Striking image – Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall enjoy a stroll. Hat tip to Jerem Morrow for pointing it our way. If anyone can tell me who shot this, I’d be most grateful. Never too late to gender bend! It harkens back to the olden days, when the Stones posed for this cover photo by Jerry Schatzberg.
I came across Katsuya Terada’s work by pure accident, when I haphazardly discovered that the apartment where I’d been staying in Tokyo was directly underneath Mandarake – a multi-story manga and anime shopping mecca. While shambling disoriented from all the STUFF, through Mandarake’s hallways, I saw a glossy image of a girl staring from beneath a helmet intersected with pipes, tubing and other such hardware. As “WANT” scrolled across my brain-monitors, I was already inside pointing at the display and paying a ridiculously low $40. It was a hard cover edition of his art book “Cover Girls” and I was enthralled.
As I later found out, Terada, also known as Terra, has been around for quite some time working on big projects like Blood: The Last Vampire and Virtua Fighter 2, but it’s still his cover girls that I love most. He renders these women with a sense of humor, young and fierce in spite of their partial nudity. Even the most vacant gaze seems to glimmer. They’re geared up, ready for battle, and remind me of Tank Girl a little. The costuming is a huge highlight; there is so much, often gritty, detail that goes into the armor and headdresses to counterbalance all that exposed flesh! It’s this costuming that really plays with the imagination and engages the viewers, inviting them to create their own backstories for all these characters.
With the much-appreciated feedback we’ve been getting for What’s Zo Wearing?, and so many wonderfully inspired and inspiring creatures out there, we’ve decided to occasionally present our favorites; créme de la créme so to speak. Here we’ll be asking about personal style philosophy, shopping habits and views on fashion in general.
I first came across Princess Coldheart a.k.a. Princest on MySpace a few years ago and immediately fell in love with her look. Appreciation of drama, big hair,and big shoes is a sure way to my heart, but there’s far more to her than meets the eye. Spend some time reading her painstakingly written LJ entires and you’ll see a well-versed, intelligent and delicate person. She’s not afraid to present herself as dramatically as she pleases, while still being fascinated by the world around her and that’s where the real inspiration lies. You can find her here and here.
“I generally try to be unique, vibrant and individualistic when it comes to the way that I look and dress and how I style my hair and do my make up. Frankly, my style has gotten much simpler and more stripped down over time (as compared to how intricate, elaborate and altogether impractical my predominantly all-black outfits and overall look used to be).
Last week there no one believed me about PayLess, but here’s more proof! On occasion they just have decent stuff. Not too often but it does happen – at least one pair of actually decent shoes.Check the website if you don’t want the often tedious experience of actually walking into one of these places, but I wouldn’t recommend buying anything here without trying it on. So if you find something you like on the site, call up your local stores and ask them to set aside the pair/size you need. This way you’re in and out in 15 minutes, tops. Then you have more time to do things. Like dye your incredibly overgrown roots, for instance!
We often have a code among ourselves and those we identify with. Nadya recently mentioned certain people’s common love of tentacles, and for me between the ages of 15 and 18 this code was Gift. It was an art film made by Perry Farrell, likely at the height of his creativity, with his then-wife Casey Niccolli and released after Jane’s Addiction initially broke up in 1992. The plot is loosely woven around a fictional overdose and death of Casey, and grief-stricken Perry’s reaction. Stream of consciousness storytelling combined with concert footage, spoken word, and iconic imagery made an enormous impression on me. Soon I demanded every person I met watch this film. I’d observe their reactions and attempt to decipher whether they were My People.
Comrade Lev has left on a special Coilhouse mission for about a week. While obligations prevent me from saying more, site rest assured it is a task of high caliber!
Now, in conjunction with this post, let us dwell for a moment on Polish artist Maciej Osika. Osika has dedicated several years of his photographic career to portraying himself as a beautiful feminine creature. These stirring images are a combination of digital and film work, intended to display beauty that is other, beyond standard queues of male or female. Exposed shoulders and silk combined with closely cropped hair in the image below are a good example of this, devoid of dramatic makeup and hair typically associated with cross-dressing. Maciej says of these portraits: “This does not mean that I want to be a woman at all costs: all I really want is to show that by photographs I can be beautiful for at least a moment. But the beauty contained in my portraits is merely a play of light and shadow…and I decide whether in the given situation I will be beautiful or ugly.”
I’ve mentioned Eric Eric Lafforgue here before, click his eye and lens are just remarkable. In my mind he must be some sort of great adventurer, at least according to his Flickr stream. The stunning image above is from a book of his on the Papou tribe of New Guinea.
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I refuse to believe that anyone really thought this was a good idea. This terrifying combination of dead grey rubber and and the wobbling of an overgrown 2 year old toddler belongs in someone’s dark musty basement, behind locked doors. No, this wasn’t mean to be cute or helpful – it was made by sadists to give us nightmares and to define “Uncanny Valley” yet again.
Since we’re on the topic of consumerism, I’d like to extend my thanks to VonLivid for pointing us in the direction of AND_i jewelry by Austrian artist Andreas Eberharter. These subtle, quiet pieces are part exoskeletons of large robotic bugs and part those ardent trips to the hardware store for accessories in preparation for the next industrial disco outing.
While we’re waiting for the launch of the shop, check out some of my favorites after the jump, and browse the AND_i galleries for more of Andreas’ work. Turn on speakers for an appropriately crunchy soundtrack to your window shopping experience, brought to you by Viennese locals Afterwax.
Thousands of people hold their breath as they watch a gleaming white spacecraft descend. It touches down in a cloud of steam and the door drops to reveal a beautiful shiny humanoid, chrome helmet and armor. He emerges, reserved, as the screaming swells all around him. Is this the Second Coming? Holy fuck-christ, is it Xenu!?
No, little ones. Look on in awe as rows of marching helmeted men line up all around. Look and know that you’re about to let Michael Jackson rock your very asses. And know that you’re lucky, because there will never be another tour in the history of music like the Dangerous tour.
