Das is Deutsche

Don't be bashful Germany...show us your dark side!

by Helmut Newton

"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. "
Friedrich Nietzsche

by Ellen Von Unwerth

by Otto Dix


by Bruce Weber for Deutsche Vogue


Still from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, dir. Robert Weine

by Helmut Newton

Marlene Dietrich

Karl Lagerfeld

"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone. "
Arthur Schopenhauer



Kraftwerk

Nadja Auermann by Helmut Newton

from the Baader-Meinhof series by Gerhard Richter

Klaus Nomi

.......Touch my monkey!!

Idolotry: Vivien Leigh

Is there anyone more exquisite than Vivien Leigh?

Though she was more famous for her Hollywood roles and her love life, this English beauty was first and foremost a lady of the stage.


She was launched into international superstardom in 1938 when MGM's David O. Selznick awarded her the much sought-after role of Scarlett O' Hara in his production, Gone With The Wind, ending a worldwide 2-year search for what is still considered to be the female role of Classic Cinema (a search that included every starlet in Hollywood, including Lana Turner, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.)

For her work on the film, she won her first Oscar (pictured with David O. Selznick)


Twelve years later, she played literature's second most famous Southern Belle, Tennessee Williams' Blanche Dubois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, for which she won her second Oscar

Though both married at the time, she and the and the legendary Sir Laurence Olivier fell in love while filming Fire Over England (pictured) together in 1936. They became the golden couple of their age, appearing together in both film and on stage, and capturing the public imagination with their beauty and ostensible passion for one another.

Her transcendent loveliness and natural poise earned her roles as some of literature and history's great beauties, such as Anna Karenina (pictured), Emma Hamilton, and Cleopatra.

"She also had something else: an attraction of the most perturbing nature I had ever encountered. It may have been the strangely touching spark of dignity in her that enslaved the ardent legion of her admirers" -Laurence Oliver

Idolatry: Ginger McKenna Rothstein

Watched one of my favorite films the other night: Martin Scorcese's Casino. The film is simultaneously gleaming and lush in texture, foreboding in tone, and banal in subject matter, with Scorcese's signature extraordinary attention to period details. If you've ever seen this, you know that Dante Ferretti's production design and John Dunn's and Rita Ryack's costumes are as key to the film as its stars.

And the best part of the film for me is Ginger.

Here she is lounging in Pucci and chinchilla, counting her jewels...

And here, she's working it out in a Courreges powder-blue mini-suit and go-go boots, accessorized by private plane....

Quite literally, the trophy wife.

Bombed and ornery at 9am, ready for her tennis lesson.

ACE:
You're a tiger. When you set your mind on doing something, you do it better than anybody

Here's when she really comes off the rails, in a bronze metallic leather pantsuit...

I think we all have a lot to learn from Ginger....

London-based nail designer Sophy Robson even calls her a "nail icon!"

One of the very few instances in Hollywood where the real life character is possibly more gorgeous than the star that plays her. Meet Geraldine McGee Rosenthal (1936-1982). married to Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, head of the Stardust, Hacienda, Fremont and Marina casinos. (Check this out for more true-story scoop).

Sigh. Rest In Peace, Ginger, you crazy bitch.