FILEP MOTWARY

show studio : SEASON'S GREETINGS

Nick Knight and the SHOWstudio.com team wish all our Newswire subscribers the best for this festive season! The team will be back in January 2010 with many new developments in store for the site - in the meantime, what better way to celebrate this time of year than by sharing our unique Christmas card, created by London accessories talent Fred Butler and based on images of the designs she created for the SHOWstudio SHOP.

HAPPY XMAS PARTY / 2010 WILL ROCK*KOSTIS AND EUGENIE

  
All that at LONDON FASHION 
  

MISS D.I AT HOME

BLAST FROM THE PAST: REVISITED INTERVIEW / ALI MAHDAVI DIETRICH OBSESSION

Dear iDEALS

this is a small part of an older conversation I had with Ali Mahdavi a few years back, focusing on his love for Marlene Dietrich. I decided to repost it since it is one of my favorites.

FilepMotwary: How did Marlene Dietrich affect your aesthetics? Do you think that she is an ambassador of a certain style of femininity?

AliMahdavi:I always have so much to say about Marlene, it’s difficult to reduce it in a few words. She’s my ultimate goddess and an eternal source of inspiration. It’s also very difficult to analyze precisely the reasons why she have such a strong impact on me. I will say that it’s mainly because no other Icon in my opinion achieved such a radical and beautiful transformation, It’s even more a transcendence that just a change of look; She is the perfect representation of my opinion about the fact that for women, beauty is not always an unfair gift but something that you can decide and build. I really think that a part of few rare exceptions there is no ugly woman, only lazy and tasteless ones. It’s fascinating how from a very common, heavy woman from Berlin, as you can see her on her early movies, such as “Eine du Barry von heute”, she became, with the help of Sternberg and a nearly inhuman will power, a hypnotic exotic bird. It’s also this very specific period of her collaboration with Sternberg that obsesses me the most. Because I’m very much attached to the figure of the Pygmalion: the fact of living and recreating your own fantasy throughout someone else; that’s is I believe, what I’m trying to do, more or less consciously in my own work, and they are for me the most beautiful, tragic and magical representation of this kind of relationship. 

FilepMotwary: Why do you think after so many decades, Marlene continues to be a reference?

AliMahdavi:The sexual ambiguity but at the same time the ultimate glamour that she represent imposed an imagery so powerful, radical and mesmerizing, are codes that are now so anchored in the collective unconscious that often people use her language without even realizing that they are referring to her, a little bit in the same way that they use the work of Helmut Newton. But you will be surprised to know how many time I asked models to pose like her and they don’t even know who she is…   

 FilepMotwary: Which one of her films is the one that you love the most and why?

AliMahdavi:Again, for me the most inspiring films she did is the one of Joseph von Sternberg. I really love “The devil is a woman” for the surrealist beauty costume of Travis Benton and the beauty of the cinematography, but if I had to choose one, it would be with no doubt “Shanghai Express” where in my opinion Dietrich and Sternberg reach the highest level of sophistication ever made in a movie.

HIDDEN, a story by Artist Konrad Wyrebek and Art Director Matthew Miles

"Hi Filep,

We’ve attached images from Hidden, a story by Artist Konrad Wyrebek and Art Director Matthew Miles. We've created Mileswyrebek.com, a London based project for our photography and video work together."

 

www.mileswyrebek.com

www.konradwyrebek.blogspot.com.

iDEAL CARTE POSTALE : I LOVE FAKE XMAS WISHES

Michelle Westgeest Polaroids /I love Fake Grunge issue

iDEAL CARTE POSTALE : KOSTAS PRAPOGLOU SENDS XMAS WISHES FROM KEMPINSKI BANSKO/BULGARIA

 

iDEAL CARTE POSTALE : HAPPY 2010 AND SNOWEY KISSES BY DANIEL SANNWALD

Daniel Sannwald, age 6

ARTIST KATERINA KANA IN HER KITCHEN

LISTEN TO ME

PREVIEW: Behind the dark glasses: The world of Karl Lagerfeld

 

Watch the full Talk Asia show with Karl Lagerfeld on CNN from Wednesday, December 23.

LOVERS LIVE A LITTLE LONGER

 
On Skype!