Those Scary Pets

BOO! There they are!

Hope you enjoyed your Halloween too!

Lady, Jaime and Paulina at Members Only, Kitty and Sunny at home.

Those Ghosts

AND SO I END A WEEK OF HALLOWEEN POSTS with Sølve Sundsbø's Invitation à la Danse whose lithe-limbed models swathed in fabric perfectly capture my emergence from the sheets after a full day and night of being bedridden with the flu.

At least in my mind it does.

Today's to-do is to find myself a costume for tonight, given that I find myself energetic and well and not collapsing in the middle of a shopping mall. Otherwise, I'll have to be back in bed which is not so bad either because tonight, after what feels like forever, Jaime will be back home!

Happy Halloween!

Invitation à la Danse by Sølve Sundbø, www.artandcommerce.com

Those I Love You's

ORIGINALLY RELEASED BY THE BAND THE LOVER SPEAKS IN 1986, Annie Lennox's 1995 cover of the song, made popular by its drag ballerina music video, has always both baffled and fascinated me ever since.

Dark and eerie, with a somber whimsy and a touch of sadness, it's not only during Halloween season that I've found myself drawn to its vulgar spectators, graceful transvestites and its fabulously freaky Annie looking very much like Maleficent in Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

It must be my closeted love for theatrics.


No More I Love You's, 1995, from the album Medusa. Performed by Annie Lennox. Directed by Annie Lennox and Joe Dyer.

Those Nightcrawlers

ASIDE FROM THE SCARY FASHION DISASTERS THAT PROWL ABOUT THE NIGHTCLUBS on most nights of the year, good to celebrate Halloween night with are Judith Leiber's Moonlit Mamba, Wisdom and Jinx, minaudières fully beaded in crystal and fashioned into the most adorable little creatures for carrying out with you if you don't intend to dress up on the 31st.

The handbags by the way range from $3,495 to $4,995. No trick. So unless you're a red-carpet celeb, it's no treat either.

Did you guess? My costume for the day is cheap pun writer.

Moonlit Mamba, Wisdom and Jinx novelty handbags by Judith Leiber, www.judithleiber.com

Those Gargoyles

OVERLOOKING THE CITY. Oh wait, that's me!

Despite countless fantastical myths and legends, it turns out that the gargoyles, however impressive or iconic, are in fact nothing more than glorified gutters.

From French gargouille, meaning "throat", gargoyle in architecture refers to grotesque figures carved in stone, with spouts that spew water away from a building to keep the mortar in the walls from eroding. So while the personified figures appear decoratively charming, they are actually hard-working things that help to keep some of the oldest historical structures standing tall and strong.

The Notre Dame gargoyles however, by introduction of the lead drain pipe in the 16th century, retired their technical functions, and after the wars, had been restored for mere decorative purposes. So now they are more accurately grotesques or chimeras rather than water-conveying gargoyles.

But that's a long story to have to casually explain to anyone right? And thus, the Notre Dame gargoyles have remained to be called gargoyles all the same. The end.

Galerie des Chimères, Notre Dame de Paris.

That Mad Style

PUBLISHED IN 1963, ART IN CLOTHING SELECTION was a beaten and battered hardbound I bought for P50.00 at a second-hand book sale back in high school. Today it is one of my prized possessions, having in some way served as my style guidebook growing up.

Yes, even if it was way behind my time.

The book dissects personal style, distinguishing it from fashion and fad, while categorizing the general dressing style for each personality type. Other chapters talk about posture and decorum, cultural influences in dressing, with diagrams of the different hat, sleeve, collar, neckline and dress types. There are also discussions on balance, contrast, quality, fabric, pattern, even clothing as an art, which I suppose at the time was still being considered a fairly new idea.

60's style has grown in popularity in the past year as countless of us girls and guys aim to channel the dapper Don and the Madison Avenue muses in that so meticulously accurate, picture-perfect drama. In the book illustrations, it's easy to tell which type is Betty or which is Joan or Peggy. Which will you be this Halloween?

Art in Clothing Selection by Harriet T. McJimsey, Harper's Home Economics Series.

That Black List

I.E., MY NEW LUST LIST. Since the skies had turned significantly gloomier and the weather cooler, I've resurrected that on-again, off-again liking for my favorite non-color. That deep, dark, dramatic black.

The trouble with growing up is that while in youth we'd have been ecstatic over a bagfull of chocolate and candy, treats -as we desire them now- no longer come pouring freely out of front doors.

Halloween this week!

Poor Sunny will be scaredy-dog of trick-or-treaters again.

Chanel J12 automatic watch, www.chanel.com Balenciaga Nero Satin Knot world.bottegaveneta.com Olympus E-P2, www.olympusamerica.com David Yurman black onyx Albion earrings, www.davidyurman.com

That Dada Design

ANTI-ART, ANTI-BORGEOIS AND ANTI-WAR, the Dada movement that begun in Zurich and peaked in the early 1920's was a passionate breakthrough in art, literature, theater and design that would later influence avant-garde, pop art and even punk rock as we know them today.

Both at many points criticized and celebrated, Dadaism or Dada produced a well of interesting, intriguing and irreverent works believed to be a precursor to postmodernism.

And while I'm not particularly fond of vintage cross-dress portraits or inverted urinals on display, I find a certain appeal in print material from the era. They are artworks on their own.

Pages from Dadaist publications. Images from The International Dada Archive, http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada