Sarah4fashion

Loving...

2012-01-07T12:37:00.000+01:00

Love until it hurts,

never relenting, ever consuming,

until it becomes dangerous.

Happy New Year !

2011-12-31T11:30:00.001+01:00

Hotel George V Paris

Happy Christmas !

2011-12-24T11:14:00.000+01:00

Galeries Lafayette

Winter

2011-12-17T10:56:00.001+01:00

Only after my Hazelnut Hot Chocolate am I ready to join the human race.

Starbucks

Reflections in Paris

2011-12-08T19:39:00.000+01:00

Now at Artflakes

The Galerie Borthier.

2011-11-04T18:12:00.000+01:00

The Galerie Borthier, in Brussels is a shopping arcade designed by Jean-Pierre Cluysenaer. It was constructed in 1847 and opened in the following year. It is situated in the centre of the City of Brussels between the Mont des Arts and the Grand Place not far from the more monumental Royal Galleries of Saint-Hubert.

Originally the mall was a part of the Marché de la Madeleine complex, a covered market also built by Cluysenaer. The façade at the rue de la Madeleine in a Flemish baroque style antedates the construction of the mall behind it. This front was recuperated from an old town house built on that site in the 18th-century.

Today the mall mostly houses bookshops and art galleries.

Wikipedia

Mont des Arts

2011-10-14T10:48:00.000+02:00

The Kunstberg or Mont des Arts, meaning "hill/mountain of the arts", is a historic site in the center of Brussels, Belgium.

The showcase square was created for the Universal Exposition held in Brussels in 1910. It featured a park and a monumental staircase with cascading fountains descending the gentle slope from Place Royale down to Boulevard de l'Empereur/Keizerslaan.

The original square was destroyed during the post-war construction frenzy known as Brusselization; between 1954 and 1965, the square and its surroundings gave way to massive, severely geometric postmodern structures such as the Royal Library of Belgium and the Congress Palace.

The Mont des Arts offers one of Brussels’ finest views. From the vantage point on a hill, the famous tower of the Brussels Town Hall at the Grand Place is clearly visible. On a sunny day, the Koekelberg Basilica and even the Atomium can be seen.

Major tourist attractions are located within walking distance from the Kunstberg: the Musical Instrument Museum, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, the Royal Palace, and the city’scathedral.

http://www.wikipedia.org/

Andy Eeckhaut: the Pictures.

2011-09-09T12:33:00.000+02:00

http://www.andyeeckhaut.com/

Andy Eeckhaut Photography sur Facebook

make-up & hair: Katarina Goyvaerts

assistant to the photographer: Christel De Greef

production assistant: Aurélie Stoelzaed

digital imaging technician: Samuel Eeckhaut

In the studio with Andy Eeckhaut

2011-09-01T20:45:00.000+02:00

Each shoot starts with make-up.

Everyone is bustling to help.

On the set with the Andy Eeckhaut.

Photographer: Andy Eeckhaut

http://www.andyeeckhaut.com/ Andy Eeckhaut on Facebook

make-up & hair: Katarina Goyvaerts

assistant to the photographer: Christel De Greef

production assistant: Aurélie Stoelzaed

digital imaging technician: Samuel Eeckhaut

Dreamly Artistic Nature

2011-08-28T12:48:00.000+02:00

Undeterred by prescribed ideal sizes, natural beauty is shrouded in a dreamy, playful air. Floral designs dominate the overall picture in warm spicey shades of red.

Dreamly Artistic Nature by Helena Vonck

Animaux de la solitude

2011-08-25T08:42:00.000+02:00

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

Mahatma Gandhi

Animaux de la solitude by Shana Verhoeven

Electro Nights

2011-08-22T09:53:00.000+02:00

The blood of machines used for the human way of living.

The colors of the night live in the coats and dresses

to lighten up the city in the night.

Electro Nights by Véronique Megyeri

Ommatidia Drosophilia

2011-08-19T21:13:00.000+02:00

Softly the day starts to fade

the horizon radiant one last time

when light beams wane at last

the day is done and crested.

Ommatidia Drosophilia by Nathalie Lemmens

Mermaid Warriors

2011-08-16T08:41:00.000+02:00

Softly the water calls

in the night

and smiles.

As if in wait

Mermaid Warriors by Annemarie Kroes

Virgin Gore

2011-08-12T14:25:00.001+02:00

Flowing, red, wet, white, fragile, untouched.

Virgin Gore by Belinda Knuyt

Délices

2011-08-09T11:29:00.000+02:00

Playful, colourful and tasty.

Delicés by Marjoleine De Vocht

Butterfly As A Fantasy

2011-08-07T11:20:00.000+02:00

Little flowers in an old fashioned-style.

Butterfly As A Fantasy by Jody Coeck.

The Anomaly Royale

2011-08-03T14:57:00.000+02:00

An unusual royal family, personified by the Seven Mortal Sins.  Ruling over the human mind and emotion, crowned with the horns of desire.

Luxuria.  Gula.  Ira.  Acedia.  Avaritia.  Superbia.  Invidia.

The Anomaly Royal by Laura Bierens

Fashion show 2011

2011-07-08T20:37:00.000+02:00

and the light hides... caught behind the fabric

Studies in bale of cotton

Inspiration: flea markets.
Old furniture ans chandeliers from a distant and not so distant past are reborn in textile forms, light and luminous.

Hats

Hats inspired by French gardens

A study in coats.

Inspiration: Louise Bourgeois.
Memoiries, upbringing, religion, experiences weave patterns that veil one's true nature. In the centre of it all, the fear to bare one's soul.

Celebration and bridal dress.

Inspiration: surrealism.
A world of imagination. Surrealism, hyperrealistic or unrealistic? Reality and reproduction make off with esthetic value.

Instituut Sint Maria

Immortal Oxygen

2011-06-13T11:55:00.000+02:00

CO² Space.  The universe will never conquer oxygen.
Carried naked by gravity.
Protected from the pull of the planets.
Craters. UFO's, masks, stars.  Immortal oxygen.

Immortal Oxygen by Stef Poortmans

Brussels Central

2011-05-01T17:11:00.000+02:00

Brussels Central is a metro and railway station in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. It is one of three principal train stations in Brussels, but handles primarily domestic traffic.

Designed by Victor Horta and inaugurated in 1952 as part of the North–South connection project to connect the main railway lines in Brussels, it lies midway between the other main stations Bruxelles-Midi / Brussel-Zuid and Bruxelles-Nord / Brussel-Noord.

The railway station has six tracks, served by three island platforms. These are underground, beneath the city blocks within the "Boulevard de l'Impératrice/Keizerinlaan", "Rue de l'Infante Isabelle/Infante Isabella straat", "Kantersteen" and "Rue de la Putterie/Putterijstraat".

As for the main entrance and ticket office, they are at ground level on Keizerinlaan/Imperatrice, and there are several other entrances on the other streets.

Wikipedia

The Garden.

2011-04-01T12:31:00.001+02:00

My eyes,...

speak the deepest emotions...

that my lips cannot.

Hair & make-up: Nadine Van Langenhove

The Samuraï.

2011-03-01T08:50:00.001+01:00

Hair & make-up: Nadine Van Langenhove

Maintaining the household was the main duty of samurai women. This was especially crucial during early feudal

Japan

, when warrior husbands were often travelling abroad or engaged in clan battles. The wife, or okusan (meaning: one who remains in the home), was left to manage all household affairs, care for the children, and perhaps even defend the home forcibly. For this reason, many women of the samurai class were trained in wielding a pole arm called a naginata or a special knife called the kaiken in an art called tantojutsu (lit. the skill of the knife), which they could use to protect their household, family, and honor if the need arose.

Traits valued in women of the samurai class were humility, obedience, self-control, strength, and loyalty. Ideally, a samurai wife would be skilled at managing property, keeping records, dealing with financial matters, educating the children (and perhaps servants, too), and caring for elderly parents or in-laws that may be living under her roof. Confucian law, which helped define personal relationships and the code of ethics of the warrior class required that a woman show subservience to her husband, filial piety to her parents, and care to the children. Too much love and affection was also said to indulge and spoil the youngsters. Thus, a woman was also to exercise discipline.

Though women of wealthier samurai families enjoyed perks of their elevated position in society, such as avoiding the physical labor that those of lower classes often engaged in, they were still viewed as far beneath men. Women were prohibited from engaging in any political affairs and were usually not the heads of their household.

Powerful women both wisely and unwisely wielded power at various occasions. After Ashikaga Yoshimasa, 8th shogun of the Muromachi shogunate lost interest in politics, his wife Hino Tomiko largely ruled in his place. Nene, wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was known to overrule her husband's decisions at times and Yodo, his mistress, became the de facto master of Osaka castle and the Toyotomi clan after Hideyoshi's death. Chiyo, wife of Yamauchi Kazutoyo, has long been considered the ideal samurai wife. According to legend, she made her kimono out of a quilted patchwork of bits of old cloth and saved pennies to buy her husband a magnificent horse on which he rode to many victories. The fact that Chiyo is held to such high esteem for her economic sense is illuminating in the light of the fact that she never produced an heir and the Yamauchi clan was succeeded by Kazutoyo's younger brother. The source of power for women may have been that samurai looked down upon matters concerning money and left their finances to their wives.

As the Tokugawa period progressed more value became placed on education, and the education of females beginning at a young age became important to families and society as a whole. Marriage criteria began to weigh intelligence and education as desirable attributes in a wife, right along with physical attractiveness. Though many of the texts written for women during the Tokugawa period only pertained to how a woman could become a successful wife and household manager, there were those that undertook the challenge of learning to read, and also tackled philosophical and literary classics. Nearly all women of the samurai class were literate by the end of the Tokugawa period.

Wikipedia

Three Cranes.

2011-02-01T11:42:00.000+01:00

I love to play against a backdrop of three old cranes.

I feel fragile, small and vulnerable,
yet safe among the steal of 'my' cranes.

The wind in my hair and earrings.

The sun is intense, the wind is cold.

The Cry.

2011-01-01T10:47:00.000+01:00

Hair & make-up: Nadine Van Langenhove

I was walking along a path with two friends — the sun was setting— suddenly the sky turned blood red— I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence— there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city — my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

The scene was identified as being the view from a road overlooking Oslo, the Oslofjord and Hovedoya, from the hill of Ekeberg. At the time of painting the work, Munch's manic depressive sister Laura Catherine was interned in the mental hospital at the foot of Ekeberg.

In 1978, the Munch scholar Robert Rosenblum suggested that the strange, sexless creature in the foreground of the painting was probably inspired by a Peruvian mummy, which Munch could have seen at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. This mummy, which was crouching in a fetal position with its hands alongside its face, also struck the imagination of Munch's friend Paul Gauguin: it stood model for the central figure in his painting Human misery (Grape harvest at Arles) and for the old woman at the left in his painting Where Do We Come From ? What Are We ? Where Are We Going ?. More recently, an Italian anthropologist speculated that Munch might have seen a mummy in Florence’s Museum of Natural History which bears an even more striking resemblance to the painting.

One theory advanced to account for the reddish sky in the background is that Munch had observed an effect of the powerful volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883: the ash that was ejected from the volcano left the sky tinted red in much of eastern United States and most of Europe and Asia from the end of November 1883 to mid February 1884. This explanation has been disputed by scholars who note that Munch was an expressive, rather than descriptive painter, and was therefore not primarily responsive to literal rendering. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the proximity to the site of the painting of both a slaughterhouse and a madhouse may have offered inspiration.

Wikipedia