Via Foxtongue.
Just a blue-haired, help underwater-smoking gayelle mermaid to brighten up your Monday morning. This illustration by Georges Leonnec appeared in risque French magazine La Vie Parisienne in 1926. The magazine was founded in 1863, ambulance relaunched just before World War I, and evolved from a mild-mannered society journal to an erotic magazine of humor, literature and scantily-clad damsels. Many more images from La Vie Parisienne can be seen here, here and here.
Fetishwear blog Kinky Attire writes, “[Nichelle] Nichols sang for Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. But it is her inescapable destiny to be best remembered as Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura. At some point in her career she also helped to advertise thigh-high boots.” The Boot Fetishist adds, “I’m assuming she was commissioned for these pictures, most likely booked for a photoshoot to be used in this catalogue. I think these pictures were taken in the 1950’s, obviously prior to her Star Trek days. However she had been a singer in the famous Blue Angel Club in New York and my guess is the catalogue relates to a store in New York.” HOT. HOT. HOT. If only she were only wearing this Star Trek corset as well! Set phasers to stun, girl. RAWR.
The superbly-designed website SpaceCollective dedicates itself to study of topics such as transhumanism, robotics, experimental architecture, and pretty much anything else that one can equate to “living the life of science fiction today.” Most of the site’s activity centers around blog posts and collaborative university projects, but one of the most stunning portions of the site, dense with complex, inspiring visuals and information, is the gallery.
There are six pages of scienctific psychedelia – a absorbing mixture as varied as Googie architecture, macro shots of hydrozoa, renderings of magnetic structures, jellyfish automatons, microchip embroidery, concept art from sci-fi films, and much more along the same lines. Two random images from this gallery may not have much to do with each other, but all together, they make a surprisingly cohesive whole. Quotes from the likes of Verner Vinge, Buckminster Fuller and Jorge Luis Borges cycle between the imagery, and most images are hyperlinked out to further sources. Enjoy!
These images are part of a traveling solo exhibition titled The Architect’s Brother, created by artists Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison. These images have been around for over ten years, but this is the first time I’ve stumbled across them by way of Mickael Ivorra. From the Environmental Graffiti blog:
Could fixing clouds, pollinating a barren earth, making wind and patching up the sky ever be turned into almost humorous subjects? In “The Architect’s Brother,” a series of 42 photographic images by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, we follow a determined and optimistic Everyman who does just that – and rewards viewers with new details the longer they look.
The ParkeHarrisons are a husband-and-wife team whose photographic work, “The Architect’s Brother” is concerned with the state and possible fate of the Earth. The exhibition has travelled from 2002 to 2007 through the United States, Canada and Germany and is probably the artists’ most publicized work. According to its official description, ParkeHarrison “conjures a destiny in which humankind’s overuse of the land has led to a spent and abandoned environment, inhabited by one indefatigable spirit (portrayed by ParkeHarrison).”
More images can be seen here and here. A hardcover book of photos is available on Amazon. More images, after the jump!
Some of the images remind me of a striking shot from the never-completed Worst Case Scenario, a Dutch Horror film in which zombie Nazis descend into the Netherlands on decrepit steampunk air balloons. Click here for the trailer. It’s… amazing.
On Monday, Coilhouse posted a news item about a Mother of London knock-off worn by Willow Smith to the American Music Awards. There’s been an update! Widely-read pop culture blog JustJared has reported that the person responsible for the yellow replica is Brea Stinson (@breabstar on Twitter), a fashion stylist represented by Balan, Inc. Coilhouse has been unable to reach Stinson for comment.
Meanwhile, stylist Mariel Haenn, who’s often been credited with dressing Smith in the past, and who was mentioned as a possible suspect due to that styling connection, was not involved in the wardrobe-sourcing or creation of this garment in any way. Haenn and her stylist partner, Rob Zangardi, were responsible solely for crafting Rihanna’s look for the AMA’s.
Huge, heartfelt apologies to Mariel and her team, and thanks to Jared for getting to the bottom of this styling mystery.
UPDATE 11/24/10 11:45 PM: JustJared.com reports that the person responsible for the yellow replica is Brea Stinson (@breabstar on Twitter), a fashion stylist represented by Balan, Inc.
Stylist Mariel Haenn is not responsible for this look, and was not involved in any aspect of Willow Smith’s styling for the AMA’s. I’ll be following up with a new blog post to clear up any confusion.
You guys all know Mother of London, the fashion label of designer and artist Mildred Von Hildegard. We’ve featured Mother of London in Coilhouse issues 01, 04 and 05, and we previously blogged some of Von Hildegard’s incredible creations here and here. Yesterday, an outfit very similar to one of Mother of London’s most iconic pieces appeared on ABC’s American Music Awards, worn by 10-year-old pop star Willow Smith, daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett. Yet the poorly-made yellow garment was created by an unknown designer without Von Hildegard’s knowledge or consent.
Mother of London knock-offs are nothing new. But the innocuous ModelMayhem fashion shoot or occasional Etsy neckpiece doesn’t damage Von Hildegard’s business nearly as much as a replica for a mainstream celebrity. Von Hildegard makes her living by loaning out pieces for music videos (Kerli, Natalia Lesz), commercials (Got Milk?), and by doing celebrity styling (most recently, she has dressed The Black-Eyed Peas, Juliette Lewis, and, in an outfit ironically similar to young Willow’s knockoff, adult performer Belladonna). Despite some of these big-name clients and her notoriety in the alf-fashion world, Von Hildegard remains a struggling independent designer. Now, she will never be able to loan out this top, one of her signature pieces, to any other celebrity, as it’s been seen on ABC and covered by dozens of mainstream fashion blogs. “Sad thing is,” Von Hildegard says, “I could have totally made her a G-rated version of this top and would have enjoyed doing so! I’d never heard of Willow until today, but she’s cute and interesting.”
The designer of Smith’s outfit remains unknown, but several blogs attributed the design to Willow Smith’s official stylist, Mariel Haenn, before the Mother of London connection was made. Celebrifi wrote, “the outfit, which included a grey one piece, a belted one shoulder top and slouched boots, was more than likely a custom made creation from stylist Mariel Haenn.” So far, Haenn only claims credit for styling Rihanna at the awards, and has advised bloggers to “check ur facts.” Responding to a Coilhouse inquiry, Haenn wrote: “To be honest I have no idea who ‘styled’ her or the designer. Wish I did. I don’t ask my clients who they used when I’m not available.”
Coilhouse will continue to investigate. In the meantime… WHIP YO HAIR GIRL:
(via Mer, thanks!)
I can’t stop looking at pictures of Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned. This should come as no surprise to long-time readers of the blog, given both my love of chic politician Yulia Tymoshenko (obsessively chronicled here and here) and interest in Islamic fashion blogging, its tensions between faith, religion, fashion, and personal style.
In the image above, Mozah (51, mother of seven, the second of the Emir’s three wives) looks like she just killed James Bond. (And I say that with perfect love and awe. Because Bond is such a douche.) Mozah’s bio in the Forbes Top 100 Most Powerful Women list reads:
The wife of the Emir of Qatar has used her growing influence to promote education and development in the Arab world and in her country, home to gas-rich reserves and Al-Jazeera (owned by her husband). This past May, Sheikha Mozah toured the U.S. giving speeches on Western misconceptions of Muslim women and the need to combat violence by eradicating poverty and hopelessness. Sheikha Mozah recently announced the creation of the Arab Foundation for Democracy with a $10 million endowment from the emir. The foundation will encourage the development of a civil society and freedom of the press, among other things. Sheikha Mozah already promotes free speech through the Doha Debates, monthly forums of controversial topics featuring guest speakers like Israeli president Shimon Peres. One of her biggest achievements is Education City, a 2,500-acre campus outside of Doha that is home to branches of Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon and Virginia Commonwealth universities.
Blogs such as HuffPo and ONTD have already caught on to Mozah’s fierceness, and equally fascinating are her presence and drive. In the clip below, she discusses one of her biggest projects, Education City. (By the way! In keeping with her sharp personal style, Mozah’s Education City has some incredible, futuristic architectural designs, worthy of a blog post of their own). She’s the kind of person who inspires me to write characters, research cultures, make stories. What’s it like to be her? What would be like if you added a little fiction to it? Like… maybe some science fiction? More images of Mozah, after the jump. [Via Holly Jones].
Madame Peripetie does it again. The Polish-born, Dortmund, Germany-based photographer, whose Insectarium shoot and collaboration with Eva Nyiri were featured on Coilhouse in 2009, has released a surreal, colorful new collection titled Dream Sequence. Some of the images can be seen here, and more can be found on her site.
Set against a stark, hazy black background, the dreamlike characters in these images appear to evoke haunted forests, chrome spaceships, traveling circus shows, and early ’90s NYC club culture. In almost every image, you can find a spray of brightly-colored wildflowers decorating the otherwise synthetic-looking subject, recalling these images of the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa by Hans Sylvester. Many more images, after the jump.
“Secret Cinema is a growing community of all that love cinema, experience and the unknown. Secret audience. Secret locations. Secret worlds. The time is now to change how we watch films.”
It’s like an elaborate cosplay event, a midnight screening of Rocky Horror and a candle-lit Cinespia cemetery screening picnic got thrown into a blender together with tens of thousands in sponsorship funding from Windows Phone (?!), and the incredible clip above was the result. Yellow snakes, white doves, retina I.D. testing stations, dancers wearing hockey masks, streetside noodle bars, even a passage with artificially-created rain. How I wish we could’ve all been there.
The images below were taken by mike mike mike, found in the Secret Cinema/Blade Runner Flickr Set. More images here.
[via m1k3y]
Any form of inquisition into the meaning of this will be fruitless. Favour me, an’ you will, with eternal confinement in a gaol, and everything that I now relate will be repeated with perfect candour.
Again I say I do not know anything at all about it, which is probably why I am making it the subject of this narrative. It is true that I have been for 18 years his closest friend and that we have been seen by reputable witnesses near Greenwood, NY, Sleepy Hollow by the Hudson, Mt. Auburn, Cambridge, Mass., and Grant’s Tomb, Manhattan, but that we possessed tastes mutually morbid or a predilection for graveyards I must strenuously deny.
I seem to remember a weird evening in November. The place was, of course, a cemetery; over the fence peered an inquisitive, waning, crescent moon, and on the fence a vulture and his vulturine, a raven and a couple of cormorants remained couchant.
Thus opens Falco Ossifracus, a short, witty H.P. Lovecraft parody written by fellow amateur journalist Edith Miniter. Published under the nom-de-plume “Mr. Goodguile,” the piece first appeared in Miniter’s zine, The Muffin Man, in 1921. The piece lampoons Lovecraft’s meandering, loquacious writing style and obsession with the macabre, though sadly it is not a parody of Cthulhu Mythos, and the setting remains confined to a graveyard. Lovecraft described the effort as “a highly amusing parody” in his memoir of Miniter, in which he also credited her as the source of the Whipoorwill legend from The Dunwich Horror while praising her “sharp insight, subtle wit, rich scholarship, and vivid literary force.”
Of their relationship, Lovecraft scholar Chris Perridas wrote, “one suspects a pre-Sonia romantic attachment by HPL of Miniter, though obviously never acted upon.” But if this hubristic letter to a friend in which Lovecraft brags about the ladies in his life (“Hell, how the cats fight!”) is to be believed, the affection appears to have been entirely one-sided.
Falco Ossifracus can be found in the Miniter short-story anthology Dead Houses, available from Hippocampus Press. Reprinting the entire story would be copyright infringement, and getting the book is recommended. Several more choice quotes, below:
For a more modern take on the H.P. Lovecraft parody (of which there’ve been several throughout the ages), see @_hp_lovecraft_ on Twitter.