This interview was initially published at Haute Macabre in September of 2016.
The discovery of Darla Teagarden’s mixed media photography and conceptual self-portraiture was a thoroughly unexpected pleasure and a bit of a revelation to me when I initially became introduced to her work a few years back.
First, I suppose, because the image I chanced upon was a portrait of a friend, Angeliska Polachek–small world!–and secondly, although I knew my friend to be quite beautiful, Darla had transformed her into an otherworldly enchantress, a shimmering, splendid, utterly sublime creature. I’m not even the slightest bit embarrassed to admit that this was the very same way I pictured her, when I conjured the lovely Angeliska’s reflection in the mirror of my imagination!
As a fantasist who doesn’t quite always see things as they are, I view our world through a splinter of glass in my eye, a feverish vision of of circumstances and scenarios, slightly distorted and different. Darla Teagarden’s surreal photographic narratives, which walk that delicate line between fable and reality, resonated very deeply with this dreamer in me.
Angeliska Polachek as Titania by Darla Teagarden
For the richly detailed imagery that comprises the highly atmospheric vignettes that she photographs, Darla draws on an intriguingly varied background consisting of experiences as a stylist, model, production designer, vintage clothes buyer and cabaret dancer. Through these myriad lenses, her projects are deeply imbued with fragile secrets and intense emotion, and I’ll confess, I have been following her subsequent work quite closely since the beauty of that first tremulous photo captured my heart.
Read further for this extraordinary artist’s insights and inspirations regarding her creations, as shared with me for this writing.
Darla Teagarden, The Visitor
Darla Teagarden, Poem for the Unnamed Witches
Haute Macabre: You provide the viewer with a narrative through photography; it shares a story, tells a tale. While I understand that you don’t wish to convey utter reality, I would also hesitate to call your work fiction or fable. Would you say that your photos then inhabit the space in between? And why do you think that space is such fertile ground for your work? We all sort of live between fable and reality, anyway. There’s that side of us that walks into a misty forest, let’s say, and in an instant, we make the moment richer in relation to our own experience. Connecting our inner lives to day-to-day situations is a way we can better understand ourselves. Cinema has allowed us new emotional access, and photography is related. I guess what I’m saying is, photography helps me understand myself and my issues.
Darla Teagarden, Ghosts
Darla Teagarden, Love Letter
…and as a visual story-teller, what are the kinds of stories you like best to share? I love sharing symbolic insight and abstraction. I’ve always maintained that when I go into a concept it has to be succinct, like a poem. I love the challenge of being succinct while conveying something that could, if given the opportunity, fill a an entire film. I guess I like stories about survival most. We are all going to die, yet we still have to make choices.
Darla Teagarden, A Summoning for Thee
Darla Teagarden, Baba Yaga
I have enjoyed reading about your perspective on failure. Fail big and often, you seem to say–don’t be a giant, fragile weenie, just go out there and do the thing! I’d love to hear about your inspirations and influences in terms of Doers of Things and Fabulous Failures. I have always surrounded myself with people who seemed to care less about the perceived consequences of failure and more about the need ‘to do’. The need to do should outweigh fear or else you’re going to be paralyzed. Of course, this is a goal and not always the case, but I try to accept possibility either way before I try something new. When I first began doing my photo projects, I knew I would suck. I did, and the proof is floating forever in the ethers of the web. However, I knew I had something to say. I knew I had to do something that made me less miserable, something that could alleviate injury… and, If i get better at it along the way, great. My inspirations have always been friends who need, not want, to express themselves because, I need it too. I guess it’s a tribe.
Darla Teagarden, Thorn
“Altars” was a collection of self-portraits about living with mental illness, inspired both by your own life as well as the lives of friends and family members. Was your intent to educate or advocate, or perhaps to confront and work through some of your own struggles? I would like to say my intention was to educate and advocate, but in the end, it was really just therapy for me. Yet, by coming from a singular place, it becomes broad and easily shared. It feels good when someone says, oh! I know this ! It’s a feeling of unity.
Darla Teagarden, Witch Wife
Darla Teagarden, Vesper
Much of your work, though certainly abstract and surreal, is considered self-portraiture. I’m curious as to where you see your art as it relates to the “selfie society” that we’re thought of as living in today. It’s the same in that the ‘selfie generation” is merely looking back at themselves to see themselves and hope others see them too. I am here! See me! But, there are rather significant differences in self-portraiture, generally. Conceptual self-portraitures are deliberate stories in relation to space that may or may not require the focus to be on the performer. My body and those of my collaborators are catalysts for storytelling. I don’t require my ‘image’ to be the story but that of the environment created around the body. Selfies say, ”see me, I’m REAL !” Conceptual portraiture says, ”Feel this ghost”.
Darla Teagarden, Histories of She
Darla Teagarden, Vigil for the Harvest Suitors
Any fantastical ideas percolating that may manifest soon? Any future projects on the horizon? I want to explore the idea of being saved. We’ve all been saved and maybe even saved somebody. I like the idea that we have the capacity to save someone, from death, from despair, from going down the wrong path, from being blind, loneliness, obscurity, from illness, others, from ourselves. I like how vulnerable we really are. I love that, even with all the casual cynicism, we are still unreasonable romantics.
Thank you kindly, Darla, for giving your time to answer our questions.
See more of Darla Teagarden’s work on her website or follow her on Instagram for news and updates.
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Wormwood & Rue is the creative endeavor of Carisa Swenson, a lovely, long-time friend and the uncanny sculptress/stitchy mistress of GoblinFruit Studio. Carisa’s work strikes a balance between the odd and the endearing, the familiar and the fantastical–she creates some truly remarkable, utterly unique beasties and creatures, and I would populate my entire house with their strange little faces, if I could!
I am pleased to share her latest, limited edition series of extraordinary art pins, this time around with a focus on wondrous marine life magics, and featuring the Southern Blue-Ringed Octopus and Chambered Nautilus.
Between the wonderful designs, the vivid, vibrant colors, and the luxurious feel of their weights in your palm (they’ve got a serious bit of heft to them!) these little works of art are incredibly special, and obviously created with a great deal of care and intention. Even the backing on which the pins are affixed is decorated with beautiful ocean flora illustrations! And if you flip them over, you will find some interesting data on these fascinating creatures…
“… providing some facts or fun info on the creatures I’m illustrating/creating is part of my desire to educate people about the wildlife that we share the planet with”, Carisa thoughtfully shared with me.
These pins are each a limited run of 100, with the opportunity to purchase each charming cephopod individually, or as a set (which saves you $2)! Click on the creatures below to be whisked away to the Wormwood & Rue site, where you can both purchase something quite exceptional and support a fantastic artist as well.
I tried to come up with a pithy title for this post, but I couldn’t make it work.
No doubt you have read my thoughts on mint scented/mint flavored beauty products previously, but if not, I will sum up for you: there is a special place in hell reserved for them.
There is nothing I find more galling that to have paid good money for a beautiful lipstick or soothing lip balm or what have you, only to ease off the lid and be greeted by the repugnant odor of peppermint or, (worse), spearmint [EDIT: or even worse–wintergreen!]. These odors remind me of chewing gum (which is the most disgusting thing of all time, ever) and the dentist office (an association for which I don’t think I need to justify my dislike).
Though most people associate the smell of mint with adjectives such as “cool” or “fresh”, I find it nauseatingly antiseptic, clean and pure to the point of parody, where it’s almost a mockery of the associations it’s supposed to conjure forth, where it somehow loops around and becomes vulgar and tacky. I’d almost rather smell rotting garbage or poopy diapers, to be honest.
I started thinking about all of this when I finally gave in and bought one of the Lip Tars that everyone seems to adore from Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics. I’d been on the fence about it for awhile; I mean, just the name itself, “Lip Tar”, brought up unsavory imagery for me: a gooey, glunky product that would sit on my lips and annoyingly ensnare stray hairs. But I thought, well, I’ll just give it a try.
And I knew just from twisting the cap off, before I’d even slid the wand out of the tube, that it just wasn’t gonna work. A smell wafted forth and struck me full in the face, an odor not unlike my worst nightmare, which is to say that it smelled like being trapped in close quarters with someone chewing and smacking on their gum, and they won’t stop talking to me, not even for one second.
Another one which recently broke my heart this past year are the liquid lipsticks from Nero Cosmetics. Miss Argentina and Gold Dust Woman are such stunning shades, but alas, I cannot handle their foul stench.
Are you like me? Can you just not even with the mint scented/flavored things? Do you hesitate before purchasing a lipstick/gloss/balm because it’s kind of a crap shoot and you just don’t know if it’s going to be pleasantly fragranced or if you’re going to wind up with a toothpaste-scented piece of garbage?
Well, I hear you. It’s an unfriendly world out there for us in the us mint-hating minority. And so beneath this image of my weird, staring eyes and blue-lipped crone kisses you will find that I have compiled for you a list of brands that I have recently tried and found to be free of the mentholated menace. If there is anything you think that I am missing or that I should try, let me know in the comments!
Note: don’t expect in depth reviews on these products. It is not my aim to be a beauty blogger! When possible, I have included links to photos of yours truly wearing these colors, although I get a little nuts with the Instagram filters so they might not be totally true to life. Also note, I know everyone hates Jeffree Star right now, and to a lesser extent I realize that Lime Crime is problematic for certain people. I am including them because I have tried them and they fit into this non-mint category; but yes, I am also aware of the issues surrounding them.
💄 L.A. Splash Lip Couture – Favorite color: “OG Ghoulish” (grey/nude); a liquid lipstick that smells aggressively like nailpolish remover. At least it’s not mint! Also, this stuff will not budge; you need a sandblaster to remove it. 💄 Necromancy Cosmetica Matte Lipstick – Favorite color: “Deadly Nightshade” (light grey with soft blue undertones/as worn by me). A tube lipstick that smells vaguely of crayons. 💄 LimeCrime Velveteen – Favorite color “Cashmere” (greige). A liquid lipstick that smells of sickly sweet butter creme frosting. 💄 Jeffree Star Velour Liquid Lipstick -The only color I have tried is “Unicorn Blood” (dark, rusty red/as worn by me), and I really don’t love it on me. I don’t love the formula either, it’s really quite soupy and drippy. It smells of acrid, acidic fruit candies. 💄 Kat Von D Everlasting Liquid Lipstick -Favorite color: “Ayesha” (pinky lavender/as worn by me). I think, even after everything I have tried, KvD’s will always be my favorite. It’s unfragranced as far as I can tell (though other folks say otherwise), the formula never gets gross and crusty throughout the day, and it’s not *too* much of a hassle to wash off. Second favorite color: “A-Go-Go” (bright orange red)
💄 Ofra Long Lasting Liquid Lipsticks – Favorite color: “Purple Rain” (pearly deep purple/as worn by me). Many folks comment on how good these smell, but I don’t get that at all. The few I have tried have a mild, chemical smell. The colors are gorgeous and there’s usually a coupon code floating around at all times for this brand.
💄 Black Moon Cosmetics Liquid Lipsticks – Favorite color: “Grim” (cool toned brown). I love the packaging from this brand and the product itself smells plastic-y and a little sweet, sort of like the top of one of your old Strawberry Shortcake doll’s heads.
💄 Lipland Liquid Lipstick -Favorite color: “Retrograde” (purple grey/as worn by me). Several folks say this this shade is similar to MAC’s stone, but I can’t personally confirm that. Like Ofra, the smell is vaguely chemical (it reminds me of synthetic fibers, like warm polyester, I guess?)
💄 DNA Cosmetics Intense Pop of Color Lipstick – The only color I have tried from DNA is “Disco” (silver grey/as worn by me). I recall thinking that the formula wasn’t very …slippy? It was kind of dry, and it had a lot of drag to it. Smelled waxy. But I really dig the ghastly grey blue, and it doesn’t smell like mint, so it remains in rotation.
💄 Colourpop Lippie Stix – As much as I loathe the name (which is super dumb), I do love the Lippie Stix. They smell exactly like crayons–which is totally okay with me– and at $5 each they are relatively cheap in comparison to the rest of the stuff on this list. They have a million colors and though I don’t find the formula to be very long wearing, well, I don’t fault it much for that. I mean, you get what you pay for, right? Favorite color: “Tootsi” (described as a cool-toned grey beige, but it seems pretty warm toned on me) Bonus: they have matching lip liners (“Lippie Pencils“) for every shade they sell, and “Marshmallow” is a greyed out lavender that matches just about everything I am into lately.
💄 Rituel de Fille Forbidden Lipstick – Favorite color: “Strange Creature” (cool, silvery grey). There is not much I don’t love about this brand. I believe it’s run by three sisters, which of course I find powerfully compelling, and their aesthetic is absolutely gorgeous, full of magic and mystery. Their Forbidden Lipstick smells waxy and faintly herbaceous. Lavender, perhaps? Exactly like how you’d want something that looks like this to smell. Tip: “Strange Creature” goes very nicely with ColourPop’s Lippie Pencil in “Marshmallow”!
💄 Bite Beauty Amuse Bouche Lipstick – Favorite color: “Lavender Jam” (electric blue-violet). I’ve saved the weirdest for last with this one. This is a beautifully creamy formula, and I really love this stunning color, but the strange thing is, sometimes this smells a little minty to me, just for a split-second. But as soon as I catch notice of it, it immediately morphs into scent of a lime freezee pop. Odd! However, there is no mint listed in the ingredients anywhere, and the so allow it to remain on the list.
Bohemian and free-spirited Anne Brigman was a photographer whose work seems to draw upon a strange and wonderful blend of pagan mythology, European symbolism, and “her childhood exposure to the native beliefs of the Hawaiian people.”
Best known for dramatic photographs of the female nude, Anne made nature her studio –California’s spectacular and still relatively remote Sierra Nevada Mountains –and fully integrated the human body into the landscape.
I read the following about Anne Brigman and couldn’t stop thinking about it:
“She visited the Sierras often enough that she developed what she called “friendships” with several individual trees and peaks. In 1926, after she’d become an established photographer, Brigman wrote an article for Camera Craft magazine in which she described her relationship with one such tree. “One day on one of my wanderings I found a juniper – the most wonderful juniper that I’ve met in my eighteen years of friendship among them…It was a great character like the Man of Gallilee or Moses the Law-giver, or the Lord Buddha, or Abraham Lincoln…Storm and stress well borne made it strong and beautiful. I climbed into it. Here was the perfect place for a figure; here the place for the right arm to rest, and even though my feet were made clumsy by boots, I could see and feel where the feet would fit perfectly into the cleft that went to its base.”
Brigman describes how she spent a couple days “caring” for the tree; tidying up around its roots, removing unattractive stones and pebbles, trimming “small extraneous branches” and generally preparing it for a photograph that she might never take. ”
A year before her death in Eagle Rock, near Los Angeles, in 1950, she published a book of her poems and photographs titled Songs of a Pagan. I would love to have this book on my shelf, but at $550+, well, I suppose I will have to admire this pagan priestess of photography and her gentle dryads from afar.
The Heart of the Storm, 1914
Female Nude Standing on Large Rock Over a Lake, 1923
This is has not been a great month, but I am not even going to get into it, because I am angry–I’ve been at a low boil for days–but if I delve into and explore any reasons why, even in some vague, oblique way, I just know I will commit to words something regrettable. Suffice it to say I am taking many, many deep breaths and trying not to spend too much time dwelling on things.
However, it has put me in a perfect mood to talk about the perfumes that I hate. I am in fine form to go on about such things right now, there is no doubt about it. Without further preamble, here are some shitty-ass perfumes that I despise. Folks who know my preferences and predilections have probably read these rants before, and for that I apologize; feel free to skip right to the comments where you can tell me all about a scent that you loathe. Let’s commiserate together, stinky friends.
The first scents on this list are probably the most hateful because they evoke an aggressive emotional response from me. The rest, eh, they’re just really gross.
I hate Victor and Rolf’s Flowerbomb so much that I nearly fly into a rage. Described as “an explosive bouquet of fresh and sweet notes”, I personally think it smells like a conflagration of petty spite, mean-spiritedness, and small minds. Like bigoted small town pageant moms and the shitty popular girls in 80s movies. It simultaneously makes me want to cringe and cry. It’s one of Daim Blond’s (see below) awful cronies. It’s all the Heathers. Also: it’s an enormous lie. It smells nothing like any flower. As to what it does smell like, precisely, I cannot pinpoint. A shallow dish of sugar water with some sneezy, cloying powder mixed in. Like Koolaid, I guess. It smells like a celebutaunt-inspired Koolaid. Or…unless, of course, there is a blossom or bloom that smells like Bongo jeans and hair-sprayed bangs and the wretched duo of Jennifer W. and Amanda P. in the 7th and 8th grade. How’s it feel to be the inspiration for the world’s worst fragrance, you dumb, hateful bitches.
With regard to Serge Luten’s Daim Blond, I do smell all of the things that people seem to love about it: the elusive whiff of soft suede from the inner pocket of an impossibly expensive handbag, the cool floral iris, the bowl of apricots sitting in a beam of afternoon sunlight.And I almost feel badly saying anything negative at all, since it came from a very special, generous person. On me, however, this does not add up to anything special – just a lightly sweet, vaguely fruity scent that lingers just above my skin and doesn’t seem to want to get to know me very well. Pretty much like most of my high school experience. But then again, this smells like everything I didn’t like about most girls my age in high school, and honestly, probably many people who are my age now (see also: everyone in Naples, FL).
This isn’t to make a judgement about you folks who love it, of course – it takes all kinds. But it’s difficult to look at something like fragrance objectively, when it conjures so many associations and memories with it. And to me, Daim Blond is starting to smell like everyone who every ignored me, and so I in turn came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t want to waste my time with these boring, uninteresting people anyhow. See? Now I am making judgements. It’s gone from a slightly pretty, expensive smelling scent to boring and uninteresting. I think Daim Blonde basically sums up Normcore for me; I have taken to calling it “Dame Bland”.
And there’s more…
💩 Burberry Brit: expecting scones & Earl Grey? Nope, you get fruit cocktail and jello molds
A gathering of death related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From somber to hilarious, from informative to creepy, here’s a snippet of things that have been reported on or journaled about related to matters of death & dying & mortality.
Mothertonguetied: The Fantasy of Belonging. Sonya Vatomsky on memory and language and losing parts of yourself and being seen for what you’ve become. There’s probably a Russian word for all of those things; Sonya might whisper it to us and seal it with a black-lipped kiss.
Bad Books For Bad People Tenebrous Kate and Jack Guignol cover the weirdest, kinkiest, and most outrageous fiction they can unearth.
[EDIT: This article was originally written in 2016. I have noticed a large amount of traffic pointing to it and realized it was all directed from the same blog post. Please allow me to point out that art is dark as often as it is light, and not all of the subjects that artists tackle are positive, beautiful, or full of happy thoughts. Artists often paint their own trials and traumas onto the canvas, and their palettes frequently reflect the very real horrors in this world. That does not make these works “evil” or “satanic” or promoting “depraved illuminati Luciferian practices” Critical thinking, people. It’s a thing. And shame on that blogger for using art to promote her ridiculous agenda.]
Polish artist Aleksandra Waliszewska creates some of your most brutal nightmares: those savage, dreadful dreams that set a deep sleeper to screaming, and where upon waking, you can only gibber incoherent nonsense regarding your nocturnal horrors and why you were moved to wet the bed in terror last night.
Unfortunate events abound, and a trail of carnage, both physical and psychological, is an underlying theme that streaks gore-soaked and deep through Waliszewska’s paintings. Whether random or ritualistic, the violence runs rampant, with characters either coming to brutal ends or who are depicted perpetrating and engaging in the brutality themselves. Sometimes it is unclear as to who is the victim and who is the villain, and yet, even those who would seem blood-splattered prey possess malignant, nearly obscene expressions. Even the animals in Wasilewska’s depraved visions sport sly, wicked countenances.
Beasts of every variety, as well as children–creatures one normally associates with innocence and purity–are in on the mayhem as well, participating in malicious behaviors and gruesome, perverse deeds. Whether against the backdrop of a well-lit classroom, a shadowy forest landscape, or the viscera-strewn confines of a dusty cave, madness, magic, and mythology cavort in hand in bloody hand.
And yet we can’t look away, can we? Waliszewska is flaying the face of the mundane and peeling back the layers to give us a peek at what lies beneath–attraction and repulsion and the multilayered shitshow strata that is the human condition.
When it comes to the the symbolism and meaning one might be inclined to seek in the jarring imagery and morbid figures she creates, one gets the sense from previous interviews and commentary from the artist herself that Waliszewska is more interested in form and emotion than imbuing her works with a deeper forethought and “over-intellectualizing” such things. An artist of few words, when asked what it is that draws people to her work, she notes laconically, “…I can only deduce it has something to do with a fascination with sex and violence.” (source)
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and recipient of scholarships awarded by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Aleksandra Waliszewska has had more than 20 solo exhibitions in Poland and abroad over the past decade, and has her work published in collections by My Dance The Skull, United Dead Artists, Les Editions Du 57, Drippy Bone Books, and Editions Kaugummi.
All images owned by Aleksandra Waliszewska. Her work can be found on her tumblr, her flickr and her Facebook page.
(This article was originally posted at Dirge; the site is no longer active.)
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“A Chilling Chosen Few” was originally written for and posted at After Dark In the Playing Fields on Halloween in 2010, as a companion piece for 12 Terrifying Tales, a list of spooky stories which I also shared again here at Unquiet Things earlier this month.
Please note that, although this list is now several years old, these remain my go-to freaky films: the kind which leaves bruised and haunting imprints on the memory, the shadowy images I watch on the movie screen of my inner eyelids when I can’t sleep at night and have worked myself up into a fever pitch of paranoia and panic.
What are some of your favorites for eerie, eldritch viewing? Whether mildly gruesome or pants-shittingly terrifying, tell me about all about them in the comments! (I live in permanent FOMO, you know, so I can’t stand the thought that there is something amazing out there that I don’t know about and have not yet seen.)
Suspiria (Dario Argento), 1977 A moody, atmospheric assault of the senses. A young American woman arrives at a European ballet school where nothing is as it seems. Hallucinatory mayhem ensues.
The Resurrected (Dan O’Bannon) 1992 An intelligent, brooding adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward”. Chris Sarandon at his creepily aristocratic best.
Cube (Vincenzo Natali) 1997 Kafkaesque sci-horror reminiscent of a visceral Twilight Zone episode. A handful of strangers wake up inside a monstrous maze of interlocking cubicles which are armed with lethal traps. Why were these individuals chosen? What is this place they are in? Is there even anything outside the Cube?
Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (John D. Hancock) 1971 An eerie, dreamlike film in which a woman’s already fragile psyche undergoes further trauma at the isolated farmhouse where she initially sought solace. Is there really something sinister going on between the mysterious drifter and the baleful townfolk – or is Jessica spiraling further into delusion and madness?
Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder) 2004 Romero’s 1978 original was “sacred ground” for horror buffs, but even though I saw this remake 6 years ago, there are some nights I still can’t sleep thinking upon certain scenes; to this day I am convinced I will awake to find my neighbor’s child gazing upon me hungrily, ready to mindlessly, viciously eat my face off.
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (Bob Clarke) 1972 A strangely awkward film, a bit of nostalgic whimsy on my part. A flamboyant theatre director brings his acting troupe to a remote island cemetery to raise the dead,as a practical joke. This turns out badly for all involved; as we all know, these practices are no laughing matter.
Lemora: A Child’s Tale of The Supernatural (Richard Blackburn) 1975 An orphaned young innocent is lured to a remote mansion on the outskirts of the strange southern gothic shantytown populated by bizarre mutants, and soon finds herself in the clutches of the wicked (and undead) Lemora. A long, unsettling nightmare of a film.
Imprint (Takashi Miike, Masters of Horror) 2005 A tale of lost love that grows stranger and more horrifying as the story unfolds. Contains one of the grisliest torture scenes that I have ever seen.
The Mist (Frank Darabont) 2007 Excellent Stephen King Adaptation (at least I thought so, but I don’t want to argue with you about it); local folks are trapped in a supermarket when a mysterious mist envelops the town – among the incredibly frightening monsters here, the worst and most brutish might actually be the human people. Also, I think this may have the bleakest ending of any movie, ever.
Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey) 1962 After a traumatic accident, a woman seems to be losing all contact with the world of the living. Worthwhile viewing for the gorgeously oppressive atmosphere alone.
The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona) 2008 A woman returns to her childhood home – a seaside orphanage – to reopen the establishment and raise her adopted son. The child’s mysterious disappearance, and frightening, otherworldly goings-on contribute to what is a quietly chilling, heartbreaking film.
A Tale of Two Sisters (Ji-woon Kim) 2003 A tale of tragedy and madness, based on an old Korean legend/folktale.
Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot) 1955
*And a bonus pick from my dear friend The Kindred Spirit, who shares that since having seen Les Diaboliques, “I have been wary of face-like bathtub faucets ever since!”
Just kidding. There will never be a new black! This is evidenced by the 666 (approx.) black tee shirts we have in our wardrobe. Leather harnesses, tulle skirts, and velvet cloaks look marvelous and are great fun for a night out (or hell, grocery shopping or a trip to the post office if you like to give the normies a show) but let’s face it–at the end of the day we just want to be comfortable. And there is nothing, I mean nothing, more comfortable than a black tee shirt. Yes, black tee shirts are more cozy. There’s science to back that up, somewhere.
We also know that we, and no doubt you, too, need to give our pile of ratty old black tees a thorough going-through because man, that shit’s old and nasty. Pilled, worn threadbare, curry-stained and eternally covered with cat fur—mein Gott, we’re gross.
Maybe, and this is just a suggestion, but give it some thought: these loyal wardrobe staples have given you their all and it’s time to let them die with dignity. Gather them up into the charity pile. Or cut ’em up and use ’em for crafts or home improvement projects or light bondage with a consensual partner (make sure they’re your tees on this last point; tossing out someone else’s stuff is likely not to result in sexytimes.)
…wait, wait! Put that middle finger away. You don’t think we’d make you go through such an agonizing exercise without some recommendations as to replacements for your beloved black scraps of comfort, do you? See below for some wicked black tee suggestions that are anything but basic.
Dead Inside Muscle Tee
Cozy coffin times with the“Dead Inside” muscle tee. FOXBLOOD // $39
Feminism Means Equality Tee
The Feminism Means Equality tee: shit yeah it does, motherfuckers. CatCoven // $25
I started thinking about all of this when I finally gave in and bought one of the 
The Resurrected (Dan O’Bannon) 1992
