and trained skirt, embroidered with 'pom-poms' of feathers and crystals, it is a walk which brings back memories for her. "[It's] my second time," she says. "I wore Chanel when I got married in London 12 years ago - and Karl gave me away."
Lagerfeld, meanwhile, posed amidst the 47 models and preparing for the flurry of kisses and congratulations, is already pondering his next collection.
"I'm lucky, I touch wood, in that I can do things exactly the way I want to. I'm never pleased with what I do, anyway. I think I'm lazy, I could do better."
Elle Macpherson tries to turn back time on the school run, fails
Personally I think Elle Macpherson looks damn good for a 47 year old woman. One might induct her into the category of MILF. Nevertheless if you still got it flaunt it Seriously what man would not want his wife to look this good at 47???
via the telegraph
Wrong! Pictures today of Elle Macpherson on the school run in Notting Hill, wearing shredded skinny jeans, a cropped fur coat, Roxy Music T-shirt, high-heeled boots and Ray-ban aviators prove that no matter how good the package, when it comes to fashion trends, women have a sell-by date.
In pictures: women who refuse to dress their age
There's no denying that the mother of two has still got it going on - indeed, many 20 year-olds would kill to look like her in their skinny jeans - but the classic mistake Elle has made is thinking that having the body of a woman 20 years younger, means she can dress like one. In short, she is a victim of what fashion insiders call 1950 syndrome - 19 from behind, 50 from the front.
She's not alone with this condition. The list of serial offenders is as long as their hemlines are short. Kate Moss is a case in point. It's not that she hasn't got the figure to pull off hot-pants, it's just that at 37, should hot-pants really be your go-to garment? I have visions of Kate going clubbing with her daughter Lila a few years from now, borrowing the embarrassed teenager's latest Topshop acquisitions like the Harry Enfield character who would crow "people think we're sisters" about herself and her dress-a-like daughter.
This doesn't mean women can't be fashionable of course - once you hit your mid-thirties you don't have to shop at Boden - it's just about age-appropriateness. If you are struggling to decipher what your boundaries should be, find yourself an age icon - someone chic in the public eye whose age, life-stage and style roughly mirror yours - and next time you are standing in the changing room in Zara thinking 'am I too old for this?' just imagine if they would wear it. As a 36 year-old mother of two, for me it's Vanessa Paradis for my grown-up self, and Drew Barrymore when I'm feeling rebellious.
What would Drew Barrymore wear?
All Elle needs to do is stop thinking 'What would Willow Smith wear' and maybe take some tips from fellow ageing Supermodels Christy Turlington and Claudia Schiffer, who both seem to have the concept of growing old gracefully down pat.
via the telegraph
Forty seven year-old ex-supermodel Elle Macpherson gives a master class in what not to wear.
BY Belinda White | 08 February 2011
In your face mums! Elle Macpherson on the school run. Photo: REX
If you're an ex-supermodel, the onslaught of age must be a harder pill to swallow than for us mere mortals. When you've spent 30 years at the top of your game, nicknamed 'The Body', courted by the fashion world's biggest luminaries and are still landing major advertising campaigns at the age of 47, you can show those young girls a thing or two right?
In pictures: women who refuse to dress their age
There's no denying that the mother of two has still got it going on - indeed, many 20 year-olds would kill to look like her in their skinny jeans - but the classic mistake Elle has made is thinking that having the body of a woman 20 years younger, means she can dress like one. In short, she is a victim of what fashion insiders call 1950 syndrome - 19 from behind, 50 from the front.
She's not alone with this condition. The list of serial offenders is as long as their hemlines are short. Kate Moss is a case in point. It's not that she hasn't got the figure to pull off hot-pants, it's just that at 37, should hot-pants really be your go-to garment? I have visions of Kate going clubbing with her daughter Lila a few years from now, borrowing the embarrassed teenager's latest Topshop acquisitions like the Harry Enfield character who would crow "people think we're sisters" about herself and her dress-a-like daughter.
This doesn't mean women can't be fashionable of course - once you hit your mid-thirties you don't have to shop at Boden - it's just about age-appropriateness. If you are struggling to decipher what your boundaries should be, find yourself an age icon - someone chic in the public eye whose age, life-stage and style roughly mirror yours - and next time you are standing in the changing room in Zara thinking 'am I too old for this?' just imagine if they would wear it. As a 36 year-old mother of two, for me it's Vanessa Paradis for my grown-up self, and Drew Barrymore when I'm feeling rebellious.
What would Drew Barrymore wear?
All Elle needs to do is stop thinking 'What would Willow Smith wear' and maybe take some tips from fellow ageing Supermodels Christy Turlington and Claudia Schiffer, who both seem to have the concept of growing old gracefully down pat.
Carole White, Top Modeling Agent, Talks Breasts, Controlling Boyfriends & Money
via The Huffington Post
The Daily Mail sat down with modeling agent Carole White -- best-known for representing Naomi Campbell, although the two are no longer on speaking terms -- who had some interesting things to say about the biz ahead of the premiere of her television documentary, "The Model Agency." White explained:
Read the rest at the Daily Mail.
"We take our duty of care seriously. But girls freak out, mainly because of boyfriends. You'd think these girls would have handsome boyfriends, but they don't. They date short men who are insecure and who become very controlling as they fear losing these girls who are always travelling, always meeting new people. That can be a nightmare."Fascinating! She also dished on the changes over the last decade:
"I now look for girls with breasts, and that is something we wouldn't have countenanced ten years ago. Our biggest demand in the past two years has been for a D cup, but obviously you have to have a really fit body. Now, we talk to our models about nutrition, make sure they have a personal trainer. Even our language has changed. A decade ago, we would have just said: 'Don't eat!'"Regarding age restrictions, White insists that London doesn't use girls under 16, however she couldn't say the same for New York, Milan and Paris, adding, "You will see girls cast for the big names who are 14. That will never change." And according to White, top models who walk in key shows can make $16,000 to $32,000 during the season, with a breakdown of $160 to $600 per show. Check out more on how much money a model really makes.
Read the rest at the Daily Mail.
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