ABMB | A Fashion Retrospective Starring Dynasty Handbag

 

“Poor Aim” (Sophie Morner)

With Liza Minnelli debuting her new show at the Palace Theater on Broadway and The Moment’s reporting from Art Basel Miami Beach this week, we thought it was important to give some due to the performance art world’s answer to Ms. Minnelli, Dynasty Handbag. With an overexcited tongue, a twitch and a synthesizer, Ms. Handbag (the alter ego of Jibz Cameron) mixes vocal recordings of her self-loathing inner monologues with live songs and writhing dance moves. The result? Cameron is as committed to her performance as Dynasty Handbag should be to Bellevue.

Now Emoting | An Aura of Uncertainty

(Carlo Van de Roer)

The New Zealand-born photographer Carlo Van de Roer recently paid a visit to the ophthalmologist, saying he had been seeing clouds in his eyes. The occurrence wasn’t completely abnormal for Van de Roer as of late; for the past month, he’s been taking portraits of people’s auras, a pseudoscientific phenomenon discussed by migraine sufferers and W.E. Butler alike.

Fashion’s Web Master | Matthew Siskin

Matthew Siskin’s design for the Obedient Sons & Daughters Web site.

For the Web designer Matthew Siskin, the overlapping Persian rugs in Obedient Sons & Daughters’ design studio inspired the oversize, horizontal approach to the fashion label’s new Web site. “I wanted to create that exact feeling you get when you walk into their office — to take their specific little world and put it online.” Framed ephemera such as the covers of vintage Penguin paperbacks and psychedelic Peter Max-designed posters jump from the walls to the Web, presented in seamless, scanning transitions.

Fine Print | ‘The Purple Anthology’

Purple Anthology, Rizzoli, 2008 (Katja Rahlwes).

Art and fashion are usually filed away in decades not centuries, so it’s not often you hear someone say, “That’s so fin de siècle.” “The Purple Anthology” (Rizzoli; $60) examines this gray, or rather, purple area in art and fashion during the past 15 years of the prescient periodical Purple. This cultish French journal’s commentaries, collages and epic photographic essays pinned down a moment in flux, hovering not only between centuries, but also between the galleries and runways of New York, Paris and Tokyo.