i am tired of seeing the annual (or sometimes even bi-annual) issues and editorials in fashion magazines that show 'average', 'normal' and/or 'healthy' women celebrating their 'curves' and shoving their so-called realness and wellness down our throats. yes, eating disorders and related body-image issues are really major concerns in modern society, and i do realise that it has become more and more important of an aspect of our collective psyche that desperately needs to be continually addressed and corrected in order to make any significant difference..BUT; publishing images of famous / non-famous women that are not in a healthy weight limit seems to me to be no better than the waif-like alien-esque teenagers that are likely to have appeared in the magazine a month before said 'realistic' / 'curves-embracing' editorial.
i am tired of the likes of Amanda from Operator Please, or even Beth Ditto at the extreme, being celebrated for their bodies and confidence. yes, it is important that more healthy bodies are embraced by editorials and articles in magazines, but these women are not ones that i want to look up to at all. there is a distinct difference between a size 4 and their much larger counterparts. why aren't the women like those on the covers of Women's Health, for example, shown in these articles ? they work for their bodies, they eat well, and often have a glowing smile on their faces. i think that these women are glowingly healthy.
but jesus, i am so tired of the media telling me that healthy means 'curves'. it often does not, at least not in so much excess.
i realise that it probably is an important issue to note that Operator Please's frontwoman is absolutely comfortable with herself and works within an industry that can often be very scrutinising and pigeonholing of aesthetics. ..and she obviously isn't morbidly obese by any means, HOWEVER, i refuse to look up to her in terms of health.
take the following images for example:
http://www.skinnyvscurvy.com/hot-models/magazines-plus-size-issue-preview.html
it's absolutely fine with me if magazines want to celebrate women that exist outside of the expected criteria, but it is as if there is no gap between these women and the Victoria's Secret supermodels.
this hasn't been written eloquently at all.. my points are poorly proven, i go round in circles and sound like such an awful person. i will come back to it when i can voice my thoughts with more sense and with more..literary steeze i guess.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
i meant to post the following in early July:
i just sent a message to my partner in crime/louvre hailing the adoration & cardio stress that just took place inside me in regard to Givenchy's recent couture collection - as fragmentally follows:
'...i got butterflies, these garments - in my non-humble opiniahno - were so soso amazing. usually every few months i see something (to do with clothing/fashion)that i find v incredible.. but its a rare - and probably only annual or bi-annual - event when i actually cry/gasp/get stomach ~stuff over clothing..
the Givenchy couture collection that i just witnessed was so on par with everything i want to create; even the ideas behind the collection are all ideas that i found myself throwing around in regard to my own diy pieces in art at school last year..
ahahhhh i'm really just..dying.'
=which is more or less an emotional summary of how i felt in the moment of initial discovery. and still do. i'm just learning to contain my internal goings-on a little better now.
i just..ah.
i will post some imagery of said design brilliance, then link some of my older posts with similar sorts of aesthetic / design symbolism philosophies..:
i really like seeing the backs of garments and models; (ps i LOVE that the background imagery in that post is totally anatomy-based..another love of mine - one i tried to draw upon and highlight its beauty /pureness in a skull drawing i did in school Art last year - as also mentioned below) their bare factor and what is at times a major part of the piece's brilliance often goes unrealised and underappreciated - especially when collections or pieces are only seen over the internet or in photographs, drawings, etc. these gowns and jackets, i found, really relied on the viewing of the back to fully appreciate the whole beautiful package.
i addressed my interest and appreciation for the backs of dresses once when i was just beginning to really appreciate the part that they can play a while ago.
in terms of being 'on par' with issues / aesthetics that i have, in the past, tried to address, i will first-off refer to the review of the collection that was submitted to style.com.:
'the history of haute couture is studded with magnificent obsessives like Cristobal Balenciaga and Charles James. even if Riccardo Tisci's name never makes it onto that list, his latest Couture collection for Givenchy proved that he shares the grandmasters' fanatical devotion to realizing an intensely personal vision through cut, cloth, and, in Tisci's case, extraordinarily elaborate ornamentation. this season, he opted out of a proper show in favor of intimate presentations, where he could better highlight detailed pieces like the painstakingly patchworked leather coat or the dress in Chantilly lace where the pattern of the lace had been duplicated in appliquéd leather (the dress ended in a cascade of dégradé ostrich feathers—Tisci considers dégradé, lace, and fringe-work his signatures).
the darkest color in the collection was the chocolate brown on those feathers. otherwise, everything was white, flesh-colored, or gold, with a salon dedicated to each shade. even the baboon fur that was attached to a swallowtailed knit jacket was spookily bleached. fact is, Tisci didn't need black to exercise his gothic inclinations. (i used tons of shades of off-white, cream, gold and brown in Art last year - colours that are generally seen to be more feminine / uplifting, and somewhat ~positive - and i used those colours juxtaposed amongst my wearable art piece and various skull imagery..the skull included floral arrangements near by, was for the most part white and yellow, whereas my wearable art piece included casts of my top and bottom sets of teeth from primary school when i would go and get mouthguards moulded each year for hockey - a lot of people found the inclusion of these moulds and the twigs and other 'rough' aspects that i weaved into the piece a little morbid, revolting, younameit. i drew the top half of a cow's skull for the same assignment and laced it with watercolour, generally calming and subtle colouring as well as drawing a flower in one of the corners. i really tried to communicate these pre-conceived 'dark' themes and images in a more beautiful light. i'm not sure if i succeeded in doing so, but i feel like Riccardo was really onto a similar thing here. he used a lot of subtle skull motifs and kept the models' looks - apart from the dresses & jackts of course - to an absolute minimum. Couture is nearly always in excess; especailly the make-up, the hair and the headpieces. sometimes the models are even instructed to hold certain facial expressions or stances. for this collection, the models were sullen, emotionless and apart from drawing almost all of the viewer's attention to the garments and their details, i think that he was drawing on the plain / ugly as part of a really beautiful and feminine ideal. so interesting and so on par with my attempted artistic ideals.)he claimed his inspiration was Frida Kahlo and her three obsessions: religion, sensuality, and, given the painter's lifelong battle with spinal pain, the human anatomy. the zipper pulls were little bones, a belt was a spinal column re-created in porcelain. the dominant motif of the collection was the skeleton, laid out flat in the lace appliquéd on a long tulle column, or rendered in three dimensions in obsessively dense clusters of crystals, pearls, and lace on the back of a jacket in double silk duchesse satin. nestled in the middle? a tiny ceramic skull sprouting angel wings. at one point during his presentation, Tisci rather tellingly muttered, "a romantic way to see death."(on par on par on par on par with my anatomy-meets-romanticism attempted thang)
that jacket was suspended in the all-white "ceramic" room. in the "skin" room, Tisci showcased lace catsuits, one decorated with a Swarovski crystal skeleton that took 1,600 hours to create. in the third, "gold" room was a lace dress that demanded six months of work. dresses encrusted with gold paillettes, stones, and beads were almost too heavy to lift, despite being revealingly scissored away at the waist. if the detail was breathtaking, it was also quite numbing in its intensity. the last room featured a giant portrait by Willy Vanderperre of Tisci's muses wearing the dresses, seen from the back. "i love that view," Tisci explained, "the spine of people."(i'm dying. on par ON @$(*&$(#ing PAR!?) walk round the photo and there was the same view from the front, the women all posed reverentially like hand maidens. in obsession is born the cult of couture.
i meant to post the following in early May:
oh god. oh god oh god ohgod. i've never had tears in my eyes when i've seen a runway report before, (this is obviously before i had seen Givenchy Couture 2010, above - the second time in my life in which i had been so emotionally affected by clothing design) despite love skyrocketing through the roof. these are just what i needed. (at that point in time i was only just getting back into designing, after almost 9 or so months of absolutely barren and dried up creativity. i had been upset with my life in general, and was in the most stress that i had ever been in - for both personal and education-related reasons - and this had lasted from around May/June 2009 until i guess toward April/May 2010. un-fun. it was so refreshing to finally be able to ~think again, to use my brain for good or for anything at all, and to do what i loved once more. i was finally getting ideas back on the go, and was starting to again be inspired by things and people around me. it felt so magical and refreshing. i'm so thankful of / for whatever spurred that re-love of design and overall re-appreciation for life. i think a new relationship had a great deal to do with the bettering of my day-to-day living, but i know a number of subtle things must have also been of influence.)
and so i present to you; Dion Lee's beautiful and delicate designs at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in Sydney. the pleats were what killed me. i cried, i smiled, i got butterflies, i gasped. fashion had never before moved me so much, and that is saying a great deal about his creations because i have most definitely been over the moon and back over a great number of collections / pieces before..
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
i meant to post these words in early January:
listening to Good Old War reminds me of a cold and rainy pre-dawn inner-city atmosphere in Melbourne during early Winter. it reminds me of being picked up by the hotel's organised driver on the side of the grey street that lay cold, yet peacefully alone, just hours before it would be bustling with cafe-goers, workers and traffic.
it reminds me of grasping for warmth; wearing layer upon layer of stockings and a number of scarves with suitcase in tow and what was then my newly-purchased Lisa Ho Formal dress in a massive tissuepaper-lined bag juggled between my arms.
it reminds me of good things and good times.
it reminds me of the good life, better than the life i live when i thought that i was gonna go crazy.
..lets go on a living spree.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
50 years of Dr Martins.
to me, AA stands for American Apparel, not Alcoholics Anonymous.
i am tired of the likes of Amanda from Operator Please, or even Beth Ditto at the extreme, being celebrated for their bodies and confidence. yes, it is important that more healthy bodies are embraced by editorials and articles in magazines, but these women are not ones that i want to look up to at all. there is a distinct difference between a size 4 and their much larger counterparts. why aren't the women like those on the covers of Women's Health, for example, shown in these articles ? they work for their bodies, they eat well, and often have a glowing smile on their faces. i think that these women are glowingly healthy.
but jesus, i am so tired of the media telling me that healthy means 'curves'. it often does not, at least not in so much excess.
i realise that it probably is an important issue to note that Operator Please's frontwoman is absolutely comfortable with herself and works within an industry that can often be very scrutinising and pigeonholing of aesthetics. ..and she obviously isn't morbidly obese by any means, HOWEVER, i refuse to look up to her in terms of health.
take the following images for example:
http://www.skinnyvscurvy.com/hot-models/magazines-plus-size-issue-preview.html
it's absolutely fine with me if magazines want to celebrate women that exist outside of the expected criteria, but it is as if there is no gap between these women and the Victoria's Secret supermodels.
this hasn't been written eloquently at all.. my points are poorly proven, i go round in circles and sound like such an awful person. i will come back to it when i can voice my thoughts with more sense and with more..literary steeze i guess.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
i meant to post the following in early July:
i just sent a message to my partner in crime/louvre hailing the adoration & cardio stress that just took place inside me in regard to Givenchy's recent couture collection - as fragmentally follows:
'...i got butterflies, these garments - in my non-humble opiniahno - were so soso amazing. usually every few months i see something (to do with clothing/fashion)that i find v incredible.. but its a rare - and probably only annual or bi-annual - event when i actually cry/gasp/get stomach ~stuff over clothing..
the Givenchy couture collection that i just witnessed was so on par with everything i want to create; even the ideas behind the collection are all ideas that i found myself throwing around in regard to my own diy pieces in art at school last year..
ahahhhh i'm really just..dying.'
=which is more or less an emotional summary of how i felt in the moment of initial discovery. and still do. i'm just learning to contain my internal goings-on a little better now.
i just..ah.
i will post some imagery of said design brilliance, then link some of my older posts with similar sorts of aesthetic / design symbolism philosophies..:
i really like seeing the backs of garments and models; (ps i LOVE that the background imagery in that post is totally anatomy-based..another love of mine - one i tried to draw upon and highlight its beauty /pureness in a skull drawing i did in school Art last year - as also mentioned below) their bare factor and what is at times a major part of the piece's brilliance often goes unrealised and underappreciated - especially when collections or pieces are only seen over the internet or in photographs, drawings, etc. these gowns and jackets, i found, really relied on the viewing of the back to fully appreciate the whole beautiful package.
i addressed my interest and appreciation for the backs of dresses once when i was just beginning to really appreciate the part that they can play a while ago.
in terms of being 'on par' with issues / aesthetics that i have, in the past, tried to address, i will first-off refer to the review of the collection that was submitted to style.com.:
'the history of haute couture is studded with magnificent obsessives like Cristobal Balenciaga and Charles James. even if Riccardo Tisci's name never makes it onto that list, his latest Couture collection for Givenchy proved that he shares the grandmasters' fanatical devotion to realizing an intensely personal vision through cut, cloth, and, in Tisci's case, extraordinarily elaborate ornamentation. this season, he opted out of a proper show in favor of intimate presentations, where he could better highlight detailed pieces like the painstakingly patchworked leather coat or the dress in Chantilly lace where the pattern of the lace had been duplicated in appliquéd leather (the dress ended in a cascade of dégradé ostrich feathers—Tisci considers dégradé, lace, and fringe-work his signatures).
the darkest color in the collection was the chocolate brown on those feathers. otherwise, everything was white, flesh-colored, or gold, with a salon dedicated to each shade. even the baboon fur that was attached to a swallowtailed knit jacket was spookily bleached. fact is, Tisci didn't need black to exercise his gothic inclinations. (i used tons of shades of off-white, cream, gold and brown in Art last year - colours that are generally seen to be more feminine / uplifting, and somewhat ~positive - and i used those colours juxtaposed amongst my wearable art piece and various skull imagery..the skull included floral arrangements near by, was for the most part white and yellow, whereas my wearable art piece included casts of my top and bottom sets of teeth from primary school when i would go and get mouthguards moulded each year for hockey - a lot of people found the inclusion of these moulds and the twigs and other 'rough' aspects that i weaved into the piece a little morbid, revolting, younameit. i drew the top half of a cow's skull for the same assignment and laced it with watercolour, generally calming and subtle colouring as well as drawing a flower in one of the corners. i really tried to communicate these pre-conceived 'dark' themes and images in a more beautiful light. i'm not sure if i succeeded in doing so, but i feel like Riccardo was really onto a similar thing here. he used a lot of subtle skull motifs and kept the models' looks - apart from the dresses & jackts of course - to an absolute minimum. Couture is nearly always in excess; especailly the make-up, the hair and the headpieces. sometimes the models are even instructed to hold certain facial expressions or stances. for this collection, the models were sullen, emotionless and apart from drawing almost all of the viewer's attention to the garments and their details, i think that he was drawing on the plain / ugly as part of a really beautiful and feminine ideal. so interesting and so on par with my attempted artistic ideals.)he claimed his inspiration was Frida Kahlo and her three obsessions: religion, sensuality, and, given the painter's lifelong battle with spinal pain, the human anatomy. the zipper pulls were little bones, a belt was a spinal column re-created in porcelain. the dominant motif of the collection was the skeleton, laid out flat in the lace appliquéd on a long tulle column, or rendered in three dimensions in obsessively dense clusters of crystals, pearls, and lace on the back of a jacket in double silk duchesse satin. nestled in the middle? a tiny ceramic skull sprouting angel wings. at one point during his presentation, Tisci rather tellingly muttered, "a romantic way to see death."(on par on par on par on par with my anatomy-meets-romanticism attempted thang)
that jacket was suspended in the all-white "ceramic" room. in the "skin" room, Tisci showcased lace catsuits, one decorated with a Swarovski crystal skeleton that took 1,600 hours to create. in the third, "gold" room was a lace dress that demanded six months of work. dresses encrusted with gold paillettes, stones, and beads were almost too heavy to lift, despite being revealingly scissored away at the waist. if the detail was breathtaking, it was also quite numbing in its intensity. the last room featured a giant portrait by Willy Vanderperre of Tisci's muses wearing the dresses, seen from the back. "i love that view," Tisci explained, "the spine of people."(i'm dying. on par ON @$(*&$(#ing PAR!?) walk round the photo and there was the same view from the front, the women all posed reverentially like hand maidens. in obsession is born the cult of couture.
i meant to post the following in early May:
oh god. oh god oh god ohgod. i've never had tears in my eyes when i've seen a runway report before, (this is obviously before i had seen Givenchy Couture 2010, above - the second time in my life in which i had been so emotionally affected by clothing design) despite love skyrocketing through the roof. these are just what i needed. (at that point in time i was only just getting back into designing, after almost 9 or so months of absolutely barren and dried up creativity. i had been upset with my life in general, and was in the most stress that i had ever been in - for both personal and education-related reasons - and this had lasted from around May/June 2009 until i guess toward April/May 2010. un-fun. it was so refreshing to finally be able to ~think again, to use my brain for good or for anything at all, and to do what i loved once more. i was finally getting ideas back on the go, and was starting to again be inspired by things and people around me. it felt so magical and refreshing. i'm so thankful of / for whatever spurred that re-love of design and overall re-appreciation for life. i think a new relationship had a great deal to do with the bettering of my day-to-day living, but i know a number of subtle things must have also been of influence.)
and so i present to you; Dion Lee's beautiful and delicate designs at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in Sydney. the pleats were what killed me. i cried, i smiled, i got butterflies, i gasped. fashion had never before moved me so much, and that is saying a great deal about his creations because i have most definitely been over the moon and back over a great number of collections / pieces before..
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
i meant to post these words in early January:
listening to Good Old War reminds me of a cold and rainy pre-dawn inner-city atmosphere in Melbourne during early Winter. it reminds me of being picked up by the hotel's organised driver on the side of the grey street that lay cold, yet peacefully alone, just hours before it would be bustling with cafe-goers, workers and traffic.
it reminds me of grasping for warmth; wearing layer upon layer of stockings and a number of scarves with suitcase in tow and what was then my newly-purchased Lisa Ho Formal dress in a massive tissuepaper-lined bag juggled between my arms.
it reminds me of good things and good times.
it reminds me of the good life, better than the life i live when i thought that i was gonna go crazy.
..lets go on a living spree.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
50 years of Dr Martins.
to me, AA stands for American Apparel, not Alcoholics Anonymous.
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