Obviously doctor, you've never been a 13 year-old girl.

Serious question: Was Danny DeVito more hilarious as a doctor in The Virgin Suicides -

or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

It's a close-run thing.

The Opium Bores

Yves Saint Laurent have released their latest campaign for Opium with British actress Emily Blunt having been chosen as the perfume's latest junky:

Upon seeing this image I took a deep breath, ready to unleash a torrent of sanctimonious criticism on its creators - something along the lines of, 'Boring! Bland! Brit girls shouldn't do Opium! Boo too all things contemporary and let us mourn every wonderful Opium campaign past.'

But then I trawled through a few blogs and realised that every fashion bitch on the internet had already written exactly the same thing. I decided that I would have to think something different.

So here's the question: What were the good Opium ads again? How did they go?

Let's have a look at some of Blunt's predecessors.

Kate Moss

This is a weird one - I really think there was some mix up at the YSL offices and someone accidentally smacked the Opium logo on what was meant to be an ad for Parisienne.

Mélanie Thierry [technically for Belle D'Opium. Settle down.]:

Well, she's wildly beautiful AND French (Dieu merci!) but the video short that accompanied this photograph is so hugely embarrassing that I can't even begin to take this campaign seriously. That dancing gives me shame tingles.

Malgosia Bela

Blah. I feel like she's trying to seduce me into flying Air France First Class (yes, Bela is Polish. Settle down!)

Kate Moss (again)

Well this is quite beautiful but if I'm going to nitpick - 'Sensuality to the Extreme'? Shame tingles (again).

So, given Opium's less than incredible track record one may well ask why the latest campaign has been met with such earnest disappointment.

Well, you see, we have been tricked. Tricked by the sneaky Steven Meisel, tricked by that awfully clever Tom Ford and tricked most of all by beautiful, beautiful Sophie Dahl. For have ever you seen so enticing a fashion image as this?:

It's an ad so good as to be a curse on the Opium brand, rendering all the perfume's campaigns before and since inferior and superfluous. No tacky Oriental/ Asian/ Tribal props. No bong smoke. Just the most ravishing advertisement you ever saw. And it has hoodwinked us into thinking that there is some great dynasty of Opium campaigns when really there's just this one, very sublime photograph.

So of course I don't like Blunt's turn in the den - the smoking suit and necklace are cheesy, the 'oriental' (ugh) atmosphere contrived and Blunt herself just such an odd choice for the product. But I'll grant that she like the other Opi-ettes have not benefited from the reflected glory of Dahl's effort.

I'll finish off with an excerpt from Luca Turin's review of Opium the perfume, published in his and Tania Sanchez's book, Perfumes - An A to Z Guide, which, incidentally, is one of the best anythings I've ever read:

Opium illustrates better than any other fragrance the peculiar phenomenon of love followed by rejection, known as fashion. It is unquestionably one of the greatest fragrances of all time, not only in terms of its phenomenal success, but in having deserved it. Yet I would hate it if anyone wore it near me today.

Ha! And it's just the opposite for the ad campaigns. Life!

our bitter angels

For the second time in this excellent song's life, "Pale Rider" by The Preachers has found itself bedfellows with fashion film. And why not? The band's singer Isabella is as outrageously beautiful as ever and she offers some very interesting insights into her mode of performance. The song is dark and lusty in a way which for me (alone, apparently) conjures up the setting of a lonely bar sitting on the edge of a desert. Nevertheless, as with the song's official video (styled by Saint Augustine Academy), dark water seems to be the motif of this new film directed by Ben Briand.

The fashion comes this time from Benah, the accessories label of a, now Sydney-based, New Zealand transplant Brenda Harvey. Beautiful leather pieces with gold hardware (a most perfect shade of gold, by the way) anchor the collection currently available on the Benah website. Also good are a series of printed silk scarves.

Without getting into the current debate over the Native American 'trend' in fashion - though obvs. I'm Team Navajo. Urban Outfitters can suck it - the Southwestern influence (direct or otherwise) on this scarf's print sits perfectly with the atmosphere of Pale Rider.

Baby when you race today/ Just take along my love with you

Oh, the loveliness of cars.

Blumarine

Vogue Italia September 2011

Prada Spring 2012

angles

The Spring 2012 Ready-to-wear collections will be remembered as being that time that Art Deco murdered us all and we loved it.

Chloé

Christian Dior

BCBG Max Azria

Araks

Alice + Olivia

Alexander Wang

Alberta Ferretti

10 Crosby Derek Lam

cute

You know how you thought Alber Elbaz was adorable? Well behold Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra:

And their clothes are beautiful too, the late 1970s style necklines and draping well-suited to the flat-chested wraiths who wore them at New York fashion week.

faaarshion

Hey look, a shoe broke at Burberry Prorsum:

Move over Tim Blanks. For the best subtle and in-depth analysis of contemporary fashion, come straight to Pavement Frippery.

swanning around

I must admit I was wee bit disappointed by Phoebe Philo's latest collection for Celine. More leather t-shirts, eh? Well I guess if you've got a good thing going... Also, I'm not ready for sloped shoulders. I'M NOT READY.

On the other hand it's nice to see Philo taking inspiration from a rather unexpected source:

=

And just look at how chuffed Barry Hall is. He loves it.

more than the sum of its parts

I'm starting to think that the stretch of road that is my bus route to work must be owned by G-Star, as there isn't a vertical space in sight that hasn't been bedecked with their brooding, grimace-heavy ad campaign. They must be doing something right as here I am about to discuss G-Star (something that would be quite unlikely under normal circumstances). This ad in particular is the source of considerable perturbation:

Vincent Gallo is such a babe! But he's such an asshole! Why is he doing a G-Star ad? Those clothes suck! Why do I care about this?! He's such a babe!

I guess you could say I'm feeling a lot of feelings.

In fact this G-Star ad series is one of many that fits into the category of 'What's a nice campaign like you doing with a shitty label like that?'. I'm especially unnerved by G-Star's decision to use Magnus Carlsen (the world's number one chess guy) as a model:

Such an undeniably cool move - especially for a decidedly lame label.

Another member of the WANCLYDWASLLT? club is Blumarine, though admittedly it has take me a while to come to terms with the fact that Anna Molinari's wares just don't do it for me. Why the consternation? Because Tim Walker's 2003/04 photographs for Blumarine are the most beautiful things I've ever seen:

And Walker was at it again for Juicy Couture:

I guess it just goes to show, you can't polish a turd but you can sure roll it in glitter.

love struck

Solestruck is a website that I more or less stopped perusing after coming to the conclusion that Jeffrey Campbell shoes are really quite ugly (I expect my Blogger-girl Union membership will be revoked shortly). I'll give credit where it's due, however. Those kids stock some pretty serious shoes:

I personally am done with gargantuan platforms and over-the-top inclines in my heels. They're fun to look at, but.

45º

There have been rumblings recently about the return of the bias-cut dress. My favourite examples of this style come from the time of its invention, the 1930s. Old Wallis Simpson's Mainbocher wedding dress is undoubtedly the queen (oh...) of the genre.

Another wedding dress, however, one that was worn nearly fifty years after Ed and Wally did the deed, is a strong contender for the most beautiful bias-cut dress. It is the Narciso Rodriguez gown worn by Carolyn Bessette when she married John F. Kennedy, Jr.

In August 2003 Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Edward Klein's pretty trashy-sounding, The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years. Klein details how the Rodriguez dress did not include a zipper (!) and that on the day, horror of horrors, Carolyn found herself unable to put the thing on. It was only after Gordon Henderson, a friend and designer (who, incidentally, had been crushed by Carolyn's decision to not go with one of his own creations), put a scarf over her head, that they were able to slide the dress onto the 'hysterical' bride.

Surely the ordeal was worth it -

Has ever a bride looked so lovely?

a cherry blossom/ hibiscus by any other name

Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet is a movie replete with brilliantly beautiful (and beautifully brilliant) costumes, but at the moment (and I go through phases) I only have eyes for the Hawaiian shirts favoured by the Montague boys:

Shame of shames, I have never noticed until now the Japanese influence evident in these prints. According to Chicken Soup from the Soul of Hawaii: Stories of Aloha to Create Paradise by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, this is because the first Hawaiian shirts were in fact made from kimono fabric remnants. Unfortunately the book doesn't give too detailed a history, as I'd be fascinated to know whether the style went into decline after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour.

P.S. I am yet to encounter a hipster girl whose Manic Panicked hair looks anywhere near as luscious as Sampson's carnation-pink locks

who's the fairest?

I just lurve Annie Leibovitz's Disney campaign but poor old Olivia Wilde seems to have gotten the short end of the stick:

I kid, she makes an awesome Evil Queen - it's probably the meatiest role of her career.

I met him in the ocean.