Kermit coat by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, “ready-to-wear” outfit by Lie Sang Bong. Below: Pepi’s-inspired hair action by fashion students from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana.
NBC has pulled together a lovely gallery consisting of 100 crisp, large-sized images from various recent fashion shows, titled: “Would You Wear It?” I love finding outlandish new designs, but quickly tire of sifting through hundreds of dull runway photos on places like Style.com in order to find them. So these kind of galleries – which usually have names like “Looks You Won’t Be Caught Dead In” – are extremely helpful. All the images in this post are from the NBC gallery except for the muppet one – that I found here. I also enjoyed NBC’s crystal-clear Gaultier and McQueen galleries. I’d seen photos of both these collections before, but the photography here is the best. The makeup in the McQueen collection is terrifying!
Uber-hot mask by Lydia Delgado. Imagine wearing that with these shoes! And nothing else.
Headlining performer Victoria Vengeance. Image by Chad Ward.
This Friday the 13th, Los Angeles will see the premiere of a new dark cabaret night hosted & organized by Coilhouse favorite Chad Michael Ward. This new night is called Lost Grind Opera, and all I knew about it before writing this post is that it’s hosted by two clowns that make me extremely uncomfortable and that there are a lot of pretty ladies involved. Although I’m not a huge fan of burlesque events, I’m curious to check this one out, because I’m curious to find out what Chad in particular thinks will make for a good show. If the actual event is anything like the photography and graphic design that he’s been cranking out to promote it, I know it’ll be something unique. So I caught up with Chad and asked him a few questions about this upcoming night.
Headlining performer Shelby “Belfast” Jones. Image by Chad Ward.
Lost Grind promises to be a cabaret show unlike any other. In an era that’s oversaturated with neo-burlesque outfits, what’s in store that we’ve perhaps never seen before? “Burlesque” has taken many shapes and forms over the last decade here in Los Angeles. We’ve seen everything from very traditional acts that hearken back to the 50s to modern dance troupes to full-on stripteases, and everything in between. With the Lost Grind Opera, we’ve taken some of the better bits of what makes Burlesque great: live music, comedy, beautiful women and both vintage and modern dance and combined it with the kind of dark and sultry sensibility you might find in a Prohibition-era speakeasy or 1940s Berlin with a touch of vaudeville and theater. The end result is a new unique experience for the patrons of the L.A. underground looking to be entertained in a way that has yet to be fulfilled.
Can you describe some of the performances that we can expect to see at Lost Grind Opera?
I don’t want to give too much away, but the evening’s overall theme is “Decadence” and the girls have taken their routines in many different directions. We’ve got a bit of cabaret, a touch of drag, a little Cajun mysticism and some Gypsy spirit all done to the live music of our house band, The Grinder Monkey Quartet.
What kind of atmosphere does the El Cid Theater have?
The El Cid was originally built as a theater for D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” to be screened. In the 1950s it became a well-known Cabaret Concert Theater before eventually becoming the Flamenco dance theater and restaurant it is today. It’s got a very intimate and historic vibe to it that made it perfect for our inaugural show.
Not like that, you perverts (though, I admit, she is my type). But here’s a photo I took of my beautiful Coilhouse co-editor Meredith Yayanos, which I’ve been dying to post for quite some time. We did this shoot back in December, and it was pretty much my only big shoot of 2008. We did two looks that day, light and dark. Above is Angelic Mer, but there’s also the more sinister Rocky Horror-meets-Caligari Mer (“Mergenta Mernau”), which you may have seen before on my site, her Flickr or via Warren Ellis (drink up, bitches!). Note the necklace in this picture; Mer made it herself out of keys that she’s been collecting all her life (here it is, up close). Mer did her own makeup, the hair here was done by the inimitable Holly Jones – who also did the styling for our Issue 02 cover – and the ruffalicious garment was styled by Mildred.
Mer is a total chameleon. I’ve done a lot of shoots in my life, and it’s hard even for me to believe that these two pictures of the same person were done literally within an hour of each other:
There will probably be more from the white set on Mer’s Flickr on the days to come. Stay tuned!
One night, while dumpster diving on an Ivy League campus, artist Jesse Reklaw discovered confidential Ph.D. applicant files for the biology department from 1965 to 1975. The yellowed recommendation forms contained ratings on the applicants’ strengths and weaknesses as determined by former professors and employers. Reklaw collected these photos and snippets of commentary in a 48-page little paperback in the tradition of Found Magazine, titled Applicant. It’s a zine classic that still makes an impact every time you page through it – funny, sad, and totally wrong. You can order Applicant for $3 here; it’s a lovely thing to own.
Reklaw also publishes Slow Wave, a web-comic dream diary. You send him your dreams, and he draws them! The first print collection of Slow Wave is called The Night of Your Life, and it’s available here.
Men in bunny suits have been very much on my mind this week. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the trailer for S. Darko, the sequel that should never have been made, is finally out. The original director is pissed that they’re ruining his masterpiece with a direct-to-DVD sequel, and none of the original cast, save for Donnie Darko’s kid sis, is involved. The trailer desperately tries to convince you that it really does have the same flavor as Donnie Darko by recycling the original film’s special FX, but without lines like “why don’t you suck a fuck” and “they don’t even have… reproductive organs under those little, white pants,” I just don’t see how that’s possible. Also: Jessie Spano from Saved by the Bell is in it. Yep. Between this, the Hellraiser ramake, the Neverending Story remake and the Clue remake, I’m just not sure my heart can bear any more! Maybe if they make Screech play Pinhead and Mr. Belding play Falkor, I’ll watch.
Back to bunny suits and man suits. The images above and below are slices from the hyperdetailed digital paintings of Japanese artist Ryohei Hase. They look great small, but to really see their splendor, go to his site, where you’ll be able to see every bristle and bead of moisture. The images in the section Meranchory (ha!) recall Zdzislaw Beksinski, while the visceral images of struggling animal-man beasts remind me of the daily grind, which, reduced to its bare components, sometimes feels very much like these pictures.
Last time in latex, Coilhouse showed you how to re-enact that deleted scene from Alien using a thousand-dollar inflatable rubber alien egg. But that was child’s play compared to the great opus of short cinema above, in which MAC Cosmetics obviously takes a cue from our post to re-enact the Sanrio version of Alice in Wonderland (itself a brilliant re-interpretation of the 1971 classic novel), in full rubber gear. Want to really fall down rabbit hole? Complete the circle. Re-enact the re-enactment. Our guide to making it happen, below.
Before you even buy the first bag of cotton candy, memorize the Necronomicon. Otherwise you’re going to be wasting thousands of dollars on mere cosplay folly, and that’s not what this is about. This sacred ritual requires the aforementioned 900 bags of cotton candy (dollar store!), one anorexic virgin (dollar store!), one black cat (use Clairol Silken Black only), Grace Slick (dead or alive; it’ll work better if she’s dead, though), 25 kilograms of LSD (or 5 YouTube hours of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Good Job, if you’re broke), the most racist golf course you can find, and one giant inflatable vagina. Before the ritual, purify yourself with thrift store douche under the full rose-fingered moon and sprinkle the shimmering dust of a crushed Katy Perry CD in a circle around yourself and your 12 naked, glistening, totem-headed disciples. Shit’s about to go down.
Of course, none of this will work without proper ritual garb. The catsuit in the MAC Masterpiece was created by Atsuko Kudo, and they’re willing to replicate this sacred garment to any Initiate seeking to penetrate the soft parts of the world. But the real trick here is the animal heads, and that’s where MAC failed to bring about the destruction of mankind. They thought they could bring humanity to an end merely with the force of Hello Kitty… and though Hello Kitty is strong, the Great Old Ones will only listen if Pikachu, Astro Boy, Duracell Bunny and the great Callisto all call out ot them in union. That is the secret that we open to you on this great night. Now go. Go with haste. Make us proud.
The ever-weird EnglishRussia just posted a rare collection of Yuri Gagarin photos. I’m used to seeing this hero of my childhood, the first man in space, smiling like Superman while decked in Soviet bling, so the image above of Gagarin posing with a skeleton and his creepy friend, Russian Crispin Glover, took me by surprise. There are so many things to love about this image. I love the expression on the skeleton’s face! I love the buttons on that coat! This is definitely the kind of pin-up I’d put on my wall.
And below, we have… well, I’m not entirely sure what we have there. It appears to be Gagarin dressed as Neptune for a play. But if he’s Neptune, then who’s the guy in the turban? And doesn’t it look like they’re in a gym locker room? Someone help me decipher this mystery.
And now, time for a musical interlude by Gudrun and Blixa! At some points in the video above, the two appear to be lovers, but in all honesty, they just look like fraternal twins to me. Anyway, in my mind, Blixa has only one true mate. But enjoy the video, and the beautiful, breathy electronic lullaby. [Thanks, Kelly.]
In sixth grade, my class visited a Long Island nursing home. The experience was supposed be uplifting; back in the classroom we’d been studying Ellis Island, and the teachers excitedly informed us that we’d have the opportunity to gather first-person accounts of the immigrant experience, from people who’d been there! When we arrived at the nursing home, we were ready with our little pencils and notebooks and mini-recorders. We broke up into pairs and made our way around the room, each team spending about 5-10 minutes with each of the home’s geriatric inhabitants.
When we got back to the classroom the next day, nobody talked about what had happened. The teachers never mentioned the field trip again, and we weren’t asked to write a report. We turned to a new chapter in the textbook, and teachers hastened on to tell us all about how the U.S. had won the war and saved the rest of the world in the 40s. But we learned a valuable lesson that day, even if no one acknowledged it aloud. When we tried to interview the people at the nursing home, most of them they stared right past us. They drooled. They moaned and mumbled absently. The few who were actually aware of our presence spoke a little, but it was gibberish; no conversation lasted more than 2 minutes before the train of thought evaporated. The lesson we learned that day, completely not intended by our teachers, was to dread and fear the process of losing our minds with age.
Granted, we saw the worst-case scenario. It was a very poor nursing home that we went to, the kind of place where people with no loving/living relatives eventually end up in storage. Still, that memory can’t be erased – not until the moment when all memories start to slip, as I learned the year my grandmother used Palmolive instead of olive oil when making eggs one morning. Within a couple of years, she didn’t remember who I was, and soon afterward forgot herself. The books she’d read, the places she’d been – they were all gone. Between that and the aforementioned school trip of doom, I developed what’s probably one of my biggest fears.
Then, there are people who give me hope, like Terry Pratchett, who got was diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s last year. Well, he didn’t take that diagnosis lying down; he donates to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, cheerfully refers to his condition as The Embuggerance, participates in experimental programs to find a cure, and continues to work on Unseen Academicals, the thirty-seventh book in the Discworld series. It’s the opposite of how my grandmother approached it, and maybe the attitude makes all the difference. “My father always used to say you have to be philosophical about things, by which he meant stoical,” he joked in a Times interview last year. “The future is going to happen whether I’m scared of it or not so I do my best not to be. Around about five o’clock in the morning things might be different but you just have to face it.” He’s right, of course. I just hope that if the same condition strikes me, I’ll be just as brave. And keep my fingers crossed in hope that by that time, every old person’s home will have a Holodeck installed.
Dontcha love it when we get it right? I love high-budget, haute-goth fashion editorials and seeing big-name designers go dark on the runway, but there’s something especially satisfying about seeing designers “of the scene” really pull off something spectacular from start to finish, from garment to finished photograph. It’s a pleasure when designers not only produce gorgeous garments, but really get involved in presenting them in a certain way. In this case, Tea Bauer, creator of Slovenian fashion label Degenerotika (previously featured here), borrows a page from Vintage Vogue to give us the wonderfully classic, textured and geometric “when-Leeloo-met-Irving-Penn” fashion image above. I love everything about it! More large-size images from this series, after the jump.
Yellow hair? Yum! Coat’s not too shabby, either. Degenerotika is definitely one to watch.
