Icon: Kim Deal

I'm a sucker for ladies with longevity. Recently I watched LoudquietLoud a documentary about the Pixies. So many precious moments there. Kelley and Kim recording the Breeders on the tour bus while knitting! Discussing the alcohol content of non-alcholic beer! Kim's parents telling interviewers she needs to get on the road with the Pixies because she needs something to do besides make paper cut out snowflakes! Adorbs. I'm mega into Kim Deal. Not because I'm too nostalgic or mobidly fascinated with an older, sober, subdued version of an idol, but because she's really fighting the good fight to rock and roll 4-ever. Much much love to Kim Deal.

My mother wouldn't be too proud to know at age 15-16 used to loiter outside gas stations looking for a beer buyer singing, "We're just looking for ONE DIVINE BUYERRRRRR!" ahhhh, the days.

That's Ms. Saint, if You're Nasty

The veneration of Ms. Ditto in the fashion world is probably the best thing/interesting phenomenon that's happened in a long while. The discussion of homo/fat politics in fashion is pretty much nil. And even when it's called out [V Magazine 2010] lacks serious weight. But, hey, you can't change the world in a day. I love about designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Gareth Pugh, and Jean Charles Castelbajac. They are canonizing Ditto as style icon. While the message may get lost in the media shuffle, no matter what the lyrics and politics still live strong in her art. And I hope they stay out there. No consumer factory can take that away.


photo props to THEMISSHAPES twatter feed from JD de Castelbajac show.

I spied Ms. Ditto on ye olde style.com talking about Viktor & Rolf. I love the right of passage idea. But then again...I like to think of Kristen "the older model" like the mother of the alien horde of fledgling maximum shouldered babies.

Polka Daughter : Yayoi Kusama

She was more famous that Andy Warhol.


She made a heap of art in astronomical scales, rooms full covered ceiling to floor. She made PENIS chairs. Then she quit art and only did happenings (i guess it's performance art these days). Then she went nuts. In a nutshell, that's it her life. (which i should not dare to be so scant or dismissive of a more complicated life)



The thing is that Kusama is still creating art every day and she's in her 70's, almost 80's! There's nothing I love more than a woman with longevity and passion that spans decades. Guess the story is not old....but she's basically a forgotten pop artist in America although she's one of the most prolific. (hello!? white dudes always get written about in books and get documented in history, others???...notsomuch)



I learned about her after going to MOMA awhile back and seeing her art book on the shelf, Love Forever. Although I still haven't seen any of her work in person. I've become a life long lover of Kusama.
The fellas at Purple Magazine took two seconds from smokin' sherm and OD-ing on tits (i have more to say about this...) to come up for air on Yayoi Kusama. She got some exposure from photographer Chikashi Suzuki. Showing her in her studio in Comme des Garcons..in POLKA DOTS of course, just lovely.
Hope Kusama is making a come back...thinking she's about to come back into view. Saw t-shirts emblazoned with her image at Cynthia Rowley store in NY last week, too. Hope she gets some long due props.

Icon: Yoko Ono

I had the fortune of attending Yoko Ono's Dress Rehearsal performance at BAM Monday night. I swear, it's going to take me a year to process the whole show beginning to end. From the video montage retrospective of her life/work (I cried the whole time). If ever you wondered why this woman does what she does...it's so clear. In the face of EVERYTHING the bastard world has to throw at her she's the ultimate optimist. I couldn't respect any one more. She devastates my heart with her tenacity and positive outlook. You could try to burn her at the stake and she'd offer you a hug. It's the complete re-version/visioning of DISARMAMENT.

Here's the rough outline of the show.
It both lightens and sinks my heart to see "WAR IS OVER...if you want it" lit on top of taxi cabs in New York in 2010.

Nothing's changed but the art still remains.

So there's this dress at the t-shirt booth, that's a mystery to me. Who designed it? What does it mean, man!!?


There's a reason this woman must open her mouth. for the pretty to come out.

There were lots of special guests. (including a sneaky Mark Ronson, I'm pretty sure, Scissor Sisters and Chimera) I know I should have loved Kim, Thurston and Yoko doing "Mulberry" best. But truths be told I loved Justin Bond's "What a Bastard the World Is" so so sososo much. So appropriate, campy, heart wrenching and awesome.





AND they played "Death of Samantha" live for the first time ever???!!

humor break: Bottoms are really at the bottom of everything. "Bottoms" on the bathroom stall....love you yoko.

And I know over time, and by complete cultural saturation of Lennon/Ono's "Give Peace a Chance" renders it totally cheezeballs. But I really don't care. I still think it's powerful to sing together and stand up--so there. (and singing together with this group was really fun and earnest).


Listen to this woman: "Stay healthy this year, and don't get too angry." .......okay, i'll try.

Icon: Sinead O'Connor

Hold on to your hankies...she's damaging.

Icon- Rita Ackermann

I first fell in love with Rita Ackermann like most punk kids in the 90's...1) the Thurston Moore Psychic Hearts album cover and 2) the Max Fish window [I have a pic somewhere I took ages ago--to post later]. Later on I discovered her band, Angelblood. Friends of mine swapped Ackermann-esque portraits and self portraits. Ackermann's "girls" just seem to infiltrate my aesthetic world--or perhaps it's just the age of nymphoid children with big girl problems. I don't know. In October, last year, I did go to see her exhibit at the Andrea Rosen gallery in New York titled "Nurses". Here's an article from Tokion Magazine Fall 2008 I finally scanned today. Enjoy! [Click for larger views]

And she's a goddamn snappy dresser,too.

Icon- Patty Hearst

Patty Hearst is a unquestionably strong and resilient woman, Stokholm Syndrome and all. I love the whole package.

She makes a dungaree militia uniform look sick!

AND the peacoat, too. How did she do it? Connection between revolutionary action and crazy good innate fashion sense, yes I think so.


Thank the lord for the SLA, Patty's got a devilish sense of humor about her past and is a fantastic actor: See playing Tracy Lords' mother in Crybaby. Girl, you make me hot.

Icon- Tina Turner

Ever since I heard "Private Dancer" at 7-8, I was hooked. Later, when I heard "River Deep Mountain High" I became a life long fan. A period of obsession with Ike and Tina and the Ikettes(music group) and seeing What's Love Got to Do with It, I was convinced: Dress to the nines, no matter how ragged, tired, sweaty or out of sorts. No matter what...look good, take pride. I admire her ability to survive/thrive through years of abuse, be a mother, be a consummate professional, leave her abuser, all while looking fierce, and... Fuck! She rules. Fearless.




OH and what? She just toured in 2008.

Icon-Lydia Lunch

Lydia in Richard Kern's film "The Right Side of My Brain" got me into so much good poetry and No-Wave. I became obsessed with Lydia and Exene's book Adulterers Anonymous.Their poetry is what inspired me to write. Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary blew me away.I fell in love with Sonic Youth and Death Valley 69 and Harry Crews. Lydia is prolific and crosses genre boundaries as much as she steps over the line of obscenity/foul mouthed anti-status quo lovliness.

As you might have guessed, I'm really into iconoclastic women who keep on creating their whole lives. She's still rock'n'rollin' Damn.

"I will live! And I will live..eh, not necessarily well, but with verve, vigor and a hell of a lot of vinegar." --Lydia Lunch 2008

Lydia-Love 4 EVA.

Icon-Aretha Franklin

Really feeling the divas today. Just found this hat at House of Vintage today. I mean, the bow kills it but the ivory number is pretty fierce, too.

Icon-Cookie Mueller

Crazy inspired today and in a nostalgic whirlwind for John Waters' Dreamland Girls. I like 'em tough, and I like 'em real. Cookie was so goddamn hot and real. She was also a writer for Details and wrote a book called "Ask Dr. Mueller". She was one of Nan Goldin's close friends/photo subjects. Cookie was an AIDS activist in the 80's, who passed away due complications of AIDS in 1989.

Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won't have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free. -Cookie Mueller

I can't stand it, I love her so much.

Icon-Divine

Speaking of makeup: Divine and John Waters/Van Smith aesthetic is the soul reason I'm obsessed with makeup today. If it wasn't for them I'd still be in makeup diapers, in a crib, eating eggs with Edith Massey.


Divine here with another style icon, Cookie Meuller (right) in Female Trouble.

Icon- Cosey Fanni Tutti

Artist, non/musician, and sex worker Cosey Fanni Tutti (from Mozart's opera Cosey fann tutti= Women are like that). Cosey most famously played in Throbbing Gristle. But I'm really into the work she did as a sex/worker/artist for Prostitution exhibition.

Chris and Cosey "October Love Song"


People have their wieners in a twist about the Kanye/Chairlift pixel melting debacle. Cosey ruled the video tape-scape, dudes. Get over it.

Icon-Tura Satana

Tura Satana kickin' ass in Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Satana's father was a silent movie actor of Japanese and Filipino descent, and her mother was a circus performer of American Indian (Cheyenne) and Scots-Irish background. After the end of World War II and a stint in the Manzanar internment camp in Lone Pine, California, she and her family moved to the Westside of Chicago. She developed breasts very early and, despite being an excellent student, was constantly harassed for her figure and Asian heritage. Walking home from school at the age of nine she was gang raped by five men. Her attackers were never prosecuted and it was rumored that the judge had been paid off. [1] This prompted her to learn the martial arts of aikido and karate and, over the next 15 years, track down each rapist and enact revenge. "I made a vow to myself that I would someday, somehow get even with all of them," she said years later. "They never knew who I was until I told them." Fierce.


To prove this lady's the real deal, in 2007, she's still kickin' ass.

Icon

Exene Cervenka from X has been my style icon since I was just a pup. Her irrefutable style has had a huge impact on everything from fashion, art and music. What is most exhilarating about her aesthetic is the DIY credo. From collages, the Original Sinners, poetry zines and even her semi-annual "garage sale" on ebay, I'm 100% interested in what Exene touches.



obsessed with this 7" cover

my favorite band of all time