Rocio Ramos Seizes the Power of Cardinals for Marie Claire Mexico and LA

Rocio Ramos Seizes the Power of Cardinals for Marie Claire Mexico and LA AOC Fashion

Photographer Rocio Ramos [IG] captures unadulterated-red, fashion passion in the October pages of Marie Claire Mexico and Latin America. Model Dalianah Arekion poses in primal, earth-goddesses elegance styled by Abraham Gutiérrez.

Most fashion media will promote the color red as symbolizing new energy and interest in living with the latest seasonal wardrobe. The message is consumption-oriented — which is understandable, especially if we are looking at the latest, earth-loving sustainable fashion buys.

We doubt that is the case here — that we are looking at sustainable fashion. But there are even higher principles at play in these images. AOC knows for a fact that artist and photographer Rocio Ramos is on our wave-length, and she likes the writing her images inspire.

So we will move out on red, into the fast lane.

Red Symbolism

The color red is most often associated with a passion for living and an embrace of love, but also carnal pleasures. Red is known as an emotionally-intense color that enhances human metabolism and increases respiration rate, while raising blood pressure. The impact of the color red on the human body has been seriously studied.

Culturally-speaking we are in a red-alert moment that transcends fashion runways and embraces the duality of competing narratives about our very humanity.

Red is the color of fire and blood, one often associated with energy, war, power and danger. Red is considered to be aggressive and fierce, but also grounding. In the world of 7 chakras, red is the root chakra, and while it’s easy enough to dismiss red as primitive with its positioning on the chakra chart, it is also responsible for our sense of security and stability.

When apes first stood tall and began walking into humanity, their root chakra was in high gear — literally. Rocks and caves were homes to humanity before we created mobile structures made of mammoth tusks. The setting for Rocio Ramos’ fashion story is perfect, because it embraces the necessities of security, survival and being rooted as the very foundation of our lives.

Stella McCartney's Spring 2022 Collection Inspires a World of Fungi Research

Stella McCartney's Spring 2022 Collection Inspires a World of Fungi Research AOC Muse

Designer Stella McCartney’s Spring 2022 fashion show was inspired by mushrooms. Quite frankly, life on Anne of Carversville has not been the same since I watched on Netflix the 2019 ‘Fantastic Fungi’ documentary that prompted McCartney’s deep dive into the world of mushrooms.

Mushrooms are the visible part of an organism called mycelium, and they are not plants, even though they have a plantlike form. Even more important, until recently, fungi have been part of the botanist’s domain, and they were classified — incorrectly — as plants, writes the American Society For Microbiology in an article Three Reasons Fungi Are Not Plants.

Fungi and Africans: Both Misclassified and Misunderstood by Carl Linnaeus

Fungi were classified as plants for centuries due to an axiom attributed to Carl Linnaeus: “Plants grow and live; Animals grow, live and feel.”

Linnaeus’ delineation of plant activity seems inadequate and overly simplistic, given scientific research on the way in which plants experience sentient activity. We know that plants sense danger and then communicate their information to other plants, seeming to contradict Linnaeus’ assertions around plant life. NOT knowing his connection to racial categorization — I muttered to myself “Oh, right. In the same way some white dudes classified people of color as lesser-quality humans, they managed to ignore the profound distinctive attributes of fungi and mushrooms by calling them plants.”

Eureka! Linnaeus was deeply involved in the science of racial categorization. Rather than taking a sharp right turn in this post, AOC will stay with the fact that fungi can’t produce oxygen via photosynthesis, a core attribute of the plant kingdom.

It’s interesting when fashion, mushrooms and the civil rights movement come together in a single, cohesive thought pattern. Then again, the world of fungi is so primordial and pervasive in our biosphere that mycelium — the network of fungal threads or hyphae that produces the mushrooms we eat — strikes us as the very root of existence.

Stella McCartney is leading the way in working on the development of luxury leather made from mushrooms. The designer wants all of us to become curious about mushrooms, and I am now her dedicated disciple at AOC.

Megan Fox, MGK by Daniella Midenge Talk Demon Sex in British GQ Style AW21

Megan Fox and MGK (Machine Gun Kelly) made many headlines this week, and it was perhaps exactly as planned. AOC’s friend photographer Daniella Midenge [IG] called her images ‘provocative’. Indeed they are, as Fox is wearing nothing but a harness and pointing a gun at MGK’s crotch in the one below Fashion director Nicola Formichetti works on the shoot with styling by Hunter Clem for the British GQ Style AW21 issue.

Fox described their state of being in the time of the GQ UK interview on her Instagram as: “The tale of two outcasts and star-crossed lovers caught in the throes of a torrid, solar flare of a romance featuring: feverish obsession, guns, addiction, shamans, lots of blood, general mayhem, therapy, tantric night terrors, binding rituals, chakra sound baths, psychedelic hallucinations, organic smoothies, and the kind of sex that would make Lucifer clutch his rosary.”

That’s a lot of information, but I will say that those who condemn the couple’s first kiss as a bust, don’t know what they are talking about. As MGK explained: “We just put our lips right in front of each other and breathed each other’s breath, and then she just left.”

My suggestion is “Don’t damn a tantric kiss if you’ve never experienced one. “

All weekend starting Friday, WaPo’s article Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly are trying to be Hollywood’s hottest new couple, but instead are the most cringeworthy by Emily Yahr was in the top five reads. It’s also the lead right now in a Google search.

Positioned ahead of the actual GQUK interview “True romance: Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly are Hollywood’s new power couple “is not ideal. But there’s no doubt that all the controversy over these two lovebirds will not hurt anyone’s careers, especially their own — and, hopefully, Daniella’s.

GQ Writer Molly Lambert asserts that Megan Fox is the “ideal cool babe consort for a burgeoning superstar like MGK, a rapper rocker whose new album, ‘Born With Horns, is executive-produced by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker.”

If you don’t know Travis Barker, he’s Kourtney Kardashian’s betrothed. Lambert writes that Fox believes she and her spiritual love MGK share what she calls the ‘combustible element’ of all celebrities like Kurt and Courtney or Mick and Marianne — except that she and MGK are “trying their damndest to make sure things don’t blow up.”

I’m not sure that they are Hollywood’s new power couple. We’re in a different moment, although eating mushrooms together on a January walk in Bora Bora is sublime. Then again, the Kardashians are in a much better position to confirm the probability of the Fox and MGK as Hollywood’s newest power couple than AOC. ~ Anne

Will American Bees Survive Pesticides, Government Dysfunction and Other Killers?

Will American Bees Survive Pesticides, Government Dysfunction and Other Killers? AOC Fashion

American [species] Bumble Bees Could Gain ESA Protection

AOC has followed the problem of dwindling bee populations for almost a decade. But we were shocked to learn this week that the American bumble bee population has dropped nearly 90 percent. These vital pollinators for wildflowers and crops have vanished completely in eight states: Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wyoming.

Presently American bumble bees have no protection. But an August 2021 petition for protecting the American bumble bee under the Endangered Species Act [ESA] was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Bombus Pollinator Association of Law Students, an Albany Law School student group.

Sounds great you say. Finally we’re taking action to protect our bees. Yet the plight of another bee species shows us just how complicated it is to protect these precious pollinators. Passing a law or writing a new policy does not guarantee any improvement in bee deaths.

We must create spaces — land with controlled uses of pesticides — in which bees can thrive and regenerate their population. However, America still can’t agree on the science of pesticides. Any mandate meets countless political headwinds, as Democrats and Republicans generally loathe each other on plans — or no plans — to protect our environment.

Correlation Exists Between Lynching Events and Confederate Statues by US County

A map [middle image’ highlights the correlation between lynchings and Confederate monuments in America. The darker, redder colors indicate higher numbers of lynching victims; with each dot representing a Confederate monument (courtesy of the University of Virginia)

Republish via AOC at FeedBurner CC 3.0 License Attribution Required: Daily Fashion Design Culture News

Large numbers of white southerners have long argued that Confederate monuments exist exclusively as symbols of southern pride and a proud history of rebellion against America’s federal government.

Led by United Daughters of the Confederacy, supporters of Confederate monuments refuse to acknowledge that there is any psychological damage to nonwhite people living their daily lives in the shadows of these relics to the days of slavery.

Former slave families should also celebrate the honor of the Old South, say white southerners while waving their Confederate flags in their faces. If people of color are bothered by these towering monuments of famed Confederate generals, they should praise God’s creation of an ideal society and way of life. Otherwise, people of color can hop the first boat back to Africa. Easy peasy.

A new study by researchers at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville challenges the noble premise of Confederate monuments.

Led by Kyshia Henderson of UVA’s Social Psychology Program, who worked with data scientist Samuel Powers and professors Sophie Trawalter, Michele Claibourn, and Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi at the university’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, the researchers documented a significant correlation between the numbers of Confederate monuments in an area and the number of documented lynchings from 1832 to 1950.

Published by the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers do not assert that the existence of Confederate monuments causes or provokes lynching. Their private beliefs — and those of the majority of researchers working in this area of study — do believe that Confederate statues are symbols of hate and also dominant power. But this study only concludes that there is a positive correlation between the two data sets: lynchings by county and Confederate statues by country.

“We can’t pinpoint exactly the cause and effect. But the association is clearly there,” Trawalter wrote. “At a minimum, the data suggests that localities with attitudes and intentions that led to lynchings also had attitudes and intentions associated with the construction of Confederate memorials.”

The researchers referenced another study associated with dedication speeches for Confederate memorials, finding that nearly half of the 30 dedication speeches reviewed involved “explicit racist language,” including phrases like “love of race” and “your own race and blood.”

T Magazine's Fluffy, Furry Ancestral Creatures by Toby Coulson with Cherokee Jack and Briana Michelle

T Magazine's Fluffy, Furry Ancestral Creatures by Toby Coulson with Cherokee Jack and Briana Michelle AOC Fashion

Modern-day nomads are slowing down, honoring traditions and the roots of our culture. This T Magazine fall 2021 feature on ‘Winter’s Fluffiest and Furriest Outwear’ highlights not only whimsical textures in which we are one with furry creatures in an animistic, psychological relationship.

Presented by models like Briana Michelle and Cherokee Jack with close, ancestral ties to the land, we are all invited to pay our respects to cultures and a biosystem eons older than the prevailing patriarchal, white-man’s so-called Christian vision of dominance over the the earth and its peoples.

AOC isn’t suggesting that all references to indigenous cultures belong to ‘the good guys’.

Consider the Arizona man Jacob Chansley, known as the QAnon Shaman, who led an insurrection against the US Capitol on January 6. We must not be naive about men wearing big, furry hats with horns. They can kill you.

Adele Covers Two Continents: Here in American Vogue US November 2021 by Alasdair McLellan

Adele Covers Two Continents: Here in American Vogue US November 2021 by Alasdair McLellan AOC Fashion

On the British side of the Atlantic, Adele signals the return of va va voom dressing. Not only has Adele walked out of the shadows and into the light — but her new-found roar is heard on both sides of the Atlantic in the first-ever cover star collab between American Vogue and British Vogue.

In America, Adele is much more subdued, compared to her Steven Meisel images in British Vogue. She looks fabulous on the cover, wearing a green Valentino Haute Couture gown. Photographer Alasdair McLellan [IG] captures the star, who is styled by Tonne Goodman./ Hair by Frankie Boyd; makeup by Akki Shirakawa

Vogue writer Abby Aguirre catches up with Adele at Heart & Hustle, a private gym in West Hollywood.

We learn that Adele has been doing rigorous weight-lifting and circuit-training sessions every day for three years and counting. Sometimes, Adele works out twice in one day if her anxiety is running high. The world agrees on very little at this point, and women who lose weight are slammed regularly on social media for betraying the sisterhood and our core argument that all bodies are beautiful.

Marcin Tyszka Flashes Magic Powers 'Flora & Fauna' for Harper's Bazaar Germany November 2021

Marcin Tyszka Flashes Magic Powers 'Flora & Fauna' for Harper's Bazaar Germany November 2021 AOC Fashion

Model Silje Lorentzen plunges into what is presented as a surreal world of ‘Flora & Fauna!’, but is it? Kerstin Schneider styles Lorentzen in fantastical patterns and prints from Alaia, Alexander McQueen, Dior, N21 by Alessandro Dell’Acqua, Max Mara, Richard Quinn, Tory Burch, Undercover and more.

Photographer Marcin Tyszka [IG] captures the artistry for Harper’s Bazaar Germany November 2021 issue / Hair by Emil Zed

There’s no arguing that the mushroom props are fantastical. But after further exploration of Stella McCartney’s Spring 2022 collection — also inspired by mushrooms — the facts of fungi may set us free in the real world.

Travis Scott by Joshua Woods Talks Dior Men's Cactus Jack x Dior, Cactus Jack Foundation

Travis Scott by Joshua Woods Talks Dior Men's Cactus Jack x Dior, Cactus Jack Foundation AOC Fashion

American rapper Travis Scott is a very busy man. These images of Travis Scott lensed by Joshua Woods [IG] for Another Magazine’s Fall/Winter 2021 issue showcase clothes that he designed in collaboration with Dior’s Men’s Kim Jones for Spring 2022. Ellie Grace Cumming styles Scott with art direction by Marc Ascoli. / Hair by Mideyah Parker

Speaking to Emma Hope Allwood, Scott and Jones discuss their deep-rooted, far-reaching collaboration.

Travis Scott is the first celebrity since Michael Jordan in 1992 to create a McDonald’s meal. Scott’s creative collective Cactus Jack encompasses a record label, a publishing arm and an array of merchandise with graphics devised by him.