I can’t wait to check out Audrey Tautou as Coco Chanel in the upcoming film Coco avant Chanel. They’ve just released this sneak peek of the movie poster and already Tautou is looking like the perfect choice to portray the fashion icon. In fact, the film was specifically conceived with Tautou in mind - the director Anne Fontaine agreeing to helm the project only if Tautou would sign on for the lead. The movie is currently filming in Paris and is expected to hit theaters in Spring 2009. With the project being in the early stages and very little information available let’s try to make a few predictions just for fun - if they prove to be correct, I’ll backward link to this post and remind you guys of it every chance I get…if they prove incorrect, well we’ll just move on and pretend this post never happened…sound good? Here we go…I’m expecting this movie to have a similar feel to La Vie En Rose as the focus will apparently be on Chanel’s impoverished childhood and early pre-fame days when she was briefly a cafe/cabaret singer. Thanks in large part to Marion Cotillard’s Oscar win for LVER - and also partly to Tautou having a bit of mass-market name recognition thanks to Amelie - I’m expecting that Coco avant Chanel will receive even more attention than LVER. I think that an Oscar nomination for Tautou is certainly possible, even likely. With the attention then, will Chanel’s early look become a hot fashion influencer upon the film’s release? Her influence on contemporary fashion is already enormous of course - but what I’m thinking of here is a specific response to the film, which focuses on her pre-Chanel days. I’m thinking of menswear-inspired looks (similar to the poster photo) and flapper-inspired looks - both of which Coco Chanel was closely associated with. I’m also thinking about how some of the coolest kids in London have been rocking silent film-era looks and flapper-inspired looks recently - see my post about that here. These sorts of things do have a way of coalescing…x eddie

I was checking out the new Japanese Elle magazine last night at Sunrise Mart on E. 9th Street - just for the photography and streetstyle and graphic stuff as I couldn’t actually read it. I loved the photos of New York it-girl Lizzy by Jean-Baptiste Mondino so I wanted to share them here. I especially like how they desaturated all of the color except for her carrot-top crop. This would be a cool move stylistically for a black/grey heavy runway show except that Gareth Pugh pretty much already did it last season, giving most of his black-clad models red/orange pigtail wigs. I’m also a big fan of little felt fedoras on girls - which Lizzy often rocks in her everyday look. The Chanel fedora here however is $1,125 which I’m not such a big fan of. xo eddie

Now a major figure on the international fashion scene as well as a style icon, she was once a model for teen magazines. She often will take a moment to pose for individual photographers - perhaps because her own career started after being spotted on the street by a photographer’s assistant. She later progressed to styling fashion shoots herself, which to some extent she still does today. Perhaps you instantly recognize her simply by looking at her photo? Who is this fresh-faced young model?

I’m moving house at the moment and trying to decide which possessions will make the move with me and which are headed for that great recycling bin in the sky. One thing that will definitely be coming with me is my magazine collection. Yes, they are heavy and a bit unwieldy but it’s worth carting them to the new apartment for the pleasure and inspiration they bring. I think of a great magazine with great photography and great writing as a work of art and not something to be tossed lightly aside. My favorite magazine of the year so far is the current issue of French Playboy with Lou Doillon on the cover. Her photos inside by Takis Bibelas have more in common with a Helmut Newton shoot than they do with anything you might see in an American “men’s” magazine. The entire issue is a special fashion issue. There is also a great article with cool photos of the neon and rough edges of Paris’ Boulevard de Clichy. The Juergen Teller photo story in the issue is unmissable as well. - x eddie

I’m totally obsessed with Youtube. In fact, other than episodes of Gossip Girl (another obsession) that I purchase from iTunes and loads of movies that I buy or get from Netflix, it’s pretty much the only thing I “watch” these days. (If I’m not watching any of the above, I’m often reading a giant stack of fashion magazines or a book, editing photos, listening to music, looking around the Internet, or I’m out somewhere.)
Speaking of obsessions and Youtube, I’m bananas for The Kills video for their new track, “U R A Fever”. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s “Outer and Inner Space” (a grainy black and white 1965 split-screen film of Edie Sedgwick talking to herself), the video takes a song that is pretty amazing on its own merits and sends it into the art-punk stratosphere. They even shot the clip with the same type of Norelco camera that Warhol used…which gave me a note-to-self to go shopping for a vintage film camera. Check out the old brocade sofa, the smeared lipstick, the split-screen, band member Hotel’s beat-up leather jacket/white shirt/skinny tie combo…wow. Some fashion show producer should take this clip and build a show around it. Videos like this are why Youtube is so exciting - all this great new music that seems to be all over the TV and radio when you travel in Europe, but that you never used to see/hear in America is now at your fingertips. The Kills new album is out on March 10th.