Black Velvet

Guess who just got a hold of her all-time favourite shoes?

Me! It was me! They are black velvet and red lacquer wedges, by Yves Saint Laurent (Tom Ford-era and Fall 2004 RTW, to be exact). Oooh yeah, life is good.

p.s. The feet in the photo belong to Hana Soukupova, who was apparently rocking the hairy leg look at the time. More power to her.

NSFW. Possibly just NS.

In the past week I've watched three films; feature length British horror flick The Awakening (2011), the music clip for Zebra Katz and Njena Reddd Foxxx's song, "Ima Read" and Agent Provacteur's video short, Fleurs Du Mal. Only two of them were scary.

I live in hope that one day someone will create a horror film as perfectly suited to me as The Others (2001). You know - eerily beautiful, with a good twist and strong child actors, set in the interwar period, starring Nicole Kidman... I'm not too picky, am I?

The Awakening actually ticked a fair few of those boxes, obviously borrowing from (or paying homage to) The Changeling (1980) and (like The Others) Henry James' short novel The Turn of the Screw and The Innocents (1961). Now, as sources of inspiration for horror film go, that ain't a bad bunch. Unfortunately The Awakening just doesn't lift off. I guess you can't simply reference your way into making a scary movie.

Far more freaky is this ad for undies:

Apparently its director, Justin Anderson, took inspiration from the Hammer House of Horror TV series:

Watching it I also felt the influence of Michael Haneke's Funny Games (2007, I haven't seen the original. Boo, hiss.) and the rape scene in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971). Disturbing stuff.

Finally here's the video for "Ima Read", a song which has apparently exploded since being used as the soundtrack to Rick Owens' Fall 2012 RTW show:

I'm calling it - scary is the new sexy.

Rodarte Fall 2012

Clem Bastow has written an interesting article on Rodarte's use of Aboriginal prints (or, more to the point, Aboriginal-esque prints) in their Fall 2012 collection.
It's a tricky issue but I do on the whole agree with Bastow when she says that there's no excuse to go the 'vaguely inspired' route when there are living, breathing Aboriginal artists with whom Rodarte could have collaborated. As a side note, and by some great coincidence, I have discussed Rodarte in terms of nostalgia for a national landscape before.And just to preemptively respond to an annoying counter argument that always seems to crop up, no, using fake Aboriginal prints and labelling your Made In China plastic dreamcatcher earrings 'Navajo', does not compare to the occasional fad for kilts. As far as I know there haven't been any government-sanctioned attempts to decimate Scottish culture in living memory - the same cannot be said for the Australian Aboriginal and Native American people.I must take issue with one point of Bastow's, however. She describes the collection's silhouettes as being 'Victorian-inspired'.


Babe, please. That's 1930s all over. AND ANOTHER THING. How could you write a commentary on that collection without mentioning the shoes?

Yes, those are sand bottle heels. Please Rodarte, just do more of this kind of stuff and less with the staggering cultural insensitivity.

Oh ho!

A dress from Alber Ebaz's Fall 2012 collection for Lanvin:

And its doppelgänger from Romance Was Born's Spring 2011 collection, 'The Oracle':

I'll take one of each. Cheers.

Pleasure never is at home

Dion Lee's Fall 2012 collection has earned him a really lovely review from Style.com's Maya Singer.

Personally this is not my favourite of Lee's collections to date. I kinda wish he would use less of that cute cocktail dress silhouette - I associate it with a certain breed of pretty and wealthy Sydney girls (whom I of course loath and envy) and find it detracts from the more interesting aspects of his designs.

Sheer geometric inserts recalled Versace's Spring 2011 RTW show, though I preferred the PVC used in that collection to Lee's isabelline mesh.

Versace Spring 2011

That said, Singer's review suggests that one of the collection's greatest strengths lies in Lee's innovative used of materials and I'd imagine that his are garments that you simply have to see in the flesh, so to speak.

Finally, how's this for a gorgeous appraisal of Australian fashion:

But what makes Lee really interesting, and eventually, perhaps, significant, is that his intellect doesn't work at cross-purposes to the unavoidable sexiness of his clothes. There is something deeply Australian about that: For whatever reason, designers from Oz seem to have a totally non-vexed relationship to sex and body-consciousness, and Lee embraces that, mitigating the potential aridity of his designs by integrating vampy notes.

Oh Maya, you do make a nation blush...