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.