And the way he roll just a rebel to the world with no place to go...

 

So my friend T sent this MJ commercial to me following a longass phone call we had that revolved around my concerns about my future. Talk about the future has always scared me a little, okay a lot...and now more than ever I find myself questioning what my future has in store for me. But see after this conversation with T, I don't really give a f*ck about where my future is headed. Either way I know it'll be great, simply because I'll make it so. Call it arrogance if you will, I prefer the term self belief. Because there is no way in hell I suffered through this many years of painful education to not get somewhere in life...one more year and then I'm out in the real world....

Times like these I need to put myself in a good mood, and Kick Push is one those tracks that never fails to make me mellow. I'm not a mellow person by nature but this song is capable of putting me in a weird calm mood when I feel as though all is right in the world. Bad/good/average day..whatever...this song is always the one to play.

So anyway, aside from all my emotional ramblings, the whole point of this post is actually about an article I read the other day. After randomly picking up the Stylist magazine during the longest tube journey, I became engrossed in this article that was concerned with the perceptions of beauty. Referring to a few famous artworks - of which the Mona Lisa was one, again Da Vinci you genius - the writer explains how the make up artists of today are seeking to recover an earlier sense of what is beautiful in their work, emulating the faces seen in such fine art. The article was intriguing to say the least, whether its true or not....hmm I'm undecided.

 Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa - inspiration for the soft smoky eye? Da Vinci's famous sfumato technique involved blending colours into one another seamlessly, creating softened outlines much like the ones seen at Gucci (above right).

 Botticelli's Birth of Venus - a painting from the Renaissance which creates impossible standards of beauty with their depiction of women with rosy cheeks, warm subtly smoky eyes, and naturally pink lips. This look seems to be everywhere during the SS shows, as seen above.

 Queen Elizabeth I's coronation painting - everyone knows that Elizabeth I created her exceptionally pale porcelain appearance using a dangerous skin cream that contained lead. Most of her portraits depicted her as having extremely pale skin, rosy cheeks and a virginal appearance. This minimal look is often seek in AW collections, in line with the cooler temperatures and colour palette.

I'm still unsure as to whether I agree with the writer's views, but what I do know is that paintings such as these were the result of the greatest artists dedicating their genius to imposing impossible standards of beauty on a world that, in reality, was scarred by pox, ravaged by poverty and untouched by hygiene. I guess that our attempts to reinterpret their work through modern day make up and beauty is a testament to their skill and vision.