Nobody Ain't Laughin' Now

So, yes, I know that Coachella was a month ago, but I recently (as in a half-hour ago) stumbled across these photos of the concert on Style.com. They're shot by scene photographer Jeremy Kost, and Style.com even had the gall to put them on the website in Polaroid format. This set makes me sick in a strange, wonderful way. Some of them are actually interesting, with soft, beautiful lighting and a cool balance of spontaniety and vanity. However, most are either just trite and Myspace profile pic-worthy, or careless and pointless.
There's just something so bizarre about Vogue's website, which normally features Tory Burch bags and red carpet pictures of Reese Witherspoon, try to hard to cozy up to the hipster crowd. I know that Vogue and its cohorts have extended the olive branch of photo shoots and kiss-ass blurbs to certain select scenesters, specifically the MisShapes, but it's never been extreme before. I can't help but think this was more of a decision on the W side of things, rather than Vogue's choice. However, Vogue and its mainstream agenda must have had some influence, seeing as how shots of random concert-goers, obscure celebrities, and musicians are peppered with appearances by Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. Intriguing...

Radio, Live Transmission

Qu'est-ce que vous pensez? The French subtitles are a bit distracting, but Control seems pretty well made. I don't know if it's fair to compare its accuracy to the real Ian Curtis and Joy Division, but as a story itself, it looks kind of entertaining.

Blue Turning Gray

Look Gemma, I appreciate the effort, and the comittment you brought to this look, but really, when you're a supermodel wearing next season's Balenciaga at a gala in Cannes, you do not need the cokewhore hair and makeup. The dress and shoes are strong enough on their own, and with the finger-in-the-electrical-socket hair style you're rockin', it looks like you have no neck. Good try though.


Naomi, you're fabulous and all, but there's something very strange about the bangs and Dolce Gabanna bondage dress combination that I'm not loving. Maybe the haircut is too evocative of the '90s, or soccer moms or something. The point is, fix it before I get Spartan on your ass.


But on the positive side, Morgane, with the JPG, bob, and all, wins.


pic source: style.com

The Wrong Girl

You guys, Eva Green is really quite majestic. I'm not sure if any other actress could pull off this Dior HC gown as well as she does. The smoldering eyes, the porcelain complexion, the slightly haughty demeanor...she looks like she came right off the runway (of course, sans the giant chairs and overly complex platform shoes). It's dramatic, beautiful, and infinitely superior to just about everything else you see on the red carpet.

Photo source: evagreenweb.com

And while we're on the subject of smokin' hot French actors at Cannes, I'd just like to interject that Louis Garrel is really quite amazing-looking, in sort of an ugly, unkempt way.

Photo source: Louisgarrel.net

Black Plastic

The Temperly for Target thumbnails are up, and aside from the fact that most of the looks are an exercise in banality, I'm loving the gamine-chic vibe of these cropped pants, and the swanky, swing coat-line of this sweater/belt combination. Alas, I'm not too excited for the rest of the collection, which seems to consist of drab babydoll dresses, strangely cut skirts, and one black and white printed sweater that is a total assault on the senses.



But perhaps even more dissappointing is the Devi Kroell for Target collection. Kroell's sumptuous accessories are reliant on exotic, expensive, beautiful materials. Without those resources, these simple shapes and colors just fall flat. They're made of cheap plastic, and they look like it. I love Kroell's main line, but this diffusion collection is really bland.

Spirit They've Vanished

Alright, so I like a lot of the clothes from Dior Resort '08. Even if they're not exactly something I'd wear, I appreciate the vibrance and silhouettes, and the fact that most of them are very chic while managing to be lurid and mildly ostentatious. However, this...

...happens to veer a little too far into the "Elizabeth Taylor on LSD runs into my 75-year-old step-grandmother in a bar and the two hit it off and decide to go to a party in her Florida retirement community and this is what Liz suggests for her to wear" territory. That said, I think the cut of the coat is fantastic. Alas, if I saw anyone, anywhere, at any time, wearing this whole ensemble together, I would have to fight very hard resist the urge to light fire to their hair.

Precipitate

I have been alllllll over the place lately, and apparently I missed out on this, from the Herald Sun:
"An accused rapist dubbed the "fire fiend" planned to murder the feared fashion editor who inspired the novel and film The Devil Wears Prada.

Anna Wintour, the legendarily frosty and demanding editor-in-chief of style guide American Vogue, was allegedly intended as a victim of accused kidnapper Peter Braunstein.

The New York Post revealed that Braunstein ranted in a personal manifesto, read to a court, about killing Wintour. He wrote: "So I'll tell you why I'm going to kill Anna Wintour -- because I just feel like it."

Braunstein, a former fashion writer, has admitted dressing as a New York firefighter and setting off two homemade smoke bombs to trick his way into a co-worker's apartment on Halloween, October 31, 2005. He has confessed to holding a gun to the victim's head, drugging her with chloroform, and then stripping her and binding her to her bed. Wearing a black ski mask, he then raped her over a 13-hour period in her Chelsea apartment in New York.

His defence team argues the acts were committed unintentionally because of his severe mental illness.

Braunstein was earlier sacked as a fashion media critic for Women's Wear Daily after causing a fuss when he found he'd received only one ticket to the Vogue Fashion Awards.

Braunstein penned his manifesto in the months leading up to the attack on his co-worker at Fairchild Publications.

The New York Post reported that no details of Braunstein's were disclosed in court, apart from his saying that Wintour's death was to be up close and personal.

Wintour is widely believed to have been the inspiration for the fashion editor in The Devil Wears Prada, a character played in the hit film by Meryl Streep.

The Post said that according to parts of the manifesto, read aloud in the jury's absence in Manhattan Supreme Court, Braunstein wrote that just shooting Wintour would be "too impersonal". Braunstein also reportedly celebrated late '70s serial killer Son of Sam (David Berkowitz) and the Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

The New York Post said that Braunstein had also admired Andrew Cunanan for his 1997 Miami Beach murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace. And he even applauded fictional killer Hannibal Lecter as an important criminal literary figure "because of his intellect".

Last week, jurors also heard about Braunstein's loathing for Wintour, the Post reported. He wrote that she "just never talked to peons like us . . . It was beneath her. And all the while I'm thinking 'Who is this skank?' "

He said she played up a "let them eat cake" Marie Antoinette-style regal attitude, but "all she does is edit a magazine -- that's it. So what's with the royalty routine?"

Braunstein also wrote: "Wintour will be escorted by eunuchs to a place in Hell run entirely by large rats. Even Satan can't get in there, because he and the rats had a falling-out a couple of millennia ago.

"The rats, apparently, are unionised and Satan tried to break the union; there's been a lot of bad blood ever since."

The trial continues."

I mean, I don't like the woman, but this seems to go a bit far.