Pierrot le Fou

Pierrot le Fou (1965) is a French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It follows the events of a man who runs away with his nanny and former flame, Marianne, as they travel further and further into the South of France in attempt to find Marianne's "brother", as well as in attempt to escape the Algerian gangsters she happens to be involved with. The movie is very stylistically strong, belonging to the never formally organized Nouvelle Vague/French New Wave movement. Radical experiments with editing and striking visuals make this film a classic example of European art cinema.

Masked

I leave you this Friday with a photo taken by the french photographer André Ostier of a couple dressed up for a ball given in the 1950's by Baron de Redé at the Hôtel Lambert.

So Light is Her Footfall

With all the crazy shoes designers have the ability to design with the new given technology, spanning from McQueen' alien-like hunched platforms (S/S 2010), the Lego palace Balenciaga shoes (A/W 2007), it's pretty amazing that no designer has yet to tackle the idea of creating some kind of shoe embodying a cat. The closest thing to this idea would perhaps be Topshop's kitty flat. But I'd like to see something even closer to the resemblance of an actual cat. Maybe something like the shoes/feet in Romanian artist Victor Braunser's Mitsi (1939).

The Night Starts Here

Vogue Italia, August 2010, presents rough leathers mixed with almost wimpish whimsical scattered pastel colored tattoos. Add garish golds and hard candy colored lips to the mix, and this is what you get:

Eileen Agar's Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse

Eileen Agar (born 1899) was a British artist whose paintings and photographs are often associated with the surrealism movement. Agar had an interesting life, as she achieved almost overnight success after the first International Surrealist Exhibition in London at the New Burlington Galleries in 1936. One of her most important contributions to the world of surrealism and fashion- both together and as separate things on their own is her Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse. The hat itself was constructed of a cork base, painted yellow and blue, and was decorated with an orange colored plastic flower, a blue plastic star, assorted shells, two types of coral painted green and pink, two star fish, twists of paper, a very large glass bead, a piece of jigsaw puzzle, a piece of tree bark and a large fish bone. Agar placed a high value on the hat, and kept it in her own possession until her death 1991. The hat is now in the Victoria and Albert museum in London.

Be: Jeweled

My quest for the ultimate odd experimentation on my nails continues. This time with a bunch of tiny Swarovski crystals chunked together sitting a top of shiny black polish.

Fornasetti's Lina Cavalieri

Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) was a painter, interior decorator, sculptor, and engraver from Italy. Out of the 11,000 items he created, over 500 of them consist of the face of one single woman; the Italian operatic soprano Lina Cavalieri. The Italian beauty's face spans over plates, paintings, and clocks, and other various objects of design. So, why create so many things related to one woman? The simple explanation Fornasetti offers is this: "I began to make them and I never stopped."

Scaffolding by Dior

Plywood scaffolding in front of the Dior store on 57th street? Oh no, darling. A
very large leather handbag will hide the changes the store is making until it's reopening in December. The bag looks a little out of place; as if it had rained luxury goods and this particular handbag landed neatly on the sidewalk... or some sort of angry fashion god dropped it on the sidewalk in order to hurt pedestrians. Cloudy with a chance of Dior, anyone?

L'exposition internationale du surrealisme//

The year is 1938, in Paris. Excitement runs fluid in the air as everyone holds their breath in anticipation of the approaching movement- surrealism. André Breton and Paul Éluard, both writers and founders of the surrealism movement organized the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris. Here, installations, photographs, and other outrageous and avant-garde works by artists of the upcoming movement were showcased. Salvador Dalí, Óscar Dominguez, Marcel Duchamp, Leo Malet, André Masson, Joan Miró, Wolfgang Paalen, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Jean, Max Ernst, Espinoza, Maurice Henry, Sonia Mosse, and Man Ray were among the select artists that were given mannequins and encouraged to outfit them in any possible way they wanted. Ah, surrealism and fashion. Is there anything better?