Adidas, Beckham, Daft Punk and co do the Star Wars cantina scene

Two weeks ago, Nike broke its own viral record for the most views of an online video in a single week (7.8million) with its Write The Future video, produced in the leadup to the World Cup. Adidas has just returned fire with this epic homage to the famous Star Wars cantina scene starring a raft of music and sports stars, including David Beckham, Snoop Dog, Daft Punk and Noel Gallagher. At a mere 100K views at time of writing, watch this go viral...

Behemoth rocks

Coupla shots of the fans at last night's Behemoth concert in Sydney. Frockwriter has talked about Norwegian black metal and its influence on fashion. Well Behemoth hail from Poland and fit into a sub-sub metal genre called blackened death metal. They rocked the full corpse paint and came out for their encore in masks - made by Zenon Darski, the metalsmith dad of lead singer, Adam "Nergal" Darski - which was pretty impressive.

And while the band's Satanic stage antics might strike the fear of God into some, it's worth bearing in mind that off-stage, Darski is engaged to the Polish pop singer Dorota Rabczewska, whose oeuvre includes the albums Diamond Bitch and Bimbo. So he can't be all that scary.

That's Nergal in action in the last, fabulous Bluralist shot by Kent Vaughan (Mr Frockwriter) - which bears some resemblance to Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream.

Tiah Eckhardt counts her lovers

Frockwriter mentioned that Tiah Eckhardt was awaiting the birth of a baby with partner Patrick Delaney. Well Oz director Alex Goddard just flicked us over this little video he shot for CLUBFEET’s new 'Count Your Lovers' single starring Eckhardt - and apparently just three weeks after the birth of her adorable baby girl Finley Victoria, who arrived in October. Sources say Eckhardt is also to be a face of Berlei, so it looks as if she’s not giving up on modelling at all.

V Magazine gets a little Norwegian wood

Overwhelmed by the staggeringly creative makeup in the 96-page Women/Supreme model supplement to V61? You are not alone. Various images of the covers have been floating around the fash blogosphere, but a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot reveals a striking series of ghoulish faces rendered in stark black and white by makeup artist Janeen Witherspoon, with styling by Nicholas Grasa and hair by Rita Marmor, Leonardo Manetti and Franco Gobbi. The series was shot by Paul Rowland, who tells V's blog that he was inspired by “Joel-Peter Witkin, paganism, mysticism, vampires, witches—all the things I love.” But did Rowland neglect to mention one key reference? Here is a series of screen grabs from the video.










And below is a series of images from True Norwegian Black Metal, a book by photographer Peter Beste that was released in May 2008 and is now on its third printing (and thanks to Kent for the tip).

Beste spent five years documenting the Norwegian black metal scene - which has been described, perhaps alarmingly, as Norway’s biggest cultural export.

Although apparently a little more civilised these days - Beste for one looks to have survived the experience - the roots of Norwegian black metal lie in Satanism and Norse pagan mythology and in the early 1990s, this underground metal genre became notorious in the wake of a string of violent crimes.

We’re talking murder, suicide, alleged cannibalism and as many as 50 cases of arson and attempted arson (churches, natch). GG Allin, eat your heart out.

Beyond the standard issue hardcore rocker accoutrements of black leather, spikes, studs and chains, Norwegian black metal-ites have a propensity for smearing their faces with ghoulish black and white “corpse paint” makeup, which would appear to have as much to do with 1970s rockers Alice Cooper and KISS as it does with early German expressionist cinema and the Oskerei, a legion of dead souls in Norse mythology.

Norwegian black metal is also the subject of the 2008 Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites documentary Until the light takes us, which had its world premier at the AFI FEST in Los Angeles on October 31st 2008.

While Paul Rowland's Supreme/Women photo series appears in a limited edition supplement to V61, Lady Gaga is on the actual cover of the edition.

In an interesting coda, it emerges that the director of Gaga's new Paparazzi video is Jonas Åkerlund, a former member of pioneering Swedish black metal outfit Bathory.









1. peter beste via news.figment.cc
2. peter beste via gawker
3. peter beste via michaelcarter.ca
4. peter beste via nemotography

Paris salutes the King of Pop

comme des garcons SS10/AP via ONTD_Fashinfags

The fashion world is also mourning Michael Jackson – and not just opportunistic retailers such as Supré who are hopping onto the MJ tribute merchandise bandwagon. Two days before Jackson died, it was revealed that the costumes for his upcoming This Is It tour would be festooned with 300,000 Swarovski crystals. At Givenchy’s menswear show on Friday, Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci told The New York Times that he had been working on some of those costumes and that his show (which featured some embellishment) paid homage to Jackson. John Galliano was the first to add Jackson’s music to his soundtrack. Also on Friday, Australia’s Jethro Cave upstaged yet another SS10 menswear show with his personal styling - Comme des Garçons. Although Cave lost the Gumby earring that prompted commentary at Costume National in Milan earlier in the week, he lifted the sleeve of his jacket during one CDG exit to reveal the words 'RIP Smooth Criminal' scrawled on his forearm. The 'Thriller' finale of Paul Smith’s show which closed the season last night was all over Twitter when Smith emerged on the runway, dancing with his models (here is a video). Jackson had of course recently been rediscovered by the fashion industry.

Much was made of Jackson’s recent appearances in an embellished T-shirt, jacket and trousers from Balmain's most recent womenswear collections – and a similarly-glitzy Givenchy jacket from several seasons ago.

The Balmain/Givenchy connection reportedly came via a hookup between Jackson and French Vogue fashion director Emmanuelle Alt.

But while Jackson has been cited by more than one as the inspiration for the rock trash aesthetic of Christophe Decarnin's recent collections for Balmain, notably a series of influential embellished military jackets, it seems that Jackson himself may have been more than a little inspired by fashion.

Together with the sequinned white glove, the beaded socks and the red bomber jacket worn in Thriller, the heavily-embellished vintage-look naval/military jacket was one of Jackson’s signature looks.

On several occasions the LA Times has credited Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins as Jackson’s costumiers for the past 20 years, including this style obit from Friday.



bill whitten for michael jackson: liveauctioneers.com (T) AP via daylife

Jackson may have worked with Bush and Tompkins in the latter part of his stage careeer, however the embellished military jackets that he wore to the 1984 Grammys and a series of other events in the 1980s – along with the original concept for the rhinestone glove – are widely attributed to Bill Whitten.

An LA-based costume designer, Whitten already worked with the Jackson 5 in the disco-infused 1970s, when the sibling group were performing in dazzling glitter stage outfits.

Here is one performance on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, which ran from 1971-1974 on CBS.



Jackson was of course not the first entertainment industry figure to make a style claim on the vintage-look military jacket.

In the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix's stage look included genuine antique naval jackets, while the high-colour versions sported by The Beatles on the cover of their 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club were authored by Mexican designer Manuel Cuevas.


adam ant/indolentdandy.net

But according to Stuart Goddard – aka Adam Ant - Jackson's jacket inspiration was more London New Romantic than Sixties psychedelia.

Goddard claims that shortly after the release of his Kings of the Wild Frontier album and videos from 1980-1981, he received a phone call from Jackson asking where he had sourced the heavily-embellished vintage naval jacket worn in the videos.

Goddard told Jackson that it came from the costume hire company Berman's and Nathan's in London's Covent Garden.

At the time the fashion and music scenes were heavily entwined in London.

However in case you are wondering if that makes Vivienne Westwood not only a godmother to punk, but also to the King of Pop, according to Goddard, the jacket was his own call.

Westwood's then creative partner, Malcolm McLaren, was the band's manager at the time.

In Goddard's autobiography, he claims that although McLaren suggested he wear something from Westwood’s debut collection, entitled Pirate (shown in March 1981 in London), Goddard declined, preferring to source the genuine article.