The Floating Sound Collective Tunes In, Outside
It feels a little bit like joining a secret society — that is, if secret societies were open to everyone. “Text a cloud emoji to this number,” instructs the Instagram bio of Floating, an L.A. collective presenting sound experiences in natural settings. Soon your phone is pinging a few times a week with invitations to events... More
What Warpaint Packs on Tour
When Warpaint returned to Los Angeles in July after a two-month tour that spanned the western hemisphere, Emily Kokal, one of the all-female quartet’s vocalist/guitarists, would often find herself wandering the hills of her Echo Park neighborhood instead of relaxing at home. “I’m so used to moving and seeing new things,” she said over coffee... More
The World According to Willow
She was a pop princess at the age of nine and poised for movie stardom by 11, having been cast as “Annie” in an update of the beloved musical, but right now, just two days shy of her 13th birthday on Halloween, what Willow Smith wants to be more than anything is a seventh grader.... More
Vintage Maven Linda Ramone Talks Shop(ping)
I gabba-gabbed with the glamorous vintage goddess and rock ‘n’ roll widow Linda Ramone for Los Angeles Magazine‘s December 2013 issue. Below are some outtakes from our talk about her inspirations, her favorite pieces and designers, and the monotony of today’s red carpet. When did you start wearing vintage? I started wearing vintage before it... More
Florence Welch: Songbird
Since she was discovered, as the story goes, singing Etta James while drunk in the loo of a London nightclub just a few years ago, the flame-haired singer Florence Welch has ascended to superstardom with a sureness and swiftness that feels almost pre-destined. When her band, Florence + the Machine, releases its second studio album,... More
Putting the Spark in Arcade Fire
For Arcade Fire devotees, Regine Chassagne’s sparkly dresses — gold stripes and disco stardust at the Grammys, tarnished sequins atwirl on “Saturday Night Live” — are as much a signature as the band’s exuberant sound; even from the cheap seats, Chassagne shimmers. Get a little closer, and the finely wrought frocks, designed by the Montreal-based... More
Brian Butler’s Magick Act
For the Los Angeles artist Brian Butler, magic (or “magick,” as the case may be) is as modern as technology. Certain teachings may be ancient, he notes, but that doesn’t make them any less relevant. “In the modern world of computers, the same energies are still operating,” he says.Butler was premiering his film, “The Dove... More
Sofia Coppola and Thomas Mars
It comes as little surprise to learn that Sofia Coppola, a filmmaker for whom music often plays a scene-stealing role, enlisted Phoenix, the French rock band fronted by her boyfriend Thomas Mars, to score her new film, “Somewhere.” What is surprising, however, is that the creative collaboration between the couple, who now have two young... More
It Happened One Night
“I think part of the purpose of museums is to serve friction,” said the artist Doug Aitken. “Things that make you wake up, that make you think.” Museum fund-raising galas, however, are better known for serving bland cuisine and excess, so when Jeffrey Deitch, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s new director, invited Aitken... More
Los Angeles Dispatch: Will Lemon
Most makeup artists consider the skin their canvas, but William Lemon III takes the idea more literally. Lemon, who is also a musician and painter, created a water-based acrylic body painting technique called skin printing, and he has used it to cover Marc Jacobs’s naked body with hot pink Stephen Sprouse/Louis Vuitton logos, and to... More
“Kids” Sounds All Right
You won’t hear a single Who riff in Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids are All Right,” but the rock ‘n’ roll title fits nonetheless. As with Cholodenko’s other features “High Art” and “Laurel Canyon,” this is a story of unconventional characters: a lesbian couple, their two teenage children, and their sperm donor; and their musical tastes... More
Keeping “The Runaways” Raw and Real
In the opening scenes of “The Runaways,” Floria Sigismondi’s ode to the all-girl hard rock band, the characters played by Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning could be almost any teenage girls living in the Valley circa 1975. Fanning is sitcom-cute in a plaid shirt, miniskirt and knee socks; Stewart sports a T-shirt and jeans. But... More