i love beauty. when it comes to my personal taste, i am personally not a fan of ambiguously beautiful or alien-like, high fashion faces. i adore beauties whose face are so OBVIOUSLY beautiful that her beauty can slice through a fog. perhaps its the old fashioned in me. i am rather perfectionistic in this personal preference, a slightly large nose can put me off. but personal preference stays personal preference. i am not one who will snub models simply because of said personal preference. in this industry, beauty can be easily manufactured with brushes, be it make up or photoshop. even a simple change in angle or lighting can do wonders to a face. i have found this to be true. i am rambling again, aren't i?
the point i was trying to get to is that when i was younger i found the incarnation of my personal preference in one miss Sophie Ellis Bextor. oh, to me she is beautiful, just absolutely perfect. i first saw her in her video of MURDER ON THE DANCEFLOOR and i wish to the stars that i had been the one to fabricate her look.
let's start with her face. i adore this make up on her, it is daring but discreetly so. her look was sexy but simple, it needed a little contrasting pop. the bejeweled gloves were a gorgeous touch, but it still needed that pop. i always adore a flash of emerald with black and red, and i guess the stylist did too. her glittery lids were a gorgeous accent to her look and makes for great close up shots! a lovely visual realization of her character as an envious competitive girl (get it? envy? green-eyed monster?).
simple and sexy, i love it. and yet, simple as it may be, it actually steals the focus of your eyes as she is the only one dressed so simply and so stark amongst all the other frivolously dressed dancers. and i thought it was clever that she was dressed in something that is supposed to be sort of ordinary, to tell that she is not going to win this thing by her dancing efforts alone. everyone else is better than her and she knows this, so she takes matters into her own hands.
speaking of hands! a nice tip of the hat (no pun intended) to Michael Jackson if just a tad obvious. but i guess one of Michael Jackson's greatest legacy is his dancing and i suppose he has earned, at the very least, a modicum of respect from fellow dancers. and a music video is a series of fast shots that must tell a quick story, so her gloves serve the multiple purposes of revealing her character as a dancer, as a way to conceal her more dangerous accessories and to add some glitz to her plain outfit. dancers are synonymous with glitz, aren't they?
THOSE SHOES ARE FABULOUS AND I NEED THEM OR MY LIFE AS I KNOW IT WILL DISCONTINUE. ahem, sorry for that tiny outburst of lust. i have nothing but good things to say about these shoes. it gives a cheeky twist to her character, a peek of her true self if you will. she is not all saccharine sweet, she hides a dark desire, she is someone who will get what she wants no matter the cost. the buckles and leather is reminiscent of naughty bedplay (you know, the one with whips and chains, things that might excite Rihanna today) and the tough silhouette of it is the proclamation of something murky hiding beneath her angelic appearance. this, coupled with the fact that her male dance partner looks so obviously whipped and helpless to her every whim, carves and completes her character beautifully.
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