Fin de L'artiste

One random Saturday night last week my friend Alex and I got together and were drinking wine as we tend to do. Having nothing to do we decided to play around and take some photographs. I happen to had recently purchased some nude tights for a photo idea and this seemed like the perfect time to make it happen. Using just a plain white wall in my room, a desk lamp, tights, lipstick and of course wine we managed to come out with some pretty beautiful photos that I turned into a short story entitled The End of the Artist or Fin de L'artiste (for some reason or another we decided it sounded better in French). These photos were also a continued experimentation from my shoot with Janely that I featured in yesterday's post as I'm sure you can see the unquestionable similarities. It seemed relevant to share this story after my discussion on the institutions and their effect on artists and their work so this story became about the destruction of the artist. Enjoy.

The Chaos of Androgyny

Lately I've been thinking a lot about androgyny; the extreme yet ambiguous subjects it entails, it's place in the fashion world, and how our society reacts to it. Within this post are some very interesting takes on the subject from a sociological and fashion point of view derived from Adorned in Dreams by Elizabeth Wilson. The photos are from a photo shoot I did recently with my favorite model/muse Janely Rodriguez and coincidentally fit well with the theme, in my opinion at least. The makeup is by the fucking incredible Kayla Carcone whom I recently did another project with that I will be posting behind the scenes shot's from soon enough. 
In the meantime let us discuss the chaos that is androgyny. 


“Today androgyny has ceased to be sacred. Modern fashion plays endlessly with the distinction between masculinity and femininity. With it we express our shifting ideas about what masculinity and femininity are. Fashion permits us to flirt with transvestism, precisely to divest it of all its danger and power.”

“Peter Ackroyd, writing about transvestism, takes an entirely different view, and suggests that what lies behind the social construction of gender is not a fear of passivity, but the fear of and desire for the ‘chaos of androgyny’, which he says is sacred:

                'Cross dressing has often been the sign of an extraordinary destiny. In many shamanistic cultures, transvestites are regarded as sorcerers or visionaries, who, because of their double nature as men dressed as women, are sources of diving authority within the community….It is not surprising that this double nature should be seen as a sign of the sacred, when we consider the androgynous or at least bisexual nature of the deities [that] are worshiped….Androgyny, in which the two sexes co-exist in one form and which the transvestite priest imitates in his own person, is an original state of power.'"

“In these ‘liberated’ times a man in a skirt causes considerable anxiety and hostility. The counter-culture of the late sixties flirted with the idea…but in general in order to wear a skirt a man has to define himself as a transvestite, that is, a sexual deviant.” 

“…outrage dressing, ambiguous as it is, may on occasion express simply—ambiguity. At first glance the androgyny of rock stars such as David Bowie shocks. New boundaries of boldness have surely been set when a man wears make-up, or a woman shaves her head…gender and desire are ultimately unstable. The rigid sexual identities we cultivate, and which are popularly experienced as ‘natural’ and given at birth, are really functions elaborated by the nineteenth-century sexologists; they merely imprison the waywardness of lust, constraining us in sexual and social roles.” 

“Suzy Menkes (The Times, 1 May 1984) wrote about the 1984 fashions for ‘androgynous undies’ and masculinity in women’s dress, suggesting that these were ‘the ultimate fashion statement about the sexual revolution’. Suzy Menkes goes on to reveal, however, that this form of ‘cross dressing’, which is opening up the way to ‘gender-bending’ unisex departments in exclusive fashion stores, is simply a new fad and that—significantly—the market it is aimed at is the market of affluent heterosexual couples for whom androgynous dress symbolizes not an attack on gender but merely a reaffirmation of middle-class togetherness.” 

What are your thoughts on 'the chaos of androgyny'? 

Summer Outfits

It has been 10 days that I have withheld myself from blogging and I'm not going to lie to you guys, I missed it terribly. So terribly that last night I even had a dream about me organizing and brainstorming blog post ideas. That could either mean that I might be a little crazy or that I just love my blog that much; I'm gonna go with the latter. I have a million and one things that I want to share here and write about including my amazing trip to Savannah but sadly have not edited the photos and have not had a moment to really sit down and write a thought-out coherent sentence. That said posts will be coming along slowly this week but you can expect the blog to back up and running in full gear by next week, I swear it. 

With all that said to bring summer to a close since this is my last week of summer vacation and next week is the beginning of fall semester and my LAST semester of college I thought I would share with you all some outfits that I wore this summer but never shared. Here I was testing out a new style of documenting my outfits. Rather than going out and doing mini photo shoots in them I wanted to just capture them immediately after being created in a candid snap-shop style. No makeup, no styling the situation or location, just me, my room and my clothes. 

As you can see I often wear my hair in the same style of a top bun that if some cold-hearted person really desired could just come up and chop it off with a pair of scissors in one quick snip. I should really keep that in mind.... Anyways, what do you guys think of this style of shooting? Would you prefer to see more of this? Please comment and let me know. I am always thinking of how I want this blog to evolve and although I do love going out and doing mini photo shoots with my outfits I also wonder if I am creating too much of a stylized reality and not giving you all a fair and real perspective of me and my life. More on that soon enough. I hope you all enjoy your last few days of summer vacation as I know mine will be spent working like a dog, not that that's anything new.