Jack & Hill: A Beauty Blog - make-up, cosmetics, perfume, and the substance of style

Beauties: Kiki Smith

I am going to be waiting outside the Gap when it opens on the 15th, to make sure I get one of the limited edition t-shirts designed by the art world goddess Kiki Smith. The Gap, in partnership with the Whitney Museum, is producing shirts by thirteen artists, including such sirens as Smith, Marilyn Minter, Hanna Liden, Barbara Krueger and Sarah Sze, and such sirons (which I hereby declare to be the masculine form of siren) as Chuck Close and Jeff Koons.

Last year Target issued a limited edition of artist-designed bath towels and I happily snapped up one by Cindy Sherman. I am all for mass-produced art, and I'm glad to see this from the Gap, which has been struggling of late to find its mojo.

Pic of the t-shirt after the jump!

Beauties: Kingi Carpenter, the Betsey Johnson of Toronto

Kingi Carpenter, owner of Peach Berserk in Toronto, is her own best advertisement; wearing a baby blue ruched top of her own design, with babydoll pink lipstick, her arms covered in ink from silkscreening fabrics, she is the very picture of the midwestern farm girl who made good as a fashion designer in the big city. This is what Dorothy would have looked like at 45, had she decided not to click her heels together and go home, but to stay in the big, bright Emerald City with her fabulous new friends and make a life for herself.

I have always thought of Toronto as a mecca of street style and alternative fashion, and was excited to visit Queen Street West, a neighborhood of shops, bars and restaurants which has grown up around the Ontario College of Art and Design. The first shop I stumbled into was Peach Berserk, where I instantly felt that old hungry-eyed yearning that only comes when you walk into certain temple-like stores. The shotgun shop is crammed to bursting with colorful garments in hand-silkscreened jersey, silk and taffeta that reminded me strongly of Betsey Johnson in the late 70s/early 80s, and when I mentioned this to Kingi she smiled and said, "I made a trip to New York in the early 80s, and when I walked into the Betsey Johnson store I said, 'This is what I want to do with my life.'"

I was surprised, when I began fingering the various garments, at how substantial the fabrics were and how impeccable the finish work was--something you don't see often in clothes with this much edge. Kingi and her lovely assistants print and sew in an open workshop in the back of the store, and will custom make any garment in any fabric. It's also hard to find clothes this youthful and fun that also fit a womanly body, and these are deftly cut to flatter the body.

Kingi is a great lifestyle example for my generation of artsy women who came of age in the 70s and now want to figure out how to approach middle age without succumbing to that dull urban classiness that seems to be the general prescription for how to look good after 40. There are a couple more pics after the jump!

Beauties: Aliza Shvarts

I seem to be a lone dissenter in my respect for the now-infamous Aliza Shvarts' position as an artist, and admiration for the grand joke she's perpetrated on all of us. To me, she is indeed an artist, working in the fine tradition of Carolee Schneeman and Kiki Smith, women who use the female body as a a medium in often disturbing ways.

In case you haven't heard: the Yale grad student claims to have artificially inseminated herself repeatedly, then took abortion-inducing herbs to induce miscarriage and created an installation piece out of the detritus. The latest storm has the University hastily denying that any of this actually took place, with Shvarts countering that she did indeed do these things, even if the question of whether or not she actually achieved pregnancy during the making of the piece cannot be definitively answered (though it's likely she didn't).

There seems to be a rather large contingency dismissing Shvarts' thesis work by saying, "She did it to get attention." Which as a statement about an artist is neither here nor there: the garnering of attention is and ought to be the goal of any artist, with the exception perhaps of someone like Henry Darger. What they mean is that she did it only to get attention, not for "art's sake." Which reminds me oddly of passage in The World According to Garp, where Garp admits he wrote his first novel for the most noble of reasons: to impress a girl. It is not, I think, entirely valid to dismiss Shvarts because she made her art for the wrong reasons, or to say that it isn't art on that basis.

Beauties: Ova Fritatta

She is an Italian starlet who cracked in 1930, while in Spain filming Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel’s lost surrealist masterpiece, L’Age D’Oeuf. You can vote for her here.

Happy Easter!

Beauties: Tilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton was like a Richard Neutra house plopped down in a tract of Hollywood McMansions on Sunday. Her bleak marble face, that curtain-wall column of a dress--next to that, even the normally quite modernist Hillary Swank looked like a fussy boudoir throw cushion, with all that lace.

Swinton's beauty is challenging, requiring the onlooker to strain and reach, to really experience the act of seeing. At first, for instance, you want desperately to give her eyebrows, but this would be wrong, very wrong, like putting a cornice on the Lever House.

If you try to understand Swinton's appearance in terms of the red carpet, or even in terms of of movie star, she is impossible to compute, but think of her in terms of an architectural statement, and it's possible that she's finally doing for beauty what Mies and Eliel did for architecture in the middle of the last century, ie, changing it forever, from the DNA up. Although it's possible that she will remain a splendid anomaly, like Kate Hepburn, who wasn't a skyscraper at all despite her height, but a yar sailing ship.

My boyfriend sent me a link to a story about her interesting love life--apparently the 50ish Ms Swinton lives with her 70ish artist husband and their children, and they are sometimes all joined in happy cohabitation by her 30ish artist lover. I think it's grand that this odd, elegant creature lives such a passionate life of her own devising (even if she was a communist in her 20s--why she couldn't just smoke crack like Amy Winehouse is beyond me. At least she has the decency to be a rich communist.).

I just got samples for MAC's new line of austere neutral shades, and I will be experimenting with them with new respect, now that Swinton has set the bar for stark elegance so very high. I may have to try going without eyebrows, or taking a young artist lover--and fair being fair, if my boyfriend wanted to bring Tilda home and paint her in the nude at our rambling country manor, I'd have to let him. We'd just have to steer clear from politics at the dinner table.

Beauties: Mahret Kupka

  Tour Eiffel 
  Originally uploaded by dynamist.

Mahret is a freelance curator in Heidelberg, Germany who edits F & Art Guide. She puts on exhibitions in her apartment, dresses in a charming mixture of high street fashion and samples of avantgarde items sent to her by designers, and has a fascinating life in front of her. Mahret provided much comic relief and many good photo opportunities for me while we were in Paris last week. I can't wait to visit her in the French capital again, when she's working there and is the toast of the town. Someday, Mahret...

Beauties: Garance Doré

  Garance Doré 
  Originally uploaded by dynamist.

I have so much to write about my trip to Paris! Not to mention the 500+ photos I have to caption and edit. It's going to be a long weekend.

But I couldn't let another day pass without bringing your attention to Garance Doré. She was one of the other bloggers that Lancome invited on our adventure, and one of the brightest spots of the trip for me. Garance is an incredible artist and photographer in Paris, and is particularly interested in beauty and street style. I could spend hours poring over the photos and drawings on her site - and probably will.

Garance is also utterly stylish herself, with seemingly little effort on her part. She nails the simple, elegant, relaxed look that most women spend years of their lives trying to achieve.

On top of all this, she is so much fun to be with, very smart, and ridiculously talented. She found a new fan in me this week, that's for sure.

Beauties: Juliette Binoche

  Juliette Binoche 
  Originally uploaded by dynamist.

When you see, close up, someone as stunning as she is, you have to scratch your head even more at the WAGs, Jordans, and Brooke Hogans of the world. This is beauty, as the French say, nonpareil.

Other adjectives which came to mind:

elegant
simple
glowing
knock-out

She can't need that much help from Lancome. (Indeed, she told us she uses products with a very light hand.)

More soon.

True vintage

  My aunt on her wedding day 
  Originally uploaded by dynamist.

I just found this photograph, from a newspaper in the 1960s, of my aunt on her wedding day. She died in 2000, and we weren't particularly close, but there is something exquisitely moving about this picture to me.

Enjoy being beautiful while you can, girls. You leave the beauty behind when you go.

Beauties: Sharleen Spiteri

I don't think I've ever been as excited about a celebrity haircut as I am about Katie Holmes's bob. (And yes, I realize what a pathetic sentence I just typed.) I have a feeling this might be what liberates her from Scientology. A good haircut is just that powerful. Click the thumbnail image to see her in all her chopped glory.

If you're familiar with British pop music, you may find bobbed Katie reminds you of Scottish band Texas's lead singer Sharleen Spiteri. Sharleen has been in my top five list of hottest females ever for a few years now, with her compelling mix of androgyny and intense femininity that's off the scale. She's so beautiful that my heart almost stops looking at the woman. Also, looking at pictures of her just now, I realize that I've wanted my current haircut ever since I saw how Sharleen - a former hairdresser - rocks short hair. (If only I could stand to have long bangs hanging in my eyes!) Ooh, here's something cool I just found out:

She wrote and performed the title track to the 1990s sitcom, "Ellen", and once appeared alongside Ellen DeGeneres in the opening credits.

Sharleen is hetero, but has a huge lesbian following, which she has embraced. And I mean EMBRACED. (How cool is that video?) Those of you who are Alan Rickman fans might enjoy the video he appeared in with Sharleen for Texas's song In Demand. She also looks amazing in the video for Say What You Want (the one where Method Man raps on the track is better). Her hair puts in a great performance in the Black Eyed Boy video, too.

I think my favorite might be the Halo video, filmed in Tokyo.

She's so pretty
Her hair is a mess
We all love her
To that we confess...