Now let us praise Nana Mouskouri. The polyglot Cretan-born songstress with only one vocal chord is currently on a farewell tour. Though Cher has had more than one farewell tour, so perhaps I can still hope to see Ms. Mouskouri live.

I became enchanted with Ms. Mouskouri when I was 16. In a local Salvation Army, I found an LP with a cover photo of a beautiful woman wearing an evening gown and black thick-framed glasses. And I remember thinking: any woman who proudly wears her glasses (and with an evening gown no less) is totally awesome, I must have this record. I bought it despite the outrageously expensive price of two dollars. (This was 1985, goslings, and I was accustomed to buying 70's photo print shirts and gold lamé suits for 25 cents.) The record was called something like International Songs, and it is long gone now alas. But I remember that there were beautiful, lushly orchestrated songs in French, German, and Greek, and it was in high rotation during my last two years of high school. I could still hum the opening song for you, a traditional Greek melody.

Her music always makes me feel like I'm living in Europe (with free health care and the entire month of August off) and I'm having a dinner party at my summer home (with a mod pop art decor) serving delicious things including vegetables from my own garden for witty, multi-lingual friends and no one is in a hurry to get home.

Ms. Mouskouri beautifully demonstrates Andy Warhol's dictate to find a style of your own and stick with it. The last photo shows her concert at the Acropolis on July 24, 2008, still lovely and proud at 73 years old. That's what attracts me to her style the most. It's marvelously dignified. I'd keep her around as a style icon even if she didn't sing.

Of course the early 70s are her strongest influence. Just look at her in the Yves Saint Laurent Mondrian dress. But I still think she makes it her own.

Now let us praise Deanna Durbin, the 1930s operatic-voiced teenaged star of lighthearted musical comedies who grew up on screen and walked away from Hollywood altogether in the late 40s. Unless you are over 70, you've probably never heard of her, but she was a big deal. Anne Frank was a fan. One of the magazine photos Anne tacked to her wall in her attic hideway remains there today.

Of course at that time there was another little lady with a great big voice. A voice to big for her body that seemed to be eating away at her from the inside. A little girl named Frances Ethel Gumm who grew up on the MGM lot to become Judy Garland. Now I genuflect before The Great Garland. The ecstacy of her voice, the pain of her life, the otherworldliness of her talent and how it made her suffer. If I had a god, she'd be it. If you don't believe me, watch A Star is Born, and be prepared to exult and weep.

There is no comparison, in my mind, between the two singer-actresses, though Universal and MGM tried to create rivalry and competition between them. The Great Garland was presented as jazz (with all its contradictions), while Ms. Durbin was well, light opera, you know, something of a square, and as she sings:tra-la-la.
But I can't help it if there's always a place in my heart for the hopelessly twee. So let Ms. Durbin nestle comfortably in the category that includes novelty tunes, CuteOverload, Cheburaska, a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta performed by a cavalcade of Sanrio characters. And of course, The Sound of Music.

Though I believe Ms. Durbin came from the same rough and tumble vaudeville background as The Great Garland, nonetheless Universal did its best to make her look like old money. Tailored looks, and always age appropriate, with touches of late 1930s whimsey. Her bicycling outfit has a polka dot yoke that ties around her neck and waist. And look how those polka dots peek out of the pleats of the skirt. (And if you like that, all her school chums wear it too, as the cycling uniform.) Just look at that cravat, will ya? Now as a devotee of the scarf that is something I try to emulate. Natural curls, bright eyes, big smile. That's what I strive for everyday (though alas, I'm no longer exactly an ingenue and I often miss the mark). I don't care much for her overly sculpted eyebrows, but that is a minor quibble.

I recently watched Mad About Music and delighted in the uniforms for Deanna's Swiss boarding school, not to mention the murals of the alps that stand in for scenery. In addition to the cycling get-up, they've got plaid raincoats with capelets and matching garrison caps shielded by transparent umbrellas on japanese frames. I'm not kidding. This stuff is glorious. They've got jaunty boleros worn with high waisted skirts and white blouses. All by Vera West and a few gowns done by Edith Head for Gail Patrick who plays Deanna's mother. (I once had the ambition to watch all the films costumed by Edith Head but had to give up. She was one busy lady.)

If you'd like to see Deanna in action, go here and here. Though I warn you, it just might melt your teeth it's so sweet. Mad About Music also has a novelty harmonica orchestra, the obvioulsy fake alps in the picture,"traveling incognito", and an imaginary father. It's set in a nostalgic, romanticized Europe where somehow everyone speaks English. It is a ball of kitsch where if you say something often enough and cross your fingers, somehow it will come true. Again, I'm not kidding.

Now Deanna usually plays a rich girl, and nothing really bad ever happens to her. (Unlike Shirley Temple who was orphaned in just about every picture.) But the characters she plays are still smart, kind, a bit kooky, and never so refined that she can't do a pratfall. The word on the street is that she was a consumate professional, even at 12. And she had the good sense to walk away from the Hollywood machine when she still could. But that makes sense if you look at her performances. She is working hard, but leaves something of herself in reserve.

"If you do not go to your limit, what do you have to give your audience?" That's what one of my Butoh teachers used to say. And I agree wholeheartedly that does make a performance compelling. The Great Garland always gave 110%, no matinee soft sell, not her. The Great Garland doesn't even leave herself bus fare to get home. Deanna gives it her all, yes of course, and even with the total shlock she had to work with. But then she's going to have a ice cream soda, read a little bit and get to bed. And I admire that.

Why must we all throw ourselves on the pyre of Dionysian creativity? What so wrong with being kinda well-adjusted? Not that I would know much about being well-adjusted, but leave the drama on the stage, no? Kill your children as Medea, or whatever it is, but don't take it home with you. Now I try to do performances like I'm working a middle-management job. Do my darndest, then go home and listen to the radio. No need for excoriating self-criticism, congratulations, or several rounds of scotch and monopolizing the conversation afterward. Hmmm, maybe I'm becoming too sensible.

But as far as I know, Deanna had a much easier time of it for one simple reason: she wasn't on drugs. As for the Great Garland, well, the studio was giving her speed when she was a preteen to just keep her Hollywood thin. It gave her attacks of paranoia where she was whirling around her trailer saying people where plotting against her.

Let us now praise Charo. Once an example of how over-exposure could damage your career, the bubbly flamenco guitarist and perveyor of her own brand of fun (known as Cuchi-Cuchi) is still shimmying that pert little bod at the age of 56. And she looks marvelous doing it.

The photographs above show her currently and in her former heyday in the late 70s. She appears almost eerily unchanged.

Yes, I spotted her on a hideous slow-newsday-item about how stars have aged. It focused on female performers, of course, and for that I blame the patriarchy. However, there was a similar slideshow devoted entirely to male rockers from the 80s, showing them both now and then. This almost evened out the equation, and showed me that Sting has definitely had work done. I mean, yoga can only do so much for crows' feet really.

These now and then comparisons are invariably unfair. Many people who looked very young at the height of their fame, were actually quite a bit older. A breathtaking ingenue who claimed to be 24 in 1984, could just as easily have been pushing forty with a short stick. And of course it's a well-honored theatrical tradition to shave a few years off your age.

Charo actually had the opposite problem. When she married Xavier Cugat and toured with his band she was 16. Press releases padded her age to make it look like less of a scandal. Charo has maintained that her marriage to the then 66 year-old band leader (who was already 3 or 4 times divorced) was purely a marriage of convenience to bring her to the United States from Spain.

Charo was a regular on television variety shows throughout the 70s. As a kid I saw her on Laugh-In, The Sonny and Cher Show, and (my favorite) The Carol Burnett Show. As the 70s wore out, she was practically a regular on The Love Boat, a show I hated. I watched it anyway because it was on before Fantasy Island, a show I loved. It was as if one had to ride the dreaded Love Boat to get to Fantasy Island. (I had a very secret crush on Ricardo Montalban, but that's another post entirely.)

A Charo appearance on The Love Boat, could almost redeem that show for me. Instead of 48 minutes of entirely unoriginal sexual innuendo (that was completely lost on me as a 10 year old), there'd be moments of Charo's trademark elan: a full body shimmy while shouting:Cuchi-Cuchi. Charo always seemed like a generous performer and very willing to laugh at herself. I know this sounds hoaky, but she also seemed like a kind-hearted person.

At times she was presented as a parody of herself. All boobs and fringe and mangled English. I even remember thinking that the show was actively making fun of her, but that she didn't care. She was having fun anyway. She Cuchi-Cuchi-ed with delight even when everyone else was snickering behind their hands. Even as a 10 year old I thought: note to self, enjoy your own shtick. And goslings, this is something I live by.

But despite this high amount of Charo exposure, and an inspirational Charo moment, I had no idea she played guitar. Charo is perhaps television's Yoko Ono: everyone has heard of her, but very few people have actually seen her creative work. Oh, sure there's maybe a hazy memory of her with a guitar somewhere in the deep whorl of the 70s television section of my brain. But actively, not really. Charo has suffered from the same syndrome as many other female performers who are better known for the looks than their abilities. I am delighted to see that Charo has made quite a comeback and that her current work is enough in her control to foreground her musicianship.

She took a break from Hollywood for over a decade but didn't stop performing. She opened her own club in Hawaii, where she performed regularly while raising her son. That seems idyllic, doesn't it? I'd love to move to Hawaii and still perform every night. (In my fantasy, flowers would also drift down from the trees to settle into my hair, and all the fruit I'd eat would be perfectly ripe. I would probably skip the child-rearing part and get a bunch of corgis with psychic powers who could read tarot cards and give me unerring financial advice. Or maybe I'd open a clown school and organize festivals.) Of course I'm always critical of female stars who retire to raise children, since I have yet to hear of a male star making a similar "choice". But with Charo's case of media saturation, perhaps this was the smartest thing to do?

Full disclosure: My sister ran into Charo in the waiting room of Cedar-Sinai in Los Angeles. They met long ago on the set for some tv show. Like my sister, Charo was visiting a friend in the hospital. My sister said that Charo is super nice, and that she has the smallest butt she's ever seen. How'd her tuches get so small? , I asked. Genetics, she sighed.

Go Charo!

Let us now praise Yayoi Kusama. The high priestess of polka dots. For quite some time now, Ms. Kusama has been peppering the world with dots inspired by the visions and trances that overtake her. Since childhood, Ms. Kusama has had hallucinations of dots and heard voices from plants and animals. Luckily for us, she has channeled her experiences of self-oblitheration into art we can all experience.

Pictured in Red, a photo from 2005, and in black and white with an ani-pal circa 1967, Ms. Kusama has created her own polka dot themed attire, and staged happenings in her Infinity Rooms where she painted all sorts of naked persons with her dots. The dots represent the elements of the cosmos: the sun, moon, stars. These allow people to self-oblitherate, her expression for becoming one with the raw universe.

Ms. Kusama even designs her own frocks.

Ms. Kusama left New York in 1973 and returned to Japan. If I did the math right, that would make her 40 when she left NYC and found greater success in Japan (I'm totally inspired. Does this mean I should move back to LA at 40?). Ms. Kusama exhibits internationally and has been in the Venice Biennale. Here is a photo of her work from the Singapore Biennale in 2006.

I am dismayed to have missed her exhibition at the Peter Blum Gallery. But I just saw her work for the first time at the Summer of Love exhibition at the Whitney. A lyrical short film showed Ms. Kusama putting polka dots on herself, her naked assistants, cats, dogs, and horses. Even water. It was the highlight of the exhibit for me.

The show was very much devoid of content, with huge photo prints of the members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones dominating the walls. I went with my friend Stella, who said the whole thing was more Lazer Zepplin than art show. We did get kinda tripped out in the chill out rooms with projection installations, but there was very little to actually chew on.

I did come to the shocking realization that I am a product of my time. I was born in 1969. My aesthetic (which I naively thought so unique) has always combined silent movie images, Indian kitsch, film noir, psychedelic polyester and Art Nouveau. Well goslings, all that was there, not always all stuck together, but certainly on the same plate. It's official: I'm a hippie.

Rudolpho used to accuse me of being a hippie, back when I cared what he thought (did I really? Now that I find that shocking). And yes, he said it as if it was a bad thing.

So I like to do a little green yoga once and a while and look at the stars. So I'll always support the underdog, protest the war, and cut my own hair infrequently with a blunt hair of kitchen scissors. So I enjoy daisies and ukuleles and fleamarkets and saying what I actually mean. So my friends are Sufis, clowns, Hare Krishnas, Freegans, and activists (sometimes all at the same time). So I want a life of doing my thing (whatever the hell that is) instead of an immaculate home with landscaping. So I leave my hair frizzy. And think capitalism is evil. And will always reject the military/industrial complex, the marriage/industrial complex and uncomfortable shoes. I might even show up to your cocktail party wrapped in a frayed vintage curtain and do a Butohesque dance to an Edith Piaf song.

Is that so terrible? I mean, who does it hurt?

Hooray the Rudolpho years are over!

Ahem.

All that said, there is a reason I have always rejected the hippie label. For all the flowerpowerness of it, for all the let-your-freak-flag-flyness, the movement was populated by a whole lotta white dudes disinterested in divesting themselves of their white male priviledge. Very much like liberals today. Plus the whole appropriating other cultures for your own amusement and exotification problem.

But enough about me and the folly of the Rudolpho years where I entertained a romantic notion of bourgeois respectability.

Ms. Kusama is the real deal. A visionary.

Isabella Blow 1958-2007

Goslings, I regret to inform you that Isabella Blow, style icon, fashion editor, and one of the few people in the world I have ever envied, is no longer with us. The fashion world, and indeed the world as we know it, will be hopelessly bland without her.

No longer will I scan catwalk photos in hopes of seeing her proud noggin capped with a Philip Treacy confection.

Checking out at the tender young age of 48, Ms. Blow leaves me bereft of a role model. Who will guide me, now rudderless and careening into my 40s? Who will put the flash into fashion and inspire us all to think vertically? Who is left in the fashion industry with a sense of humor?

Reading more about her life, I now see the struggle, when before I saw only ease. I didn't know that her father, Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, had basically disowned her. I didn't know that she paid for her glad rags on the installment plan. That her earlier years were filled with odd jobs, even as a cleaner. That her promotion of other's talents never netted her a dime. That she struggled with depression.

I can't believe she thought of herself as "ugly", though I even read as much in one of Vogue's profiles. To me she always looked regal and dazzling, even without a pagoda on her head. And with work she obviously loved, plenty of places to wear luscious lids, and a gallery co-owned with her second husband, I thought it all came easily to her. From fashion director of the Sunday Times Style section, editor-at-large for Tatler's, and I was green-eyed about it.

Izzy (if I may, since something about reading several obits promotes this sort of familiarity), I misjudged you. There was way more grit, hard work and complication than I gave you credit for. My envy was pure small-mindedness on my part. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to be your friend.

People say it takes courage to dress with this kind of insouciance. I disagree. It is an art form. And Ms. Blow was a great artist.

For Lynne Yaeger's tribute, click here

Let us now praise Lynn Yaeger. This photo here was copied from Mickey Boardman's blog on Paper Magazine. I once had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Boardman, and he is a throughly charming chap with wit to spare. So in light of my last post about copyrights, I'll just hope he doesn't send me a cease and desist letter. After all, this is good linkage, no? But where oh where is the Lynn Yaeger daily style feature? I want to see what she is wearing everyday! I'd even volunteer to photograph her myself.

Just look at Ms. Yaeger's style--I love it. The first photo is by Mr. Sartorialist, whom I have not met. But I must confess that I take extra care with my ensemble and toilette when I hit the flea-markets since I’ve noticed that many of his photographs are taken in that area. I'd frame a cease and desist letter from him.

Her aesthetic fills me with visions of turning “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” into a 12 tone operetta, setting it in the Weimar Republic, getting the Tiger Lilies to do the music and Comme des Garcons to do the costumes. Ms. Yaeger is an excellent example of creating your own style and wearing it well. I loved her "Material World" columns in the Village Voice. She is one of the few style writers with a social consciousness, commenting on the means of production with a well-placed barb. A big Brava and a shower of rose petals to Ms. Yaeger.

Let us now praise Gemma Jones, an Australian-based fine artist who created this painting. Using images from vintage ephemera, Jones presents the everywoman of yesterday as a star in her own right. Her paintings have a contemplative quality. Don't you totally want one? She also paints on dresses that are pop art fabulous.

In an interview with Uppers, Ms. Jones is quoted:
“I find it interesting that fashion is often seen as non-art … that it is perceived as superficial, transient and basically for suckers and in the same breath constructed as particularly feminine. I like to explore a point where art and aspects of feminine culture overlap. Equally I'm interested in realms such as craft, decoration and domestic interiors which have been thought of as feminine concerns outside of art.”

To this I say: Hear, hear!

Check out more images, including paintings on fabulous 60s styled trapeze dresses (modeled here by the band, The Shimmys,) here.