bringing the drama

I know we're well past NYFW (my favorite day of fashion month already passed in Paris, too) but I thought it was important to showcase the work of Michael Doyle, from the Art Institute Show from NYFW this season. I wasn't feeling up to going so I asked Tayler to scope it out for me and I regret not going now if only for Doyle's work. It's very dramatic and beautiful and reminded me of my favorite illustrations for my favorite lady, Salome -- the Oscar Wilde retelling of the story. I've written about how much I love her for Rookie already. 

When I looked more into Doyle's inspiration, I wasn't even surprised. Verbatim:

My collection "Of a Neophyte" is inspired by the Art Nouveau artist Aubrey Beardsley. He was an early 20th Century artist from the UK who made grotesque and sexually charged paintings inspired by (or mocking) his aristocratic upbringing. My collection is inspired by costume and history, yet my personal level of creation and innovation makes the clothes very special and of a time not seen before. I stay as conceptual as possible and create clothing that is not a carbon copy of my inspiration.

Aubrey Beardsley was the illustrator for my favorite version of Salome. I remember flipping through Wilde's play in middle school and staring at how lethal and beautiful the illustrations were. I've always gravitated towards the gothic, I guess. Gothic women actually had FEELINGS, so know? Feelings like RAGE and bitterness and things I was feeling as a bullied marginalized girl in middle school who was questioning her sexuality and getting real tired of people calling me Chinese Chicken or Jackie Chan's little sister and then asking me to do their homework for them. Gothic women killed their men and looked fabulous doing it. I've always admired that. I still do, haha.

I think Doyle's interpretations are really beautiful and I wanted to share them because he's been overlooked a little, I think. Ok, I'm back to doing homework.  I'll talk to you soon -- I have so much to share!!! Much love.

fashion nerd appreciation: the magazines & books that shape me

One of my most frequently asked questions is what books I read about fashion because I have so much to say on the subject, so I thought I'd show you the media I most frequently flip through. I've discussed Style Deficit Disorder on the blog before in 2008 but the pictures don't work anymore and also that post is hella embarrassing. So: here. My current most cherished favorites. I do have many other favorites, but they're at my house at school, so whatevs. Here ya go:

Book info: 

Style Deficit Disorder: Harajuku Street Fashion - Tokyo by Tiffany Godoy
Revue Encens Magazine, Love Magazine (issues 6 & 8 specifically), 032c Magazine, METAL Magazine, Worn Journal, The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion (Dress, Body, Culture) by Yuniya Kawamura.

This is a LONG post, so I'm putting it under a cut.

ODDITORY & OTHER THINGS

ODDITORY from MONICA MENEZ on Vimeo.

Stumbled across Monica Menez's rad, perverse, funny fashion videos and couldn't wait to show you guys! This is not my favorite one, but the other one is a triggering so I thought this one would be better. Her other two on her Vimeo are fantastic though, do check it out. These photos are from her portfolio, and go in hand with the video above. 

on survival & anxiety & feminist film gaze & words to heal you, from me with love

Hmm. I do inspiration posts occasionally, but I think I'll do them more often now because they are a good place to center my thoughts that often get sidelined into tumblr text posts and forgotten about later. Plus, I don't really care to document what I wear on a routine basis, it's more about everything else to me now. By everything else, I mean what I do with my body, what content I create, not the image I produce. I don't know how long this will last, me being me, Narcissist Extraordinaire, but there are so many strange, terrible, horrible, and beautiful things in the world, that it seems like a waste of energy for me to obsess over my looks at the moment.  I want to think about the influences.

It's a matter of both closing my eyes to constant self-surveillance and taping them open so I can learn everything, because I have realized nothing will ever be enough. I am thinking also about the complexities of constant self surveillance when it comes to women and femininity (they are not the same things, women and the feminine, so this distinction is important). We insist on seeing ourselves and maintaining ourselves constantly like we are going to disappear. Some of us are going to disappear, and maybe that surveillance has something to do with it. I am having weird problems with vanity. I am not ashamed to be happy with myself as a whole, because I am working to improve myself constantly, but also, it is sometimes very exhausting to realize how much work I have done to myself, and how much work there is left to do.I get dysphoria looking at pictures of myself now, even recent ones, like, 2 week old ones. It's so rapid and it isn't stopping. Like I said, nothing will ever be enough. It's ok, though, it's actually quite beautiful.


Here are some things that matter to me at the moment, and things I've written recently that have kept me grounded. They are lists, because I am a Type 8 and keeping lists helps keep me motivated to get things done.

♠ ♠ ♠Things to Remind Yourself When People are Never-Ending Shitheads Who Seek to Destroy You ♠ ♠ ♠

Filed under XY Mar 1999 by XYmagazine

§ § 15 of My Favorite Feminist and Queer Films § §

1. Cleo from 5 to 7 2. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance 3. Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains 4. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Picking these particular screencaps was pure coincidence but I think it speaks to the overarching theme of my perspective on feminist and queer cinema, and also my thoughts on self-surveillance and vanity and repulsion etc as a whole (things that make up feminist academia and feminist practice as a whole) . Feminism for me is about resistance and analysis but also empathy. Not charity, but empathy, and solidarity, because we can't speak for others and we have so much to learn from each other, and we are all so fucking complex. I will never know myself fully and you won't either, and it's important to question ourselves to further ourselves, you know? Critical analysis breeds complexity which breeds a way to understand how we can help each other.One of the reasons I enjoy my Lady Vengeance ladies so much because it becomes so clear they are being reactionary to what has been handed to them. In cinema, women are rarely afforded really complex hero positions, and when they are, their femininity is taken from them in some traumatic fashion, they are considered animals, sellouts, unhappy with themselves. It's a punishment for being different, you have to be punished in some way if you're going to be free.

 I admire all the women and people in these movies because they reject, and scream, and are very aware of the positions they have in society and are fighting against it and for themselves every step of the way. Again: vanity & resistance & vengeance & will & power & sisterhood & solidarity & refusal & freedom. When you watch any of these films, you are so aware that nothing is "natural" and being a person is such hard work, and you appreciate the shit you go through as a result. Pain, you see, can be pleasurable too, because at least you know you're feeling something. There's a truism for you. Now, we're almost done....

A Trio of Poems to Hit Home

Ok, I'm done. I suppose this gives us both lots to think about. I'm going to get back to reading. Hope you have a nice day. Much love.

Fashion Book: Alexander McQueen Evolution

McQueen was and remains one of my favorite designers. I remember the day he died, everyone at the tents (shows were still at the tents! Lincoln Center say what?) was in a state of shock. I don't even remember what shows I attended, just that I felt perpetually scared -- I guess shell shocked, and grappled for my friends arms in the dark on the way back home. In the taxi cab back from Milk Studios with Tavi and Elizabeth we passed by the McQueen store and were quiet since the first time we got into the cab, and I don't remember anything else. Just that moment. A sense of loss.

Since he's died I've spent hours and days poring over fashion books about him to be disappointed in what they've offered; I've guess it's because I'm always trying to understand him in a profound way so I feel more at peace with the fact such a genius ended his life so early. I don't begrudge him and I'm not angry, I'm just constantly wondering where would he would be now. He was so good -- so, so good. And now he's gone, and we'll never know. And more than anything else, I find that frustrating, and when I read fashion books about him, I'm usually left frustrated because they just relist what he's done, without offering any real insight on his relationships or the mood of the seasons he presented, and it all feels so shallow. That's why I'm so appreciative of the new release by Katherine Gleason.

Gleason sets the mood for each show and provides beautiful description of both the audience reception, the inspiration behind the collection, McQueen's life and relationships at the time and how it all connects. She also doesn't paint him as a perfect person, and takes her time to describe him in all his complexities, and for that he had plenty. I've included some of my favorite parts of the book -- but not all, and not in their entries because duh copyright, but I hope you enjoy them and you buy the book so we can share the experience.

Formative Looks: 90's CDG

Anyone who knows me even vaguely knows I am a CDG obsessee - the tag spans the very beginning of this blog, and the brand is one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place, started loving fashion in the first place. It constantly makes me think and it's what I fall back on whenever... well, whenever. It's one of my keys to survival, and the brand shapes my aesthetic and what I look for in other brands. I can not underscore my love for the brand, for Rei, for Junya, and for what they've given me. I thought I'd put together a memoriam of my favorite looks of CDG for my own personal pleasure here for future reference. CDG has been around for ages though, so I'm going to break it up into different posts / decades / eras etc. 

“For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.”- Rei Kawakubo

SS 1995. Rei described the feeling of this collection as this: “Looking for a future with a positive, vibrant energy.”

I enjoy the early era of CDG as the cluttered, learning process of Rei. It's kind of romantic? And romantic is not the first word I would say when I think about Rei....so I'm especially fond of her older collections because of it.

SS 1996. This was probably one of the most memorable collections of CDG, and I love the campaign  images so much too. Somehow it's really peaceful despite being such a colorful collection? It's one of my favorite incarnations of the CDG woman, because it's so connected to other woman. I feel like it's important to view this girl connected to other girls. They're all on a different level than you. They're looking away from you, they're in their own rainbow world and it's peaceful and full of power you can't understand.

The rest of the images in this series can be found here.

 

“Comme des Garçons can never, by its nature, appeal to everyone. It would be the end of CDG if it ever did. We have to maintain the paradox of creation [that will never] be understood by everyone, and yet through its indirect power, we are able to continue.”- Rei Kawakubo

 Fall/Winter 1996. I like this one so much because it's an amalgamation of everything I'm currently loving! I like the rich, velvet fabrics but the fact they weren't interpreted in a baroque royalty kind of way. It's fresh. And J.W. Anderson reminds me a lot of this era in some ways.

But my favorite... the true #1 formative collection for me ever of all time is SS97. It's everything. I did an homage here, my feelings haven't really changed from then.

Vogue Paris, 1997 Comme des Garçons, Spring 1997

Spring/Summer 1998 is wonderful too. It's timeless, I see reiterations of the styling all of the time.

Illustrations by Upsana Prasad

I have a pretty low key desk job at school (which is great, because I get to do homework while also researching fashion and feminist stuff while also writing up things for Rookie while also doing things for powderdoom!) and on my surfing in between helping patrons, I stumbled across the work of Upsana Prasad, a London College of Fashion BA student in Womenswear. I was really into Upsana's illustrations, they're reminiscent of Rorschach tests and I'm preoccupied by things related to mental illness at the moment (you'll see health/fashion/feminst themes a lot in my future posts here, I'm just saying).

For more on Upsana and these illustrations, follow the jump.

some notes on napkins.

Visionaire / Comme des Garcons via  rifles @ tumblr

“…the female narcissist is dangerous to patriarchy because she obviates the desiring male subject (loving herself, she needs no confirmation of her desirability from him). in the case of an artistic practice that performs female narcissism (such as wilke’s), the threat lies in its making superfluous the arbiters of artistic value. already presuming her desirability, wilke obviates the modernist critical system; loving herself, she needs no confirmation of her artistic “value.” 

—	amelia jones, body art: performing the subject

“Those who subvert social norms are, ostensibly, people who have forgotten that they can be seen, publicly, at any time. Therefore, when they transgress social norms—by expressing physical affection for a person not visibly coded as the opposite sex, for example, or by being fat and rejecting social and bodily invisibility—they need to be reminded of this omniscient social gaze, and in the absence of institutional discipline, must be punished so they do not transgress again. This is the mechanism by which a dude who sees me in a vividly-colored dress, walking alone as though I either don’t know or don’t care that I am defying bodily norms, feels compelled to scream “UGLY FAT BITCH” at me. He is applying social discipline and teaching me a lesson: Everyone can see you, and your body and/or behavior are unacceptable.”

—	So Michel Foucault and Jeremy Bentham walk into an elementary school cafeteria*

Cindy Sherman Untitled #479, 1975

I have been very very happy lately, friends and parties and Beyonce do that to a person. That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking critically though... and thinking critically makes me feel sad in kind of a detached way. I wrote this the other night on my tumblr, and I collected all of these things on Tumblr too, but I need the conciseness of a blog post with all of them together to understand what I want from art / critique / myself. Anyway, here goes.

I want ridiculousness in fashion. I want ugly. I want destruction, I want imperfection, flaws, ripped seams, extra armholes, mutated glory that when people walk by me they whisper that they just don’t get it. I want to confuse you. I don’t want timelessness. I want everything, right here, right now, no regard for looking regal or rich or calm and collected. Why do I have to be classy anyway? Why do I need to impress you? When I slip on something I love I’m not doing it for you, I am doing it to feel good about myself, I am doing it to be transported into a place in my mind where I am safe and powerful and the cracks in my existence are filled with gold and diamonds and chocolate and goodness. I want to be able to change what I’m wearing mid walk — flip my jacket inside out, upside down, endless options, I want to tear apart what I’m wearing and what I represent and build back up again. I want you to have to think about what I represent, the space I take up. I want you running scared because you don’t understand and I don’t want you to. Every fucking seam of my jacket represents something you can’t have because I don’t want you to. 

This is mine. 

All mine.

 You can’t have it. 

when the pawn hits the conflict he thinks like a king

“When the infinite servitude of woman is broken, when she lives for herself and by herself … she will find strange, unfathomable, repulsive, delicious things; we shall take them, we shall understand them.” - Arthur Rimbaud, Letters of the Visionary. 

Antilamentation, by Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Peter Lindbergh for Vogue Italia, 5/99

Max Vadokul's photo for Y's Autumn 200 Catalogue

I don't know where I am, but I know I am very happy -- and when I am not, I know that there is happiness waiting for me down the road. I have decided to regret nothing and try everything.

you need to know the rules before you can break them.

I am uncomfortable with the big elephant of privilege in the blogosphere. So I am trying to think of ways to acknowledge and subvert it in my own blog without being a hater to the girls that I support and love who also blog but who also perpetuate the bubble of privilege that makes reading fashion blogs not very enjoyable anymore. I mean I acknowledge I have that privilege, too -- I am white-appearing, cisgendered, don't read particularly "QUEER" if people are stupid enough to judge by appearance, 'straight sized', I am in an area where I am afforded every opportunity to shop where I choose because there are plenty of places I like to shop near me that I can afford and that have things I want and I can fit into most everything I try, and I get sent things that otherwise I may not be able to afford, by very generous friends, followers, and stores. And I work as a writer and 'blogger' and get paid for it occasionally by sponsors and editors so I can afford things if I save up. I know I have privilege myself when it comes to being a blogger.

But then again, I am not a rich person, I don't get as many opportunities as some other bloggers because I'm not quite as marketable (also I'm terrible with answering emails at a reasonable time) and I've turned down things many times, for many reasons, and I'm okay with all that. I think and hope you all trust me and my opinion and why I blog. I am just contemplating what it means to have integrity but also individual freedom to market myself. You can't make bank on pride, you know? I don't know if what I am writing is making sense. I hope so. I've been in this hard place for awhile. I just don't like the feeling that I have this power to affect change and help people and make people less lonely while also making them feel like they're only going to have a good blog, only get where they want in the world if they do x things, look x way, buy x things, take pictures x ways, x times a week, write x way. I think I am doing a disservice to you now by saying you can only be a successful fashion blogger by being 'yourself'. I think we all know that is kind of bullshit, now. Successful fashion bloggers, they/we have this unwritten glossy standard now, and it's tiring. I am tired. I have realized I am not tired of blogging, but by the rules of fashion blogging that have silently creeped up on us, the rules we have kind of invented for ourselves. I wonder how and when it happened, really, and how can we actively change it without making everyone change if they don't have to. I wonder if enough people care.

What I'm saying is that I am, as I've said before, tired of playing by the rules. I have played by them, I have gotten this far by them and by making them accommodate me and my personality and my style, but meh. Enough is enough. I don't think fashion blogging is enjoyable enough a pursuit for me to keep blogging if I'm gonna keep trying to accommodate a certain style of blogging I'm not into, anyway. I dunno what my resistance will be, in what form it will take on this blog, other than this long winded declaration. I guess I'm gonna do whatever I want and I hope you're gonna go along for the ride. I'd like to know if you feel the same about where the blogosphere is going. Do you like where fashion blogging is at the moment? Does it alienate you too? I wanna know your thoughts.

Talk to you soon.