Lourdes Vuitton by Francesco de Molfetta
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Casa Louis Vuitton

See more Lourdes Vuitton images over at High Snobiety

(via WOW Report)

 
In the mid-1980s Grace Jones’s body became the flesh canvas upon which Keith Haring created some of his most striking images. In the process, Haring contributed to Jones’s reputation as an innovator of cutting edge style and fashion. She wore Haring’s body paint in the video for her song I’m Not Perfect and in live performance at New York City’s Paradise Garage.

Body painting was a natural extension of the ephemeral nature of Haring’s art. Like subway graffiti and street art, it isn’t intended to last.

I remember the days before Haring became famous, when his “Radiant Baby” graffiti was as ubiquitous on the streets of New York as the smell of urine and the sound of ghetto blasters. For awhile, Haring was New York.

In the above photo we see Haring preparing Jones for her role in the 1986 movie Vamp, in which she portrays Katrina the Queen of The Vampires.

The music in this clip from Vamp is by Jonathan Elias who produced Jones’s Bulletproof Heart album.

 
for more photos pull up to the bumper

Raquel Welch photographed by Terry O’Neill. Available at the SF Art Exchange.
 
Raquel! was a multimillion dollar 1970 TV variety special starring Raquel Welch, Tom Jones, John Wayne and Bob Hope. It’s a camp time capsule full of Bob Mackie dresses, Paco Rabanne spacesuits and Bob Hope singing Rocky Raccoon wearing a Davey Crockett hat. It was shot all over the world, in Paris, London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, the Big Sur coast and elsewhere. 

A treat for the eyes (in every way) it was. For the ears, not so much. Welch sings a number of pop standards of the day, often with dancers in fully choreographed production numbers. There’s often a thematic disconnect of the material to the visuals, such as when Welch croons California Dreamin’ with the Eiffel Tower behind her. This contributes greatly to the “offness” of the proceedings. One reviewer compared Raquel! to “a community college production of Barbarella.” A highlight is Tom Jones lip-syncing I Who Have Nothing as he gazes longingly at the jaw-dropping sex bomb in front of him.

This first came out on VHS in the early 90s and I used to give it frequently as a gift. I gave one copy to Pizzicato Five’s Maki Nomiya and she later told me that she had a dinner party in Tokyo when she screened it for a group of friends and it went down a treat. That’s how this it should be viewed, in a group, with at least 2 or 3 drag queens in the mix, and a lil’ herbal “entertainment insurance.” It’s a guaranteed recipe for party success! It’s out on DVD now.

 
Over at J-Walk Blog I stumbled across the most awesome of awesome web sites, Yvette’s Bridal Forum. One of the commenters at J-Walk sums up this delightful little goldmine perfectly, “It’s the ultimate anti-aesthetic shock site. Sort of like Goatse, but for web designers.”

Click here to try drugs.

 
A Forever 21 clothing store located on Times Square, in the building that used to house the Virgin Mega-Store, has taken a Tron-like approach to advertising.

A digital 61 foot electronic billboard features virtual models interacting with people on the street below. The model takes photos of onlookers, which are then instantly displayed on the billboard. In addition, the models can pick people out from the gawking crowds, create digitized images of them, kiss them and turn them into frogs or pick them up and drop them into “Forever 21” branded shopping bags.

The dystopian mindfuck also displays “love tweets” from so-called “fans.”

Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation. - Marshall McLuhan

For more info and photos on the billboard check out design boom.

 
Forget about Chelsea Clinton. Jamil Smith Cole and Michael K. Cole were married in what has been called “the wedding of the century.”

If the black gay community has ever come close to having a celebrity- married couple then Jamil Smith Cole and Michael K. Cole are it.

You gotta love Michael and Jamil for not only proclaiming their love for each, but doing it in style.

More images and text after the jump…

 
New ‘bug-eyed” trend alert? Artist Jessica Harrison sure thinks so with her sculptural video using real fly legs for eyelashes. Now where’s the centipede moustache?
 
(via Nerdcore)

 
Funny new t-shirt design from African Apparel. I’ll take “ganja hands” over jazz hands any day!
 
Thanks, Cedric!

 

 
Imagine José Mojica Marins directing Can’t Stop The Music after snorting the remains of Bob Fosse and Federico Fellini and you may conjure up the demented disco fever that is The Apple. Billed as a “funky fantasy that will rock your world”, this 1980 schlock fest is Xanadu for cokeheads, bouncing a deluge of dance scenes off the viewer’s retinas like a hailstorm of mirrorballs.

In an attempt to replicate the cult success of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Apple takes every rock star as Messiah/Satan cliche and tosses them into a pot of boiling Spandex, gold Lurex, and black Lycra. Add a pinch of amyl nitrate, stir in a rusty cock ring, and some Manic Panic hair dye and you’ve got one of the most insanely inspired spectacles since John Travolta slathered on the KY in Staying Alive.
 

 
Word from a Fab Five Freddy tweet and a post on his own MySpace blog is that New York hip-hop futurist Rammellzee has passed away at age 50 from as-yet-unrevealed causes. (@149st features a great, fact-filled interview with the man.) Emerging as a teen graffiti artist in the mid-‘70s, bombing the A-train from its last stop in his Far Rockaway, Queens hometown, Rammell ended up like many of his talented peers—a multidisciplinary creative icon submerged in the nascent metropolitan hip-hop scene.  He first surfaced as a persona to the world in amazing fashion, dressed in trenchcoat and wielding a sawed-off shotgun as he MC’ed for the Rock Steady Crew in the Amphitheatre scene of hip-hop’s famous first film, 1982’s Wild Style.