fashion blog

You recently saw a couple of the photos we took with AskoJonathan Photography for my Happily Ever After-act. Because behind-the-scenes photos always make things better here's the set up for the series. A lot can be, and is done by photoshop, but the more you can put into the set organically the better. So I had the other photoshootees of the day functioning as ground for my rose bushes. As one does. Obviously the raw shots where there's a faun peeking out under my elbow are the best ones. Here are some shots of how the actual act looks on stage - photo: Bernhard Miettinen photo: Minna Jerrman photo: Bernhard Miettinen It's my most Burton-esque act, that even though it begins eerie and sad, sort of a too-late Sleeping Beauty scenario, actually is rather humorous. In a tragicomic Burton kind of way. It started out as an idea for a quick Halloween act for our own event, where I wanted to dance with, what I first just planned as a ghost out of fabric, but then came up with - a ...

This year's Suvi-Vintage poster that I did got summery vibes from the late 1950's. The vintage fair is in Tampere 29-30.6. I am performing elsewhere but you go! And now I am off to Paris! Peforming on Wednesday, there until Friday evening. Last time I was there was twenty-one years ago, so hit me with your best and most charming to-do's there!

Hong Kong Ballet 40th Anniversary Season Brand Video from Design Army on Vimeo . I am away performing in Turku but meanwhile here is some brain candy and eye orgasm for your Sunday!

Entertainment-tip for this weekend: April Fools Burlesque in Pikku Hanhi in Lahti and our RubiesKlubit: Hikiklubi at Sture 21 in Helsinki tomorrow! Come join the fun!

Let me first start this by saying that I am definitely and foremost waiting for Halloween (and now that the second week of October is about to start I consider Halloween-season here!). But. While it is as little as 80 days until Christmas (!!!),  it is only 56 until our yearly Christmas show , which this year will kick off the whole festive season: This year we are celebrating at our Rubies-Klubit burlesque club's home venue Sture 21. Tickets are on sale now; get them in time as they tend to sell out ! Poster by me, as usual. Ps. and first Halloween, yes. Catch me at these Halloween events: Horror & Tease in Tampere Oct.13 and our very own Rubies Klubit: Demoniklubi on Oct.27!

Photo: Neil Kendall It will be a full moon tonight and if the sky is clear I know I will most likely be woken up by it, as it stares straight into my window around 3am with a light strong enough to penetrate my sleep. But I still don't want to close the curtains because there is just something about being woken up by a bright full moon, so I most often tend to stare back at it for a while and ponder the universe. So in honour of that I'll post a picture from a photo series inspired by Méliès 1902 film  La Voyage Dans La Lune – taken   at the end of this summer, when I had the chance to shoot with amazing vintage style photographer Neil Kendall in Chester and I got to be the first one to try out his new moon set! Not to be shared without proper credits.

If you want more sparkle in your life, and even if you don't, but just want to have fun and be entertained, come watch our studio's Summer Show Friday June 8th at Sture 21! Coming to a show is always a win-win -  you have a great time and help put bread on the performers' tables. Plus get your daily/weekly/monhtly dose of sparkle and (biogradable) glitter. It is already the 5th summer show we organize, and as usual we feature both students and teachers as well as resident Shangri-La performers. And a lot of other fun stuff! It's a bigger show than our regular clubs, and we turn the madness down a little bit (just a little) when hosting. Find out more on the event page , and get your tickets from our webshop here: Summer Show tickets . Also, a small reminder that I have created a discount code for my blog readers to our studio which gives -15% off pretty much everything - also summer show tickets! We have several summer classes and courses coming up in June as well so ha...

Considering how rather unstructured my day-to-day life's routines are, as in not-really-there and lets-see-what-happens-next-week-in-life, and supposing it is not the first impression I tend to give, I am actually rather un-enthusiastic about change.  It's not that I am reluctant to change, just lazy about it. Mainly small everyday bits, perhaps as a balance to even out the lack of certain routines and certanties. When the big thing is messy and loose around the edges, keep the smaller things intact. Like tending to stick to one and the same lipstick or nepalese dish or handbag once noticed that it works. (I'd probably always do the same nails too if I would not force myself to get a bit creative there.) You know - if it ain't broken, don't fix it. And thus I have been adding to the same playlist for ten years.  Ten years folks! That is some 520 and Sundays! It is weird how time flies, isn't it. But that is because it is the best playlist for soft and mellow, d...

Lets end the week with some creative music playing. Or making. Orkestra Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments  (BBC Arts) In Swedish there is actually a separate verb for playing and making music on an instrument, more in the sence of performing it or playing together:  musicera, as can you say ' musisoida ' in Finnish. One can refer to that as musicerande  (kind of like something that someone or some people were occupied with, or "the music that they were making" as in the present particle of the word. < I had to look that term up, as it is after all almost 20 years since I last had grammar, erhm). But there does not seem to be an English equivalent for such a word... Briefly and totally non-academically based on how other words and endings are used (for example a demonstration of something - to demonstrate ), I would make the word musicate up, but it already exists on the internet (not in Merriam Webster though) and means something else: to be absore...

Ok, perhaps not exactly. But suitably for a time of growth, flowers, resurrection and Easter witches Asko and I did a photoseries for my act Happily Ever After, which is something of a reversed Sleeping Beauty ghost story. Photos by Asko Rantanen / Asko Jonathan Photography Concept and muah by me.

Anyone who has rad my blog troughout the years would by this point be familiar with Atelieri O.Haapala ,  the neo-victorian portrait studio by Saara Salmi and Marco Melander! The project went on for a decade, and there were many amazing themes, backdrops and set ups, with thousands of beautiful pictures as a result. I've had the pleasure to have my photo taken several time during the years, both in studio but mainly at the pop-up events. And now they are aiming to make a beautiful and elaborate book out of it! You can pre-order the book by supporting Atelieri's Indiegogo campaign , or support the book with smaller printed perks. And please do! You will love it - and I definitely want my copy too - so lets make this happen! You can find most of Atelieri O.Haapalas photos in their  Facebook albums . Oh, and the image you see being edited at one spot in the film? This is the final version; from Helsinki Burlesque Festival 2017. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/atelieri-o-haapal...

Tonight! At our studio starting 18hrs - Dr.Sketchy's Helsinki presents: Wonderland! Come and draw and enjoy the nice setting, music and atmosphere. Photo by Neil Kendall.

Late last summer we shot a series of editorial photos with Karl Vilhjálmsson for a feature article series for  Hufvudstadsbladet .  The series is about lust and how it has been depicted and received in film, literature and society in Finland. The articles talk about censorship of erotica and sex and Finnish film history related to that, how a famous daring film affected the actress, and also about the many faces of porn, the small domestic industry as well as research around the subject. Modelling with me were Ruska Schönberg and Sampo Marjomaa. Some of the images we shot in our back yard, I guess the views are familiar to some of you already. The images play with the mindscapes and clichés around the themes. We had a lot of fun shooting these!  (And some people were, of course, offended by the whole thing).  Photos by Karl Vilhjálmsson.

Altough in general I was always more of a CMYK person. I've been organising, kind of, as in trying to, which rather means: looking at and going trough things at home that have been packed in boxes; drawings and sketches and paintings from my art school years. And then I thought about those years. And then I watched this and thought about art school some more. I like the red one best.

Last Sunday we turned our studio into interstellar space -or intergalactic if you so like- they way it would look if an, umm, elementary school or some kind of vaudevillian basement theatre put up a play about space. We really wanted it to look adorably crappy on one hand with our small self made planets and things hanging by the help of string and clothes pins but on the other hand still keep it on the right side of being deliberately camp (the way we like it) as well as to function as the optional drawing detail or background inspiration. The navigators of the ship with the brave cosmonaut. (Our space aesthethics always tend to be rather b-movie retrotastic.) So as you know from what I've written before, Dr.Sketchy's is a worldwide concept of  "alternative" live model drawing. There have been  Dr.Sketchy events in Finland for a decade now , and last autumn Tinker Bell and I revived the Helsinki branch. We make sure our Sketchy-playlists suit the themes as well and ...

It's time for the next Dr.Sketchy's Helsinki! This time we create you a little mini cosmos over at our studio, where the drawing takes place. Dr.Sketchy's is an "anti-art school", a so called 'cabaret drawing'- event, where attendants can draw and paint croquis with a little different setting than the one you might be used to from art school. Usually with a specific theme, styled and set up according to that, and with great music. Photos by Asko Rantanen, whose alter ego Johnny Moth also will serve as our model. The space shuttle will be navigated by Tinker Bell and yours truly. So,  Sunday 23rd from 4pm onwards . Bring pencils papers and cash and see you at Shangri-La!

Pretty much two of my favourite things! (Well you know, depending on what level of life and living you are referring to.) I find these images of snacks matching the outfits; a series named Wardrobe Snacks  by Kelsey Mc Kellan with stylist Michelle Maguire, strangely soothing for the eye and mind, partly in the sense that they somehow are very reminiscent of my childhood. Must be the hues and the polyester, early 80's. That. And the snacks. I mean is there anything more 80's than that cardboard like waffle cone?  Those (and they are still around) were the only ice cream waffles back in the days. And that shade of ice cream - pear ice cream. An instant childhood boost for me. You might have heard this story before, but we were in Heikintori in Tapiola with my mother and now late grandmother and it was warm and sunny and I got a pear ice cream and then my 9-month pregnant mother's water broke and we had to rush away and I did not get to finish that ice cream. Or so my almost...

This one is for you.

A couple of photos from the gigantic number we created for the tenth and final Helsinki Burlesque Festival with both of our performing student troupes from our burlesque school  - We are already on our eight and sixth season with the troupes, and so far we've created ten acts for them separately, but this was the first one we did with both troupes together and also the first one we put ourselves in as well. And it was, like said , the biggest number done over here so far. And as far as we've concerned, that ever will be; we'll stick to choreographing for max 15 persons; 27 was quite the challenge when it comes to rehearsal space and noise, mainly noise, in the studio. Not sure when we'll get to do this act again with the full cast - smaller versions will most likely be seen, but I'm super happy that we got our ladies up on that big stage and made lots of epicness happen! Photos with watermark by Tuomas Lairila and the others by Jari Miettinen. (In case you've m...

Some time ago I watched the film Sayat-Nova / The Colour of Pomegranates. It is a1968 Soviet film written and directed by Sergei Parajanov that tells the story bout Sayat Nova, the Armenian 18th century poet and musician. It describes his life symbolically and poetically via his works, often with an allegoric meaning, rather than presenting the events told in a form that we are used to. This did not result in a very amicable reception from Soviet officials the time; the name of the film was changed from  Sayat-Nova  to  The Colour of Pomegranates  the most religious iconography were edited away, and the international release was not until years later. (Plus, Parajanov was persona non grata because of his films for a long time and was also imprisoned in the 70's.) But the internet can tell you all that in better detail. The Colour of Pomegranates is different from and not directly comparable to any other film I've seen - I got into watching if after reading a film rev...