In the supermarket today when I complimented my neighbor on her silly Chanel earmuffs she took them off and gave them to me, saying in that
completely AbFab way that only fashion lifers have:
"I got them at the Chanel sample sale because I had to buy something and they told me they were the only pair ever made. Then last night at
Sean Jean I saw Kelly Osbourne wearing a pair! If you like them, take them pleeease!"
chi chi,
that is way to funny. i met kelly last night at the show and she was wearing them. they were mink, right?
[This message was edited by michael ford on 02-10-03 at 11:20 AM.]
that is way to funny. i met kelly last night at the show and she was wearing them. they were mink, right?
[This message was edited by michael ford on 02-10-03 at 11:20 AM.]
From her Milan show in January. Absolutely WORSHIP. I'll be working this look tonight at Chez.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/14/1041990275302.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/14/1041990275302.html
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From John Galliano's ready-to-wear in Paris. It's Joan Crawford meets Mother Flawless Sabrina. Amen.
[This message was edited by Michael Madison on 03-13-03 at 11:24 AM.]
[This message was edited by Michael Madison on 03-13-03 at 11:24 AM.]
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PETA has had no luck in its efforts to convince Anna Wintour to keep fur out of Vogue magazine by showing her hideous images of animals struggling in traps. So we're hoping to get her attention with a hideous image of ... herself.
Just in time for Wintour's "Lifetime Achievement" Award at the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Fashion Awards on June 2, PETA is launching a new ad campaign featuring the most unflattering picture of the Vogue editor we could find, with the slogan, "Fur Is Worn by Beautiful Animals and Ugly People."
NY Mag has cute item this week:
New York Magazine
Just in time for Wintour's "Lifetime Achievement" Award at the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Fashion Awards on June 2, PETA is launching a new ad campaign featuring the most unflattering picture of the Vogue editor we could find, with the slogan, "Fur Is Worn by Beautiful Animals and Ugly People."
NY Mag has cute item this week:
New York Magazine
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September 15, 2003
Tell Us, Doctor, What Is It About Models?
By GUY TREBAY
New York Times
In 1953, Dr. Edmund Bergler, a New York psychoanalyst trained at the Freud Clinic in Vienna, focused his analytic intelligence on understanding that most sadly neglected field of human pursuits: fashion. The result was a book, "Fashion and the Unconscious," a matchless addition to the literature both of homophobia and of claptrap.
Dr. Bergler was not the first to suggest that the will to hoax womankind with fashion originates in the unconscious minds of maternally fixated, orally regressed homosexuals. He wasn't even the first to see a link between "unconscious repetition compulsion" and a tendency to writer's cramp. (Freud got there first.) But Dr. Bergler did manage to commit to the page analytic canards whose qualities of unbridled gaga can be appreciated for their humorous qualities even a half-century on.
Man, wrote Dr. Bergler, meaning heterosexual man, "for whom the neckline plunges, for whom the skirts are shortened and swirled, who whistles (sometimes in thought) after every good-looking girl is not, as he believes, looking after Lady Godiva." What said man is frantically seeking, Dr. Bergler asserted, "is inner reassurance that he is the he-man."
If there is one time of the year when a reporter's inner he-man is put to the test it is Fashion Week. Hiking from showroom to backstage areas to the front row, one dutifully notes the latest trend for dye-treated burlap, Liza Minelli eyelashes and ultrasuede pleats, while secretly indulging that most helplessly he-man of inner vices, the obsession with models. "It's a real disease," said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barney's, on Saturday morning, as he awaited the start of the As Four show at the Josephine tent in Bryant Park.
"Johnny and I were just discussing it," said Mr. Doonan, referring to his partner, the designer Jonathan Adler. Specifically they were discoursing on Karolina Kurkova's exceptional proportion of leg to torso; about Linda Evangelista's ability to draw a crowd, even in retirement and when wearing a do-rag and jeans; about how the wide-set eyes and yearling dimensions of the Italian model Maria Carla Boscone are so unearthly compelling and strange that Mr. Doonan has been unable to resist casting her for successive Barney's campaigns.
"It's about beauty, I guess," Mr. Doonan noted mildly, hesitant to lay claim to his inner he-man. "I also like to look at the birds in the trees," he said, and the tacit comparison between birders and model obsessives is apt. The feeling a birder gets from glimpsing a yellow-bellied sapsucker is probably no different from the thrill a model obsessive gets glimpsing Elise Crombez, the Belgian catwalk star du jour.
Models, said Pat McGrath, the influential makeup artist, as she applied gold sequins to the feline Ethiopian beauty Liya Kebede at the Baby Phat show last evening, "are a strange species of their own." They compel our eye with their giraffe-like limbs, their miniature heads, their fragile ankles and the facial features that, however apparently varied, still conform to ideals of beauty that scholars say have not changed much at all through history. Is it the marketplace or something immutable in human nature that makes the snarling butch loveliness of the Dominican model Omahyra Mota more like the beauty of Mey Bun, the shaven-headed 20-year-old Cambodian model from Brooklyn, than not?
"They're best when they're silent," said Mr. Doonan, and it is true that as naturally as model beauty attracts attention, it is their blankness and silence that seduce the mind. "Kate Moss kept her trap shut and it really helped her career," Mr. Doonan continued. Smart models always do.
"People are addicted to models because they are addicted to fantasy," said Ms. McGrath, whose own addiction began when she was a girl in Northampton, England. "Looking at these women in magazines, you were drawn into another world of women you would never meet, whose apartments you would never enter. Their beauty hijacked you into their world." It is a world populated by beings whose image is so sublimely inscrutable that, as the 62-year-old Henrik Ibsen once wrote about his 18-year-old crush, Emilie Bardach, one is free to "adorn it poetically."
Backstage at the Baby Phat show yesterday, the scene was typically chaotic, noisy, fogged with hair spray and cigarette smoke. The small work areas were jammed tight with television camera crews, dressers, hairdressers, makeup artists, manicurists, personal assistants, publicists, friends, caterers, children, dogs and fantastically beautiful women wearing nothing but underpants. Who knows what Dr. Bergler might have made of this post-Freudian scene from he-man heaven? And, honestly, who cares?
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
Tell Us, Doctor, What Is It About Models?
By GUY TREBAY
New York Times
In 1953, Dr. Edmund Bergler, a New York psychoanalyst trained at the Freud Clinic in Vienna, focused his analytic intelligence on understanding that most sadly neglected field of human pursuits: fashion. The result was a book, "Fashion and the Unconscious," a matchless addition to the literature both of homophobia and of claptrap.
Dr. Bergler was not the first to suggest that the will to hoax womankind with fashion originates in the unconscious minds of maternally fixated, orally regressed homosexuals. He wasn't even the first to see a link between "unconscious repetition compulsion" and a tendency to writer's cramp. (Freud got there first.) But Dr. Bergler did manage to commit to the page analytic canards whose qualities of unbridled gaga can be appreciated for their humorous qualities even a half-century on.
Man, wrote Dr. Bergler, meaning heterosexual man, "for whom the neckline plunges, for whom the skirts are shortened and swirled, who whistles (sometimes in thought) after every good-looking girl is not, as he believes, looking after Lady Godiva." What said man is frantically seeking, Dr. Bergler asserted, "is inner reassurance that he is the he-man."
If there is one time of the year when a reporter's inner he-man is put to the test it is Fashion Week. Hiking from showroom to backstage areas to the front row, one dutifully notes the latest trend for dye-treated burlap, Liza Minelli eyelashes and ultrasuede pleats, while secretly indulging that most helplessly he-man of inner vices, the obsession with models. "It's a real disease," said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barney's, on Saturday morning, as he awaited the start of the As Four show at the Josephine tent in Bryant Park.
"Johnny and I were just discussing it," said Mr. Doonan, referring to his partner, the designer Jonathan Adler. Specifically they were discoursing on Karolina Kurkova's exceptional proportion of leg to torso; about Linda Evangelista's ability to draw a crowd, even in retirement and when wearing a do-rag and jeans; about how the wide-set eyes and yearling dimensions of the Italian model Maria Carla Boscone are so unearthly compelling and strange that Mr. Doonan has been unable to resist casting her for successive Barney's campaigns.
"It's about beauty, I guess," Mr. Doonan noted mildly, hesitant to lay claim to his inner he-man. "I also like to look at the birds in the trees," he said, and the tacit comparison between birders and model obsessives is apt. The feeling a birder gets from glimpsing a yellow-bellied sapsucker is probably no different from the thrill a model obsessive gets glimpsing Elise Crombez, the Belgian catwalk star du jour.
Models, said Pat McGrath, the influential makeup artist, as she applied gold sequins to the feline Ethiopian beauty Liya Kebede at the Baby Phat show last evening, "are a strange species of their own." They compel our eye with their giraffe-like limbs, their miniature heads, their fragile ankles and the facial features that, however apparently varied, still conform to ideals of beauty that scholars say have not changed much at all through history. Is it the marketplace or something immutable in human nature that makes the snarling butch loveliness of the Dominican model Omahyra Mota more like the beauty of Mey Bun, the shaven-headed 20-year-old Cambodian model from Brooklyn, than not?
"They're best when they're silent," said Mr. Doonan, and it is true that as naturally as model beauty attracts attention, it is their blankness and silence that seduce the mind. "Kate Moss kept her trap shut and it really helped her career," Mr. Doonan continued. Smart models always do.
"People are addicted to models because they are addicted to fantasy," said Ms. McGrath, whose own addiction began when she was a girl in Northampton, England. "Looking at these women in magazines, you were drawn into another world of women you would never meet, whose apartments you would never enter. Their beauty hijacked you into their world." It is a world populated by beings whose image is so sublimely inscrutable that, as the 62-year-old Henrik Ibsen once wrote about his 18-year-old crush, Emilie Bardach, one is free to "adorn it poetically."
Backstage at the Baby Phat show yesterday, the scene was typically chaotic, noisy, fogged with hair spray and cigarette smoke. The small work areas were jammed tight with television camera crews, dressers, hairdressers, makeup artists, manicurists, personal assistants, publicists, friends, caterers, children, dogs and fantastically beautiful women wearing nothing but underpants. Who knows what Dr. Bergler might have made of this post-Freudian scene from he-man heaven? And, honestly, who cares?
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
This question really says it all , right Chi? I kept hearing it in my head all night after that party....yeesh.....but oh what fun it is to ride with Mr. "Queer Eye" Carson! Good to know he's an Opera fan!
or a better question
"which celebrity name will be dropped next?"
"which celebrity name will be dropped next?"
or...
Here are the next celebrity names.
Chi Chi, Glammy, Kitty Boots & Carson (from Queer-Eye) and I went to The Marc Jacobs show & after party last night. The show was fun as always. Rob and I looking at the celebrities. (Rob telling me who everyone was) For some reason we ALWAYS sit directly across from Sally Jessie Rafael. I swear every show! She has had some VERY funky surge and her mouth is all funny now. Rob says she looks like she's constantly looking for a mint. After the show Kitty went home but Rob, Chi, Carson and I went to the after party at The new Maritime Hotel. It was such a nightmare! So crowded. Very scary with no easy way out. It was every friend of a friend of a friend of some third rate hairdresser/stylist in New York. It was like Beige multiplied and exploded inside a too small closet. We finally found our way out where we met Howard the manager of the Hotel. We told him how scary it was inside but he just laughed. He said, "Johnny, I can't believe you of all people didn't know better!" Anyway, outside the in the street these guys were busy hanging these posters about who will be the next blonde (or something like that). Well after Debbie, Chi Chi and Sally Jessie Rafael who could possibly live up to that?
Carson!
He is the next big blonde.
He's very nice, very smart and really alot of fun. He's taking his new-found fame with a grain of salt. Enjoying it but not taking it too seriously. Signing autographs, taking pictures with fans, smiling when people say stupid things like, "Oh my God, you're Carson from that TV show. My roomate loves you. She watches your show all the time. I've never seen it."
He's really nice.
In the car ride over to The Maritime Hotel we were howling at Kitty's expense. Now that Carson and Kitty are working together we had to compare "Kitty-isms". Kitty Boots is a true genius as most of you know but even though she was born in England she has this very unique way of mangling the English Language.
Example:
Kitty: "Chi, someone named Megadeath Moore called you. Here is her number."
Chi Chi: Megadeath Moore? "Oh, Meredith Monk. Thanks Kit."
or my favorite...
Kitty: "Chi, someone named Cam-ill-a Piggly called you. Here is her number."
Chi Chi: Cam-ill-a Piggly? "Oh, Camille Paglia. Thanks Kit."
our new favorite:
Kitty: "Carson do you have everything ready for the opera show you are going to?"
Carson: "The Opera? I'm not going to the opera... Oh, The Oprah Show in Chicago. Yes I'm ready Kit thanks."
God save the Queen and God bless Kitty Boots!
Celebrity Name: Sally Jessie Rafael
Here are the next celebrity names.
Chi Chi, Glammy, Kitty Boots & Carson (from Queer-Eye) and I went to The Marc Jacobs show & after party last night. The show was fun as always. Rob and I looking at the celebrities. (Rob telling me who everyone was) For some reason we ALWAYS sit directly across from Sally Jessie Rafael. I swear every show! She has had some VERY funky surge and her mouth is all funny now. Rob says she looks like she's constantly looking for a mint. After the show Kitty went home but Rob, Chi, Carson and I went to the after party at The new Maritime Hotel. It was such a nightmare! So crowded. Very scary with no easy way out. It was every friend of a friend of a friend of some third rate hairdresser/stylist in New York. It was like Beige multiplied and exploded inside a too small closet. We finally found our way out where we met Howard the manager of the Hotel. We told him how scary it was inside but he just laughed. He said, "Johnny, I can't believe you of all people didn't know better!" Anyway, outside the in the street these guys were busy hanging these posters about who will be the next blonde (or something like that). Well after Debbie, Chi Chi and Sally Jessie Rafael who could possibly live up to that?
Carson!
He is the next big blonde.
He's very nice, very smart and really alot of fun. He's taking his new-found fame with a grain of salt. Enjoying it but not taking it too seriously. Signing autographs, taking pictures with fans, smiling when people say stupid things like, "Oh my God, you're Carson from that TV show. My roomate loves you. She watches your show all the time. I've never seen it."
He's really nice.
In the car ride over to The Maritime Hotel we were howling at Kitty's expense. Now that Carson and Kitty are working together we had to compare "Kitty-isms". Kitty Boots is a true genius as most of you know but even though she was born in England she has this very unique way of mangling the English Language.
Example:
Kitty: "Chi, someone named Megadeath Moore called you. Here is her number."
Chi Chi: Megadeath Moore? "Oh, Meredith Monk. Thanks Kit."
or my favorite...
Kitty: "Chi, someone named Cam-ill-a Piggly called you. Here is her number."
Chi Chi: Cam-ill-a Piggly? "Oh, Camille Paglia. Thanks Kit."
our new favorite:
Kitty: "Carson do you have everything ready for the opera show you are going to?"
Carson: "The Opera? I'm not going to the opera... Oh, The Oprah Show in Chicago. Yes I'm ready Kit thanks."
God save the Queen and God bless Kitty Boots!
Celebrity Name: Sally Jessie Rafael
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Was that a dig at me from Rodhammer? Ha.
Megadeath Moore! still my favorite! I love Kitty so much. She makes life so great!
Megadeath Moore! still my favorite! I love Kitty so much. She makes life so great!
Yes, it was a dig at all of us but we deserve it.
We are hideous. I'm the first one to admit it.
I did have fun last night though.
Hideous as we are.
We are hideous. I'm the first one to admit it.
I did have fun last night though.
Hideous as we are.
well excuse me for havin' a good time! I'll try to be boring tomorrow.
When even little old WonderBar is innundated with packs of jaw-grinding, Euro-Japanese-Russian fashionistas, cramming themselves into the tiny bathrooms three to four at a time, and led by a monsterous Liz Hurley look-alike, you know Fashion Week has become bigger than any of us, sweetie. And maybe it was the real Liz. What do I know anyway?
[This message was edited by hatches on 09-16-03 at 05:40 PM.]
[This message was edited by hatches on 09-16-03 at 05:40 PM.]
-I saw part of the Heatherette show on NY metro looked pretty good, not as wild as usual maybe i missed some stuff, maybe I'm expecting god knows what from them. Anyone go to the show?? party??
-aint it great that ny metro is covering the shows this year again, a whole lot more than style network does.
-Not that I don't like the song but was there any designer that didnt play Beyonce knowles song. (crazy in love)
-Am I the only one who doesn't give a shit about Sally Jesse
-Anna Sui Rocks!!!!!
[This message was edited by jonomar on 09-19-03 at 02:01 AM.]
-aint it great that ny metro is covering the shows this year again, a whole lot more than style network does.
-Not that I don't like the song but was there any designer that didnt play Beyonce knowles song. (crazy in love)
-Am I the only one who doesn't give a shit about Sally Jesse
-Anna Sui Rocks!!!!!
[This message was edited by jonomar on 09-19-03 at 02:01 AM.]
I went to "Heatherette". It was fun. Way too crowded though. The elevators were very scary.
And what do you mean you don't care about Sally Jesse? That's un-American isn't it?
But I agree, Anna rocks!
And what do you mean you don't care about Sally Jesse? That's un-American isn't it?
But I agree, Anna rocks!
All followers of the church of Vreeland, or latter-day saint Antonio...
RUN to the new Michael Gallagher Gallery at 4th Avenue and 12th Street on the corner. Filled with original fashion illustrations including Charles James and Antonio, rare books, fashion photos and Weegee and EVERY back issue of Flaunt, Vogue etc.
And, the most learned Walter Cessna (of STOP magazine fame) is the manager.
http://www.gallaghersfashion.com
RUN to the new Michael Gallagher Gallery at 4th Avenue and 12th Street on the corner. Filled with original fashion illustrations including Charles James and Antonio, rare books, fashion photos and Weegee and EVERY back issue of Flaunt, Vogue etc.
And, the most learned Walter Cessna (of STOP magazine fame) is the manager.
http://www.gallaghersfashion.com
Wow... Jimmy Scouse is modelling....
New fashions from Italian fashion label Etro
New fashions from Italian fashion label Etro
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yeah, some people just MAKE the clothes. Not everyone's cut-out for the catwalk. Go Jimmy!
PUNK ROCK BABY!!!!! Betsy is the fucking shit!! I wanna be her today.
[This message was edited by jonomar on 02-11-04 at 09:40 PM.]
[This message was edited by jonomar on 02-11-04 at 09:40 PM.]
i hear that in new york
during fashion week
you can even see...
JUPITER.
during fashion week
you can even see...
JUPITER.
I didn't see Jupiter Goblin...
'course I was lookin' at Uranus.
(I got a million of 'em)
'course I was lookin' at Uranus.
(I got a million of 'em)
dads...
bad news...
i had a faerie friend do your chart
and with venus in scorpio it looks like there's some good times ahead but...
i hate to tell you this...
you have cancer in uranus.
bad news...
i had a faerie friend do your chart
and with venus in scorpio it looks like there's some good times ahead but...
i hate to tell you this...
you have cancer in uranus.
But the tumor under my wig is B-9!
hey guys give me some of what your smoking!!
BTW Johnny I saw a pic of you at some smashion show you looked great! Anything interesting to report from Fashion week?
BTW Johnny I saw a pic of you at some smashion show you looked great! Anything interesting to report from Fashion week?
See crotch grabbing New Romantics cruise eachother in the street!www.johngalliano.com
Great site!
Good lookin' out Hatch.
and jonomar,
I just saw your post (from Feb.)
A picture of me?
It must have been the one in AARP Magazine.
Good lookin' out Hatch.
and jonomar,
I just saw your post (from Feb.)
A picture of me?
It must have been the one in AARP Magazine.
FASHION FLASH!
(and you didn't hear it from me sweeties)
Yesterday I was at the _ _ _ _ _ showroom. Getting music together for the Fall '05 show. And guess whom was there?
Miss boob malfunction herself, Janet Jackson.
She was getting a dress for the Grammys.
"I know what Janet's wearing
Na Na-aa Na"
But forget about that...
Know what the ring tone on her cell is?
"Don't stop till you get enough"
So if you see Joan & melissa...
YOU DIDN'T HEAR IT FROM ME!!!
(and you didn't hear it from me sweeties)
Yesterday I was at the _ _ _ _ _ showroom. Getting music together for the Fall '05 show. And guess whom was there?
Miss boob malfunction herself, Janet Jackson.
She was getting a dress for the Grammys.
"I know what Janet's wearing
Na Na-aa Na"
But forget about that...
Know what the ring tone on her cell is?
"Don't stop till you get enough"
So if you see Joan & melissa...
YOU DIDN'T HEAR IT FROM ME!!!
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I luved Janet BD (Before Duprie) what happened with her... I thought her tit looked terrible that day... have no prob with her gettin it out but its just an ugly tit...
I was talking to her again today. She really is a sweetie. Very demure. It's hard to believe she did that "tit thing". It seems so out of character.
(Now that I've been with her a total of 3 minutes I feel like I know these things.)
(Now that I've been with her a total of 3 minutes I feel like I know these things.)
Why also is she dating that dwarf/moron/ghetto-trash ...i really don't get that at all.... I luved her best image was either that beach video that Herb Ritts shot or the Thats the way luv goes era...
I did the music for Tracy Reese's show yesterday. The show looked amazing. (I just saw it on New York 1). I think she's really good.
Anyone?
Anyone?
I saw the pictures in the paper here. Her stuff looks fun and young. I was more fascinated by the story about 14 yr old JoJo the singer..She sure sounds like a pip. And as for Janet ( Miss Jackson if you're nasty) I have always loved her. Maybe the dwarf thing is a leftover from her brother..who knows..but we all know that good things cum in small packages..Just ask Hatches...Mike the meatpacking man...remember?
Wow, have I ever been out of the loop. Here's an alleged trend that I have never - ever - heard of before, and what's more, I can't say that I've even noticed many (any?) of these gals around town. As a recovering goth, I'm appalled at my own ignorance. Where ARE they hiding in NYC?
March 13, 2005
Gothic Lolitas: Demure vs. Dominatrix
By LAURA M. HOLSON
New York Times
IT did not take long for Twinkle Lam to realize that she had a problem on her hands.
For the past 10 months the 23-year-old Ms. Lam has moderated an online discussion group about Gothic and Lolita fashion, a style of dressing imported from Japan featuring Victorian-era calf-length skirts, bloomers, aprons, lace bows and ruffled petticoats that has attracted a following among high-school and college-age girls in the United States.
For the most part, discussion on the Web log (www.livejournal.com/community/egl), a forum of about 2,500 ardent adherents to Gothic and Lolita fashion that Ms. Lam manages from her home in Dallas, revolves around questions like where to buy chunky high-heeled Mary Jane pumps or how to fashion Bo Peep collars. But over the winter, the usually polite exchanges gave way to angry, often profane declamations.
At issue was Gwen Stefani's Alice in Wonderland costume in her "What You Waiting For" video. Alice, with her prim white collar, poofy sleeves and bell-shaped skirts, is an informal muse for many G.L.'s, as they call themselves, and the sense was that Ms. Stefani had bastardized the look by exposing blue ruffled panties and laced-up high heels, making the look more dominatrix than demure.
"That outfit looks nothing like Lolita," read one of the more restrained posts. "It's not even original, it looks like what Britney wore when she kissed Madonna."
Although petticoats and parasols are hardly mall-wear, Ms. Lam said the video was a sign that the Gothic and Lolita aesthetic, once fetishized by a few, might be moving out into the mainstream, where it could be co-opted and corrupted by the many. Just in the last six months, Ms. Lam said, Gothic and Lolita blog sites have been infiltrated by men seeking pictures of girls in sexed-up Gothic and Lolita fare "That never happened until recently," Ms. Lam said. "It's coming more into the spotlight, and it's only going to become more and more popular."
Not that Ms. Stefani was the first celebrity to call attention to Gothic and Lolita fashion; Amy Lee, the lead singer of Evanescence, wears black lace dresses favored by some G.L.'s, and last year Courtney Love was co-writer of a Japanese-style comic book about Princess Ai, a character based loosely on Ms. Love who dresses in Gothic and Lolita style. Neither Ms. Lee nor Ms. Love, though, has drawn the ire Ms. Stefani did. She has incorporated the style into her act, traveling with a troupe called the Harajuku girls, named after a trendy neighborhood in Tokyo where many girls who wear the style gather on weekends.
Gothic and Lolita got its start in the early to mid-1990's among Japanese schoolgirls inspired by the band Malice Mizer and in particular by Mana, the band's effeminate guitarist, who wore black and white ruffled dresses, elaborate bows, false eyelashes and heavy white makeup.
The look caught on as part of Japan's "cosplay," or costume play, culture, in which young people dress up like iconic pop figures, many of them popular cartoon characters. Soon teenage girls in Tokyo were stitching recreations of Mana's costumes by hand. Local designers followed, and ultimately Mana created his own line, Moi-même-Moitié, which is sold in Japanese department stores.
In 2000 publishers of the Japanese fashion magazine Kera started publishing the Gothic & Lolita Bible, which has grown to a circulation of 80,000. Part catalog, part fashion magazine, it has patterns for making costumes as well as recipes for bite-size chocolate cakes with powdered sugar crosses that Gothic Lolitas (or Goth-Lolis, as they are known in Japan) can serve at tea parties.
As the look spread, it inspired different interpretations, so that in addition to the traditional Gothic and Lolita look, which is heavy on the Goth with black or white dresses, clunky black shoes, and dark makeup, there is also Sweet Lolita, bursting with ruffles and pastels; Elegant Gothic Lolita, a corseted Victorian style; and Schoolgirl Lolita, favoring pleated skirts and knee socks.
Jodi Bryson, a consulting development editor for Tokyopop, a leading provider of Japanese style comic books in the United States, who has studied the trend, said that she first started noticing an interest in Gothic and Lolita in the United States about three years ago as Americans either visited Tokyo or learned about Gothic and Lolita online. "It was then we started seeing girls dress up, from teenagers to college-age and beyond," she said. "The attraction was twofold: there was the creative side, making costumes, and the escape of role-playing. It was a killer way for girls to express themselves."
In addition to spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on Gothic and Lolita fashion, American followers of the trend join online communities, scour Japanese bookstores and eBay for issues of the Gothic & Lolita Bible (they can buy it for anywhere from $20 in a bookstore to as much as $50 online), and meet for tea parties at which they dress up and eat cake. Many, she said, also go to anime conventions, where people celebrate all things Japanese.
Michelle Nguyen, 22, lived in Japan for five months in 2003 and became a regular reader of the Gothic & Lolita Bible there. Now a senior at Penn State University studying English, advertising and Japanese, she buys Japanese-made skirts and dresses on eBay and has taken up sewing so she can make her own outfits. She has four parasols, various flouncy pastel skirts, and plenty of floppy lace bows. She and friends organize Gothic and Lolita outings for which they dress up and have tea or go to movies like Lemony Snicket's "Series of Unfortunate Events," in which the costumes evoke the Gothic and Lolita style.
She said she sometimes gets stares from students on campus. "I used to wear big frilly skirts out to classes, but it's hard to do," she said. "You have to function sitting at a desk and, in a ruffled skirt, you just can't do that."
Ms. Lam, who attends college and works for an oil and gas company in Dallas, has more than 10 full Gothic and Lolita outfits, on which she has spent thousands of dollars. She said she wouldn't even think of wearing one to work. "Half would have a heart attack, and I don't know about the other half," she said of her co-workers. "My mom, when she first saw me dressed up, said, 'Why didn't we just save your baby clothes?' "
As for her boyfriend, she said: "He really likes to see me in the sweet stuff, all white. I'm like, can't I wear something more practical?"
Ms. Lam predicts that the hullabaloo over Ms. Stefani will subside, although it has changed the nature of the conversation among Gothic and Lolita fans forever. A hopeful sign, she said, is that some fans are warming to the idea that the trend is not solely theirs anymore.
"We should all be flattered that the style is reaching mainstream," read one recent post online. "Fashion is a free right."
Also, Ms. Lam pointed out, the more mainstream the look becomes, the more available the clothes will be, and more affordable, too.
March 13, 2005
Gothic Lolitas: Demure vs. Dominatrix
By LAURA M. HOLSON
New York Times
IT did not take long for Twinkle Lam to realize that she had a problem on her hands.
For the past 10 months the 23-year-old Ms. Lam has moderated an online discussion group about Gothic and Lolita fashion, a style of dressing imported from Japan featuring Victorian-era calf-length skirts, bloomers, aprons, lace bows and ruffled petticoats that has attracted a following among high-school and college-age girls in the United States.
For the most part, discussion on the Web log (www.livejournal.com/community/egl), a forum of about 2,500 ardent adherents to Gothic and Lolita fashion that Ms. Lam manages from her home in Dallas, revolves around questions like where to buy chunky high-heeled Mary Jane pumps or how to fashion Bo Peep collars. But over the winter, the usually polite exchanges gave way to angry, often profane declamations.
At issue was Gwen Stefani's Alice in Wonderland costume in her "What You Waiting For" video. Alice, with her prim white collar, poofy sleeves and bell-shaped skirts, is an informal muse for many G.L.'s, as they call themselves, and the sense was that Ms. Stefani had bastardized the look by exposing blue ruffled panties and laced-up high heels, making the look more dominatrix than demure.
"That outfit looks nothing like Lolita," read one of the more restrained posts. "It's not even original, it looks like what Britney wore when she kissed Madonna."
Although petticoats and parasols are hardly mall-wear, Ms. Lam said the video was a sign that the Gothic and Lolita aesthetic, once fetishized by a few, might be moving out into the mainstream, where it could be co-opted and corrupted by the many. Just in the last six months, Ms. Lam said, Gothic and Lolita blog sites have been infiltrated by men seeking pictures of girls in sexed-up Gothic and Lolita fare "That never happened until recently," Ms. Lam said. "It's coming more into the spotlight, and it's only going to become more and more popular."
Not that Ms. Stefani was the first celebrity to call attention to Gothic and Lolita fashion; Amy Lee, the lead singer of Evanescence, wears black lace dresses favored by some G.L.'s, and last year Courtney Love was co-writer of a Japanese-style comic book about Princess Ai, a character based loosely on Ms. Love who dresses in Gothic and Lolita style. Neither Ms. Lee nor Ms. Love, though, has drawn the ire Ms. Stefani did. She has incorporated the style into her act, traveling with a troupe called the Harajuku girls, named after a trendy neighborhood in Tokyo where many girls who wear the style gather on weekends.
Gothic and Lolita got its start in the early to mid-1990's among Japanese schoolgirls inspired by the band Malice Mizer and in particular by Mana, the band's effeminate guitarist, who wore black and white ruffled dresses, elaborate bows, false eyelashes and heavy white makeup.
The look caught on as part of Japan's "cosplay," or costume play, culture, in which young people dress up like iconic pop figures, many of them popular cartoon characters. Soon teenage girls in Tokyo were stitching recreations of Mana's costumes by hand. Local designers followed, and ultimately Mana created his own line, Moi-même-Moitié, which is sold in Japanese department stores.
In 2000 publishers of the Japanese fashion magazine Kera started publishing the Gothic & Lolita Bible, which has grown to a circulation of 80,000. Part catalog, part fashion magazine, it has patterns for making costumes as well as recipes for bite-size chocolate cakes with powdered sugar crosses that Gothic Lolitas (or Goth-Lolis, as they are known in Japan) can serve at tea parties.
As the look spread, it inspired different interpretations, so that in addition to the traditional Gothic and Lolita look, which is heavy on the Goth with black or white dresses, clunky black shoes, and dark makeup, there is also Sweet Lolita, bursting with ruffles and pastels; Elegant Gothic Lolita, a corseted Victorian style; and Schoolgirl Lolita, favoring pleated skirts and knee socks.
Jodi Bryson, a consulting development editor for Tokyopop, a leading provider of Japanese style comic books in the United States, who has studied the trend, said that she first started noticing an interest in Gothic and Lolita in the United States about three years ago as Americans either visited Tokyo or learned about Gothic and Lolita online. "It was then we started seeing girls dress up, from teenagers to college-age and beyond," she said. "The attraction was twofold: there was the creative side, making costumes, and the escape of role-playing. It was a killer way for girls to express themselves."
In addition to spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on Gothic and Lolita fashion, American followers of the trend join online communities, scour Japanese bookstores and eBay for issues of the Gothic & Lolita Bible (they can buy it for anywhere from $20 in a bookstore to as much as $50 online), and meet for tea parties at which they dress up and eat cake. Many, she said, also go to anime conventions, where people celebrate all things Japanese.
Michelle Nguyen, 22, lived in Japan for five months in 2003 and became a regular reader of the Gothic & Lolita Bible there. Now a senior at Penn State University studying English, advertising and Japanese, she buys Japanese-made skirts and dresses on eBay and has taken up sewing so she can make her own outfits. She has four parasols, various flouncy pastel skirts, and plenty of floppy lace bows. She and friends organize Gothic and Lolita outings for which they dress up and have tea or go to movies like Lemony Snicket's "Series of Unfortunate Events," in which the costumes evoke the Gothic and Lolita style.
She said she sometimes gets stares from students on campus. "I used to wear big frilly skirts out to classes, but it's hard to do," she said. "You have to function sitting at a desk and, in a ruffled skirt, you just can't do that."
Ms. Lam, who attends college and works for an oil and gas company in Dallas, has more than 10 full Gothic and Lolita outfits, on which she has spent thousands of dollars. She said she wouldn't even think of wearing one to work. "Half would have a heart attack, and I don't know about the other half," she said of her co-workers. "My mom, when she first saw me dressed up, said, 'Why didn't we just save your baby clothes?' "
As for her boyfriend, she said: "He really likes to see me in the sweet stuff, all white. I'm like, can't I wear something more practical?"
Ms. Lam predicts that the hullabaloo over Ms. Stefani will subside, although it has changed the nature of the conversation among Gothic and Lolita fans forever. A hopeful sign, she said, is that some fans are warming to the idea that the trend is not solely theirs anymore.
"We should all be flattered that the style is reaching mainstream," read one recent post online. "Fashion is a free right."
Also, Ms. Lam pointed out, the more mainstream the look becomes, the more available the clothes will be, and more affordable, too.
Madgie,
As far as I knew, this phenomeon in dressing was pretty well restricted to the Japanese. I am a big fan of Malice Mizer... their fan-base is famous for the overdressing...
http://www.malice-mizer.co.jp/top.html
This is a better link
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/3507/malice.html
They stopped recording in 1990 but the legend lives on. One of their many lead singers, GACKT, has a gorgeous voice and might still have a solo career.
F-Major tried very hard to get the more severe Gothic/18th century clothes at one point, but the comapny, run I think by Mana, would not export them!
I haven't seen any girls around town doing the pure Lolita either, but then I don't go to all the Goth clubs religiously. Have seen ALOT of the Lolita/Dominatrixes though! It is almost a standard look for some Dommes, esp. the 20-somethings.
As far as I knew, this phenomeon in dressing was pretty well restricted to the Japanese. I am a big fan of Malice Mizer... their fan-base is famous for the overdressing...
http://www.malice-mizer.co.jp/top.html
This is a better link
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/3507/malice.html
They stopped recording in 1990 but the legend lives on. One of their many lead singers, GACKT, has a gorgeous voice and might still have a solo career.
F-Major tried very hard to get the more severe Gothic/18th century clothes at one point, but the comapny, run I think by Mana, would not export them!
I haven't seen any girls around town doing the pure Lolita either, but then I don't go to all the Goth clubs religiously. Have seen ALOT of the Lolita/Dominatrixes though! It is almost a standard look for some Dommes, esp. the 20-somethings.
Ask Maki about the Goth Bible, her sister is involved with a similar publication.
La Madison, you are a born Gothic L prospect.
Only about a third of the attendees at any Goth club here are costumed and only the hard core regulars really do a tough look. Among that there is a fair portion of GL's but seldom anyone really approaching the all out Harajuku style. It appears to me to actually be a kind of 'medium' -think like an art medium, paint, photography, etc.- where androgyny can be indulged in to the max for guys and where an alternative form of extreme femininity gets played for girls who for any number of reasons abhor the mainstream off the rack 'fashions' pounded in to the average consumer. It certainly plays to the intensified repression of the current time with its mixture of heavily connoted sin and innocence. But I don't see it catching on as a real mainstream hit aside from maybe a few extremely watered down fashion details and maybe accessories. What would it say about the level of schizoidness in our culture now if the two main veins were rap and Gothic Lolita?
La Madison, you are a born Gothic L prospect.
Only about a third of the attendees at any Goth club here are costumed and only the hard core regulars really do a tough look. Among that there is a fair portion of GL's but seldom anyone really approaching the all out Harajuku style. It appears to me to actually be a kind of 'medium' -think like an art medium, paint, photography, etc.- where androgyny can be indulged in to the max for guys and where an alternative form of extreme femininity gets played for girls who for any number of reasons abhor the mainstream off the rack 'fashions' pounded in to the average consumer. It certainly plays to the intensified repression of the current time with its mixture of heavily connoted sin and innocence. But I don't see it catching on as a real mainstream hit aside from maybe a few extremely watered down fashion details and maybe accessories. What would it say about the level of schizoidness in our culture now if the two main veins were rap and Gothic Lolita?
POP-Heavy Metal is next seven......
start watching channel 128 MTV2!
LOL, no really it's true.
sounds like old fashion rock n' roll,
but what does merlinator know?
start watching channel 128 MTV2!
LOL, no really it's true.
sounds like old fashion rock n' roll,
but what does merlinator know?
NOT to sound too Francine 59-ish, but I started a Gothic Lolita topic in Hopelessly Devoted, 8/02.
http://motherboards.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3106060101/m/3846096701/r/3846096701#3846096701
http://motherboards.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3106060101/m/3846096701/r/3846096701#3846096701
Gosh Chi Chi...who has egg on his face now? I'm even more out of the loop than imagined. If this has been percolating for so long, I wonder why we haven't seen more popping up here. I wandered into Batcave a few weeks ago and it was empty. The people who did show were were totally lame. Talk about a long death. I hear there's a new party on Sundays that was not meant to be a goth night, but that's what it's become...supposed to be really good. Trying to remember where...
C'mon Madge,
You've got to get up pretty early to Out-Goth The Empress.
You've got to get up pretty early to Out-Goth The Empress.