Before the hordes of his extended fashion family descended on Somerset House last night, Sam McKnight was pacing through the two floors of an exhibition of his life as one of the great sessions hairstylists. He stopped in front of a formal British Vogue portrait of Princess Diana, taken by Patrick Demarchelier in 1990. “I put on the tiara and had to make her hair big for it,” he remembered. “But, oh, God, then we had such an amazing day afterward. We were chatting and she suddenly asked, ‘If you could do anything, what would you do?’ And I said, ‘I’d cut it off!’ And she said, ‘Well, let’s do it now!’”

Thus, Diana, Princess of Wales, got the best slicked-back look of her life, the cut that defined her chic, grown-up, independent years—and her cutoff from her marriage. “I didn’t realize at the time,” McKnight said, “but in retrospect, with everything that was going on in the background, she wanted a change.” McKnight, after that, became Diana’s entrusted hairdresser. As photographer Nick Knight puts it elsewhere in the show, McKnight has that general effect on women when he’s working. “When he goes near the girls, they relax.”

It’s a testament to McKnight’s popularity in the magazine and fashion show milieu he has worked in since 1977—nearly 40 years!—that so many (who are sometimes so difficult) cooperated and gave permission, and that Chanel and Vivienne Westwood lent spectacular clothes to illustrate the interpretive cut and ****** of what a great hairstylist contributes. Straightaway, as you step off the street into the exhibition, you’re plunged into the next best thing to a backstage hair-and-makeup station and the kind of frenetic scene that goes on minutes before Chanel, Fendi,Dries Van Noten, or Balmain shows take to the runway. In place of the mirrors there are videos—say, of Kendall Jenner getting her Balmain hair look at a recent presentation—which have been recorded by GoPros worn by McKnight’s assistants. Every facet and every angle of the transformations—sometimes with four pairs of hands working on one girl’s hair—are captured.

From then on in, it’s easy to see how this exhibition will become a magnet for kids who want to experience the atmosphere of fashion and worship at a temple of a sublime hair alchemist. Shonagh Marshall, the curator at Somerset House, has run the numbers on the hairstylist’s Vogue covers, many of which are displayed on a faux newsstand. “Sam has been involved with 190 Vogue covers, which is more than any one photographer, or anyone else over that time,” she reported.

That’s not bad for a Scottish lad, born the son of a miner in 1955, who made his way to being a central team player with photographers and editors in the high supermodel years. Glorious images of Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington,Cindy Crawford, and Tatjana Patitz abound. “It was a golden era. We were on the road the whole time with Patrick Demarchelier, traveling the world with the same 10 people,” McKnight said, laughing. “We were making it up as we went along, really.”

The massive sweep of the show brings out the important collaborations of his career, with photographers Demarchelier, Knight, Tim Walker, and more; with fashion editors Lucinda Chambers and Edward Enninful; and makeup artists Mary Greenwell and Val Garland. It’s studded with celebrity—Lady Gaga, Tilda Swinton, Kylie Minogue—and honors the spectacular shape-shifting talents of Kate Moss, from her early days as a fresh tousle-haired ’90s teen in love on a beach: “Johnny Depp was there,” McKnight recalled.

There are the moments when McKnight changed models’ fates with short, blonde crops—Jeny Howorth’s in the ’80s and Agyness Deyn’s in the aughts. We see his process, with the hairpieces, wigs, and frizzing techniques integral to creating Westwood and Chanel shows, in both videos and installations masterfully laid out by Michael Howells. Right at the end, there’s a room Howells describes as “Sam the Man,” the walls checkerboarded with pictures of flowers from his garden and the ridiculous varieties of wigs he poses in on his Instagram feed these days. It’s testament to the energy and humor of a talent happily adapted to an industry that is constantly working on the new, in the now; an inspirational treat for all those who remember and for all the many thousands of young eyes that will be opened for the first time by this extravagant journey through one man’s career.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses

Live in the moment*, we exhort ourselves as well as others,
But such a mandate is a fool’s errand, nothing more,
For all which we endeavor, all we savor and regret,
Are transitory things, snatches of synapse,
Fireflies gone a-gleaming before we can fasten the cap,
All Chinese-checkerboarded with air holes, onto the jar.
So forgive me, then, for not extolling the virtues
Of your laugh, your smile, a certain set of jaw or wrinkle of nose,
For those are fleeting morsels of time,
Mere snapshots, flat and obsolete at the click of the shutter,
Like the crimson-iris inducing Instamatic images of long ago.
Rather let me, then, dwell
Upon the aftermath of these glimmers in time, in your eyes
Those crevices of memory and apprehension
Where the momentary acquires its shading and gradation,
Its context and concreteness, its niche in ones cosmology
Of those things which flutter the surface
Of somnambulant ponds of sleep,
Roiling the stuff of our dreams for better or for worse.

Crowded, foggy, checkerboarded screens- all showing the death of the individual and the eyes of the new-born kids who follow more people than last time, more crowded desires and confusion are shared, an exchanged glance and a quick darting of the eyes in another direction, the made-up face you have come to hate, the small explosion of tears you wish you could have, the little number of years you have lived, the large portion of time you spend wishing you were asleep and not awake. It won't be long until your heart murmurs for the last time And you'll forget what was dreamt And what was felt And you will move along And take a journey of your own And feel similar spectrums of apathy And sadness And love And un-comfort And warm insides And regret And lust And yearning And longing And wanting. You will never find yourself but you will find companions and maybe even a place to call home. At least a place that is yours, with doors, floors, walls and tables.

Psyche wracked with agony
impossible mission to extricate lovely bones
they wanna remain permanently abed.

I chiefly function to amass knowledge
courtesy assiduously, habitually,
and judiciously reading
an eclectic assortment of written material.

Yours truly woke
with ambition, disposition,
inclination, and predilection
to glean from an assortment
of books esoteric learning
since... birth, but particularly
when experiencing emerging adulthood
about two score years ago.

Feeble attempt crafting poetry
whereat gobbledygook doth trot -
oven chilly cooked confusion eliciting
faint thanks a lot
unbeknownst this tasteless,
senseless, rhymeless... lettered
Rorschach test tease I jot
interpretation, viz hitting
analogously like amorphous melted ingot
watch yourself...

d's lines iz still smok'n HOT,
now I puzzle regarding how
to extricate mess elf,
cuz aye got myself
into try'n to strut and trumpet
hightailing (courtesy Google)
searching information superhighways
one can cyber surf to Hong Kong,
(a coastal city and major port
in Southern China,

bordering Guangdong Province
through the city of Shenzhen
to the north and the South China Sea
to the east, south, and west)
an entrepôt, (which goods brought
for import and export,
and for collection and distribution)
yea, that autonomous enclave
the region inhabited since
the Old Stone Age,

later becoming part
of the Chinese Empire
with loose incorporation
into the Qin dynasty
initially starting out
as a farming fishing village
and salt production site,
it became an important free port
governed by Chief Executive,
who serves as premier of the Region

and head of government
of Hong Kong
beholden to The Basic Law
which designates a system of governance
led by a Chief Executive
and an Executive Council,
under principles of separation of powers,
with a two-tiered system
of semi-representative government
and an independent judiciary.

Anyway... when zombie like,
and hyper aware
about mein kampf,
and lxv roaming years
exhibiting conscious state
(although that might be debatable),
I try to dead reckon eyes
purposefulness astride oblate spheroid
nsync with other gals and guys
either one, t'other or all
mask cue lated in disguise

impossible mission to triangulate
Euclid say logic defies
to comprehend gibberish,
no matter how much you scrutinize
his highness, qua shape
shifting imperfect square stumps
any tree mend us great mind to analyze
me skewering, marinating, gunning... decries
abiding any logical positivism
queries best addressed to Lord of the Flies
since nary handy dandy blues clues,

I opted out thus...
******* provided to synthesize
random words helter skelter
strewn to symbolize
absent any rhyme or reason
courtesy handy matted figurative
trapezoid doth employ
no paradigm to exercise
leaving comprehension after mine demise
so go ahead chastise
cuz I already know,
never will said poetry win apprize.

Initially, an attempt
sought regarding Das scribe,
yours truly donning
checkerboarded rawhide
collared, cuffed oversize raiment, pride
and prejudice obscured
courtesy hand-me-downs
couture also decking out
alley oop trapeze artist bride
of Frankenstein grooming in attendance
with her bonafide
circus motley crew, a veritable
monster mish mashup
happenstance didst decide
unlike traditional feted newlyweds
swingers airborne did only abide.

The law of gravity aerial
pas de deux bodies airborne
aloft pledging their respective troths sworn
fleeting suspended animation while shorn
infinitesimally of Earth's pull
only expert can playfully scorn
accomplishment courtesy no greenhorne
neophytes in utero umbilical cord,
taking root as metaphorical acorn,
thus unbridled and groomed skill inborn
burst out the womb like heated popcorn
snapped up since birth well worn
genes Ringling Brothers and
Barnum & Bailey circus practiced morn
till night stunts became second nature
encore performance
no matter bodies outworn.

Curtain Call now doth close
unrehearsed poetic gambit,
cuz yours truly tuckered out I suppose
ready to take his doze
zee dough into dreamland, expose
zing oft times confused
with dark shadows of outer limits
of twilight zone,
where me lovely bones froze
where sudden night mare arose
gripping courtesy rigor mortis head to toes
daunting wordsmith champion
manifestation of daily woes.

Suddenly me clutched
by melancholic despair
somnambulantly where
countless tomb morrows *****
scarcely undifferentiated
from yesterday's care
wracking psyche with wrath plus fear
at accursed purposelessness near
faux sing myself regarding pas
city to emulate good cheer
whereat time and tide
wait for no man/woman.