Heavy Metal Lovers


A rolling stone gathers no moss the only time I was good at something all it took was four wheels
And you could be a Genius I guess the wheels gives it away this isn’t about bad boy bands heavy
That broke many a levees of the mind but it is inextricably wound together with music and how apropos
To write about it today when the music of all heaven was called to silence and then a whole lot of
Shaking began When **** Clark walked through the gate don’t waist it just taste it it’s all right to be
Burly and squirrely “Get lost in the rock and roll” amp it up Bob Seeger everything comes with rules
There was time before Elvis but it still applied cool cats had one command be cool don’t break the
Jackson rule of Cool Square is not the fit you want to project oh the sixties the place the strip in
Hollywood the car an Austin Healy convertible if they even had hard tops which I doubt reading Michael
Canes auto biography he spoke of him being there I didn’t see him but he got swallowed up by the
Great beast it flowed out of those clubs into the street the sidewalks full of hot babes and cool dudes
We were so low it was like you were on the payment it even got into the act there was a raw energy
That electrified every ounce of your being it rose out of the payment and cruised those Hollywood
Streets plus every street in America felt its heat and heard it s roar red cherry glass pack mufflers
Then songs took up the anthem I had fun fun until my daddy took my T bird away shutem down GTO Jan
and Dean’s Drag City, Dead Man’s Curve, The little old lady from Pasadena and many more but the king
of cars that held the title was held by no other than the Cobra we were a couple of brazen GIs with a
Seventy two hour pass we met the enemy at a stop light the Austin Healy sounded so throaty in that
Southern California night air and we lived the song do you know the way to San Jose LA isn’t nothing but
A bunch of old freeways we would roar up the entrance to the ten the Malibu highway the Five to Dego
The 710 to long beach and the Queen Mary this southern California kid from Compton a suburb of LA
Was giving me the grand tour Disney and Knox berry later in the day the big sad Walt had just died
And then there was this monster next to us it was towering before we felt so continental a slight British
Smugness as we drove this fine European sports car but when the lion roars your purring becomes a
Little puckish it was bulging in comparison we were like a joke your mother won’t let you have a real car
What did they paint the light red how many shades of red did we turn as we set in this shadow of green
Paint and death for any idiot that tossed out a challenge when he took off it was like our car was
Wearing a smug British suit and the force he generated when he accelerated tore every stitch off down
To just underwear praying the smog would quickly envelop us the rest of the way didn’t happen so you
Do what anyone does you choose the less of two evils and rattle on about how they put Porches engines
Into VW bugs like who cares why is one of those suckers behind us well they are cool and this is about
Cool cars you could always tell them by the tail pipe instead of a round rifle barrel it had a wide round
Funnel at the end like the old blunder bust guns of the colonists then an era and times needs a voice
The male was a mix of Lou Rawls and Berry white doing the singing but also any time introduction was
Needed Aretha took care of the female side Jimmy Hendrix took care of the instrument on his
Supernatural guitar Hugh Masicali African Jazz drummer follow the beat every teen Idol was making
The girls swoon then you add in the mix the American auto chrome and steel dreams see the heat rising
Flashes that were blurs running wide open filled with teens and thrill filled screams and then there was
The exit and the entrance there was a royal distinction that rubbed off on its occupants the cool look
And clothes and hair for both sexes dreamy stars in all places not just the bright lights of movie magic
For girls it was they rode well but if they took the wheel this sealed the deal how can you add curves to
Curves they had the saying your blowing my mind man it in toned them as perfect inter changeable the
Womanly softness the interior the lines outside truly defined you are in the presence of qualities that
Run deeper than just the surface you see so much more how blessed when both car and women
Continually amaze you think you discovered everything oh foolish one you just stepped into another
Power zone that was built in at creation somehow the car was somewhat accidental but the woman’s
Was on purpose cheating would cease to a great extent if the truth was only known you got more
Excitement than you will ever know and for the man let him step out rise to his full height there is
Something sweeping and grand about it how could it be any different muscle and brawn distinction
Used as in art subtle but by being so it is so telling appeal runs no stronger and it effects effortlessly
Adds maximum benefit and joy girls find it unmercifully enjoyable packaged like fine wine in a wooden
Box with straw in other words perfected delivery of romance simply a soothe that washes over you
With lasting ramification the golden straw has glistening particles as well as star dust that make other
World tastefulness abide in two lives equally shared so drive into the setting sun in your own heavy
Metal dream that we love so well

In 1983, the Fashion Design Council burst on to the Melbourne scene like a Liverpool kiss to the mainstream fashion industry. Inspired by punk's DIY aesthetic and armed with an audaciously grandiose title, an earnest manifesto and a grant from the Victorian government, FDC founders Robert Buckingham, Kate Durham and Robert Pearce were determined to showcase the burgeoning Melbourne design scene in all its outrageous glory.

"People resented hearing about Karl Lagerfeld," says Durham. "Our movement was against the mainstream and the way Australians and magazines like Vogue treated Australian designers."

Over its 10-year lifespan, the FDC launched such emerging designers as Jenny Bannister, Christopher Graf and Martin Grant. But what was perhaps most exciting was the FDC's ecumenical approach. Architects, filmmakers, artists and musicians all partied together at runway shows held in nightclubs.

"It was an inventive time when people came together and made people notice fashion," says Durham.

Among the creative congregation, Durham remembers artist Rosslynd Piggott, who constructed dresses of strange boats with children in them and filmmaker Philip Brophy, who used "naff" Butterick dress patterns. Elsewhere, an engineer made a pop-riveted ball dress out of sheet metal. The crossover between music, art, graphic design and film extended to architects such as Biltmoderne (an early incarnation of celebrated architects Wood Marsh) who designed the FDC's favourite runway and watering hole, Inflation nightclub.

"Clothing was confronting," says Durham. "It was brash and tribe-oriented. It was quite good if you weren't good-looking. People liked the idea that this or that clothing style was going to win you friends."

Today, however, even Karl Lagerfeld has a punk collection. To complicate matters, "fast fashion" appropriates the avant-garde at impossibly low prices. The digital era too has caused the fashion world to splinter and bifurcate. What's a young contemporary designer to do?

"The physical collective is no longer that important," says Robyn Healy, co-curator of the exhibition High Risk Dressing/Critical Fashion, which uses the FDC as a lens to view the current fashion landscape. "These are designers who are highly networked through social media who put their work up on websites."

Fashion designers still use music, film and architecture, but in different ways. Where FDC members might document its runway shows with video, studios such as Pageant use video as the runway show and post them online. Social media is perhaps the big disrupter. Where FDC designers might collaborate with architects, today it's webdesigners.

"Space has changed," says Healy. "Web designers might be the equivalent of the architect today. It's a different use of space."

As grandiose as the FDC, yet perhaps even more ambitious in scope, is contemporary designer Matthew Linde's online store *** gallery, Centre for Style. Like the FDC, it offers space for "artists who aren't at all designers per-se, but they're dealing with a borrowed language from fashion", Linde told i-D magazine.

"It's an extraordinary juggernaut across the world with a huge amount of Instagram followers," says co-curator Fleur Watson. "[Linde] has created a brand that uses social media in an interesting avant-garde way."

Yet unlike their often untrained FDC counterparts, these designers are perhaps the first generation of PhD designers, notes Watson. "Robert Pearce had a belief in culture changing the world. That's what these new designers are reflecting on in their research, their position in the fashion world and how do they change the way fashion works?"

While it's also true that new technologies offer exciting possibilities in embedded fabrics and experimentation with 3D printing, fast fashion has created certain expectations.

As Cassandra Wheat of the Chorus fashion label laments: "It's just hard for people to understand the complexity and the value that goes into production without being really exposed to it. They think they should have a T-shirt for cheaper than their sandwich."

During the course of the exhibition Chorus will produce its monthly collection from one of the newly designed spaces within the gallery. The exhibition's curators have commissioned three contemporary architects who, like its '80s counterparts, work across the arts, to interpret FDC-inspired spaces. Matthew Bird's Inflation-influenced bar acts as a meeting place for the exhibition's forums and discussions on the contemporary state of fashion. Sibling architects abstracts the retail space, while Wowowa's office design resembles a fishbowl. For Watson, the exposed shopfront/office has as much front as Myer's. Its architecture suggests the type of brazen confidence every generation of fashion design needs. Says Watson: "Fake it till you make it."Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/cocktail-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2017