The Makeup Show is this Sunday & Monday

THE MAKEUP SHOW NYC MAY 17 & 18 @ THE METROPOLITAN PAVILION - GET YOUR TICKETS TODAY! CLICK HERE.

Hope to see you there....

Anna Wintour on 60 Minutes this Sunday

Be afraid...be very afraid.
You know times are tough when icy Ms Wintour goes on TV trying to sound friendly and GASP even vulnerable. Plus shows a clip from a staff meeting where she tells them the new issue of the magazine "has to be about value."
Click here to see the 60 Minutes teaser video

At “The Model as Muse" Met Gala wearing Chanel with Blake Lively in Versace.

Richard Avedon Exhibit

A FASHIONISTA MUST SEE........


"This exhibition will be the most comprehensive exploration to date of Avedon's fashion photography during his long career at Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Working closely with The Richard Avedon Foundation, ICP curator Carol Squiers and guest curator Vince Aletti will present new scholarship on the evolution and extraordinary, ongoing impact of his work. The exhibition will feature more than 200 works by Richard Avedon, spanning his entire career, and will include vintage prints, contact sheets, magazine layouts, and archival material." @ ICP MAY 15 – SEPTEMBER 6 2009


VERUSCHKA

VERSACE CAMPAIGN

KARA YOUNG

Kara Young photographed by Gilles Bensimon for Elle 1988.

Unseen: Guy Bourdin

"French photographer Guy Bourdin is among that lot of macabre but gloriously talented artists (think Stanley Kubrick), whose work equally disturbs and intrigues. The influential French Vogue contributor was rumored to be whiney, stung by the abandonment of his mother at a young age and unfairly demanding. There was no doubt that Bourdin was struggling with some dark demons: You need not look further than his photographs, which often feature an unholy mix of death and desire, misogyny and eroticism (the leggy, usually nude, models he used often had their heads cropped off or hidden). Despite the twisted subject matter, his photos are highly cinematic as well as glamorous and inspired a legion of photographers including Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Jean Baptiste Mondino, Nick Knight and David LaChapelle."

“Unseen: Guy Bourdin,” which opened last Saturday at The Wapping Project in London, is a collection of 32 of the photographer’s unseen works. Shown in a massive former hydraulic power station-turned arts center, the industrial-chic environ feels like an apt place to show the work. The Wapping Project founder and director Jules Wright — who was aware that Bourdin wanted his photographs to be destroyed after his death (in 1991 at age 63) — felt no moral implication when planning the show, which was curated in conjunction with Bourdin’s son Samuel Bourdin and Phillips de Pury & Company, and hosted by Bourdin’s model muse, Nicolle Meyer. “It is a bit of a conundrum,” she says, “However, from my point of view, I think the work is extraordinary and it deserves to be seen. It’s so influential and I’m pleased and delighted to be showing it, and for the work to be re-looked at, reappraised, re-thought.”

Through July 4 at The Wapping Project, London.


ALSO: The Films Of Guy Bourdin

From a makeup artist's point of view many of Monsieur Bourdin's photographs were also very exciting because he demanded a particular look to the makeup. A very pale foundation with dark smokey eyes, brightly colored lips and heavily rouged cheeks were usually his signature look.

Jean Desprez ~ Bal a Versailles

In this perfume campaign for Bal a Versailles, Swedish fashion model Anna Anderson (popular during the late 1970s/early 1980s) captures some of the mystery of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last autocratic ruler of Imperial Russia, and his wife Tsarina Alexandra.

Strangely enough the Princess Anastasia Manahan was also known as Anna Anderson. She was rumored to have survived the regicide of the Romanov’s in 1918 and showed up years later in Paris. DNA tests proved conclusively that she did not survive and that the Anastasia of Paris society was a fraud named Franziska Schanzkowska, who was really a Polish factory worker.

No pretender in the modern history of monarchy has created as much controversy as Anna Anderson, born Franziska Schanzkowska in Pomerania in 1896. The unstable 24 year old factory worker abruptly disappeared in 1920. Until pulled from the Landwehr Canal in Berlin shortly afterwards in a failed suicide attempt, and committed to the Dalldorf Asylum she refused to tell authorities her identity until 18 months later when she declared herself the Grand Duchess Anastasia.

Franziska Schanzkowska (Anna Anderson) was the right person, at the right place, at the right time. When word circulated of an articulate young woman in Berlin claiming to be Anastasia the opportunity was seized by people with differing objectives, financial and political.

The Russian Refugee Office in Berlin, presided over by Serge Botkin, represented the interests of exiles in Germany and came to the aid of Anderson (then calling herself Mrs Tschaikovsky). The organization was basically a monarchist support group and the suicidally depressed woman soon found herself embraced by sympathetic exiles, many sending or bringing her flowers, sweets and letters of encouragement.

As the months passed they won her confidence and when released from the asylum she moved in with the first of a long line of supporters, who fed her information and encouraged her delusions. In time an impressive entourage formed around her, at first credulous exiles seeking a sizable finders fee from the Dowager Empress before yielding to opportunists with sights set on imperial bank accounts. In the years ahead there were constant power struggles, clashes of egos, firing and rehiring, every dispute among them short of murder.

Anna Anderson made a good, if not inconstant, living out of being Anastasia. Her entourage perpetually solicited donations from well heeled Russian expatriates and others, who gave generously. She toured Europe and America, attended fashion shows, was mobbed by the press and feted as a celebrity wherever she went. Living at other peoples' expense in fashionable hotels, Park Avenue apartments and private estates where she socialized with fashionable notables of the day who flocked to parties to see and be seen with her.

Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984. Ten years later, DNA tests were conducted on samples of her tissue that had been stored at a Charlottesville, Virginia hospital following a medical procedure. The DNA tests showed that Anderson's DNA did not match the Romanov remains or Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (a great-nephew of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna), but was consistent with the mitochondrial DNA profile of Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. Some supporters of Anderson continued to doubt she was Franziska Schanzkowska, despite the mitochondrial DNA match between Anderson's remains and the Schanzkowski family.

Donatella had a birthday recently...

Donatella Versace (born May 2, 1955) is an Italian fashion designer,
as was her brother, the late Gianni Versace, the founder of the Versace clothing brand. Her current title is Vice-President of the Versace Group and Chief Designer of the fashion line. She owns 20 percent of the entire stock market assets of Versace. Her brother, Santo Versace, owns 30 percent. Donatella's daughter Allegra Versace inherited 50% of the company stock after Gianni Versace died.

My how she has changed...well at least she is less tan these days!

The Stephanie Seymour Divorce

Stephanie Seymour has been a top model since she was 16. She was a Victoria’s Secret Angel and a Sports Illustrated swimsuit pinup. Peter Brant is an art collector, owns thoroughbred racehorses and publishes Interview and Art in America magazines. He made his fortune with his White Birch Paper Co.

The couple have been together for 16 years and have three children together. Stephanie filed for divorce about two months ago and since then it has reportedly been war between the two. Stephanie came home to find the locks changed, and she is living in the maid’s quarters in the home they are still sharing.

“It’s OK. I’m sleeping in the maid’s quarters. I’m doing the best I can to keep things amicable. I want to be the bigger person. But it’s tough. He’s playing very dirty with me.”

The parties are due in court in Greenwich today, and the litigation is expected to be bitter, with Brant challenging her for custody of their three children -- Peter Jr., 15, Harry, 12, and Lilly, 4 -- by accusing Seymour of being an unfit mother.

Sorry to hear this news...hoping things don't get too nasty between them, but it looks bad already, understand Brant is a tough competitor in EVERY thing.

16 years, what a shame. I'm sure they will both be OK, it's always the children that suffer the most.