Rad Hourani's new website is way inspirational

Still from "Demo Crazy" Francesco Vezzoli

How the hell does he do it? The roll call of Hollywood and fashion world doyens who have been seduced into involving themselves in Vezzoli's art escapades ranges from Donatella Versace to Helen Mirren, Miuccia Prada, Cate Blanchett, Milla Jojovich and now in his German show at Pinkakothek der Moderne Sharon Stone. The new video "Demo Crazy" focuses on a fictional election campaign spearheaded by Madame Stone and French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy. Who can possibly be next in Vezzoli's pantheon? Hilary Clinton?

Pinkakothek der Moderne
Barer Strabe 40
80333 Muchen

Nov.16. 2007-Feb 17th 2008

Abbey Lee playing dress up for TI

Cause & Effect, 2007, acrylic, stainless steel, and aluminum, 11' 10 3/4" x 33' 4" x 38' 4".

Back in NY I wandered through the Do-Ho Suh at Lehmann Maupin's 26th Street gallery. There was something about this show that restored my faith in Manhattan and the life lived in New York. It is so great to walk through the monumental and inhuman scale of the city to find yourself in a vast room with Do-Ho Suh's piece "Cause And Effect" confronting you. This cyclone of tiny orange/yellow acrylic figures spiraling up from one lone figure at the base is such a great metaphor. Its creation is the result of a tremendous amount of concentrated effort on the part of one individual. The piece is the visual expression of the idea of human interaction and interdependence and it also tells you something about the virulence of great ideas. I'm glad I saw this piece and I left convinced that Do-Ho Suh is one of the greats of our current zeitgeist. I also left the show inspired to be both more rigorous and more freewheeling in all my future work.

Do-Ho Suh
Lehmann Maupin
540 West 26th Street
November 3–December 22

The candy colored houses of Curacao in the blinding equatorial sun: A new way of seeing!

I spent the weekend in Curacao, a Dutch commonwealth island in the Caribbean, just north of Venezuela. I flew down with no expectations, zen in the presumption that this was going to be another encounter with a mother agency looking to peddle its boys and girls to the" NY fashion people." But then something strange happened. Curacao which I assumed would be another postcard pretty tourist trap yielded quite a few surprises. The first surprise being a bounty of insider fashion gossip that was as over the top as the intense colors on the houses of Wilemstad. I found out for instance that the secret ingredient in Creme de la Mer is...whale placenta. Or it could be a scandalous myth but I love that idea in the same way I love the story I was regaled with concerning Maria Carla pulling out a thousand dollar jar of the stuff out of her handbag, backstage at a Givenchy show and moisturizing her face with it while giving the Kheil's bearing make-up artist the look of death.

Colette/Domestic: Curated Alpahabet: Ezra Petronio

Ezra Petronio has a dream life. He breaks the rules and ends up reinforcing fashion's status quo. He publishes Self-Service as a hardcover magazine. Which is a very genius conceit if you really think about it. He breaks tons of rules in Self-Service. He covers images with huge blocks of type which for the post-Brodovitch school is absolute sacrilege. He has made a book of his fashion celebrity Polaroids (which ironically enough I just mis-typed as PRO-laroids) . The book is titled "Bold and Beautiful". It is printed by 7L, my favorite publishing imprint in the world. You really should buy it for the reference library. Other than that Petronio plays with clients and collaborators like Miu-Miu, Prada, Chloe, Colette in imaging these very selective brands. This ranges from product packaging to websites to advertising and general creative direction. TI worships this ideal. The altar may be found at Petronio's blog : workinprogressblog.com. It is so bookmarked right this minute!

Natalia /DNA: Louis Vuitton SS08

frillr.com is on TI's bookmark list because they do such a great summary of current fashion news. For instance, I was away all weekend and didn't catch WWD's previews of the Mert n Marcus LV SS08 ads. And look! Its Eva/1 Mgmt and Stephanie/IMG AND Naomi/IMG for first run with Natalia/Angela/Claudia to follow. But you heard all about the genius casting here first, no?

Eva/1 Mgmt, Naomi/IMG, Stephanie/IMG for Louis Vuitton SS08

Wendell Lissmore: Red Models:Classic Pose: Unique Features

I love Dave and George at Red Models. Such fanatics those two. Whether scouting or booking, cajoling clients or snapping digitals, these guys commit with such a passion to their models, you realize why fashion needs new blood. New blood is not jaded and it never sleeps.Right now Red is polishing up their better boys for the FW 08 men's shows in Milan and Paris. Today's eye candy alert sounds for New York's finest Wendell Lissmore. How great is that boxer's nose of his?

Wendell Lismore: Looking ad ready:Courtesy Red Models NYC

Christiane F: Directed by Ulrich Edel

Chloe Sevigny once commented that every single outfit the lead actress wore in in this cult German classic was perfection. Which doesn't mean Christiane F's looks were in anyway flamboyant or self-consciously quirky. What is perfect about this chronicle of a nice German girl's descent into the wilds of urban nightclubs, heroin addiction and prostitution is the exquisite lack of self-consciousness on the part of the young lead actress, Natja Brunkhorst. What she wears is super-normal, almost to the point of banal . But Christiane is too tall...with her too long arms and too long legs and so the poportions of what she wears are always off. Too small jackets, dangling vests...sweaters that never cover her wrists. There is a scene where she is running away (all knock knees of course) from the police in a German shopping mall with her new found posse of bad boys and girls. It's just her in a tiny satin baseball jacket, jeans and heels but as her lanky body bolts through the flourescent wasteland of that shopping mall she looks so much like the perfect Marc/Miu-Miu/Balenciaga/Calvin model that you realize where the appeal of the awkward gamine stems from for so many designers. And of course there is the spectre of Bowie hovering over the film making him seem iconic before he was actually an icon. This film is a must buy for every art school kid/fashion fanatic/model scout/emerging photographer. Wonder what ever became of Natja though?

The Most Recent Triumph: PH: Meisel Vogue Italia Dec 07

This is what the love of fashion can spawn. Our very devoted fashion contributer Max, has just outlined a veritable THESIS on directional fashion photographer Steven Meisel. Intense no? If Max does pull it off, this could well be a scholarly book sold in college bookstores worldwide. Make room Madonna!
The Imagist.