"and who would you LEAST expect in a mink?", Del Boy asked at the SSFF...:
Macca in mink (Tabloid News - 12/03/07 - Daisy Kay) You know it's a slow news day when the most exciting lead is a snap of anti-fur campaigner Heather Mills wearing a mink coat in... 1989. The Mirror is delighted with their find, even going to the trouble of printing 40 little pictures of a mink's face, informing us that 'it took ALL these to make it'! 'The video will deeply embarrass the anti-fur activist, who last year called Naomi Campbell 'shallow and hypocritical' for wearing fur,' the paper scoffs. (http://www.megastar.co.uk/meganews/news/2007/03/12/sMEG01MTE3MzY4OTUxOTk.html)
A taste of her own medicine for the golddigger everyone loves to hate. :-) And it shows how often 'public outrage' about fur is a question of selective indignation. Anyone remember the fuss about the less htan popular Countess of Wessex wearing a fox hairband, somewhere abroad? Of a type where someone really had to have it your hands to be sure it was real fur? Like someone from the royal household... who couldn't keep him or herself from making a phone call to a newspaper? Now, compare that to the tons of fur that Her Majesty has worn all her life, in full view on television - you'd expect that those at least would have been good for a minor civil war, wouldn't they?
It has come to our ears lately that several West-European nations are considering to include animal rights into their constitutions. I'm looking forward to the discussions. Will 'All animals are created equal?' be in there? With or without the proviso '... but some are more equal than others'? And if someone spots me swatting a mosquito or a wasp (I'm allergic to wasps), can I expect the Law at my doorstep? Or if get stung and survive, should I sue them? Does that mean that veggie-ism is going to be compulsory for all? Obviously, animals are not created equal, unless you're a Jain-Buddhist. But who's going to draw the line? And by what standards?
After all this high-minded talk, time for some good old indecent and even immoral Balkan links. As usual, leave good taste in the umbrella stand at the door, if you can find some space left between the kalashnikovs.
* Ceca - Gore od ljubavi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrFev-svdgI Ceca is a turbofolk icon. In the beginning of this clip I saw the snow coming down on Ceca's barely covered body and I knew there was going to fur in this one. And there was. Two coats even. * Ceca - Lepi Grome Moj http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiAwGNDMtQM I did...! I did see a pussycat! Some cuts with a feathered Ceca sitting in a non-escape-proof birdcage. Depending on your age, you'll be reminded of a classic Avengers episode or of Sylvester and Tweety. * Goga Sekulic - Seksi biznismen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCjhLLRrpNU A silverfox stole (with tail) and some very good feathers, in one clip. Find of the day, Goga is almost too seksi for her furs. * Goga Sekulic - Gubim kontrolu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VY7eeftE-8 Not my favorite kind of furs, but some furlovers may like the camera angle. Goga wants control - get it? * Goga Sekulic - I lepsa i bolja http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkL5im4hkv8 For completenes' sake: soso fur, LQ video, although I think it's actually not a bad clip at all. Everyone you see is Goga, except for the two dancers (I guess). Three persona changes in one line, beat that Madonna. And okay, I like the synthesized bag pipes.
Soft Spot TV ep. 7: Kylie's feeling much better, and Mikhail too
It always amuses me when fur lovers tell me they don't like feathers at all - especially as a lot of them don't seem to know the difference, judging by the various upload sites. People, just watch the best version of Kylie's White Diamond, address below, and then let me know what you think.
France * Lââm - le sang chaud ( feat. Princess Aniès) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFbBoCtclO4 French hiphop, but lovely fluffy bits. Note: avoid the low quality version, this is the good one (for youtube standards). Now, fluffy stuff and a good Laam song together, that would be something.
Ex-Yu * Ana Nikolic - Vatra http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhUvcgbS00Y Bad taste alert. Turbofolk (see Wikipedia) as we know it. The formula is: a dumb House beat, sex, some oriental and ethnic influences, sex, bad taste and sex; I love it. :-) Furs, feathers and nationalism and more sex are optional but frequent. Some furry bits in this one, including a classic white fox fur stole (with tail). * Seka Aleksic - Crno i Zlatno http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_aG4_WUCK0 Bad tast alert 2. Turbofolk for the feathery people.
Ayu * Ayumi Hamasaki - Jewel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhSkjzxfdwU Lovely fur hood and cuff. Kawaii song too (giggles). HQ vid. * Ayumi Hamasaki - Bold n Delicious http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKFKkgiJWi4 Repost, in case you didn't have it yet. I never leave the house without it. * Ayumi Hamasaki - My name is woman (Arena Tour '05) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEyT-VA3Xxg (Possibly a repost, I don't remember.) Ayu acting as domina in white feathers, thankfully the malesubs clear off after a minute. Great feathers - beat that Madonna. Version with subtitles. Video encoding itself LQ-MQ, sadly.
Kylie Kylie Minogue - White Diamond (live Showgirl Homecoming tour) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S5-J7BBsHQ Probably the best feather clip EVER. It's so good it almost makes me weep. The HQ in the Youtube address is probably coincidental, but it is very, very deserved... Kylie iswearing ostrich feather (probably 'virgin', the top quality), costume designed by John Galliano no less, the dancers wear Lido-designed outfits with a lot of marabou feather (the stuff usually taken for fake fur). Now, just lets pray there'll be a DVD... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DE5l85Dkl8 Another version form a different angle, it says HQ in the description, well... HQ for a cell phone, but still nice * Kylie Minogue - On a night like this (live Showgirl Homecoming) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6_h6_uQM0M More feathers! Would have been as good as the above (not the cell phone version), but no feathery dancers in it. It still has lovely close up shots though. The history of this costume is a case of 'every dark cloud has a silvery lining'. In the original Showgirl effect, it seemed the sky was the limit for the feather costumes (I suspect Kylie had been dreaming of doing something like all her livf, and she admitted in the past she likes playing the showgirl persona behind it, also see her performance at the Sydney Olympics), but the designer had to take some limitations in mind - after all, she'd have to move about in it a lot. After Kylie's promise to her Ozzie fans, who had to wait because of her tour cancelation to come back with an even bigger show), this limitation was thrown out of the window - physically, Kylie still had to hold on to the brakes as she's still recovering from her breast cancer. Hey presto, the new huge pink costumes, which I like at least twice as much as the more modest original blue one (which I liked as well).
As promised to Sheeny on the Softspot... the cover of this October's Numéro. There's a Twiggy-ish, 60s-ish fur editorial inside with the predictable emaciated models in war paint. This cover is far more attractive and inspiring than any of the pictures inside. The furs and the fashion make up for a lot though, and there are some nice ads -maybe more later. I might even try a better version of this scan, because it has suffered from reflection.
A stylish street ad for a jewellery brand somewhere in XU - no furs or feathers on the site that I know of. There still more to come - not bad for a Summer holiday.
Sometimes it's fun to bash bad websites, but often it isn't. A fresh example of the latter case is www.albefurs.com, a link brought to us by SSFF regular Hack__Jack. Why wouldn't it feel quite the same to unleash our best irony - if not sarcasm - on this effort? Most of all - these people have been trying very hard. They've forked out for a designer who knows his Flash (wow!), there was a really amazing photographer at work and the products look promising too, in spite of the website. Hold on, in spite of? Yes. First of all, people don't come to this website to watch a Flash animation, they're looking for furs. There's a 'Skip' button, but it takes dangerously long to show up, even on my 3,2 GHz machine and broadband connection. If internetsurfers have a patience span of 20 seconds, Albefurs.com is one foot over the edge. Secondly, there's the music. If talked about music on websites before, and to sum it up, it's almost always an annoyance, be it Beethoven or The Ramones. Sadly, Albefurs' music isn't Beethoven at all. Even if you have no other music running yourself or if you are in a noise-friendly environment, this is the kind of 'music' that makes you really, really want to go away after a minute or so. It gets to your nerves and it makes you want to smash things if you do hang around for longer. Thirdly, there's the pictures. I love photography, I love fashion and I can tell you, these are wonderful pictures, which is exactly why it's a waste and a shame that they're so small, even looking at it from the shop's point of view. There used to be time when there were reasons to use small pictures on websites, but since then, let's say five years ago, things have moved on. No one's using a 640 x 480 screen resolution anymore and if there's anyone still using a 56K dial-in modem, he or she's probably living somewhere in the Third World - not a likely Albefurs customer. On the other hand, go to a serious photo gallery and you'll see that most if not all pictures are displayed at very large sizes. There's reason for that: 'Less if more' doesn't work for the size of good pictures. Photos have larger impact on a larger size. Add to that for furs: you'll get a much better 'feel' for the fur's texture if the picture has a decent size, and the fur's softness is obviously a major drool-factor when it comes to selling them. The only reason I can think of making the pictures so small: it might disturb the page design. Now, the page design would be much more important than selling furs, wouldn't it? Whose priorities are we talking about here?
Excuse me for getting ironic after all. Some positive suggestions: 1. Add plain HTML next to the Flash, if you want to stick to Flash at all. Visually challenged surfers will love it too. Just because people are blind or have eye-problems, it doesn't mean they can't afford or enjoy a fur coat. 2. Ditch the music. Delete it. Burn it. Nuke it. Shoot the composer. Strangle the guy who told you it would be a good idea to put it on the site, and do it real slow. You don't want music if you want a people-friendly website. 3. Larger pictures. Are you proud of your product? Show it. Even better: put your logo on them and make them downloadable. For the foreseeable future they're going to do the rounds among online fur lovers, saying 'Albefurs-Albefurs-Albefurs'. They're that good, and who wouldn't want that?
One of the good things of having this blog is that - other than on the SSFF - I can allow myself to be gloriously off-topic.
The past three quarters of an hour I did a lot of thinking. This was no fault of my own, but apart from watching the text 'WINDOWS IS CLOSING DOWN NOW' or observing the gradual lengthening of the traybar down right on the screen of our laptop, I only managed to send a away one email and inspect a site - very briefly - on the SSFF. The reason was that the antivirus program needed its weekly update and the firewall got to a new version too. Both required rebooting. To counter your obvious objections, no, this isn't a very old laptop and I like to keep its setup rather clean. Now, imagine you switched on your tv set and you had to spend about 15 minutes to update some bit of crucial maintenance software in its prints, after which you'd have to switch it off again - perhaps only allowing you only a few minutes of the nine o'clock news - and repeat the process for another piece of functionality.
Still, some people think the worldwideweb is some kind of television. They believe you need more than just information and pictures - before you get to anything, you have to watch floating logos, one or two graphics twirling here or there, there has to be an agonizingly slow progress bar progressing somewhere and, of course, you need music. You can't have silent television, that would be unnatural and perverse. Imagine how happy we were with the music on the site I inspected if you know one of us was suffering the consequences of a long day in corporate life. Yes, she was sleeping.
Music on websites is, all by itself, as mindbogglingly contraproductive and irritating as Flash animations. People who are not listening to music while websurfing very likely have good reason. They're in a business environment, on a train, or there's someone dozing next to them on the couch. On the other hand, people who are listening music while websurfing aren't happy with some piece of repetitive musical junk cutting through their Madonna or Monteverdi.
Which leads me to the conclusion that a baffling number of the people who are responsible for creating websites, probably don't do any websurfing themselves.
Soft Spot TV ep. 6: Mikhail fills his Ipod. (Fur and feathers.)
These are all mp4s intended for use on an Video Ipod. You can play them on Quicktime or Itunes too, but if you have an older version already, these are of no particular use. If you don't have them however, you might like a lot of them, provided you stick to your favorite texture (fur or feather). NOTE: Due to the place where they're posted, the links will only last a day or five from now! So far, media-convert is the only fool-proof way I've found to convert .flv into mp4. It's takes some work though, so if you feel inclined to post some material too (conversion automatically results in a link), bring it on. Fur http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=zytyiv Ayumi - Bold and Delicious. Should be a classic. Never leave the house without it. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=xkyocw Lilkim - Came back for you. Fur must-have! http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=caekce Dior Backstage . Huge collars and doll faces. I love this one. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=tesuvd Galliano Haute Couture ('decadent'). Oldie, very good. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=jksmkw Joan Crawford, Ice Folies of '39. Short fragment digitized by yours Faithfurry. Longer and better versions exist. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=syyxtm Ayumi wins award for No Way To Say. Great fox stole. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=bqvkpu Ayumi - Unite! (live). Okay, just one foxtail... :-) http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=yxfexl snejanaonopkaatdiorhcfw06bulkyfur.mp4 Two of this year's big Galliano/Dior furs. Of course, they always focus on the wrong coat... http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=owfapz Northern Pursuit. Classic BW furclip. YouTube post by Fibreway.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3abKsbjNEoQ Snejana Onopka in Fendi (sent to my by Jerry). For me, Fendi has been missing the Gasp!-factor the last few years, but for completeness' sake, have a look.
Ciao all, As some of you know, I'm rather partial to things and people Venetian, even remotely Venetian, so I can't resist using this video to testdrive You Tube's blog option. Seriously, look at this one, and also at pt. 1,2 and 3 (look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXjPRkUEgAM). 'Venetian Princess' is one of those rare people who are genuinely funny without looking like they have to compensate for something. Being a 'nature lover' (eeeww) she'll probably hate *my* blog, but such is life.
Back up and heads up to the Soft Spot Fashion Forum, and consequently mostly devoted to (fake) fur- and feather-related fashion. And perhaps some other good things too, time will tell.
