Althouse: The suicide's...

February 14, 2010

The suicide's...

... shoes.

Models were terrified in Alexander McQueen's shoes. Prescient?

Witness the brutality:

(If you have trouble playing the embedded video, watch it here.)

34 comments:

Anonymous said...: Cruelty towards one's subject is en vogue in the arts in general these days.; 2/14/10, 4:29 PM
traditionalguy said...: That was like an S&M happening. The women seemed to be in bondage to a cruel master. The Chinese foot binding disaster seems to have made a come back. Another old evil idea called New and therefore trendy.; 2/14/10, 4:39 PM
Unknown said...: Any woman who is forced to look like that just for a day's pay ought to have sense enough to know the money's not worth it.

WV "antemud" The real primordial ooze.; 2/14/10, 4:42 PM
former law student said...: From todays AP report, I would be more sympathetic:

At the pinnacle of his success, British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was found dead in his home Thursday, days after posting anguished online remarks about the death of his mother.

No one loves you the way your mother does.; 2/14/10, 4:54 PM
knox said...: I have to agree with tradguy. They look very painful. I'm not one of these people who think that high heels represent the subjugation of women... but designers, get a grip. Over the past, I don't know, 5-6 years, it seems like the "norm" for heels keeps getting higher and higher. I guess McQueen found the breaking point. So to speak.; 2/14/10, 4:55 PM
knox said...: Not to sound flip about it, poor guy.; 2/14/10, 4:55 PM
Wince said...: A total psychopath.

Alleged Ala. killer was suspect in attempted bombing of Harvard professor

The professor who is accused of killing three colleagues at the University of Alabama on Friday was a suspect in the attempted mail bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor in 1993, a law enforcement official said today.

Amy BishopAmy Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, were questioned after a package containing two bombs was sent to the Newton home of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, a professor and doctor at Boston's Children's Hospital.

It was the second startling revelation in two days about the past of Bishop, who is accused of fatally shooting three colleagues and wounding three others Friday afternoon at a faculty meeting on the University of Alabama's Huntsville, Ala. campus...

Bishop surfaced as a suspect because she was allegedly concerned that she was going to receive a negative evaluation from Rosenberg on her doctorate work, the official said. The official said investigators believed she had a motive to target Rosenberg and were concerned that she had a history of violence, given that she had shot her brother to death in 1986.

Investigators conducted a search of the home where Bishop and Anderson were living and questioned the couple, the official said. Anderson was questioned about whether he had purchased any of the components used to make the bombs, the official said.

During a search of Bishop's computer, authorities found a draft of a novel that Bishop was writing about a female scientist who had killed her brother and was hoping to make amends by becoming a great scientist, according to a person who was briefed on the investigation and spoke to the Globe on the condition of anonymity.

The US attorney's office in Boston did not seek any charges against Bishop or Anderson, and no one was ever charged with mailing the bombs to Rosenberg.

Federal prosecutors did not immediately return calls today...

Sylvia Fluckiger, a lab technician who worked with Bishop at the time, said Bishop had been in a dispute with Rosenberg shortly before the bombs were discovered.

Shortly after the attempted bombing, Fluckiger said, Bishop told her she had been questioned by police one day in the lab. According to Fluckiger, Bishop said police asked her if she had ever taken stamps off an envelope that had been mailed to her and put them on something else.

"She said it with a smirk on her face,'' said Fluckiger. "We knew she had a beef with Paul Rosenberg. And we really thought it was a really unbelievable coincidence that he would get those bombs."

Sergeant Mark Roberts, a spokesman for the Huntsville Police, said today that police in Alabama had been informed that Bishop was a suspect in the 1993 mail bombing case.; 2/14/10, 4:59 PM
Palladian said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/14/10, 5:15 PM
Wince said...: Give me my shoes, I mean, my tenure!

I wonder if Amy Bishop's mother went through something similar?

Notice the Eve Ensler bangs with pigtails.; 2/14/10, 5:20 PM
Palladian said...: Oh no... it's the ... CRUEL SHOES; 2/14/10, 5:25 PM
Janis Gore said...: Perhaps he was referencing this exhibit.; 2/14/10, 5:32 PM
Dana said...: Not only terrified in his shoes, but the poor girls were obviously starving, too. Hopefully a cheeseburger and flip-flops are in their immediate futures. A cruel and unusual form of self-punishment on both levels.; 2/14/10, 5:43 PM
TheCrankyProfessor said...: I would like to see a cutaway of what that instrument of torture was doing to their feet inside. I mean, maybe he bought insoles from New Balance to make them all comfy....but somehow I DOUBT it.; 2/14/10, 6:06 PM
kjbe said...: Those look like ballet toe shoes. Yikes, am so glad I'm not a slave to fashion & tend toward flats (FTW).; 2/14/10, 6:15 PM
grimson said...: Lady Gaga seems to like them in Bad Romance.; 2/14/10, 6:29 PM
Sorin said...: Where's Posh?; 2/14/10, 7:04 PM
Peano said...: Hideous. Perfectly hideous. Scowling, under-nourished stick women clomping around in those idiotic things. That's even worse than those NYC street fairies you put up the other day -- and "loved."

These make a little more sense. Not much, but a little.; 2/14/10, 7:24 PM
LoafingOaf said...: Miserable looking zombie women walking around in butt ugly clothes and painful, insane shoes.

Does the high fashion world ever do shows where models are allowed to smile and show personality?; 2/14/10, 7:36 PM
LoafingOaf said...: I'm not against fashion, but I admire the regular folks out there who put together their own looks for themselves on the cheap, as opposed to people who just walk into Saks Fifth Avenue and pay thousands of dollars for whatever the high fashion world tells them to wear this season.; 2/14/10, 7:50 PM
Dark Eden said...: I can't watch a fashion shoot without thinking, "dear god please someone get these girls a cheeseburger."

Its not really even funny. The entire fashion industry just seems like a sickness.; 2/14/10, 9:09 PM
natatomic said...: They all look like the White Witch.; 2/14/10, 9:24 PM
Roux said...: Apparently he's done a good job at making attractive women look unattractive.; 2/14/10, 10:04 PM
William said...: I think the luge outfit is even more uncomfortable and unattractive and doesn't even have the compensating grace of being fetish wear.; 2/14/10, 10:19 PM
Anonymous said...: I thought that the clothes themselves were beautiful, but the shoes, the models' faces and their way too thin legs made the overall effect ugly.

wv: nobelgam: a prize-winning leg (the all-seeing wv oracle strikes again); 2/14/10, 10:35 PM
JAL said...: Peano's link made me laugh.

wv redlize
Actually I think bluelize more.; 2/14/10, 11:03 PM
muddimo said...: Wow, talk about objectifying women. Very obvious that he viewed them simply as moving mannequins. Ugly makeup to hide and impersonalize (depersonalize?) beautiful faces. He even found a way to destroy the naturally beautiful gate of a young woman.; 2/15/10, 6:02 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: The shoes - they've been named "Lobsters": think of the claw - are cool, and dangerous (indeed, Steve Martin's "Cruel Shoes") but the way they're exhibited in the show, here, is hideous. i've said it, in various ways, before and I'll say it again:

We need a new vision.

And, yea,...that would be mine:

The Macho Response; 2/15/10, 7:33 AM
Deborah M. said...: Hideous and dangerous. The models have been made to look like aliens (as in extra terrestrials). But all high fashion is exaggeration, thus the uber thin models and ridiculous clothing.

wv: arboyles. What you get on your feet after wearing those shoes.; 2/15/10, 8:01 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: "The models have been made to look like aliens (as in extra terrestrials)."

Telling me everything I ever needed to know about our late Mr. McQueen,...; 2/15/10, 8:34 AM
Anton said...: I'm sorry, but there's something really sick about that. And I'm not talking just about the shoes, but the twigs-for-legs too.; 2/15/10, 8:52 AM
Patm said...: Always loved that he was not afraid to use color. But those shoes were stupid.; 2/15/10, 9:03 AM
Anonymous said...: Just looking at the pix, all I can say is somebody took Star Trek: Deep Space Nine a little bit too seriously.; 2/15/10, 10:14 AM
Anonymous said...: One more thing, the guy H A T E D women. Sadistic. Women as geishas.; 2/15/10, 10:17 AM
Anonymous said...: Very weird. The dresses and hair looked pretty cool, but the rest of it?

1. Overly skinny, emaciated.
2. Identical looking shoes, ending at precisely same point on the leg
3. Weird thumping music
4. Scowling faces

=> Robot land mixed with quite a bit of oppressive gov't and cubeville culture.

Isn't fashion supposed to somehow be liberating and not about becoming a droid?

Why do women put up with this shit?; 2/15/10, 11:58 AM