fleur de hiver

manolo mocs

h&m conscious collection - tone-on-tone raised intarsia made from recycled wool and organic cotton

maison martin margiela wool riding pants

summer snowfall

back in january i blogged about a different dress by 3.1 phillip lim. someone outbid me and i've yet to stitch up a bootleg version, even though i managed to unearth my sewing machine. recently i saw this sequined number on the outnet and you can figure the rest. i'd love to tell you what it cost me, but my extremely frugal mother sometimes reads this blog, and i don't want her to have a heart attack. 

hypothetical attempt

me: but ma, it was the outnet! major discount!

mom: everything i wear came out of the alley... and don't i look styyyylish.

last time i saw my mom, she was wearing one of those expandable scrunch tees that you sometimes see in walgreens, or on hunyak tourists. this particular one was sheer and tie dyed, and underneath she had a tank top with small-print words on it like "love" and "peace." her skirt, leggings, and socks were all different patterns, or purple, brown, and amber. the only solid-color garment she had on was a green cardigan i'd given her. i wish i'd taken a picture, but it was too terrifying. it was sort of like the pattern-clashing that you see on poor people in third-world countries, but taken to a psychedelic extreme.

right. so, out of respect for my mother i won't admit the cost of a designer dress, but i will gleefully criticize her outfit. let me adjust our lens; on a skinny hipster at fashion week, my mom would draw a crowd of photographers for being the most original and reckless dresser. vogue italia would give my mom preference over 

or

any of these chicks.

i will never get over the horrors of being forced into mixed liberty prints as a child -- it's one of those things formative pains that drive me toward a sculptural, soigné, monochromatic principal -- but fashion folks are real aspirational about contrasting patterns. there are editorials devoted to mastering this stylistic challenge. well, let me tell you, franca sozzani (you chic creature, you) my mom does this with aplomb.

maybe for a future challenge, i will try to replicate one of my mom's looks. lord have mercy.

okay, sorry, i meant to talk about the 3.1 phillip lim dress. the designer, by the bye, had a gorgeous, minimal f/w 2012 runway. below you've got filtered photos of the dress, which is all matte white sequins with a silk chiffon lining. covered black buttons and handkerchief-hemming at the hips. it is just slightly too big, but that's how i usually do. (tight and open-toe is for strippers and slatterns.)

coach belt, miu miu courts,  vintage python clutch, vintage earrings

sometimes you pick something out and you know exactly how you'd like to wear it, and for whom you'd like to wear it. this is a romantic notion of how you'd like to be perceived; your most-assured, most-poised, and yet most-comfortable self. your impala-self more than your otter-self. even if you will never wear it under such dreamed-of circumstances. this is how fashion works on the brain, (i tip my cloche to flaubert) which is to say that it's emotional and irrational.

lovely shua

science fiction novels

a little outfit review, a little fashion month rundown, and an incomplete list of sci-fi and fantasy novels.


on purpose, i didn't include anything by Ovid or Homer or any fantasy/folklore.


however, i forgot to add The Princess Bride, The Last Unicorn, or the Flight of Dragons -- the last of these being a gorgeously illustrated book of the hypothetical physics of dragonflight and the collective [unconscious] memory of such magical creatures.

i measure time by how a body sways

I Knew a Woman

Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

green and gold

josh crow

from life

from the [reference] photo

vintage Aquascutum car coat in camel wool, vintage silk dress,
vintage Gucci belt, j.crew tortoiseshell courts, UO crystal necklace

the costumes are the sets

i meant to do this post as soon as i'd heard that eiko ishioka, the inimitable artist and costume designer had passed. she truly worked from a different paradigm. her vision was incredibly specific and her idiosyncratic.

obviously i never shut up about the 1992 version of dracula (it is from a coppola quote re: ishioka that i take this post's title) but i always admired her work under tarsem singh. (even though i think singh is an awful director -- the hack version of terry gilliam, who's curdled in his own way.) 

here's a documentary clip where eiko gets to talk about her process and put the actors in their place. i love the idea of constriction as character psychology. everything after that is photos, lots of them.

bram stoker's dracula, 1992

klimt reference, musculature

this costume must have fallen to the cutting room floor

this scene starts with a flickering, grainy effect,  because they are shooting with fewer frames per second. the camera pans shakily, as if amateur and hand-cranked. the film seems to be painted cell by cell -- in the style of the first color movies. when dracula sees mina, the image returns to full sharpness and vibrancy. hi, metaphor. 

i read that the inspiration was a lizard's ruff 

different dress on mina, different hairstyles for both. i appreciate when garments repeat over different days. a small nod to reality.

color metaphors. mina represents life, growing things. she wears mostly blues and greens, with a vine motif. just as lucy usually wears pink, red, and orange, to represent her flirtatious nature.

exception: lucy's snake dress

exception 2: mina's scarlet gown

the cell, 2000

singh would like to suggest he's into surrealist art...

...but really he's just into comic books

the fall, 2006

mirror mirror, 2012

i might see this just for the costumes, but the tralier is unbearably annoying

this is so ugly

ugly again