Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

If you want to escape the sun, I suggest to take a trip to photography museum Foam in Amsterdam. My favorite Dutch fashion photography duo, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, have an exhibition of their extensive work. I love it that their pictures are never just “pretty-pretty”, they mix fashion with art and there’s always an element of darkness in their work. The exhibition contains 300 of their most essential images, selected by the duo themselves. They choose the photographs that showed their fascination for people and their aspirations: who are we, how do we want to look en what does that say about our lives and feelings. A tiny selection of their work:

Advertisement:

Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2006

Chloé Spring/Summer 2007

Abbey Lee Kershaw in Fora by Gucci advertisement

Editorials:

Kate Moss for Vogue Paris, April 2008

i-D Magazine January 2009

French Vogue, August 2009

Lara Stone in W Magazine, May 2009

W Magazine, March 2005

Non commercial:

Pretty Much Everything – photographs 1985-2010:  June 25 – September 15,  Foam Amsterdam, entrance € 10,-.

Kinky or Cool: Over the Knee Boots

Once in every five years “over the knee boots” make a comeback. And every time I’m tempted to give it a try and buy them, but always have some excuses not to. The very small, sane part of my brain says: “You will look like a cheap tart, you can’t wear them to work (some of my clients are extremely conservative christian white males), and they will only last one season. But then I saw these pictures of the Dutch Royal Family: Princess Maxima is wearing them! Shocking! I mean, if she can wear them, so can I! So maybe I’m going to listen to the little devil in my head this time and wave my creditcard… 

 

 Royal Highness Princess Maxima wearing brown and grey suede over the knee boots. (And leopard……I suddenly feel very frumpy).

 Brigitte Bardot’s wearing hers with a leather and sequin mini dress.

Marc Jacobs, Fall 2009. 

Daisy Lowe showing her boots and her underwear. 

The Royal Highness of Cool: Debbie Harry.

Gucci, Fall 2009. 

Lindsay Lohan on the September 2009 cover of Elle UK.

Isabel Marant, Fall 2009.

Actress Barbara Parkins (Valley of the Dolls) from head to toe in leather.

I never thought I would like Roberto Cavalli, but I love the dress and the boots – from the Fall 2009 collection.

 Raquel Zimmermann as Debbie Harry with trademark boots in French Vogue, September 2009. 

And ofcourse: Kate. Shot by Mario Sorrenti for Vogue China, December 2008.

The Vogue September Issue

New fashion movie alert! This time it’s actually not a movie, but a documentary about the US september edition of Vogue magazine. The documentary is made by R.J. Cutler and follows Editor in Chief Anna Wintour behind the scenes of the making of the september 2007 issue of Vogue. To give an indication about the importance of the september issue: it weights 2 kilograms and has sold 13 million copies!

The movie shows Anna at the Vogue offices in Manhattan NY, but also follows Sienna Miller at a Vogue covershoot.

Take a look at the movie trialer:

The film will be in Dutch cinemas from 17 september 2009.

About princesses and witches

Last month my sister in law gave birth to two beautiful healthy twin baby girls. The proud dad of the girls (my brother) told me he expected me to be the coolest aunt ever, so now I have to find out what cool aunts do. I’ve already made arrangements with my brother about future shopping trips and taking them to concerts. But that’s all in the future, first of all an aunt needs to tell (bedtime) stories.  But when I was looking for a book with fairytales, I found out that most fairytales include helpless princesses who needs to be rescued by a prince on a white horse. Or the helpless princess scrubs the floors because an evil stepmom tells them so. Well, those princesses don’t seem like healthy role models for little girls to me. So I’ve decided to write my own sort of feministic fairytale book. It will contain princesses and witches and dragons, but this time the princess will be too smart to accept an apple from an strange old lady and she will fight the dragon herself……When I was looking for inspiration I found these beautiful pictures:  

  

Appropriate footwear for princesses.

Gwen as Alice (in Wonderland) and as the Queen of Hearts in the video for “What you’re waiting for”.

Snowwhite

Hansel and Gretel drawing.

John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs in an Alice in Wonderland themed fashion shoot, US Vogue december 2003. 

Pretty witch.

Little Red Ridinghood drawing. The wolf looks like a cute dog to me.

Same theme, better dogs, great location.

Snowwhite in the glass coffin. Seems more like an aquarium to me 😉

 Snowwhite and the seven dwarfs.

  Another snowwhite drawing.

Princess dress (strangely most dresses for princesses are white or blue, but never pink!)

 My favorite fairytale is The Little Mermaid…….such a tragic story!

And a fashionable Snowwhite.

Must have fashion books

 If Oprah can have a book club, so can I!

I usually look at the people on the street to get new inspiration about how to dress. But because of the cold winter everybody’s wearing coats, scarves and hats in black, grey, navy and brown. So in the winter I look at other “sources”: movies, music, blogs, magazines and books.

 These are my favorite fashion books of the past couple of years.

 

 

 In Vogue: The Illustrated History of the World’s Most Famous Fashion Magazine is the perfect book when you’re interested in the history of (American) fashion photography. The book takes a look at the (over) 100 year history of Vogue Magazine. It’s illustrated with hunderds of images from past Vogue editions and features the work of the top fashion photographers, like Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Steven Klein.

Personally I like the stories about the Editors in Chief and their influance on the magazine: Diana Vreeland (breaking all rules in the sixties and patting on make-up and cutting models’ hair herself), Grace Mirabella (more realistic approach in the seventies, using a black model on the cover for the first time) and Anna Wintour (she put jeans on the cover for the first time in the eighties, introduced the supermodels in the nineties and used celebrities as models).

In Vogue: The Illustrated History of the World’s Most Famous Fashion Magazine by Alberto Oliva and Notberto Angeletti.  Hardcover: 440 pages. Publisher: Rizzoli (September 22, 2006). Language: English. ISBN-10: 0847828646. ISBN-13: 978-0847828647.

 It’s Vintage, darling! contains everything you always wanted to know about vintage clothing. No pics, but lots and lots of practical information about “how to be a clothes connoisseur”: how to indicate quality, getting great fit, how to deal with flaws, where to shop, etc. The bible for vintage shopping! Contains contributions by Celia Birtwell, Lulu Guiness, Jemma Kidd and Pearl Lowe.

It’s Vintage, Darling! by Christa Weil. Hardcover: 416 pages. Publisher: Hodder And Stoughton Ltd. (September 30, 2006). Language: English. ISBN-10: 0340922753. ISBN-13: 978-0340922750.

 

 

Kate’s lovely. Her clothes are even better. Angela Buttolph collected all the photo’s with Kate wearing her best outfits: from her start as a 14 year old model, untill her recent eighties rock chick look. The book doesn’t just show her style, but also contains contributions by people like Marc Jacobs, Bella Freud, Katie Grand and Mario Sorrenti. 

Kate Moss Style by Angela Buttolp, hardcover: 208 pages, publisher: Century (November 11, 2008), language: English, ISBN-10: 184605429X, ISBN-13 978-18460542.

 

The Cheat Date Guide to Style shows you how to develop your own personal style. Are you a Prickly New York Art Dealer, a Fifties Pin-up, Glam Rocker, a Wino, Two Tone Boy or the Old Fashioned Governess? Lots of pics, interviews with style icons (Vivienne Westwood, Chloé Sevigny, Miss Piggy) and wild ideas. One tip, don’t judge this book by it’s (ugly) cover……….

 The Cheap Date Guide to Style by Kira Jolliffe and Bay Garnett, hardcover: 128 pages, publisher: Bantam Press (1 Mar 2007), Language: English, ISBN-10: 0593056949, ISBN-13: 978-0593056943.

 

 

And finally a book that makes me depressed: all these perfect clothes that I will never own/wear……. This book is about the British fashion brand Biba. It was the sixties/seventies version of todays Topshop.  Presented as an entire history of the company, the book showcases over 150 newly commissioned photographs of its costumes and focuses on one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of the label.  This book is beautifully presented with its decadent art deco & art nouveau imagery and eloquently captures Biba’s “rock and roll promise to live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse“.

For more info: www.bibaexperience.com

Biba: The Biba Experience by Alwyn W. Turner, hardcover: 240 pages, publisher: Antique Collectors’ Club Ltd (7 Sep 2004), language: English, ISBN-10: 1851494669 ISBN-13: 978-1851494668.