Alexandra Valenti takes pictures of my soul. And lady hippies.

Because I love school (and it was the one thing I was ever actually good at) I've given myself some blog homework this Fall.  Actually now that I think about it, I give myself homework all the time in the form of long to-do lists and giant DIY projects that never get done.  I am the worst kind of procrastinator which I guess is really the best kind of procrastinator...?  Maybe the only part about school I was really good at was the hoarding of college-ruled notebooks and Hello Kitty pencil pouches...

But back to blog homework.  Even though it seems counterintuitive to my having a design blog, I drift in non-style most of the time.  Other bloggers seem to already have style and use their blogs to tell you about it but how the fuck does that happen?  I just post shit I like and hope when I'm on my deathbed (which will probably be on a hovercraft in space) I can look back and discern some meaning from these ancient interweb adventures.  

I figured now that I'm an "adult" it would be a good time to dig deep into my psyche, past the excess of design blogs and trips to Homegoods and uncover my authentic, honest-to-design-gawd personal saucy style!  I'm talking clothes and art and interiors and my feelings about whatever is the 21st century equivalent of a Hello Kitty pencil pouch.  

Probably a vintage Hello Kitty pencil pouch.

I want to look at everything in my life and say "That's so Raven!" but the Lacy equivalent of Raven.  If you say "That's so Lacy!" it sounds weird because it rarely has actual lace and people are confused.  Also, people think you're talking about lingerie and my "lingerie" consists of tank tops in ugly colors and yoga pants with pant splatter on them and holes in the crotch so it's kinda misleading.  

I'm nothing if not honest.  And holey.

And in all honesty, this is actually fun homework because it involves a lot of time thinking about yourself and what your style soul wants.  This isn't selfish - I'm calling it SELF CARE.  By way of Pinterest and mood boards.  Expect to see upcoming posts about ME while I work this shit out.  Feel free to do the same for yourself..  We'll probably need a support group or something.  If you already have your soul style figured out then HOW U DO THAT?!

Keeping all this blog soul homework in mind, my inner style Madame exsqueed "That's so Raven!" when I found the portfolio of photographer Alexandra Valenti.  She shined a laser of lady love directly into my soul style with her sense of fashion, color, art and just general badassery.  I think I've posted photos of hers in the past but seeing all of her work at one time made sense for my research.

"Research" like I'm the Indiana Jones of mood boards and shit.  Imma fight some Nazis once I get my outfit right!

Her portfolio is mostly hippie chicks wearing dramatic costumes in moody settings.  I think that's my spirit animal.  It's probably only .07% of my legitimate, Real Life style but it's at least eleventeen hundred % of my soul style.

And if you hate hippie chicks in moody settings or my overlong dissertation of soul style at least there are some pretty ladies for you to look at.  I think I saw a nipple on here somewhere.

No nipple here.  Sorry.

So what can we deduce from these pictures?  I am obviously a proud supporter of ladies in lonely settings...

Especially if there are rocks involved.

Bonus points for dashes of color...

...and the "built" environment.

Triple word score for styling that looks like tribal bellydancers which you know I'm totally down with.

Is it okay to culturally appropriate if it's just for fantasy purposes?

Let's just go back to blonde ladies and chandeliers - I'm pretty sure I'm safe there.

But enough about me and my non-style, I think we can agree that Alexandra really knows how to take some pictures of ladies looking fierce.

She has a whole series of black and white pictures with trippy graphics on them and you can even buy them should you so desire.  

I know I've seen this one before I just had no idea about the rest of her work.  Shame it took me so long because I have a serious lady boner for this mashup of rainbow colors on a black and white.  Expect to see this in a saucy mood board real soon.

Hoods, not so much.  But mysterious in a crackhead skater kind of way?!  I CAN THINK OF NOTHING MORE ME THAN THAT.

Except sparkly things.  That trumps all and Alexandra really knows how to highlight some earthly sparkle.

She really inspires me to put on all my jewelry at once, finger paint and go bananas with my Instagram filters.  Be prepared for a shit ton of solar flares, light leaks and burnouts on all my upcoming pictures of Charlemagne!

Now if you'll excuse me, put on my "lingerie" and organize my Hello Kitty pencil pouch.

Secrets to my blogging non-success: Pinterest, gays and animal genitalia!

This weekend proved to be a very informative one: while cleaning out my closet I learned I really don't look as good in empire waist tops as I think I do.

I learned it's possible to give yourself temporary lactose intolerance (that's soooo worth it) after making a mac and cheese with sausage, goat cheese and eleventeen other types of cheese.  

After a few cocktails with some homosensual hippie types, I learned that Tennessee is home to Short Mountain Sanctuary which is a commune/home base for the Radical Faeries - a collective of pagan-esque gay men from around the world.  Ahh Appalachia, the secrets you keep...

And most importantly I learned that not only do I have a Bachelor's of Scienze in Home Ekonomics, I am also an investigative journalist!  For instance, just this week I had to get out my secret design blogger decoder ring to find the source of this bedroom that I saw all over Pinterest:

And by 'all over Pinterest' I mean 'all over my bedroom' because I found one pin and then printed a thousand copies out, taped them to my bed pillow and then dry-humped the shit out of them.  It's so dreamy like a really sterile hotel in fog.  But something about the decorgasm felt familiar and upon closer inspection of the now-destroyed paper I realized it was THIS room: 

SCHWING!  It's Francisco Costa's bedroom and an old favorite of mine.  Ahhh... memories.  I included it my round-up about horse art a few years ago because I used to have the time to do round-ups like that.  It's a post I'm proud of because I think I only had ONE horse cock joke in it.  Wait... I should reread to be sure...

I'm not sure why I like this room so much since without even knowing whose room it is you can tell that the queen living here gets vegan colonics, has a platinum (horse?) cock ring and isn't satisfied until the hospital corners on his bed linens are sharper than Angelina Jolie's Malificent cheekbones.

That's pretty much the opposite of everything I believe in: I get bacon colonics, [redacted for propriety] and I haven't made my bed in 17 years.

Maybe I only like this room because I get to make so many cock jokes about it...

The photography (ok, possibly the real reason I like the room) is by Australian artist and photog Martyn Thompson.  He has a book out about his interior photography called... wait for it... Martyn Thompson - Interiors. 

It looks like lifestyle shots of people who can afford to buy small islands but instead choose to live simple, monastic lives in beautiful places like this: 

 ...and then fuck them up with bullshit like this:

John Derian's house from, like, forever ago.

And this:

pics from Desire to Inspire

Fuck every piece of wayward furniture in this room and the platinum cock ring-ed horse it rode in on.  This is what it looks like when rich people masturbate and ejaculate money all over their house and call it decorating.  One Papa Bear chair is great but two is disgusting.  You just bukkakked all over your gorgeous house and in front of that deliriously awesome window.  (MS confession: I had to google the spelling for bukkake before I verbed it.  Do not attempt.)

How many filthy dick jokes can I squeeze into this post?  I'm going for an even baker's dozen.  

But I forgive Martyn for his photography clients because he still photographed one of my blogger favorite bedrooms.  He also has a nice, albeit sparse, tumblr with a bit more of his photographs and where I found this interview from Australian Vogue Living:

More fun things I learned: he makes his own clothes, appreciates Vivienne Westwood (like me and any person with eyes!) and is a Radical Faerie that twice a year visits Short Mountain Sanctuary in Tennessee to sleep in a tent and tap into his homospirit.  

Well, I'll be damned.  That's a very weird and completely pointless coincidence involving useless facts about Tennessee.

The only point to that story is that maybe now you can see how a blog post actually develops in my brain:  cocktails > gay story time > bed time lullabies bed via Pinterest > squeeing > investigative journalism and internet adventures > dreamy interiors and horse cock > more dreamy interiors > bitter ramblings by a lower middle class hack Madame >  inappropriate dick jokes > the rabbit hole of tumblr > gay hippies in Tennessee.

I just wanted to show you a pretty bedroom and then all hell broke loose!  That's essentially the formula for almost every single blog post I've ever written.  It's the Universal Formula for my internet success that fortunately consists of only 10% animal genitalia.

Problogger might want to take note.

Now, I'll probably want to blog later this week so I'm going to pour some gay hippies a few cocktails and see what happens...

PS. Martyn I have some friends you should meet.

The Sunday Set inspired by Dr. Bronner's gift of the firecrotch.

To round out this week's unintentional theme, here's an image dump of all my secret hobo hippie dreams so you too can layer on all your best jewelry and spend your Friday twirling like Stevie Nicks.  I'll let you borrow a gauze skirt if yours is in the laundry.  


Obviously that's a self portrait in the first picture...

The New Gypsies from Iain McKell

here

[MS sidebar: if I haven't told you, I have a weakness for '70s landscape photography.  If you ever see a vintage book on ebay about America's amber waves of grain or grizzly mountain shots that a poor man's National Geographic would publish, alert a Madame immediately.]

here

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real source?

Iain McKell again

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Penabranca

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I think I've officially turned into this lady now:

here

I might actually have that scarf...  I definitely have those earrings.  I do not have that tummy.


But I am going to stop now before these images land me in some expose as an example of white people and cultural misappropriation along with Urban Outfitters and every editorial magazine shoot of the last two years.


Next week I promise no more hippies.  We'll be back to whatever it is that I normally blog about around here.  But for now I TWIRL!