Monthly archives:January 2016
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8 years ago
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Forget this year's Oscars! The 2016 Screen Actors Guild Awards offers a wildly gorgeous array of surprisingly fresh looks that will surely influence future fashion to come. (It also showed that 69-year-old Susan Sarandon is still too legit to quit.)
The January 30th telecast, featured television and film luminaries wearing unpredictably dope designs from up-and-comers including Erdem and Peter Pilotto.
To use two-time 2016 SAG Award winner Idris Elba words to best summarize the gowns seen at last night's SAG Awards: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to diverse TV."
Check out five stand-out progressive styles that's definitely pushing awards show fashion forward.
Daring Statement Makers
Photo Credit: Getty Images
While actress Mad Men's Sola Bamis stole the red carpet wearing a marigold-hued bow dress by Lola Wusu, American Horror Story's Sarah Paulson surprised many with a black velvet and jewel-toned fringed gown.
New Spins On Vintage
Wearing a bespoke Rachel Comey dress and turquoise grandma heels, Transparent's Gaby Hoffman, is the best example of vintage as new-and-modern. Another stand out: Alicia Vikander's Louis Vuitton number featuring traditional color-blocking of black, silver, and gold. And while the actress took home an award for best female actor in a supporting role for The Danish Girl, her look was already a winner in itself.
Unexpected Colors
Photo Credit: Steve Granitz/Wireimage
2016 SAG Award winner [...]
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8 years ago
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I came across Katy Grannan's photographs at Salon 94 after visiting the New Museum next door. While individually they remain striking portraits, albeit not vastly unique in the photographic spectrum, what makes her work important lies in her documentary approach to the sleepiness, strangeness, and pathos of Modesto, California.
Also the setting of her upcoming documentary, The Nine, the pieces ranged from large-scale individual portraits, to landscapes, and video clips. The portraits are blazing in their preciseness and their size allows for the individuals to tower over the viewers, commanding the most space and attention in the room they are in. The men are shirtless, and the women sport outfits that look like they're from the 80's. A look of disillusionment permeates through their faces, however, and in the case of the women, it betrays the vibrancy of their clothing.
What's really at the heart of Grannan's work is a commentary on the American class system - ripe in the media these days thanks to shows like Making a Murderer - and "the other side of the American Dream." Modesto was the location in The Grapes of Wrath and Dorothea Lange's photograph Migrant Mother, both gripping portrayals of The Great Depression's physical and emotional effects on the psyche and physicality. And essentially, Grannan's work from Modesto serves as the setting of our contemporary depression. And the photographs speak for themselves in this regard - the subjects are present but not f[...]
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Enter Ziggy Stardust.
Bowie’s beloved persona began with the release of 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Stardust starred as the record’s fictional alien rock star who arrived on Earth just as it received the news that the world would end in five years. In the album’s opening track, which is aptly titled “Five Years”, Stardust laments about the planet’s fate while walking amongst it’s doomed species. He resembled them in shape, but is extreme in all other aspects. He had wild hair, outlandish outfits, and an overall zeal that made him an eccentric, especially compared to the cop, soldier, priest, mother and newscaster that populate the rest of the song.
In a 1974 interview with “Beat Godfather” William S. Burroughs, Bowie described the scene:
...It has been announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources. [The album was released three years ago.] Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have lost all touch with reality and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock & roll band and the kids no longer want rock & roll. There's no electricity to play it. Ziggy's adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, 'cause there is no news. So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. "All the Young Dudes" is a song about this news. It is no hymn to the youth as people thought. It is completely the opposite[...]
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8 years ago
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Romania's official 2016 Academy Awards entry for Best Foreign Language Film, Aferim! is an unconventional and beautifully shot black-and-white movie that is both reminiscent of an American Western and exotic in its depiction of a bygone (and perhaps not so bygone) foreign culture. The episodic tale, which takes place in 1835 Wallachia (a region in Romania), follows a lawman and his son as they traverse a desolate landscape in search of an escaped gypsy slave.
Directed by Radu Jude and co-written by novelist Florin Lazarescu, Aferim! (which means “Bravo!”) is based on actual accounts of gypsy slavery. Though often comedic (the dialogue is full of crudely funny banter), it serves as a semi-historical commentary on Romania’s anti-Roma sentiment, which is still very much in evidence today. It also starkly depicts the ridiculous prejudices that people of one nationality or religion have for others, in addition to other forms of bigotry.
Constable Costandin (Teodor Corban) and his teenage son Ionitā (Mihai Comānoiu) first come upon an abbey on their travels, where they cross themselves and light candles like good Catholics, though Costandin has already cruelly berated an old woman and threatened a bunch of local gypsies. He’s a scrappy, equal-opportunity offender, who hurls insults at almost everyone he comes across – especially poor “crows” (gypsies) – or denigrates them behind their backs. In contrast, Ionitā is more reserved and thoughtful. The two carry a ma[...]
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8 years ago
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David Bowie was a musician of almost immeasurable influence. His last name echoes amongst the likes of Fitzgerald, Lennon, Presley, Ramone, Nicks and Cobain as one of the people responsible for music today. For almost half a century, he graced genre after genre with his albums, exploring each with an obsessive eye. From folk rock to krautrock-laced funk to art rock and experimental, there seemed to be no undertaking that Bowie couldn’t master. He fathered sub-genres and inspired others to do the same.
He became known not only for his songs, which climbed the charts like English ivy, but also his oddities. His hair, his face paint, his outlandish outfits. During the era of Ziggy Stardust from his station in glam rock, he made being an outsider ‘in’. He challenged gender norms, racism, politics, and a whole manner of preconceived notions of how music was supposed to be. He was an idol, a style icon, a pop star, the star of your favorite childhood movie and in his final effort he was a blackstar.
Bowie’s final album Blackstar was released on January 8th, coinciding with his 69th birthday. The record is a short, emotional, and strange departure from the various forms of pop that Bowie is best known for, but fittingly so. Bowie was never going to be predictable. Two days after the album’s release, the seemingly immortal Bowie died after a long battle with cancer. Blackstar then took on its intended meaning. It was his swan song. With every subsequent listen it seemed increas[...]
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8 years ago
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David Bowie was an incredible genius that has been a massive influence on the fashion world from ready-to-wear to high couture, trailblazing trends for both men and women alike.
Since news of David Bowie's tragic death on Sunday, January 10 hit the internet the following Monday, a deluge of mournful tributes on sites like Twitter and Facebook have brought back to attention many of his gender-fluid, enigmatic looks throughout the music legend's career, which span six decades.
His constant sartorial evolutions have left indelible mark on fashion, as evident in the multitude of status updates, images, and video, paying homage to Bowie.
Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. Photo Credit: Ilpo Musto / Rex Features
From Jean-Paul Gaultier's 2013 "Rock Stars" collection to Haider Ackermann's latest Spring 2016 line, it's no doubt that Bowie's influence still impacts fashion these days.
On Monday, Gaultier told The Associated Press, "personally, he inspired me by his creativity, his extravagance, his sense of fashion that he was constantly reinventing, by his allure, his elegance and his androgyny."
Below: 1) Jean-Paul Gaultier spring 2013, 2) Haider Ackermann spring 2016, and 3) Dries Van Noten men’s fall 2011 collections.
Photo Credit Jacques Brinon/Associated Press, Valerio Mezzanotti/Nowfashion, Francois Guillot/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
To Karl Lagerfeld, Bowie was "a great artist, and a timeless icon...who will remain a reference."
And on Tue[...]
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8 years ago
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Based on the novel by Bonnie Nadzam, Lamb is an unsettling drama about the relationship between an unmoored middle-aged man and a precocious young girl. The movie, starring and directed by Ross Partridge, consists mainly of a road trip, fraught with the self-centered needs of its protagonist and set against the beautiful backdrop of the duo’s natural surroundings (Wyoming and Colorado).
When we first meet David Lamb (Partridge), he’s denying the fact that his wife has left him to his ailing, alcoholic father, who knows better; David also lies about his wife’s desertion to co-worker Linny (Jess Weixler), with whom he is having an affair. Despite his good looks and laid-back outward demeanor, David is obviously a guy with issues.
Some time later, he is smoking in a parking lot after his father’s funeral, when 11-year-old Tommie (a terrific Oona Laurence) saunters up and asks for a cigarette, a dare set up by her friends. David’s reaction – he not only gives her one, but lights it – is the just the first of many disturbing moments in this film and in their relationship. He pretends to kidnap Tommie to scare her friends, but actually drives her home, and lectures her about approaching him: “I’m not a bad guy, but I could have been.” (He introduces himself as “Gary,” one of many lies he tells to various people he knows or encounters.)
This sets the tone for the rest of the film, showing both David’s concern for Tommie and his disconcertingly inappropriate behavior[...]
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8 years ago
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If each new calendar year brought forth a new style trend that mirrored the Spice Girls, 2016 would be known as the Year of Sporty Spice. Right now, athleisure is as popular and ubiquitous as Park Slope or Santa Monica moms pushing UppaBaby strollers—and with booming sales, chic, dressed-up exercise clothing are finally more affordable too.
"Stores like H&M, Forever 21, and Aritzia, are offering up a selection of goods that aren't just cute but, mostly at under $50, won't break your bank, either," writes Ray Lowe of Refinery 29.
Here are three simple facts you need to know about this fabulously casual fashion trend.
Activewear Is Not Going Anywhere
Don't count on this bubble bursting in 2016!
In October 2015, Morgan Stanley ventured to estimate that activewear will reach up to $83 billion in sales by 2020.
Athleisure sales stretched out to $36 million in 2013. In 2014, activewear accounted for 16 percent of the total apparel market, according to research firm NPD Group. And in 2014, Nike expected to add $2 billion dollars to sales by 2017.
Photo Credit: Nike
Clearly, activewear is going for the win. High-end names like Sweaty Betty, Outdoor Voices, Vimmia, and Aday, are now competing with fast-fashion staples like H&M for shoppers' hearts.
And over the years, luxury companies like Tory Burch, Trina Turk, Stella McCartney, and Mara Hoffman have rushed to jump into the current craze.
Below: Image from January 2016 limited-edition, 21-piece[...]
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