The Swelle Life

The Original 'Ugly Betty'

I came across this photo on Dlisted this morning, it's Heather Matarazzo in the 1995 Todd Solondz film Welcome to the Dollhouse. One look at misfit 'Dawn Wiener' and a certain popular TV character by the name of Betty, aka Ugly Betty comes to mind. Inspired, perhaps?

Have you ever seen a Todd Solondz film? In addition to Welcome to the Dollhouse, I've seen Happiness (1998) and Storytelling (2001). Solondz, who writes the scripts for all of his movies, has a real knack for creating compelling viewing that hooks you, easying you into his disturbing story lines with clever, uncontrived dialogue, fascinating characters and a kind of surreal atmosphere that feels a bit like a daydream. Then 'Augh! What the hell am I watching!' - things turn totally perverse, yet somehow it all fits, and you feel dirty and disgusted, but you can't look away.

I highly recommend his movies if you appreciate daring film making, but I wouldn't invite the parents over for Todd Solondz film night.

Dita Shows Us Her Wonderbra

So, a bra manufacturer finally got wise and recruited Dita von Teese to be their face and (ample) bosom. Wonderbra was the least slow on the pick-up and now we get to see the burlesque performer dancing in a sexier line of frillies in the push-up masters' new campaign, now showing on your TV for your private viewing pleasure. Ladies, don't get angry at your men, her moves are quite mesmerising, they can't help but stare. Don't fight it, join in. If he drools or starts fidgeting awkwardly, however, a light smack is acceptable.

Leanimal Untamed on Project Runway

   

(Sorry, Leanne - sometimes headlines are a bit of a challenge.)

Leanne Marshall is one of my favourite designers and I'm thrilled to have found out that she's on Project Runway 5! Actually, she's my #1 favourite of the accessible designers, meaning those who make amazing clothes that we can afford without starving or selling off the family jewels (I'm speaking literally, not figurately, but you can earn your money however you like). For her Leanimal line she mainly designs dresses and coats (do we really need anything else?) that upon first glance have you mentally calculating your savings and clearing space in your wardrobe, thanks to her unique brand of structural and femine detail. 'Cute' doesn't cut it; Leanne's expert ways with tucks and pleats and an instinctive non-traditional approach to mixing fabrics and textures result in a truly original garment. Which is why those who know her covet her extraordinary and beautiful designs.

However, time may be ticking on the bargain prices now that she's been chosen to be one of the 16 (now 13, well done!)talented designers to battle it out before the delightfully snotty Michael Kors, the intensely alert Heidi Klum (those eyes scream 'caffeine!'), and that woman Nina Garcia. And how much do you love 'make it work' Tim Gunn? ProjectRunway.com is auctioning the dress Leanne made in episode 3 (see right) and as of today it's leading the bids of the others by miles. This dress looks so 'Leanimal' yet I haven't seen it before. I really look forward to what brilliant pieces will come from her in future episodes.

I am lucky enough to say that Leanne is designing a custom dress for me once the show is finished and I can't wait to show it here. And she still designs and makes every piece herself. How insanely busy must she be? What a woman. And, she has one dress left in her Etsy shop, a truly special, one-of-a-kind piece that is so artfully crafted that it was displayed in the Contemporary Museum of Craft in Portland. Oregan, where she is currently based.

Project Runway 5 is running on Bravo in the US but I have no idea when Canada is getting it and who is running it (no info on Bravo.ca or google. Hmph!) You can see the first two episodes on YouTube right now, hopefully #3 will be posted soon.

Here are some gorgeous pieces from Leanne's Spring 08 and upcoming Fall collections:

 

 

Pushing Daisies - No Sound Required

I was really looking forward to watching Pushing Daisies now that it's here in the UK (thanks ITV). The rave reviews stateside are being echoed here and the promo stills looked very enticing indeed, right up my alley with the hyper-colourific 'Black Hole Sun' meets Tim Burton aesthetic. Delish.

I was taking photos of the pilot from the TV screen throughout so I confess I wasn't giving the dialogue my complete attention. However, it  seemed as if it didn't matter all that much. Not a criticism, the show is, erm, pleasant. Rather. Quite. Anna Friel is delightful as Chuck, she does a cracking American accent (where does she hide the Northern?) and there's good chemistry with Ben, well played by Lee Pace. But it didn't impact me much, other than how it looked (great clothes, especially the dresses and shoes, and wallpaper deserves another resurgence thanks to the show's wonderfully patterned interiors). Which is still something in itself. It could prove to be an utter visual indulgence, depending on whether it's merely satisfied with its early achievements or looks within itself to find new ways to illustrate the fairy tale.

A sign of good things to come, however; the top photo is from an upcoming episode and from that I'd say the future looks bright. For now, some pretty pictures from episode one:

As I was posting this photo of Ned and Chuck on the grass, it seemed familiar. Then it came to me. They're in Tubby Land, see for yourself!

Gossip Girl - Even Their School Uniforms Make Us Feel Inferior

It was the mid - late 80s when I attended high school (stop snickering) and it was a Catholic school. Yes, the dreaded uniform. That which students loathe, and parents, teachers, school administrators and other oppressive regimes love. The first year we got away with a dress code uniform of a white or navy golf or dress shirt and grey trousers or skirt. Naturally it was abused right off the bat and white became cream, navy was baby blue and grey trousers, faded (or not so faded) black jeans. Can you blame us for trying?

We thought we were smart (then again, I also thought a perm and navy eye liner was a good idea) but we didn't get away with it for long. The next school year the official uniform was introduced - white dress or golf shirt with school logo and for the girls, the 'choice' of grey wool trousers (seemingly modelled after the 'Mom jean') or THE KILT. The grey, white and burgundy (to match the hideous, mostly ACRYLIC burgundy logo v-neck sweater we had to wear in winter) wool kilt. Made of the itchiest of wools so we're talking premium fibres here, with a little Brillo pad for filler. We still tried to get away with some modifications - rolling up the top to make it shorter or hemming it. Threats immediately ensued and we were told to wear them no higher than the middle of the knee or face detention. I once witnessed a teacher get down on his knee to check whether a girl's hem was slightly above the line of moral decency.

To be fair, when I worked at Yonge & Eglinton in Toronto there were a few Catholic high schools in the area and there was obviously no rule about hemlines. The majority of the girls had them hiked up to the upper thigh. And the combination of the flared style of the kilt, extreme wind at this particular intersection and the way teen girls tend to bounce instead of walk, meant that I saw more under-age butts than an unlicensed tattoo parlour. So our school may have had a point. But it still sucked big time.

So, now we have Gossip Girl. A show about those wealthy, fashion-obsessed, contemptibly privileged New York society high school kids whose lives surely make our kegger/bush party days seem pitiful in comparison (because we thought they were cool before, right?). If only it were fiction. Imagine a 'uniform' as seen above (shirts provided by French Toast, the real-life supplier of American school uniform apparel), or rocking up to the school's front doors accessorised like this:

There is one drawback to this scenario, however. When you're this fabulous, usually so are your friends. And when you all have to-die-for coats, the latest 'it' bag and shoes that are too good to make contact with the ground, it's hard to stand out, as this photo illustrates. (And having matching hairbands doesn't help.)

After reading an interview with the Gossip Girl novel author Cecily Von Ziegesar (who attended  a small, private girls school on the upper east side), I could smell a reality show a la The Hills being cooked up. She mentioned how her classmates would sometimes miss school to be private-jetted to Paris for couture fittings. So, I bet it's not long before we've got the real Gossip kids flaunting their stuff in our faces - who wouldn't want to see filthy rich 16 year-olds living lives we can only conjure in daydreams? Please, at least spare us that irritating, giggly-sinister narration. (Oh, I know I'd watch it anyway.)

What is with the guy who plays Chuck? He looks like the offspring of Jimmy Fallon and The Count from Sesame Street.

   

Truly Mad for 'Mad Men'

The best-looking show on TV has arrived in Britain and I'm hooked (thank you BBC Four). Set in 1960 New York, Mad Men is about the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising. It is an utter treat to watch. Brilliantly shot, each frame serves up an eyeful of style perfection. If you love the mid-century aesthetic, this show is an hour-long daydream. Not a detail is overlooked, from the bang-on accurate props to the delicious costume design.

Ah, the clothes. Costume designer Janie Bryant represents women's fashion exactly as it was in 1960, a transitional period where the longer circle skirts of the 50s gave way to shorter hemlines and more figure-hugging styles (as the ultra-curvaceous secretary, Joan, aptly demonstrates). And the men, never have they looked so good. With his French-cuffed shirts, spread collars and sharply tailored grey business suits, the show's staggeringly handsome lead, Don Draper, is the epitome of masculinity at its best (shame about the incessant cheating).

There's something about this era, the one I just missed by being born a few years after the heyday was over. You want to be there, to live in it. An idealised version, albeit, where everything seemed so polished, polite and perfect. Never mind your mum may have smoked while you were floating in her belly, her hair always did that neat flippy thing!

 

And everything was 'swell'. There are at least three mentions of the word in each episode of Mad Men. It so represents the mid-century era tendency to delight in things so sweetly. Who can resist that? Not me. I love the ideology behind the word and that's why I used it in naming my shop and this blog, with the 'e' added for a little French, feminine flair. Although Don would never share this sentiment. He's more serious, a brooder - a necessary contrast to the bright-eyed young hipsters at the office. And isn't that just swell?

Love for Viv

Last night I watched Project Catwalk, Britain's version of Project Runway, as I do every Wednesday. It was the episode before the final three are chosen to show at London Fashion Week and some of the designers really put the 'Catty' in Catwalk. Fellow Canadian expat Chelsey (in the back) and self professed 'straight lad' Ross (demonstrating his straightness by seemingly attempting to board a passenger into Pam An's fuselage) were confronted by mentor Ben de Lisi about their feeling that Viv Whelan (far left), a 42 year-old self-taught mum of three is 'just a dress-maker' who 'doesn't deserve to be here'. They got a thorough reaming by a vexed Ben who did it in front of the remaining group which included an unwitting and therefore somewhat humiliated Viv. Afterward, Ross seemed to have smoothed things over with Viv who handled it gracefully but I'm sure the whole thing stuck in her craw. I don't know what a craw is but if she has one there was probably something in it.

The cliquiness of the non-Vivs made me think about how formal education in the creative arts can cultivate rigidity in its students. This certainly wouldn't apply to everyone, I'm speaking in general terms; that when approaching art academically, in an institutional setting with professors and lecturers and reading lists and scheduled times to 'create ' in a predetermined location of predetermined wall colour and decor, there's an unconscious conditioning that results in the defining of the chosen discipline in absolute terms, and any deviation is seen as ungifted-ness and unworthiness and grounds for peer disqualification from following in said discipline. That was a long sentence.

There's a powerful sense of entitlement that can come with formal training. You've become one of the Chosen, selected for admission to a competitive program and identified in a certain way for the duration of the two or three or four years it took to get the paper that tells the world that you officially know your shit. Viv is an outsider and doesn't have the docs that say she can play with the big kids. And yet somehow she won a challenge (for streetwear at that) and received high praise for her Mac dress; if she were younger and they didn't know her background or had only seen her completed work, would the others have figured out she was 'different'? I doubt it.

These students are heavily reliant on validation. Their hearts and souls are continually handed over to be judged as they anticipate the verdict on whether they're 'good', not just as artists but as individuals, it's who they are after all. It can be very threatening and destablizing to have someone who followed their own, less or differently structured path, compete with you on equal ground. How do you justify the time and effort you've spent, and more significantly, what is the value of the positive appraisals given to you by 'those who know' if anyone from the street can stroll in and show you up? What are you then?

This is in no way a suggestion that formal training is a bad thing. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in visual arts and did two years of advertising creative in college. And for gawd's sake I'm married to a professor. My view is really a composite of my experience at university as a painter, essentially, and my journey (geez I really hate that word but I can't think of a better one at this ungodly time of night) into self-directed learning in my new chosen field (that I discovered outside of school). I can appreciate both sides.

In time, when dear Chelsey and Ross are established and successful, I'll wager a pint they'll feel silly about having made such a fuss over Viv. Or they'll blame it on creative editing.