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.

The Prettiest Nightmare I've Never Had.

Guinevere Van Seenus runs in Rodarte.

Wow. Rodarte's latest collaboration more than makes up for their lackluster show at the New York tents a couple of weeks ago. The video Todd Cole did featuring pieces from The Mulleavy Sisters' Spring 2010 collection is a mind warping romp through a rocket ship ghost yard. Shot on location at the now defunct space-tech field lab of Paypal co-founder Elon Musk, the video piece is chillingly sparse. It stars a lone supermodel, the excellent and underused Guinevere Van Seenus, who was a glossy page regular in the late '90s/early aughts. Her reemergence here is perfect for the strangeness of the video--where'd they find Guinevere? In that deserted spaceship hull?

Pretty/creepy.

Wherever she was, she's not happy about where she's wound up. Her pained expression and laborious running through the ghosted space spot are haunting to say the least. The eerily industrial soundtrack buzzes, hisses, and basses the perfect tone for all of the unsettling that unfolds. So, what's pretty about this nightmare of strain, strife, and space? The dresses! Rodarte's Spring collection was a collage of gorgeous fabrics that had gone through some really tough times--they were burned, stretched, dirtied, dunked, beat up--kind of like our seemingly tortured Guinevere. But they came out on the otherside knotted and resewn into some beatuiful pieces of work. Purgatory to the heavens. Watch the video, it makes a better case than I.

Click the above images to watch the full Todd Cole/Rodarte collabo.

Halloween Couture.

Forget Ricky's. If you need a mask for New York's best damn holiday (second only to annual Gay Day) Alexander McQueen's got you covered. Dazed & Confused Magazine presented 13 top fashion designers with briefs detailing a challenge to create a mask for model Guinevere van Seenus. Most of the designers got scrappy and used leftover materials from their A/W09 shows to create their pieces. Here, take a look at what your inner couture customer wants to wear for Halloween:

From top: Masks by Roberto Cavalli, Riccardo Tisci, Peter Pilotto, Martin Margiela, Alexander Mcqueen, and Jean-Charles de Castelbajec.

Check out the full feature, including interview with the designers about their creation, on Dazed Digital.