http://cache.jezebel.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png http://jezebel.com/tag/eccentrics http://jezebel.com/tag/eccentrics Dr. Ted Eisenberg is the world's most prolific boob job surgeon. He is also a champion knife-thrower: "My work spills into my hobby, and my hobby spills into my work. I bring that work focus to my knife-throwing." This… [Gawker] More »
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It's like Vogue Italia mixed up Isabella Blow, Daphne Guinness, added a dash of Peggy Guggenheim, and popped on a Philip Treacy lobster hat. Oh, fashion! Always so whimsical. We've broken these looks down into easy at-home steps. More »
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Martin Howard has written a paean to "eccentrics" — the lobster-walking, mole-eating, own-buttcheek-caressing weirdos who, he argues, make the world a better place. Which made us think of our favorite eccentrics — and what eccentricity is in the first place. More »
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Margaret Gelling, an expert on the arcana of English place-names and who described herself as a "neat, keen, merry woman...sensibly shod and clad," has died at 84. [Economist] More »
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A moment of silence, please, for a great urban character: Joe Ades, champagne-swilling, Park Avenue-dwelling, bespoke suit-sporting, British-accented, motor-mouthed vegetable- peeler-hawker extraordinaire and New York institution, has died at 75. [NYT, Vanity Fair] More »
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"Shoot 'em. Shoot 'em. It's a better way to live!" Check out Katharine Hepburn in rare crank form in this 1979 60 Minutes interview, waxing on aging, humanity, movies, and bores. [Oh No They Didn't] More »
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It was with horror and chagrin that we learned recently that the struggling Village Voice has ended the 30-year run of fashion writer Lynn Yaeger's "Frock Star" column(formerly "Elements of Style"), one of the most unique and awesome voices in mode journalism. For those of you unfamiliar with Yeager's idiosyncratic personal style - she describes her hairdo as that of "the world's oldest French orphan" - and bitingly funny voice, may we suggest a dip into her archives? We get that times are hard for print and she'll certainly always have a plethora of journalistic outlets, but Yeager is not merely a New York institution but a much-needed bit of surrealist fresh air in a self-serious industry. If young writers are looking for an example of talent and self-confident individuality, look no further than this Hall of Famer. More »
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A piece in yesterday's Times described the frenzy surrounding the appearance Robert Pattison, the star of Twilight, at a mall in Pennsylvania last Thursday. Squealed one tearful girl, "He was this close...Close enough to bite my neck." I guess this was fresh on my mind the other day when I met up with a young teen whom I've known since she was born - a smart, independent 15-year-old. I asked her if she was a fan of the Twilight phenomenon, and her face grew stormy. "I've never read them," she said. "I can't stand these stupid girls who just follow the trends." And I knew exactly how she felt: because for every group of girls screaming at a mall appearance, there's an equally fierce group of deliberate trend-buckers, defining themselves by their scorn for what's popular. More »
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You know, we've talked a lot about the difference between 'fashion' - that remote art form that most of us admire from afar - and style. What we wear. A couple of years ago, Little Edie Beale, the eccentric poor relation of Jackie Kennedy immortalized in Grey Gardens, was discovered by Fashion. We all know the trademarks: cashmere sweaters on her head, upside-down skirts, pantyhose sarongs, trouser minis. Designers were thrilled by this creativity, quick to reinvent and intellectualize it in expensive fabrics. But Little Edie wasn't intellectual; she was instinctive. With straitened circumstances and, okay, a healthy dash of delusion, she condensed a hundred Today show segments every hour. Reinvention? Check. Second-hand chic? Check. DIY? Natch. Well, little Edie's real moment has come - and we're not talking Drew Barrymore's biopic. More »
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When I was nine, I wrote a fan letter to Tasha Tudor. For those of you unfamiliar with the children's illustrator who died yesterday at the age of 92, she was as known for her aggressively anachronistic 19th century lifestyle on a New England farm as she was for her delicate watercolors of children and animals. As a pantaloons-wearing third-grade oddball who'd rigged up a fake root cellar in my back yard, the idea that a grown-up could pursue this kind of eccentricity so boldly was very appealing. Born into an old Boston family (about which she talks a lot in The Private World of Tasha Tudor and The Tasha Tudor Cookbook - what, you don't have them?) Tasha Tudor was in fact a hardworking artist who illustrated more than a hundred books and raised four children as a single mother. That she lived by candlelight, had hundreds of corgis, spun her own flax, raised goats and chickens and wore clothing exclusively from the 1830s was almost incidental - which is what made it so awesome. More »
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