Two images by photographer Janieta Eyre, featured at [FAT]

If you’re in Toronto, check out [FAT], or Toronto Alternative Arts & Fashion Week. The annual festival, which takes place from April 8 to April 11 this year, combines art, fashion, photography and performance. From their website:

Toronto Alternative Arts & Fashion Week is a multi-arts festival with a mandate of showcasing artistic disciplines rooted in fashion, and their exploration of the human body in today’s time. The festival aims to emphasize this mandate through the artistic disciplines of fashion design, photography, installation, video, performance, music and dance, in an effort to push forward and redefine our perception of the fashion phenomenon. When presented jointly, the underestimated social force of fashion is showcased, redefining its role in contemporary Canadian society as not only an economic colossus, but also as an engineer of social practices and vehicle for personal expression. The Toronto Alternative Arts & Fashion Week intends to introduce a broader audience to these related creative fields, building public interest while simultaneously creating a forum where artists can learn from and collaborated with each other.

Photographer Anna Ross and fashion label Plastik Wrap.

[FAT] Official Website

Venus Wept: “Justice is blind and, apparently, naked.”

Antiseptic is relatively new, and over the past year I’ve watched their designs get more and more complex. Their riveted leather corsets look aggressive by themselves, but when coupled with Venus Wept Photography’s hyper lighting, the augmented sharp edges and textures show you something even more dangerous and pleasurably painful-to-wear. A stylistic joyride that weaves through 80s dystopia chic, medieval armor, medical fan lacing and many other real and imaginary places from different times, the designs owe a debt to alt-fashion predecessors AMF and Mother of London, with Antiseptic’s designers on a fast track to a voice that’s completely their own.

The San Francisco-based duo behind Antiseptic doesn’t seem to be interested in commercial manufacture, and focuses on showing off their designs on runways and in elaborate fashion shoots. Most recently, they staged a fashion show the San Francisco Fetish Ball that brought together some of my favorite models for the first time.

Models, clockwise: Alex LaMarsh, Scar13, Eden and Kumi.

• Antiseptic Fashion
• Venus Wept Photography

As a brief follow up to this recent post regarding Miss Jackson’s freakatude, let us ruminate on the April cover of BackBook magazine. Here she’s caged and dressed in latex by Polymorphe, House of Harlot, and Syren. Inside she’s snarling from behind some Very Serious headgear.

The BlackBook article describes this Matthew Rolston shoot and tells of “codpieces, feather ticklers, steel pelvic thrusters relieved of their phallic attachments, barbed cowhide whips are fanned out alongside some kind of automaton skull with a full set of human teeth and gums” here. Oh Janet.

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• A Dose of Your Daily Discipline
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• Janet Jackson’s Some Hot Rivet Shit

“The gentleman who has the pleasure of tying the final bow owns you.”
– Mr. Pearl, interview

What strikes me about fetish legend/corsetier Mr. Pearl’s images is how much he looks like a true English gentleman – and how, magically, his 18-inch corseted waist works to enhance that image, the opposite of what one might expect it to do.

Mr. Pearl grew up in South Africa and moved to London at the earliest chance after completing his military service. He spent three years in New York in the early 90s, where he did his most intimate published interview, of which there are few. Already a renowned tightlacer by this time, Pearl treated corsetry with such reverence that he insisted on precision in every aspect of his involvement with it; when his New York interviewer described him as a corsetier, he interrupted. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am a designer who employs the corset and lacings into his designs. I am not a corsetier – I have not attained that specialized knowledge. There are only about five left in the whole world now, who possess that art. I hope one day to be amongst them.”

Fast-forward to the 2000s: Mr. Pearl is a successful corsetier, commissioned by Mugler, Lacroix, Galliano and Gaultier when they need a master to produce their corset designs for the runway. Clients include Dita, Kylie Minogue and Jerry Hall. He lives in Paris, and works out an atelier behind the Notre Dame.

Pearl & his creations. Corsets, BW: Michael James O’Brien, color: Francois Nars.

Despite his success, Pearl doesn’t have a flashy website. There’s no web store to offer plastic-boned corsets that bear only his name, no MySpace page and no blog. He’s known for his aversion to modern technology, and his only web interview was handwritten and transmitted by fax.

Invitation a la danse by Solve Sundsbo. More at foto_decadent.

One of my problems with runway shows is that they’re often too sterile; there’s not enough of a story being told. You know what to expect; some dance music, some walking, some turning, some clapping. I wish that runway shows were structured more like plays; heroes and villains, gags and surprises. So I commend the fashion world’s recent efforts to incorporate more technology and atmosphere into their runways, like McQueen’s famous Kate Moss ghost two years ago and more recently, Diesel’s flying jellyfish fashion show.

L: McQueen’s famous McQueen “hologram”. R: Target’s ghost bride.

Even though the prolific “holographic technology” fashion spectacles of the past two years actually rely on a technique that’s been around for almost 150 years, the effect is still as fragile and ethereal as ever. The great potential of combining this type of projection with CGI effects is already apparent. I’d love to see some of those techniques used for something more interesting than Target’s goofy effort, however. Can you imagine what Torture Garden would do? I’d also love to see this effect in concert. I’d do anything to see a transparent Liz belt out Song to the Siren in this manner.

Nothing can top the excesses of royal 17th century France. The fashion, the banquets, the art – everything radiated king Louis XIV’s obsession with opulence. This grandiosity is captured in Vatel, Roland Joffré’s film starring Gerard Depardieu and Uma Thurman. Julian Sands plays Louis XIV with Tim Roth is his impeccably sleazy right hand man Marquis de Lauzun. Vatel tells the true story of a famed master chef ordered to feed, entertain and impress the capricious Sun King over a weekend at Chateau de Chantilly.

The costumes are, naturally, spectacular. To draw parallels between today’s rock stars and 17th century royalty, when choosing the materials for all the magnificent gowns and frocks Joffré took the costume designer to a Parisian shop specializing in dressing famous musicians. He also advised that the actors listen to rock music in their dressing rooms to get them in the proper mood. The cast is excellent as is the acting, there is intrigue, fireworks and brazen displays of food throughout. The set are appropriately pompous and droolworthy. For all these reasons I dub Vatel required viewing.

Though the film ultimately denounces the corruption and arrogance of the nobility, I find myself shamefully enchanted by the lavish design, best showcased in the clip below the jump [enigmatically in Spanish].

Check out these awesome gloves! Another brilliant find by our friends at Her Modesty. The website, GlovedUp.com, is like a SockDreams for your arms in terms of eye candy. Lots of great fashion images in the gallery. Alas, it’s all way overpriced.

Christina Ricci’s been an icon of dark beauty ever since the Adams Family movie. She’s played quirky and odd her entire life, her doll-like face and dark hair the epitome of spooky charm. Despite widely publicized body issues of her past and being just over five feet tall, Christina is a wonderful and versatile model.

She seems to have finally gotten comfortable in her skin and in addition to a resurge in acting has been a subject of countless photo shoots, some of which are credited today over at foto decadent.

Christina has embraced her height, and even thinks it could one day help her play a spy. She says in her latest interview “I always figured I would be the one they send through the air vent if something happened. You know: ‘Can fit in small places'”.

Indeed, the world needs more tiny, round-headed fawns like Ricci. I love the way she radiates this colossal confidence, especially knowing that it hasn’t come easy. Together with some great photographers Cristina Ricci has created some sensual, strange and beautiful images – my favorites are showcased beyond the jump.

Left: the original Lil Soap by Jess Fink. Right: the Hot Topic rip-off.

Jess Fink, troche an illustrator and creator of dirty comics published by Fantagraphics, created the shirt design on the left, dubbed Lil Soap, and sold it through her Threadless.com shop. Hot Topic distributed the shirt on the right soon after. Jess wrote to the company that made the eerily-similar shirt for Hot Topic, and the presidents of the company (which is named New Breed Girl) responded with the following:

“It is my poiicy (sic) to encourage freelancers to use the free Getty photo images as reference points & we also use sketches from the Japanese free clip art books, which have inanimate objects with cute faces & legs etc. which are also very similar to the soap.”

Hmmm. Jess plans to take up the matter in court. In the meantime, friends have banded together to show their support by making parody images which include some hot soap-on-soap slash. It was way too early in the morning for me to behold this Harry Potter image (NWS?).

Friends of Jess have shown their solidarity by making images such as this.

• Original Shirt on Threadless
• Hot Topic Ripoff
• Gallery of Parody Images

As promised, an all-black edition of WZW.

And now, The Zo Curly Hair Nest® instruction – because you all want to look like crazed Zo-hobos. Also known as “Zobos”.

• WIth a medium-sized curling iron curl approximately 1 – 2 inch sections of hair.
• Spray each section with hairspray once curled. I use Big Sexy Hair Spray N’ Play brand.
• Once hair cools finger-com curls so they aren’t uniform spirals
• Arrange curls on head, using bobby-pins to fix them into place

And there you have it.