The Little Black Dress: Still Relevant

More research discovering something most of us already knew: Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s is still a favorite. In a poll conducted by Lovefilm, a UK-based DVD rental group, the iconic Holly Golightly ensemble was voted the greatest female screen outfit. Also unsurprising: Marilyn Monroe’s infamous white accordion-pleat dress from the Seven Year Itch was one of the top three.* 
*What, with fashion magazines positioning the Little White Dress as an alternative to the LBD and the 1939 Irwin Shaw story, The Girls in Their Summer Dresses, surreptitiously haunting collective fashion memory, we’ve hopped on the LWD trend at MyShape.

North By Northwest By Way of Savile Row

North By Northwest

Saturday, May 29

Gates open at 7 pm

Movie screens at 8:30 pm

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

1600 Santa Monica Boulevard 

Los Angeles, CA 90038

cinespia.org

Wardrobe trivia: Cary Grant’s suit was provided by the Savile Row tailor Kilgour. Clothes On Film suggests that Hitchcock probably let Grant select his own wardrobe, but didn’t trust co-star Eva Marie Saint with her own sartorial choices; Hitchcock took his blonde leading lady to Bergdorf Goodman and picked out her on-screen attire himself. She likened the experience to shopping with a sugar-daddy.

I Will Survive

  

Long kept from public view, a palm-sized painting by Frida Kahlo sold Wednesday night at Christie’s for $1.1 million (or $1.2 million, depending on your source), against pre-sale estimates ranging from $100,000 to $150,000. The 1938 painting features a pre-Hispanic warrior under a troubled sky; it measures 6" x 4" and was framed in Oaxacan tin as a votive offering.
More interesting than the unanticipated selling price is the story behind the painting itself. Kahlo created the work in gratitude for her own survival; she had attempted suicide after discovering Diego Rivera’s affair with her sister.

The buyer was an unnamed private collector from Mexico who purchased several works during the auction. Will this collector hide Survivor away again?

For more info, click here or here.

Above: Survivor, Frida Kahlo, 1938.

MyShape.com Fits and Flatters on NBC

This was filmed by the local NBC affiliate last week, and has been 
picked up by news stations across the country.

Uh-Oh

N * O * R * M * S

The Evolution of Emily

I confess that I haven’t read much Emily Dickinson, but a couple of new books and a garden show that I’m too far away to attend, is more than enough inspiration to fill that gap.
The title of Holland Cotter’s recent New York Times article, My Hero, the Outlaw of Amherst, considers one of the imagined Emilys from passive, love-lorn recluse to feminist and queer studies icon. Cotter’s story reminds us that, if written works are any kind of window into a true self, Dickinson was equally capable of being the village eccentric as she was of being a terrorist: 
     Had I a mighty gun
     I think I’d shoot the human race.




My Hero, the Outlaw of Amherst, Holland Cotter
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, a novel by Jerome Charyn
Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds,  
a biography by Lyndall Gordon
Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers 
is on view at the New York Botanical Garden through June 13.

Rites of Spring

The Wizard of Oz

Saturday, May 15

Gates open at 7 pm

Movie screens at 8:30 pm

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

1600 Santa Monica Boulevard 

Los Angeles, CA 90038

cinespia.org

MonkeyShines

I love CakeMonkey. The Red Velvet Cakewich. The Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Cakewich. Even the idea of a PopPie or a Yo-ho. Is there such a thing as a Cake-ho? (Bear with me while I take Nine Inch Nails out of context: what have I become, my sweetest friend?) 

Today was my friend Christopher’s birthday, which he celebrated with a boxful of CakeMonkey individual layer cakes. 
Above: the birthday assortment, including Pecan Dacquoise, Vanilla Gorilla, Coconut Cake, Chocolate Caramel Cake, Apple Crumble and Cake Monkey Crunch. Below: the Silverlake pop-up store.

Memory Objects

Soon after photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she discovered that items from her mother’s wardrobe would prompt her mom to share anecdotes of the past. With this in mind, Barron began shooting her mom’s clothing, shoes and accessories, and the result is a 100-image visual biography, My Mother’s Clothes.

There’s something haunting about the way the way a dress can lay across a bed, suggesting warmth from recent wear, or the stillness of a nearly-empty bottle of fragrance, a spritz perhaps still  lingering in air. The way these objects are photographed depicts absence but expresses joy.
To see more of Barron’s work, click here. Or to purchase the book, click here.

Call Me Madame

M: Christ, I miss the Cold War. —  Quantum of Solace, 2008.

M’m! M’m! Good!

Death by PowerPoint

Marine Corps General James N. Mattis was quoted in the New York Times as saying this at a recent military conference: “PowerPoint makes us stupid.”

The above chart is one example of how PowerPoint’s limited visualization capacities can make a complicated mess out of complex data, but the software is also a reductionist tool that, through the use of bullet points, oversimplifies information and creates a false sense of understanding. Which, of course, leads to bad decisions. Like war.

Okay, now I’m being reductionist.

But here's a thought. Approximately a month and one-half ago, President Obama appointed design and data visualization hero Edward Tufte to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, and he's charged with helping to show us all what’s happening to the billions of dollars in economic stimulus tax money. (To refer to Tufte in such a lofty manner is not reductionist; the man has a cult-like following of graphic designers who speak in reverential tones about how they’ve been influenced by his seminal work,  The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.)

As such, Tufte knows a thing or two about PowerPoint, and I can only hope, on behalf of the American public, that the military will closely watch how Tufte makes sense of economic battles and follow his lead. And if the armed forces haven’t yet done so, I hope they’ll learn something from his 2006 pamphlet, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within.