He is here, with more here.

Someone over at Dior thought Victoire de Castellane’s new flower and insect-heavy jewelry collection needed it’s own island inside Second Life. I made a visit, filmed it, and set it to Philip Glass, resulting in overly dramatic virtual home movie.

These are from Art Force One, a French group. Contact them if you want a pair. See my tag:Sneakers. Kicks, and Trainers for more. I DO NOT MAKE OR SELL SHOES. (I get lots of comments from people who want these but don’t bother to read the sentence above.)

Again, these are from Art Force One, Contact them if you want a pair. I don’t yet make or sell shoes.

The artist, Catherine Bay, outfits performers in latex recreations of the famous Disney ensemble, and then they go about their business reciting a script that includes the lines:

My place in society does not allow me
to play Russian roulette,
to open a casino,
to carry on a sexual relationship with Bill Clinton,
to dress myself out of a fashion magazine,
to wear sneakers Made in China.

Whatever. I just adore the crude English translation of the French explanation: “The multiplied image of White Snow evokes the fall of marvellous in the industry of Disney, its effigy hung up again with our banality…”
There’s video here.

The Film:

In 1923 Cecil B. DeMille filmed the Ten Commandments, a film he’d make again in 1954 with full color and sound. At the time, its sets were the largest ever made; the walls of The City of the Pharaoh were 720 feet long, 120 feet high and required 1,500 laborers to create. When filming was complete Cecil ordered the sets toppled and buried to prevent rival film crews from using them. The film itself was hugely successful and more than recovered the cost of production making over $4 million.

The Designer:

In 1906, designer and illustrator Paul Iribe launched the satirical journal Le Témoin (The Witness), a weekly anti-fascist publication produced with artists Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, and others. Two years later, Iribe became famous among the design community after illustrating a brochure of Paul Poiret’s new fashion collection with clean, elegant lines and flat color. Shortly after, Iribe opened his own studio and began designing fashion, fabrics, and home furnishings, Mesopotamian inspired works art historians would later cite as the beginning of the art deco movement. Iribe then moved to New York after WWI and began working for Vogue. By the 1920’s, he’d traveled west to take part in that new moving picture business where one of his first jobs was designing the giant sets for DeMille’s 1923, Ten Commandments. After designing and directing several films in Hollywood, he moved back to Paris and designed a jewelry collection for Coco Chanel, a woman he would be romantically linked to although never marry. He died in 1935 at 52.

The Ruins:

In 1998 I heard about “The Lost City of DeMille,�? as it has come to be known, and insisted I see it for myself. This was in the early days of the internet and all I had to go on was “it was filmed 100 miles north of LA in dunes near the ocean.�? I got out my maps and the only dunes I could find were near a small town called Guadalupe. So I told my college roommate we were going on an adventure to see some real fake Egyptian ruins. He was game and we headed off up the coast. Nearly 200 miles later (not 100) we were there. (Well, I’m leaving out us getting lost and the car sinking in the sand.)

The exact location was easy to spot. It was the one dune covered in plaster debris. The sand was so soft we could reach our arm in and feel the whole set right under us. But we didn’t even need to dig; whole areas were exposed, including a hand (of Ramses?) lying on the sand. Because the film was shot in a duo-tone process, giving some range of color but not the full spectrum, the sets were painted in color, color that was still intact on unexposed pieces.

I’ve since read that excavations were underway, and a team was brought in with ground-penetrating radar that revealed as much as two-thirds of the set were still burried. So a month ago (September 2006) I went back to see the progress. Sadly, there is no progress; the dunes look the same. Only now you can’t even see what was there because the Ten Commandments ruins share the dunes with the Snowy Plover, an endangered bird. The entire area is roped off now with signs every 20 feet all the way to the ocean.

This is all well and good, save the birds, protect the set, but nothing seems to be happening in terms of raising money for an excavation. I’m not surprised Hollywood doesn’t care, they’ve never seemed too interested in their own history, but you’d think the art and design world could pool resources to uncover Iribe’s sets. Considering his chairs from the same period sell for $15,000, and an Iribe cabinet auctioned at Christie’s earlier this year was valued at $750,000(!), you’d think his set would be worth something to someone. Until then, if you want to see the sets you’ll have to settle for the artifacts on display at the charming craftsman style bungalow that houses the Dunes Center in Guadalupe.

For more info:

The Lost City of DeMille

The Dunes Center

I’m way too close to the screen.
Will I ever be a real journalist and get to sit in the good seats behind me?
Marie looked at me. Awesome.
Molly Shannon?
Molly Shannon.
My mother will love this.
Is this even scripted?
I’d like some champagne and cake.
There’s going to be an upswing in sales of flowering teas.
I’d like an assortment of pastries.
How is she not getting fat?
My god her boobs are big! – oh wait – it’s just her knees pulled to her chest.
Sheep, chickens, fresh milk and eggs, a “cottage� – Martha Stewart has found her favorite part of the movie.
Are any pastry shops still open?

What I adore is Ms. Coppola’s fondness for embracing what other filmmakers would reshoot or cut. Sofia lets a hat flip off during an embrace, an elephant overzealously explore a costume, birds flap in the cloisters over a wedding ceremony. Whether intentional or not, here it says even royalty isn’t immune to forces of nature. Perhaps it’s the abundance of these awkward moments that lead a critic to describe her film as “Marie Antoinette’s home movies,� a description I can’t disagree with.

And like home movies, Marie Antoinette isn’t big on plot. Is that a bad thing? No. Not when the footage is eighteenth-century teenagers running around Versailles. It’s like Mtv’s Laguna Beach but with political significance. I actually can’t wait to see it again, although next time I’m smuggling in a tiny bottle of Sofia’s own sparkling wine and a box of airmailed macaroons from Laduree, the same patisserie that supplied them for the film.

A note on the previews:
Ignore the most recent one; it shows way too much and the tone is all wrong. The first preview, the one with the New Order music, is perfect. And no, it’s not all 80’s music. It’s like half period, half 80’s, and it totally works.

Also, the film was based on the book, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, by Antonia Fraser.

From Art Force One (they’re French, of course).

Related: More Custom Kicks: Nikes from Art Force One

Again, these are from Art Force One, Contact them ( email sabrina at art-force-one) if you want a pair. I don’t yet make or sell shoes.

Check out Steven Meisel’s Makeover Madness in the July Italia Vogue.

While the U.S. Vogue does another safe Nicole Kidman shoot Italian Vogue delivers fierce insect/vampire insanity.