Going up?

I joked with my friend once that I would love to ride the elevator at the Conde Nast building (after feasting in the cafeteria of course) up and down for a day just to see what happens in the world's most fashionable shafts. Well, now I can have that experience and still hang on to my dignity.

Introducing @CondeElevator's Twitter feed. It's every bit of crazy goodness that 4 Time Square employees overhear on their way up the building. It's fantastically full of all the fashionese and fat phobia you would expect.

Couture Is In The Details

Claire Shaeffer shows-and-tells a Dior Couture gown's secrets.

Claire Shaeffer isn't fooling around. Her love of couture is serious; it's obsessive even. She ran away from home at 17 to literally join the circus. Literally. When acrobatics failed her and she wound up a doctor's wife, her performer shoulders kept her out of a lot of the fashion she loved, so she taught herself how to sew. In the manner of anyone who would run away to join the circus, she didn't just start with easy Simplicity pattern shift dresses, nope, she started a life-long practice of astutely dissecting garments to gain knowledge of their construction. Combing the aisles of vintage stores, she picked up pieces by big name designers and analyzed their every stitch to see the hows and whys and ins and outs of their form. She never stopped. Today Claire is one of the premier authorities on fashion's most fine, skillful sewing techniques. She has penned over 15 books on sewing and leads workshops for those hungry for the knowledge of just what goes into those high-priced couture garments (it's actually worth the money!). To learn more about Claire and her secrets, check out a post I did on her recent visit to the FIT campus for Pins and Needles, FIT's Fashion and Textiles MA program's blog.

Good Face

Artist Jen Mann gives good face. Her print work and paintings are the love children of a high fashion magazine and the prime of the pagan planet. Her pretty subjects have the bone structure of perfect creatures, and the animals she sometimes coaxes out of their ethereal surroundings (or their skulls) are equally perfected.

While the imagery elements (howling wolf, pretty woman) could easily have come from that hippie/suburban spirit shop on Main St., Manning's soft renderings of bold features keeps her work well in the realm of higher art. You can see more of her work at her website and on her blog.

I like my goddessses shaved.

Ah, the '90s were forever ago, but with one quick flash of that dragon furled on a buzzed tete, they were only yesterday.

Shaved-headed model Eve Salvail made a return to the catwalk at Jean Paul Gaultier's couture show yesterday, and it looks like she hasn't missed a beat. Need a reminder of Eve? Here she is featured on House of Style, with an appearance by JPG himself:

Now, where are my clippers? And, my tattoo gun? Maybe Eve will let me borrow hers...

And because one good shave deserves another, watch Grace Jones get a 13 minute haircut in a video piece by Anton Perich.

Goddesses.

Love, worn.

Riccardo Tisci's contribution to couture is beauty realized. The spareness with which he presents his collections speaks to a rare level of restraint in the fashion industry by a clearly capable and highly talented individual. His ten looks for this season are phenomenal in their craft, and rather than glut the runway with three times as many ensembles, he lets them each stand alone like understated lines of poetry, clearly meticulous in every detail. Behold the beauty, front and back:

I'm waiting with bated breath for some detail shots. This collection makes me want to impose a rule that any designer still showing couture must present a video of the handwork that goes into each look. If we only could witness the finesse and skill represented in these creations. I hear there was also a scent diffuser misting the presentation with the aroma of roses. See? Meticulous.

Historical Hotness

Single subject Tumblrs have me at hello. This one had me at hot. The genius behind My Daguerreotype Boyfriend has begun combing the annals of historical photography for the men who melted the lens, even way back when. I think the site makes an awfully good case for you guys out there to dust off your cravats and join something that requires a uniform. I'm going to share a few photos with you, but you'll have to visit the site for your boyfriend's stats. Some are criminals, some are soldiers, some are imports...all are hot. (Except one or two with muttonchops...)

Gosh, something about those sepia tones make the brooding even broodier.

Surf the Pavement

I'm a fan of tough girls. The thing about being a tough girl is that you have to do your dirty work with grace. Here the ladies of the Longboard Girls Crew shred Madrid mountains with a style so sweet, it makes the bloody work look like a dip in the ocean.

I mean, really, the pretty little synchronized ditty at 3:45? That's money. I'm also a fan of how they skim their fingertips along the passing road the way a girl on a boat might touch the surface of the water, leaving a wake. Their clothes are classic skater gear with softened edges. It's all so breezy.

via The Daily What

Opie x Rodarte

Image of a Rodarte gown by Catehrine Opie.

The photographer Catherine Opie is known for her portraits of gender. She takes photos of "men" and "women" in ways that show you the confusion of those terms, the identity they impose, and the ways they are expressed. She also photographs the body as a platform for thought and or pain. Self-portraits of the artist are disturbing and beautiful documents of self harm, or of love. It's this mix of the rough and soft, of the dark and the warm, that makes her pairing with Rodarte a natural fit. As a satellite to their MoCA show (which they call a case study of their still young work) Rodarte is releasing a book of photographs by Catherine Opie and Alec Soth. Californian landscapes of interest and inspiration to Kate and Laura have been photographed by Soth, while Opie has taken photographs of the Mulleavy sisters' clients and favorite models in their gorgeous American couture pieces.

The photos above are all included in the book which is available for pre-order on Amazon.

On With His Head!

Cick above for video via the SHOWstudio site.

It never ceases to amaze (and utterly relieve) me that some of the most genius artists in the fashion world are also fantastic people. I've grown up with a ridiculous, inexplicable inner itch to make fashion my life. There was no cure for that strange condition, so now I'm devoting myself to it with a drive I didn't know I had. Every day it takes courage to show up as myself to a dream that I never thought I could really do without being reincarnated into some other human form with longer legs or a keener style sense. The fuel for my fire are the ever-so-talented and delightfully humble fashion folk who also do what they love simply because they must. Philip Treacy is one of those people. His work is poetic in its perfection. Every piece that I've ever seen come out of his millinery shop in his decade plus career has been witty, expertly crafted, and pointedly beautiful. Every single one. In an old SHOWstudio video piece I just caught for the first time, Treacy makes one of his "Feather Salads," or so he calls them. You get to watch him craft one of his gorgeous hatworks from mold to mannequin with the skill and eye he has in excess. He also answers questions at the same time, speaking candidly about his initial fear of Lady Gaga, the only two "machines" that he uses to make hats (his hands), and the beautiful feathers he curls to perfection with a hair iron. The video is only available through the SHOWstudio site, but please click through the photo above and watch; the video is phenomenal.

It Girl

Clara Bow was the first screen star to be branded an "It Girl." What was It? Words defy what only 20 minutes of Bow's story can tell. Watch this fantastic documentary from a few decades ago (and and a big pond away) to learn more about the Bow. Also, revel in watching Louise Brooks talk about her contemporary.





I personally think It was the hair. Love it.

Street Ladies

Artist Katy Grannan has a keen eye for the pretty that exists in the odd. Her work is a body of mostly photographs that shows viewers what they may not think to look at in a way that makes it so they can't stop staring. The artist's latest work centers around a decidedly older group of subjects. In a two part solo exhibition entitled The Happily Ever After at Salon 94's Bowery and Freemans locations (see the site for details) Grannan presents The Believers and Boulevard. The Believers is an unscripted video work featuring a cast of faces familiar to Grannan's cannon; and Boulevard is the artist's rendition of street style photography. In her characteristic way Grannan stopped and snapped an intriguing (beautiful, unsettling, maybe unhinged) set of strangers against a stucco wall, as bright as the California sun.

The photos of Boulevard are of a varied set of passersby that present with their own peculiarities. Each subject carries out some form of visual delusion, whether a dyed mustache masking grays, a teeny tank top defying calendar age, a masculine jawline, or a host of ill-fitting clothing relaying an ill-fitting persona. The thread between them is a molding of reality to match the mind's life, the one that the subjects are living happily ever after. The photos themselves are saturated with sunshine, and glisten with brightness. The shots of older women, in their outfits and with their smiles, are most intriguing. Age is such a taboo in our culture, that we associate it with demented minds and feeble bodies, rather than a mark of life well lived and well spent. Grannan's photos raise that point without any pointedness, just great sitters and a stucco wall.

Must See.

My hero's doc is out!

Want to see this with me? I'm so there.

All you need to know about makeup.

Two brushes at a time makes total sense!

Need makeup lessons? Throw away your beauty magazines and just click above to listen to adorable tutorial poster Madison who makes about as much sense as any magazine beauty copy I've ever read.

via The Daily What.

Meow, Quack, Grace.

I happened to be at the same fashion exhibit in the same gallery as the epically orange haired legend that is Grace Coddington a bit back, and I'd like you to know that she keeps her iPhone ringer set to quack. She's quite the animal lover actually. Here she is on Martha "made it" Stewart's talk show talking up her cats and cat book and cat necklace. Cats!



Here are the kitty photos of Karen Elson as Ms. Coddington for Vogue ca. August 2008.

Meow.