turkish delight pink pie mountain head

More from my inspiration journals. Let's get inspired and go burn something down, maaaan.

 

1) Becky, my long-term, recently deceased, much-beloved boyfriend's mother, in the early 80s. She was a runway model and an avowed punk in London, Paris and NYC (where she worked as a shopgirl at IF boutique, among other things) from 1982-1988. Her long-term boyfriend during this period was the lead singer from A Flock of Seagulls. You'll be happy to know she is still legitimately beautiful and crazy chic at 52, so it can be done.  2) Spread. 3) From a 70s children's book which never ceases to inspire. 4) My older sister in high school in a dress we found in our old home's attic. I really kick myself all the time for not hanging onto that when we moved... 5) Nice hair idea from Archaeology Today magazine (is that title an oxymoron?). "The poppy goddess", can you dig it?  6) From a book about Mayan/Incan civilization: "Human dancing in his way as White-Three-Dog." TOO GOOD 7) Another photograph from Becky's files, part of a series an artist-friend in NYC did, something involving hooking people up to televisions..? I should ask her more about this.

"Have you a child; how is he styled?" "Wild."

More from my inspiration notebooks.

Cover of a pamphlet on beauty brought back from a commune in India; Neolithic winged arrowheads; i.D.?; fridge by SAMO; W and then Anthropologie, I think; drawing from a 1920s book of children's poetry called Silver Pennies (this elf-girl is one of my style idols); sweet tat, bro; compilation; best baby picture ever, my big sister little; clipping from 1970s Russian newspaper courtesy of my dad; image from Jalouse (kelly green, lavender, and tomato-red: great combination) plus Tin-Tin; punks from 1980s German alternative textbook by the Goethe Institut. Beneath, a page from a book of Brothers Grimm stories, presumably one of the ones that didn't catch on so much with the public. (Did you know the Brothers Grimm were influential linguists, along with being story-tellers? My dad is a retired linguist and rhapsodizes about the importance of their work on a semi-regular basis.)

not in kansas (city) anymore

I've been keeping these inspiration notebooks since I was about 14. Motivated by a compulsion which I've come to realize isn't all that weird (but seemed like it at the time), I started gathering images from books and magazines which made me feel something-- at first, mostly clothing or hair that interested me. Over time, the scope of the images expanded to include family photographs, drawings by friends and myself, found images, scraps of trash I picked up, etc. In a way, they are more revealing and more personal than the journals I keep. On the occasions when I travel for styling assignments, I always lug these along to flip through. I've found that inspiration for an outfit can come as easily from a faded book of matches found on a sidewalk or an image of a motorcycle than from a picture out of French Vogue.

First, compilation; image from Selvedge; the reverse of a piece of embroidery from the 1700s (isn't the reverse usually so much better than the front?); fashion magazine; page from a 1970s science fiction enthusiast magazine; sixth, image from an old book of my mom's called "Encyclopedia of the Strange"; next, self-help pamphlet from a local college; images from Discover, then Selvedge, then Zing; lid to a yogurt container my dad brought back from Moscow in the 70s; image from an Australian fashion magazine, and image from an old French textbook. At the bottom of the page, something I found in the local newspaper with a note I wrote to my then-boyfriend, but never gave him because I like it too much.