It looks like this. I’m kinda hoping the “helium balloon dreadhead” look becomes a new thing. I could totally see it. Bonnaroo, Burning Man… make it happen!
Sadly, after the photo was taken, apparently the gentleman with the balloon dreads chopped ‘em off for World’s Greatest Shave.
Via reddit
Oh, boy…
No, these are not mug shots of the most wanted criminals from the 1970s—though the confusion is quite understandable, considering how these hirsute models could have probably been successfully prosecuted for crimes against good taste—no, these are genuine head shots of once fashionable hairstyles from the 1970s, and I’m sure a few of us can recognize ourselves here… I know I can.
You see, back in the 1970s, unless you opted for a standard short-back-and-sides, your local barber might attempt these cuts on your unsuspecting hair follicles. As you can imagine, these fashion travesties had names like “The Wolfman,” “The Caveman,” “The Psycho,” “The-weird-guy-in-the-kiddie-pool,” “The Gerry Helmet” (for obvious reasons…), “The creep-from-the-accounting-department,” “The Robert Helpmann” (aka “The Child Catcher”), “The Great Masturbator” (evidentallly a Dali-inspired surrealist coif) and, of course, “The Brian Connolly”!
The trauma of having one of these haircuts inflicted on your person could last well into adulthood. Ah, the Seventies—a decade rich in music, film, comedy, and television, but utterly rife with naff fashion.
Via Retronaut
This week, Luxury Launches heralded the arrival of Swiss haberdasher Suitart’s Diamond Armor bespoke men’s suit, made of bulletproof material and bedazzled with black diamonds.
The suit is not only bulletproof (certified by NATO standards) as mentioned before, it’s also waterproof due to nano-technological sealing and is equipped with an active cooling system. It’s the only suit of its kind that has an air conditioning system developed by EMPA built into it. The integrated technology can be activated at the push of a button and offers cooling through humidification of water. To add elegance and class to the suit, the Diamond Armor is encrusted with 880 black diamonds. The lapel and the contours of the Diamond Armor are graced with 600 black diamonds each with a diameter of four millimeters and a total weight of 140 carat and the buttons of the jacket consist of Swiss watch steel 316L with DLC coating and are graced with additional 280 black diamonds. To match the opulence of the suit, it can be accessorized with a 24 carat golden silk tie developed by fabric specialist Weisbrod from Zurich and EMPA and Carl F. Bucherer
limited edition watch.
Wearing a suit encrusted with diamonds and a tie of spun gold? Goodness gracious me, why would anyone want to harm you?
So not only is the suit Elvis-y
Still, the lack of a simple photograph showing an item at which the world would surely love to get a gander is disheartening. What Suitart has shared is this video dramatizing how their fabric stops bullets.
This video demonstrates how bullets can be stopped with a Ted Nugent guitar solo.
Celebrated LIFE magazine photographer Gordon Parks shot these around Christmastime in 1958. They were used in a 200-page special issue on the glories and absurdities of American entertainment. Parks’ series was titled “Without the Girls, Show Biz Is No Biz.”
They’re soft focus and oh so beautiful. Very much like a Edgar Degas piece when he painted ballet dancers.
More after the jump…
Can you spot the Putin???
What with Pussy Riot, the Sochi Olympics, and the unrest in Crimea, Russia’s officially in the collective consciousness of Americans again, even the ones who get their news from Gawker. Americans generally have inordinate difficulty finding, say, Ukraine on a map, so I can’t say I’m not pleased that more people have context for an outfit like the Night Wolves.
For those not in the know, the Night Wolves are a Russian motorcycle club founded in 1989. They boast about 5,000 members, and have chapters in Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, and Romania. Like a lot of outlaw bikers, they’re fundamentally conservative, claiming to follow only their own rules, but they endorse both Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin has not only gone on rides with the gang for high-profile photo ops, he recently awarded the group’s leader, Alexander Zaldostanov (the big motherfucker here, whose nickname is “The Surgeon”), an Order of Honor for his “active work in the patriotic upbringing of the young”.
It’s difficult to tell which of the Night Wolves’ many accomplishments garnered them such prestige—perhaps it was for when they offered, ahem, “security” to churches after Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” protest? At any rate, the Night Wolves have been keeping up with their civic duties, recently appearing as a vigilante military presence in Crimea. I’m sure they’re supplying just the right note of level-headed sangfroid the situation calls for.
Also like a lot of outlaw bikers, the Night Wolves find ingenious ways to capitalize off their macho “brand.” Much as the Hells Angels make a little extra cash selling tacky swag, so too have the Night Wolves ventured into the world of merchandising. The clothing linked on their website (sadly) appears to only be available only in stores. You can see it modeled below by disheveled young ladies and those guys who stand as if the bulk of their arm muscles is preventing them from ever looking relaxed. (My dad was an Iron Horseman, and I assure you, this is some sort of ubiquitous biker body language.)
But with the possible exception of some leather goods (which appear to have a wolf on them?) the clothes appear to be generic biker fare. If you really want the Night Wolf logo (and can read Cyrillic), you can order the jewelry online! The collection is sort of a mix of “goth kid” and “Rasputin,” but I could see wearing it to your local PTA meeting. Don’t delay, order today! The guys clearly need to cash if they’re ever going to buy a decent camera (the photo quality is pretty bad).
Someone’s a crankypants…..
Still can’t seem to get those arms down, huh?
That looks practical. Nice Eurotrash jeans, by the way.
Apparently no one told them they were getting their picture taken.
If you told me these were some lesser-known Kentucky cousins of mine, I’d probably believe you.
For the daytime.
For more of an evening look. Works for the symphony or the club!
Awwww, loooook! Puppies!
“In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea, and he told us of his life, with his Yellow Submarine Vans…”
As a lifelong wearer of Vans, I’m not entirely sure I’d wear these psychedelic puppies. I can appreciate them, though, as a novelty item and Vans fan.
Perhaps if one of the classic styles showcased the Blue Meanies, then I might seriously have to reconsider…
The Yellow Submarine-themed shoes are around $65 + shipping at the Vans website.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Mick Jagger makes his TV debut with some sensible shoes
Nick Cave and David Bowie hi-top All Stars sneakers
Footwear with bite: Fancy shoes with teeth soles
Foot Fetish: Freaky faces in old, discarded shoes
h/t Nerdcore
Photos of Chinese Millennials hard at work, sportin’ some fun-loving, kind of elaborate, hair’dos:
It is 8:30 at night. A group of young workers are busying processing products at a plant in Zhuhai city, South China’s Guangdong province. They have been working for nearly 10 hours. All of them are born in the late 90s and come from rural areas outside the province. Wearing blue uniforms and having peculiar hairstyles, they make a living by repeatedly working on the assembly lines and contributing as one of the forces of the city’s construction.
There are more images over at China Daily.
Via Nerdcore
Baricka O’Bisha
“Behind every ‘great’ man, there’s a queen.” That’s the insight that “Saint Hoax” hit upon after seeing a drag show for the first time and contemplating the similarly “constructed” nature of drag queens and incredibly powerful political figures:
The recipe for an iconic queen:
1. Flamboyant name
2. Fierce persona
3. Defining outfits
4. Personalized hairdo
5. A trademark feature
6. One hell of a PR teamI then realized that it takes that same exact effort to make a leader.
The text continues: “Like drag queens, political/religious leaders are expected to entertain, perform and occasionally lip-sync a public speech. ... But unlike drag queens, the fame hungry leaders don’t know when to take their costumes off.”
At the Saint Hoax website you can see the full transformations.
Vladdy Pushin’
Madame O’ Sane
Georgia Buchette
Ossie B’
Hitleria Hysteria
Kimmy Jungle
Queen Abby
via Lost at E Minor
Classic American fashion is a beautiful medium. And while the original uniform of the teenage rock and roll dirtbag was a fairly austere, masculine style, it was as an export that the look exploded. British and Japanese rockabillies are the most obvious examples, but it’s the Swiss kids of Karlheinz Weinberger’s photography that really blow me away. The photos are from the 50s and early 60s, but I could see sporting the women’s looks today. Classic, surreal, and dangerous.
Fun fact: John Waters gives the forward for Weinberger’s coffee-table book, Rebel Youth
More Swiss greasers and rockabillies are the jump…
I can’t recall ever seeing such bold use of patterns—entirely excessive, but somehow it works. These images come from the 2014 calendar for Splash, a Dubai-based company reputed to be “the Middle East’s largest fashion retailer.” The meticulously conceived pics are the work of Tejal Patni (Flash-heavy website), an Indian photographer and filmmaker who works out of Dubai. He’s done the last four calendars for Splash, but this last one is on a whole new level.
If I were running Burberry’s, I’d hire him based on the 2014 calendar alone.
Here’s a commercial Patni did for Listerine, almost certainly the most intense advertisement about bad breath ever done:
limited edition watch.