this is just to say

i hope i am not sullying the content of this blog in posting this video, but this is too good not to. I feel that it is, in some way, wrong to say "I want to be this," and yet...

Charis Weston

Edward Weston's wife, Charis Weston, acted as his muse for many years, and is the subject of many of my favorite photographs by him. Not much is known about her, but she looks amazing. Enjoy.

c'est "Super Cool"

Here are a couple images (A,B,and C) from a series called "The Alphabet" done by this amazing Parisian design firm called M/M. They have created posters, advertisements, and editorials for brands like Hermes and Balenciaga, I.D. magazine, and more. Though much of their work is commercial, they also borrow from their commercial work to create art that is exhibited and sold in galleries. You can see their catalogue here:

Link

Lagos Calling

Here are some amazing shots taken by photographer Clayton James Cubitt of Nigerian punks. Pretty fucking cool.

Justification

"And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation. Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment universal, and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for him. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies."
Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890).


The act of getting dressed in the morning is really a daily ritual of transubstantion.

Icons?

I'm pretty mixed about the whole "style icons" question...I think that they are more or less for people who have little personality themselves, or don't really know how to create their own style. That said, there are a few people whose personalities, lifestyles, and/or appearance that I admire...although sometimes I suspect I'm really just responding to a specific photograph. Aaaannnyway ambiguities aside, I really like Joan Didion, Charlotte Rampling, and Susan Sontag