lost at sea

When first waking up, I spend a few moments in this strange place between consciousness and sleep, like I'm existing in two worlds at the same time, but am disconnected from both. I'm lost in this space where everything around me feels both familiar and foreign. Slowly my mind clears, my senses wake, and I remember where I am and who I am. But that feeling of drifting deja vu and disconnection is so distinct and unique that I was incredibly surprised to experience a similar sensation while watching Triangle.

Triangle was written and directed by Christopher Smith, the auteur behind the hilariously disturbing Severance. Though it was actually released in 2009, it certainly never came to a theater near me and finally just came out on Netflix Watch Instantly. Starring Melissa George, this outing is less gory and less funny than its predecessor, but it's still thoroughly mesmerizing. George stars as Jess, a waitress and single mother of an autistic child who is invited on a sailing trip by Greg, a regular at her restaurant. They are joined by two of Greg's closest friends, Sally and Downey, their friend Heather whom they awkwardly invited along in the hope that she'd hit it off with Greg, and 18 year-old Victor, a troubled kid that Greg has taken in to help him operate his boat, The Triangle. It's sufficiently awkward and realistic as the characters meet and get to know one another. Sally takes an immediate dislike to the quiet Jess, partially due to her disappointment of not being able to set up Greg and Heather, but also due to Jess's shorty shorts. Jess self-consciously stumbles as she attempts to make friends, while visibly dealing with the guilt leaving her son for the day.

It doesn't take long for things to turn dark. A sudden storm tears the boat apart and tragically drags the likable Heather out to sea. Once the storm passes, the survivors huddle on the hull of the capsized sailboat. To everyone's relief, a cruise ship appears in the distance and makes its way to the rejoicing survivors. But the ship is abandoned, completely deserted. Soon after, the characters start being picked off one by one, and eventually Jess faces a masked assailant in a climactic fight scene on the upper deck, during which she victoriously throws her attacker into the ocean. And that's just about when you hit the half hour mark. Wait, what?

So the standard slasher storyline is finished and there's still about an hour to go. And this is when things get strange and that disconnected otherworldly feeling starts to kick in. As Jess gazes out to sea, relieved at having killed her anonymous assailant, she sees a capsized schooner with five survivors waving for help. When the cruise ship approaches, Greg, Sally, Downey, Victor and Jess Version 2.0 board the ship and the story begins again. What follows is a beautifully executed dance of overlapping timelines and trippy plot twists. That dreamy deja vu ratchets up as Jess struggles to understand what is happening to her and why events are repeating themselves.

Usually I am all about the spoilers, but this is a movie that needs to be enjoyed with a little surprise and mystery. I can't bring myself to give anything else away. It's not a perfect film, but it's an ambitious and occasionally fascinating one. The screenplay is beautifully written, with realistic dialogue, a complicated concept, and subtle references to Greek mythology and The Bermuda Triangle that weave together creating a chilling chain of events. The entire cast hits their notes perfectly, but it's Melissa George who carries the whole film with believable weight and grace. I used to be firmly in the anti-Melissa George camp (thank you Alias season three), but after Triangle, In Treatment, 30 Days of Night, and realizing that she was totally in Dark City, I'm starting to think that she might be an extraordinarily talented actress.

i really think so

keep their heads ringin'

Loving the cover art for the upcoming release of the "Telephone" re-mixes.

twinsies!

Great minds think alike! On the left is a new look from Richard Chai, on the right one of Emma Berg's looks from last fall. Keep an eye out for Miss Emma. She's going places.

l'enfant terrible

McQueen, my king, is gone. Only a week after the death of his mother and three years after the suicide of his mentor and dear friend Isabella Blow, incomparable fashion genius, l'enfant terrible as he was often called, Alexander McQueen has taken his own life. The man who began his career on Saville Row, creating custom-tailored suits for royal pricks and rebelling by embroidering vulgar messages inside their coats, has died and it is heartbreaking.

Isabella Blow, who devastatingly took her own life three years ago, was my idol growing up. Though an esteemed fashion editor, it was mostly her iconic hats that made me fall in love with her. So when she discovered and launched the career of (Lee) Alexander McQueen, I took notice. I may have been leading a mundane ponytailed high school existence with days consumed by the school paper and dance team practice, but at night I was clipping out McQueen images from magazines and pasting them up inside my closet, obsessed with the designer who taught me that beauty and horror can co-exist.

Fall 06

Alexander McQueen established himself as fashion's bad boy early in his career, a moniker I always disliked, but that he seemed to enjoy. His first collections in London were as despised as they were revered, and his attitude toward the norms of the industry incited established designers to label him a hooligan. McQueen loved pointing out the silliness of the fashion world, taping interviews with his back to the camera and closing a show by mooning the audience instead of taking the traditional designer bow.

I was mesmerized by his time spent at Givenchy, where he was able to make his theatrical vision a reality on the runway. Many considered his career at Givenchy a failure (he even called his first collection crap). The house known for dressing Audrey Hepburn in chic and feminine gowns did not seem an appropriate fit for McQueen's avant garde style. But the designer used his brief tenure there to set a new industry standard for imaginative runway presentations, particularly when double amputee model Aimee Mullins walked down his runway wearing elaborately carved wooden legs.

the legendary prosthetic limbs

Shortly after, he had Shalom Harlow spray painted by car factory robots.



And in 2006 he transformed Kate Moss into a ghostly hologram.



In his last presentation, he took his showmanship to new levels with the frighteningly beautiful production "Plato's Atlantis."



When Gwyneth Paltrow was eviscerated by the fashion press for wearing breast-baring McQueen to the Academy Awards in 2002, I was overjoyed that a stereotypical Hollywood "ingenue" and "starlet" (or any other insulting and infantalizing term that you can imagine) was screaming "Fuck you!" in McQueen. Because McQueen was more than a designer, he was a language. And whatever you said, if you said it in McQueen, it translated to "I am not the woman you want to fuck. I am the woman you do not want to fuck with."

Fall 09

McQueen was always a polarizing figure, particularly when it came to feminism. Early in his career, he was vilified as a misogynist for exploring the Highland clearance in his legendary "Highland Rape" collection. More recently, he came under fire for dressing models in painful corsets and unwalkable heels, a decision that many argued further subjugated women.

Meanwhile, other critics praised him for his fearsome and empowering designs that portrayed women as predatory, sometimes unsexed, as Lady Macbeth would have said. Despite all of the controversy and debate, he always struck me as a lover of women, constantly celebrating the strangeness and the bewitching character of the alleged fairer sex. His themes were somehow both frail and hostile, as if he were a frightened child lashing out at the world through his art.

a torn and battered look from the Fall 95 "Highland Collection"

Alexander McQueen was many things: a master tailor, a shock artist, a rogue taxidermist, and a lover of all things both terrifying and beautiful, the macabre and the transcendent, the gothic and heavenly. He was a black star and a supernova, united as sartorial maestro. How could a man capable of such artistic darkness also create visions of such imaginative romance?

Spring 2007

I know that people often react to suicide by asserting that the act is selfish and cowardly, and maybe that's true. But aren't we're all selfish and frightened? And perhaps it was selfish of us to expect so much, to crave so much from McQueen the artist, a soul so fragile and deeply troubled. I don't know if there is an afterlife, but I hope that Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow are somewhere out there together, somewhere magical and safe.

a look from the Spring 08 Isabella Blow tribute collection

What a wonderfully strange and magnificent man he was, and what a devastating loss for us all.

Alexander McQueen 1969-2010

heart of darkness

Amazing director (Philip Ridley). Talented cast (Jim Sturgess, Clemence Poesy and Noel Clarke). Strange and thrilling premise. Color me in.

oh holy jesus

I don't even know what to say. I need someone to explain to me what the hell is going on at Valentino. I've had issues with label in recent years, but I just don't have the wherewithal to break this collection down tonight, so I'm going to let it marinate and attack the collection with commentary tomorrow. In the meantime, Jenna's got some great observations up on Jezebel. The first thing I thought when I looked through the first couple of looks was: Oh shit. Poor man's Rodarte.

show me your teeth

Tavi and Alexa Chung at the Chanel show

a few outstanding looks from chanel

be mine

backstage at Chanel Couture