Welcome to Oz: A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop (VOICES)

This book goes some way toward explaining why. From his first 1980 collection, Versace cannily engaged a great photographer, Richard Avedon, who stylishly wedded his designs to a potent blend of celebrity, beauty, flesh, sex, and humor, which became instantly identifiable as Versace--poised, pansexual, tongue firmly in sculptured cheek. Whether in trademarked group shots of intricately entangled supermodels, Stallone nude and stone-faced, Elton gleeful in drag, or Bon Jovi proudly strutting his buff bod, Avedon equals Versace--to the extent that he can show Kate Moss, without a stitch of Versace (or anything else), and we know that she is thinking Versace. This gorgeous volume collects more than 170 photographs, and gives us, as it justly proclaims: "A glimpse of the impassioned shameful opulent titillating sewmanship of that daredevil magician of art and artifice who was and will always be Gianni Versace." --Alan Stewart

She includes a questionnaire to determine how fast you metabolize food, and a week's worth of sample menus to guide you along the appropriate eating plan for your particular profile. Gittleman also debunks the "fat is the root of all evil" diet myth by explaining how fat actually boosts immune function and aids weight loss. There's also extensive supplement information and helpful explanations of the often-misunderstood roles of protein, fat, and carbohydrate, along with resources for everything from amino acid testing for vegetarians to home-study courses in nutrition. This is a fine book for anyone looking to lose weight--not fall victim to the latest dieting fad.

Creating a taylored regimen utilizing a combination of different approaches that have been developed through the years is a brilliant idea - after all, metabolic typing and the blood group diet seem to have worked great for a lot of people, but they too were inperfect plans. So combining the two of them and adding the data about ancestry and body needs developed through one's "family tree" seemed like the best idea of all. But a work like this would go into very many aspects and peculiarities, since each approach has its own flaws and supposedly these could be sort of fixed by jumping in with a different approach. In other words, a book like what this book promises would have be much thicker and go into each "tool of personalization" much deeper than this book actually does. It does contain some useful info, and anyone who can fit into the categories very specifically will find it helpful. But in my case, this book didn't tell me anything that could help me taylor my food regimen to my needs - I happen to be of the blood group AB, which is the newest and least common one, so I am told to find a balance between the A group diet and the B group diet. No tayloring on that aspect. Then we come to consider the metabolic typing, and I seem to be a fast burner, except I have some key characteristics of the slow burner, like a passion for cakes, sweets and pastries, and a feeling that no meal is complete without a sweet fix. So that also puts me kind of in the middle.

In short, this book is based on an excellent idea but it barely touches the tip of the iceberg. In order to be truly helpful and complete it would need to go much more into each approach and include research on the "exceptions".

A good read for anyone who doesn't have much knowledge of the field of nutrition, mainly an interesting read, but not very useful, for anyone else.

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Ornate, Exquisite, Sumptuous
Perfectly Gianni
Satified my curiousity!
A dazzling book of luscious, erotic, artful photographs

Do Not Disturb
Gianni Versace , Roy Strong , and Richard Avedon
Manufacturer: Abbeville Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Fashion | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0789201135

Gianni Versace has said of himself, "I don't care for half-measures. I believe in making clear-cut choices." Versace's fashion is about such bold and unequivocal choices. Unafraid of being denounced by those less daring and more fearful than himself, he makes fashion meant to be worn by those who share his desire for risk--who share his honesty about sexuality and his self-confidence in aesthetic choice. Traditionally, fashion designers begin with innovations in their first collections, develop fans and followers, and ultimately settle into a style that is the designer's trademark, with modest adaptations to the season and fashion currents. Gianni Versace is different. The New York Times remarked on a 1996 showing: "Gianni Versace ended the day with his collection, dedicated to 'a woman who listens to classical music but enjoys rock, who reads The New Yorker and Calvino but can have a laugh at gossipy chronicles, who adores wearing Versace with Calvin Klein jeans or Versace jeans with a Chanel jacket.' If that sounds like a personal ad . . . it could be, because Mr. Versace is not setting up housekeeping with clients who have married him in the past; he is always courting someone new." Indeed, Versace is an uncompromising designer--one who develops and expands not only in the public arena of fashion but also in the even larger area of popular culture.

Versace's energy has become famous; he makes it clear both as a designer and as a human being that he prizes life. Already by the late 1970's, Gianni Versace was in command of his distinctive style. He was able to combine absolute power and authority with comfortable materials and a relaxed silhouette. Even then he was designing the most confident clothing of his time. Who else, after all, would combine silk and leather with the panache of American sportswear? Who else would have let the pleats in the silk blouse become the center of ever-widening ripples that make troughs in the soft leather skirt? While Versace's designs are celebrated as unabashedly sexual, they nonetheless possess a strong sense of personal grace. Versace shows an unerring talent for bringing from the street those extravagant and graceful elements that represent the best in contemporary style. No major designer living today has more successfully transfigured the street's reality into convincing style--all the while keeping in sight the extravagant possibilities of Baroque and Renaissance motifs. Versace understands, perhaps better than any designer of his time, that fashion's place in the world is at the center of visual spectacle. With intelligent commentary and celebrated photographs of Versace designs, this book presents the Versace spectacle in all its boldness and sensuality.

In this volume, we see Versace at once as the designer of the Byzantine Madonna, of the performer of Madonna, of modern sportswear infused with Italian Renaissance pageantry, of 1930's-inspired slinky gowns, and of an entirely new 1990's couture vision.

Vulgar Favors, Orth's first book, is the story of a monster obsessed with social climbing. From his earliest childhood, Cunanan's severely dysfunctional parents programmed him with a sense of entitlement but gave him no means of entrée into the glittering world of wealth and privilege he so desperately desired. At first, Cunanan's youthful, exotic good looks and magpie intelligence earned him access to the upper echelons of San Diego's fabulously decadent and closeted gay rich, but as drugs and dissolution exacted their toll, the doors closed tight and Cunanan's rage and frustration took a murderous bent. The most interesting parts of Orth's tale, however, are not the lurid details of depravity but the revelations on how Versace's celebrity status influenced the investigation into his murder. Even in death, it would appear, the rich are very different from you and me. --Patrizia DiLucchio

Reactions of some in the gay community, who seemed to judge the book by a "political agenda" seemed to mirror the response to Randy Shilts classic book on the AIDS epidemic "And the Band Played On". Many of the worst critics of Shilts classic book were from the gay community.

As they say, those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it. Law enforcement and the gay community cooperation on the Cunnanen case went from excellent to horrible. In Vulgar Favors Oarth describes the extremes, and everything in the middle, in great detail. It provides a foundation on how this "odd couple" can work together better in the future.

I recall reading somewhere that there were several gays on the books editing and publishing team and they didn't have any problem with the book and it's contents.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Cunanen case who has an open mind. Gays are like everyone else, you have to take the good with the bad. Early on the Minneapolis newspaper wouldn't even use the word "gay" to describe Andrew Cunanen even though they listed several of his lovers with obviously male names (like duhh!). The local gay press ironically, tended to be supportive of Vulgar Favors and the Vanity Fair coverage because it got coverage and awareness for local gay community issues like substance abuse and cooperation with police.

As for Andrew Cunanan, the demons that drove him to serial murder arose from the values imposed on him by his parents at an early age, not his sexual orientation. Cunanan was a quintessential narcissist and a sociopath, always a dangerous combination no matter what social milieu. Cunanan's pathology is a great deal clearer than most heterosexual serial killers with the same personality traits because his extroversion put his materialistic cravings on public display. Had Cunanan been more circumspect in his behavior, he might have killed many more men before being run to ground.

What speaks to me most in this book is Orth's depiction of a smart man who sacrificed his own personality in order to fulfill his fantasies of wealth and celebrity. When his aging body and drug habit finally caught up with him, Andrew Cunanan was a man filled with a deadly despair. Weak and inconsequential, he took up a gun to make himself a man of means, counting his riches in infamy. It must have been a cold, unfulfilling dish.

Orth's primary targets for criticism aren't the gay residents of the communities named above. Instead, she reserves her barbs for the various police departments and the FBI who bungled the search for Andrew Cunanan. Had a truly coordinated effort been launched to capture him, Cunanan would never have gotten close enough to Gianni Versace (...). Instead, agencies seemed content to expend the least possible effort in finding Cunanan. If nothing else, Orth's book is a damning indictment of how law enforcement doesn't ensure public safety in the gay community with the zeal it normally reserves for the larger heterosexual community.

In the end, Cunanan's perverse inversion of values would taint the lives of everyone he knew, save his younger sister Gina, the only Cunanan who refused to sell her story to the tabloid media. Ironically, Cunanan would have been delighted to know that his infamy was earning him column inches in Vanity Fair and top billing on tabloid television. His name in lights -- that simple vision drove Andrew Cunanan to murder five people.