What is this 'Mommie Dearest' BS?, Or: Why is Tom Skerritt Not in This Film?

Well, the Golden Compass full trailer is finally out. I realize this isn't really fashion related (though I don't have any huge issues with the costuming...though I do think it looks way too polished/Vogue spread-esque, and this outfit looks like Lyra bought it at Limited Too. She does not wear hot pink, okay? It probably does not even exist.) but I feel the need to discuss it in minutiae as I really like the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman a lot, and am very anxious to see how such a far-reaching, complex, and yes, feminist YA fantasy novel will be adapted (for hundreds of millions of dollars, no less) for a market in which the film The Game Plan is currently number one.

(That's right, that movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson where he is a tough football player but has to deal with the frilliest and silliest of all things, a little girl! There's a bulldog wearing a tiara! [I actually just randomly thought I would check out which movie was number one right now to point out how retarded everything is, but, like, I never expected to be as perfect a point-maker as this movie. I guess people felt a bit of a whole inside when The Pacifier left theaters.])

First of all, the focus on the "golden compass" itself is insane. In the book, it's never even referred to as a "golden compass." In fact, I think they just randomly picked that name because the real, British title "The Northern Lights" was too obscure or something for American audiences. It's not like it's actually a compass- in the book, it's called an alethiometer, and even though there is a scramble to get it, it's not like the focus is just on the damn compass like it is on the ring in Lord of the Rings, a crappy franchise they seem intent on ripping off. The alethiometer is an actual object and all, but its significance is largely symbolic, and the book doesn't feature every character screaming, "Give me the golden compass! WHERE IS THE GOLDEN COMPASS???"

Secondly, the CGI daemons are So. Bad. They just seem like regular wacky-talkin', wisecrackin' Disney-esque sidekicks, besides looking hella fake. If I personally had to do it, I would have had real animals and had the dialogue just be heard, not mouthed by the creatures. I mean, it's not like deamons are talking animals, and their connection to their humans is clearly supposed to be mental/psychological. The whole look of the film looks very CGI, and all the scenes look so austere and clean and computerized- I personally always imagined Lyra's world to be jumbled and Medieval looking and filled with old-fashioned looking brass machines. Plus Mrs. Coulter's golden monkey looks so messed up it probably wandered off the set of Gremlins.

Lastly, why the hell is the whole focus on how evil Mrs. Coulter is, and Lyra rejecting her? Her father, (Lord Asriel, in case you didn't know) is also hella evil and weird, but the entire plot just seems focused on her, perhaps because she is played by the movie's biggest star, the always bland Nicole Kidman. I can't believe it shows a clip of Lya screaming, "You're not my mother!" or whatevs like that is what the movie is about. Clearly the evil in these books stems from a large, religious (mostly male) authority, and this film makes it look like there is mostly one evil character, and of course she is some ice queen-type, even though the literary Mrs. Coulter is pretty complex. The book is about Lyra, but she barely even seems to be part of the movie. (Which sucks, because young, female, non-sexualized heroines are few and far between.)

In conclusion, I can just imagine this series glossing over all the controversial, anti-religious and even gay undertones in the books, and just making it some typical overblown fantasy. Is Hollywood really going to stay true to a core theme that rejects both original sin and the Garden of Eden myth? Plus, I have and will always imagine Lee Scoresby played by Tom Skerritt and Tom Skerritt only.

Taking it to the Hoop, in a Good Way

After my last negative post, I felt the urge to post perhaps the original "I liked it": Bjork's swan dress from the 2001 Academy Awards. Asked to come and perform the song she recorded for her film, Dancer in the Dark. Anyway, the point is, she wore an insane swan dress and the American media was like, "What a fashion nightmare! It's totally a 'don't!'" Of course, the Oscars are pretty much there to celebrate mainstream symbols of status/wealth/beauty, and Bjork was using the platform as a type of performance art- particularly noticeable in the picture at left, where she "laid" her egg-shaped purse on the red carpet by dropping it.

Anyway, it's pretty sad that everyone didn't get it and all, and it's still talked about as if it was some sort of big fashion nightmare, but truly, it was awesome. Fashion icons as creative and strange as Bjork are unfortunately few and far between. And the Oscars, as it gets more and more driven by stylists and boring evening gowns, is pretty damn boring. This is, after all, the venue where Barbra Streisand once wore a sheer, glittering, bell-bottomed tuxedo and Cher once wore this. Of course, both these pictures were found on some "Worst dressed Oscars" list because these looks are so simply unflattering and uncouth! I mean, they could have dressed like this!

Tom Ford= Douche

Tom Ford, former head designer of Gucci, is seen here posing for Out magazine. I personally was never a big fan of his work, which was characterized by minimalism, lots of black (as well as extreme overuse of the plunging v-neck), obscene advertisements, and various "sexy" looks. See, what is so neat about Tom Ford is that he is gay but he loves to objectify women just like straight men do (and I guess all the other gays in the fashion industry as well, but Tom Ford is especially known for it.) You may remember him from the repulsive Vanity Fair cover he orchestrated, showing him fully clothed (Dude, it's okay because he's gay!) fondling two naked actresses young enough to be his daughters. (Props to Rachael McAdams, who actually bowed out of this shoot when she saw what it was all about.) I fucking hate Vanity Fair and its misogynistic editor in chief, Graydon Carter, and this sort of crap is pretty typical of them, and every time I look at that magazine I feel like writing an indignant letter of some sort.

Anyway, everyone loves Tom Ford because he's so hot and masculine and grabs his crotch and objectifies women, even though he has been balding the same amount for like ten years so he clearly has hair plugs. Below is a quote he said in the same Out spread.

What the fuck? He understands women because as a gay man he understands what it's like to be pursued- ie, be passive, or in his words, "an object?" I can't believe people can just say stuff like this in a supposedly "progressive" magazine, and just have it pass. Of course, Tom has the best of both worlds, because, as a gay man, he also gets to be "the aggressor." How nice for him! He manages to straddle the line between stereotypical maculinity and stereotypical feminity so very well! He probably relates to women because sometimes he feels weak, but to straight men because he sometimes feels strong, too!

PS: Trademark stubble? So lame.

PPS: Ohmygod, I hate Tom Ford so much more just after a basic google image search: here, here and here are some good examples. I can't believe he literally walks around with his shirt unbottoned like this! He also refuses to smile and looks like Jeremy Piven. The end.

Gawd I Wish I Was at This Party

This photo is from the after party of Jeremy Scott, the "designer." Apparently, being on the cutting edge as he is, he has discovered, perhaps for the first time, that you can wear those Palestinian scarves in a hipstery fashion. He looks like a gay 80's pirate, but not in a good way. Kanye is blazing some trails with his Wayfarers and Members Only-esque jacket. Hip! What I love about Kanye is that he has all the obnoxiousness and novelty factor of the hipster set, with the the typical overblown misogyny of mainstream hip hop.

Flanking them like are muse/icon Cory Kennedy and muse/icon Agyness Deyn. Of course, they do nothing except look waifish and wear neon stretch pants. When I first saw the below picture of Cory (back from rehab, I see!) I was like, "i can't believe she's wearing that ugly 80's top! It's so ugly!" But then I realized it was probably something Jeremy Scott "designed." As for Agyness, well, dying her hair back from bleach-blonde isn't doing her any favors. When people in 1986 imagined what teenage boys from the future would wear, I bet it was a little something like this ensemble.

Alright, here's another picture. It's pretty amazing. At first I thought MK was wearing a crown of thorns and then I realized it was just your run-of-the-mill peacock feather headband. But doesn't she seriously look like Jesus?

Fashion Icons and Role Models: The Town Whore

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that there used to be performers and musicians and singers who used to dress totally out of control and it wasn't "ironic" - from David Bowie to Prince to Grace Jones to Cher, to even Motley Crue/pretty much every hair band ever. (Even though like half these people just ripped off their look from somewhere else [There's one point in The Motley Crue biography Gaby lent me where Nikki Sixx is like, "I was on top of the world, making more money than Johnny Thunders ever was!" as if this wasn't directly proportional to him also being a million more times of a tool than Johnny Thunders ever was] they were definitely superior to the weak-ass version of rock bands today who always have one modelish member who stands in the front wearing v neck t-shirt while every other members hang behind their shaggy hair, mumbling about how they want to be like Mick Jagger or whatever likes there's not ten zillion other bands like them who pretend they're doing something really fresh.)

Anyway, my point is, I'm starting to feel we are reaching a highly styled, glossed over, and non-individual time where there may never be another Dolly Parton. Dolly has always said she's modeled her look after the town whore- the woman she thought was the most beautiful as the child, who had the biggest, blondest hair and tightest, shortest dresses. I love this, because, I too, as a kid, wanted to look like the women I thought were beautiful, even if they were Naomi from Mama's Family and Kelly from Married With Children. I mean, I thought Loni Anderson from WKRP in Cincinatti was really beautiful, and still sort of do!

Women like Dolly Parton practically invite drag queens to imitate them, and they certainly emphasize how much of femininity is simply a show- a big, sparkly, bewigged one. When people say they can see my hair from down the block, I feel, in some small way, that I am carrying on the tradition of a proud and glitzy trashiness, one that is miles away from the glitzy trashiness of, you know, Fergie. (Though there have to be some people who do Fergie drag, right? I mean, besides Fergie.)

Of course, Dolly is so much more than a fashion icon; she's an extremely talented musician and songwriter whose written numerous hits for both herself and others. In a time when few female artists wrote their own music, Dolly did. Unlike the cheesy country of today, she comes from the grand old Grand Ole Opry tradition, with artists like Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn and the Carter Family. According to wikipedia, Dolly grew up "dirt poor" in a one-room cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Her father was a "holy roller" type Pentecostal preacher, but Parton professes no denomination, claiming only to be "Spiritual" while adding that she believes that all the Earth's people are God's children. Plus she is rumored to be a lesbian, and that those long sleeves she always has on and her huge wigs are there to hide a bunch of butch tattoos and a shaved head. Whether this is true or not (it is), what's important is that someday Simone and I are going to go to Dollywood, her theme park, and it will be the greatest day of our lives.

PS: I highly suggest you to click on the photos to make them big, especially this last picture of Dolly Parton and Cher, which makes me really happy.

PPS: I thought the silver thing in the right hand bottom corner of that last photo was like a chair or something, and then I realized they were just Cher's knee high silver pirate boots. Oh man.

Ugly Urban Outfitters Items of the Past Month: Slouch City

Don't these images just scream "Fun! Liveliness! Zest! Well-fitting clothing!"? Let me tell you, they both make me want to celebrate life in a major way. Anyway, I think the model on the left is high on something. The more I look at models, the more this seems apparent. Her horribly bony shoulders are modeling the Truly Madly Deeply Mixed Striped Dolman Top, which is just another one of those things that is a copy of something from the late 80's you could find at a thrift store. The horrible color combination, drop shoulders (shudder) and geometric stripe pattern are what really make it totally '89. There's also a teal/putty/fuchsia one if you're so inclined, or just want to see some really emaciated wrists.

On the right is the Shell Kimono Tee, with the hugest screen print known to man on the front. It looks really strange to have a huge, sloppy screen print on a huge, sloppy t-shirt- you just don't know what to focus on. That shell is so big that it's encroaching upon the voluminous folds of the neckline. What exactly would make someone want this? Whatever is supposed to be happening here, it's not working. The top doesn't need a screen print; it has enough going on.

As many of my friends and colleagues know, in 1986 or something an amazing book called Dressing Sexy (ohmygod, if you have not read it, you have to buy it right now. This will be the greatest $1.50 you will have ever spent.) was published. This helpful guide, complete with photos of heavily made-up models with huge hair, encourages women, in a very Backlash-y fashion, to cool it with all those respectable tweed suits that make men respect you and helped you ease into a male-dominated workplace in the 70's, and start up with the suede tank tops, unbuttoned jewel-tone silk blouses, bed-head hair (it makes men think of sex!), and harem pants, in order to land yourself a Burt Reynolds type and a nice big flashy rock on your finger. The cover shows a woman wearing heavily pleated mauve leather trousers.

As for oh-so flattering Lux Knit Ankle Harem Pants (which are polyester, ewwww), I know Barbara Bergdorf would have approved, especially if they meant to be paired with a shoulder-padded mauve blouse cut to the navel. Which they probably are.

And last but not least, the Lux Paperbag Pant! This kind of reminds me of how, in the 80's, Japanese designers like Yohji Yamamoto rejected the structured glitz and gaudy, Dynasty-esque glamour of the decade, instead designing the dark, avante-garde, slouchy and asymmetrical. And maybe I would have been attracted to this had I been trying to avoid wearing a teal blazer in 1986, but today we have learned that these kind of clothes make your ass look saggy and that the cast of Dynasty actually looked pretty fierce.

Hair, Beautiful Hair

Back in the Victorian and Edwardian days, mourning was very fashionable. If you were a woman who were close to someone who died, you were required to wear black for a certain period of time- some widows wore black for the rest of their lives. (Men, I believe, were largely excluded from this practice- men have always been much more encouraged to wear clothing for practical, as opposed to symbolic or aesthetic reasons.) Mourning jewelery, made of dark stones like jet or onyx was very popular, and so was jewelery made of hair.

Hair jewelery was sometimes made from the hair of departed love ones, but sometimes it was meant to symbolize other things, like friendship- you might have a locket with your friend's hair braided inside and a poem about being BFFs engraved upon it, like one of the Best Friends broken locket necklaces I used to buy from the Oriental Trading catalogue.

There were hair chains, watch fobs, earrings and pins. Hair was even braided into elaborate framed pieces. I can only imagine how difficult it was to craft these items- and can't help thinking about how strange and almost talisman-like they seem today. My mother, who used to wear a Victorian hair ring all the time, said she'd buy me some hair jewelery for my graduation present. I would love to have something this amazing, but this one was a bit expensive- it was listed at about $250 on eBay. But then again, that's not that much more than some pair of designer jeans, or something made by Juicy Couture, so if anything, it's a steal.