Choklit Chanteuse

Working Myself into A Fine Frenzy

2010-11-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

My love for stop-motion animation is no secret. Give me Švankmajer, give me Brothers Quay over rubbery slick CGI any day. Coraline and Fantastic Mister Fox make me positively quiver with glee. So it's no surprise that this music video for A Fine Frenzy stopped me in my tracks.

It's all too easy to see why I loved this brief little gem of a film, as it's also packed with imagery I adore... from paper umbrellas to tall ships, vintage sewing supplies to doll parts. And much to my delight, I found the singer / songwriter behind A Fine Frenzy, who stars in the video, is an impossibly luscious fiery-haired young vixen named Alison Sudol.

Her sophomore effort as A Fine Frenzy, Bomb in a Birdcage, is the second album I've discovered solely from my love of a music video, the first being the incredible Ramona Falls. The album is at once stirring and ethereal, layered and playful. Sudol's voice is something like a blend of Feist and Regina Spektor, her songs filled with glorious vocal acrobatics... ear~candy for a chanteuse like myself.

While rooting about for more images, I found that she had modeled a line of one-of-a-kind couture vintage-inspired headpieces from L.A. called Ban.do. Photographer Angela Kohler's work resulted in a series of jaw-droppingly gorgeous portraits that feel almost pre-Raphaelite in their dewy glory.

As it turns out, Angela Kolher and her partner Ithyle Griffiths also directed the "Lost Things" short film above that started me down this particular rabbit-hole. They used a similar style to win a contest to design a stop-motion ad for Amazon Kindle in 2009, which became very popular. But it's their work with Alison Sudol that strikes my fancy most.

Ah, the joy of lush new music, a pretty girl, and whimsical stop-motion animation. What more could I wish for?

Things That Please Me: Stereoscopic Vixens

2010-10-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

We interrupt this lull in postings with a scandalous report ~ I have discovered an amazingly expansive archive of naughty peep~show cards from Chicago's Columbian Exhibition of 1893.

What is it about the erotica of yesteryear that makes it so much more tantalizing than today's bare-it-all trashiness? Call me old-fashioned, but I find a demure hint of skin much more appealing than a spread-eagled centerfold... and real bodies with real skin and hair a LOT more alluring than the airbrushed and landing-strip-shaven models. The shy poses, the oft-ludicrous settings... I love it all.

As we are sadly lacking a stereoscopic viewing device to properly appreciate these three-dimensional treasures, my man took it upon himself to create a few animated gifs that combine the two images: behold the jittery loveliness.

There are no less than 57 pages of stereoscopic peepshow galleries, and a whole additional gallery of risque French Postcards. A few of the images are clearly more recent than Victorian times, but the vast majority are vintage naughty bits; truly an epic collection.

As my own body metamorphosizes to accommodate the little person growing within (only three more months!), I am ever more appreciative of the female form in all its incarnations ~ I am enchanted by what the body of a woman can do.

The combination of form and function is truly magnificent. And so I raise a toast for the sheer glory of this corporeal existence, and for these complicated systems of bones, blood and breath we call home.

In the Pudding Club

2010-08-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

It's finally time to come out of the closet... I'm knocked up. I've got a certifiable bun in the (rapidly-expanding) oven. After many years of being decidedly NOT ready to jump on the breeder bandwagon, we decided the time was right.

And so, I've spent the last four months in a haze of queasiness, violent mood swings, and heretofore un-imaginable exhaustion. Mind you, this hasn't abated my desire to hunt down all manner of new shopping temptations...

(Hemp & Velvet Booties by Bobka Baby)
So for the time being, I am putting away my corsets and bourbon, in favor of nappies and vitamins. I've been far more focused on important questions like "Is it possible to have an infant in your life and completely avoid *shudder* pastels?" and "How in the world will we decide whose surname this child will inherit?" and frequenting the brilliant alt parenting blog Offbeat Mama more often than my usual haunts of neo~Victorian and steamy blogs.

But fear not, my loves! I don't intend to turn this space into a venue to rant about swollen ankles and cloth vs. disposable diapers (tempting as those topics currently are). We're carrying on much as before ~ my love is already planning what kind of contraption he'll build for this little critter to ride in - no molded plastic stroller for us, no!

When I can muster the energy, I'll certainly still be posting here about all things fantastical and gorgeous. So I ask simply for your patience, dear readers, as I embark on this new kind of adventure!

The Miracle of Mystimation

2010-08-16T17:55:00.001-07:00

The lovely and talented Else, proprietress of Latent Twist Spatterdashery, introduced me to a most enchanting film a few nights ago: Vynález zkázy, a.k.a The Deadly Invention, a.k.a. The Fabulous World of Jules Verne.

Now I'm no stranger to Czech animation; given my love of puppets, stop-motion, and surrealism, it's unsurprising that Jan Švankmajer is among my favorite filmmakers, and I've seen my fair share of others, from Jiří Trnka to Jiří Barta. But I'm sad to admit I had never heard of Karel Zeman, who is considered to be one of the fathers of the genre.

This film, released in 1958, was absolutely spellbinding. Zeman artfully blends live actors with sets painted to look like Victorian woodcut engravings, stop-motion animation, miniatures, and special effects to create a whimsical world like none I've ever seen. Indeed, the posters for the American release sell it as "The First Motion Picture Produced in the Magic-Image Miracle of Mysti-mation!"

The resulting hybrid of real actors adventuring in a two-dimensional world is just incredible. And as if the visual effects and textures alone weren't magic enough, the story is filled with fantastical mechanical wonders: pedal-powered blimps piloted through the skies, four-legged mechanical underwater fighting machines, a steam-powered villain's lair inside a volcano, and hand-crank picture-wheel projectors.

Apparently this film was shown frequently on television in the sixties, along with another of Zeman's features, on Baron Munchausen (!) ~ and its influence is clear. Terry Gilliam's early animations come to mind immediately, and I am also reminded of the recent Ramona Falls video that I so adored. But I truly can't begin to describe the wonders to be seen in this film, I simply urge you to find and watch it.

It can be found in parts on YouTube, and indeed, one can even buy it on DVD, although it doesn't appear to be getting the Criterion-Collection-treatment it so richly deserves. You can even track down a making-of documentary about Zeman's special effects. As for me, I'm off to track down every other film Karel Zeman made, to devour them with relish.

August Bradley's Haunting Imagination

2010-08-07T15:41:00.000-07:00

I happened upon this delightful series of images from the 2008 Hasselblad Masters book by fashion photographer August Bradley while poking about on DeviantArt a while back.

Admittedly, the first one caught my eye because I recognized Kojii, one of the models from the single season of Project Runway I indulged in watching (it was only for Louise Black, really!), but I was intrigued. I loved Bradley's painterly use of light and color, and the implied drama in the dreamlike pictures.

You can find a number of lovely interviews with him on the web ~ I particularly enjoyed this one, A Trick of the Light. With most of my favorite photographers, it's the ability to hint at a story behind the scene that captures my heart, and Bradley is adept at making the viewer feel like he's frozen a fable in time.

While the world of high fashion and its overly made-up, impossibly lanky women will always feel a bit alienating to me, I can't help but be charmed by the oddity of this series, the Depression-era-circus-meets-post-apocalyptic-fairytale mood.

The faux ravens, the decaying props, the unusual men mixed in with the leggy models... fine. I'll bite. I even found a very brief documentary on the project which reveals a bit of what goes on behind the scenes.

It seemed like a fitting month to feature this particular artist. So carry on, August Bradley, with your fantastical haunting visions. I look forward to seeing more of what comes out of your imagination.

CoutureLust: Steam Trunk Couture

2010-07-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

I'm beside myself with excitement to bring you the latest CoutureLust profile ~ it's been some time in the making. Meet Juniper Lindquist Fletcher, who along with her husband Christian Fletcher, brings us Steam Trunk Couture!

(Juniper and Christian in 2007 / Photo: Derick Ion)
I've long been enamoured of Juniper and Christian's excellent design-work ~ the attention to detail, perfect blend of modern tribal circus sensibility with vintage charm... every piece of theirs I've seen is glorious.

(Steam Punk Gown / Model: Ashley Knight / Photo: Sequoia Emmanuelle)
Juniper and Christian are currently hard at work on their latest creation... a baby, due any day now. Finger crossed that line of steamy baby-wear is in the works! And there are already heart-poundingly hot designs for men in their line ~ seen gracing the likes of Sidecar Tommy of Beats Antique.

(Sidecar Tommy in Steam Trunk / Photo: Derick Ion)
Without further ado, the lovely Ms. Juniper.

How would you describe yourself and your style of work?

I consider myself a renaissance woman. Whether it is costume & clothing or painting & sculpting, I love the process of manifesting dreams into this plane of reality. These days with Steam Trunk at the forefront of my creative wiles, I design garments and accessories that embody facets of Victorian and Retro fashion, yet are modern and street smart for today’s fast times. Steam Trunk fashion can be noted as “Antique street-wear”.

(Model: Ukushu Kazakova / Photo: Sequoia Emmanuelle)
Where do you find inspiration?

Fortunately all through my life, artists have surrounded me and craftspeople that support the belief that we are capable of creating anything our minds can dream up. Whimsical moments, vintage artifacts, beautiful textiles and the divine patterns of nature inspire me.

What do you do besides design amazing clothes?

I am also an illustrator, painter, costume maker, web/graphic designer, body modification artist and soon-to-be-mother!

(Model: Lucid Dawn / Photo: Derick Ion)
What are three things that please you the most in the world?

Three things that please me the most in this world are: the exploration of consciousness, creating with my own hands, and reveling in the love of my husband and community.

How did you get your start making clothes?

I began making clothes for dolls and myself through experimentation and the help of my mother who is also a seamstress. After years of private tailoring, making costumes and having a small hand made line in Canada; I came to the USA to be with the love of my life, Christian. Together we began designing a vision for Steam Trunk in 2007 and produced small numbers of unique garments, which were sold at fashion events and a few local stores. In the years to follow, we were given great support through our community and also formed with the Five and Diamond Collective, who has been a strong factor in our growth as a company.

What piece of work are you most proud of?

I am most proud of my “Venus” Gown, which is a hand detailed couture silk and taffeta piece. This is a piece from a limited collection created in collaboration with Chrystie Cappelli and my husband Christian for the most recent fashion show we presented at the W Hotel in SF.

Where can we find your line?

Our line can be found at:

Five and Diamond
San Francisco, CA

Ceiba
San Francisco, CA

The Congregation Of The Forgotten Saints
Los Angeles, CA

Gold Bug
Pasadena, CA

Dark Garden Corsetry & Couture
San Francisco, CA

Delicious Boutique
Philadelphia, PA

Morning Glory
Burlingame, CA

Gothic Renaissance
New York, NY

La France
Tampa, FL

CANADA

Belle et Rebelle
Montreal, QC, Canada

Sanctuary Curio Shoppe
Edmonton, AB, Canada

Bia Boro
Nelson, BC, Canada

Thanks so much, lovely Juniper, for doing this interview despite the impending birth of your wee one... can't wait to hear about your further adventures!

Non-Stop Shenanigans from Jeunet

2010-07-06T19:31:00.000-07:00

I've only ever adored anything that was born in the imagination of French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. From the seedy dark delights of Delicatessen to the whimsical romantic giddiness of Amelie, Jeunet never fails to delight me. So it was a given that I'd fall for his newest film, Micmacs à Tire-Larigot, a phrase impossible to translate, but roughly meaning "non-stop shenanigans".

Like much of his work, the world created in this film is a saturated one, filled with magical realism and exaggerated caricatures. Micmacs is an unabashedly silly romp liberally dusted with joyful subversion, with an improbable plot about arms dealers getting come-uppance from a merry band of misfits.

Jeunet masterfully weaves his fairy-tale to feel like found-object assemblage art ~ visually enchanting, a finished piece that is so much more than the sum of its junkyard parts. The soundtrack is also lovingly chosen to win my heart, with a distinctive gypsy jazz feel sprinkled with mechanical sounds that add quirk and flavor.

Like one long Rube-Goldberg-esque sequence of related events, the film comes together perfectly in the end. Although nothing can ever top the glory of City of Lost Children, which consistently makes my top ten movies of all time list, I'd highly recommend this one to anyone who likes films of marauding and merriment. And who doesn't, really?

Saucy Swimwear for Solstice

2010-06-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

O beloved readers, I have been utterly remiss in my long absence... rest assured I have a good reason, which will soon be revealed. In the meantime, my band, Baby Seal Club, has been in full gigging and recording mode. We have two shows coming up with watery themes: a giant warehouse party called Sand by the Ton and the Rivertown Revival.

All this nautical goodness has caused us to decide we need a full suite of turn-of-the-century-beach-wear to don for these gigs, and so our research for inspiration has commenced. We unearthed so many great images I had to share, especially on this, the first day of summer.

I just adore the theatricality of these suits. The Victorians wore wool suits that covered them almost completely ~ knickers, puff-sleeved dresses, stockings, and all. You can find more delightful pictures and history here. Things lightened up considerably in the 1920's.

Having no desire to squeeze into a modern bikini bottom myself, I rather like the idea of swimming-bloomers. And ah, the utilitarian silliness of the "bathing machine" ~ those stripey booths for changing from your long woolen petticoats into your long woolen swimsuit and bathing-cape.

And then there's the circus mood of these "Fancy Bather" cigarette trading cards. It appears that stripes and bathing suits go together... And it would seem parasols, oversized bows, and leg-ribbons are a must.

Stripes are de rigueur for the gents as well... this rather serious beefcake of a chap looks like his wool may be chafing his tender bits.

We are fortunate to have the help of our incredibly talented artist friend Else Olava to put together these outfits ~ she spent all weekend sketching madly as the band began recording our very first album. So we shall certainly see what comes of it all. Happy longest day of the year!

Chimera and Charm: The Art of Lesley Reppeteaux

2010-05-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

I am captivated by imagery that tells a story. So I was quite transfixed when I happened upon the work of Lesley Reppeteaux ~ dark and dreamy paintings of fairytale characters with secrets in their solemn eyes.

(Phantom Limb, 2009)
And it's the eyes that are most distinctive and compelling in Reppeteaux's images ~ the exaggerated ovals make her women look sorrowful, as if filled with unbearable knowledge they cannot un-know. Often half-creature and half-woman, her lovelies are frequently trapped in some borderland between freedom and captivity, between innocence and experience.

(Saline, The Saltwater Queen, 2008)
In a recent show at Thinkspace in LA, Reppeteaux hung 22 paintings that told the tragic Greek myth of Persephone and Hades. It's a perfect tale for her sensibilities ~ surrounded by lotus flowers and pomegranate motifs, her pale maiden of the underworld wears pinstriped stockings.

(The Scent of Flowers Filled the Air, 2010)
I found this apt description from her: "My work reads like painted fables filled with strange characters telling sordid stories. I blend the worlds of literature and fantasy to create a peculiar world where pouty-lipped vixens and melancholy beauty resides, striking a balance between the lovely and bizarre, creating paintings with chimera and charm."

(A Hush Fell Over the Meadow, 2008)
Her serpentine lines are Art Nouveau-inspired, her details lyrical in their unfolding of the songs of these forgotten heroines. She is a woman of many talents ~ some of her recent works include glass mosaic frames that become part of the artwork, and she is also an accomplished comic book artist. I am entranced by her vision.

(Nest, 2009)
To my dismay, there does not seem to be a comprehensive gallery of Lesley's work online ~ her own website features only currently available works, and there are a smattering of galleries with small collections.

(The Soothsayers Song, 2007)
Still, you may find her through her website, and her blog, cheerfully sub-headed "the happily out-of-date adventures of Lesley." There is also a good interview with her here, and a lovely video on YouTube that pairs her work with a PJ Harvey song. I will surely be keeping an eye out for more painted fables from her...

Scents and Sensibility

2010-05-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

I am, most decidedly, not a wearer of scents. I am the kind that runs through the perfume section of the department store holding my breath, the kind that finds cologne abhorrent, the kind that can't even use scented lotions. And yet, the emotional potential of the sense of smell, and the vivid language that describes it, draws me in.

{Photo: Kevin McKinney / Things in Jars: For Strange Women}
As Diane Ackerman says in A Natural History of the Senses, "To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit." And so, a treatise on perfume.

{Alphonse Mucha, Lance Parfum "Rodo" lithograph, 1896}
The delightfully macabre German novel "Perfume: Story of a Murderer", which then became a captivating film, was endlessly fascinating to me. The tale is not for the weak-hearted; filled with gruesome descriptions and disturbing cruelty, it nonetheless features some of the most stunning passages I've ever read. I couldn't imagine how such a strange book could translate well to the screen, but director Tom Twyker brought it to vibrant life in all its bizarre glory.

The last issue of Coilhouse magazine had an interview with Christopher Brosius, who runs Brooklyn scent gallery CB I Hate Perfume, and has been called "the Willy Wonka of Perfume." The CB Manifesto sums up my feelings on perfume perfectly: "A lazy and inelegant concession to fashionable ego / Too often a substitute for true allure and style / An arrogant slap in the face from across the room..." Brosius escapes such trespass by creating the purest of accords, the most elemental single-note scents, that he combines to make his concoctions.

And then there's the sheer beauty of For Strange Women ~ almost enough to tempt me into giving scent-wearing another chance. Like Brosius, Jill McKeever is a different kind of perfume-maker ~ independent, innovative, and terribly strange. Scents like "Sweet Androgyny" and "Decadence and Debauchery", her breathtaking imagery, and packaging that hearkens back to an Edwardian apothecary are all incredibly appealing to me. Absinthe Lip Balm, enough said.

{Photo: Kevin McKinney / Perfume: For Strange Women}
In her Kansas City lab, Jill uses natural essential oils and plant absolutes to fragrance her goods and tinctures ~ which include lip balms, bath salts, and perfume oils. She "combines antiquated styles with pagan sensibilities" to make her lavish potions, and describes how the different scents blend like harmonies to create the music of the perfume.

{Photo: Kevin McKinney / Bath Salts: For Strange Women}
I am also intrigued by the quirkiness of alt perfume house Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs, with their Neil-Gaiman-novel-themed collections and full moon open houses. Perfumer Elizabeth Moriarty, who was (so fittingly) trained by a Voodoo practitioner in New Orleans, certainly has a nose for the odd and enticing. In an LA Weekly article, she says she loves “using scent for atmospheric purposes, for triggering Proustian memories and for inspiring emotion. Scent is such an underrated sense, and perfumery is such an underrated art.”

{Photo: Kevin McKinney / Perfume: For Strange Women}
I am most pleased that there are perfume-makers out there looking at scent in a new way. When done right, a scent can evoke a feeling, a location, a time, a person... and transport us instantly back to that emotional place via our most basic chemistry. So what aromatically moves you?

Things That Please Me: Good Bourbon

2010-04-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

Having been on a self~imposed dry spell that has thus far lasted almost three months, I thought now would be a perfect time for an ode to my libation of choice ~ bourbon.

Though I'll happily down the more common top-shelf stand-bys like Maker's and Bulleit, it's when the craft labels start pouring that I really get feverish. Noah's Mill and Woodford Reserve are favorites, though in researching this post I realized many of my loved ones are the small-batch labels of larger breweries - Knob Creek, Basil Hayden and Booker's are all owned by (shudder) Jim Beam, and Buffalo Trace makes Elmer T. Lee and Hancock's Reserve.

Considering my deep and abiding love of bourbon, it's positively shameful that I have yet to visit San Francisco speakeasy Bourbon and Branch, known for its period decor and password-only-entry.

It's also a mystery why I do not yet own one of these awesome vintage decanter tag bourbon necklaces I've been drooling over for years, by Dust Design Co. on Etsy.

If it must be mixed, my very favorite libation is a whiskey old-fashioned ~ but only the version made by our local country bar, the Underwood, which involves Guinness-marinated organic bing cherries ~ none of those unholy-red maraschinos. And on a cold night I might be convinced of a bourbon toddy...

But truly, I'm a simple woman. Straight-up, no ice please, that's my drink. O sweet brown medicine, though we are apart right now, we shall one day be together again, and once again your sinfully rich toffee-kissed balm will soothe my savage soul.

The Candy~Colored Glory of 666 Photography

2010-04-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

What better occasion than a new Facebook fan page and an upcoming large-format book to celebrate the amazing artistry of 666 Photography?

The first image I discovered by Austin photographer Gayla Partridge was a portrait of a petulant corseted beauty holding a pygmy goat. I was new to the world of neo-Victorian costuming and had stumbled upon the picture while looking at the fabulous hats of Topsy Turvy Design. I was instantly besotted.

{Photo: Gayla Partridge / Makeup: Lisa Naeyaert / Model: Kayleigh / Hat: Topsy Turvy}
Burrowing into the colorful website of 666, I found pinup girls and drama queens, harlots and virgins, burlesque beauties and high concept art. Gayla makes all her own props and often hand-paints her backdrops, which gives the sets a timeless tintype feel.

{Wardrobe/Photo: Gayla Partridge / Makeup: Lisa Naeyaert / Model: Ali}
Like pages from a story-book, her photos speak of stolen moments and hidden treasures, epic display windows in the most delectable shop ever.

{Photo: Gayla Partridge / Makeup: Lisa Naeyaert / Model: Jenovia / Fascinator: Topsy Turvy}
Gayla delights in technicolor gloss and vintage va-va-voom. Truly, you have to love an artist who constructs five-foot mushrooms for her shoots and recreates period sets and moods ~ but with a campy modern twist.

{Wardrobe/Photo: Gayla Partridge / Makeup: Lisa Naeyaert / Model: Kalani Kokonuts}
Most recently, her breathtaking series of "Muertos" photographs, with longtime collaborator Lisa Naeyaert as the model and make-up artist, graced the glossy pages of my beloved Coilhouse.

{Wardrobe/Hair/Photo: Gayla Partridge / Model/Makeup: Lisa Naeyaert}
Gayla's love of the female form is clear, and it must be as joyful an experience to model for her as it is to behold the images. Peek behind the scenes in a recent interview with Gayla from Austin's Rare Magazine.

{Wardrobe/Photo: Gayla Partridge / Makeup: Lisa Naeyaert / Model: Jenovia}
See more of Gayla's delicious pictures and keep up with her on her blog, her mySpace page, or Twitter, as well as her website and new FB page.

Bonus temptation: the cephalopod-lovers won't be able to resist clicking this link to see Gayla's perfectly odd portrait of a little girl on the Cephalopod Tea Party blog...

Noble Beast, Indeed

2010-04-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

I fall in love with some albums the same way I fall in love with people... immediately, with abandon, and with all my heart. And I've got a serious crush on Andrew Bird's 2009 release, Noble Bird.

I've known of the quirky Chicago song-crafter for quite some time, but was most familiar with his early music, as a collaborator with the great Squirrel Nut Zippers and then with his genre-confounding outfit Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. His solo work is a departure from the old-timey jazzy stuff, and wanders instead to shoegazing indie, but is just as pleasing.

An accomplished classical violinist trained from the age of four, he seems equally at home juggling four instruments and a loop pedal as he is with his trademark astonishingly lovely whistling. He often collaborates with fanciful artists for his album covers and tour posters ~ this one by Diana Sudyka is particularly incredible, and she has prints in her Etsy shop.

A chameleon of a songmaster, Bird's lyrics tend towards the nonsensical, chosen more for poetic aural cartwheels than meaning. Extra points for penning lyrics like this ~ "No peace in the valleys, malarial alleys, where the kittens have pleurisy... Donning our goggles, Valerian ogles, to see microscopically." In this video, he manages to conjure up an amazing maelstrom of swirling sounds by himself, in a church.

On the amazing resource Internet Archive, a simple search for Andrew Bird yields audio from more than a dozen live shows, interviews, and more. I highly recommend pursuing them, and letting Mr. Bird take you on an audio journey.

I mean, the man wears stripey socks in his press photos. How can I not adore him?

La Fée Verte

2010-03-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

The poet in his attic room paces by the dim glow of the oil lamp, fevered ~ again he is walking the thin line between genius and madness, waiting for his muse, a faceted goblet of potent green liquid in his pale hand.

But La Fée Verte is a capricious and cruel mistress ~ she murmurs promises of glorious lucid visions in your ear... but then overwhelms her acolytes with feverish passion for ever more until one sip too many ~ and she is gone in a vaporous flurry, leaving them muddled and weak. Still, the poet drinks… and dreams…

I am beamingly proud to introduce my newest design ~ Absinthe, with model shots by the brilliant Revel of Aesthetic Alchemy. Every time I look at this photo-set I fall in love again ~ the lighting, the mood, the grace and glorious beauty of the model, Ariel Collins...

I've had this one dreamed up for quite some time. In fact, the whole concept of Adornments for Tarts was born from an absinthe-themed gown ~ I made it for myself, and then needed really spectacular, unusual accessories to go with it... so I invented them. And thus it's extra special to me that I was able to use that very gown in these phenomenal images.

Some other bits and bobs of news: my Web site now has a Facebook "share" feature on nearly every page, courtesy of my impossibly talented Web designer husband, of Sassy Monkey Media, so you may easily share links to your favorite adornments. There's also a new interview with me on the lovely Gale's Tattered Rouge blog, where more details of the Absinthe gown story are revealed.

So... drive them mad in the Absinthe adornments, now available in my Etsy shop.

Tarts Love Dollymops

2010-03-23T23:01:00.000-07:00

Among the many lovely new things to be discovered at the Nova Albion Steampunk Convention where I was vending a few weekends ago, there was one towering standout, in my estimation: the new steamily-themed collection, from corsetier nonpareil Dark Garden ~ Dollymop Designs.

This glorious new line was unleashed upon a reverent crowd in a fashion show leaning more to performance art than catwalk. A parade of proud and ravishing creatures ~ gorgeous women, dashing men, and one capering child ~ made their way through the crowd in a sort of serpentine formal promenade.

And then, to various snippets of delightful sepia-chord style music, they arranged themselves into playful tableaux, in pairs, triplets, and quartets, as if they were allowing us a glimpse of an elaborate pageant. The effect was nothing short of breathtaking.

The vision of Dark Garden seamstress Kalico Delafey, the Dollymop collection was simply stunning on every facet. The muted tones of browns, khakis, blacks and grays made one feel one was looking upon antique portraits.

The whisper of military stylings, along with the structure of the corsets, lent a regal air to the models, tempered by elegant touches like feathered hats, ruffles, and furs. And there were skirts with big pockets!

The designer describes the line thus ~ "Inspired by the natural world, Dollymop designs are reminiscent of a bygone era with a whimsical nod to the subversively romantic." Dollymop also happens to be Victorian slang for an amateur lady of the night... not terribly far off from a tart, I'd say... which might have accounted for my instant and unfaltering adoration of the line.

See more images of Dollymop Designs here, including some from the very fashion show I attended... All lovely images on this post used with kind permission from photographer jules cisek, taken at various shows and events.

Pretty and Dirty Together ~ Scott Radke

2010-03-12T23:32:00.000-08:00

I cannot recall what Interwebs chase led me to the work of artist Scott Radke, but I am absolutely transfixed. His sculptures are creatures from another reality, unraveling strange stories to enchant me.

(Tutu #1, 2009)
It's the faces that are most striking. With the most subtle hint of a crease, a sideways glance, a slight turn of the mouth, Radke creates poignantly expressive characters.

(Untitled Egg, 2009)
I am reminded of the human-faced sphinxes of MirrorMask, and also a bizarre Dreamcast video game called Seaman that obsessed my husband for some time, where one is obliged to care for a creepy half-fish-half-man. What is it about animals with human faces that makes them both so compelling and so disturbing?

(Octopus, 2010)

Like the beasts in Spike Jonze's interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are, Radke's creations embody the most raw of feelings, the very roots of emotion. Angst, frustration, boredom, jealousy, bliss... all play out in the textures of their features.

(Swan #40, 2009)
What are their stories? What has befallen these fragile creatures, with their stirring human-like faces and organic beastly forms? What gives them such sturm und drang, such beautiful fragility?

(Hats #3, 2009)
I read a 2006 interview with Radke where, when asked where he got his inspiration from, he replied, "something pretty and dirty together," and I understood. His creatures are the perfect marriage of both the lovely and the ugly, the tragic and the comic, the playful and the serious.

(Koi #1, 2009)
See more of Radke's work on his Livejournal blog, Flickr stream, and his Web site.

Dark Grace: The Photography of Revel

2010-03-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

I have just sent off my Absinthe set of adornments to the stunningly brilliant Revel to be photographed. I discovered Revel while doing the CoutureLust feature on Blasphemina's Closet, and upon visiting her web site, Aesthetic Alchemy, I was smitten.

{Odalisque Precieuse by Aesthetic Alchemy / Wardrobe: HMS Latex / Model: Revel}
I am all aflutter with anticipation at what the results of this endeavor will be. Revel's vision is tantalizing ~ a world of dark and capricious creatures, equal parts fetish wickedness and Lolita innocence.

{White Rabbit by Aesthetic Alchemy / Model: Lauren WK}
Her styling is dangerously bold, with splashes of color and textures seemingly at odds... leather and silk, velvet and latex.

{Bronzed by Aesthetic Alchemy / Wardrobe: HMS Latex / Model: Jessamyne}
Revel meticulously builds and collects all of her props and sets, conceiving each image as a story to unfold and capture ~ the gloss of high fashion meets the curious sinister side.

{Blackbird by Aesthetic Alchemy / Wardrobe: Retroscope Fashions / Model: Revel}
Many of Revel's images are self-portraits, which adds to the intrigue. Her haunting gaze and lustrous pale skin are otherworldly, like a creature out of time, out of the ravages of reality.

{Strangeling by Aesthetic Alchemy / Model: Revel}
Indeed, I was struck by a quote I saw in one of Revel's online profiles, and how aptly it describes her dreamy oeuvre... from the incorrigible Oscar Wilde: It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

{Nouveau by Aesthetic Alchemy / Wardrobe: Blasphemina's Closet / Model: Ariel}
I'm thrilled to be able to have Revel take some of my treasures away from the sordid perils of actual existence ~ and into her rich imagination.

CoutureLust: Quaintrelle Couture

2010-02-24T14:41:00.000-08:00

One of the glories of the Edwardian Ball is meeting brilliant like-minded people... such as the stunning and incredibly talented Calamity Lulu of Quaintrelle Couture, who I lured to my booth with 80% dark chocolate.

(Lulu in Tudor Dress by Quaintrelle / Photo by Mr. Nightshade)
And what, you will ask, is a quaintrelle? On her Web site, Lulu quotes Wikipedia: a woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and the cultivation of Life’s pleasures... Dear readers, imagine my pleasure upon finding that a word existed that so splendidly summed up my tendencies! I immediately knew Lulu was a woman after my own heart, and was delighted that she agreed to share some more about her work here.

(Eva in Can-Can ensemble by Quaintrelle / Photo by Mr. Nightshade)
How would you describe yourself and your style of work?

Frippery as philosophy. Fabric-based alchemy without any gold -- not in the sense of money or colour, but rather, the narrow mindset of boiling down elements for a highly specific and defined objective. In alchemy they say the Masterwork is achieved only when the alchemist forgets about gold and loses himself and his aim in the purification process. When I design, I usually don't have any picture in my head when I put the pencil to paper, and I try not to get caught up doing one style--I don't want to make variations of the same piece over and over again, so my "style" is chameleonic and as mercurial as I am. Fashion for shapeshifters.

(Mr. Nightshade in Waistcoat by Quaintrelle / Photo by Audrey Penven)
Where do you find inspiration?

The usual suspects: history, architecture, the human form, but I'd say my number one inspiration is the material itself. I frequently feel like fabric has an intent of its own, as if it knows what it wants to be when it grows up, so I try to listen to its little whispers. (I see fabric fulfilling its destiny in Adornments for Tarts, so I think you intuitively do this too!)

What do you do besides design amazing clothes?

Ballroom dance, burlesque, travel, psychological treatises, study foreign languages.

(Lulu in Headpiece by Quaintrelle / Photo by Mr. Nightshade)
What are three things that please you the most in the world, and why?

Fabric. I'm a sensual hedonist, and I can't even begin to explain the joy of a beautiful silk, velvet, wool, or linen on skin. A truly perverted fabricphile, I even like to smell it. The smell of silk: mmm.

Books and intellectually stimulating conversations, because I am a nerd. A big, fancy nerd.

I lack a precise word for the third, and perhaps most significant, thing that pleases me (undoubtedly the Germans have the perfect one). Art, perhaps, because it involves creation; and also the kind of passion that leads to meticulous attention to detail and perfection of one's craft; or love, because it has to do with developing one's sense of joy without root in attachment to stagnant things; or learning, perhaps, because it involves the evolution of the mind... that's it: I'll use Evolution. Nothing pleases me more in this world than evolution -- feeling myself evolve and seeing others evolve.

(Detail of Can-Can Corset by Quaintrelle / Photo by Mr. Nightshade)
How did you get your start making clothes?

I was born a quaintrelle. From the time I could hold a crayon, I would almost exclusively draw women in fancy dresses, and would always design some monstrously complicated costume for Halloween months in advance and give it to my mother, an accomplished seamstress herself, to make for me. She'd take my drawing and move a seam somewhere more convenient, and I'd take the drawing and move the seam right back, so she decided I should learn myself pretty early on. I had my first machine -- a child's Singer with only one function -- at the age of six, and being an independent little chit, I worked things out more or less for myself over the years.

(Detail of Tudor Headpiece by Quaintrelle / Photo by Mr. Nightshade)

What piece of work are you most proud of?

I'm a ghastly perfectionist, so I always feel like my work could be better! I am a little proud of the stomacher I made for my silk mantua -- raw silk, gathered in three rows, embellished with organza trim of a delicate fawn colour (though it looks rather pink in the photo), beaded all over and with cording couched with decorative crosses in silver embroidery floss. On the mantua, which is as lovely sage green with a baroque acanthus print in gold, it has a look that's both opulent and organic.

(Detail of Tudor Mantua Stomacher by Quaintrelle)
Where can we find your line?

For the moment, exclusively through my website by commission. I haven't quite been won over to the idea of prêt-à-porter, since absolutely nothing makes someone feel as luxuriously well-dressed as a custom-tailored garment, but I'd like to offer at least ready jewelery or accessories on my website -- once I find time to set it all up!
...

Thank you, Lulu, for sharing your inspiring vision and your delectable creations... and this quaintrelle is looking forward to seeing more from you!

Things That Please Me: Arts & Crafts Wallpapers

2010-02-09T23:02:00.000-08:00

I must confess that I am a hoarder of fine bits of paper. I am reminded of this each Valentine's Day, as I pull out my many bins full of scraps to make cards. I love textured paper, brightly colored hand-made paper, and translucent vellum ~ but most of all I love patterned paper.

(Owl by Charles Frances Annesley Voysey, 1898)
So imagine my delight when I found a trove of reproduction wallpapers online at Trustworth Studios, which sent me down a rabbit-hole searching for the original illustrations. I am quite sure that could I afford to, I would be squirreling away rolls and rolls of it. Oh, such complex valentines I would make, with the rich and intricate repeating patterns!

(The Demon by Charles Frances Annesley Voysey, 1889)
I have always loved the style and sentiment of the Arts and Crafts movement ~ the modern steampunk movement has borrowed much of that doctrine, certainly in the appreciation for the finely crafted and the hand-made. While it's the organic curves and sensuality of Art Nouveau that inspire me most, there's something glorious in the simplicity and utility of Arts and Crafts that is dear to me as well, and in some designs, as the ones here, the line between the two is blurred.

(Seahorses by Charles Frances Annesley Voysey, 1887)
Most of these wallpaper designs are by British architect C.F.A. Voysey, who had an eye for whimsy and playfulness that I find irresistible. In his late career, Voysey focused almost completely on fanciful designs for children's nurseries.

(I Love Little Pussy by Charles Frances Annesley Voysey, 1898)
Design movements aside, I could just lose myself in the worlds of these papers, like this seemingly odd and lovely combination by French designer M.P. Verneuil, of bats and poppies ~ which were both motifs used to suggest altered states of consciousness...

(Bat and Poppy by Maurice Pillard Verneuil, 1897)
Learn more at The Textile Blog or the Arts and Crafts Home.

Frolicking in the Evil Garden

2010-02-02T21:28:00.001-08:00

It already feels far away now, but the Edwardian Ball was, of course, absolutely splendid. This year's theme, The Evil Garden, invited escapades involving indoor croquet and all manner of strange foliage.

It's always a pleasure to see the usual bands of miscreants - the Golden Mean Snail Car crew, the merry pranksters of the Neverwas Haul, Fou Fou Ha, and Kinetic Steam Works...

The Adornments for Tarts booth was much~visited, and copious quantities of both good bourbon and dark chocolate were consumed, as is only appropriate. I had a lovely time sharing my space with Industrial Fairytale, and some plans for collaboration were concocted...

And I was so pleased to be assisted by my dear Stache, who took his handlebars to a new level for the occasion.

(Picture by Mr. Nightshade)
Perhaps my favorite part of the weekend, besides the incredible costume~watching, was connecting with all the other artisans with an eye for opulence and detail. The vendor rooms were a glory to behold. I was mesmerized by the work of Rachel of Rubyblackbird ~ her meticulous processes, the intricate embroidery, and the marriage of soft textile arts with metallurgy won my heart.

(Picture by Mr. Nightshade, actually from 2009, shhh!)
She was booth-sharing with lovely Rachael of Nouveau Motley, who had a display of incredibly gorgeous assemblage jewelry. I was also thrilled to meet Tricia of House of Nines Design and see her most delightful hand-crafted hats in person... one could find her hats perching jauntily on the heads of many an attendee and performer, and Tricia herself looked impeccably fabulous.

(Picture by Lbc42)
Having the vendors downstairs from the stages caused me to miss much of the entertainment, but I did manage to sneak away for a few songs from my beloved Vagabond Opera. I hear that Blaze and David of Flynn Creek Circus put on an incredible double-trapeze act... and I was pleased I was able to see Justin, the event's incomparable producer, perform with Vau de Vire Society and his band Rosin Coven for a few mad and wonderful songs.

(Picture by Mr. Nightshade)
The whole weekend was a blurry bliss, if a wee bit exhausting. In the few precious moments of quiet, I kept myself entertained with handwork... and I have a never~ending supply of that.

(Picture by Heather Wakefield)
If you're intrigued and want more imagery, the best place is Mr. Nightshade's gallery on The Blight. And now, to finish a few custom orders and prepare for the next event... the Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition in March!

All is Revealed...

2010-01-24T23:25:00.000-08:00

First, a heart~felt thank you to everyone who joined in and helped me spread the word about the Raffle of Revealing Riches last week. As promised, I used Random.org to pull the winners tonight for the prizes we unlocked... and drum-roll please...

Sewicked is the winner of TotusMel's lovely tatted bracelet... and SquadratoMagico wins the $33 gift certificate! And although we didn't get quite to sixty-six entrants, we did make forty-four altogether, so I'd like to add a $44 gift certificate because I was so impressed by the sheer enthusiasm of those who did enter... and that winner is Emi Ramsey!

Thanks again for leaving such lovely comments. It was truly splendid to hear from so many of you ~ from all over the country and beyond.

Soon, a full report on the magnificent Edwardian Ball that I just arrived home from ~ which was incredible but exhausting... but first, rest.

The Raffle of Revealing Riches!

2010-01-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

This, my dearests, is my one-hundredth blog post. And to celebrate, I'd like to host a giveaway, to say thank you for being such brilliant supporters of my whimsy and my work.

I'm borrowing the rules shamelessly from the lovely TotusMel's tiered giveaway that many of you are familiar with. Indeed, TotusMel herself has kindly contributed the very first prize... an elegant Quadra Bracelet!

And here's the revealing part ~ if we reach 33 new individual entries, a $33 gift certificate to my shop will be added to the prizes ~ suitable for purchasing any style of earrings or a pair of Zephyr sleeve garters in your choice of color.

If we reach 66 entrants, a $66 gift certificate... and if, by some chance, we hit the magical zenith of 99 individuals entering, I shall offer up $99. These gift certificates can be used for smaller treasures, or put towards anything in the shop ~ a pair of cuffs or a a beaded silk collar.

So here are your various pursuits to enter my Raffle of Revealing Riches:

1. Visit my Etsy shop or the Adornments for Tarts Web site, and leave a comment here telling me which design is your favorite.

2. If you're not already a follower of this blog, click here to become one, and let me know about it in the comments.

3. Post a link to this contest to your choice of social network or your own blog ~ as many as you like ~ and leave a link to said post in the comments here. While you're there, follow me on Twitter, or fan me on Facebook, if you haven't already.

Each of the above pursuits completed grants you one golden (virtual) raffle ticket... you can put several entries into one comment if you wish. Your comment profile must include contact information ~ if it doesn't, be sure to leave a valid email address in your comment, or your entry is void. The winners will be drawn by random number generator on January 24th.

Multiple entries by a single person do not count towards unlocking the treasures, but most certainly increase your chances of winning something lovely by giving you more virtual raffle tickets...

So if you've been reading along quietly, now is the time to speak out! Fare thee well, sweetlings, let's get this raffle rolling!

New Year, New Life

2010-01-04T19:45:00.000-08:00

I am ever so pleased to share the news that the turning of the year brought with it a little addition to our family ~ my new niece. After a jaw-droppingly long and challenging labor, my beautiful sister and her husband welcomed their new daughter to the world.

It was an incredibly emotional event for us all, not only the first baby in my generation for our family, but a terrifying and gorgeous reminder of both the tenuousness and the vitality of life.

And when the little one was finally (finally!) safely here, I found myself spinning into a vortex of infant-related sweetness - hours perusing hip designer baby fabrics online, like this incredible mermaid-and-octo print by Heather Ross - plotting all the tiny finery I'd make for her... in my copious spare time, yes.

So while I try to stay focused on sewing more adornments for the upcoming Edwardian Ball, and rehearsing to record next month with my band Baby Seal Club ~ I must also make some space for simple, blissful amazement at this new child's tenacity, my sweet sister's courage, and the overwhelming love I have for both of them.

The Lovely Robots of Machinarium

2009-12-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

I'm not much of a gamer, though I'll admit I've been sucked in more than once by an addictive puzzle game (ahem, Dr. Mario). But sometimes, a rare game comes along that's so lovely to look at, I just want to lose myself in the world of it. Machinarium is such a game.

The blogosphere has been gushing over this one since its mid-October release, so I'm not the first one to fall for it - you can read about it on my beloved Coilhouse, on Boing Boing, and countless game review sites. But the attention is well-deserved ~ it's a worthy play, my friends.

Within the first few moments of the game, I was smitten with my earnest little robot character. The quirky sound design and luminous, eerie soundtrack are enchanting. The point-and-click simplicity belies the game's depth, delightful intrigue, and humor.

But the the real magic of Machinarium is in the way it pulls you in to its entirely hand-drawn, gorgeously detailed, arcane world of decaying metal. You must slow to a snail's pace to enjoy the beauty of your surrounds, pull each lever and touch every gear to solve the sometimes maddening logic puzzles of all varieties...

An interview with Jakub Dvorsky, founder of Amanita, the Czechoslovakian company that makes the game, reveals that the company's fanciful first release, Samarost, was created as his thesis project in 2003. Like Machinarium, Samarost is a whimsical puzzle game, with every small action compelling a chain of Rube Goldberg-esque events.

I haven't even fully explored the rich post-apocalyptic environs of Machinarium, and already I'm feeling sad to finish it, reluctant to go back to the break-neck pace of my own world. For a chronically busy multi-tasker like myself, Machinarium is more than a diversion ~ it's a lovely respite. I highly recommend it.

CoutureLust: Blasphemina's Closet

2009-12-14T22:48:00.000-08:00

I'd harbor a guess that many of my readers are familiar with the Lolita style. If not, meet Samantha Rei, proprietress of Blasphemina's Closet. Samantha takes the girlish ruffles and neo-Victorian sensibility of Lolita style and makes it sumptuously couture.

(Image: Photosynthetique)
She curates the annual Schoolgirls and Mobilesuitsfashion show, and her luxe creations can be seen at New York's Dances of Vice. And good news for dandies... she's got a men's line, too.

(Image: Fairytale Vegas)
Samantha is based in Minneapolis, and along with previous CoutureLust featuree Heather Luca of Scoundrelle's Keep and Megan Bishop of Apatico, founded the Libertine Asylum, a "society for the spread of fanciness, hedonism, indulgence and beauty." Ah, ladies after my own heart. Let's see what's behind the flounces in Blasphemina's Closet...

(Image: Photosynthetique)
How would you describe yourself and your style of work?

I generally stick to classic and gothic lolita. Lolita fashion is a style that gained popularity in Japan and has taken hold as a relevant subculture worldwide. It has a lot of basis in Victorian and Rococo fashion as well as certain other influences like stories, sweets and other subcultures.

Two of the best sites for info are Avant Gauche and Lolita Fashion.

(Image: Photosynthetique)
I also tend to do neo-Victorian and aristocrat menswear and for fun and friends, wa-lolita.

Where do you find inspiration?

Books and movies. Usually, whatever I'm reading at the time or movies I've been enthralled with each season inspire my next line. Music, too. I'm not really into sweet style, and since that's what's in right now, I don't tend to be inspired by the Japanese brands as much as I used to.

(Image: Aesthetic Alchemy)
This year, I've been inspired by Snow White as illustrated by Arthur Rackham (he's a HUGE inspiration in my life), Little Red Riding Hood, Josephine Bonaparte, story book villains, the poetry of John Wilmot, the films Gangs of New York and From Hell, Japanese illustrator Mihara Mitsukazu, regency era fashion plates, Valkyries, and as always, Alice in Wonderland.

(Find more links to Samantha's favorites at the end of the post.)

What do you do besides design amazing clothes?

I make fascinators and jewelry. I love that! It's one of those things where I do it in my spare time, then sell it later. I can spend time making one piece pretty. It's like meditation. Also, I love to read. If I'm not working, which is most hours of most days, I'm reading or watching crime shows.

(Image: Scoundrelle's Keep Imagery)
What was the most challenging piece you've designed / made?

I had to make five bridesmaid and one flower girl dress out of bright red dupioni silk. They all needed to look the same, but be made to fit each girl. It was very tough, because half the girls didn't actually live in town. I was working on this while finishing a piece for my best friend to wear at her wedding and her sister's bridesmaid dress, all had to be done that week because they were both getting married on the same day. That was stressful, but everyone was beautiful!

(Image: Photosynthetique)
What are three things that please you the most in the world?

Books, history and family.

How did you get your start making clothes?
My mother taught me to use a sewing machine when I was about 13 (early 1990s). I got into design shortly after that. I used to hand sew clothes for my Barbies for something to do. I didn't really "play Barbies" right. But I really got gung-ho into designing when I was in early high school. I started with my own clothes, then with practice styles, then made prom dresses for friends. The first year I did that, I made two dresses for friends for like $100 each. I was so proud! Shortly after beginning college, I started my Web site :)

(Image: Erin Nicole Johnson)
What piece of work are you most proud of?

It's a tie between showing my collection PULP at Dances of Vice in Spring of 2009 and a black and blue silk wedding dress I made for a Halloween wedding this year. I was so proud of that collection, I hadn't done a gothic line in ages and it looked so cohesive and elegant. And the wedding dress made the bride look radiant. I love creative clients who just let me go! I can't choose...

(Image: Photosynthetique)
Where can we find your line?
On the internet, at conventions (check out my ongoing con schedule for 2010!) and every once in a while in spots around Minneapolis.

List some of the top books, music, and movies that you've enjoyed recently...

Books!
Monster Blood Tattoo
Valiant:A Modern Tale of Faerie
Barnaby Grimes
A Lion Among Men
Seeing Redd
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Spiderwick

Musical inspiration this year!
World Inferno
Rasputina (My favorite band since high school!)
Voltaire
Circus Contraption
Gogol Bordello
Amanda Palmer
Dr. Steel
Emilie Simon
The Builders and the Butchers

Movies!
Gangs of New York
From Hell
Quills
The Libertine
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Moulin Rouge

Thanks so much, lovely Samantha! We'll be off down one of those fabulous interwebs rabbit holes now to find more inspiration from your links... just like Alice.

Textured Bliss from Ramona Falls

2009-11-30T23:18:00.000-08:00

I have actual hard evidence of the power of social media marketing, and it is this: I just purchased an album from a band I'd never heard of, simply because of their incredible video that was released a mere month ago and has been going around on Facebook. And I am well pleased.

I was completely captivated when I saw the video for the Ramona Falls song I Say Fever. Unlike anything I've ever seen, it's some sort of magic combination of Victorian paper animals and stop-motion animation, and yet feels totally edgy and now. See for yourself ~ and do go full screen.

A side project from Brent Knopf of Menomena, whom I haven't yet heard but will surely pursue, this album, Intuit, is absolutely brilliant. The songs are like complicated blossoms unfolding, opening to expose new treasures with each listen. The epic opening song, Melectric, sends me off to into visceral, textured bliss.

Unexpected percussive elements, shimmering vocals, orchestral arrangements, and sweeping variations in mood (due, in part, to the many guest artists who contributed) ~ the layers keep peeling away to reveal more loveliness. You can watch Brent get wicked with the looping here, as he records the luscious song Going Once, Going Twice.

Just doing my part to virally spread lovely music ~ so go listen.

Things that Please Me: Crankbunny

2009-11-21T13:01:00.000-08:00

In need of some whimsy to cheer an otherwise gray day yesterday, I turned to puppet-maker and animator Norma V. Toraya, also known as Crankbunny. In a world of overwhelming technology and frenetic multi-tasking, there's something comforting in the mechanical simplicity of her paper treasures.

Like the red bloom framed above, all of Crankbunny's beautiful pop-up cards are an art-form unto themselves ~ my most lusted-after being the Secret Decoder Card, where she will add a hidden message of your choice to be decoded by the lucky recipient.

But it's her paper puppets that tug my heart-strings. I want to scamper about inside her world of vintage-looking and oddly vulnerable creatures, her sad factory robots and thirsty zebras and winsome monkey-ladies...

Like so many craftistas that inspire me, Crankbunny's devotion to the details is incredible. She says she makes every card with her "tiny little marshmallow fingers" ~ and at over 3,000 sales on Etsy, that's a lot of wee bits of paper to cut out and assemble. And if you're wondering *why* she makes handmade goods, watch this lovely short film she animated.

Now you know! Want more? Visit the Crankbunny Etsy shop, or check out the new book she's just published, Paper Puppet Palooza.

On Etsy, you may even watch one of her puppet-making how-to's, or read her Featured Seller Interview, which is quite sweet and quirky. And of course, check out her Web site and blog.

Now go buy handmade!

All Women Have Secrets in Stiletto Heights

2009-11-11T23:53:00.000-08:00

I've been mooning over the work of mixed-media collage artist Jennifer Gordon for ages. Every image she creates makes me flutter with delight. And today, I fell hard for this piece on her blog, and couldn't help but purchase the diminutive original from her shop, Stiletto Heights.

The Apothecary's Daughters
In Jennifer's own words, she is "very inspired by Neo~Victorian and Edwardian themes. Steampunk, vintage belly dance images, Ziegfeld Follies, Ophelia, flappers, and circus girls, to name just a few." Why, those are all the very things that I love, fancy that!

In Her Rebellious Youth
Like dusty pressed flower petals unearthed from a long-forgotten trunk in the attic, Jennifer's collages ache with hidden stories and desires half-met. Her characters are doe-eyed silent era theater beauties, pale gilded fashion icons, and folkloric dreamers, all frozen in time.

Cinderella's Longest Day
Jennifer assembles her pieces from antique letters and old ledgers, found images and ephemera, layering decorative papers with paints and pigments and watercolor crayons. In the end, a window into a secret history is made, and we lucky voyeurs catch a glimpse of the the color-saturated dream-world these wayward men and tender heroines inhabit.

She Does Not Wait For June
A quick interwebs search will turn up a number of lovely interviews with Jennifer ~ I especially enjoyed this in-depth one on Stainless Steel Droppings, which reveals that she has been a magician's assistant and a scenic artist, a comic book writer and a stage actress... her own secret histories, as if she, too, is one of her own characters. As she says in the interview, "Each piece is a self portrait, only the pictures are not me."

Airship Captain
It comes as no surprise that Post Secret tops her list of favorite links, as each of her images, with their titles like shreds of poetry, are ripe with the whispery secrets of ghosts.

I Am Half Sick Of Shadows
You may find art books, prints, stickers, bookmarks, and so many more intriguing art works at Stiletto Heights, Jennifer's Etsy shop.... where All Women Have Secrets.

The Alternative History of Christopher Perez

2009-10-28T21:40:00.000-07:00

In celebration of that most lauded of holidays for costume freaks, Halloween, I must share the discovery of the eerily gorgeous photographs of Christopher Perez, from his Flickr set called Alternative History.

Malachi
In Christopher's own words: "Images gathered from across the Multi-verse. Exceedingly rare and difficult to find, these appear to be from the Ages of Victoria, Punk, Steam, Tribal, and Samurai. How they withstood the stresses of crossing the gaps between Ages in the Multi-verse may never be known, let alone understood."

Ancient Samurai
Perez hails from that bastion of everything wondrous we call Portland, and has the good fortune of a seemingly endless supply of wicked and gorgeous characters for subjects.

Age of Steam
Many featured in these images are from a performance troupe called Bogville Creature Features, a mysterious and enthralling host of miscreants who have thoroughly captivated my imagination. A visit to Portland to experience such splendor in the flesh seems imminent.

Maestro Crunk Vaultz
The Bogvillians seem to have been assembled by tribal steam enchantress NagaSita, of Serpentine fame.

NagaSita as Lady Rhinebone Leveaux
Their makeup and costuming is impeccable, but Perez' eye for capturing essence and his meticulous embellishment of the portraits is what makes these brilliant.

Eyelet V. Wayward
He perfectly ensnares the souls of the characters, and as with much of the imagery that appeals to me, implies a fantastical story just beyond the frame.

We hope to lure Christopher down for the next Handcar Regatta, to set up a Photonic Capture Tent for more alluring portraits... but in the meantime ~ content yourself with inspiration from these lovely freaks.

Find out more about Christopher's work on his blog or his Web site. And spookiest of All Hallow's Eves to you, lovely readers...

Aether Lamp: The Sketches of Brigid Ashwood

2009-10-24T17:29:00.000-07:00

I cannot think of another word more appropriate than "luminous" to describe the work of Maryland-based artist Brigid Ashwood ~ her mechanical beauties shimmer from the page in a vivid play of shadow and light.

(Yo Yo Bee, May 2009)
Brigid works in a variety of mediums that are categorized quite charmingly on her site: "Illuminations" for digital art, "Pigment Emulsions" for oil paintings and colored pencil sketches, and "Mineral Deposits" for sketches, silverpoint and graphite.

(Repose, February 2009)
Her oil paintings are breathtaking, but it's the Mineral Deposits that captivate me the most ~ they are somehow so very reminiscent of scribbled plans from DaVinci's notebooks, intriguing words combined with rich imagery, hinting at things yet to unfold.

(Unfair Things, Fall 2009)
I had to look up silverpoint to see what it was, and was tickled to find it is "a traditional drawing technique first used by Medieval scribes on manuscripts" that involves dragging a silver rod across a primed surface.

(Implement (Insect Scissors))
How delightfully archaic and appropriate for these beautiful images, the ball-jointed lovelies and strange apparatuses, ripe with possibilities and stories not yet revealed.

(The Creative Engine, May 2008)
I love Brigid's byline of "winged things and improbable machines", which captures the playful combination of invention and mythology in her work. Keep up with Brigid's adventures on her blog, and dig in deeper at her Web site for more of her enchanting work.

The Wild Rumpus!

2009-10-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

It's been some time since I've sat through an entire film beaming from ear to ear, but last night I left the theater giddy from the brilliance and purity of Spike Jonze's new interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are.

Not to raise anyone's expectations to unhealthy heights, but set aside all that buzz, rumors of poor test screenings, and the anxiety about the corruption of a classic book, and this is an stunning film in its own right.

Jonze perfectly distills the pathos of childhood, and in particular the challenges of being a creative and intense child, without trivializing it. Though the Arcade Fire song that made the trailer was conspicuously missing from the film, the score by the phenomenal Karen O creates a sublime backdrop of frenzied raw emotion. And the Wild Things themselves, massive monsters made by the legendary Jim Henson's Creature Shop, are surprisingly sympathetic and compelling.

Though the film may not mirror the book exactly, author Maurice Sendak approached Jonze to take on the project and worked closely with him throughout, urging him to "keep it dangerous". I've always been one for the darker themes, scoffing at those who would shield their little ones by offering only sanitized stories, so I love that Jonze preserves the peculiarity and wickedness that earned the book criticism in the first place ~ while making the story his own.

A good article with more making-of back-story can be found here, but I say just go see it. And then let the wild rumpus start...

CoutureLust: Skingraft Designs

2009-10-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

Jonny Cota and Katie Kay of Skingraft Designs have roots in the vaudeville circus performing arts scene - Cota as a stilt-walker and Kay as a tribal bellydancer - and that love of theatricality and flair for high drama shows. Their work is an exercise in contrasts - soft feminine ruffles and brawny masculine leather, demure coverings and exposed skin, silks and metals.

(Photo by Tiny Dragon Productions)
What started in 2005 as custom-wear for sideshow performers and musicians has grown ~ into a full label that's rapidly gaining ground, with a show in L.A.'s Fashion Week tomorrow. I was completely transfixed the first time I saw an image of their designs. Shot at the legendary Los Angeles bar The Edison, the model leapt from the page, stark and raw, and yet so elegant, luminous against the industrial background.

(Photo by Allen Amato)
On one of my favorite fashion blogs, Haute Macabre, Jonny described the style as “victorian punk rocker riding a regal horse to her gothic wedding.” You can see why I'm drooling. I'm thrilled to feature Jonny speaking up about Skingraft's astonishingly gorgeous work here. Click the images for more incredible detail.

(Photo by Brion Topolski)
How would you describe your style of work?

I would describe my work as a constant juxtaposition of dark and light, hard and soft, and natural and synthetic. Skingraft is a dark Victorian dreamer living in a city of concrete and noise and somehow finding comfort in it. The work is very detailed and very meticulous, as each piece starts as a story that almost writes itself.

(Photo by Allen Amato)
Where do you find inspiration?

I think that Skingraft's greatest inspiration is the animal kingdom, beasts, birds and the natural world in general. No matter how dark or metropolitan any of the designs can be, they always somehow relate back to the shapes and imagery of animals and plants. We are also often inspired by silhouettes and techniques that are ancient, classical or even just a few decades old. From Victorian corsetry to classic millinery, we are easily excited by old techniques and craftsmanship.

(Photo by Brion Topolski)
What do you do besides design amazing clothes?

Skingraft can be a bit consuming at times, so my life outside designing clothing seems to be shrinking more and more. Outside of Skingraft I spend my time collecting and altering taxidermy, producing electronic music for my DJ sets and spending time with my partner and pit bulls.

(Tattoo artist Kat Von D, Photo by Sheryl Nields for Latina Magazine)
Outside of designing clothing, my partner Katie Kay collects vintage clothing, spends time with her partner and their pit bull and has spent quite some time on tour as a tour manager for Amanda Palmer and the Dresden Dolls.

What are three things that please you the most in the world?

Fog, coffee and leather

How did you get your start making clothes?

We started out as circus performers creating costumes for ourselves for our stilt acts and dancing acts. That costuming grew into a business of making costumes for other performers as well, and the next thing we knew we were transitioning more into fashion and creating clothing for everyday wear. None of us were trained in what we do, it just happened naturally.

(Photo by Saryn Christina)
What was the most challenging piece you've designed or made?

Every wedding gown that we make is always a huge challenge, but fortunately each project has run smoothly and has turned out really beautiful. One of my first gowns I ever made was my greatest challenge, because it was made primarily of leather and burned silk, two materials that are very difficult to work with. The gown was topped with a leather Victorian jacket covered in thousands of small metal studs that I put in each by hand. The shoulders were decorated with fur fox faces dripping in chain and metal, and the detail was done by hand.

(Photo by Tiny Dragon Productions)
What piece of work are you most proud of?

I am most proud of the new gowns I am working on right now for our runway show this October. The lines are much cleaner than before and the details are extremely meticulous. The dresses are constructed with a lot of hand-sewn feathers, metal studs and extremely form fitting corsets. I am terribly excited to see them on the runway, I feel that they are the true evolution of Skingraft.

(Photo by Brion Topolski)
Where can we find your line?

We just opened up our first store in downtown Los Angeles and we carry our entire line here including our couture fashion show pieces. We are also are carried in stores around the country in such cities as New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlanta.

Thank you, Jonny, for the interview, and for your brilliant vision in collaboration with Katie. You may find Skingraft ready-to-wear designs for both men and women online, at Hunters and Gatherers and Five and Diamond, among others.

A Blisteringly Brilliant Day

2009-10-07T22:26:00.000-07:00

Still, I find myself struggling for words to describe the Great Handcar Regatta. It's been over a week, and I carry on basking in the glow. Sweltering heat, yes ~ 102 degrees. Intense crowds, yes ~ possibly more than 9,000 people. But all in all, an incredible, joyful, luminous day.

(Picture by Gwen Harlow)
Hats off to the organizing team, who I am so proud and grateful to have in my community. The Regatta is a most astonishing confluence of determination and talents and passion, and it came to life with a roar once again, in the very back-yard of my own sleepy suburban town.

(Picture by Mr. Nightshade)
The heart of the event is surely the races on the railroad tracks, where no less than twenty-three teams of industrious racers entered, with amazing person-powered vehicles of every stripe. The Screaming Vortex, pictured above, the Rail Skins by Nordic Track, a bobsled which slid along the tracks on blocks of ice, and Todd Barricklow's giant Two-Penny were crowd favorites.

(Picture by Mr. Nightshade)
To bring a little absurdity to the races, my beloveds Krank-Boom-Clank built a vehicle out of pink children's bikes for the delightful clowns of Fou Fou Ha to ride...

(Picture by Rick Washburn)
A wonderful variety of people in costume were seen traipsing about, and many a beautifully-attired patron thanked me for my costume guide from the Regatta Web site. I was so pleased it had proven useful.

(Picture by Gwen Harlow)
The art installations were incredible, especially Bryan Tedrick's Portal of Evolution and the always-delightful work of Tony Speirs. The various and sundry curiosities in the Wunder Closet were fantastic, from antlered babies to disturbing machinery to hybrid musical instruments ~ complete with sideshow freaks hanging about outside...

(Picture by Daniel Silveira)
And Baby Seal Club put on a medicine show of our own on the Snake Oil Stage, where I tried to keep from fainting in the heat whilst peddling our much-lauded Baby Seal Club's Miracle Elixir and Tits-Up Tonic, which very nearly sold out.

(Picture by Sassy Monkey Media)
We were thrilled to hear that our most-beloved publication Coilhouse was sending photographer-about-town Mr. Nightshade to take photos of the event, and his images are gorgeous, as ever.

(Picture by Audrey Penven)
Some of my favorite artists, builders, crafters, and performers were on hand. The Golden Mean Snail Car pulled up next to the Front Porch where the Hobo Gobbelins were playing... Cyclecide set up their bike rodeo, the Neverwas Haul crew showed up, and the Department of Spontaneous Combustion brought contraptions... there was a steampunk stilter, and a tiny marionette robot...

(Picture by Mike Estee)
Like a miniature Maker Faire with a steampunk edge, it was a celebration of ingenuity, beauty, and the simplest of technologies. All in all, a rip-roaring success for all involved. My deepest love and gratitude to everyone who made it so fantastic!

(Picture by Charlotte Hampton Trombley)
See more Regatta photos on Flickr. Watch Regatta videos on YouTube.

Splendid Accomplishments!

2009-09-28T19:47:00.001-07:00

As I swoon in the wake of this most fabulous outpouring of creativity, passion, and dedication from my friends and family that culminated in the Great Handcar Regatta yesterday (and while I wait for more pictures to come in so I can post them!), I have an exciting announcement. My love Stache, truly a giant among men, somehow managed to publish a brand new Web site for Adornments for Tarts last week... Take a gander at his amazing work!

The new site has a beautiful gallery of all my designs, easy links to my shop and this very blog, a captivating biography, a list of my favorite resources of all kinds for inspiration and edification, and more decaying yet elegant curly-cue embellishments than you can shake a stick at.

And Stache did all this while building a new racing contraption and re-furbishing the Hennepin Crawler with Krank Boom Clank, and being on the organizing team for the Regatta... he has been working tirelessly. He also fabricated the splendid Mini-Penny, a hi-wheel bicycle inspired by the penny farthings of the late 1800's.

(Picture by Swaziloo)
There will be so much more on the glory of the Regatta soon, but in the meantime, a moment of deep appreciation for this brilliant, talented, ever-so-dashing man I am lucky enough to have for my husband. See more of his work at his company site, Sassy Monkey Media.

Handcar Regatta Costume Guide!

2009-09-22T23:31:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit slow on the blogging front lately ~ and simply put, it's because of the approach of the Great Handcar Regatta, merely days away.

So alas, no time for blogging! But I did write an article on costuming for the Regatta Aetherweb site, so I'll reprint it here for my fair readers (sans local shop references, which can be seen in the original here, along with many more images).

As our most-favoured local faire the Handcar Regatta approaches, your Choklit has been besieged by faire-goers wishing for advice on proper Regatta attire. So I've compiled a brief guide to how to outfit oneself for this most auspicious occasion.

Steampunk has a thousand definitions and a spectrum of devotees from purists to novices ~ but in my humble opinion, the very joy of the steampunk genre is the fantasy and flexibility of it. So I present this guide only as a playful suggestion, ideas for the curious, and not as any sort of definitive tome. Onwards!

Inspiration and Character

When starting from the ground on a costume, I would advise choosing a character ~ not that one need play that role all the day, but it can help keep one focused. Are you a mad tinkerer? A street urchin? A vaudevillian vamp? A dandy aristocrat? An intrepid explorer? A soiled dove? Last year's Regatta played host to a fine cast of characters.

The basics for any steamy costume are historically inspired, from the Victorian or Edwardian period. Look up costuming resources online for images ~ the Costumer's Manifesto, the Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild, and Truly Victorian are good starting points. The good news is that the basics are rather simple - long full skirts and blouses for the ladies, dress shirts, vests and high-waisted pants for men. Natural fibres like cotton, wool, linen, and leather are ideal, and many steampunks tend towards earthy, natural colors - browns, khakis, creams - but bright colors can also be used to great effect.

Where to Find the Basics

If you're going for an authentic look, there are a number of online shops for re-enactors that provide reproductions - try Gentleman's Emporium or River Junction Trade Company. But if you're on a tight budget, or short on time, some creativity at the mall or in thrift shops should yield plenty of ruffly tops, long skirts, vintage vests, and simple dress shirts.

Accessories for Gents & Dandy Cross-Dressing Ladies

But it's really all about the accessories for a steamy look. Let's begin at the top: hats of all kinds are key to the steampunk aesthetic. Top hats and bowler hats are common, and aviation caps and newsboy caps are also a lovely direction. Online, look at the Village Hat Shop.

Small touches like suspenders, fingerless gloves, ascots, jabots, and spats can go a long way, and can be found at vintage stores or quite easily online at places like Gentleman's Emporium. One may also find fine sleeve garters in the same spots, or in my own Etsy shop, ahem.

Accoutrements of a Fairer Nature

Corsets and bloomers are key to the steampunk wardrobe for ladies. Well-made corsets can cost a pretty penny and the custom kind take some time to make, but you can find less expensive versions in thrift shops and off-the-rack. Meschantes Corsetry and Timeless Trends are two makers who offer off-the-rack spiral-steel-boned corsets, but one could certainly start gently with the spandex kind found in your standard mall lingerie shop.

Stripey socks are great for anyone, Sock Dreams has a dizzying array. And don't be caught in the sun without your parasol! Bella Umbrella has gorgeous pagoda styled umbrellas, or paper parasols are inexpensive and sweet.

Putting the 'Punk' in Steampunk

And lastly, don't forget to punk it up! Add a modern twist to make it anachronistic - fishnets, torn edges, spikes, gears, feathers, rayguns, asymmetry, combat boots. Goggles are so common among the steampunk set that they are approaching caricature, but it's an easy way to say, "Tally ho, I'm about to go adventuring!" Your basic cup-style brazing goggles from a hardware store will do the trick, but if you'd like to find more elaborate fancy ones, I'd recommend BoilerGoth, the Neverwas Store, or searching eBay for vintage ones.

A true Victorian lady would never wear her corset on the outside, or reveal her bloomers (much less the striped stockings underneath) ~ which is exactly why we do it.

For your further edification: Aether Emporium has a jaw-droppingly long list of online resources. Steampunk Costuming, Deconstructing Steampunk, and How to Dress Steampunk are articles worth perusing. And Threadbanger offers a fun library of DIY costuming videos, including episodes on making your own steampunk outfits, spats, and gloves. And finally, here's the Flickr group for Steampunk Costume, and away you go!

The Hen Also Rises

2009-09-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

The briefest of loving nods to that brilliant art festival in the desert that I sadly could not make the trek to this year... hope all the Burners had their worlds expanded once again. Since most of my crew lacked the resources to get out there this time, we did a grand social experiment to see if we could capture the spirit of the Playa at home... and created Burning Hen 2009.

About thirty-five people came together in the woods, wore costumes, built theme camps, cooked outdoors, and made a general ruckus for three days. It was like a miniature parody of Burning Man - we had porno-potties, samba and accordion workshops, Funk Farm Dance Camp, a Wild West Hula Hoop show, the Redwood Nest Theater playing movies, a few great dj's, and a stunning fire~dancer...

We had filthy spoken word poetry performances, the Chicken Beak Gummy Worm Glory Hole, night croquet, Super-Soaker Twister Camp, amazing large-scale art and a beautiful Hen that it pained us just a little to burn.

We truly did not want this to be just another party, so we created a Survival Guide and list of rules that seemed overwhelming at first. We locked up the house for the duration, didn't allow ins-and-outs, no cell phones, no laptops, no beer or coffee runs, no long goodbyes. But setting these boundaries allowed everyone who agreed to them the ability to step outside their day-to-day reality, which is really what we're all craving when we go to the Playa.

Amazingly, everyone agreed that we tapped in to the sheer joy and freedom you experience on the Playa, without leaving our own back yard. We were all so excited to bring gifts of all kinds to share, and we created our own little community. And so we learned something today, my loves... the spirit of Burning Man is actually inside us.

Thanks to all my beloved nest-mates for the beautiful time, and thanks to Paul G. and Miss M. for the gorgeous pictures.

Everything that Creeps: Elizabeth McGrath

2009-08-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

I've long been an ardent admirer of Liz "Bloodbath" McGrath ~ woman of innumerable talents and one of my aesthetic heroines. Equally comfortable in a gallery, on a stage, or wearing a dress made of candy wrappers.

(Portrait by Darla Teagarden)
You see, as if it weren't enough to be an auspiciously brilliant pop surrealist sculptress and artist, she also fronts the theatrical L.A. outlaw rock band Miss Derringer, along with her husband, Morgan Slade. Liz creates all of the album cover designs, naturally.

She sings, she paints, she draws, and she sculpts. But my true love is for her compelling dioramas. Like so many artists I'm drawn to, she finds the loveliness in the grotesque, the magic in the wicked, and binds it all together to craft dark and whimsical little worlds for us.

(Sailor's Valentine, 2001)
I'm mad about McGrath's meticulous attention to detail and her penchant for the macabre ~ the unlikely bedfellows of preciousness and freakish oddity. Many of the pieces have a carnival side-show feel, like she's built a tiny stage for a character with a story to unfold...

(Detail from Honey Creeper, 2006)
I'm fortunate enough to own a copy of her lovely and sadly now out-of-print book called Everything That Creeps, which contains gorgeous full-color images of her work, so one can get close to the haunting creatures she's created.

(Detail from Queen of the Inanimate, 2001)
Wide-eyed blue-lipped waifs and mournful two-headed fawns, winsome skeleton birds and tutu-wearing insect girls, they're all in here.

I hope to see her work in person, someday, to peer into the vast reaches of the twisted universe of her imagination.

(Portrait by Mark Berry)
Until that day, I'll content myself by reading about her adventures on her new blog at my favorite underground art mag, Juxtapoz.

Don't Let Long Sleeves...

2009-08-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

...get in the way of your adventures. New in the Adornments for Tarts shop - Zephyr Sleeve Garters.

(Image courtesy of Photomato)
The inventor tinkers away in his dusty workshop, deep into the night, sculpting fine wood, gleaming brass and supple leather into arcane treasures for amusement and edification. With nimble fingers and piercing eyes he sees the potential in a pile of mismatched parts, senses the adventures that await if he can just craft that perfect apparatus to help unfold his fortunes....

Suitable for both dashing gents and audacious ladies, Zephyr Sleeve Garters are made of dupioni silk, and there are five colors of garters available to match any ensemble - scarlet red, pewter silver, bronze gold, mahogany brown, and ebony black.

And yes, that's my much-adored and dapper husband Stache above, by his kinetic contraption, the Hennepin Crawler, at the Maker Faire.

Thanks to fellow Steam Teamer and brilliant goggle-maker BoilerGoth for inspiring the title of this dispatch.

Giveaway at the Wunderkammer!

2009-08-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

Most of my dear readers will be familiar with the lovely TotusMel's addictive daily Etsy finds blog the Wunderkammer ~ finds for those of us with dark and decadent tendencies, that is.

TotusMel covers a spectrum of drool-worthy goodies, with a new batch of four every day. Past favorite collections include Necking, Top Hats, and the intoxicatingly odd Gas.

But the glorious news is this - just yesterday, she started a giveaway contest to celebrate a new blog design by the multi-talented Industrial Fairytale, with incredible prizes contributed by past featurees on the blog. A gift certificate to Adornments for Tarts is included with grand company like Tom Banwell, WinonaCookie, and ZKitten. The more people enter the contest, the more wonderful goodies are unlocked, so start spreading the news. If we get up to 175 entrants, this amazing custom bustle-skirt by CrescentWench will be added to the treasure-pile.

You like free goodies, don't you? Tally ho! Rules are here.

Things That Please Me: Pie

2009-08-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

Though one wouldn't guess it, considering how rarely I write about epicurean delights here, I am actually something of a foodie. So a brief interlude from our regularly scheduled shameless debauchery and costume lust for an ode to the humble pie, one of my most favorite desserts.

(Image via Pie of the Month Club)
I had a most sublime pie-eating experience last weekend at a coffeeshop ~ house-made blackberry-rhubarb pie, and it was perfect. Buttery flaky light crust, tangy sweet fruit, and a big dollop of very lightly sweetened handmade whipped cream ~ heaven on a plate.

(Image Courtesy of Faith Durand via The Kitchn)
And I'd choose pie over cake any day. My love for pie is so strong that when Stache and I got married, we refused to have cake for our wedding feast. Instead we requested a pie potluck, which resulted in the delight of dozens of varieties of pie, all spread out on a long table as far as the eye could see.

Amazingly, we were not eating processed sugar or white flour in those days, and a family friend who owns a bakery made us a rather glorious whole-wheat-crust, honey-sweetened, triple-decker ginger pear pie for our very own.

Who can deny that home-made pie makes everything better?

CoutureLust: VECONA

2009-07-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

I nearly wept the first time I saw a VECONA creation. It was the now-legendary tentacled corset, featured on BoingBoing, that brought me tearfully to my knees. Upon visiting the Web site of VECONA creator Janet, who lives and works in Germany, I felt I had fallen down the rabbit-hole of brilliant costuming. Every image is a fantastical wonderland of beauty and intrigue, every model tells a tale of scintillating decadence.

(Fashion: VECONA / Photos: Viona / Model: Bérengère)
Janet collaborates with amazing talents like Shien Lee and Lucas Lanthier, the masterminds behind Dances of Vice, and she traveled with Emilie Autumn on her Asylum tours for a few years, performing as a Bloody Crumpet and doing all the costume design. I'm ever so delighted to feature VECONA. Be sure to check out her beautiful new Web site!

(Fashion: VECONA / Photos: Matt Frederick / Model: Ulorin Vex)
How would you describe yourself and your style of work?

I'm a wanderer between genres, eras and worlds, and this is how my styles look like. I love picking particular parts from different influences and mixing them together to create my very own universe. I love inviting guests to be part of it and bring their personal taste to make it even more colorful and unique. This is why I started working with other artists like musicians and photographers. My work shouldn't necessarily meet the requirements of a certain scene, but for sure I'm glad when people can identify with my creations. And in the end I just do what I love. ;-)

(Fashion: VECONA / Photos: Viona / Models: VECONA & Shien Lee)
How did you get your start making clothes?

As almost everybody in that business, I started with sewing as a hobby and for a long time it was only that. It took me a while to find out that this is what I really love to do in my life.

(Fashion: VECONA / Photos: Silent View / Model: Fräulein von Rosenfelde)
In the meantime, I studied computer science and as my first project in that field I made the VECONA website to present the costumes and clothes I made in my free time. It turned out that many people were interested in what I showed in the gallery and in getting their very own VECONA piece. So after finishing my studies, I screwed up my courage and decided to follow this sewing passion. What can I say, since then every single day I enjoy this privilege to have a job that satisfies me and gives me the surety that finally I found my destination.

(Fashion: VECONA / Photos: Annie Bertram / Model: Drastique)
What do you do besides design amazing clothes?

At the moment I'm pretty much interested in the era "Weimar Berlin“ and do a lot of research about that. In this context I started swing dancing a while ago and I really enjoy it!

Where do you find inspiration?

Honestly, I find inspiration just everywhere. It comes to me seeing a fabric, watching a movie, reading a book and pretty often while driving my car. But - the best inspiration I do find just working, because with every single piece I start, I get ideas for three more.

(Fashion: VECONA / Photos: Annie Bertram / Model: Ancalime)
What are three things that please you the most in the world?

My beloved family and friends, a warm day outside and coffee.

What piece of work are you most proud of?

Usually the last one I made. ;-)

(Fashion: VECONA / Photos: Annie Bertram / Model: Drastique)
Where can we find your line?

Since I do all pieces as custom orders you should just write me an email to janet(at)vecona(dot)de! Besides these special orders I also offer an accessory and jewelry line in my online shop. Besides the VECONA creations I just established a second label together with a friend, it's called VeconaVintage. Our collection for men and women will come out at the end of the year, so watch out and stay curious. :-)

Many thanks to Janet! I am most certainly staying curious ~ here's a little wish that one day she'll bring her brilliant imagination back to the States so I may be astounded by her work in person.

The Sinners' Circus

2009-07-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just have to run away with the circus, you know? Along with co-conspirators klown-fi band GOOFERMAN, the Sisters of Honk, Circus Metropolus, and a whole slew of other moderators of mayhem, my band Baby Seal Club hosted a 3-ring sinfest called the Sinners' Circus at a local brewery last weekend.

Glorious moments were plentiful, but here are a few top ones: seeing my beloved Stache go-go-cage dancing in a vintage band jacket and a Lucha Libre clown mask... joined shortly thereafter by my brother in a bear suit.

The stunning 10-cent Absolution Booth confessional hand-built by one of our dear friends and local mad genius Muir... you confessed your sins into an antique telephone inside, and they were broadcast out to the surrounding crowd.

My beloved band-mates getting theatrical for the Seven Deadly Sins theme... Wizzbang as a gorgeous and aloof Pride, 19 as the avaricious banker Greed, Doc as a terrifyingly wicked Lucifer, Fudo as a powerful preacher named Wrath, and your own Choklit, of course, as the harlot of harmonies ~ Lust.

The brilliance of the wanted posters Stache made for us to put up around town and in the venue... See the full set here.

Amazing performers on both stages, outside and in, including a mesmerizing show by fire-eater Monique, who absolutely embodied an enchanting swamp priestess.

Once again, we pulled off a spectacle of epic proportions - complete with tent revival faith healing, fire-dancers, carnival games, stiltwalkers, jugglers, and an oversized bear. And plenty of klowns, of course.

We worked all day Saturday to transform the venue into a red velvet big-top, performed, stayed up being debaucherous with the clowns until dawn, and tore it all down the next day. More pictures are coming from the fabulous Miss M - check back here.

Ah, sweet ephemeral events... so fleeting. And now we start the planning for the next one!

Aural Goodness

2009-07-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

I've been consumed with putting on a circus for the past few weeks ~ which I'll be writing about as soon as I have some good imagery. In the meantime, for your various and sundry entertainment needs, here are a few tidbits of aural goodness from my music world.

Three albums that have been garnering my attention as of late... first, My Maudlin Career, the new offering from the luscious Scottish indie pop band Camera Obscura. Not unlike my other favorite Scottish band, they spin a lovely web of stories and sounds.

The shimmering, tambourine-rich, sixties candy-pop sound reminds me of the soundtrack of my early college years ~ that would be Mazzy Star ~ but with a horn section that gives it a more soulful flavor. The singer, Tracyanne Campbell, has an endearingly human voice - not seductive or terribly powerful, but lovely in a vulnerable way. If you're in the mood for perfect pop charm, listen to this.

On another end of the indie spectrum, NYC-based Grizzly Bear has been intriguing me with their much-lauded new album, Veckatimest. The band pushes the boundaries of indie rock with slightly dissonant harmonies and unexpected rhythmic changes, but somehow it all comes together in a surreal and mesmerizing stew of dense textured beauty.

I find myself at a loss for words to describe this album well, and it keeps growing on me. There's nothing simple here; many of the songs disperse and regather like oil on water, moving you from folky chamber-pop to epic wall-of sound rock with ease. But if you have a soft spot for complicated artistry and risk-takers, like I do, you just might fall in love.

The last album on my playlist is Dark Night of the Soul, the phenomenal and mysterious collaboration between renegade producer Danger Mouse and reclusive genius Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse. This project is noteworthy for a variety of reasons - first, their third collaborator was David Lynch, who put together a collection of his photography based on the music. Even more intriguing was the unconventional release ~ because of a legal dispute with industry giant BMI, they were unable to release the album, and instead published the book of Lynch photos packaged with an art-printed but blank recordable CD-R.

Best of all, though, is the music itself, which is dark, lush and surreal, and varies as greatly as the all-star cast of guest vocalists, including James Mercer of The Shins, The Flaming Lips, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, Frank Black of the Pixies, Iggy Pop, Nina Persson of The Cardigans, Suzanne Vega, and more.

Read more of the story, and hear the whole album, on the NPR web site.

Literate Smut

2009-07-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

In my various travels on the Interwebs the past few months, a few enticing morsels of the saucy variety have caught my wandering eye... shall we say, a more discerning brand of erotica.... pretty enough to make me want to feature it here. And this post is oh-so-not-safe-for-work, lovelies ~ especially the links.

The ever-flowing fount of alternative cultural goodness that is Coilhouse first lured me to the sumptuous Web site of Coco De Mer. Founded in London by Sam Roddick, daughter of Body Shop proprietress Anita Roddick, Coco De Mer started as an ethically-sourced high-end erotic toy shop. I found an interview with Sam about how this came to be.

While many well-intentioned feminist-owned sex toy shops tend towards the well-lit and clinical in an effort to make their clientele feel safe, Coco De Mer is dolled up like a Victorian boudoir. There's nothing unsavory about the shop - it appears an oasis of luxurious unabashed sensuality and revels in the range of pleasures of the mind and flesh. The shop has since blossomed into a virtual community, complete with startlingly gorgeous photographs...

...arty explicit short films, user-generated dressing-room images, and an online storefront filled with delightful, if expensive, treats. Longing for a $170 sustainable silk organza blindfold? Or handmade Paul Seville custom leather restraint gauntlets? Coco De Mer provides.

After having my senses thoroughly tickled by my visit to Coco De Mer, I wandered over to Filament, the site of a brand new ladies' magazine out of the UK, on the recommendation of Seattle artist Libby Bulloff. I was intrigued by a line from the editor's note... "We stand at the back of the male strip revue on a hen night, looking past the oiled, muscle-bound hunks, checking out the narrow-hipped lads behind the bar." I ordered the magazine straight away.

I found the publication to have a refreshingly candid air, with blush-inducing stories and alluring photo spreads alongside articles about atheist parenting and alternative history. Creatrix Suraya Sidhu Singh used a Livejournal community to research the female gaze ~ and so the mantra of "what women think is hot" guided her image choices, and common sense guided her content choices. Her promise: no fashion, no diets, no celebrity gossip. What a relief ~ I'll definitely be looking forward to Filament #2.

A little cheeky diversion is always a good thing, in my humble opinion.

Dark Sirene

2009-06-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

Every sailor knows there are certain places you just don’t take a ship… mysterious and gloomy corners of the earth where one cannot predict the wickedness one might encounter. And every sailor knows that if you have the misfortune of finding such a corner – and if you hear the dulcet tones of a certain kind of voice - you are forever doomed to a watery fate, for you will fall in love with a siren from the deep.

Sitting on her rock, she waits, always singing her ancient song, always searching - her glistening salty skin and beckoning turquoise eyes both an offer and a warning to those who will listen. I'm ever so pleased to share my first new design listing in ages ~ Sirene.

Absolutely luminous model photography is by Lex Machina. If you'll recall, I've been giddy with anticipation about this collaboration, and I'm delighted and thrilled with the results. Lexie did all the styling and makeup artistry as well. Go give Lexie and this image some love on Flickr, and visit the model, Elise XY, on Model Mayhem.

You can find the listing for the cuffs here on Etsy, and I'll be posting the necklace and earrings as soon as a few more pictures come in - Lexie captured dozens of breathtaking images, and is currently working her magic on them.

Lure them in with the Sirene adornments.

Vagabond Opera Glory

2009-06-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Sublime Moment of the Week: dueling cellos, a guitar, and a clarinet, being played by various members of the indescribable cabaret band Vagabond Opera, while sitting on the Hennepin Crawler, in my driveway.

Last Friday night, my dear Amber Lee played a show with the fabulous vaudevillian roustabouts from Portland, to promote their new CD, The Zeitgeist Beckons. The performance was brilliant ~ complete with hypnotism, playing card tricks, toy chattering teeth, and oh so many sequins, hats and stripes...

Vagabond Opera is the kind of band that entertains you from the moment they step under the lights until the raucous finale where they jump off the stage and dance among the blissful fans. One song even compelled Lord Hopton to sweep me away into a vigorous tango number that left me completely breathless. Following the after-party at the home of the Mad Maggies, who had also played, Stache and I were thrilled to play local hosts to the travelers ~ half of them stayed at our house. And of course, we all realized we were cut from the same cloth and fell in love.

In the morning, after brunch, sax and clarinet player Robin (who also moonlights with my beloved March Fourth!) and Stache had a giddy dandy-accessory-trying-on party, and my living room became an internet cafe, as no less than five laptops were put to use. Before they departed for their next show, we tooled around town a bit on the Hennepin Crawler, much to everyone's delight. And soon half of the band was playing instruments in an impromptu interlude on the Crawler.

Full Flickr set here, with more to come (and look, here's video on Facebook!). And then they all drove away in their very large van, blowing kisses and with promises of future visits. Huzzah for the unexpected glory of having a magnificent band you love come for a sleepover at your house!

Le Scaphandrier ~ The Giant Diver

2009-06-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

I'm thoroughly enraptured by the work of French performance art and puppetry troupe Royal de Luxe. Their May 2006 performance in London, The Sultan's Elephant, was nothing short of genius ~ I can't even imagine the glory of being in attendance at the event, which included a little girl Giantess, a wooden rocket-ship, and a 50-ton mechanical elephant.

Photo by cocobeloeil
And now I've just heard that they've done it again... Writer R.J. Evans posted a blog about a new performance that took place starting June 6th in Nantes ~ the birthplace of Jules Verne ~ that involved a giant deep-sea diver, Le Scaphandrier in French.

Photo by chilirv
I've always been a lover of puppets and marionettes, so to see a 30-foot-tall diver hauled out of the water by a team of frock-coated puppeteers, and then sent out adventuring, just blisses me out.

Photo by Stéfan Le Dû
And there's a beautiful and complex mythology, too, for these amazingly emotive characters, that's been unfolding around Europe for years in various performances - about how the Diver is searching for his niece the Little Giantess, a character from the Sultan's Elephant performance. With the help of Google's nifty translation engine, you can read more about the back-story on Stéfan Le Dû's blog.

Photo by Stéfan Le Dû
The company is rather mysterious and rarely releases information before a performance, adding to the intrigue. But you can find some jaw-dropping YouTube videos, along with a Flickr pool filled with lovely images from the performance.

Photo by Stéfan Le Dû
It's one of those things that makes me happy to be alive, that there are people out there creating such things. We humans may be making war, and reality TV shows, but we're also making street spectacles with grand mechanical creatures, simply for the sake of wonder and magic and art.

Photo ©2009 by Stéphane Lerouge ~ Nantes
Also keep an eye out for the off-shoot company of brilliant fabricators La Machine. They built the original sultan's elephant, and they were also the ones who sent a massive wooden and steel mechanical spider called La Princesse marauding around Liverpool in a post-apocalyptic frenzy, to the delight of onlookers, for week in September 2008 before moving on to Yokohama.

Photo ©2009 by Charlie Charlton
La Machine also built the permanent exhibition Machines of the Isle of Nantes at its workshop, which is open to the public, features the elephant giving rides, and includes a mechanical squid.

Glorious. Simply glorious.

Love at the Maker Faire

2009-06-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed my conspicuous absence in the last week or two... I have not been negligent, dear readers, but in a frenzy of activity ending in last weekend's glorious Maker Faire. This post will be doubly long to make up for it!

Photo by Sassy Monkey Media
I was vending my Adornments for Tarts as part of the Steam Team, in the Carnivale Mechanique area of the Faire. The crowds, the wind, and the long days not-withstanding, my experience at the Faire was incredible. I'm still exhausted, but it was worth it, to be part of the single most concentrated gathering of creative, gorgeous, and debaucherous mad-people short of Burning Man.

Photo by Bonnie Burton
Being delighted by some of my beloved Etsy Steam Teamers for the first time in the flesh - TotusMel, AlliesAdornments, and Clockwork Crow - and reuniting with old friends - Nullalux, Industrial Fairytale, Tom Banwell, and 19Moons - was glorious, though admittedly we were so busy we hardly had time for chatting... Nullalux in particular was juggling like mad to take care of all the mail-in items.

Photo by Pip R. Lagenta
I was really excited to see everyone's work in person, particularly Tom's Pachydermos Gas Mask.

Photo by Bonnie Burton
The weekend was filled with those kinds of magical peak moments that happen when you're in bliss... Drinking Irish coffee in the shadow of the Neverwas Haul with her brave and tireless crew, and then careening about on the little trolley...

Photo by Jake Von Slatt
Following the Golden Mean Snail Car and her brilliant gang of vagabonds from bar to bar in the sleepy suburban town, in full costume, confusing and delighting the locals...

Photo by Sassy Monkey Media
Meeting some of my brilliant friends from the Interwebs in the flesh, most notably Molly "Porkshanks" Friedrich in her showstopping costumes...

Photo by Rich Dahlgren
...the resplendent Libby Bulloff, whose outfit on Sunday nearly made my heart explode with joy... shown here with Qais Fulton of Ectomo fame, who I failed entirely to meet...

Photo by David Dowling
...a beaming Tom Sepe and his splendid Whirlygig Emoto...

Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
...and beautiful Theremina of Coilhouse ~ who stole my heart and serenaded the crowd with her antique Stroh violin, perched atop the Hennepin Crawler... she played violin for the beautiful dancers of Deshret, as well.

Photo by Jake Von Slatt
Another giddy moment was having my portrait drawn by the talented and sparklingly beautiful Suzanne Forbes...

Original Art by Suzanne Forbes
And of course, watching my beloved Krank-Boom-Clank boys ride through the hordes of people on the Crawler, getting cheers everywhere they went.

Photo by Shel and Nate
And amidst all that madness, I still found time for drinking beer with the Boiler Bar crew under the propane glow of art by the Flaming Lotus Girls...

Photo by Sassy Monkey Media
And not to forget kissin' on my beloved Stache.

Photo by Sassy Monkey Media
Beautiful new friends and treasured longtime ones, your creativity and passion filled my heart to the brim this weekend. I fell in love all over again with the ragtag band of tinkerers, costumers, musicians, artists, and freaks that I call my community. This is a love letter dedicated to YOU.

A Mere Moment: Audrey Kawasaki

2009-05-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

I've long been captivated by the work of pop surrealist darling Audrey Kawasaki. Her lithe and doe-eyed lovelies are both moving in their childish innocence and disquieting in their subtle eroticism.

Mia and Mai, 2006
I read an interview that quotes her as saying, "I paint them because they are distant, elusive, and unobtainable, and slip right through your hands. They are something I chase after, and that I grasp onto for a mere moment, and am forced to let go, and that is what keeps me painting."

Two Sisters, 2008
I love that description of the moment of connection between artist and muse. I love that she paints the girls on wood and uses the grain in the image, which gives them a lovely organic feel, and that she tends to pale and washed out colors, like faded vintage ephemera.

Yasuragi, 2007
It's the juxtaposition of opposites in her work that's most enchanting to me, and I especially love it when remnants of the natural world slip in ~ bones, feathers, sea creatures.

Umi no Yami no Jyoou, 2007
And the blush of swirling-haired art nouveau brings to mind echoes of another of my favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha, or the waves and flower-petals of Hokusai.

Mizuame, 2007
And look... tentacles, just for me.

Octogirls, 2006
You can immerse yourself in Audrey's exquisite world at her Web site, and keep up with her via her LiveJournal blog.

Oughta Be in Pictures

2009-05-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

I'm swooning with anticipation about my first collaboration with a photographer other than my love Stache (though I do adore his photography). I've just sent off my brand new Sirene design to Lexie, proprietress of Lex Machina Photography (formerly BrainWreck), after being floored by her newest work on Flickr.

This set of images reminds me of some of the brilliant Kate O'Brien's more painterly work, like her "I Spy" photo I've always adored. I'm giddy with Lexie's treatment of these, the richly saturated but understated tones that give them that vintage feel.

Truly, how could I not be enamoured of someone with a a bio that reads like this: "motor-hobo transient photographer and comic nerd of the steampunk persuasion"? It seems Lexie travels around the country full-time in an RV with her soulmate, Emmy, the dashing subject of this stunning image.

This whole tale appeals to me tremendously... although I do love to travel, I am a home-body at heart, and so that kind of nomadic lifestyle is something I can only admire from afar.

And now, the waiting... sigh.

Within Your Rights to Bite...

2009-05-04T20:50:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen the Swedish film Let the Right One In, you should. I rented it after reading an intriguing review on an excellent blog I follow, Blood Milk, and it was stunningly lovely.

I'll admit, I have an undeniable weakness for vampire films, but this one transcended the genre with its fragile beauty. If you can't bear plainly illustrated violence and slow, disturbing moodiness, this may not be the film for you, but I was absolutely mesmerized.

The film does not flinch from exploring intense themes in the fertile borderlands between good and evil, adulthood and childhood, innocent friendship and budding sexuality, and all of these are treated with incredibly stark tenderness. The two twelve-year-olds who play the leads were quite magnificent in their roles, and the icy perpetual night of the slums of Stockholm was a perfect setting. The film is both savage and poignant, and utterly moving.

The film is based on a 2004 novel that I'd love to read. I'll pretend I didn't hear about the American remake. La la la.

Good trivia... besides the lore that says a vampire cannot enter a house uninvited, the title also refers to a Morrissey song I had never heard, "Let the Right One Slip In," which includes the delightful lyric "I'd say you were within your rights to bite." I've been bitten, truly.

CoutureLust: Scoundrelle's Keep

2009-04-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

It was a striking image on her Flickr photostream that enamored me to Heather Luca's brilliant clothing line out of Saint Paul, Minnesota, Scoundrelle's Keep. Heather's designs are both playful and elegant.

Heather's recent collaboration with Samantha Rei of Blasphemina's Closet is breathtaking. It premiered at a recent Dances of Vice event (oh, if only I lived close to New York!). Images by Photosynthetique.

How did you get your start making clothes?

I learned the basics of sewing from my mom as I was growing up. She made many garments for us, even matching mom-and-daughter sets. Looking through the photo albums still makes me wince! When I had my daughter, I found myself with many small pockets of free time that I would end up wasting because I couldn't really go out and do stuff with an infant.

That Christmas, I asked my family to buy me a sewing machine, and thus picked up the hobby again. When I got married the following summer, I made my own wedding gown, including a beautiful white-on-white brocade corset. It was my first serious attempt at a corset - it was a kit from Farthingales in Canada, and it turned out really well. From there, I had friends asking me to make them corsets, and word spread like wildfire. Soon I was taking clients from even out of state!

Where do you find inspiration?

I am very inspired by classic Victorian clothing. I tried doing historical recreation of garments, but I found that far too restricting, so I integrated modern fabrics, materials, and techniques that would not have been available in that era to create something new and decadent. I create from the past that never was.

What are three things that please you the most in the world?

My family, especially my 7 year old daughter, Kaia; being able to dress fancy in neo-Victorian and Lolita styles, and collecting Asian ball-jointed dolls (ABJD).

What do you do besides design amazing clothes?

I went to college for photography, and I love being able to capture images. With most of my local orders, I offer a free photo shoot at the completion of a corset or outfit, both as a bonus to the client, and as a way to keep my portfolio filled with the newest garments I've made.

What piece of work are you most proud of?

Its hard to narrow it down to one piece. Each garment I finish is more beautiful than the last. I really love the fall collection of clothes that I showed at Kakkoi|Con and Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits (SGMS)- it was the first full line that I have made, and it went from design to fruition really smoothly.

Where can we find your line?

I am available locally in Saint Paul, Minnesota for in-person consultations for orders; you can also purchase custom-made items directly from my website.

Thank you Heather! I'll carry on dreaming of owning a corset-dress from Scoundrelle's Keep.

Things That Please Me: Sepiachord

2009-04-20T23:41:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I'm predictable, but lately I've been delighting in a genre of music best described as sepiachord. And what, you may ask, is this "sepiachord"?

I'm shamelessly borrowing the term from the Seattle-based Web site that coined it, and explains it thusly: ...something that looks back to the past to comment on the present while looking sideways at the future. A cubist aural experience... assembled like a clockwork orchestra... It is the music our grandparents or great-grandparents would have listened to, if they were as off-set as we are.

Like steampunk, sepiachord is open to interpretation, and the genius is in the marriage of seeming opposites. The label is broad enough to include genre-busting favorites like Beirut, Tom Waits, and the Dresden Dolls, but it's the electronic-beats-versus-old-timey-jazz-samples that I've been swooning over as of late.

This whole notion was first introduced to me by my dear friend of startlingly impeccable tastes, Meester Ralph, and then furthered by Stache. Both have gifted me with delicious play-lists featuring all manner of lovely musicians - British band The Real Tuesday Weld, French hip-hop talent Wax Tailor, and Austrian artists Waldeck and Parov Stelar spring to mind.

It's the mash-up that pleases me most ~ the thoroughly postmodern pursuit of blending the most disparate elements into an enjoyable and seamless whole. Behold "Crazy in Love" by the Puppini Sisters - a cover of a Beyoncé song, remixed by The Real Tuesday Weld. Brilliant.

San Francisco Bay Area band Beats Antique takes the fusion a step further by adding a dash of middle eastern flavor and a sprinkle of circus whimsy... which just may spontaneously combust into the coolest beats ever.

I've only recently discovered them and I have yet to see them live, but I hear they're splendid. Who wants to come out and play?

Why I Love Isabella Rossellini

2009-04-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Truly, one just can't help but adore the fabulous and talented Isabella Rossellini.

Never mind that she came to New York from Rome at age 19 and paid for school by being a translator and circus ringmaster. Never mind that she's been romantically linked to Martin Scorsese, Gary Oldman, and David Lynch. Never mind that she's stunningly beautiful, brilliant, and an active environmentalist.

I love her for her fearlessness. She was mesmerizing as the masochistic lounge singer in Lynch's neo-noir classic Blue Velvet. And who could resist her as a double-amputee beer baroness wearing beer-filled artificial legs in the beautiful surrealist film The Saddest Music in the World by Canadian genius Guy Madden?

But it's Green Porno that sealed my love for Ms. Rossellini. When asked by the Sundance Channel to make a series of "flashy environmental" shorts, Isabella took it upon herself to illustrate the frequently disturbing sex lives of insects.

Most definitely not safe for work, but delightfully bizarre and candid, the series features a charmingly amorous Isabella frolicking about in an oversized, cartoonish set, mostly made of paper. And she's just released Season Two - on sea creatures. Please let there be an octopus episode, please!

Here's a recent interview with Isabella. And my favorite snarky feminist pop culture rag, Bitch Magazine, just featured the series in an article called Wings of Desire, on the radical gender role implications of documenting bug sex.

You know you want to see Isabella as an orgasmic snail in a giant homemade paper maché costume. And her accent makes a statement like "We're sequential hermaphrodites" sound positively sensual. Just go.

Fuchsia Sparkle Glam and Taxes

2009-04-06T14:07:00.001-07:00

They say only two things in this world are certain. For me, of late, it's been glam and taxes. Baby Seal Club just played our first gig of the season, and early on it was announced that not only was it a glam theme, but my band-mates wanted it to be hot pink glam. Witness the results.

Faithful readers will know that although I am a consummate costume freak, "hot pink glam" has never entered my lexicon. I tend towards the rich fall hues and corsets, goggles and fishnets, feathers and stripes ~ my own bizarre little genre-bender I like to call Tribal Victorian Burner Circus Freak. After several days of *shudder* combing the trashiest teeny-bopper stores in the mall to no avail, I decided I'd have to make it myself. And own it.

Thus began what shall henceforth be known as the "Week of Fuchsia Sparkle Glam-ness." Sewing zebra spandex is not for the faint of heart. I even let my brilliant friend Amber Lee have her way with my make-up, and ended up coming out like a cross between Jem and Bowie circa 1973.

Yes, that's my man Stache behind me, wearing a giant hair-metal wig ~ he was in the opening band. And my much-adored bassist Lord Wizzbang Hopton also took the glam thing to new heights. And I, for all my complaining, totally pulled it off. So much so that three or four people came up after our ridiculously fun show and said we should dress glam all the time.

Alas, to come down from being a glam diva and spend ten more hours slogging through those painful taxes was misery. Having to figure out inventory was making me feel like I was trapped in a nightmare of algebraic word problems: "If Choklit bought 1 spool of velvet ribbon for $20 and made 4 collars with 12 inches of ribbon each, and a train traveling south was going 50 miles an hour towards a train going north at 35 miles per hour, how many yards of velvet ribbon would it take to tie a bow around the southbound train before they collided?"

But I finally triumphed. Over the taxes, AND the glam. Overall, the weekend was incredible. So now we're trying to figure out how to incorporate some glam elements into our usual costuming to spice it up - but still feel like ourselves. Any ideas? Gaslamp Glam?

Clowns and Whiskey

2009-03-31T11:39:00.000-07:00

Somehow, March ended up being a whirlwind of events that all included some unholy combination of whiskey and clowns, and usually a little too much of both.

It all started with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Bingo, wherein nuns in drag make a general fuss about everything, while giving away fabulous prizes for bingo.

Sisters Bingo photos used with kind permission of Sheila Garvey.

Several of the sisters were beside themselves with admiration for my dashing male companions, so there was much shooing of frisky nuns away from my dear ones.

If you've never been to the monthly event, I highly recommend it for a rousing good time - just don't sit too close to the speakers. Shrieking nuns + nasty-tasting Johnny Walker = headache.

Following on the heels of Bingo was the delightful Spring Equinox Sideshow party a few weekends ago, an event packed with clowns, firedancers, and freaks of all stripes. Here's your Choklit with beloveds El Fudo and Miss M ~ in fact, the three March birthdays that led to so much swilling of whiskey.

And Stache found a bottle of absinthe to share with the lovely Pamela - whom we had only just met at Sisters Bingo a few nights before.

Having barely recovered from the Equinox Party, we spent a ridiculous weekend in the city at a whole host of parties, including Fou Fou Ha's new show, Out of Order: A Musical that Comes out of a Toilet, which was beyond hilarious - I think I still have the giggles.

Fou Fou Ha photos used with kind permission of Eric Gillet.

I'll never have my fill of those beautiful Fou's, they make me sparkle from my fingers to my toes. Well, the Fou's and one-third of Fudo's birthday bottle of Noah's Mill... heh.

Now what will April have in store for us?

CoutureLust: Amoelbarroco

2009-03-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

I first encountered the stunning and intriguing Viveka, a.k.a. Brummella Brumaria, designer of Amoelbarroco, through her Etsy shop, and was instantly enamoured. Even more so when I found her Flickr site, with its deep archive of delectable photos.

Captivated, I went to her blog, and found it written in Spanish, which made sense, as she is based in Madrid. Though sadly, my own Spanish is far too pathetic to be able to read the entries, I enjoyed the pictures, and when I fed her bio through that clunky-but-entertaining Google translator engine, it yielded this delightful paragraph:

Steampunk pirate, robot recalcitrant scientific crazy part-time aesthete unparalleled, exquisite Baroque zombie art-nouveau, and lover of the crapulilla - Orientalism, Symbolism, Terror, times past, the vicissitudes of history and several anachronisms, dandybilly and carnivaliosa...

I'm sure it's not a perfect translation, but it made me very happy. I'm considering re-learning Spanish to follow her blog.

How would you describe yourself and your style of work?

I use to think about myself as a dilettante with a non-stop creative anxiousness and infected with some kind of quixotic behaviour. I love art, literature and history (that's why I studied Fine Arts) and, in my work, I use to "contribute" to them with some personal cosmogony and fantasy, altering it or showing my point of view of the past and anachro-aesthetics. I just want to work again and again about my perception of beauty, no mind which form it adopts. Now I channel all these ideas through designing clothing, but who knows if this is its final shape!

Where do you find inspiration?

As I've said before, mostly from art and history. I have my preferences, of course; baroque, rococo, Victorian, art nouveau and 80's are essential to me, but also of interest to me are diverse subjects such as medical imagery, romantic orientalism, contemporary and antique photography, puritan and religious tradition and imagery, comics, music and films, and many more! I find inspiration also in books, I love symbolism, decadent writers, horror literature, steampunk...I'm always reading something.

What do you do besides design amazing clothes?

Well, thanks so much for your comment :). Hehehe, apart from spending time with that strange gentleman I use to find by my side and hanging out with my dear freak friends in bizarre places, in the professional world, I work also in fashion as a teacher in a school, besides attending Amoelbarroco!

I'm also a kind of amateur photographer (mostly self-portraits), model for others sometimes, I enjoy very much this activity, and I REALLY love traveling, too, I think I would spend my life discovering new places.

What are three things that please you the most in the world?

Just three!! I think I can resume this in "having the possibility of doing whatever I like and want."

How did you get your start making clothes?

With my brand...maybe...by accident?? Hahaha, I begin this adventure working with another girl more experienced in this sector, but we decided not to work more together, so I decided to continue alone and I've been like that from a year and a half more or less with some friends as collaborators sometimes, I really appreciate their help and opinions. Anyway, in the past I made some designs for my closet, and always enjoyed working with image and making my own eccentric-styling and way to understand fashion. Also, when I was an art student I developed some art-fashion artifacts and constructions, and if I go back as a child I use to draw some girls with strange clothing and appearance, so I can say that always had a part of my thoughts moving in this direction.

What piece of work are you most proud of?

Hard to decide!! The most successful one is the "pirate-gondoliere" shirt which has an original illustration of Laura Wächter on the back (I always want to collaborate with her, she is a very talented person).

But I love specially the first men's shirt I made with my own hands and even "French couture"! There are some new designs that will be visible soon that I think are good stuff too.

Where can we find your line?

On the last times I worked mostly with direct orders from costumers, this is my favourite way of selling, but you can also find some garments (and sales) at my Etsy shop, or in Madrid in a couple of places: La Morgue, but there are a few products now (c/Espíritu Santo 2) or my permanent exhibition at L'showroom (c/Mejía Lequerica, 17, 2d).

Thank you, Viveka!

Things That Please Me: Surreal TV

2009-03-13T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm one of those people who simply doesn't do television. But every once in a while a show makes it through the filters and captures my attention, and then I become addicted and have to watch every episode in all-night marathons. The most recent of these is Lars Von Trier's cult classic horror mini-series from the early nineties - Riget, or The Kingdom.

I haven't completed the marathon yet, but thus far I've been captivated enough by the bizarre and colorful characters, ridiculous plot twists, and dry moments of comedy to forgive the shaky claustrophobic camera work and indulgent B-movie gore. Besides, the fact that it's all in Danish makes it that much better.

Preceding Riget by a few years, and drawing frequent comparisons, is Stache's favorite TV show of all time - Twin Peaks. I somehow missed the phenomenon the first time around, but when it finally came out on DVD, I consumed it like candy. The unsettling snail-like pacing, the unabashed absurdity, and the droll humor all instantly endeared me to David Lynch's foray into the small screen.

I both love and hate the way Lynch makes you feel like you might be missing something deep, when in fact there is no answer - the truth is that it just doesn't make any sense at all. Twin Peaks reached levels of artfulness rarely seen before or since on television, and scores of rabid fans are still talking about it.

But perhaps my most beloved surreal TV show is HBO's Carnivàle, which certainly owes much to these earlier shows. But Carnivàle takes the top honors in my book for the stunning production values, and because, well, it takes place in a traveling carnival in the 1920's.

I have such appreciation for the painstaking way in which the creators immerse you in the world of the show. All of the extras look like living Dorothea Lange portraits. The opening title sequence takes my breath away every time. And the stunning art direction, gritty costuming, and luminous lighting lend a palpable sense of beautiful decay and doom every time you watch the show.

It seems shows like this always end poorly, or not at all, as in the case of Carnivàle, which was written as a seven-season show and canceled with a fist-clenchingly frustrating cliff-hanger after only two seasons, spawning desperate campaigns to bring it back from heartbroken fans. And they are all too rare - clearly the general public does not share my peculiar tastes.

So I'll have to wait, perhaps years, for the next time some rogue director wants to make a brilliantly baffling show to remind me that sometimes, TV can be worthwhile.

Bohemian Carnival and Hollis

2009-03-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we finally managed to attend the "indie circus orgy" known as Bohemian Carnival. I took the opportunity to don my "Stripey Fraggle Klown" outfit (spot the Aubergine adornments!) and gather the gang to run off with the circus for a night. I even managed to tart up my lovely friend Grace, who had thus far not indulged in the type of festooned debauchery I'm prone to.

I was a wee bit disappointed with how many spectators in plain-clothes were in attendance, and not all the acts were to my fancy, but it was a rousing time nonetheless. Stache took some pictures of our beloved burlesque buffoons Fou Fou Ha performing, which was certainly the highlight of my evening.

We also saw Klown-Fi band Gooferman for the first time, which was a delightful spectacle... and there were some lovely aerial acts.

Photographer to the stars Mr. Nightshade caught me backstage with Mama Fou, sneaking a sip from the clever and handy guitar flask of Vegas the Klown.

Originally conceived by members of Circus Metropolus and nouveau acrobatics troupe Vau de Vire Society as a gathering for the Bay Area underground circus community, and denizens of Burning Man's Red Nose District, the event has been growing for the past year or so. Curly wigs off to the organizers for the wickedly good time!

As a final sad yet hopeful note on this circus-ish post, I'd like to mention the plight of Hollis, a woman from our beautiful community (that is, the Bay Area Circus Burner Freak Activist community, of course) who was in a dreadful motorbike accident in India, and is now in a coma. Her family and friends need to raise $150K to airlift her home for treatment. Read more about it on Coilhouse, and if you can donate at all, please do it here. And spread the word!

Fotografía de los Sueños

2009-02-28T16:29:00.000-08:00

Falling down one of those unexpected interwebs rabbit holes today led me to the online galleries of Madrid-based photographer Eugenio Recuenco, and I was sufficiently enamored to want to share.

I spent hours poring over the deep archives on his Web site, mesmerized. I didn't love all of his work ~ it's a very diverse portfolio ~ but the ones I love... I love very, very much.

He's a master of creating moody, surrealistic tableaus that are ripe with the promise of some fantastical and possibly disturbing tale.

I've heard his pictures described as cinematic. It's perhaps because of the meticulous attention to detail in the art direction, and a dreamlike quality that I find enchanting.

It occurs to me now that the first print issue of my beloved Coilhouse Magazine had a lush spread and interview with him. He has also made a few short films that are worth perusing even if some of them were originally perfume ads or music videos.

Thanks to my new blog obsession HauteMacabre for leading me to this work, and to the lovely TotusMel for leading me to HauteMacabre.

CoutureLust: Black Lotus

2009-02-24T23:48:00.000-08:00

I'm ever so pleased to announce a new interview series: CoutureLust. I'm constantly amazed by all the enchanting indie clothing designers I find online, and I wanted to take the opportunity to show them some love.

First up, Christina Molcillo of Black Lotus Clothing. I found Christina at a Tribal Bellydance festival a few years ago, and have been avidly watching her work evolve into a jaw-droppingly gorgeous fusion of tribal-grunge-gothic-carnival-Victorian beauty. Not surprising that I lust after everything she creates. Prepare for serious WANT.

How would you describe yourself and your style of work?

First thing that comes to mind is that I'm a dork who just so happens to make pretty things. Well, at least I think they're pretty.. Nothing wrong with liking your own work, right?

My current style is kinda like a Grungy Tattered Beautiful F^&*d Up Mess... (excuse the language, but that's the best way I know how to describe it). I'm drawn to texture, layers, and sparkle... antiques, feathers, flowers and other found objects. I somehow manage to rip them all apart and put them back together in a fashion that pleases me. It's actually quite a therapeutic experience really... kinda like finger painting, or digging in the dirt while gardening. There's no precise way to do it... you just do it....
Where do you find inspiration?

Everywhere. I know that's really vague, but it's true. I can be walking down the street and see a leaf and go "Wow, look at the veins in that leaf, kinda looks like a stitching pattern," or I'll be sitting in traffic and stare at the dingy old commercial truck in front of me and think "Hmm... if that truck were a garment what would it look like?" Then I'll look at the colors, detailing and feel of the vehicle and actually form a costume in my head to match it. Do I really go home and make that costume? No... ahh... probably not. But it's a good creative exercise! Normally I just dig through my fabrics until I find one that I like, and go to town with it... that's usually how all my pieces start.

Or... unless I'm creating for a customer... I have a specific person in mind. I love to use certain dancers as muses, they can give me creative boosts as well.
What do you do besides design amazing clothes?

Nuthin'... Hehe... I don't know, just normal stuff I guess. I love traveling, hanging out with my friends and my amazing husband (he's really funny). I read books, watch movies, take baths, collect things, dance, oh, and I just got off a 2 week raw juice fast. That was a pretty awesome experience... I love learning about health and nutrition.

What are three things that please you the most in the world?

The People Around Me
Being Creative
Shopping

How did you get your start making clothes?

To sum it up I've always made stuff... After high school I studied Fashion for a minute then quit about halfway through the program... I didn't touch it for five years until I discovered Tribal Belly Dancing, and that's when I started making my own costumes.

In all honesty, I hated performing, so I decided to choose to stay in the game by being a costumer.

Pretty much all I knew was that I wanted to be a designer sooo badly, but didn't know how to get started... I was also under the impression that everything had to be mass produced, so I tried to go down that route, but just couldn't connect the two. Eventually I just sat down in front of a machine and taught myself how to sew... one costume at a time.

What piece of work are you most proud of?

Good question. Nobody has ever asked me that. I guess it would be this one. I loved that combo of bluish grey and silver with the red. Some lady in Spain owns it now, I hope she's taking care of it...

...and I love these new things I'm working on in my studio right now... lil' skirts, neck corsets, bras and crap that nobody will probably ever see. Most of my work is sold at shows, and never goes online. I don't think people realize how many things I make...

Where can we find your line?

Various shows, events are posted on my website... you can always add me as a friend on mySpace or Tribe too. I always upload my new work (there) simultaneously with the site.

Thanks Christina!