The Head-In-the-Clouds Wig.

Bebe Bouton wearing the head-in-the-clouds wig.  Toile La La.

Raveling threads from the sewing room are the origin of this fetching wig worn by Bebe Bouton.  Most of the head-in-the-clouds wig comes from a dove blue-grey duvet cover sewn over the weekend.  Bebe - and Bat, another Toile La La model - appear in a candy-floss petal/peach wig in the Romantic Souls F/W 2014 fashion show here.

L'Heure d'Ete: Summer Hours Review.

Summer Hours, directed by Olivier Assayas, gracefully invites the viewer - like a guest - into the life of a family of older siblings who face - and deftly weigh - questions about values, connections, love, and continuity.  In the home of their youth, the familiar art objects possibly mirror and record the ups and downs of the family.  There are overall themes of the delicacy of life, longevity, effect, and simultaneity - with an examination of views regarding nostalgia, and a glimpse of interwoven beginnings and endings.

Of the same gentle, contemplative quality:  My Afternoons with Margueritte, The Hedgehog, Moonrise Kingdom.

The Excellence of Real Mail.

Versus the Lackluster of Email, Real Mail Contains in Its Folds... your friend's handwriting, little extras such as photographs and artsy bits of sketching or stamping.  Real - snail - mail requires postage, which provides another chance to personalize correspondence... stamps add pizzazz... panache... an artful touch.

Here's another excitedly received letter from E - this one came with three small vintage black and white photographs... lovely bits of the past.  Among other things, E tells me of her affection for books with deckled, rough edges, her Uncle named Square, and her fragrant lavender and jasmine. 

We're true mail snails... choosing real over email anyday.

Real Snail Mail for Toile La La at Art Fashion Creation.

If you love the thought of real mail, you'll surely be inspired by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler's book Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art.  And, here's a link to Jennie's blog Everyday Should Be a Red Letter Day with a recent Tokyo correspondence post.

Beautiful Antiquity.

Signed, Toile La La.

La Criniere d'Un Lion.

Elle Fait La Criniere d'Un Lion.  Photos Toile La La.

See the photo poem at Toile La La.

La Criniere d'Un Lion.  Toile La La Photo and Poem.

Savion Glover: Sound Your Shoes.

The crowd has gone and I'm still clapping for Savion Glover's SoLe Sanctuary.  Rhythm-rhythm-rhythm is smack-dab center spotlight in Glover's show - but, there is the conscious balance of stillness too.  No Busby Berkeley pretty girls, no glitz and dazzle - or musical shenanigans to pad the performance... because here - with Savion Glover - are the feet and the legs and the heartbeat, ears and memory of a tap-dancing hoofer who knows his art - the art of pure rhythm pouring forth from his soul to his soles.

Savion Glover SoLe Sanctuary program flyer - with addition of blue.

Reading the program flyer, prior to the show - there was promise the performance would be good - for the text itself was full of rhythm and thought:  "Entering the Monastery of His Out'ness, Gee Oh Dee, Tranes Tribute, Holy Strings, The High Priest of Gone, Improvography, Directed and Choreographed by Spirits Known, Meditation on the Art of Tap" - and listen to these rhythmic names... "Little Nuk Nuk, Cat Daddy".  And the performance overview:  "Savion Glover's Reverence for the Art of Tap is Put to the Stage Literally in the Form of a Living Altar... ."

If you are a fan of tap, rhythm, percussion, drum, bass - You just have to see SoLe Sanctuary for yourself.  The miraculous, glorious racket Glover - and hoofer Marshall Davis Jr. - make with their feet, I can only aspire to create with my typewriter.

As a Bravo-Encore-Shout-Out, here is my ode to SoLe Sanctuary:

Savion Glover, Sound Your Shoes

Shiva Nataraj of Clackety-Clack

Train on Track

Percussive Locomotion

Mediatation of a Hoofer's Soul

Circle and Slide

on Life's Rhythm-Ride

Tic Toc

Clip Clop

Drum Staccato

Pizzicato

Whisper-Crash and Clatter

pitter-patter-Morse Code 

Ode

to the Universe Pulse

Om

All Sounds 

Yin-and-Yang-of-Still-and-Quick

Quick and Still, Yang and Yin

Song Stepper

Hands Together

The Fashion Show as Artistic Medium.

Many of the Fall/Winter 2012/2013 and Spring Summer 2013 Runway Shows have a distinctly artistic look.  Granted, the world of fashion has very often enthralled the masses with its theatrical charms - but, at this moment, there are clear-cut standouts. 

With life-size cutout figures displayed on stands, Norma Kamali's FW12/13 Collection gives the viewer a feeling of observing paper-doll fashion.

Manish Arora's FW12/13 show was presented against a backdrop of graffiti artwork in-progress.  Parisian graffiti artists Vizion, Rude, and Broke completed the scenery as the final looks began to reflect the colorful imagery.

A show-goer might think she had awakened in a retro Op Art fashion show from another planet - here at Thom Browne's SS2013 Collection.

Marc Jacob's SS2013 Louis Vuitton collection also had a contemporary Op Art appearance.  Behold this impressive escalator presentation:  Magnificent display!

Conversely, more intimate and like turning the pages of a fairytale book - are these RED Valentino FW12/13 Collection stills.  Viewing them may bring to mind Theatre De La Mode.

Tsumori Chisato's SS2013 apparel is art-to-wear - with perhaps a Peter Max similarity of line and color:

ThreeASFOUR FW12/13 presents embellishments like tatting - but magnified, and of the 21st century.  Imagine viewing this while listening to the vibrational-frequency "singing" of glass bowls - the actual introduction:

Stella Jean's SS2013 Runway Collection looks like it jumped from Frida Kahlo's paint palette.  One might imagine a cheerfully-bright and energetically-patterned Stella Jean turban or long skirt on Kahlo, or a frolicking Josephine Baker.

All photos this post - Vogue Italia Runway Collections.
Another art-lover's post here - "do you hear or feel color".

I Am A Color Sponge Wholly Absorbed by Ken Nordine.

Color beckons me. Not merely the look of colors, but their names too - reel me in.

Many years ago, driving to some now-forgotten destination, I heard - from Ken Nordine's Colors  Word Jazz album - the Green selection. 

In Green, Nordine's voice, the epitome of the phrase "cool as a cucumber", describes various shades of green - assigning them personalities. According to Nordine, "... green can be a problem... there's the green that should never have happened - the stupid green", but then - on the other hand, there's another green -  the one "to be seen with" . "We should spend the better part of our time - yours and mine - with a green like this," says Nordine about the green to be seen with.

Here's a link to a Jonathan Kaplan YouTube video word animation of Ken Nordine's Green.

Nordine's album includes what sounds like a whole coloring crayon box full of selections: olive, lavender, burgundy, yellow, green, beige, maroon, ecru, chartreuse, turquoise, white, flesh, azure, puce, magenta, orange, purple, muddy, russet, amber, blue, black, gold, crimson, brown, rosey, hazel, mauve, fuschia, sepia, nutria, cerise, grey, and coral.

Nutria was the only color that threw me for a loop. A nutria is an invasive rodent, so - as a color - it posed a challenge visually.

This Skip Heller article at Asphodel paints a nice picture of the making of Nordine's Colors album.

Street Bard.

Downtown Denver, CO on August 10 - this traveling poet with a trolley and an old-school Underwood typewriter caught our interest.  Here's her signboard.

The signboard of poet Abigail Mott.  Photo Toile La La.

Undaunted by my photography, or the shuffling of passersby, or the panhandler hoping to divert our attention... Abigail Mott composed for us a custom-made poem, right there on the sidewalk - unaided by computer, dictionary, thesaurus, or anything - except her non-electric Underwood.

But it wasn't just her talent to spontaneously produce poetry (the words apparently transmitting
obstacle-free - head to fingers), it was the sight of her poetry-production that was also somehow significant.

Abigail Mott composing a poem in Denver, CO.  Photo Toile La La.

She looked as if she should be painted - at this age and that moment in time, with her leg crossed and fingers tapping  - and with people passing by and seeing her typing.

The poem-typing hands of Abigail Mott.  Photo Toile La La.

So, someday - when I'm not reading about art, fashion, and design - or sewing, or trying to organize all the books, fabric, thread, pencils, paint and boxes full-to-the-brim of artsy detritus (or walking my Good Luck Employee cat - on her leash)... perhaps I will paint the poet.  But, for now - I offer a sentence poem in return for the poem Abigail created for our family (which I won't share, because - after all, she created it especially for us).

Les Mots for Mott:  Street Bard Angel Poet Pulling Thought from a Word Piano, Tap Your Fingers,  Clack Your Keys Please for a Snapshot Paragraph.