Day Tripper from Jeremy fusco on Vimeo.

The fashion film I styled when 9 months pregnant! SS11 Meadham Kirchhoff Collection Special
Shot by my fabulously talented husband.
Now on ASOVFF.

Please click on the link:- http://testmag.co.uk/painted-eyes/

Here are some screen grabs from the film for you to enjoy.

Screen grab from a film for Test Mag I styled; shot by Daniel Sannwald.

PAINTED EYES

Director: Daniel Sannwald
Director of Photography: Ruta Balseviciute
Stylist: Tamara Cincik
Model: Elena Sudakova @ FM
Hair: Hiroshi Matsushita using Kiehls
Make Up: Thomas De Kluyver @ D and V Management using Mac Pro
Music: Architeq (Fulgeance Remix) by Birds of Prey
Stylist’s Assistant: Siam Goorwich
Photographer’s Assistants: Moses Power, Christian Roman Thumm
Digital Assistant: Studio Private
Lighting and Location: Studio Private
All fashion by Michael Van Der Ham
Sunglasses by Janz & Cooper, jewellery by Erickson Beamon
Copyright TEST 2011

While I work out the looks, poses and how to look intriguing, rather than just bulging at the seams, for my soon to be revealed ode to how to looking like the stylist I am while growing week on week, as I am now 5 months pregnant, in the true spirit of diversion, here is a sonnet of love to all those Winter Wonderland inspirations, primarily gleaned from my quintessential top five favourite film list: David Lean’s epic and gloriously beautiful ‘Dr. Zhivago’.

This film has seen me through so many epochs: from childhood Christmas holidays, to litmus tests with boys, to snowed in in New York, through to New Year’s Day two years ago, when I needed some TLC, unaware that life was about to change forever…  I have been building up for another sitting: that’s the glory of the modern age – dvds which you can switch on, off, pause, choose; rather than trying to sit through a film en famille on Boxing Day, when your mother and grandmother would rather discuss whom in the film used to be married to whom and what to do with the garden next Spring…

So here is my litany of timeless Winter inspirations, to show why capes, cossack collars and (fake!) fur trimmed cloaks are year on year a jaw-gasping choice to entertain the glamour of our snow-sieged hearts, eyes and escapist imaginations.  Having just been bought the most delicious vintage red cape (thank you so much my darling Juicy aka Sarah Reygate, for Christmas – perfect for bulge explosion pregnancy stark glamour, mixed with Red Riding Hood playfulness methinks!), from Mary Portas’ beautifully decorated spanking brand new Living and Giving Shop (109 Regent’s Park Road, Primrose Hill, NW1), which was designed by my old friend Kate Monckton (once the best and most helpful pr in London, now a one to watch interior designer: http://www.katemonckton.com/) , it seems fitting to hark back to true style and show a gallery of glamspirations, perfectly (like red capes) suited to bright white snowy days and misty, dark nights.

Geraldine Chaplin arrives back from Paris to Moscow; at the train station in all her glorious Parisienne couture.

This utterly gorgeous colour combination of pale pink with soft grey, marking her time spent learning the art of glamour in Paris – perfection.

Too much is just enough.

The scenes with Lara (Julie Christie), when Yuri (Omar Sharif) falls in love with her, coincide with front-line on the Eastern Front during WW1, then the revolution and thus the colour palette shifts to utilitarian taupes, khaki and earthy tones.  Echoing images from Soviet stark propaganda, these are then wholly practical: woollens, tweeds and furs, yet utterly romantic.

Julie Christie showing how blonde on blonde is always beauty.

Lara an Yuri arriving at the Summer House.

Genius art direction, or how to make sunny Spain and wax look like freezing Russia on ice.

Elizabeth Taylor showing how to rock a mono cape and hat look at Heathrow Airport in The VIPs

The VIPs, directed by another great of British cinema, Antony Asquith and based loosely on the true story of Vivien Leigh’s attempt to leave Laurence Olivier, is another film where each outfit is jawdropping in its chicly cut simplicity: stuck at an airport as fog stops all flights, somehow fabulosity never leaves the room, while scene on scene Elizabeth Taylor shows the value of cut and shape, aligned with perfect taste.

Hooded perfection in The VIPs.

A Matter of Life and Death

Jack Cardiff cinematographer: the camera genius inspired by Rembrandt.  His work with Powell and Pressburger: a marriage of form, art and magic.

If you do anything this weekend, please try to see ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, or ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, or ‘Black Narcissus’ (my first Archers viewing film aged 7, I was totally entranced), or ‘The Red Shoes’ .  I guarantee technicolor transportation…

My husband – yes there is still a novel roll of the tongue each time I saw this, barely 7 months into our marriage – has promised to book us tickets for the 3D IMAX experience of Tim Burton’s ‘Alice’, on the next available day he has off from shooting the film he is working on.

Tim Burton's vision of Alice

Arthur Rackham's colour palette as sported by Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter

Helena Bonham Carter channelling Elizabeth 1st as the Red Queen

Helena Bonham Carter is a local resident and someone who though I love styling, I am glad doesn’t use one: her off-kilter reworkings of the Dior 1947 silhouette are gloriously garish in a world of good taste, I would mourn their passing, were she to change.  I love too, the idea of her, Tim and their children living in close proximity, sharing our air and views, with their lives of make-believe and creative dreams.  Were we to one day to become friends, I would naturally invite her to our allotment for a lunch of salad leaves and tomatoes, perhaps there we might catch a view of the running rabbit…

Alice is a girl for all times: the pre-pubescent questing naughty know-it-all at the dawn of her womanhood, the light side of the Poltergeist looking glass: searching for answers to the changes in her physicality and surroundings from riddles;  beset by ever-shifting realities and confronting the maturising truth. These trials are at the root of all rite of passage quests, from the Odyssey to Oz: that people and life is not as they seem, we cannot trust everyone.  Sometimes we have to step off the path ( the consistent Fairy Tale motif) to find the answers to our questings and questions.

I have grabbed together some of my favourite Alice images, I hope you shall enjoy them too.  Have a lovely weekend/Mother’s Day!

Tim Walker's Lily Alice

Arthur Rackham's Alice

Arthur Rackham is a huge influence on me: I love his sombre palette, weaving magic from dismal tones of Autumn malaise, he somehow manifests the eeriness of half-recollected dreams.  A shoot I styled for Purple once, was completely referenced in his work, and though that reference might not be obvious in the result, it laid a foundation baseline of colours and shapes for me to work with.

John Tenniel's original Alice

The first Alice illustrations were by John Tenniel: she looks a very moody girl!

Jan Svankmajer’s ‘Alice’ was a gold dust filmic find one night at the Scala when I was an undergraduate at UCL.

Alice as seen through the eyes of Jan Svankmajer

Jan’s take on Alice, echoes the work of that other famous Czech also called Jan, who I was lucky enough to work with once in Prague, Jan Saudek.  Czech was once called Bohemia: the essence of eccentricity is at the heart of their very DNA.

That awkward unsettling time between our new teenage self and the overpadded child body

I shot a story once with Serge Leblon, where he built an Alice set in his sitting room in Brussels: a mousehole gap between two worlds, sprinkled with muddy earth, mushrooms from the local gourmet shop, as Alice tore through, her red shoes and half her torso left on our side of the page.  I wish I could find it now, perhaps she is having too much fun on the other side of the Looking Glass…

Disney Alice aka the first time ever I saw her face...

Psychedelic cat - quite a thing to set before a crazed Red Queen

Return to the source: the real deal Alice - OF course she was a brunette! Alice Liddell, the girl who inspired Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July–

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear–

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream–
Lingering in the golden gleam–
Life, what is it but a dream?

The Liddellettes

Pre-raphaelite, I am sure she wished like I she had torn down the rabbit hole and was as glad of all her adventures, trials though they are, as I am of mine.