Pre-moticon.

The first issue of i-D, August 1980. Designed by Terry Jones.

I have a love hate relationship with online slang. The internet land shorthand can get out of hand, and the elllloonnngatttiiiiooonnn ooooffff woooorrrdddsss drives me bananas, but the one thing I couldn't do without are the winky, smily, sad-faced little emoticons that help make typed-word-only convos a little more human. In this post, I pay homage to one of the first major communication vehicles to make big-time use of the graphic representation of an emotion: i-D Magazine. See it winking at you? It's been doing that since it's first issue (above) published 30 years ago. I was just reading a NYT article that cited the name of the fashion glossy and I winked back. Here, in all of it's glory is the winky wink and it's long tradition of cover girl imitations.

Why the wink? Because it's cheeky like all things British should be. Thanks for so many years of so much fun i-D. Wink on.

For a good time visit the i-D cover archive.

One/One-Thousand: Mario Sorrenti

If you like naked women, you'll love Mario Sorrenti.

The Napels-born photographer made his way to New York at the age of ten. His career has been building on itself for years and has overshadowed early tragedy. His younger brother, Davide, was a inspiration for and a victim of fashion's darker Heroin Chic days. Mario's oeuvre includes photographic tributes to his departed brother, as well as a serious stash of important editorial work. Among his first assignments was to document a trip with then girlfriend Kate Moss for the now infamous Calvin Klein Obsession ads featuring Ms. Skin-n-Bones in her barely salad days. Those images became symbols of a time since gone (remember the rebel girls scrawling "feed me" across CK billboards of Moss?) but Sorrenti hasn't gone anywhere. In fact, his work has become staple among top mags like Harper's Bazaar, W, V, and Vogue. His images are often hazed shots of dewy bodies barely dressed...just the way fashion mags like 'em. But his style is versatile, lately entering a territory of bolder colors and more clothes.

He ain't goin' no where.

Kate and Dolly.

There's something really funny about this, and then there is something strangely hypnotic about it. Watch Kate Moss appear as Dolly sings the ultimate ode, Jolene.



You can buy that drawing if you want.

Layer By Layer.

Over at the SHOWstudio shop you can pick up all sorts of ephemera crafted in the quest for fashion shoot perfection. There are set pieces from shoots that appeared in W, Vogue, The New Yorker, etc. Hand-made by set designers and prop stylist like the extremely talented Shona Heath and Simon Costin, items include giant fiberglass cherries, furry rabbit ears that sat atop Alber Elbaz's head, and a giant, furry poodle puppet. But, if you want an item that was there for it all, for every shoot, offering necessary support and guidance and important stability for all the creative types, including the models, you need only purchase one thing: The floor!

Yep, you can by a block of the photography studio floor signed by photographer Nick Knight. It is a relic composed of layer after layer after layer of paint rolled on to the floor to provide a fresh white coat for the next morning's shoot. It's like a supremely stylish onion of sorts. It's mind-boggling how something as thin as a layer of paint can add up to inches of thickness over time.

The blocks on offer may be just wide enough for you to stick on a pair of stilettos and play Kate Moss in front of the mirror. Maybe.

Two Minutes For All Time

A few years ago Nick Knight lined up some to the world's most cherished human resources (supermodels!) and snapped their photos for a model-heavy issue of British Vogue. Before the gorgeous creatures escaped his studio to return to their natural habitats, he pointed a digital film camera at them and let it roll for two minutes in a Warholian exercise. The project, called More Beautiful Women, was for Knight's brilliant fashion/web love child, SHOWstudio. No instructions were given; there was no goal, no endgame- just two full minutes of permission-granted voyeurism. The videos are like mini-psych experiments. The models mostly begin with fierce stares, or some sort of strong, put-on pose. Then they giggle and loosen up. Then they attempt to regain composure, but we've seen through their pay-per-hour stare and it doesn't last as long this time. They look away, they fidget, or they become mannequins. They get bored. They are no longer models, but women watching their own thoughts, unaware of the camera. Then they are relieved when it's over. Here's a play-by play of Helena Christensen's two minutes:

The opening stare into the camera is fierce and sexy from behind a half curtain of perfectly tousseld hair. That's why she gets the big bucks.


Then the arms relax, a smile cracks.


She tucks the fierce hair behind her ear.


Makes a brief attempt to get the fierceness back.


But melts again.


Gives us a stellar, goofy eyecross.


Gets bored.


Is no longer vamping in the least.


Gives a goofy, girlie grin when the timer buzzes.


Leaves the set giggling.

It makes for great watching. Click here to see Christensen in full. Erin O'Connor and Kate Moss also took turns staring down the lens.

kate moss in more beautiful women


I wish there were better archives of this project. Knight had so many women participate, from Twiggy to Naomi, to Penelope, to Shalom. If you hunt down anymore beautiful creature clips, send 'em my way!

Top Of The Drops.

Yesterday I braved the beautiful sunshine to get a look at Topshop New York. I had every intention of going in, but the drop of the store was unbelievably successful and the queue (yes, the queue) was around the block and then some. Here's The Budget Babe's footage of the loooooong line.



A video of the line lasts 1:52, that's a long friggin' line. Despite the gorgeous line-waiting weather, I opted out of the mayhem and just poked my nose around the windows and the crowds instead.

My favorite part of the opening was actually the great tote bags that Topshop had handed out to potential shoppers in the days leading up to the event.

Each tote came with a gift card worth anywhere from $5 to $500, brilliant move because most of the people who were waiting on line said they were there to redeem the only-valid-yesterday cards. It made the event quite the scene. Well, that and tell any fashionista worth her fake hipster glasses that Kate Moss is in a ten mile radius and she'll be there. It's a given. It's a rule.

Here's a fascinating discussion about the difference between what Americans expect from their Topshop and what the British want. Apparently we need bigger dressing rooms. Not because we are bigger (yeah right!) but because we expect more space.

I'm so happy that I live here and can go at eleven AM on a Tuesday. I'll have a full report when I can shop sans stampede and overcrowding. It'll be much more thorough and less anxiety filled. Cheerio kiddies.

Floss Like Moss.

Click image for bigger image!

Kate Moss is a stylecon of the first order, highest rank, and greatest import. Her star still shines bright after all of these years, and it's because the girl knows how to use her noggin even better than she knows how to use her good looks. She was born to do what she does, and thank the lucky fashion gods, she decided to do her thang with Top Shop, a reasonably affordable outpost for fashionable finds. Her collection is coming to America peeps, this Thursday, to Broadway and Broome specifically. It's full of Liberty Prints and casual cool rockness. I'm loving the bandanna with two little flower patterns. This is big, like a British invasion of the fashion realm. Yippee. Cheerio. Rubbish bin. Cheeky. Tired and emotional. That's all I've got.

Here are Kate's Liberty Prints, based on classics from the storied fabric design house and reworked by the modesigner for her collection.

Aren't they purdy? Or, ahem, swish? I don't know if that even works...