LOVER'S ROCK

there was once a time when reggae lyrics weren't made of up "brap! brap!", or "reeewiiiiind selectaaaa", and dancing to it didn't mean getting on a headstand with your legs in a split position gyrating like a rabid maniac. just like the r&b music of the seventies and early eighties, the reggae of that time had just as much soul but with a little tropical flavour to give it some heat.

CHESTERFIELD

i've been a good boy this year and if santa clause was more than a myth i'm quite sure i shall wake up on christmas morning and find one of these lovely, tufted, distinguished sofas under the christmas tree. unfortunately reindeers don't fly and none of them have glowing noses so the likely hood of that ever happening is dead.
but a boy can dream. of a house with dark stained herringbone hardwood floors with thirteen foot ceilings, a brick fireplace and victorian era crown mouldings with one of these handsome badboys facing a large set of french doors opening up into a balcony overlooking something amazing.
imagine having a cuddle with henry cavill on one of these??? oh god!

LUMPS AND BUMPS

don't call it a fat suit! madame kawakubo's "lumps and bumps" collection has been remixed, revised, and revisited by all the youngbloods and old guns in the fashion world. the woman who brought her "apocalyptic chic" to paris in the early eighties proved that she can still rattle the fussiest parissiene feathers a decade and a half later. commercially it was a bust, but big ups for being a woman with balls bigger than the poofs that run this mad mad fashion circus. sometimes its not about being pretty, but not giving a fuck and being original. and no one will argue that this collection has guts and originality in spades. thirteen years later and this shit will avant all the other "avant gardes". you're pretty ace in my book rei rei!

SKINS

i'm quite sure i've made it obvious in my old posts how obsessed i am with british youth culture of the late seventies/early eighties. because let's face facts, the music and the fashion associated with the musical movements of that era pretty much rules like cash does to wu-tang (if you don't get the C.R.E.A.M. reference then you are hopelessly lame).
although musically my inclination tends to lean towards the manchester scene, fashion wise i'm all about the butch-ness of skinheads in all their working-class glory. unfortunately nowadays when someone mentions skinheads, most people just see a swastika. damn those white supremacists for hi-jacking the image of a movement that owes much of its visual identity from the influences black immigrants brought to the u.k. in the seventies. i'm not a sociology professor so i'm gonna leave touchy subjects to someone more qualified to go on about it and talk about how much i love photographer gavin watson instead. a man who grew up at the time of the original skins and who, thank god, had a camera to document it.
in his pictures all i see are kids hanging out, holding hands with their birds, drinking lager at a pub, and causing mayhem like most young people do at that age. instead of looking at the shaved heads, union jacks, and doc martens, all i see are friends being friends and boyfriends with their girlfriends. its not that much different from any of our albums on facebook.
i love the humanity in the photos. i love its naturalness, its youth, its honesty. i know its cliche to say "this photograph really captures a moment", but this is exactly what these photographs do. it makes the reality of that time so obvious. not burdened with the negative connotations the word "skinhead" is now attached to.
with the legacy of skinheads forever tainted by bigots and hate mongers, watson's photographs at least gives us a sliver of what was once was. before the word "hate" cemented itself to the culture.


p.s. yeah i know there are no black people in the pictures above, trust me there are some in his other pictures but i just couldn't find big enough images to use.

ICON - FRIDA KAHLO

there are certain figures that designers, photographers, stylists and everyone else who works in the wacko world of fashion considers to be a constant source of inspiration. the more eccentric, the better. the crazier, even better! and to be bisexual, jackpot!! i don't necessarily consider mexican artist frida kahlo as crazy, but i guess if you can't be bothered plucking your uni-brow then fashion people will consider it rather mental indeed. of course by doing the nasty with josephine baker any fashion faux-pas is easily forgiven.
her highly personal works clouded with symbolisms of unborn fetuses, religion, mexican paganism and social commentary does bring to mind the great surrealists of the thirties, but what sets her apart from the magrittes and dalis is her sex.
the moment you laid your eyes on any of her work, you instantly knew it was done by a woman. a woman who had so much passion it spilled onto the canvas. there was something primal about the nature her sexuality. it is at once, savagely graphic, yet loaded with emotions and naked vulnerability.
her art documented every tortured experience of her life. from her volatile marriage to diego rivera, her numerous miscarriages, and her life long injuries sustained from a horrific car accident during her teenage years, its all there. laid out in all its honest brutality.
her greatest work perhaps, was her herself. the conviction of the way she dressed, the way she decorated her head, even in the act of not grooming her now infamous brows she became one of the most powerful image of womanhood in the twentieth century.
it is that uncensored projection of woman-ness, straddling an extremely narrow line between profound beauty and intense unease that makes her forever provoking, forever inspiring.