Juliette of the Spirits

This is the photograph of Juliette Lewis that I'd hoped would accompany my L.A. Times profile of the actress, rocker, and style maverick. I dunno, maybe they thought it was a bit out there, but I can *totally* see this dress in Urban Outfitters, can't you?!

Photograph by Robert Sebree
Mu & H- Cazzie Mayorga
Lead Stylist- Marina Toybina for GLAZA
Second key Stylist- Dawn Ritz

Slumber Party Tonight!

Hey L.A.! Finding little joy in the same old scene? Why not venture beyond your well-trodden turf to celebrate the first anniversary of Historic Monument 157, aka the Church of Fashion, in Lincoln Heights?

For the past year my friends Charon (Tricky Poodle) Nogues and Reid Maxwell, along with a shapeshifting band of artists and musicians in residence, have been hosting events in a ramshackle Victorian house that has shades of both Haight-Ashbury circa '66, and the Munsters. The space has seen roller skating, square dancing, bands galore, movies, medicine women, urban activists, and impromptu fashion shows. I snapped the pretty babies above (apologies for the blur...that's mistress of ceremonies Tricky in the silver) at a birthday party earlier this summer. You truly never know what you will find.

Tonight the entertainment includes hunky hobos Eben Stewart and Frank Fairfield and burlesque by Jewel of Denial. All guests are invited to bring their sleeping bags and wake up to huevos and nopales in the AM.

Hope to see you there: 3110 N. Broadway, L.A.

Sexy Sadie, What Have You Done?

Sharon Tate's killer Susan Atkins, aka Sadie Mae Glutz, died today in prison at the age of 61. During her 1969 trial, Sadie told the court that she was "stoned, man, stoned on acid" when she stabbed Sharon 16 times and wrote "Pig" with her blood. She said she felt no guilt, because she did it out of "love." The loving lady also managed to find herself not one but two husbands in the slammer. You think you've got baggage? Think again.

I Had Some Dreams, They Were Clouds in My Coffee

In October, 1976, this cloud passed over the city of Los Angeles. It was visible from the hills and from the beach, and much like the Station Fire pyrocumulus, it was also photographed repeatedly, by people who couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. My friend Jennifer, who grew up in L.A. in the '70s but missed the awesome visitation (homework, maybe?), has a poster of the cloud, caught from a dozen different angles, hanging on the wall of her Santa Monica home. These are two of them, and the pictures aren't airbrushed or enhanced; the thing really did look like a cotton candy Zeppelin floating by. What was it?! "Nuclear testing" - that's Jennifer's guess.

Grievous Angel

R.I.P. Gram Parsons: beautiful dreamer, cosmic cowboy, and hippie heartbreaker who flew off to the Great Gilded Palace of Sin in the Sky 36 years ago today, leaving his body in room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn. He is survived by a daughter, Polly, a granddaughter, Harper Lee, and his songs.

Dress Her Up in Your Love

While we're on a little Madonna jag (and while I'm on deadline), I thought I'd post an old L.A. Weekly story I wrote about Madonna's stylist, Arianne Phillips. The L.A. lady designed the costumes for Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man (based on a Christopher Isherwood novel), which premiered last week at the Venice Film Festival and is already generating Oscar talk.

Without further ado, here's "Exterior Decorator," published May 31, 2007.

“Oscar nominee” is a title you keep for life in Hollywood, and though it has served style visionary Arianne Phillips well, the honor, received for her work as costume designer of the Johnny Cash–June Carter biopic Walk the Line in 2005, was kind of like a tiara on top of furs, jewels, a couture evening gown and glitter platform shoes. In other words, Phillips’ career, which includes ongoing collaborations with Madonna and Courtney Love, was already pretty stellar.

“I plod my path pretty solidly,” says the stylist and designer, whose credits also include dressing Hedwig and Tank Girl. “A lot of people I work with are people I have long-term relationships with.”

But that hardly means things get static; Phillips mixes up her gigs from season to season. At the moment, she’s doing mostly editorial work here in L.A., after five months on the New Mexico set of 3:10 to Yuma, James Mangold’s follow-up to Walk the Line. To prepare for the “down and dirty” 1870 Western starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, she gave herself a crash course in Westerns, watching a lot of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone films. For the actual costume “building,” Phillips worked closely with Western Costume, the “granddaddy of costume houses” — which she describes as a public archive for the industry.

Born in New York City and raised in Northern California by writer parents, Phillips is most gratified when she’s helping to tell a story — whether it’s through a narrative film, an album cover or a fashion spread. She doesn’t do red-carpet or event styling, and prefers to work with artists — like Madonna — who are forward-thinking and seeking transformation. “That, to me, offers an opportunity for clothes and costumes to help underscore change . . . I’m not attracted to films where the character starts out and ends up in the same place.”

Although she remembers seminal fashion moments like seeing Cabaret or staring at a Robert Plant poster when she was 12 or hearing the Slits for the first time, style icons, for Phillips, have been the people in her life. “My aunt was a superchic, rock & roll, thrift-store genius who used to drag me to the flea markets,” she recalls. Today she finds great inspiration just people watching on the streets of Manhattan, where she travels often for work (and, yes, she is bored with the New York–L.A. debate).

Style is simply a natural mode of expression for Phillips — be it discovering a new talent or designing, with Carlos Rosario, her own dress to wear to the Oscars, honoring the tradition of Hollywood costume designers rather than playing the game of fashion politics.

“I’ve always liked decoration, whether it’s been on my wall or on my body,” she says. “I’ve always been attracted to pretty things and glitter. I don’t think there’s a lot of evolution between the 5-year-old me and the 40-year-old me. Maybe I’m a little more sophisticated now than I was when I was 5, but sometimes I’m not at all.”

(photo by Joe Mama-Nitzberg)

And Speaking of Madonna Wannabes...

OMG, it's 12-year-old Lourdes (!), striking a pose in Mom's "Celebration" video, the first single off her new album, also called Celebration. Gotta love Madonna's homage to Warhol's Marilyn on the album cover, too. The only question is, what took her so long?

Neon Flashback

My friend Linlee was dazzled by the donuts piled high on a table at Saturday night's Kenny Scharf opening at Honor Fraser Gallery, but I was most wowed by the way Scharf's giddy, dayglo cartoon vision has come full circle since his days on the downtown art scene in late '70s-early '80s New York. His glitter-dipped space mobiles and punked out "Flinstones" stills are perfectly in sync with the current moment, and they're equally evocative of those long lost days of artistic freedom, when Madonna and Basquiat were coming into their own, living in downtown Manhattan was somewhat affordable, and dance clubs were actually FUN.

One woman, who goes by the name Maripol, captured it all with her Polaroid camera. The French-born Maripol was a stylist and scenester who helped create Madonna's "Lucky Star" look, and like a good stylist, she always had a camera at the ready to capture her friends in their youth and vintage-clad beauty. Many of her subjects would become very famous, and some of them would die young; all of them are in her beautiful book, Maripolarama, published in 2005. I interviewed Maripol for Variety's VLife back then, and she dished about her romance with a 16-year-old Vincent Gallo ("We had a nice love affair...I was such a bitch," she said), and laughed about the time Andy Warhol was egging her on to drag Tom Cruise into their limo (he ran off, terrified). Unfortunately I was just a few years too young to fully experience the electric excitement of Downtown 81 (a film starring Basquiat that Maripol produced), but you know I was rocking the rubber-and-rhinestone look that Maripol, via Madonna, introduced to the masses.

Pictured above is Debi Mazar, Keith Haring, Jaqueline Schnabel, and Tereza Scharf, Kenny's gorgeous ex-wife. Both she and Mazar were at Honor Fraser Saturday night, but, unlike another ex-downtown diva, Ann Magnuson, I didn't see either of them anywhere near the donuts.

My Day of Service

Fittingly, I spent September 11th at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, doing my civic duty as a prospective juror. "Dread" does not even begin to capture the feeling that welled up in me when the recorded message told me to report downtown for jury duty at 7:45AM Friday morning. But I'm going to see Mark Lanegan at the Troubadour the night before! But I'm freelance, what if I get put on a case?! But I don't have an iphone, how will I check my email???

I have no idea why the whole thing threw me into such a tizzy. Sure, I was tired when the alarm went off at 6:30, but it was actually kind of nice to be strolling the grand, sunny streets of downtown with the morning workforce, and then it was actually pretty cool to see inside the building where Phil Spector stood trial. The 5th floor hallway was tiled with shiny brownish bricks - very '70s - and the benches along the walls were occupied by people of all ages and races, some chatting animatedly, others sipping coffee in silence. I felt a peculiar surge of pride and connection to my fellow Americans as we all embarked on what the administrator/comedian told us would be "one of the most boring days of your lives."

But I had the New Yorker style issue with me, and there were creaky old PCs where I checked email and was denied access to Facebook (which is probably a wise idea). Somehow it all passed rather quickly and I was never even called to a courtroom. Around 4:15 funny guy said, "I'm sorry to tell you all that you have to go home now. Your service is complete."

I felt surprisingly cheerful as I left the building, stopping to look at the above image of a woman on the glass (which reflects the abandoned building across the street), who I learned was Clara Shortridge Foltz herself, the first female lawyer in California and the founder of a magazine called The New American Woman.

And then, on my way home I decided to pop in to the Silver Lake Crossroads, and scored a bitchin' pair of tortoise shell Lanvin sunglasses. Ah, justice!

Spirit of 76!

How is it possible that Yoko Ono, pictured here in a current photograph, is almost 80 years old?! I think we must credit the deep well of originality that keeps on inspiring her to make art and keeps her connected to youth culture. She is a thoroughly vital human - whether you appreciate her eccentric bird call songs or not (I just watched the Rolling Stones Rock 'n' Roll Circus again the other night and she was in prime form). Look out for Yoko's new album, Between My Head and the Sky, recorded with a band she is calling the new Plastic Ono Band. Naturally, Sean Lennon is producer and musical director.

90210, the Next Generation

If I owned a television, I would like, totally be tuning in tonight to the new 90210, just so I could check out the handiwork of Showpony founder and artist Kime Buzzelli, who is an assistant costume designer on the show. I ran into Kime at our local coffee spot, Chango, earlier this summer, and she was telling me about the crazy long hours on the set, and about how much fun she was having creating inspiration books for every character. If you've ever read Kime's blog, The Moldy Doily, you know what a collector and curator of images she is, so I'm sure these books were something to behold.

Here's an excerpt from yesterday's blog post, in which Kime talks about her job and about her ongoing California Dreamin'. Definitely a girl after my own heart...

"So many fittings, so many trips to the stores/boutiques in L.A. so many alterations, so much FLAIR! And now the pay off is to finally get to see it all appear on the screen - with music. There are all new sets, new shooting locations (incredible views) and new cast members added to the mix. And the end result really captures the fantasy of living in California.

I have always been in love with the dreamy lighting in California, driving at sunset alongside giant palm trees backlit by a Los Angeles landscape. Something about the perpetually nice weather and access to beaches and surreal settings has always made me happy to live here. This new season is really going to be fun to watch, because the writers have finally captured the essence of high school - drama, comedy and of course tragedy. Ha."

Message of Love

"You're gonna cry; I cried," Thursday night's show opener Juliette Lewis warned me backstage at the Greek Theater before the Pretenders went on. Although I've been a fan of the band since the early '80s (the first album, Pretenders, remains a permanent fixture in my car), I've never seen them play live, so I half expected a classic rock nostalgia trip with a couple hits medleys and a few moments where the greatness shines through and we all kick ourselves for not seeing them back in '85. I definitely had no idea how FOXY Chrissie Hynde still is (an advertisement for veganism if there ever was one) or how beautifully supple her voice is, or how timeless the songs would sound. And I certainly wasn't prepared - warning aside - for the deluge of tears that soaked my cheeks as she sang "Talk of the Town" and "Back on the Chain Gang" in that rich, vulnerable vibrato, the chiming guitars bringing me back to a time when I felt so confused yet hopeful, and Chrissie spoke for all us girls when she put down her foot and declared, "I'm special, SO special...and I'm gonna make you notice."

Thank you for everything, Ms. Hynde...here's wishing you a happy and special 58th birthday on Monday.

Rock We Wrote

Yesterday the L.A. Times' Jacket Copy blog published its list of "46 Essential Rock Reads". As one would expect, this oddly numbered, arbitrary list generated its share of comments from completists and rock geeks whose favorites were excluded, or who thought that certain authors (that's you, Albert Goldman) weren't worth the paper they were printed on. Some may have had a point - I couldn't tell you if Bob Dylan's Tarantula is any good or not - but for my time, the more interesting commentary occurred on my Facebook news feed, where Pamela Des Barres and her friends discussed the fact that her iconic memoir, I'm With the Band, was one of only four books by women on the list.

In my book (ha ha) it's hard to argue with a selection that includes Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me and Patti Smith's Babel, but I have to agree that Sheila Weller's Girls Like Us, a biographic trilogy about Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon published last year, is both a dishy read and an insightful historic document, and it could have been on there (why not #47?). I was also glad to hear Miss Pamela's personal recommendations: Marianne Faithfull's Faithfull, Catherine James' Dandelion, and Bebe Buell's Rebel Heart (and it was sweet to see Buell herself weighing in, congratulating her old friend).

It definitely got me thinking, and I feel the need to chime in here with my own life-changing chick rock book, my personal "how could you leave out...?!", and that is 1995's anthology of female music writing, Rock She Wrote. Edited by Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers (now the L.A. Times Pop Critic), this anthology spans from mainstream celebrity profiles to early Lisa Robinson pieces for Creem to an excerpt from Runaway Cherie Currie's autobiography (soon to hit the screen with Dakota Fanning as Currie) to Lisa Carver's "Why I Want to Rape Olivia Newton John," which, given my admitted Xanadu fixation, I really need to take another look at. This was the era of DIY publishing and girl power, and I remember going to a reading/ book release party for Rock She Wrote at CBGB when it came out, just as I was committing to my own career as a music journalist (which eventually allowed me to talk to my heroines like Patti Smith, Stevie Nicks, Liz Phair, and Sleater-Kinney). It was at this reading that I felt, right down to the soles of my motorcycle boots, that women weren't "as good as" men, but were in fact wonderfully different yet equally - if not more - powerful, with voices that could speak our unique truths without fear or self-censorship.

15 years and a technological revolution later, I'm not sure where that leaves us, but I guess it's worth noting that this L.A. Times list was written by a woman. Rock on, ladies!

Thirteen, Death Rock, Bad Attitude...

"Thirteen, Death Rock, bad attitude" is the caption that accompanied the email from my friend Tasha, attached to which was this incredible relic from 1983. Snapped outside of Fairfax High, where Tasha, then a Brentwood Jr. High student, was hanging out with her Hollywood friends, the photograph was printed by the subject herself - "hence the funky quality." That positively dangerous puss explains a lot about this woman, who is the most ladylike badass I've ever met. Not surprisingly, today Tasha is an image consultant by profession! Try that on for size, '80s poseurs!