mm fashion reports: denver (& your dateline?)

[vulcantouch]

note: those new to this are advised to read at least the first post of the thread this one continues, so you'll be able to follow the following blather now then:
for this week's report i spose i Could just point you to this parisian-rain-slicked, zeitgeist-soaked image brought to you courtesy of shutterbug richard aVeTon (and, of course, r2's website & digicam ), but let's take things a bit deeper and discuss how Biography, properly modulated, can inform one's mm fashion sense
i'm sure y'all are aware that once upon a time, the color black's fashion contexts were limited strictly to mourning and some formal wear. but what i'll bet y'all Didn't know is the how black went from that limited use to its current, de rigeur wardrobe status for everyone from mulleted, dirtball metalheads to goth cafe poseurs to johnny cash the answer is gabrielle chanel. when her lover boy capel died, she vowed to make the World mourn for him, and begun using unprecedented amounts of black in unprecedented fashion contexts.
this would have been mere momentary egotistic caprice, if not for the fact that chanel was also an uncanny fashion sorceress and realized (unconsciously, perhaps) that, despite its upsettings of convention, using black as a staple would work Perfectly with the modernistic, paring down of detail and silhouette which has been such an inherent part of 20th century fashion. as a result, to this day anyone with even a hint of fashion sense periodically "mourns" capel, just as coco intended
so, how would we inject biographical subtext into Our mm fashion, without falling into the trap of overliteral triteness? first, we might do well to not Try. for example, i've been doing it for a couple of weeks now, only i hadn't realized it.
the key is Modulation. you don't go for the result directly; it's best if it's a side effect that snuck in while you weren't looking. if someone can not only Sense, but Put Into Words, what you're trying to do, you're either being too obvious or they're the world's most preceptive & articulate critic
looking back on my last coupla reports (and this week's as well), what struck me was the way they inexpliciably reminded me again and again of my summer of '81, during which i was building plastic model tanks (1/72 & 1/35 scale). i also noticed my selections graViTating towards more miltary hues & designs (dropship, apc, tac fighter, stealth, fettpacks). back then i even made (out of some detailed leftover parts) what one might call ancestors to the scifi mms we know today (they were EXACTLY the same size and, though cobbled from military bits, their configurations had unmistakable sci fi connotations- one recalled like an isd, one looked like sark's Tron carrier, etc). but i didn't know Why. oh sure they worked within the moment aesthetically, but that didn't explain the referential coherence. then i realized: Summer's Ending. when you're a kid that's a poignant time, one in which, in my case, one realized the days of endlessly obsessing over one's tanks are finite.
the quality of the daylight- from which i take my cues- is much the same in august '01 as it was in august '81. so in conjuring my present-day mm "fashion shows", i've been inadvertantly drawing on and evoking those poignant times.
as you may be able to infer from the selection below, that influence continues this week. but probably not the next; i can already feel that moment passing. just thought i'd explain it all the same, though
-b5 raider
-vorcha
-warbird
-med frigate
-moncal
-centauri destroyer
-mini t-16 from potf luke
-narcissus
-also, i'm currently borrowing from b'jr a green-camo-colored, military edition of the tx-4a seen on jj's galvoy page here. a sculpt which apparently saw repaint life as a galvoy. if i can't find said gv repaint, i may ask b'jr to trade me this, as its "schwarzneggerian ark II" look has kinda grown on me. alas, he only has this one, so if he's not willing, maybe y'all can keep an eye open
vt
np: randy newman, "social studies" (aka "let's drop the big one now")

[LTBasker]

Why not just cut off the nacelles to the Enterprise-D micro or The Enterprise and put'em together to make some odd shirt? heh. Well... this thread is rather...weird. Tho I did like the idea of having the Jem'Hadar fighter mm as a badge that was mentioned in the one thread you linked. Hmm... well, a Cardassian Obsidian mm or Galor mm wouldn't make bad either since the two are in the same shape as the Cardassian insignia. OR am I just so sleep deprived right now that I'm not thinking straight and this post is completely missing the point of this thread? hehe.

[vulcantouch]

. . .in which one designer showed a dress made entirely of yellow #2 pencils! when the model slinked by they clattered against each other & gave the runway a first-day-of-school whiff sheesh, where's the shalimar when you need it?
i agree cardieships'd make cool badges, but not cuz they resemble the Union logo, but cuz they look cool period. they're among my fave mms
today's report
this week's Vibe, like that of a few of the previous weeks, has an ambivalent character. but unlike those previous weeks, this ambivalence does not derive from transitional aspects. instead it derives from an inexplicable but unmistakable attempt on the part of the Vibe itself to deceive us into believing that summer is Not ending after all. and it's doing a good job too, by trafficking in summer-like temps and even some summer-like precip patterns. it's also helped by the part of us that doesn't Want the summer to be ending. but we are not fooled. we Know- both from the sun's arc in the sky and our memories of a summer that could not have been more perfectly, Richly reveled in- that the wheel Must be turning.
though we don't know whether the Vibe is being self-indulgently wistful, trying to tempt us to indulge in same, or both. but since the Vibe is our Prime Directive, we are forced to respect its deceptive whim even as it seeks to confuse us. so, as when a boss who lacks the talent for joke-telling tries to crack up his staff, we play along. but only to a point; any more would not only be condescending, but beneath our abilities. so we strike a shrewd, sneaky compromise, and answer its inscrutable headgames with some of our own! let the Vibe just Try to gauge our sincerity from the following spread
-r2b1
-dud bolt pod (mm fashioned from racer)
-aldar beedo pod
-maquis
-sst dropship
-x99 microinvader
-z12 nucleoresponder
-narn fighter
chew on That, Vibe!
vt
np: debbie harry, "backfired" (rodgers/edwards write/produce)

[good shot jansen]

can make the mm experience, such a hazy, gauzey, dreamy, rememberance of long ago childhood joys by the shores of lake wobegone!

tonights display of mm's in the jansen houshold will be x-rays under black lights to remind me of carefree days of catching fireflies in the wanning days of late summer evenings of past.




np: the beatles - things we said today

[vulcantouch]

in that case:
"greedy for happiness, i asked nothing of life but that it consist of a series of joyous afternoons."
so pass them MMadelaines, MadeMoiselle
report
the vibe continues her deceptive ways, resorting this week to desperate, undignified trickery such as trying to obscure a key clue (the angle of the sun's arc thru the sky) with cloud cover, and changing from cloud to sun quickly and unpredictably in order to keep us distracted & off-balance. yeah right, like That smack's gonna work on Us thanx to one of our patented, handy-dandy, presto-change-o, hot-standby, shield-frequency-modulating Spectrums (clearest first, cloudiest last), we get the jump on All them snootchiebootchies:
-b5 station
-z12
-tiebomber
-retrieval ship
-clegg holdfast pod (mm fashioned from pakracer)
-klingon d7
-reb transport
-baltian (a la the 4lom/zuckuss naming fiasco, this mm's officially called arquillian, but anyone who's Seen mib knows better )
-b5 green
-alpha cc
-runabout
-quiksnap kazon
-ds9
vt
np: sakamoto, "music for yohji yamamoto collection 1995"

[vulcantouch]

. . .but only on the understanding that next week we're comin back with a Vengeance
vt

[LTBasker]

Hmm....hehe, a hand band that has upper and lower DS9 pylons all around it. A shirt made up of various Starfleet/Cardassian/Romulan/Jem'Hadar/Bajoran/Klingon MMs to make up the DS9 battles? There'd be an interesting piece. Hmm, shoes made up of nacelle pieces? hehe. A hat made out of spare DS9 parts with a spinning B5 station on top.

[vulcantouch]

just as spring goes hand-in-hand with '80s nostalgia, so is fall the domain of the '70s. that decade's tacky palette- acidic avocado, hotrod chrome, searing orange, blaring yellow- echoes not only fall's foliage but also its sunsets, the year's clearest. and as luck would have it, the retro 70's vibe of fall- gaudy, giddy, stoked & naive- happens to be the ideal antidote for these times of a world forever changed (my proust quote above seems pretty poignant now, eh?).
3 weeks ago, in looking forward to the mms that would take center stage during the equinox, i realized that they all sported some measure of 3 palette-defining colors: orange, yellow and deep blue-green. (i assure you it is mere coincidence that these are the three colors yielded when adding yellow to the currently all-the-rage red-white&blue; mm fashion is rarely so literal.)
though leaves began to turn last week, murky skies swirled & lingered eerily, which couldn't help but bring to mind wtc smoke, during which only the following worked:
-isd
-ds2 (on dm trophy base)
-mmm ds2 (on pylon hole of dm trophy base)
-ea atmos shuttle
-mmm falcon
-alpha b
-sandcrawler
-b5 raider
-khaki stealth
as anyone here can Surely see, that's No way to inaugurate FALL luckily, today an electric blue sky finally prevailed. eager for a fieldtest, we hit the diagonal-wood patio of Racine's and deployed our mork-suspender-esque rainbow:
-r2b1
-multi-colored rocketpak from '95 fett
-k-bop v.1
-gv ssp recon warrior
-sebulbapod
-cloud car
-ferengi
-n1
-vorlon transport
-boles roor pod (mm fashioned from pakracer)
-ipi toys' light/sound tos communicator keychain (about the size of a dc vehicle; "i Love classic 23rd century design- black finish, silver highlights" -dax, ds9's "trials & tribble-ations" )
result: the above turbo-charged mm convoy effected a decisive reclaiming of our afternoon, cafe-slummin' oasis. in other words: ladies & gentlemin, mm fashion is BACK
vt
np: pablo cruise, "your place in the sun"

[LTBasker]

Do ya think Death Stars would be REALLY uncomfortable though? shirt made out of Star Destroyers and rocket packs with an N1 on the chest as a sort of "badge." :P You got the funky fashion reports, and my mind comes up with stuff for the stuff in'em... 'Course at least they're not as bad as BC3's idea for Klingon V'Cs. but still a weird idea...is a weird idea.

[vulcantouch]

since fall is one of the few times (around here anyway) when one can usually depend on being able to watch the afternoon sun arc thru the sky unobstructed by cloud cover all the way to the horizon, it naturally follows to ask what mms work best during the last hour or two of daylight.
to begin with, one can never go wrong by deploying the trusty "mexican restaurant appetizer triumViraTe" (chips, salsa & guacamole) flying straight outta the late-day light & towards you, their elongated, high-contrast shadows pulling off em & cutting a swath across the table:
-cardie galor (chips)
-sisko sailor (salsa)
-hms bounty (guac)
then, augment this classic trinity with any combo of the following for a well-rounded meal:
-ipi communicator
-jabbarge (one of my Least favorite ships)
-landspeeder
-ferengi
-gen kbop
-b5 green
-'95 fettpack
-300fett figure (likewise, position him so you're starin down his barrel with the settin sun blazin behind him, for a real Man With No Name feel )
vt
np: america, "horse w/no name"