April, 2013
Trypanophobia
I’m not much of a fan of the Saw series (okay, a little bit), but this is an awesome promotional poster for their annual Halloween blood drive this year!
Tags: blood drive, nurse, saw, syringes, trypanophobia
Poetry: “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
This is one of my favorite poems ever.
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.Tags: emptiness, hospitals, poetry, self-awareness, sylvia plath
Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll
Here’s the trailer for Marilyn Manson’s upcoming movie Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, which is scheduled to be released sometime in 2010. Alice is played by Lily Cole, who also stars in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
It looks interesting, to say the least. I have no idea if it’s any good or not, but I still want to see it.
“I want to take the children’s story that we all know, and discover the horrifying roots that grow beneath every one of its childish metaphors. The characters may be absurd and wrapped in puzzles, but the author himself is the story that I find painfully close to me. Lewis Carroll is far more complex than the world’s narrow perception of him as a quiet deacon, a mathematician, and a loner, simply obsessed with photographing young girls. He was possibly one of the most divided souls living in his own hell that the world has overlooked.”
—Marilyn MansonTags: alice in wonderland, lily cole
9/9/09
“I never saw a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.”
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall Paper”I’m reading The Haunted Omnibus, a compilation of “Great Ghost Stories of the World” that was first published in 1937. It includes “ghost” stories by M. R. James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Algernon Blackwood, Guy de Maupassant, Pliny the Younger, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ambrose Bierce, Poe, and others. This is a 1941 copy. I love old books, and old things in general. I look at this book and I think, This is 68 years old…. And I have it right here, it’s so far and so close to me at the same time. I also like it when I find things left in secondhand books, tucked away and forgotten, like lovely cloth bookmarks, slips of paper with quotes on them, tickets to the ballet, or a decade-old article about Virginia Woolf in a Woolf book.
Oh, God, I was on the bus today, and I smelled something, like baking bread, as we went over the bridge to the U-District, and it plunged me into a memory of my childhood. Isn’t it weird how smell can carry you back to the past? It’s almost like deja vu, the strongest throwback of all your senses, to the actual experience of life. It’s beyond words. I’m not even sure what that scent is, or if I’ve ever really smelled it before or not, or my brain is just glitching, but that momentary sensation of actually being in the past that it triggers is so real. Smell has the strongest ability to get you back to the past, more than anything else.
Chad Michael Ward: Digital Apocalypse
I love Chad Michael Ward. He is a horror, fetish, and fashion photographer and digital artist. His personal work is beautiful, macabre, shocking, edgy, and tender all at once. The atmosphere of his images is very recognizable, and they’re part of a growing pool of fashion photography geared towards scenes from the post-apocalyptic world – a fusion of pinup, fashion-forward, and cyber aesthetics, with strange stories to tell of the future seen through the imaginative lens of the alternative subcultures of the present. He also does commercial work for bands like Collide and The Cruxshadows.
You can see more of his work over on his site.
Tags: chad michael ward, digital apocalypse, fetish photography
Clothing Designer: Louise Black
Louise Black, also known as candycain, is probably my favorite fashion designer. When I first saw the pieces in her Dollflesh and Eye-Spy Eclectics lines, several years ago now, I thought she was the perfect designer for me. Never had I seen such splendid, wonderful taste and quality. Her designs are instantly recognizable for their distinctive style and superb craftsmanship. Anyway, here are some examples of her work that I just love incredibly.
Louise Black’s designs are heavily influenced by 1920s fashion, but unlike a lot of “flapper-style” clothing around, her garments are no flimsy, sloppy, simplified affairs with just tiers of fringe or something and barely any actual feel of the ’20s; she really pushes beyond the typical in a true fusion of past and present. The solid craftsmanship, intricate hand-beading, and elaborate trims on her work are her signature. She uses many antique trims, textiles, and other elements (such as buttons) in her clothing, and often revamps vintage clothing but goes way above and beyond what this usually entails. She makes accessories, beaded wrist cuffs, headpieces, necklaces, and neck cuffs, etc., with queen, Victorian, and flapper themes.
Opium Noir Set
Midnight’s Mesmerism Frock
Sapphire Venom Dress (reminds me so much of my idol Louise Brooks)
Tags: 1920s, beaded trim, dollflesh, flapper, louise black, revamped vintage
The Whimsical Photography of Darla Teagarden
Darla Teagarden is a wonderful surreal and whimsical fashion photographer based in Austin, Texas. Her dreamy photography combines influences from the ’20s and the Victorian era, and takes place in a beautifully pastel-colored, wonderfully artificial landscape with a radiant glow around everything. This world is populated by tender and strangely lovely denizens created with the aid of makeup and styling. Her images tell stories of the never-existent past brought to life in the bizarre and twisted present, of bow-lipped lovers, enchanted maidens, and dignified personages in a magical fairy-tale land. Her photographs are beautifully manipulated, with a distinctive style all their own. They are both vividly and softly colored. Soft, hazy photography with an edge.
Tags: 1920s, artificial landscape, hazy, pastel, victorian, whimsical
Vecona Clothing
Vecona is a German couturier that makes Victorian-inspired, long-skirted, many-petticoated, tattered, Frankenstein-esque wisps of affairs. Their style ranges from historical gowns to deathrock-inspired clothing, but the Victorian influence is definitely a heavy, prominent one. Vecona outfits various musicians such as Anna-Varney of Sopor Aeternus, Lucas Lanthier of Cinema Strange and The Deadfly Ensemble, and Emilie Autumn. Most of the pieces in their collections are separates that match and layer to create a perfectly extravagant, many-parted outfit with hoops, bustles, and all. Visit Vecona’s site here. I have exactly one piece from Vecona, but wish I had so many more.
Tags: bloomers, hoopskirts, insane asylum aesthetic, lacy, neo-victorian, tattered, vecona, victorian undergarments
