#donald brooks

[kitsunetsuki]

Irving Penn - Benedetta Barzini Wearing a Dress by Donald Brooks (Vogue 1967)

[operaqueen]

Julie Andrews - STAR! - 1968

[chicinsilk]

US Vogue July 1963

Seagram's V.O.

Model Iris Bianchi wears a long floral silk dress by Donald Brooks for Townley.

Le modèle Iris Bianchi porte une longue robe en soie florale de Donald Brooks pour Townley.

vogue archive

[featherstonevintage]

Jean Shrimpton in Donald Brooks

Glamour, September 1963

Photographed by David Bailey

[cressida-jayoungr]

One Dress a Day Challenge

Anything Goes December

Darling Lili / Julie Andrews as Lili Smith/Schmidt

This dress evokes the right lines for World War I, when the movie takes place. I doubt the material is period-appropriate, but I'm open to being corrected if someone knows more about it than I do. At least it appears to be a housedress, almost a glorified robe--Lili wears it when at home with a cold, and she wears a different costume later when she goes out. So I guess the chenille-like texture is possible, but it still seems unlikely. I do like the contrast between the soft gold and the satiny black trim, however.

[alwaysalwaysalwaysthesea]

Silk and feather dress by Donald Brooks, 1967.

(source: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

[costumeloverz71]

Recycled costume: Debbie Reynold’s, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In                                   Julie Andrews, Star!

Costume designer: Donald Brooks

[albertcapraro]

March 29, 1976 - Parsons - Ford Library Museum First Lady Betty Ford receives Parsons Award and is pictured with designers (Left to Right) Donna Karan, Donald Brooks, Albert Capraro, Kasper, Kay Unger, Chester Weinberg, Liz Claiborne, Shannon Rodgers, Leo Narducci, Anthony Muto, and Calvin Klein

[fanofspooky]

Behind the scenes photos of Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1978

[sci-fi-gifs]

We came here from a dying world. We drift through the universe, from planet to planet, pushed on by the solar winds. We adapt and we survive. The function of life is survival. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) dir. Philip Kaufman

[kitsunetsuki]

Richard Avedon - Jean Shrimpton Wearing a Dress by Donald Brooks (Vogue 1971)

[operaqueen]

Julie Andrews - STAR! - 1968

[chicinsilk]

US Vogue May 1960

Sondra Peterson in a chiffon ensemble; Exquisite fawn print with spots of black, brown and white. By Donald Brooks. Revlon Pango Peach Lipstick.

Sondra Peterson dans un ensemble en mousseline de soie; imprimé fauve exquis avec des taches de noir, de marron et de blanc. Par Donald Brooks. Rouge à lèvres Pango Peach de Revlon.

Photo Karen Radkai vogue archive

[sam-keeper]

Halloween Film: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

I always loved the ending of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the classic sci fi film about replicant humans being grown from strange alien plant pods and taking over society. Well, I loved what was the ending, before the nervous studio tacked on a prologue and epilogue giving the film an optimistic (and contrived) conclusion. You know, where the main character runs out onto the road, desperately trying to halt oncoming traffic, to get anyone to listen as he cries, into the night, and finally directly into the camera at the audience, "They're here! You're next! YOU'RE NEXT!" For all the film's been interpreted as expressing red scare paranoia about communist infiltration (and even that's contested--others see it as a cry against McCarthyite witch hunts), the sheer manic shrieking energy of that finale lodged itself in my brain ever since I watched the film as a teenager. It was fearful, but it also was relatable, almost a kind of perverse power fantasy. Imagine, just imagine, screaming out from every theater screen and tv set: don't you see what's happening all around you? Look away from the screen if you like--they're already here!

The 1978 remake is actually a weird kind of precursor to our new phenomenon of the rebootquel: a short ways into the film, the main character of the original (literally--it's Kevin McCarthy, the original's star) slams into the car of our protagonists, ranting that blood curdling monologue. In this version, however, the pod people swiftly dispatch him off screen, and we get a creepy shot of a crowd of them standing silently, dispassionately, over his bloody broken body. That sums up the film's sense, contra the original, that it will already be too late by the time anyone notices anything wrong.

What a creepy film this is. It's astonishingly shot, full of striking images and brilliant camera work. Like, if you want reflections and shadows and distorted views of characters to feel fresh again, like they're more than hackneyed metaphor but really, viscerally unsettling, this is the film for you. There's a pervasive sense throughout that the worst has already happened, the world already gone strange when you turned your back. Instead of zombified mania and violence, there's a flatness to everything, a cool impassivity. The cast enhances this impassive flatness through contrast: it's a film full of brilliant weirdos as heroes. Scope Jeff Goldblum in this, for example, as a self absorbed neurotic owner of a mud bath house, and Veronica Cartwright as his Star Child wife. Even the relatively well adjusted main couple has their oddities: early in the film Brooke Adams as Elizabeth has a moment where she does this, fuckin, crazy thing with her eyes to make her friend Matthew laugh that's genuinely very funny and unsettling, and it immediately lends her character so much off beat humanity. These are people who have dedicated their lives to the department of health and they've got the zealotry that comes from being genuinely a bit of a weirdo for both bureaucracy and science. Indeed, Elizabeth's husband gets replaced early in the film by a pod she brings home to study out of pure curiosity about the world.

Elizabeth, soon after realizing there is something fundamentally wrong and alien about her husband, remarks to Michael that San Francisco feels suddenly strange to her, like an alien environment full of alien people. I feel this sometimes in Seattle. Oh, everywhere, but pronouncedly here, interacting with boomer or gen xer artists in my area who casually talk about the homeless like they're subhuman, with people on the street who will freely monologue about who we need to cleanse from the city, with our repulsive mayor and city council who verifiably think I and queers like me are disgusting. You get to thinking, or at least I do, that surely people don't have that much cruelty in their heart, and then you run up against the flat casual way a stranger will condemn a fellow human to oblivion, simply for the crime of being an unpleasant reminder of poverty. Every supposed red line gets crossed--local leaders pump money into already bloated police budgets, people shed their masks, politicians race to be the most xenophobic and border-paranoid, and the state department and media shovel dirt on the fire of each exploded Gazan hospital or butchered aid convoy. Am I supposed to feel secure in this tough new environment? All I hear is the panicked cry: YOU'RE IN DANGER! YOU'RE NEXT!

Donald Sutherland's character Matthew has a belief in institutions that's at once charming and completely exasperating. He's a health inspector who clearly cares deeply about doing his job and doing it well, and so is almost totally unequipped to respond when every social system transforms into a weapon to hunt and replace him. The number of times this man calls the police, often seemingly out of civic duty!! Meanwhile Leonard Nimoy plays a psychiatrist who manipulates and shepherds the cast. He's a pod person, of course, but it's totally unclear whether he was one the whole time or became one late in the film. The suggestion seems to be that it doesn't matter: his role as a professional is to smooth over social ruptures and keep the state of things running as stress free as possible, so he seamlessly adopts his role in the new dispassionate world order. I can't stop thinking, too, about a scene where Matthew and Elizabeth are caught out pretending to be pod people because they react with terrified revulsion to a homeless man who's accidentally been grotesquely fused with his pet dog. The pod people, of course, do not react to this sight, but go about their business. All that seems to have changed in pod person world is that the whole machinery of society carries on without emotion or meaning. The horror is that instead of ending, the world just keeps going.

Sarah and I discovered after watching that there's two other takes on The Body Snatchers, one in the 90s and one late in the Bush era 2000s. I guess that means we're about due for a new generational interpretation of the story. It's not quite like clockwork; maybe it's more like a seasonal bloom. Every 10-20 years, someone feels a compulsion to run to the cinemas and shout, to anyone who will listen, that they're already here, the pod people have already taken over while we were sleeping. And maybe they already have.

Check out more short reviews on my Patreon

[cressida-jayoungr]

One Dress a Day Challenge

October: Black Redux

Darling Lili / Julie Andrews as Lili Smith/Schmidt

This is the costume Lili wears for her opening performance of "Whistling Away the Dark." The black dress is meant to blend with the backdrop, and the song opens with a tight spotlight on just her head and shoulders, making it look as if her head and the sparkly collar are floating in midair. Later, the spotlight pulls back to include the rest of her gown, picking out the silver designs around the cuffs and skirt as well. It's pretty magical, and the song is beautiful too.

[soupy-sez]

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) dir. Philip Kaufman