Fashion monster

The one and only Francois Sagat ❤️

Insta-famous

Instagram feed shots from Melbourne’s Honcho Disko Party, which looks like it is well worth checking out (above), and Thai actress Araya Chompoo Hargate (below). Despite her fashion icon status, her personal instagram styling has, to my eyes, more misses than hits. This is one of the exceptions.

And finally, Francois Sagat visits my favourite Paris museum, the Musee de la Chasse et Nature.

 

The Experimentalists

The wonders of the internet – who knews this existed? Bjork in her peak-Bjork late 1990s incarnation hosting a TV chat show with Estonian avant garde composer Arvo Part, whose expansive, soothing work was unknown to me and has now been gloriously revealed.

Thanks Bjork!

Big Time Sensuality

Human?

Excuse me…

…I just have to explode.

I’ll be the next installment… ;)

She’s still got it…

The glorious return of a fashion icon, as Faye Wong serves some classic Faye looks at her 2016 Shanghai concert (which was also filmed for VR release).

 

Kylie’s disco Christmas

 

A bonus track from the French and Italian versions of Kylie’s re-issued Christmas album of last year (dubbed the Snow Queen edition.) This continuation of her Christmas project consists of an oddly winning formula of high-calibre Minogue pop, quirky renditions of Christmas standards and knowingly camp Baz Luhrman-esque renditions of nineties club hits – plus this. Somehow, it all works.

New Solange

 

Coming on the heels of Franks Ocean’s universe of a record “Blond,” the Blood Orange album “Freetown Sound” and her own sister’s “Lemonade” comes Solange’s own statement piece the state of black America: “A Seat at the Table.” On first listen the album grooves prettily through its lush tracks, but lacks the punch of some of her other work. But perhaps it is aiming at something different this time, as it is already worming in under my skin after one or two listens…

Two Japanese comebacks

J-Pop megastar Utada Hikaru is back with a new album, seemingly with a slight gay bent. This track is a rather lovely lesbian-themed duet with fellow “Heisei diva” Shiina Ringo.

Even more exciting from my point of view is the surprise re-appearance of “Relax” magazine, which I was shocked and thrilled to spot in an Eslite bookstore in Taichung.

“Relax” was the Bible of early 2000s Tokyo cool, a magazine I “read” (well looked at) religiously and in one of the most glorious moments of my existence, once appeared in. The magazine shut up shop in 2006, but is apparently back, with exactly the same layout as before and in its first issue, an extended interview with Mike Mills (a name I haven’t head in a while) as though the last decade never happened…

懐かしい !!!

Elke Maravilha: a marvellous life

Halfway through the Olympics came the news that a Rio icon had passed away. Elke Maravilha was a model and actress, famous for her flamboyance. Blonde and beautiful, she had a huge appetite for life, a magnetic smile and a mile-wide wild streak that had endeared her to generations of Brazilians.

Born Elke Giorgierena Grunnupp Evremides, (you can see why she used a stage name) she had emigrated to Brazil as a child from Leningrad. She came from an academic mixed Russian and German family, and grew up speaking nine European languages before breaking into showbiz as a ditzy blonde appearing on TV talent shows and the catwalk.

It was her work as a fashion model that led her to form a friendship with Zuzu Angel, the pre-eminent Brazilian fashion designer of the 70s and an unlikely rebel, who used her high profile as a constant thorn in the side of the military dictatorship after her activist son had been kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the regime. Elke was also arrested, after tearing down “wanted” posters offering a reward for his capture. She was held in an infamous prison and torture centre for five days and eventually stripped of her Brazilian citizenship, forcing her to fall back on her German passport.

Still, her show business career went on, often appearing on the television show of the hugely popular surrealist TV comic Chacrinha. She also landed a part as a brothel madam in a TV series that became her signature role. In addition to her huge gay following she was now crowned the godmother of Rio’s sex workers.

Elke married eight times, most recently to a man thirty years younger, and lived in a pink mansion in Copacabana near the beach, continuing her wild ways until she passed away aged 71, a shock-blonde rebel to the very end.

Kylie’s Glacier of love

Kylie Minogue took the stage this week as a surprise guest of singer John Grant, to perform a verse of his song “Glacier” in response to the Orlando massacre.

It was, to my mind, the perfect gesture – poised, eloquent and angrily heartbroken.

Listen to the lyrics carefully.

Tuuuuuune

Take her up to Monto.

Three amazing ladies

Recently, netflix came to Hong Kong. With the cold and miserable weather outside, the boyfriend and I spent some quality time on the couch and under the blanket, exploring some of the channel’s documentary offerings. Among them were two interesting films about very different, but striking, women.

“Iris” is a short doco about the life and style of octogenarian fashion star Iris Apfel, whose offbeat signature ‘look’ of chunky beads, oversized glasses and clashing patterns has recently become influential and much-admired. Iris comes through as a thoroughly charming character, with no only style but warmth and grace, and a surprisingly sharp wit for her age.

The second documentary was an exploration of a much more complicated character – Nina Simone. Produced by her now-adult daughter, it documented the ups and tempestuous downs of the legendary singer, forthright civil rights campaigner, schizophrenic and victim (and perpetrator) of domestic violence.

Finally, having exhausted netflix, I tracked down online something that I had been searching for for a long time, the cult Japanese film “Black Lizard”. The queer classic was written by Yukio Mishima and starred Akihiro Miwa. Miwa, a glamorous transvestite, plays the female lead with aplomb in this subversive, pulpy tale of Tokyo noir crime in the late 1960s. She has since gone on to become one of the great survivors of Japanese showbiz, a mainstay of morning chat shows, now with an iconic shock-blonde ‘do and her own pay-per-call psychic network. In her day though, it was her beauty that was the attention-getter. She was gorgeous.

Grey days and glam: David Bowie…

RIP Blackstar

I wouldn’t say I was ever a Dvid Bowie “fan” – wrong generation, plus he was always a bit too “rawk” for me. But I was quite taken by his Blackstar single, and then taken aback to find out that so soon after its release, he had died. In fact I was surprised how strongly I felt. I had just downloaded his new album and posted a fashion set on the blog by Kansai Yamamoto who designed some of his iconic looks – probably the peak of my David Bowie interest – when news of his passing arrived like a flash from the blue.

I may not have had that intense sense of a personal connection that many of his fans have described in the online and newspapers obituaries, but I felt a keen sense of loss, that one of “the good guys” had left us. I started to realise, reading through his obits, how much of an influence he had always been: on rock, on fashion, hovering at the periphery of my cultural vision, a great force I had rather taken for granted.

And then, in one perfectly choreographed final flash of brilliance, he was gone, leaving behind an album and videos suddenly invested with layer-upon-layer-upon-layer of meaning and a pitch black beauty: these songs are nothing less than the sound of someone opening their arms to death.

Truly extraordinary.

RIP, the Black Star.

椎名林檎

J-alternative empress Shiina Ringo and a fox parade.

Meanwhile, in the gay world…

Francois Sagat by Jonathan Icher, and below by the same photographer, model Arthur Gillet.

Taiwanese fashion blogger, stylist and TV host, Judy Chou, whose Facebook feed is a relentless parade of fierce looks at beach bear parties and Pride parades:

  

And current gay scene “it boy,” the absurdly-monikered Strongjaws:

 

The Kylie Christmas Album: My Thoughts

Like many long-time fans of La Minogue, I was distinctly nonplussed by the announcement of a 2015 Christmas album. Here is a woman who had once set the charts alight, one of the globe’s great pop stars and a singer who had always exhibited exemplary taste: collaborating with Nick Cave, Towa Tei and Dev Hynes, appearing in Holy Motors and Moulin Rouge, being photographed by Stephane Sedanoui. Kylie’s great strength has always been her willingness to lob perpetually surprising career curve balls at her fans, and win them over and now here she was – this veteran of unexpected rock directions, collaborations with Japanese rappers and extended tours of South America – wallowing in her twilight years in that the nadir of pop music sophistication, the Christmas Album.

Depressing.

Except – it isn’t.

Having now heard the album I have had to totally re-evaluate my stance. Because many of the songs on it are, to be frank, pretty good. The standards are sung beautifully with joy and a complete absence of cynicism, together with covers like Only You, an early eighties new wave hit here covered as a duet with a hitherto-unknown-to-me UK Television comedian. But against all odds, its lovely. Another track, Christmas Wrapping, sees her team up with Iggy Pop (!) on a song where she raps (!!) pretty well (!!!!). White December is classic Kylie, a heat-seaking missile of a melody that buries into your brain and the disco-tastic 100 degrees is an explosion of Studio 54 disco goodness, shimmering through the snow, bedecked in tinsel.

It strikes me now that Kylie has, in fact, just performed her signature move again. She has bucked against her fans’ hopes and expectations – this time that she be “edgy” and current – swept aside their (and by that I mean “my”) prejudices, and shown them that they actually wanted her like this all along.

Unexpectedly, the Kylie Christmas album is a low-key triumph.