A black and white portrait of Prince covering an adult-sized onesie from Rage On.
 
If there is one thing I can’t stand more than white shoes, it is seeing someone out in public wearing pajama pants. I mean, I get it. Life is hard. And most days can flat out suck all the brain cells that make you care about things right out of your head. But you can still get dressed. Come on, man. How hard is it really to exchange an actual pair of pants for the stupid flannel ones you wore to bed last night before you leave the house? As someone who sometimes works in their pajamas (one of the many perks of my “job” here at DM), if I ever left the house wearing my PJs, it had better be because I was fucking dead. But as I often do, I’ve digressed away from the subject of this post which features another one of my triggers, the adult onesie. Because almost nothing says “I give up” like reverting to wearing clothing you wore when you were a baby. Ug.

Not all of the grown-up onesies I’ve culled for this post make me want to get on the next shuttle to the Moon. In fact, a few of them are pretty damn cool like the black and white one featuring a photo of our dearly departed Prince pictured at the top post. But I did include some that are truly terrible too, and I’m just going to leave you to ponder that thinly veiled warning while you scroll through the images below. Each onesie will run you a cool $109 over at Rage On. The company also takes custom orders so if you don’t see the onesie of your dreams (and my nightmares) below, just have one made especially for you… baby. I’m going to ease into the “bad” ones so you can prepare yourself for the moment you audibly say “fuck no.” Some of the images below are NSFW.
 

Actor Max Schreck in character as the vampire Nosferatu.
 

Old-school horror film VHS covers.
 

Satan/Baphomet mashup. I’ll take it!
 
More after the jump…

Boy George modeling BOY London, around 1987.
 
Iconic fashion brand BOY London got its start back in 1976 shortly after the opening of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s infamous SEX boutique on Kings Road in London. Known at first as Acme Attractions, founder and designer Stephane Raynor attracted a respectable clientele that included the likes of Bob Marley, Patti Smith, Billy Idol and Chrissie Hynde to his small street booth on Kings Road. Although BOY London catered strictly to punks (and tourists) at first, as the dawn of the 1980s approached, Raynor and his partner John Krivine opened a proper brick and mortar operation called BOY London which became a fashion haven for the incoming stars of London’s nightlife, the New Romantics.

Raynor was pretty tight with many of the elite members of the New Romantics scene including Boy George who would end up modeling quite extensively for the brand, helping propel it to international notoriety. As a matter of fact, according to Raynor, the first-day BOY was open for business it was raided by the cops. The windows to the boutique were smashed and people got arrested. Even Sid Vicious paid the shop a visit wearing a pair of high heels amidst the chaos of the shop’s early days. BOY was joined at the hip with the small, but influential Blitz nightclub in Covent Garden that was frequented by the “Blitz Kids” who, among others icluded Steve Strange, Rusty Egan, and of course George O’Dowd. Raynor approached his pal George about representing BOY which he did with incredible enthusiasm, often stepping out in head-to-toe ensembles by BOY anywhere he went. Many of the images below of Boy George modeling BOY London’s fashions were taken by photographer Paul Gobel for the cover and marketing materials of O’Dowd’s first post Culture Club solo album, 1987’s Sold.
 

Photo by Paul Gobel.
 

 
More BOY on Boy action, after the jump…

 
I’m digging this old school Vans sneaker dressed up as Charlie Brown’s iconic shirt. Vans has teamed up with whoever owns the Peanuts trademarks featuring Charles M. Schulz’s iconic characters. Not only is there an ode to Charlie Brown, but there are other Vans showcasing Snoopy, Lucy van Pelt, and the entire Peanuts gang.

Vans Created with vintage artwork from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, the Vans x Peanuts Old Skool combines the iconic Vans skate shoe with sturdy canvas and suede uppers, a Charlie Brown-inspired sidestripe, and an embroidered tongue.

The Charlie Brown sneaker retails for $70 here.

 
Okay, so they’re probably not all the rage (I just said that as they’re currently making the rounds on the Internet). The “hairy leg leggings,” are sort of an inexplicable product to me. Why not just let the hair on your legs grow instead of buying a pair of these, is what I want to know? Seems like the most cost effective thing to do and you’ll still have money for pills. And if you don’t like it, just shave that shit off!

Anyway, the hairy leggings are available from custom UK clothing printer Contrado. If hairy leggings are not your thing (maybe they’re not?), you have other options to choose from.

There are no images of the crotch area for these leggings. I wonder if it’s smooth like a Ken doll? That’s the word on the street, at least.

 

 
via Geekologie

 
Here’s a fashion statement I never understood: Bullet bras. I know a lot people find the Bullet bra AKA the Torpedo bra incredibly sexy, but all I can think of is Ursula Andress in The 10th Victim where actual bullets fire out of her pointy bra. They’re just too pointy, in my opinion. But who the hell cares about what I think, right? People (men?) dig ‘em.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say regarding the Bullet bra’s history:

Military terminology crept into product marketing, as represented by the highly structured, conically pointed Torpedo or Bullet bra, designed for “maximum projection”. The bullet bra was worn by the Sweater Girl, a busty and wholesome “girl next door” whose tight-fitting outer garments accentuated her artificially enhanced curves.

It appears the Bullet bra and Sweater Girl fad died out around the 1960s due to cultural changes including “counterculture, the Civil Rights Movement and the concept of free love that emerged in the United States.”

Okay then.

 

 

 
More after the jump…

Willie Nelson

I’m not sure of the provenance of few of these images. The artist’s name is clearly signed on one image (good ol’ Willie), but otherwise I came up empty-handed. Even a reverse Google image search led me nowhere. Are some of these from an old Playboy spread celebrating pubic hair? I simply don’t know.

What I am pretty certain of though is that a few of these are definitely not tattoos but body paintings incorporating the nether region hair. Every website I go to says they’re tattoos, but I’m not buying it. That being said, the bird’s nest and Willie Nelson coiff are quite creative. Next up? Kenny Rogers. I demand to see that.

 

 
More after the jump…

 
When I saw these photographs of Victorian women in their voluminous skirts and dresses, I wondered what I could say that hasn’t already been said by the usual suspects in historical books or feminists texts about patriarchy and fashion, etcetera, etcetera. I really don’t want to go down that path, but if you do there are plenty of sites out there that will supply the goods.

Honestly, my first thought when I saw these pictures was: “How the hell did these women go about their daily lives dressed like this?” It couldn’t have been easy. It couldn’t have been very practical or even remotely comfortable. But then, most fashion isn’t meant to comfortable—it’s about performance, it’s about dressing up to present a show. Victorian fashion was all about presentation—like the whalebone corsets worn to keep the female figure constrained, narrow-waisted, and artificially slim. Seems perverse to us today, but so might breast implants appear one day to our progeny’s progeny.

Fashion changed rapidly during the 19th-century with radical developments in industrialization, mass production, new techniques in printing patterns and colors, and the rise of the department store. At the start of the century, dresses were straight up-and-down maxi-lengthened Jane Austen-type garments made of linen and silk. By the 1820s, there was a flaring out of the hem and a widening of the hips to give women a more voluptuous and feminine shape.

This style of dress developed quite dramatically in the 1830s when such dresses ballooned out from the waist like a bell or a parachute, while the upper half of the body remained slim and pinched at the waist. Their bell-like shape was solely dependent on the hidden supporting structure of a bustle or crinoline cage suspended from the wearer’s waist. These “cages” were originally made of whalebone but were soon superseded by lighter more sturdy yet flexible “steel-hooped cage crinoline” in 1856.

Such hoop dresses or skirts were worn by all class of women. But it should be noted, these garments were often very hazardous as many working-class women lost their lives after their skirts were caught in machinery while many middle-class women perished after their dresses caught fire.

Rich women would have had a whole closet filled with various beautifully designed outfits. Lower class women usually had just the one outfit, which they kept fashionable by changing collars and cuffs or adding ribbons or a new layer of material.

Ultimately, the whole ensemble presented the image each of these women either wanted to or felt obliged to present.
 

 

 
More Victorian women in big-ass skirts, after the jump…

Actress and model Vikki Dougan clowning around at the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus.
 
Actress and model Vikki Dougan earned her nickname “The Back” thanks to the dangerously low-back, curve-hugging dresses she wore in the 1950s and 1960s. Dougan’s alluring back has even inspired a song written by folk music legends The Limelighters whose lyrics passionately request that she “turn her back” on them. And, as the title of this post suggests, Dougan’s provocative posterior bearing dresses and look also served as inspiration for the animated character “Jessica Rabbit” from the 1988 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Dougan would begin her modeling career at the age eleven in 1940. In 1948, nineteen-year-old Dougan (who had changed her name from Edith Tooker to “Vikki Stappers Dougan”) was named the winner of the New York Skate Queen competition. This success landed Dougan a spot in what sounds like the greatest fashion show of all time held by the Roller Skating Institute of America (RISA) which showcased the latest in roller rink fashions. Zowie. Dougan’s fame would take flight, and she would score roles in various films, photo spreads in prominent magazines such as LIFE (photographed by Ralph Crane) as well as posing for commercial advertisements for lingerie. Dougan also did a couple of mostly PG-13 spreads for Playboy and was romantically linked to some of the most famous men in Hollywood including Frank Sinatra.

Sometime in the 1960s things started to slow down for Dougan and in 1964 Cavalier magazine ran twelve photos taken of Dougan in the buff which had initially been shot for Playboy. Following the session, Dougan refused to let Playboy publish the cheeky photos, and she filed a lawsuit against Cavalier which was eventually settled out of court for a tidy sum approximated to be in the neighborhood of $75,000. Photos of Dougan showing off her fabulous back follow and are slightly NSFW.
 

1958.
 

 
More Vikki Dougan after the jump…

Donald Trump
 
Today is the first day of summer—even if every day tends to feel like summer anymore—so it seems appropriate to blog about these interesting one-piece bathing suits for women. Beloved Wear makes these suits and and believe it or not… they’re on sale! Each one will cost you just $49.95!

I can’t vouch for the quality as I’ve never shopped from this website before, but you’re probably 100% sure to turn a lot of heads if you sport one by the pool or at the beach. I can pretty much guarantee it.

Nicolas Cage
 

Luchador
 
More after the jump…

Spandau Ballet
 
The Blitz club in Covent Garden was ground zero for the movement that came to be known as the New Romantics, an identity that perhaps represented the most forceful rejection of the premises of punk music, which was then on everyone’s lips. Where the punks preached scruffy confrontation and anarchy, the New Romantics veered in an escapist direction, stressing the rarefied forms of yesteryear (most often the 1930s) and an abiding (even a political) belief in actual beauty with a capital B. 

The Blitz Kids looked to Roxy Music and David Bowie for inspiration, adopting a sartorial flair that included flaming mascara, outrageous accessories, zoot suits. The Blitz club spawned the New Romantic acts Visage and Spandau Ballet, among others, but nature of the scene was insular—the whole point of the weekly meetups was to parade oneself for all the others who had gathered for the occasion. Gigs didn’t have to be promoted because word of mouth would fill any chosen room.
 

Chris Sullivan
 
In May 1980 Strange, Egan, and Chris Sullivan of the band Blue Rondo à la Turk opened Hell, which had a darker feel than Blitz. At Hell, as Dave Rimmer writes in New Romantics: The Look, “many of the Blitz crowd pursued an ecclesiastical theme: dark robes, white faces, a look that prefigured Goth.” At Hell you would hear acts like the Pop Group, Defunkt, the Cramps, and A Certain Ratio, but its “anthem” was “Contort Yourself” by James White and the Blacks. Hell only lasted a few months, and by early 1981 the hot spot had become a joint started by Chris Sullivan and Graham Ball called Le Kilt, which was where BBC sent Robin Denselow to do his report.

Tellingly, the report begins with the strains of Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan” as Sullivan carefully dons his tailored duds. A few minutes later, Steve Strange bellows the words “Nobody should knock fantasy!” in fervent defense of the New Romantic ideology in an overt embrace of escapism—and why not?

Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet are on hand, Gary in particular speaking with palpable edge about the demands the New Romantic movement places on the participants (for they must dress up as much as any performer).

Continues after the jump…