ABBEY LEE FOR US VOGUE

Portrait of Abbey Lee that i styled in the current issue of American Vogue.

Photographed by Beau Grealy.

GET TO THE CHOPPER....

Givenchy Spring 2012 Couture. I love everything about this, the gym hall, the basket ball, the nose rings that make all the girls look like baby predators.

I also enjoy this Arnie Schwartz soundboard immensely.

Awesome Dazed cover styled by my friend Robbie Spencer with the Givenchy haute couture jewellery on the musician Grimes.

BALENCIAGA

  

SALEM'S LOT

Pretty obsessed with Salem's album....it's dark as anything but there is light in there too.... like forget me knots growing on a new grave, or when snow falls on piles of rubbish and makes it look really pretty or people rising from the dead that you didn't want to die.....like Jack Nicholson's character in Easy Rider...i fancied him so hard in this film and he was all fucked up and a total alco but he was kinda scared and childlike too and impulsive and just so lost, anyway i was half in love with him when he got murdered and i kept hoping he was just unconscious and not really dead. I hated that they had smashed his lovely face in with a hammer and i really missed him for the rest of the film. I feel the same about the cat that got murdered in Girl with a Dragon tattoo that i watched last night...i really missed that cat a lot after it was gone :(

I'm Presuming this is the kinda soundtrack the world provides you with when your speeding car has veered off the edge of a cliff at night time and everything has slowed down and you can see the ocean shining underneath you cos the car's headlights are still on and you know you are definitely not going going to survive because beside you in the passenger seat the grim reaper is smiling at you and holding your hand and you realize that you're 100% cool with dying.

BANBA

So my massive love in with Ireland continues, it reminds me a little of when my mom used to brush our very long hair as kids and she would put your face in between her boobs and brush all the knots and tangles out, it was extremely comforting and quite a lovely experience considering there was a certain degree of pain involved.

Banba is the ancient name for Ireland (pronounced bahn-va), she was a daughter of the Tuatha De Dannann and the patron Goddess of Ireland. It's a good name for a kid i reckon except it sounds a bit like Bambi...which is also a cool name for a kid...god love my babies....poor Banba and Bambi...an island in the middle of the Atlantic and a fawn with wobbly legs and a speech impediment.



I went to the Cliffs of Moher above on New years day with the Lahinch family all of whom i love deeply (see Lahinch vibez) and it was wild up there, dark and stormy....with the winter sun coming through the clouds and sea spray making everything look dreamy, there was even an upside down waterfall. I'm thinking if you dipped your hand into that it would burst into the flames of beezlebub like a heathen stepping onto holy ground.

We rang the new year in together..all twenty of us..on the steps to the beach surrounded by the high foamy tide and the wind howling around us like a murder of banshees. One of the most memorable and wonderful nye's i can ever remember. Ireland i love you madly.

LAHINCH VIBEZ

This new years eve I'll be surfing (ie..trying to surf...ie... paddling for 45 mins til my arms are about to fall off, and i think i might barf in the sea and then actually...eventually catching a wave ..paddling...paddling...paddling...dont stop keep paddling....  aching... aching... ouch ouch... get up get up... and then standing up like Michealangelo's 'David' for around 60 exquisite seconds where you hear  briefly but perfectly Motzart's final concerto ringing in your ears before you hit the shallows) in Lahinch in Co.Clare on the Irish Coast this year.

Conjoined with me on this one are a bunch of reprobates, English men, Irish women, stragglers and blow ins from the four corners of the world seeking refuge in the Irish sea. Seeking to get their heads blow off by the wind, their eyes burned out by the winter sun and the very core of them frozen to an icicle by the hard blow that comes in off the atlantic.

We're talking full wet suit here.... gloves, hoods and socks cos the atlantic is feckin freezoid. I'm hoping for a full survival tally on this one although we may lose one or two to the sea (there are a lot of us) and some fingertips and toes may succumb to frostbite, other than that i think the whiskey will keep us warm and in high spirits for the adventure beyond the surf.

I have a theory that i totally made up and this is it.... when the old year is turing into the new one like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, the sea churns magic... like cream into butter and can absolve you from of all your sins...no matter how bad...kinda like a really wet confessional box but the sea is your priest and can free you of it all, no hail mary's or our fathers or anything...she will simply wash all your dirty little sins off like soapy suds. I'm really into this ....i'm going to spread the rumour as soon as we get down there and see how many filthy little sinners i can get in for skinny dipping on new years day.

A LOVE LETTER TO IRELAND BY CLAIREBAN

This poem was written by one my best friends and soul sister Claireban with the red hair like fire, like a caribbean sunset, a beech tree in autumn. She's an active volcano.... a ginger unicorn or a selkie if they exist at all... thats what she is, just in human form.

This poem is what being irish is all about. It's the essence of it that gets you when you're away from home. The can't quite put your finger on it-ness of something that holds you suspended in a memory of a person, place or a time and the eternal association of inanimate things with those we love, have loved and those we have lost.

There is a line in Carol Ann Duffy's poem Mrs Midas when she is talking of her husband who wished for everything he touched to turn to gold and it crushes me like a snail underfoot after the rain whenever i read it...'I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead.'

My favourite part of Claireban's poem is 'I miss your men, God i miss your men, i miss your tracksuits, your Nike air max, your women, your mackerel'. 

THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010

A love letter to Ireland

IRELAND

IRELAND

GOD

I MISS YOU

i miss you

I miss you

I miss you blowing in my hair

whispering in my ear

confusing me

I miss lying in your fields

swimming in your seas

smelling you

smelling of you

i want to inhale your gorse

Kneel in your churches

Perv on your knackers

I miss your men

God i miss your men

I miss your tracksuits

your nike airmax

your women

your mackerel

your humor

you camouflaged me

you illuminated me

you gave me this skin

Ireland your in me

your my name

your my great strong roots

the blaze in my hair

my voice

my accent

my prayers

my curses

my wilderness

my WILDNESS

your my conscience

my family

my freckles

my fire

You Mothered me

Fathered me

Your the most beautiful land I've ever seen

I dream of you

I love you

I love you

I love you

see you soon

Claireban

MAGIC BEANS

'Never be afraid to trade in your cow for a hand-full of magic beans!'
Tom Robbins


As an afterthought.... have the bravery and courage to really believe in your magic beans and never ever trade them back in for the cow.

PURE LOVE

NEW YORK LABRADOR

New York. You are perfect even though it's been pissing rain since i got here and has mostly been dark and hardly light at all....i still love you. I'm your golden labrador always, unconditional big wet brown eyes gazing up at you in an 'oh god i love you so much it hurts' kinda way.

ALWAYS IN MY HEAD AND IN MY HEART

"There are bears and there are small dogs. Be Strong like a bear! If they take out your teeth, sit on the dogs. Bears always forget that they can just sit on the dogs. Sit on the dogs." 

Dave Eggers, 'You shall know our velocity!'

Reading Dave Eggers at the minute and  I am so comforted that he is kinda weird and funny like Salinger.  That's what is so amazing about reading, having a good ol laugh or cry by yourself.  I feel like this on the plane sometimes watching films and its just me and the other 300 passengers or whatever all happily strapped to our chairs like mental patients. Noise cancelling headphones on and i may as well be suspended in some kind of pod floating through the galaxy for as much as i am alone.  I have access to my entire emotional spectrum on a flight.

Also he talks about God which i love, i have a mad empathy and affinity with people who have any concept of god or faith. I grew up with it and i'm not religious but i love faith.... i just love it. I mean you can feel hopeless, at sea with no life ring, no arm bands, no land, no nothing and then faith comes flooding in like a little tsunami, washing all over you with warm ocean and carrying with it a lovely big smooth piece of driftwood for you to cling onto and you know in your heart that, that piece of wood is gunna take you home.

The lovely thing is that miracles can always happen because what you believe in isn't tangible in the first place, so if the existence of something is not proven and it's merely an idea like UFO's and aliens, bigfoot etc... you can't un-prove it, until every single person in the world beyond a shadow of a doubt stops believeing in it and hence it ceases to exist, even as a thought.  It's already too late for that anyway cos everyone loves the Loch Ness Monster and all that other shit. 

So all that stuff like Jesus and heaven and aliens and ghosts, it's kinda just out there and up for debate and to be honest i think it makes life more exciting. So you just keep on keeping on kind of believing in it because in the end it actually doesn't matter, you can go round in circles trying to get your head around it and you never will cos there is no answer. I always think that if something makes people happy and comforts them when stuff gets heavy then it's okay whether it's real or not who cares, anything that gives people faith is so incredibly worthy of existing.

I told my friend Nick this about faith, he has no religion  and he said 'Oh well if thats the case then you may as well have faith in the devil and ask him to give you stuff cos that would be more fun. I laughed pretty hard at that....mostly because he was right. I bet the devil would have given me a porsche by now.

KARLIE AT 14

A really old shoot that I just found with super model Karlie Kloss, shot by Jacob Sutton back in the day. I remember Karlie was 14 years old and incredibly wise and sweet. Gary Card did all of the wonderful illustrations and plasticine animals.  I love how weird this shoot is and it reminds me how we were always doing interesting funny stupid things back then, just finding our way in the old world and being brave and not really giving a shit what anyone else thought. Now when i look at it, it makes me dig those younger versions of us and i love these images.

This is Karlie now in Italian Vogue. WOAHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh someone got all grown up.

THANKSGIVING

DAZED DECEMBER DOUBLE COVER

The double cover I styled for the December Issue of Dazed and Confused magazine shot by Rankin. We worked with Gael Garcia Bernal who is such a cool guy. He suggested his star of the future in Veronica Echegui. Veronica is kinda like a cross between Salma Hayek when she is licking tequila of her own leg in from 'Dusk til Dawn' and Penelope Cruise in 'All the pretty horses' when she is being all cute and fragile and then riding around bareback on massive horses. So everyone was all misty eyed about her...gay, straight, boys, girls..... it was a universal falling like we all just got tipped of a plate like vegetables and ended up in a love soup with her. 

ZOO KID

I'm crazy about this boy, his name is zoo kid and he's very young like 14 or something and really talented. Not only does he have amazing ginger hair like some of my favourite people in my life but he has awesome style and his voice is like all heavy and syruppy like cough mixture, you can't not listen to him when he is singing....it's an involountary command, i love that. I reckon he's been on earth before in another life cos there's no way i had a handle on love and any level of emotional shit when i was his age. Anyway he's heaven.  Check him out here singing his song 'Out getting ribs'.

MING MING THE CHINESE PRINCESS OF CHARLAND

Super talented designer, fellow Irish woman and one
of of my best mates, Simone, full name for real... Simone Cecilia Ming Ming Rocha featured in this month's issue of 10 magazine. Photographed by Freddie Helwig looking all hot and dishevelled in her studio in Dalston. Her hair looks so good in this picture i cant stop zooming in on it. Her interview is bright and funny  and full of stuff like this....

'I attended Ching Ming which is the amazing day of mourning, very inspiring also my family are originally from Happy Valley but my dad grew up in Healthy Village in Hong Kong'

Loving the positivity of the names of the villages when translated from Chinese to English!

Go on Ming ming the Chinese Princess of Charland (China & Ireland of course).

http://simonerocha.com/

YOU GOTTA LOVE JACK

“Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same.” 
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums


I kinda love that celestial sounds like my name, it makes me think of stars and navy skies and clouds and heaven music which is harps and the flute and maybe some violin.

LIL BIT OF WRONG NEVER HURT ANYBUDDY

'No breath today, all is gone. She suffer like a dog in that age of lonelyness. I will be there for the light for the fire. Il Il will see in the deep soul in our romantic destiny. Maybe we can talk about her long hair the song of the silence God.'

Lara Stone in French Vogue by artist Marco Perego. The Tinkerbell asphyxiation obsession is pretty funny and the Virgin Mary getting an handful of lara's boob was always going to be a good idea. I guess the perversion of innocence is always fascinating and loving things that are 'wrong' will always be exciting. If there was a like button on this i would click it until it turned into a 'i want to sleep with you' button.

REALLY COMFY COUCH

The film we made with Agyness on our Twin shoot, shot and directed by Ben Weller. Myself and Agyness did the audio, sat in a van on the side of a hill in the middle of a field with all the doors closed. The two of us trying not to laugh too much and get hysterical as you do in church. We were under fierce time pressure at this moment so it was an intense little session. The answers were so good sometimes i got goosebumps, i love the honesty of Agyness she's so open and is just not afraid to be herself on any level, strong or vulnerable. I love that.

THE GREAT DEYN

Twin's very first cover Shoot with Agyness Deyn and photographer Ben Weller for Issue 5.  Agyness rocks, she's the coolest girl ever and her accent is like a lullaby.  We had a magic team on this one which all seemed to be confirmed by Mother Nature at the end of the day who blessed us with the most epic double rainbow i've ever seen, we were all running knee deep through a wildflower meadow on a hillside in the rain to try to take pictures of it. This was followed by an incredible Hieronymus Bosch sunset that set whole sky was on fire as we drove back to London. Hair by Chi Wong & Make up by Shinobu Abe