27 Thursday Sep 2012
Posted in Books
A great go-to book by Amanda Brooks to help you solidify your look, or get you to try a new one. It’s full of IT girls, cool girls, chic girls, all of them AB FAB and inspirational.
It’s also a great pictorial reference book for you young-uns just learning the style icon vernacular.
She also has a blog: http://iloveyourstyle.com/
28 Thursday Jun 2012
Posted in Books
Ari Seth Cohen turned his blog into a book. He has a thing for older ladies, albeit, stylish ones. And gents too. They can be eccentric or classic, just as long as they are expressing their own individuality.
I love one of the ladies’ quotes, “If everyone is wearing it, then it’s not for me.” Take that H&M! In a world of fast fashion, youth obsessed culture, it’s nice to see older folks with a wink and smile in their creative ensembles. We will all be this old one day, if we’re lucky. We can still march to the beat of our own drummer, in Red Wings or wing tips, you decide.
Who needs a stylist when you’re stylish? (Should be on a t-shirt, or at least a coffee mug.)
02 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Books
Lizzie Garret Mettler, a freelance writer who’s written for the LA Times, Bon Appetit, and the Huffington Post, took her tomboy blog and turned it into a book. It chronicles the past 80 years and how women have taken masculine aspects and made them fit their look and lifestyle.
Being a tomboy myself, I can’t wait to get it.
I put her blog on my blogroll. Check it out.
02 Friday Mar 2012
Posted in Books
Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin elevate fashion photography to art. They work with what Inez calls, “… a duality. There’s a gender shift, there’s beautiful and ugly. There’s spiritual and mundane. There’s tension.” I love their work because they do the arty stuff but still make the clothes look good, and maybe that’s because Vinoodh was a designer first.
Their new book from Taschen, is $700 (!, well, it is Taschen), and three volumes.
Lady Gaga, V, issue 61.
Clint Eastwood, New York Times Magazine, 2005.
28 Tuesday Feb 2012
Posted in Books
Tags
Angel City Press, Brigitte Bardot, Elizabeth Taylor, Glenn Ford, Hollywood Rides a Bike: Cycling and the Stars, Rita Hayworth, Sean Connery, Steven Rea, Susan Peters
Steven Rea combined his two loves, films (he’s a film critic in Philly) and bikes. He complied little known pictures of celebs on bikes for Hollywood Rides a Bike, Angel City Press, and his Tumblr blog “Rides a Bike.”
Mmmm. Sean Connery.
The always gorgeous, doesn't matter what she's doing, Bardot.
A very young, fresh-faced Elizabeth Taylor.
Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth.
Steven Rea, Angel City Press.
Don’t you love the sepia tones and how relaxed everyone looks on their bikes?
03 Friday Feb 2012
Posted in Books
Love them or hate them, they’re not going away, in fact they’re multiplying. I’m not talking about celebrity red carpet dressers, I’m talking about the talent behind today’s most influential magazines, and runway shows. A collection isn’t ready to be shown until the stylist and designer have ordered and assembled all the looks that will walk.
Stylists: New Fashion Visionaries, by Katie Baron.
Marie-Amelié Sauvé, stylist to the house of Balenciaga. Quiet but forcing boundaries ever forward.
I do admire them. Can you imagine having to do something new and exciting all the time, or risk looking stale? It must be nerve-racking, but fun and challenging when you’ve got the gift.
12 Thursday Jan 2012
Not to be confused with Blue Ivy, mini Beyonce.
This is a new book from Reel Art that tracks the satorial influence of preppies on hipsters from 1956 to 1965.
Anthony Perkins. Classic clothes always look good.
So strange to think of McQueen's style as preppie, but i guess it was in this decade. He's still the man.
Paul Newman was really fine, wasn't he?
http://www.reelartpress.com/catalog/edition/43/hollywood-and-the-ivy-look
03 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted in Books
No, it’s not an upcoming summer blockbuster. It’s a new book of photos from Lindsay McCrum.
The gun debate is such a charged and heated one in this country, it’s refreshing and eye-opening to see it framed (no pun intended) in a non-confrontational way. This post takes neither side, just want to tell you about how evocative the photos are. Each photo tells a compelling story, strikes a balance of between sweetness of the subjects and the subtle deadly force of the weapon.
As a writer, you could write a film or book with this image as a spark. As a designer, you could play with the balance of feminine and masculine, soft, hard, protective and vulnerable, danger and safety.
22 Tuesday Nov 2011
Even with taking a year off (protracted negotiations ate into the shooting schedule) everyone is STILL talking about the fashion of “Mad Men.” Which is something considering the show is in its 5th season, and fashion has the attention span of a gnat.
There are whole sites dedicated to the show and its fashions, but I just wanted to post some pix of Jon Hamm since I’m jonesing for new episodes.
Wow. I love that he went with this mauvey shirt. That color looks great on him.
Much has been written about his throwback good looks: the square jaw, the maturity, the sheer masculinity of him. No guyliner. No tribal tattoos. No goddamn Affliction t-shirts (that are lame on a 17 year-old, much less a 40 year-old trying too hard.)
He reminds me of Gary Cooper, tall handsome, and looks great in clothes. Ever have a friend who throws on any ‘ol thing and looks fantastic? That’s what I’m talking about. It’s really not about the clothes (although having great taste doesn’t hurt), it’s about their attitude, and the easy confidence they project.
Coincidentally, there’s a new book about Cooper’s style, Gary Cooper: Enduring Style, by G. Bruce Boyer (a fashion writer of 35 years) and Maria Cooper Janis (Gary’s daughter.) It’s chock full of never-before-seen photos of her dapper daddy.
http://www.powerhousebooks.com/site/?p=7389
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
19 Saturday Nov 2011
Posted in Books, stuff to see
Tags
You either evolve or die. People keep saying books are choking, sputtering, dying a slow death. Books are not dying. 1) Because we won’t let them, because people still love reading a book, 2) Because they’re evolving, mutating, adapting to the tech saturated life that is the 21st century.
Patrick Carman’s Dark Eden can be bought as a traditional book, but also can be read with a app that enhances Carman’s written word. You can even buy it chapter by chapter with a app for each chapter.
When you were a kid, and you read, say Grimm’s Fairytales. When you got to the picture page, didn’t you just drink in every detail of the illustration? Even though you had pictures in your mind’s eye, didn’t a beautifully rendering drawing really illuminate the scene for you? I think this hybrid is that childhood experience on steroids.
I’m sure Dark Eden will be the next Hunger Games.
http://enterdarkeden.com/home/
Why put this on a so-called fashion/film site? Think about how this process can add or illuminate your own work, whether you’re a writer, designer, photographer, etc.
The Fashionéaste 
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