Category Archive for People + Pets
KODONA FASHION INSPIRATION: ARTHUR RIMBAUD.
The next time you’re itching to dress Kodona – comme un garçon victorien – call upon the ghost of French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Ah, quelle histoire! As a boy, Rimbaud often wandered to neighboring countries and had to be brought home by the police. The poetry bug bit at age 16. Soon after, Rimbaud may have joined the Paris Commune and was possibly gang-raped by soldiers. The poet became a street-dwelling anarchist, complete with long hair, shabby clothes, and body lice – not unlike kids today, eh? He moved into the home of Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine, who promptly fell for the sullen blue-eyed teen and abandoned his pregnant wife for him. The pair ran to London and took up la vie bohème, spiking it with absinthe, opium, and hashish. They traveled; they fought; in Brussels, a drunk and raving Verlaine shot at his lover and hit him in the wrist. Quand il a realisé que Verlaine avait perdu la tête, the boy had him arrested. Verlaine was subjected to a humiliating interrogation of his lifestyle and sentenced to prison for two years.
Rimbaud returned to France, and at age 18, completed Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell). The work, which switches between poetry and prose, is “widely regarded as one of the pioneering instances of modern Symbolist writing and a description of that drôle de ménage (domestic farce) life with Verlaine.”
Througout his twenties, Rimbaud worked random jobs and extended his travels to uncharted terrains. He enlisted in the Dutch army for a free ride to Java (as soon as he reached the shore, he deserted). As an importer-exporter (possibly dealing with slaves), he led caravans through Cyprus, Yemen, Egypt, Ethiopia. A knee carcinoma forced his return to France. His leg was amputated. At age 37, he was dead.
Un soir, j’ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux. Et je l’ai trouvée amère. Et je l’ai injuriée.
One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.
+ Arthur Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell), 1873.
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OUJI GOTHIC ARISTOCRAT BRIAN ERMANSKI.
Ouji a) is the Japanese word for “prince”; b) describes the male counterpart to Gothic Lolita. One little ouji apparently got lost and wound up on the streets of New York:
Artist Brian Ermanski calls his look “Edwardian Punk Fop,” which puts him in good company with the dandy/aristocrat oujis. You can read New York Metro‘s style interview with him here, and in New York Look Book: A Gallery of Street Fashion, which just arrived in stores.
LA CARMINA
