Weekend Reading List: Fashion

“There’s only one thing in life and that’s the continual renewal of inspiration.” - Diana VreelandI forgot to say before that just before Christmas I recieved a couple of books that I wanted but never got down to buying; I guess I didn't want them badly enough. One was Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel. I spent a very pleasant afternoon looking over every page with BG on his sofa, feeling excited and inspired. After that we went outside and repotted a cactus, and pruned back his passion fruit vine. Reading and gardening: I can't think of a more agreeable way to spend a Sunday afternoon - unless it's to work on a painting or drawing, but that's just me.
Lots of you would rather hit the gym, I'm sure, or trawl a 'sauna', but different strokes for different folks, as they say (I'm quite sure it should be 'folk' not 'folks', by the way).Anyway this book made me look at Carine Roitfeld's Irreverant with a bit more perspective - not that Irreverant isn't a splendid overview of Ms Roitfeld's work so far. It is, and much of it is excellent and definitive, and I'm her fan. Also, I like the personal bits of information, and the archival photos of her family. The thing I object to is the title, as well as the sense the book projects that her work, or her attitude actually pushes the moral or aesthetic envelope in some extreme, innovative fashion. You must be very short-sighted to not see that what she does had already been done half a century ago at least. Her ouevre is but an echo of the truly shocking (and yes, irreverant) path scorched by Helmut Newton, Chris Von Wangenheim (see below), Guy Bourdin and Robert Mapplethorpe. So accomplished, yes, irreverant, hardly.And can someone tell me how someone as immaculately stylish as Ms Roitfeld begot a daughter who looks so common? In Julia Restoin Roitfeld's every slutty outfit, one can see that Carine's style really isn't for everyone.
I'm also struggling with the magazine Industrie (the one with Franca Sozzani, the editor of Vogue Italia, on the cover) and also Love (Kristen Mcmenamy). Poor Ms Sozzani is striving, isn't she, to fill Ms Roitfeld's heels, to be the queen of fashion? The grizzled one wants to be irreverant too! But she succeeds only in being disagreeable and frankly repugnant - the interview amply illustrates the reason why fashion people have such a negative vibe, and why they should remain behind the masthead and not appear on the cover. Plus she looks like Madonna with all the filler vacuumed out of her. Oh, and Industrie has a story on Glen O'Brien.
Does anyone even need to know one thing about Mr O'Brien?
As for Love, the less said the better. A quick flip shows that the magazine has no direction whatsoever. Since I'm way behind in my reading, I'll struggle with Love no longer - into the bin it goes! Ms Mcmenamy's 1992 Vogue Italia cover (Steven Meisel) directly 'inspired' the 2010 Vogue Paris cover.

Year of the Dragon: Ariane Koizumi

This is Ariane Koizumi, in a 1989 photo by Peter Lindbergh.
Ms Koizumi, a native New Yorker of Dutch and Japanese parentage, was discovered by Steven Meisel (Meisel's picture of her below) and was a supermodel, before the term was coined, and joined the long list of models who never quite made a successful transition to films. She starred in one movie, Year of the Dragon, which came out in 1985, at the height of her fame as a model. Directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke and John Lone, the Chinese Mafia film didn't exactly break racial stereotypes. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone. In the movie Ms Ariane played a Chinese-American television reporter, Tracy Tzu.
There was Sayoko, Tina Chow and then Ariane.
Ms Koizumi made Jenny Shimizu possible.

Lets Be Pretty!

Nyasha Matonhodze for Louis Vuitton Fall. Photo by Steven Meisel.
So who's that doggie in the window?

Not the 1960s Again!!!

How many times have they revived the 1960s since 1990? Having said that, I quite like the vulgarity of this cover... bad taste can be so energizing.

Lanvin: Kinga vs Iselin the Man

Steven Meisel's playful, drag take on classic Helmut Newton. I like. However: I don't get this liking for Iselin the Man do you? Are there no other models available?

Karlie Kloss in Dior

There's something not quite right about these Dior ads by Steven Meisel - quite apart from the cynical looking model who seems to be wriggling, yes, wriggling, on a piece of driftwood, the clothes look truly random. What appears to be a white raincoat + Hawaiian print dress + purple bag? Don't understand; Those red shoes? The items may be nice seperately, but together?

Sean O as Steven Meisel

Perfect casting! Why didn't I think of this earlier? Ms Meisel probably already thinks he looks like Sean O'Pry in his mind's eye... (Photo: China Men's Vogue)

Bananas and Stripes

The new Prada ads (Steven Meisel) look a lot like Antonio's drawings, don't they? I've placed the ads in order of like: From delightedly-like (three girls in banana print) on top to dubious at the bottom (eyewear).I'm not crazy about the Maria Carla one that denim bag is too truly in your face... And the spectacles one is rather practically doesn't need models. But still I admire the clarity of the ads - no soft sell here, just product, product, product!

Tom Ford

“There’s a continuity from what I was doing at YSL at the end; that’s the customer.” - Tom Ford“It’s about individuality. Real clothes, real women. For a fashionable woman aged 25 to 75. That’s why I literally put many of my own muses in the show.“I want this to be somewhere a woman knows she can go when she wants a great jacket—not a fake expensive jacket, something that has intrinsic value. I don’t think fashion has to change every five minutes. I’d like these to be clothes you can wear for a long time—ten, 20 years; pass on to your daughter. Why buy vintage when you can open your own closet!”Tom Ford and his debut women's collection as featured in Vogue December. Mr Ford’s comeback to womenswear after six years (his last was with Gucci Group) was shown achieved in top secret-style in New York on September 12. Anna Wintour should just have put any one of these images on the cover instead of Angelina Jolie. The photos by Steven Meisel of this collection were shot the morning after the presentation on September 13.

Working Girl

Poor Linda in the good old days! Her brows were still where brows should be. Vogue August 1987 A New Working Advantage by Steven Meisel. Male models: John Pearson, Todd Bentley. Hair: Oribe

Lady be Good

More pictures of Our Lady of the Infinite Crazies in drag. Anna Wintour is LOLing somewhere.Feeling constipated? Could be the soiled socks you swallowed Lady!Sniffing the ammonia fumes (yum yum) that rise off the urinal - truly Gaga.The best picture of the series: And it's because we can't see her face. Yay!
And below is HOW IT"S DONE: Good old Linda!

BP Oil Disaster As Fashion Statement

So this is where all the crude went?
Now I've really seen it all (and it's usually in Vogue Italia)! I must say I don't really see Kristen McMenamy as Mother Nature, but she makes a pretty convincing dead seal (spread 4). Bet the old girl had fun playing dead.