fill me with song, allah, kiss me once more, that i may, that i may wear my love like heaven

I always knew that the readers of DRG were special little dollies - everyone I've spoken to, emailed with, and blog-stalked has a passion for the retro, the beautiful, the impractical, the magical, the bohemian, and the glamorous. Imagine my excitement when I opened my message inbox this morning to see emails of links on museum exhibits (ooh la la McQueen à la MoMA), concerts, and interviews with glamazons like Debbie Harry and Florence Welch. A special merci to a certain fabulous San Franciscan who thought of moi when she saw a piece in the Los Angeles Times. 

The piece is on Pattie Boyd and her upcoming photography exhibit on Catalina Island. As it turns out, Catalina holds a spot close to Pattie's heart. A recent rediscovery of photographs from early 1971 contained images of Pattie's first-hubby George Harrison deep-sea fishing off of Catalina just weeks prior to his landmark Concert for Bangladesh event. 

I am definitely diggin' this article because it captures the dreamy sweetness and loveliness that Pattie was so known for. The article says, as follows, "Boyd gazed at those photos with her cornflower blue eyes. She broke into the slightly gap-toothed smile that made her stand out among the other models of her era and reflected on the image ... She sighed and added: 'We were all so young and beautiful.'" 

Her last comment is such a definitive statement of the sixties - it was a decade when everyone was young and beautiful, a collection of multi-colored dream children walking so high they didn't touch the ground. Despite what she thinks - and despite the passing of years and youth - Pattie is still incredibly beautiful. 

Check out the article here, as well as a sneak peek at Pattie exhibit  

Title: from "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" (Donovan)

Then and Now: William Blake's Satan and the Victoria's Secret Angels

Yesterday I was looking at artistic renderings of the story of Satan's fall from Heaven and the subsequent fall of Adam and Eve in Eden. You know, just a casual Friday afternoon for me. (Actually, it was an art history lecture in my course on Miltonic literature) 

I really fell in love with William Blake's works (I am a sucker for watercolours), especially "Satan in His Original Glory." The ink and watercolor piece depicts Satan as he was originally - a perfect angel of God's creation, you know, before he launched war on God and then was expelled to Hell. And, let me tell you, Satan in his original form is pretty damn majestic. For whatever reason, when I first saw this piece, I thought of the Victoria's Secret Angels and their gorgeous wings.  

It's not too far off, is it? Both Lucifer and Gisele have the most fab wings on their backs - even in similar color schemes. And a pre-Fall Satan was quite feminine looking as well - with some fake tan and hair extensions, he could be up there strutting his stuff alongside the other VS Angels. Though, Gisele wins because I doubt Satan ever had Justin Timberlake crooning "SexyBack" behind him.  

No irony intended by putting Satan, a former arch-angel of heaven, next to Gisele, a former hot 'angel' of fashion

change clothes, and go

Natalia Vodianova was granted the wish of girls everywhere when she dressed up as some of fashion's most iconic models. Look through the photos to see how she and the Vogue crew successfully captured the essences of everyone from Dovima to Veruschka.

credit: US Vogue Magazine, May 2009

Bardot does Chaplin

Brigitte Bardot is photographed on break from filming Viva Maria! in Mexico 1965. According to Willi Frischauer's biography on the star, Bardot: an Intimate Biography, Bardot would perform splendid impersonations of the legendary Charlie Chaplin in order to pass the long months on the hot Mexico set, despite never seeing a Chaplin film. These are several photos from the rarely-seen shoot.

Photographer: James Hyman, London

a harrison boy is always in fashion...

Wow, this spread from Fashion Rocks! is so old it's practically vintage now, isn't it? While you ignore my lame attempt at a joke, please enjoy reminiscing to a simpler time full of opulence and fantasy - I'm talking about circa 2007, when these photos were taken, NOT the sixties. Again, lame joke aside, this is perhaps one of my favorite photoshoots of recent years. And I love that Dhani's outfit in the lower left corner is quite similar to his dad's at the rooftop concert so many years before.

those freaks was right when they said you was dead

Okay this freaked me the fuck out when I saw this. Look at Paul's feet in the first photo, and compare to the second photo. Haha all you Faul theorists! Our boy was wearing shoes for the first part of the photo shoot, but then obviously just wanted to walk barefoot on hot asphalt instead. Duh.

there's a little bird that somebody sends down to the earth to live on the wind

When I was younger more naïve, I used to believe I was Ruby Tuesday from the eponymous Rolling Stones song. I don’t know why – after all, I was a teenager from the 21^st century city, not a swingin’ sixties groupie who got busy one time with Keith Richards (no matter how much I wish my life was otherwise). Well, I guess if Anne Hathaway can believe that Blackbird is about her, than I can be forgiven for thinking Ruby Tuesday was about me.

She would never say where she came from

Yesterday don’t matter if its gone

That’s the only bit of the song I don’t really agree with. But then again, its so freaking gorgeous that I love it anyways. I understand the whole “you can never go home again” thing, so not talking about your past is not only the best solution, but the only solution. The lyric that follows, "yesterday don't matter if its gone," is the one that really has kept me from being Ruby Tuesday. I can't embrace it into my life, I can't make myself believe it. If I agreed with the sentiment that whatever happened in the past doesn't really count for anything, I wouldn't have a blog which celebrates decades past, now would I? Not only does the past matter to me, its everything to me. I am not a full-functioning 21st century gal - I need the past to give me a little help in my boring hum-drum life. Vintage Vogues and Sixties memoirs are my kind of heroin - daily doses of the retro help me to get by. I need my fix.

And now for your fix, here are some lovely ladies from the sixties:

'tis then when the hurdy gurdy man comes singing songs of love

I love these trippy-dippy, hurdy-gurdy photos of Donovan. The girl on the right is Jenny Boyd (Pattie's sister), who Donovan was in love with for a time in the late 1960s. He wrote "Jennifer Juniper" for her, and she was one of the main reasons why he decided to join the Beatles in Rishikesh in 1968.

she would never say where she came from

Pauline Boty was a sometimes actress and the only female Pop artist from Britain. She is considered to be one of the founders of the Brit pop art movement. In 1954, Pauline, the fourth child and only daughter of a suburban Surrey couple, won a scholarship to Wimbledon art school. Her gorgeous blonde looks got her the nickname "the Wimbledon Bardot" by her peers. Pauline studied stained glass at the Royal College of Art and graduated in 1961. She developed a style of painting that Pauline often paired with collage, and represented messages of female empowerment and sexuality and criticism of male-dominance.

As well as being a colleague and friend to some of the greatest artists in Britain during this time (including David Hockney, Peter Phillips, Peter Blake, and Derek Boshier), Pauline acted as an occasional model for these artists as well, posing for Michael Seymour, John Aston, and Michael Ward, among others. Alongside Phillips, Blake, and Boshier, Pauline was featured in the 1962 television program "Pop Goes the Easel," which documented Britain's leading pop artists.

She was an occasional actress, active in theatre and television as well as portraying one of the many girlfriends of Michael Caine in the 1966 movie "Alfie." She was in the running for the lead part in "Darling," eventually played by Julie Christie. Pauline married writer and actor Clive Goodwin in 1963 and together they had a daughter, Boty Goodwin (who was also an artist and died in 1995 at the age of 29), in 1966. While she was pregnant, Pauline discovered that she had a rare case of lymphatic cancer. Doctors warned that if she were to treat the cancer with radiation, her unborn child would be gravely endangered. Pauline opted to go without radiation treatment, and unfortunately passed away only five months after her daughter's birth. She was 28 years old.