A while ago I was contacted by the Contributing Style Editor of Bust Magazine and she asked me the permission to publish one my outfit pictures in their August/September issue...
- Oh my, of course you can!" - I promptly replied. Bust is indeed one my favorites US magazines and getting a feature sounded great! So, here I am* with my bright maxi dress and my bright yellow wall :-)
Thank you Tara!!
The whole issue looks great as always and there's a massive Fall Preview of all the best things coming from movies, fashion, books and tv...go get your copy!
*Sorry for the not-so-good scans: my old faithful scanner doesn't work on Vista and I had to find "alternative solutions"...! By the way, here's a a better view on the dress
I often feel I'm just a shy girl who hide herself under memories instead of looking forward to new days, but I just can't help. Bygone eras, old houses and found photos are things I like in a very personal way. And not surprisingly I have a thing for home movies too.
I have a lot of photos of my family
but sadly there's no trace of their home movies. I didn't grow up surrounded by moving images of my dears and I developed an interest in this kind of films only when I started studying cinema. This is an interesting thing: I came to home movies - something which is rarely considered cinema - through a very "institutional channel"!
Home videos often skip the technical issues, they don't bother, it's not their purpose but the real big thing about them is that even if they are just a mere showcase of everyday lives of an unknown family you can read them as a proof of something bigger. You just have to change the perspective.
Visual artists, documentary filmaker and experimental directors have often worked on family images, deconstructing and recontextualizing them, reediting, manipulating, taking apart and putting them back together. Subverting their own mechanism. Mending the pieces, indeed.
Looking back at their work, at home movies frames, I can't say if there is a symbolism in everyday life of if it's everyday life that lies beneath symbolism.
Also, I can't stop thinking about the strong connection between home movies and death. Here I'm thinking of italian filmaker Alina Marazzi's first beautiful work, Un'ora sola ti vorrei (international title: For One More Hour With You), a patchwork of old family videos, diary entries and recordings which try to reconstruct the life of her mother, who passed away after years of psychiatric disease, in 1972, when Alina was only seven years old.
You can watch the movie (fragmented...) on You Tube (it's in italian, though).
But I'm also thinking of Kennedy family home movies. Those happy summers are pictured in our collective imagery as a document of an era, a cultural product. Once again something that goes beyond a basic series of pictures.
Beyond the videos above, I can't avoid to mention Jonas Mekas's This Side Of Paradise: Fragments of an Unfinished Biography; a little gem I was lucky enough to see some years ago.
Here's Mekas himself talking about his movie:
"Unpredictably, as most of my life's key events have been, for a period of several years in the early '60s and early '70s, I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedy's and her sister Lee Radziwill's families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship. The time was still very close to the untimely, tragic death of John F. Kennedy. Jackie wanted to give something to her children to do, to help to ease the transition, life without a father. (...) The images in this film, with a few exceptions, all come from the summers Caroline and John Jr. spent in Montauk, with their cousins Anthomy and Tina Radziwill, in an old house Lee had rented from Andy Wharol for a few summers. (...) These were summers of happiness, joy and continuous celebrations of life and friendship. These were days of Little Fragments of Paradise."
Memories and loss of memories, presence and absence, life and death of the classic American Dream are fundamental elements in this film in which there's no voice over. Just laughs and the sounds of waves that come and go.
In September, Who's Next will introduce 13 designers from all over the world, gathered in two areas of the trade show devoted to young designers, Fast and Fresh.
These 13 "trend-forecasters" young talents were spotted by Who's Next's team's expert eye on the Who's Next Blog, a brand new discovery and exchange platform devoted to the young creation's best emissaries.
I had a look at these designers profiles and I'm currently loving two of them. Here are some pictures from their past collections, while waiting for their S/S 2010 ones which will be presented from September 3rd to 6th, during the coming Who's Next trade show in Paris.
LEW is the acronym for Kim Lemans and Merel Wicker who met in 2001 at the Amsterdam Rietveld Academy. After working for various fashion houses, they decided to launch their own label in 2006. Their concept: patchwork clothes in fresh and powerful colors, flowing and light lines for a very delicate and feminine figure. Their motto "Why make it simple when it can be complex?" shows in their will to confront two opposite fashion worlds: streetwear and haute couture.
Beautiful sherbet colors and silky textures here...
Anuschka Hoevener works and lives in Berlin after starting out in London and New York. In 2004, she opened her own studio/showroom. Her collections give way to pure and simple lines however presenting slight alterations for an always-original figure. Ornamental details, pleats and creases or paddings liven up each piece of clothing. For the Summer 2010, our young designer favors flowing lines and lightness for a both urban and easy look, in shades of green, white, gray and stonewashed blue.
It's hot and the only thing that save me from sleepless nights is watching movies till late. Horror movies, old or new, do the best work - I've always thought horror movies and summer nights are a strong couple - but a bit of Hitchcock, works well too.
Yesterday evening I was reflecting about my favorite Hitchock movie and I ended up with...nothing! I mean, I really can't choose between Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much (the 1956 version). I've seen them oh so many times...
Rear Window is probably the first "serious" movies I've ever watched (and I was just 7 or 8 years old!) and it's probably the movie I've watched the most in general (I think the second one is Dirty Dancing, but that's another story...). It's Grace Kelly at her best and the side little stories of the people "spyed" by James Stewart are great.
The Man Who Knew Too Much is simply fantastic, fun and intricate and who doesn't love Doris Day singing Que sera sera ?!
This morning while transferring files from the old to the new laptop (I'm almost done finally!), I found the pictures from Vanity Fair 2008 Hollywood Portfolio , called Hitchcock Classics that channels iconic moments from the director’s greatest hits
While I can't choose my first favorite Hitchcock movie, I have no doubt on the second place. It's all for The Birds.
After watching it, I've never looked at a seagull (or a pigeon, a raven, a dove...even a robin indeed!) the same way as before...
I'll break my own rules posting another Fall/Winter lookbook, but it really deserves to be posted! When yesterday I saw the first pictures of Wren new collection on Liebe Marlene , I thought they look exactly as I wish my fall wardrobe should look this year and when I checked the whole thing I was 100% sure!
