Lolita Fashion at NY Comic-Con

Fan Girls & Fan Boys converged on NYC's Jacob Javits Center for the annual NY Comic-Con Festival this weekend.  One of the popular panels for fashion fans was the Lolita session on Friday afternoon.

Representatives from NYC Lolitas broke it down for Lolita Fashion newbies.  They covered the different types of Lolitas, essential accessories and wardrobe staples (start with the petticoat!).  The key brands were listed (Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, Moi-Meme Moitier...) and where to get them.  

Good quality is expensive...The hostesses stressed saving your money and what Ebay vendors to avoid.  They also gave examples of local shopping mall stores to adapt accessories from (H&M, etc.)

My favorite part of the event was the parade of fashionable Lolitas who showed their style...

Goths at Fort Tryon Park Medieval Festival

The Medieval Festival and Renaissance Faire at Fort Tryon Park draws huge crowds to this northern tip of Manhattan.  While few New Yorkers usually get to this neck of the woods, the gorgeous castle (Cloisters Museum) lures those who wish to dress of another time.

There are several distinct groups who attend this annual party.  There are the fully garbed knights, casual cotton peasant outfits, the pirates, the fairies and most fashionable, the Goths.  I found the most stylish attendees walking around Fort Tryon Park.  A very pretty tribute to Harry Potter's Bellatrix LeStrange, prim and elegant witches and my favorite, the fabulous Lady Zombie.  She cavorted with a crew of lavishly attired gentlemen in dark vampiric garb.

Check out the fashion slideshow below:

Yohji Yamamoto Spring 2011

Gotta love that certain fashion designers don't conform to the expected rules of Spring fashion.  Avant-garde Yohji Yamamoto presented a mostly black collection mixing textures and irregular silhouettes.  He added a few pop neon colors in wildly printed tights and underpinnings.  

Mr. Yamamoto, a guitarist on the side, wanted to mesh the psychedelic with the couture.  There were rubber corsets for a rock and roll touch with chiffons and layered handkerchief hems.

Photos by Gianni Giannoni

Divine Comedy Auction at Sotheby's

How to you send celebrities like Alan Cumming, Julianne Moore and Padma Lakshmi to Hell?  Invite them to Sotheby's auction house for a private viewing of their new exhibit and auction, The Divine Comedy.

This is a rare tongue-in-cheek event for the famed, often stuffy auction house.  It was inspired by Dante's vision of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise.  The exhibits range from classic August Rodin sculpture, a variation of a Bosch triptych to contemporary art like Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol and Cindy Sherman.

If you don't have the thousands (or hundreds of thousands) in dollars to purchase these pieces, you can buy the illustrated catalog instead.  Click here for more information or view the exhibit until October 19th.
Top photo by Joe Schildkrout, art photos from Sotheby's.

Masked Ball for French Vogue

It's not Halloween yet, but extravagance with a mask has come to Paris...

French Vogue celebrated its 90th birthday with an elaborate masked ball.  Designers Jean-Paul Gaultier and Jeremy Scott mingled with models Gisele Bundchen and Tyra Banks.  Other celebrities included Lenny Kravitz and Dita Von Teese.  

The black couture gowns were elegant of course, but those with true style expressed it with their facial accessories... Gisele wore a spiraling sculpture of a mask that covered only one eye.  Bianca Jagger and Gaultier went for flamboyant feathers.  Tyra Banks was one of the most photographed of the evening with her last-minute improvised mask of cut-up fishnet stockings.... 

Ara Jo's Vampire Fashion Collection by Andreas Waldschuetz

The perfect combination of Gothic fashion and photography. London fashion designer Ara Jo created a beautiful collection inspired by vampires.  Slinky silhouettes of lace and ornate jewels.  Photographer Andreas Waldschuetz shot the clothing in an amazing, intense collection of photographs inspired by sinister siblings.  Are they a stylish take on the Bathory sisters? All I know is the first photograph could make the twins of the Shining run and scream...
For more photos, click through here.

Gothic Circus Fashion Shoot - August Bradley

I came across these fabulous photos while surfing.  They are from August Bradley's Hasselblad Masters books.  One with a circus theme, one about a man in a dark room.  They weren't marketed as fashion photography, but that's exactly what they looked like to me.  The haunting art direction has a look of wickedness and decay.  The circus photos look like a witch stirring up trouble, a wrangler of evil crows, a black widow and a sculptural gown.  The man in the dark room looks like it could be Hamlet contemplating death, or an Edgar Allen Poe type alone with his tormentors...