“We were influenced by Diana Vreeland when she was the editor of Vogue in the ’60s. It was very futuristic and stylized. And I went from wearing no makeup at all to that black, punk, really heavy eyeliner. That cat eye. It was just a makeup extravaganza. Cheap, cheap make-up and Day-Glo clothes.”
Kate Pierson, The B-52’s, Harper’s Bazaar
I love this trip down memory lane (more…)
Over on Facebook, there’s an amazing group that’s popped up in the last few months celebrating and often reliving the days of 80s-90s UK club culture. Called Bring The Noise!! Our Story!! Our History!! it covers rave, rare groove, the Mud Club, Buffalo, World’s End and basically, the whole gamut of style and music references that any Londoner going out during the glory years of the 80s and early 90s will greedily gobble up. Even better, people are digging out old club flyers and membership cards from their attics and uploading long forgotten photos of themselves in their clubbing clobber that’s stirring up quite a few long-buried memories. (more…)
Much as I love fashion photography, nothing beats slapping a brush on a page and creating an exaggerated line that sums up the silhouette of the season. I’m well out of practice in that respect but I still love to enjoy amazing work from the great and good of fashion illustration. On Instagram I get my fix from David Downton and if you appreciate illustration I recommend that you do too.
Back in the day, I was inspired by the work of Tony Viramontes. His work can be enjoyed again in a new book, ‘Bold, Beautiful and Damned’ just published by Laurence King. (more…)
Along with Michael Roberts and Antonio Lopez, Tony Viramontes was a major influence in my early quest to be a fashion illustrator. His dynamic brush strokes and androgynous subjects are just as impactful now as they were in the eighties. Good to hear there’s a monograph coming out in October courtesy of Laurence King to celebrate the illustrator who died in 1988 at the age of 33.
A month before sees a 1stDibs.com sale of original Viramontes artwork and Polaroids, which until now have resided in the Viramontes family lockup in L.A. Mark your diaries for September 4th to snap up a gem or two…
