About fantasy and phantasm. Souvenirs of a simple time.

When I first saw it this morning, I could barely believe it. Horst, whom I am worshiping more and more for making me smile every day - you really have to check out his blog which is so different, so refreshing and surprising - was exhuming some very distant and well covered childhood memories. But in reading this one word "Fantaghirò" and in looking at these stills out of the movie, I suddenly felt shifted back in this jaunty light-hearted years of my childhood. Where I spent my time between Christmas Eve and New Year's day in watching these fantastic Italian fairytale movies "Fantaghirò" and "Desideria and the ring of the dragon": full of fantasy and phantasm, witches and wizards, adventurous and rebellious princesses, wicked warriors, mean stepsisters and bewitches princes, battles and love in desert and snow.

This makes me longing, longing for this simple time, but above all longing for fiction, fantasy and phantasm these films already carry in their titels: "FANTAghirò" and "Desideria", personification of longing and desire: so I am longing for Victor falling in love with Desideria without ever seeing her face, only recognizing her by her VOICE, for prince Romualdo loosing his heart to Fantaghirò without properly seeing her face, only recognizing her by her EYES. And all these girls dressing up as men...

Dear Mr. Zizek, 

this is also a message for you, wouldn't you be interested in interpreting these films with your psychoanalytic methods, this would be real fun, I am sure....

"Fantaghirò" and "Desideria and the ring of the dragon" directed by Lamberto Bava.

Beautiful still selection by Horst.

Ephebos. from boys and bears.

Strengh and control of every single muscle and vein. Absolute precision and beaty, pureness and grace.

Hedi Slimane who delights us continously with the sublime photography of his personal as well as his fashion diary now did a film - about a boy and a bear. pirouettes in the snow, tension and lightness in absolute grace.

This video reminds me Greek art and its aesthetics, the cult of male beauty embodied in it and its idealisation as absolute beauty in 18th century art history, and the emblematic formula developped by the German archeologist Johann Winkelmann:

"noble simplicity and silent greatness" - edle Einfalt, stille Größe 

(one has to pronounce these beautiful words in German)

www.hedislimane.com

haute fourrure

  

favorite winter garments: timeless chic.

because crisp cold and sharp frost shall not overcome good style.

 

elegant 

Azzaro couture AW 0910

 

casual rock 

Balenciaga aviator jacket AW 04/05

image via  jak&jil blog

 

inside out 

anica fur vest AW 0910

seen at lesmads

Just married - une comédie humaine by Terry Richardson

DESIRE LUST & LUXURY.

 

 

 

Just discovered this vintage French Vogue shoot (February 2008) - starring a fabulous Natasha Poly and the grandios 102 year old french actor Pierre Gérard in the ironic and grotesc comedy of the young wonderful lady marrying an old rich man. what a beautiful, crude and sharpened satire about ruthless lust.

credits:

photographe: Terry Richardson

styling: Emmanuelle Alt

Vogue Paris, February 2008

thank you for shopping

Fashion photography often shows models posing ridiculously. There's a real art of posing, a whole repertory of facial expression showing the models like dolls, staring into space, with their mouth wide open, lost somewhere in abstract thoughts, dreaming and longing for some absolute in order to appear erotic, sexy, mysterious and inaccessible - everything the reader - we- expect from these perfect women. The conceptual photographer/illustration and design Duo Gustav von Arbin and Vassili Brault shows the models in the very same poses in a very interesting story called "thank you for shopping" alluding evidently to the customer's attitude and expectations. But, instead, they show the models grasping for air, suffocation under plastic bags painted in acrylic over their faces. A sacastic and critical, yet very beautiful artwork.

"To highlight the irony often held within model poses in editorials, we turned obvious sexualy explicit pictures meant to display designer clothes, into a show of models gasping for air."
Thank you for shopping."

 

Credits

GUSTAV VON ARBIN/VASSILI BRAULT

RICHARD BERNARDIN/MARCUS OHLSSON

www.gandv.se

discovered at sans saveur ni odeur.

void.

Daul Kim departed. no more forking.

Nothingness. Emptiness. No sight. No sound. No life. Form without life. Leap from the wall. Life without you. I just can't seem to get a meaningful grasp. Dead end. Dead caligraph. Broken bone hands Or a fucking handle on the madness. Black adracula. No mans land. The grenade in the glovebox. The deep dark unfathomable unknowable. Lights off. Nowhere's ville. The rotting cartoon. Shite that makes a mockery of anything. No beginning. No good god. Meets the end of roads. We ever ever ever fucking try to do. Infinity colossal. Evades me insignificant. Escapes from me. Avoids light. You and me. Me and you. The gap between us.

poem by Damien Hirst read lurve magazine issue 2.

Satyricon

Russian photographer Alexey Kiselef known for the editorials he did for Dazed&Confused, ID or Russion Vogue for instance does more than only sightly fashion photography. With his artwork he goes far behind the surface. He takes current symbolic codes from today's fashion and media discourse, twists them around in an ironical and satyrical sense and exposes its debauched, obscene and lubricous aspects.

This photo triffles with lots of codes:

Alexey evidently refers to Diesel's SS 08 "live fast" ad campaign showing a young and sexy women changing her baby's napkin while sprinting on high heels, the vaunted ideal of looking still more sexy in the fifties than in the twenties just like Madonna or Sharon Stone, and for sure the trend of adopting children  - and so many more...

 

so for all of you who have the chance to live in BERLIN, you definetely should go there:

Random
Alexey Kiselev
13.-27.11.2009
Opening 13.11.2009, 19h
Lucas Carrieri Gallery
Torstr. 96, 10119 Berlin

all images by Alexey Kiselef:  www.kiselef.com

and above all thanks to Mahret from f&art due to whom I discovered Alexey's artwork.

The Wonderful issue

this is already my third post on Lara in one month: but she is just wonderful!

Lara Stone named "girl of the year" on the December Cover of British Vogue photographed by Mario Testino.

Lara Stone wears white tulle corset dress, Dior Haute Couture. Corsages, around waist, from a selection, Basia Zarzycka. All make-up by Dior. Hair: Sam McKnight. Make-up: Val Garland. Fashion editor: Lucinda Chambers
photo: www.vogue.co.uk

have a look at the making off

girlspower: lara & camilla

Lara Stone for ERES SS2010 Cruise Collection,

photography by Camilla Akrans

via: wwd

love Camilla Akran's pure aesthetics and Lara Stone's radiating sensuality!

   

 

 

kings and queens.

image: www.valentino.com

Two years after his "retirement" Valentino Garavani is still on the top of the jet set. Bronzy as ever he was partying last night at the Standard Hotel in New York to promote the DVD release of  Matt Tyrnauer's fantastic documentary The Last Emperor which will be out in European cinemas next month.

image: via style.com

What a contrast! the Queen of pop and her alabaster skin and a tannend King of couture dancing at the boom boom boom, even "too tanned" as his compagnon Giancarlo Giametti tells him in a fabulous scene in this absolutely fascinating movie, which is so funny and touching at the same time!

Matt Tyrnauer from the American Vanitiy Fair and his team accompanied Mr.Valentino Garavani for two years - his last two years - and give an absolutely stunning view on the life and work of this great Italian couturier and his glamorous life he built up in over 45 years with Giancarlo Giametti always at his side. Wow, that's just glamour at its best!

have a look at the trailer.

GQ Germany's model of the year 2009

Do you remember this provoking ad? and above all do you remember the guy this finger belongs to?

Yes, it's nobody else than Jon Kortajarena whom it belongs to and who was named "model of the year" 2009 by  Germany's GQ yesterday night in Munich.

One remembers him particulary from Tom Ford campaigns.

The provoking one shot by Terry Richardson for SS 2208,

 The SS 2009 campaign shot by Tom Ford himself,

 

and also this winter AW 09/10 ad campaign, also done by Tom Ford himself.

 

 

(I love especially this last photo for it's allusion to Yves Saint Laurent's famous naked pose from 1971)



And actually Tom Ford, too, has been awarded at the same event and named best fashion designer of the year...

all images:  Tom Ford