Amazing Fashion Designs by Kansai Yamamoto in the Early 1970s

Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto (February 8, 1944 – July 21, 2020) was a fixture of the 1970s and ’80s fashion scene, and his avant-garde kimonos gained popularity thanks to one big-name fan: David Bowie.

Yamamoto’s floaty womenswear creations helped cement Bowie’s androgynous look during his Ziggy Stardust tour, and a long-term relationship was born. “Color is like the oxygen we are both breathing in the same space,” Kansai once said of his work with Bowie.

Kansai opened his first boutique in Tokyo in 1968 and eventually expanded worldwide. His collections debuted in the United States in 1971 at Hess’s in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a department store known for its controversial fashion shows of American and European styles selected for their potential to influence ready-to-wear clothing designs. 

That same year Kansai became the first Japanese designer to show in London, where his clothing was seen by David Bowie; Bowie later commissioned Kansai to create the wardrobe for his Ziggy Stardust stage persona. The designer was again featured in Hess’s showing of Asian trendsetting fashions for fall/winter 1973 at One World Trade Center in New York. All of the Kansai ensembles on view in this gallery were modeled at the New York event; several were shown earlier in London.

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Untitled Film Stills: Amazing Self-Portraits by Cindy Sherman in Different Stereotypical Female Roles From the Late 1970s

Untitled Film Stills is a series of black and white photographs by American visual artist Cindy Sherman predominantly made between 1977 and 1980, which gained her international recognition.

In the series, Sherman posed in various stereotypical female roles inspired by 1950’s and 1960’s Hollywood, Film noir, B movies, and European art-house films. They represent clichés or feminine types (the office girl, bombshell, girl on the run, housewife, and so on) “that are deeply embedded in the cultural imagination.” The characters in all of these photographs are always looking away from the camera and outside of the frame. Sherman cast herself in each of these roles, becoming both the artist and subject in the work.

All of the images are untitled, as Sherman wanted to preserve their ambiguity. The numbers affiliated with individual works of art are assigned by her gallery, mainly as a cataloguing system. In December 1995, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) acquired all sixty-nine black-and-white photographs in the series. Sherman later decided to add one more image, bringing the series to seventy.

In the essay The Making of Untitled, Sherman reflects on her beginnings with this series:

“I suppose unconsciously, or semiconsciously at best, I was wrestling with some sort of turmoil of my own about understanding women. The characters weren't dummies; they weren’t just airhead actresses. They were women struggling with something but I didn’t know what. The clothes make them seem a certain way, but then you look at their expression, however slight it may be, and wonder if maybe “they” are not what the clothes are communicating. I wasn’t working with a raised “awareness,” but I definitely felt that the characters are questioning something-perhaps being forced into a certain role. At the same time, those roles are in film: the women aren’t being lifelike, they’re acting. There are so many levels of artifice. I like that whole jumble of ambiguity.”

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Do Not Believe Him

In WWI there were numerous campaigns aimed at slowing the spread of this debilitating disease that can stop an army in its tracks. This poster was produced by the American Social Hygiene Association warns young men not to have causal sex because it is likely they will contract VD.

If some ‘wise guy’ tells you that sexual intercourse is not dangerous, the facts are:

• A girl who would yield to one man has probably had relations with another. Very likely she is diseased.
• Most prostitutes (private or public) have either syphilis or gonorrhea or both.
• Furthermore, there are no antiseptics, prophylactic treatments or other preventives which assure absolute safety.

Amazing Covers of the Jugend in the 1890s

Jugend (Youth) (1896-1940) was an influential German arts magazine. Founded in Munich by Georg Hirth who edited it until his death in 1916, the weekly was originally intended to showcase German Arts and Crafts, but became famous for showcasing the German version of Art Nouveau instead. It was also famed for its “shockingly brilliant covers and radical editorial tone” and for its avant-garde influence on German arts and culture for decades, ultimately launching the eponymous Jugendstil (“Youth Style”) movement in Munich, Weimar and Germany’s Darmstadt Artists’ Colony.

Jugend covers in the 1890s

The magazine, along with several others that launched more or less concurrently, including Pan, Simplicissimus, Dekorative Kunst (“Decorative Art”) and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (“German Art and Decoration”) collectively roused interest among wealthy industrialists and the artistocracy, which further spread interest in Jugendstil from 2D art (graphic design) to 3D art (architecture), as well as more applied art.

Germany’s gesamtkunstwerk (“synthesized artwork”) tradition eventually merged and evolved those interests into the Bauhaus movement.

Here is a photo collection of Jugend covers from the 1890s.

"Armseelchen", Jugend, October 31, 1896

Jugend, 1896

Jugend, 1896

Jugend, 1896

Jugend, 1896

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Unidentified Man and His 1952 Custom Pontiac in Houston, Texas, 1973

Postcard published by International Trade, 1973. Back of postcard reads: “’52 Pontiac custom features hand-painted seat covers, lots of chrome, years of work.”

The artist wishes to remain anonymous. Photographed by Chip Lord in Houston, Texas, 1973.

33 Amazing Vintage Posters Designed by Marcello Dudovich

Born 1878 in Trieste, Italian painter, illustrator, and poster designer Marcello Dudovich relocated from Trieste to Milan in 1897 after attending a professional art school. In 1899, he transferred to Bologna, working here for the publisher Edmondo Chappuis, designing billboards, book covers and illustrations for publications such as Italia Ride in 1900 e Fantasio in 1902. Here he met Elisa Bucchi, his future wife.

Posters designed by Marcello Dudovich

In 1900, Dudovich won the “Gold Medal” at the Paris World Fair. He designed some of his well-known posters, including “Mele di Napoli” (Apples from Naples) and “Borsalino”. In the 1920s he made several posters for the Milan department store, La Rinascente, and in 1922 he was appointed artistic director of “Igap”.

In 1930, he designed a prominent poster for Pirelli. After the Second World War he moved away from the world of commercial art, concentrating instead on his painting.

Marcello Dudovich died in Milan from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1962. He is celebrated as one of Italy’s greatest poster artists. Here below is a set of amazing vintage posters designed by Marcello Dudovich in the early 20th century.

E. & A. Mele & Ci., Napoli, Novità Estive, circa 1900s

Federazione Italiana, Inchiostri da Scrivere, circa 1900s

Mele & Ci, Napoli, circa 1900s

"Rapid", Nuovi Inchiostri da Scrivere Sopraffini, circa 1900s

Bitter Campari, Milano, 1900

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Double the Hitchcock, Double the Fun?

Some behind the scenes photos of Alfred Hitchcock holding a plaster dummy head of himself on the set of Frenzy (1972).

Frenzy was the third and final film that Hitchcock made in Britain after he moved to Hollywood in 1939. The other two were Under Capricorn (1949) and Stage Fright (1950). The last film he made in Britain before his move to America was Jamaica Inn (1939). Frenzy was screened at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, but it was not entered into the main competition.

Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo appearance can be seen three minutes into the film in the center of a crowd scene, wearing a bowler hat. Teaser trailers show a Hitchcock-like dummy floating in the River Thames and Hitchcock introducing the audience to Covent Garden via the fourth wall.

Crazy Double-Faced Swimming Caps of the Late 1950s

These vintage crazy swimming caps were invented by a Long Island housewife, Betty Geib, to amuse her children. After they flew off the rack at a church bazaar, she started a new business, Betty Darling, selling her wares for $3 to $6.

The caps featured indeed funny masklike faces and motifs including a sea serpent, a black cat, and a sunflower, decorating the back of the head and creating a fun effect when you saw a wearer donning one.

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40 Illustrated Photos of The Queenslander Front Covers in the Late 1920s

The Queenslander was the weekly summary and literary edition of the Brisbane Courier, the leading journal in the colony—and later, federal state—of Queensland since the 1850s. It was launched by the Brisbane Newspaper Company in 1866, and discontinued in 1939.

In a country the size of Australia, a daily newspaper of some prominence could only reach the bush and outlying districts if it also published a weekly edition. Yet The Queenslander, under the managing editorship of Gresley Lukin—managing editor from November 1873 until December 1880—also came to find additional use as a literary magazine.

The Queenslander was first published on 3 February 1866 in Brisbane by Thomas Blacket Stephens. The last edition was printed on 22 February 1939.

Here below is a set of illustrated photos from State Library of Queensland that shows The Queenslander front covers in the late 1920s.

Illustrated front cover from The Queenslander, 27 October 1927

Illustrated front cover from The Queenslander, August 11, 1927

Illustrated front cover from The Queenslander, December 1, 1927

Illustrated front cover from The Queenslander, December 15, 1927

Illustrated front cover from The Queenslander, December 22, 1927

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17 Stunning Vintage Art Deco Posters

Art Deco is a style of visual arts, architecture and design that first appeared in France just before World War I. It took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris in 1925.

Combining modern styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials, Art Deco influenced the design of buildings, furniture, jewelry, fashion, cars, movie theatres, trains, ocean liners, and everyday objects. During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress.

Art Deco is one of the first truly international styles, but its dominance ended with the beginning of World War II and the rise of the strictly functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style of architecture that followed.

Take a look at these 17 fascinating and stunning vintage art deco posters:

Rajah by Henri Meunier, 1898

Waschanstalt Zürich by Robert Hardmeyer, 1905

Salamander Shoes by Ernst Deutsch-Dryden, 1912

Grieder, a shop in Zurich, by Charles Loupot, 1919

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30 Amazing Polaroid Portraits of Andy Warhol in Drag in the Early 1980s

Photography was central to the work of Andy Warhol. Photographs dominated the mass-mediated American culture in which Warhol operated, and served as his image bank. While the artist most famously used found commercial photographs as source material for silkscreen paintings of celebrities, disasters, and other subjects, he also worked from his own images.

From the 1970s until his death, Warhol made tens of thousands of Polaroid prints, a method that appealed to him because of its speed, ease, and flattening effects. Polaroids served as working studies for his commissioned society portraits; however, many were never adapted into silkscreens, but remained experimental, intimate prints that the artist preserved in his files. Among these was a series of self-portraits in drag, on which Warhol collaborated with photographer Christopher Makos in the early 1980s.

Andy Warhol enjoyed dressing for parties in drag, sometimes in dresses of his own design. He admired “the boys who spend their lives trying to be complete girls,” so in 1981 he and a photographic assistant, Christopher Makos, agreed to collaborate on a session portraying Warhol in drag. In many ways, they modeled the series on Man Ray’s 1920s work with the French artist Marcel Duchamp, in which the two artists created a female alter ego name Rrose Sélavy for Duchamp.

Warhol and Makos made a number of pictures, both black and white prints and color Polaroids, of their first attempt. For the second round of pictures, they hired a theatre makeup person. This stage professional better understood the challenge of transforming a man’s face into that of a woman. After the makeup, Warhol tried on curled, straight, long, short, dark, and blonde wigs.

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