Criss-crossing America’s interstates on shoestring music tours, my bandmates and I see scores of battered roadside billboards. They advertise ramshackle sculpture gardens, art brut outposts, World’s Biggest Fill-in-the-Blanks, rustic museums, and obscure historic landmarks. Such attractions are usually located in quiet little towns only a short distance from the highway. More often than not, we make a point to stop, stretch our legs and explore. These spontaneous jaunts expose us to beauty and knowledge we would never have discovered otherwise.

Possibly the most delightful surprise on this last stint with Faun Fables was a visit to the Top of Oklahoma Museum, housed in the somewhat dilapidated (but still glorious) Electric Park Pavilion on Main Street in Blackwell, OK (population 7,700). A grand, white structure with a large central dome, the Pavilion was built in 1912 to celebrate the advent of electricity in Blackwell. Its design takes after styles exhibited at the famous “White City” of the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. Its lights, which originally numbered over 500, could once be seen for miles across the windswept prairie.

These days, the Pavilion could use some serious TLC. Multiple leaks in the dome have endangered the museum’s contents. Plastic tarps enshroud several exhibits. Many items bear marks of water damage. One of the kindly septuagenarian docents who works there followed us from room to room, clucking over the holes in the roof, the rusty stains. These senior preservationists take a lot of pride in their charge, with good reason. The “TOOM” is a sprawling treasure trove of turn-of-the-century ephemera, railroad memorabilia, articles of Cherokee life, hand-carved walking sticks and pipes, dioramas, dollhouses, baby buggies, hobbyist’s taxidermy, antique musical and medical instruments, Victrolas, zinc smelting documentation, delicate handmade lace, linen and clothing, exceedingly creepy dolls, sewing machines, china, vintage propaganda, picture books, elaborate quilting, and countless other keepsakes left behind by the city’s first brave citizens.

Judging by these artifacts, early non-native residents of Oklahoma were hardy, determined folk who struggled to eke out a life on America’s frontier. How they maintained such an unshakable air of dignity and refinement is beyond me, but Blackwell is a true, sparkling diamond in the rough. For me, nothing symbolizes the spirit of its citizens better than the following portrait, unceremoniously presented on a torn, water-stained bit of pasteboard in the museum’s “School Room”: ”

Who were you, Lola? Whatever became of you?

The girl’s name was Lola Squires, and she was a student enrolled in Blackwell High, graduating class of 1916. That’s all I know. Her gaze knocked me back several feet. Once I finally stop staring at her, I realized that there were countless other flint-eyed and bow-bedecked young beauties on the walls nearby. I must have spent well over an hour in that one room, moving from portrait to portrait, documenting as much as I could, just stunned.

Deformed ribs, fainting rooms and OMGDRAMAZ – why should ladies have all the fun? Men wear corsets too! Male corsetry was first popularized in Regency England by Beau Brummell, the original dandy – a man who polished his boots with champagne.  Here he is in his pre-insane-from-syphilis days, sporting abs of whalebone. “Sixpack? Don’t need one.”

There’s been a spectacular revival of dandy style in fashion magazines and on the runway, but it’s not until now that I’ve seen a strong new take with a darker tone. Photographer Peter Ashworth (previously mentioned here) recently collaborated with designer Stefán Orschel-Read (who also models in the shoot) to create Orschel-Read’s A/W fashion lookbook, “Mourning for Orlando” – a series that, at various turns, perfectly marries dandy and deathrock. My favorite images are of the streamlined corset/jacket combo; I imagine Mr. Pearl would approve! The collection includes a wider array of unusual pairings, including geisha, punk, Baroque, and, amazingly, the 70’s leisure suit. How do they all combine? See for yourself.

Yesterday, Sociological Images reposted these incredible images, which originally came from the Daily Mail, a conservative British tabloid. These images appeared in “Femail” – the Daily Mail’s lifestyle section for women – under the title “Out of Africa: The incredible tribal fashion show inspired by Mother Nature.” Both SocImages and another fascinating blog, zunguzungu, took issue with the vapid exoticization that was going on in the article. I highly reccomend reading zunguzungu’s eloquent analysis of the Daily Mail’s presentation of these images, titled “Recycling Africa“.

Serious Business aside, I just want to say this: the images themselves are absolutely striking. When I separate these images from the Daily Mail’s silly writeup (“As they paint each other’s bodies and make bold decisions about their outfits… it seems that the only thing that motivates them is the sheer fun of creating their looks, and showing them off to other members of the tribe”), and from SocImages’ somewhat guilt-tripping Daily Mail smackdown (“What does it mean that people in the U.K. (and the U.S.) are consuming these images? What is the relationship between these images and colonialism? How do such images interact with “development” rhetoric about how Africa is un- or under-developed, developing, or undevelopable?”), on a purely visual level, I’m just absolutely inspired.

It’s amazing, how we can rearrange ourselves.

• Rest of the Images on Daily Mail
• Sociological Images – Representing Africa
• zunguzungu – Recycling Africa

Quiet, everyone. Ruhe, bitte! Teacher’s in and you must make room for her hair. Today’s lesson is a crash course in German. Your aids will be Kraftwerk, a parrot and the color red. Sharpen your pencils and brains as you pay close attention to this 80s TV treasure.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/n1Sq5iEJv8o" width="400" height="330" wmode="transparent" /]

Perhaps if my French classroom had been black, and my teacher were Nina Hagen, I’d be fluent by now. Alas.

Somewhere out there, there’s an alternate Philip Pullman reality where Dust settles in the form of dæmons that take shape from the strands of hair on your head. They whisper in your ear, telling you which way to go, and talk to each other while their people stand still. In our world, they would consider hairspray, straightening irons and combs an absolute travesty. If I had one, it would be a hedgehog.

Hair Hats by Nagi Noda, sent by Nicola via Jezebel/Neatorama

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

Restoring this post after this weekend’s spam-fest; apologies if it appears in your RSS Reader twice.

Here’s something that won’t be around forever: a French MySpace page that catalogues 1,428 images devoted to the bob hairstyle and its derivatives. Brooksie would be proud!

Looking through the images in rapid succession was like shaking a grayscale kaleidoscope of eyes, lips and hair angles into constant new configurations, a delightful experience that left me feeling awed and inspired. I wondered if I should be feeling a twinge of guilt for ravenously going through what can be classified as “stolen images” that have been gathered from the web, scanned from magazines and even manipulated without credit. And then it hit me: I don’t care.

Of course knowing the artists’ names would’ve been nice, but I accept that it may have been impossible to compile that information. I enjoyed the site anyway. Was that wrong? Depends on where you think the line of theft gets crossed. Of all places, I’ve observed that the most embarrassing attitudes towards image theft come from within the alt photo/modeling scene. What I mean to say is: no one has bigger or uglier watermarks than alt photographers.

Peter Ashworth’s website just went through the first overhaul it’s had in years. It’s great to see the English photographer out and about, putting up new images on a site that looks like it’s easy to update. Above are two classic images that had a huge influence on me when I first began to do studio photography. The image of performer Lucifire with a gauze “veil” over her eyes pinned to her face by hypodermic needles will always remain, in my mind, one of the greatest fetish portraits ever taken. The image on the right, with its high contrast and clear space, was the first to show me a kind of abstracting isolation that I find crucial in producing a strong fetish image.

Below are two new works by Peter Ashwroth from a series called in excelsis. The models are Ulorin Vex and Viktorya, wearing the recognizable hairstyles of Robert Masciave. There’s a stark economy going on in his Ashworth’s older work with alt models that’s been replaced by high glam, and while I definitely enjoy these new images, I also hope to see more of the reductive, slightly-raw imagery that made such an impression on me in the past.

• Peter Ashworth’s Photography Site
• Murray and Vern – fetish fashion label where more Ashworth work can be seen

I’ve recently come across the flickr stream of Hairport – an aptly-named hair salong in Lisbon, Portugal. Since then I’ve wondered, daily, why more people don’t look like this. It’s 2008! The proverbial Future. Why are there not more artistically shorn heads in the world? One thing I notice about these photos is that not everyone’s a teenager – many Hairport clients and employees are established artists, designers and writers in their 30s. We all know it will grow back should we hate it, yes? Why not embrace the endless possibilities instead of the usual trims, streaks and loose layers! Looking at these pictures makes me downright giddy as I envision a world where one couldn’t be hindered by their hairstyle choices, no matter their profession. Perhaps a trip to Lisbon is in order.

The late Sydney Guilaroff was Hollywood’s most beloved and trusted hairdresser. Credited with making the unforgetable Lucille Ball a redhead, he was friend and confidant to some of the biggest stars in history.

In Roy Del Ruth’s Du Barry was a Lady Gularoff is reunited with Ball, indulging in all that is glorious and flamboyant with sky-high powdered wigs. His talents coupled with Gile Steele‘s costuming prowess produce some enticing and hilarious hair concoctions, tricorn hats, ostrich feathers and all.