fashion - Style Of Eye

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Of course this post is all about the visual aesthetics. That’s why they’re models. To be alluring, so that the viewer becomes hypnotised and the next thing they know they’ve bought the clothing because they want to look like the model, or has the hairstyle to look like the model, or buys the accessory to feel like the model.

There are actors who model, then there are models who try to act, there are strictly fashion models and there are adult models (models who bare it all), and then there are the super-models.

Supermodel Linda Evangelista famously said many years ago, “I don’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars.” The supermodel was born. Fair call, I guess. Evangelista was part of the core group of the original supermodels which featured Cindy Crawford (whom Prince wrote a flirtatious song about on his infamous Black Album called Cindy C.), Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Helena Christensen, Claudia Schiffer, Tatiana Patitz. There were others that floated peripherally, but those ones were the most famous.

David Bowie married a famous model; Iman. Many other rock stars and some actors have dated and had relationships with models, such as the late Michael Hutchinson, who was with Helena Christiansen for a few years. That Babyshambles frontman dated Kate Moss for awhile. Tommy Lee married Pamela Anderson. The list goes on and on.

Models work the runway, play the catwalk, schmooze the catalogues, drink the champagne, powder their noses, and throw tantrums when they don’t get their own way. Okay, so I’m generalizing. I haven’t got much to say for this post. What is there to say? Models; seen, and seldom heard. Pretty faces, gorgeous figures, pony walks. Some models are way too thin. That whole heroin chic bullshit that was around for while seems to still be poking out its ribs; it’s as ugly as sin. Call me old fashioned, but a model should have some curves, and not look like she’s been starving herself.

As for the male models, it’s funny, but there really aren’t many famous ones at all. And they all look the same too. It’s a weird anomaly, but the world of modeling is very female-centric. Of course there are thousands of male models. But I couldn’t be bothered finding any pics of them. The women rule.

So here they are.

Of course, none of these models are as beautiful as my Mediterranean lover, my Butterfly Blue, but she prefers to be on the other side of the camera herself. And I'll be showcasing some of her best work in the future. Of the supermodels I was a big fan of Christy Turlington back in the day, until I saw Laetitia Casta and Adriana Lima. Of the adult models Alley Baggett and Tabatha Cash win hands down. Of the actors who model young Josie Maran is the quiet achiever here, but Claire Forlani smoulders. And then there's the divine curves of Morian Atias.

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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: fashion

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footwear

October 19th 2007 02:11

They say the shoe makes the man or woman. Certainly it defines a person’s look, probably more so than hats, or shades, or even jewelry. Footwear comes in so many shapes and sizes, colours, textures and price-tags. Women can spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on shoes. And they do.

In fact women with money (and some with not so much money) tend to have wardrobes set aside just for shoes; shoe closets, they call them. It’s a kind of status thing, they more shoes they have the more powerful they feel, which reminds me of an American television commercial from around the late 70s, early 80s. It was an ad for Hush Puppies, a brand of shoe for men and women. “How many pairs of shoes do you own?” asked an off-camera voice to a well-to do lady, “Ten, eleven, twelve pairs of shoes,” the woman replies smugly to the camera, “But I live in Hush Puppies,” she adds with a sly smirk.

As a teenager I wanted a pair of Fry cowboy boots. The funny thing is, I can’t remember if I ever ended up owning a pair. At high school, when it was mufti day some of the punk girls would come to school in their knee high patent leather Doc Martin boots. Boy, that was a statement-and-a-half.

I’ve never been able to wear what Aussie’s call thongs comfortably (I’m talking about flip-flops, not a g-string!). In New Zealand we called them jandals. I just couldn’t stand the piece of rubber between my toes. Ugh! I wore what I called thongs, which used fabric instead of the rubber. But I much prefer sandals such as Birkenstocks.

I loved my sneakers though, or trainers as they call them in Australia. I owned a sensational pair of Pumas, black with red stripes, very cool. But I don’t like the contemporary sneaker design, all tubing and pumped up fittings. They look naff. I prefer sleek, minimal styling.

Now there’s nothing sexier on a woman than a great pair of boots. Knee-high is the go, but on a perfect set of long legs those thigh-highs can cause quite a stir. Something very suggestive, come hither about boots, especially the thigh-high ones, pure sex, teasing “You wanna fuck me?”, or perhaps, more correctly, they’re making the statement “I like to shag in these boots! All … night … long!”

Shoes are great for height too, especially if you’re vertically challenged; platforms and stilettos. Prince wears three or four inch platform boots (which still only puts him at about 5’6”). Women put their feet through hell wearing stilettos all night long, but there’s sense of quiet power that comes with the elegant height they provide you.

At the moment (off the top of my head) I own two pairs of black boots, a pair of Adidas sneakers, a pair of Diesel designer sneakers, a pair of Birkenstocks, a pair of D&G thongs, a pair of Italian designer dress shoes, and a pair of Italian sandals. There are more in the closet, but they probably need throwing out. Like t-shirts I seem to hold on to them way past their use by date.

white buckle patent leather thigh high boots

dollhouse wonder knee high cowgirl boots

Some very practical footwear, some very cool and stylish footwear, and some dan sexy footwear too! If I was a woman, I'd be owning a pair of those faux fur boots fer sure. I dig those red modern moccasins, and those bonsai sandals tickle my fancy too. But for sheer old school comfort and durability the street player in me recommends a pair of of the Converse basketball boots. And for the ladies? Try those gorgeous sheer black stilettos on for size.

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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: fashion

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sunglasses

October 17th 2007 01:10

“Put ‘em on your face!”, that was the tag which sunglasses manufacturer Bolle insisted on. Fair enough, although I’ve never been a fan of Bolle’s designs. I prefer the old school wares, like the Raybans’ warefarer design, made famous in the movie Less Than Zero.

The Aviator design, also by Raybans, has been a fixture for decades, made famous in the movie Top Gun, but pilots have been wearing them since the 1920s. Personally I prefer the less ostentatious look of the classic black 1950s look which Italian actor Marcello Mastrioanni wore in Fellini’s 8-and-a-half. If I could find a piar like that I’d be a happy man!

Actors like Jack Nicholson have made wearing sunglasses de rigour. He even wears them to the Academy Awards, and doesn’t take them off! It’s that kind of ridiculous behaviour reminds me of that infectiously inane pop song from the 80s by Corey Hart, same sort of deal.

But hey, we’ve all been there. I know I’ve worn shades inside, usually because I’m dreadfully hungover. But occasionally because I thought it looked cool. Oh, the silly things we do when we’re young and impressionable. Still, there is something distinctly aesthetic about great looking shades on the face. They can make or break your fashion pose. They are possibly the most distinctive accessory one can adorn, simply because by covering and hiding the eyes you immediately draw attention to yourself.

You can be even more contentious by wearing mirror shades so that anyone talking to you see only themselves reflected, and that can be damn annoying, even intimidating at times. But it does look impressive from a short distance, you can’t deny it.

Elton John made a career out of sunglasses. Well, he certainly made sure they spoke volumes, just in case he wasn’t loud and obnoxious enough during the 70s and 80s he wore over-sized and absurdly glam sunglasses to off-set his behaviour, just a tad. Now we get pint-sized celebrities such as the Olsen twins, and vacuous socialites, such as Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie making over-sized shades trendy for impressionable teens. It smacks of bad taste.

Bono and Ozzy Osbourne have managed to get away with that pretentious, constant wear of sunglasses, I’m not sure how. Good on ‘em I say, being the fickle wannabe rockstar that I am. If you’ve got the shades, flaunt ‘em!

Cassandra Tiensivu diamond-studded sunglasses

Like any self-conscious popstar, I wanna have a different pair of sunglasses for every day of summer. But if I have to settle for just three: the handmade acetate design, the Blackflys funk flys, and the Guccis. I actually own two pairs of Guccis, but the pair featured above are tré cool, yes, very cool indeed!

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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: fashion

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hats

October 14th 2007 23:12

Hats are a curious thing. The can look exceptionally cool, or down right silly. I’m hat fussy. I’m also hat intolerant. I really only dig certain hats. On the whole I think of them as masks for people to hide an element of insecurity behind, in an unconscious kind of way, I might even proclaim a shy kind of vanity.

I can’t wear hats on the whole. My head is too big. That sounds conceited, but it’s simply that I have a large girth. My head, that is. Ahem. Most hats don’t fit me. And when I do find one that fits, it just looks wrong, because as I said, I’m hat fussy.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t admire or appreciate some hats on other people. Hats can be almost unassuming, purely practical, and then they can be very ostentatious, all about the parade. Take Melbourne Cup day for example. Then take winter. And then there’s all the hat etiquette; having to politely remove your hat when you enter a certain premises. What’s that about?

I wore a beret for a while. And I had a little Greek sailor’s cap too. Talk about quietly ostentatious! But the hat I wore for the longest time (until I lost the damn thing) was a ghetto style cap which I had all my dreadlocks tucked under. That was a very cool hat. What a shame. I guess the street claimed it back.

I lot of men wear hats, especially caps, because they’re going bald. Of course, they’re only aggravating the problem by covering the bald patch. The hair follicles need invigorating, and it ain’t getting shit under a cap. Thankfully I don’t have that problem.

As a boy there was a Dr. Seuss book which gave me the creeps: The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. It’s the Middle Ages and young Bart goes to remove his little feathered cap as the King rides past, but discovers much to his surprise, and much to the disdain of the King’s men, that he has another identical hat underneath. So he removes that. But there’s another. And another, and another, and another, and another …

Poor Bart is arrested and whisked away by the King’s men, and so unfolds poor Bartholomew Cubbins hatted plight. It’s a surreal book with a subtext of quiet rebellion and anti-conformity. Such is most of the work of Dr. Seuss. Brilliant, of course, but it chilled me as a boy, nevertheless. I feared poor Bart would have his head cut off as punishment for the crime of not bowing to the King and removing his hat.

So, without further adieu, hats off!

Some fine head adornments indeed. I think I'd like three hat boxes to go; the panama fedora, the Mad Hatter top, and the red sombrero deluxe, thank you very much!

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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: fashion

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bikinis

September 6th 2007 02:37

The history of the bikini begins far before the official introduction of the bikini swimsuit in the summer of 1946. Some historians believe that the bikini may have been one of the first public swimming costumes in existence. Drawing evidence from 300 A.D. Roman mosaics, historians point to the bikini as the swimsuit of choice for ancient Roman women. However Minoan wall paintings from approximately 1600 B.C. also depict women wearing the seemingly quite popular two-piece bathing costume!

The official history of the bikini, under that name, begins in the summer of 1946, just one year after the end of World War II. During that summer two French designers almost simultaneously created and marketed the bikini swimsuit. Barely leading the charge, Jacques Heim, a fashion designer and beach shop owner in the French resort town of Cannes, introduced his swimsuit creation, the “Atome,” early in the summer of 1946. The swimsuit was named the Atome because of its miniscule size (as compared to the then smallest known particle of matter, the atom). Heim sent skywriters high above the Cannes sky, with the simple, yet striking message “the world’s smallest bathing suit.”

As fate and synchronicity would have it, another French fashion designer was also hard at work creating a remarkably similar swimsuit. Just three weeks after Heim began marketing his swimsuit, Louis Reard, a mechanical engineer who had decided to dabble in swimsuit design (he was also running his mother’s lingerie business), unveiled his fashion sexclamation mark. Four days before Reard was to show the world his new bikini in Paris, the U.S. Military inadvertently provided him with the name. They exploded a nuclear device near several small islands in the Pacific known as the Bikini Atoll.

On July 5th, 1945, Reard also sent skywriters over the French Riviera with a more contentious message: “Bikini—smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world.” The name struck a lasting chord.

Reard's bikini was so small that no Parisian models at the time would wear it on the runway. He hired Micheline Bernardini, who had no qualms about strolling around in a bikini, seeing as her day job was a nude dancer at the Casino de Paris.

Bikini’s are more or less de rigour on any gorgeous beach during summer. Everything from the seaweed bikini, macramé bikini, vinyl bikini, string bikini, mink bikini, rubber bikini, monokini, Brian Hyland's Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, Chanel's infamous "eye-patch" bikini and the irrepressible tanga, "thong" or "dental-floss" bikini; made famous on the beaches of Brazil.

Allessandra Ambrosio bird o' paradise bikini

Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I'm not a huge fan of the micro string thang. Still, on certain physiques it can look, well, distracting ... I love the traditional colours, the whites (Adriana Lima and Kelly Brook) and blacks (that slick rubber off the hip pic is dynamite!). The knotted bikini can be quite sexy too, I must say; the lime, the pink, the madeira black. However Halle Berry does Ursula Andress in orange very well indeed.

... I know it's not a bikini, but Kelly Brook below in the "conceptual" one-piece is something to behold.