Anna Dello Russo by Helmut Newton, 1996

Love how much a departure this is from both their styles.

[via]

Inspiration 10.29.10

Can you tell I just re-watched Blue Velvet?

David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini by Helmut Newton.

Coveting 10.13.10

Dear Gareth Pugh,

If you could just messenger me over the following looks from your new collection, that would be great. You’ve even sold me on the colour white.

Smooches!

Alex

(Seriously, I would sell my baby brother for this jacket.  Sorry Charles. I love you and all, but I’m a sucker for asymmetrical closures and interesting peplums.)

Sleek, black, vaguely armour-like. WANT.

Disco cyborg. Hate the leggings, covet the dress.

This is so cool and android-at-a-Ren-faire-y. I want to twirl around in it.

I think my other brother might have to be exchanged for this jacket. Sorry, Max. Your charms are no match for metallic drapey awesomeness.

So, Gareth, what do you think? Do we have a deal? My undying love and two brothers in exchange for your awesome clothing?

What do you mean, it doesn’t sound like you’re getting much out of it?

So cruel of you, Gareth. I thought you were better than that.

[via where you will also find awesome menswear looks which I ignored in my selfish focus on my own imaginary wardrobe.]

And inspiration to revisit the collection thanks to Gene!

 

Stalking Vidal Sassoon

My hair is curly, and I look like a pin-head with short hair  but if I could pull it off, I’d march straight to the hairdresser right now and demand a replica of one of these sleek Vidal Sassoon cuts.  I’ve lusted after them for years. The first time I chopped my hair short, I was sure that I would magically be transformed into one of these androgynous Sixties gamines. Tragically, I hadn’t factored in being twelve, with a face-full of braces and rower’s shoulders. I looked androgynous all right, but not in any good way. I lacked the requisite frailty to pull off the look.

Every couple of years, I’d happen across a picture of Sassoon at work and feel the familiar compulsion to either pick up the scissors myself (end result: tears and strange short spots in hard-to-reach areas) or to hightail it to the local hairdresser (result: strange mushroom crop). I’ve learned my lesson over the past few years and am rocking the long sexy boho wavy thing. Still, looking at these pictures and these exquisite cuts, I’m feeling a sudden urge to start scrutinizing my face shape. Maybe something subtle will have changed in my bone structure and hair texture to allow me to chop it off into a sexy angular crop? Maybe? This time around? Pretty please?

Other side of the lens

Isabella Blow by Steven Meisel, 1993.

[via]

I’ll happily admit I may have shrieked a little bit when I saw these scans. This editorial throws together two of my very favourite things– ultimate Texan goddess Jerry Hall and the USSR– and the combination is so exciting that I can’t help but giggle to myself with glee. Throw in some horses, some camels, and some Soviet statuary, and I’m in heaven. It’s like the shoot was done with me in mind.

Did I mention she’s a goddess?

Jerry Hall by Norman Parkinson for Vogue January 1976.

[via]

Land Girls

I have a secret obsession with all-girl institutions. Growing up a tomboy, I’d read about British boarding schools and daydream about the joys of bosom friends and uniforms. When I actually went away to boarding school, some of my most fondly-remembered times were after hours in my all-girls dorm, where we’d cram ourselves in to a tiny little room barely big enough for a microwave and an ironing board and gossip the night away. I was never a very girly girl, but my imagination was always captured by instances of female camaraderie.

Recently, when thinking about women banding together, the Land Girls, or the Women’s Land Army, keeps popping insistently into my thoughts. These were the women who took over the agricultural jobs in the UK during WWI and WWII– a cow-milking answer to Rosie the Riveter. They were generally young girls who came in from the cities, rolled up their sleeves, and set about serving their country by making sure the  while the men were away at war. They plowed fields, tended crops, and turned trees into telephone poles. They were sexual revolutionaries and looked damn good doing it.

They were made famous through things like Angela Huth’s charming book and the subsequent film and  BBC adaptation (all of which I strongly urge you to pick up for a bit of period fun.) Land Girls were classic examples of cool girly style: badass enough to leave their homes and take up work on a farm, but still managing to  maintain an iconic freshly-scrubbed sexiness. Most of them tended to be pretty young girls, out away from home for the very first time, so you can just imagine what sort of racy stories they had to tell!  I love my mental pictures of rosy-cheeked lasses, freshly turned out in their practical little uniforms, heartily hauling barrows before putting on a quick slash of lipstick and heading off to town to flirt with the few boys left around. I’m sure I’m romanticising it quite a bit, but the accounts I’ve read of the time point to incredible adventures and stories of girls managing to be strong together at a time of great national hardship. What a time they must have had!

I’ve assembled a collection of pictures so you can see for yourselves the charm of the Land Girls.

The uniforms. How awesome is she?

Being inspected by the Queen!

America had Land Girls too. I dig the cute utilitarian outfits.

Reunion of former Land Girls. How much fun would it be to go out for a drink with them and hear their stories?

[via 1, 2, 3 (interesting interview), 4 (awesome resource), 5 (BBC site full of interviews and fun facts), 6 ]

In Memoriam

“Burning Down the House” by David LaChapelle, with Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow.

Presenting: Obywatel Kane

I’ve been thinking about movie poster design lately, and kept finding my mind being brought back to this Polish poster for Citizen Kane. It’s not the my usual style, but I think it’s so much unexpected fun. I’d expect this to be something of a spoof piece, designed recently, rather than an actual one-sheet for the film. Polish film posters always have such charming twists to them, and a great style (not to mention the personal nerdy pleasureI get out of sounding out the Polish words and trying to decipher them… ahhh the joy of having been a Russian major). I’ll try to feature more of them soon.