Madame says: DEATH BY PUPPET
One of the joys of being ill is that you can quietly sort through shit from your sick-bed. Whilst giving my DVD collection a once-over I found some of the “highlights” of my brief music career. In fact, what had, at the time seemed like ritual humiliation by puppet, today in my dotage and with the distance that maturity and a new century brings, I can see as a highlight of sorts! Stern instructions to “look Zig and Zag in the eye, ignore the blokes underneath”, and nerves, almost got the better of me.
If you’ve started off a manic monday down in the dumps, you have my permission to laugh with OR at!!
Madame says: WOWER THAN WOW
I’m always thrilled to welcome new readers to Madame Says. When Hormazd Narielwalla wrote that he’d arrived here by way of a visit to M.Goldstein and had been shocked to the core by hearing Klaus Nomi for the first time on my music player and was compelled “to immediately capture” his feelings in some incredible collages, I was excited to share them with you. You can see the whole set here, and they’re made in part from Saville Row bespoke paper patterns from men who are now dead, and Narielwalla’s love of nostalgia, puppets and also his sense of style combine to produce something quite magical I think.
I’m always delighted to turn people on to Klaus Nomi, the German opera singer who emerged from the underground scene in New York in the late 70s, a complete one-off who sang like Maria Callas and fused this with New Wave music and a stage persona and costumes that would in turn influence David Bowie.
One of my favourite quotes is by photographer Anthony Scibelli “Klaus had rendered himself black and white”. He had such a strong visual image that in person he looked like his own logo. Klaus Nomi was a revolutionary in as much as he pushed the androgyny envelope not just visually but also in that he sounded exactly like a accomplished female singer and would switch between his male and female voices at will.
I always try to sneak at least one Nomi song into my set at the George and Dragon, where there’s the time to run the gamut. He was such an inspiring truly individual character. His untimely death and cult status just add to the mystique of the artist.
Please click on the picture above to see the full joy and check out Narielwalla’s flickr – terrific!
Madame says: ME
Seriously, I feel like the lady who lives inside the radiator in Eraserhead.
I’ve got bloody mumps. Bed rest is what is needed. Hmmm….bed rest and two 7 year olds doesn’t particularly gel as an idea.
Madame says: KNITWEAR DEVIANTS
I love this picture of Cozette and Sid in Paris for menswear a couple of weeks ago in their matching Social Zombie jumpers!
Sibling: Cozette McCreery, Sid Bryan and Joe Bates, have a mission to give men’s jumpers a bit of a shake-up. Menswear can be boring, but not when you put a chap in a sequinned twinset or a 3-dimensional ram’s head with horns that look like giant shoulder pads or the kind of colour palette that wouldn’t look out of place on the runway at Lacroix.
In fact, weirdly, this is the kind of menswear that women covet. The visual gag made classy and collectable. There’s humour and intelligent research here that references such disparate influences as Francis Bacon’s dress sense to the classic Breton sweater.
Glad to hear Sibling have UK stockists now (Hervia Bazaar and Daniel Jenkins). Previously Paris and Tokyo were the only cities with the guts for these knitwear revolutionaries….oh, and you’ll be able to order from their website when they’ve finished updating it too!
Madame says: OUCH
Well, we were all feeling a bit rubbish yesterday but compared to today we were positively perky. Joe throwing up to my left..Duke well enough to challenge me with my aching eyes (I ask you ACHING EYES?!) to lacklustre games of chess in bed – in fact today we are all about bed and only bed.
It’s as if we’ve all got different symptoms to some horrible whole made up of swollen glands, earache, sickness and head and EYE ache.
The upside to all this is My Friend Totoro, learning more from my 7 year old son about chess, crumpets, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and giving yourself up to the fact that your best laid plans have to be surrendered to soaking in the bath and the lure of the eiderdown.
Madame says: OFFICIALLY INTERNATIONAL
Great news last night was that Elias Redstone’s piece on M.Goldstein on The New York Times blog was posted!
So pleased they used the portrait of us that Sarah Lee took and I thought I’d post another picture she took on the same day of our resident skull since at M.Goldstein we’re on a Hot Voodoo tip – see this weekend’s window above – and I thought a bit of Sunday morning Marlene (the only woman who could smoulder in a gorilla suit) would top off the theme beautifully….
MORNING MOBILISATION by Nahid de Belgeonne
Are you still following your resolutions to eat better, exercise more, be calmer, drink less…? Grand sweeping resolutions often fail because they are too….sweeping! Tweaking your lifestyle in smaller steps will mean you stick to it.
It all starts with how you prepare for the day. If you down a double espresso, wail like a banshee and get scrambled up in your tights – guess how your day is going to pan out? A calm start to the day sets the tone for the rest of your waking hours. This joint mobilisation routine above was taught to me by my yoga teacher, Simon Low. Working gently through the full range of motion of your joints helps them to prepare for all your movements in the day ahead. The meditative nature of the routine means that you float into the rest of your day.
The beauty of this routine is that you can do it in 5 minutes or in 20 minutes and if you have no time at all just try the spinning bit at the end. If you want a more detailed instruction sheet, email me here Here’s to a healthy 2010 to you all!
Madame says: KINDA KARMA
I flew down to the coast on Saturday with the boys for the night to check on Mum’s hip progress and get a bit of that ice cold salty blast of sea air. In fact we even got Grandma onto the shingle – without stick! – which I think was pretty incredible and shows plucky bravado if not a little foolhardiness!!
The boys set to work collecting winkles – they call all shells winkles because it’s free reign to talk loudly about “WINKLES!” followed by hur hur hur….and gives them a job to do – basically filling my pockets up to bursting with oil slicked debris. Anyway it’s fun to have a mission.
In the car on the way back to London the conversation came around to Karma. I was trying to convey the concept of your actions having consequences and that doing bad to others could come back to bite you in the bum – which was me trying to keep it light but they took literally so then I had to start again…
Obviously this led on to reincarnation which they grasped in as much as they became obsessed with the idea of me coming back as a kitten after I die. They would dress me in kitten heels (seriously, and I don’t think they realise that is an actual type of heel!) and I would be allowed to wear lipstick and have my ears pierced (!). Silence. Then “I REALLY want you to come back as a kitten Mum”. I love talking about the big philosophical concepts with the boys.
Madame says: DIDDLE DEE DIT DEE DEE…
Two ladies!!!!!!
Spent a terrific afternoon in M.Goldstein with these two stunners yesterday afternoon! We feasted on cupcakes while the ladies made like dervishes re-piercing their ears and filling them with knives, bluebirds and horses….getting corsetted into a bit of 1950s Dior (Gwen) and channeling Shanghai Surprise era Madonna (Hanna).
In fact, so infectious was the female excitement that men from miles around were drawn to the tiny space, begging to photograph ‘my girls’ (I felt like a proper eastend Madame!)…
Good times….great taste…M.Goldstein.
Madame says: SHOW ME THE PIG
I’ve mentioned my pig-wearing before and I’ve realised that the pig is a recurring theme in my jewelry for M.Goldstein….which is no bad thing. As I’ve often said, the pig is lucky…and while I wouldn’t go to the extent of breeding pigs (just not practical in central London) to ensure wealth and health, an easy and stylish way to “have pig” is to wear one.
Check out the Attire page on M.Goldstein for more of my one-offs….and start using your piggy bank again if you have one, there’s a tradition I’d hate to see die out.
