Madame X

  

The photo above has been sitting in my photo stash for awhile now. Pretty sure I gleaned it from Fashionising.com; The ensemble looks like an old school sunbathing suit, this one is simple, classic,and oddly, vaguely familliar.Couldn't put my finger on it until today. It hit me: Madame X.  Is it my feverish state, or does the pose and the suit remind you a bit of the John Singer-Sargent painting of Madame X?

  

It's not the first time, the painting has inspired imitation. No, I've seen it before, the one most blatant  homage was the Nicole Kidman portrait done for Vanity Fair a few years back. Which, technically gets it right, but doesn't quite capture the allure of the original. What I love about the Singer-Sargent portrait is its fierce study of lines. Arabesques after arabesques of curves: her aquiline profile, the snake-charmer's shoulder slithering over that curt hourglass curve of her waist.  Fashion form at its finest. Those slippery shoulder straps!  And I just love the taut twist of arms that  are mirrored by the mahogany table legs, just as curvacious and ambitious as the sitter. Then there's scandalously alabaster skin contrasting the midnight-soaked dress.

 

The bathing suit picture seems a tamer version of Madame's ambition. Milk-fed skin against debutante black. Subtle, but sexy. Off shoulder and unnervingly tasteful. It is a look that revels in beauty and the detemination to take part in that beauty, by, as a certain Malcolm X once said, "any means neccessary."