Happy 100th anniversary, Charles Addams!

The american cartoonist known for his particularly dark humour and macabre characters would have been 100 years old today, being born the 7th of January, 1912.
Google commemorates his bday with a funny logo of his iconic "family".

I love the original newspaper cartoons and I loved the films (the ones with Angelica Houston and Christina Ricci, note!). Who was your favourite character? I loved Morticia (as a fashion icon) but my favourite was Wednesday. 

Morticia Addams' dress

December is just round the corner so I am very busy making new pieces for the website. I am particularly interested in evening wear at the minute as it is what people are demanding right now for Christmas. I just finished several pieces including a stunning 30s/40s lace gown and a dramatic velvet pencil number with a breathtaking lace piece going across the chest. I will post them here as soon as they go on the website.
In the meantime.....

 I want to show you the real Morticia Addams dress! I came across it while checking my polyvore page (feel free to check out my sets, here)

It is for auction! The starting bid is from $2000 (not cheap) on liveauctioneers.com (this is the link, in case you want to have a quick nosey).

This is the description: 900. Angelica Huston "Morticia Addams" dress from Addams Family Values. (Paramount, 1993). A full-length form-fitting black gown with cobweb motif on the sleeves worn by Angelica Huston in the role of "Morticia Addams" in Addams Family Values.

This dress looks fantastic. Much simpler than I thought, despite all that beading work on sleeves and godets.

However, I have to say, being a cinematographic piece, I was expecting something more complex and extravagant, more haute-couture- inspired, like the other design shown in the pic below. Maybe, layers of lace, ripped/unfinished chiffon, jet black jewels sewn into the bodice?... I still love it, thought. 

I always wanted this dress, since I was little. I love the shape, so 30s. I am starting to wonder if I should make something like this for my label.
What do you think? Do you like it or like me, expected more? Would you wear it to outside of Halloween or Whitby/Treffen Gothic Festival?

Here is a link to a blog devoted to Morticia Addams. Very good pictures and graphics.
http://fymorticiaaddams.tumblr.com/

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland - a first look through the looking glass

As a Tim Burton's fan, I can't wait to go to the cinema to watch the last colorful but dark film "Alice in Wonderland".
Here is a critique I found on the Guardian website:
"Burton's version will be a sort-of sequel in which a 17-year-old Alice returns to Wonderland, allowing for a darker, more adult-orientated vision that takes in characters and storylines from both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Frankly, the sight of seven-time Burton collaborator Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, resembling a dayglo-version of Adam Ant in his heyday, with a bit of Ronald McDonald thrown in for good measure, looks enough to have most small children running screaming from the room in terror".

Now we are talking!...

Those old vampires: mormons!

More about vampires...

Did you know that in the 1920's and 1930's, more than 30 films came out of Britain which depicted Mormons as evil vampiric perverts?

The films, shown only in burlesque houses due to their terrifyingly honest nature, often portrayed a Mormon villain who used mesmeric power to seduce young girls into becoming his polygamous sex slaves. "Trapped by the Mormons" (1922), the most successful of these films, was so popular that it spawned the sequel, "Married to a Mormon". (www.myfilm.com/2005_10_01_archive.html)

Want to know more? Here the link: http://www.trappedbythemormons.com/trapped_index.htm

Sweeny Todd, a victorian version of a C.S.I. episode

First of all, as you might have already guessed by this blog's look, I AM a Tim Burton´s fan (well, I hate The Planet Of The Apes but that film is crap anyway, everyone would agree with me, I suppose) BUT I am not too sure about Sweeny Todd, I am afraid. The film follows the same lines as his other films: gorgeous decadent and gothic aesthetic, interesting storyline, excellent actors, dramatic and not-at-all cheesy music....but too much blood for me. I might be a missy sissy but while I was watching the film, I suddenly had a memory crisis, I didn´t know if I was watching a Burton´s film or an episode of C.S.I....

but Grissom wasn´t there......
and if he was, he would had been one of the corpses swimming in the disgusting mincemeat machine maker next to that "auswitch-like" oven....

I´ve done a bit of research and I have noticed I am not the only one to have had not a very very good impression from the film. As an illustrative example, this is what I've read on http://www.product-reviews.net/:

"It seems like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street isn’t the only one doing a bit of butchery! Warner Bros have asked director Tim Burton to ‘butcher’ his own film, cutting it from an R-rated Movie to a PG-13 MPAA. According to reports, the early footage from the film was so violently bloody that the studio executives have become squeamish and have requested the film to be re-cut.
A report in the Daily Mail has said,
“Tim’s not happy that the studio is asking for so many cuts to the cutting, as it were. The thing is, the studio really likes the film and they want to make it accessible to as big an audience as possible - which means stemming the blood flow. But that’s a bit difficult for a story involving a guy who gets high slitting throats.”
In the Film, unsuspecting victims sit in the mechanical chairs of Todd’s barber shop expecting a short back and sides. Sweeney then slices their throats before opening a trap door and allowing the bodies to travel into the lair of his wife, Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). Once his wife has the bodies, she uses them to make her meat pies".