The Face

Our Patron Saint of Post-Punk Poise, Miss Debbie Harry - at the venerable age of [gulp!] 79 - is the face of Gucci's "We Will Always Have London campaign, in which the couture house has launched "The Blondie Bag"!

I am always touched by your presence, dear

Miss Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble, 1 July 1945)

All hail!

Life through a lens

RIP Mick Rock, "The Official Photographer of the 1970s".

[click any photo to enlarge]

All I want is a photo in my wallet, a small remembrance of something more solid

[Photos from the great lady's photoshoot with Andy Warhol in 1980]

It's our Patron Saint of Pouting's 74th birthday today! How did that happen?

Not resting on her laurels one iota, Miss Debbie Harry (for it is of course she) has written her autobiography - titled Face It - which is due out in October. Of it, she said in an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this year: "I realised I have led a very full life and couldn’t possibly cover everything... It’s such a long period of time, and there’s so much to tell, that I couldn’t really isolate a lot of little stories and events... [it's about] the way we got through and maintained and continued and carried on through all that time from my sort of warped little perspective.”

Well, that's my birthday present sorted...

Many happy returns, Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble, 1st July 1945)

Yeah, you know her, check out those shoes

"Patsy, whoooo?"







72 years old?



NEVER!

Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Tremble, 1st July 1945)

Being hot never hurts

"The only place left for rock to go is toward more girl stars. There's nothing left for men to do. There's bound to be more male stars, but they can't express anything new."

"How can one be a woman and not be a feminist? That's my question."

"Being hot never hurts!"

"I could be a housewife... I guess I've vacuumed a couple of times."

"I thought I'd live to a ripe old age, because I always felt there was a lot to do. I had a driven feeling. I always thought in the present."

"Regardless of what I say about trying to be better at what I do, I rely on looks a lot. Women’s calling cards, unfortunately, are based on their looks. As far as ageing goes, it’s rough."

"The only person I really believe in is me."

"I wish I had invented sex."

Our Patron Saint Miss Deborah Ann Harry is seventy years old today.

That is a scary thought...

Debbie the débutante

A small selection of images from the forthcoming exhibition of photography by former "Mr Debbie Harry", Chris Stein.

Chris Stein/Negative: Me, Blondie, and The Advent of Punk is at Somerset House in London from 5th November 2014 to 25th January 2015. A must-see, methinks!

More photos from the exhibition on The Guardian website.

Intemperance and perversion were the order of the day

From the ever-fabulous Dangerous Minds:

Swiss surrealist artist H.R Giger has died. Giger is famous as the designer of the eponymous creature and bizarre sets for the film Alien, and for a lifetime’s worth of beautiful and disturbing organic/machine hybrid body-horror paintings (he called them “biomechanoids”). He also became a part of the music world when his works were used as album covers for the likes Emerson Lake and Palmer, Magma, Celtic Frost and Danzig, among many others. Notoriously his Penis Landscape was included as a poster in Dead Kennedys’ Frankenchrist LP, setting in motion an avalanche of censorship and legal difficulties which derailed the band.

Here’s a 1981 British television interview with Giger and Blondie singer Debbie Harry. The occasion for the seemingly odd pairing is Giger’s portrait of Harry for her début solo LP, KooKoo.

H.R. Giger's surreal designs influenced many outside the cimema and music, such as the avant garde fashionista Alistair McQueen, who produced shoes based upon his designs for Alien.



He also has a museum, and, more importantly, a bar dedicated to him in his native Swiss region of Gruyère:



I would love to drink there.

"My planet was ruled by evil, a place where black magic was practised, aggressions were let loose, and intemperance and perversion were the order of the day. Just the place for me, in fact."



RIP Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger (5th February 1940 – 12th May 2014)

Petite ingenue

Pretty baby, you look so heavenly
A neo-nebula from under the sun
Eyes that tell me incense and peppermints
Your looks are larger than life, long live innocence
Petite ingenue, I fell in love with you
Pretty baby, I fell in love with you

Deborah Ann "Debbie" Harry (born 1st July 1945)

Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci...

From the BBC website:

"There was always a ton of people outside waiting to get in - people from all walks of life," says Myra Scheer, an early fan who later became Steve Rubell's assistant.

"Most never got in, but if you caught the eye of Steve or of (doorman) Marc Benecke suddenly a path opened up.

"Beyond the velvet rope was what I used to call the Corridor of Joy. It had ornate chandeliers and everybody there was screaming with joy that they got in. You could hear the pulsating music as you walked through and then you turned left and there was this dance floor. Everybody on that floor had the energy of being a radiant star."

Among them: Margaret Trudeau, Elton John, Marisa Berenson, Diane Von Furstenburg, Debbie Harry, Vladimir Horowitz, Jerry Hall, Margaux Hemingway, Brooke Shields, Ginger Rogers, Cher, Salvador Dali, Richard Gere, Divine, Ivana Trump, Calvin Klein, Amanda Lear, Halston, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Truman Capote, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Grace Jones, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Liza Minnelli, Gloria Swanson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Warhol and of course the ever-present Bianca Jagger...

New York's notorious Studio 54 opened its doors 35 years ago tonight.