kottke.org posts about fashion
Fashion photo retouching (i.e. high-brow Photoshopping) gets the New Yorker treatment with this story on retoucher Pascal Dangin, one of the best in the business.
In the March issue of Vogue Dangin tweaked a hundred and forty-four images: a hundred and seven advertisements (Estée Lauder, Gucci, Dior, etc.), thirty-six fashion pictures, and the cover, featuring Drew Barrymore. To keep track of his clients, he assigns three-letter rubrics, like airport codes. Click on the current-jobs menu on his computer: AFR (Air France), AMX (American Express), BAL (Balenciaga), DSN (Disney), LUV (Louis Vuitton), TFY (Tiffany & Co.), VIC (Victoria’s Secret).
The article touches too briefly on the tension between reality and what ends up in the magazines and advertisements. As Errol Morris points out on his photography blog, it is often difficult to find truth in even the most vérité of photographs. Even so, the truth seems to be completely absent from Madonna’s recent photo spread in Vanity Fair that was retouched by Dangin, especially this one in which a 50-year-old Madonna looks like a recent college graduate who’s never lifted a weight in her life.
The uncanny valley comes into play here, which we usually think of in terms of robots, cartoon characters, and other pseudo anthropomorphic characters attempting and failing to look sufficiently human and therefore appearing creepy and scary. With an increasing amount of photo retouching, postproduction in film, plastic surgery, and increasingly effective makeup & skin care products, we’re being bombarded with a growing amount of imagery featuring people who don’t appear naturally human. People who appear often in media (film & tv stars, models, cable news anchors & reporters, miscellaneous celebrities, etc.) are creeping down into the uncanny valley to meet up with characters from The Polar Express. I don’t know about you but a middle-aged Madonna made to look 24 gives me the heebie-jeebies. Perhaps the familar uncanny valley graph needs revision:
The Sartorialist on headbands:
Headbands…what a tough accessory. When they are right, they are really right and when they are wrong you’re Loverboy.
Lipstick as economic indicator.
Ms. Stein’s rationale for buying lipstick echoes a theory once proposed by Leonard Lauder, the chairman of Estee Lauder Companies. After the terrorist attacks of 2001 deflated the economy, Mr. Lauder noticed that his company was selling more lipstick than usual. He hypothesized that lipstick purchases are a way to gauge the economy. When it’s shaky, he said, sales increase as women boost their mood with inexpensive lipstick purchases instead of $500 slingbacks.
More economic indicators: sushi, Big Macs, steakhouses, Starbucks coffee, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and Jay-Z.
A list of responses to “The Question” asked of all kilt-wearing gentlement: What’s under your kilt?
The Velocouture group on Flickr collects photographs of bicycle fashion fashion, on a bicycle. The best ones are of people who try to coordinate their outfits with their bikes. This gal is particularly fashionable. See also this NY Times slideshow.
Hate couture.
Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old “Ms. Ruth” sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it’s done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, “Lilbit,” who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.
(via delicious ghost)
The iconic Birkin bag made by Hermes is supposedly so difficult to find that there’s a two-year waiting list. In his book, Bringing Home the Birkin, Michael Tonello says the list is just a marketing ploy and that he was able to buy Birkin bags whenever he wanted.
“I would go into a store with a list in my Hermes Ulysse notebook and pile up scarves, shawls, bracelets, worth about $2,000. This made me seem a regular Hermes client,” Tonello told Reuters in a telephone interview. “Once I had that pile ready to buy at the last moment I’d ask for a Birkin and they would usually produce one of the back room. In 2005 I bought 130 Birkins in a three-month period — and you tell me there is a waiting list?”
The Birkin retails for thousands (and sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars and can be see here in situ, on the arms of celebrity millionaires. Lindsey Lohan looks like she can just about fit into hers. (via clusterflock)
A visual look at the top 10 trends in spring/summer 2008 fashion, including parachute silk, higher waistlines, and skinny belts.
As part of the the Takashi Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the artist is collaborating with Louis Vuitton to station street vendors — who typically sell counterfeit merchandise — outside the museum selling real LV bags designed by Murakami himself.
Clothing libraries loan clothes out for free (or a small fee) to unemployed people for job interviews or to expecting mothers so they don’t have to buy a whole bunch of maternity clothes. Great idea. (via magnetbox)
Related to last month’s post about monochromatic outfits, here’s some photos of children who do the same thing, pink for the girls and blue for the boys.
korean artist jeongmee yoon’s ‘pink and blue project’ was inspired by her daughter. she would only wear pink and buy pink toys.
I find it interesting/odd that the children, some of whom aren’t more than five years old, are the ones presumed to be making the color choice here. (via a.whole)
Around All-Star time a couple of weeks ago, Nike released a shoe called the Nike Trash Talk, “the first Nike performance basketball sneaker completely produced from manufacturing waste”. The shoe, worn by Steve Nash in a recent game, looks a bit like Frankenstein’s monster with all the exposed stitching; it’s a beautiful shoe and I want a pair. The problem is that it’s one of those limited edition deals…which means they’re already all sold out and sitting on the shelves of sneaker collectors next to hundreds of other boxes of shoes that will never be worn. I looked on eBay and found two pair but not in my size. What are my chances of getting a pair of these at approximately retail price? I’m not looking for a collectors item…I just want to wear them!
Profiles of 5 New Yorkers that dress in only one color.
Why gray?
I actually wore turquoise for eight years, but last September, I switched to gray. I’d had a bad year and needed to get out of it.
That’s a big switch.
I like everything to be clean, and gray is clean. Gray is between black and white, so it’s a noncolor, almost. I feel messy and unclean if I wear other colors.
Where do you shop?
I make all my own clothes. I can’t wear anyone else’s.
What about shoes?
That’s hard because even the soles of my shoes have to be gray or white. I get annoyed if the soles are black.
Buzzfeed has more on monochromatic outfits.
Monsterhoodies. When the hood is up, it looks like a shark, dinosaur, or monster is biting your head off. Rrwar!!
A list of controversial fashion advertisements. Can’t believe the Calvin Klein stuff (the 1995 campaign especially) didn’t make it on there.
Wear Palettes takes the outfits showcased in street fashion photos snapped by The Sartorialist and makes color palettes. 1500 different palettes so far.
Ridley Scott and the company behind “The Devil Wears Prada” will bring the epic story of the Gucci dynasty to the screen. From Variety:
Just when Maurizio [Gucci] was on the verge of his greatest success — a daring fashion show debuting the clothes of newcomer Tom Ford — his penchant for accumulating enemies caught up with him; Maurizio was gunned down in front of his Milan apartment in 1995.
Plenty of potential for intrigue in the history of the House of Gucci in the 1970s and 80s, fleshed out by what is sure to be extravagant production design mixed with Scott’s highly-stylized aesthetic will make this an interesting project to look out for.
Previous big screen forays into the world of high fashion include this year’s vanity documentary “Lagerfeld Confidential” and the maligned Robert Altman romp “Prêt-à-Porter (1994).” (via The Tastemakers Society)
Order your Dumbledore pride tshirts, now available in rainbow “I always knew” and “Wizards Are Gay” varieties.
Hot in Japan: wearable hiding places.
By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine.
The manhole bag is my favorite…”a purse that can hide your valuables by unfolding to look like a round sewer cover”.
Lagerfeld Confidential is a documentary film about Karl Lagerfeld, the first such film done with Lagerfeld’s authorization. It’s playing at Film Forum in NYC later this month.
Remember Dove’s Evolution video of a fashion model going from drab to fabulous with the help of makeup and Photoshop? They’ve got a new video out called Onslaught in which we see the barrage of images that are directed at young girls each day. BTW, Dove’s parent company makes all sorts of products that may contibute to the problem that Dove is attacking here. (via debbie millman)
Jack Spade held an impromptu fashion show in Bryant Park outside the giant tent where Fashion Week was happening, enlisting passersby to carry Jack Spade bags up and back on the sidewalk. Wonderful stuff. (via design observer)
The third paragraph from a New Yorker profile of Donatella Versace (not online):
The trouble began when, between appointments, Donatella repaired to an outdoor terrace to smoke. Seated at a wrought-iron table, she thumbed open a pack of “special DV Marlboro Reds” (so called because her staff in Milan is instructed to cover the customary “Smoking Kills” label on every pack with a sticker bearing a DV monogram in medieval script).
…and that’s as far as I read before deciding that reading yet another article about someone wealthy enough to have a staff helping them opt out of reality is a waste of my time, no matter how well written the article.
On finding your true self in a peer vacuum:
To move to a city where you are not afraid to try something new because all the people that labeled who THEY think you are (parents, childhood friends) are not their to say “that’s not you” or “you’ve changed”. Well, maybe that person didn’t change but finally became who they really are.
Speaking of cool Etsy shops, elastiCo is selling pillows and tshirts with the most popular Google News search terms printed on them.
Newer posts
Older posts
Stay Connected