Gael Garcia Bernal + Michel Gondry + Charlotte Gainsbourg

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Gael Garcia Bernal in Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep.

Watched this two years ago. Still haven't forgotten Stephane, the artist played by Bernal who couldn't distinguish fantasy from reality in his mix of hallucinations.

I think his character was convincing, to a significant degree, because what he wore was likewise very different from what those around him were clothed in.

His purple suit gave him license to incite surreal scenes.

It was also his strange personality that endeared him to his soft-spoken neighbor, Stephanie, played by Gainsbourg.

Notice that even in dream sequences, the color of dress of the two characters contrasted.

The suit and the sweater were like Spanish and French: one bold and the other complicated.

Stephane's suit reminds me of an outfit from Yves Saint Lauent's 2008 Fall/Winter collection, which is both brave and refined.

Stephanie's sweater, which Gainsbourg found and suggested for her character, looks gray from afar, until all the flecks of color appear upon closer notice.

It is the same for the beauty of the French singer and actress.



In dreams, emotions are overwhelming.

And so I guess are the colors of suits and the accessories that come with them, not to mention dreamy women.

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This contrasting of characters through color was also used by Gondry in his more popular film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Primarily through Kate Winslet's hair.

You look like a tangerine!

In this film, memories take the place of dreams, binding with reality to create surreal sequences.

For both The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, eccentricities make way for the otherworldly.

Can we say the same for beauty?

Can certain eccentricities and subtleties offer us a glimpse of attractiveness that can be called otherworldly since it cannot be possessed?

Not held by specific features or facial structure.

Beauty that is fleeting and exists outside of oneself.

Seen only through her eyes.

Appeal that transforms as it moves between youth and maturity, femininity and masculinity, innocence and malice.

In daily life and across her various roles on screen and in glossies, something certainly radiates about Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Her own eternal sunshine.

Photos from men.style.com and The Fashion Spot

What it feels like for a boy

Wonderful lapel and collar, shoulders. I wonder if menswear resubsumes interpretations from womenswear. It would be a pity if it didn't.

Time and again designers voyage into explorations of the androgynous, paring away details or exaggerating. Do these become more daring and provocative as society becomes more open?

Or as certain individuals cast their influence?

Below is a scene from the movie The Cement Garden, where the adolescent Charlotte Gainsbourg mentions the lines sampled by Madonna to introduce her song "What It Feels Like for a Girl":



Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly, you'd love to know what it is like, wouldn't you? What it feels like for a girl?



Certainly, not all men harbor these secrets. But it is also true that the pressure to conform among the male species can be overbearing.

What does it mean to break loose from these boundaries to cross the border?

Cole Mohr in a Marc by Marc Jacobs 2008 Fall/Winter campaign. He also does the men's collection for the season.



Marc Jacobs wearing a tartan kilt during the Marc by Marc Jacobs 2009 Spring/Summer show and in Interview Magazine's June/July 2008 issue, as Andy Warhol.



A woman said in one of the online fashion forums that she would never wear a certain Marc by Marc Jacobs dress after seeing Cole Mohr in it.

Call it insecurity or revulsion, but while some find this form of expression in bad taste, others take it as rebellion with an edge.



What did the original Andy Warhol and David Bowie mean for their generation?



What do the images they left mean to us, who live in a time when decadence almost always means merely luxury and money?





Given these impressions, how then should we take Thom Browne's new 2009 Spring/Summer show with its skirt-like shorts, sari-flap pants, and frippery that look like grass-skirts?





Play: poking at men's egos, dropping their pants, and inflating their suits with tutus.

Apparently, we are only left with irony.



Even so, Browne's signature bending of form and structure has actually widened the range of masculine expression. Off-runway of course, and without the ballerina props that no matter what I say can't hide intended humor.

How can you repress a smile when the world has been turned upside down even without the help of heels, mascara, and quilted purses?



Photos from Face Hunter, dans-paris (now Garance Dore), and men.style.com


Expect to find Charlotte Gainsbourg again on these pages.