Coat

Elsa Schiaparelli sundress ca. 1948-1949 via The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fan Bingbing for Harper’s Bazaar China

Dress

Gianni Versace, 1990s

1stdibs.com

i think what turns me off, really, to a lot of late preboot stories is that they’re just so damn cynical about everything - i don’t love superheroes because i’m infatuated with the idea that Everything Sucks And Everyone Is An Asshole To Each Other All The Time, i love superheroes because i want to believe the world can be fixed. i love cape comics because they elevate characters who have idealistic worldviews above those that don’t, i love cape comics because it’s a world where idealism is never a lost cause.

i’ve talked about this issue before, but there’s a reason my favorite batman story of all time is detective comics #500’s, “to kill a legend.” in it, phantom stranger offers batman the chance to go save his parents’ lives in another dimension, and batman accepts. as batman and robin investigate the world they’re in, they discover that this earth has no heroes, not even fictional ones. they’re in a world that can’t even conceive the idea of a hero, much less actually harbor them. so robin makes the argument that maybe they shouldn’t save batman’s parents, because this is the only shot the world has at having a hero - and doesn’t the good batman will do outweigh the price of just two lives?

it’s the sort of moral dilemma that we see fairly often today, but ‘tec #500 shoots it down ruthlessly. batman, of course, saves his parents, and the waynes of that dimension remain a whole and happy family. you’d think that batman had just selfishly saved his own parents and cost the world its last chance at a hero. but bruce wayne becomes batman anyway, because 'tec’s argument is that it is never a bad thing to save someone’s life. the lives batman saves will go on to save other lives. the great ouroboros of comic books isn’t infinite sadness or infinite dickery, it’s infinite potential to do good. batman raises robin who becomes nightwing who will become batman who will redeem another robin, and morrison’s run told us that batman and robin will never die, which means they never fail; their belief in doing good never once fails them. the lives they saved always turned to save more lives. to quote batman #700, “no matter when. no matter where. no matter how dark.”

i love cape comics because the very concept of them rewards hoping against all hope. superheroes by nature reward the idea of genuine belief; believing enough in a cause that you will splash it across your chest and put yourself on the line to make it happen. and in a world where everyone is competing to see who can give less of a fuck, it’s a very powerful thing to read about being praised for believing in “naive” or “childish” ideals like hope and truth and justice. i’m not here to read about how everyone really hates each other and everyone is the worst and everyone dies and everything is bad forever and ever. i’m just not.

Paolo Sebastian | The Nutcracker

Favourite Designs: Poem Bangkok ‘The Return of Persephone’ Resort 2022 Collection

“Bal Masque” cocktail dress ca. 1958 via The Victoria & Albert Museum

“The Duchess of Windsor patronised top Paris designers throughout her life. Christian Dior was a particular favourite. She was sixty-two years old when she selected this black evening dress. It was called ‘Bal Masque’ and came from the 1958 spring-summer collection designed by Yves Saint Laurent for the house of Dior. The style of the dress is influenced by the bell-shaped skirts fashionable in the 1860s. This influence can also been seen in the way it has been constructed. This dress has a tightly fitted boned corset and a bell-shaped skirt supported by a layered petticoat.The lightweight overdress is made of a double layer of spotted black tulle. It is studded with sparkling black bugle beads which are arranged in festoons caught at intervals by 42 bows of satin ribbon. The dress buttons down the back.”

Coat

1930s

Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arketektur, og Design

Poem Bangkok pre-fall 2020 “Celestial Sin”