couture

Fashion, sex, gender, androgyny, bisexuality, trans haute couture models smashing glass ceilings… StyleNoir’s Gender section is a treasure trove where you’ll find articles and photo editorials that explore how gender and orientation is perceived and represented in fashion, and beyond. There are op-eds about coming out as bisexual, they feature Lea T (a favorite here on TinyNibbles) and controversial androgyne model Andrej Pejic (the blonde person in this post’s main photo); Tilda Swinton gets a spotlight, and there is just way too much androgynous, queerly delicious eye candy for me to not *need* to share this with you. YUM.

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This is Zahia Dehar (famous for once being an underage sex worker in a European football scandal) with male model Jakub Zelmanshot in Dehar’s own Fall/Winter 2012/13 lingerie collection – shot by one of my all-time faves, Ellen von Unwerth.

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Hurricane by 30 Seconds To Mars came out about a year and a half ago, but it had a lot of stops and starts – which might be why you might have missed it. In fact, people are still unpacking the controversy, deep layers and imagery around one of the most arresting music videos to come out recently. It’s certainly on par with Gaga’s Telephone, and goes much, much further with the sex, extreme fetish and violence than what Telephone colorfully alluded to. If you haven’t spent the 13 minutes of your time to watch Hurricane, it’s highly recommended – even if you don’t like the music.

This video was clearly a labor of passion and philosophy, and I’ll admit it includes a lot of references that for me are unexpectedly personal. Still, what is written about it online isn’t complete and I think that perhaps you’d need to know a bit about eroto-fetish subcultures to recognize the players. My point is, much is written that has associated Kanye West with this project, but he’s not in this at all – and overlooked are Terry Richardson (cameo, still photos), icons like the Porcelain Twinz, and outrageously sexy ancillary photography by one of my all-time favorite couture shooters, Aram Bedrossian.

Check out Bedrossian’s delicious Hurricane gallery.

When Hurricane was released, MTV clenched its rectum so tight that the video appeared to be under MTV’s banhammer – only to later surface in en edited version on MTV2 after hassling the fuck out of singer, performer, writer and creator Jared Leto.

Here is one letter out of several we received about the inability for networks to broadcast HURRICANE as is:

(…) 09:17 – WOMAN RUNS FINGER OVER OTHER WOMAN’S G-STRING CLAD BOTTOM AND TOUCHES HER ANUS -

This shot makes the video completely restricted.

Well, then I guess life makes living “completely restricted” too. Oh well.

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Above is the just-released video that Kanye West made for supermodel Aja Rubik’s pet project 25 Magazine. When I saw the announcement about Rubik’s magazine a while back, I was both excited (because, as you know, I post a lot of porn/couture hybrids) and frustrated (because the project had a whiff of pretention and the website was basically a dead-end for visitors). Which is all why I didn’t post anything about it previously; there was no “there” there.

West’s video was made for Rubik, who’s a longtime pal of West, and it’s his contribution to the magazine. Now that content is beginning to be on offer for the magazine, I regret to say that the mag’s website is a continual dead-end for content, and I advise you not to visit the site unless your fetish is feeling like you just got a no-release hand job from an anorexic stripper named JavaScript.

Fashionista has excerpts from 25 Magazine in a slideshow in their post Anja Rubik’s Erotica Mag 25 Advises Readers to ‘Let Him Watch You Masturbate’.

Maybe the website is such a disappointment in both UI and eroticism because Rubik and West haven’t explored the vast online world of erotic fashion and erotic couture. In an interview about the collaboration with West Rubik told NYMag,

It’s funny. We talked about porn looks these days, and he agreed with me that there’s no porn out there that is beautiful aesthetically and integrates fashion to make a beautiful image.

The video has its moments, but blink and you’ll miss them. Kanye West’s video isn’t the kind of fashion porn we’re used to around here. It’s not awful, but it’s a pretty amateur attempt at merging kink and couture. It’s not erotic and it’s trying way too hard to be edgy (without understanding the fetishes it’s weakly imitating), it’s not inspiring, and – of course – it stars Kanye West’s ego, ostensibly for the purpose of ego-fapping. I don’t mean to be harsh but if you’re going to make porn for self-indulgence, then do that – but don’t make porn out of the fabric of your own ego and then tell us it’s elevating the cultural conversation about porn. That’s just insulting.

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