THE ALCHEMIST

This guy could be my Viennese twin, right down to the shakily hand-applied studs on the jacket and the single cross earring. Not to mention the (in my case slightly regrettable) haircut!





The other day at work I grabbed a two-year-old copy of (wait for it) newWitch magazine. Before you rush to judge me for my admittedly ooky mystic crystal revelations, let me just say that it brought me back into contact with a source for surprisingly kind of cool gothy junk I dimly remembered from my teen-goth days. Disregard the velour gowns and dragon pendants, and it turns out Ipso Facto has several pretty nice necklaces and pentacle/sigil pendants that I, at least, would not mind wearing. I'm really into the Baphomet and unicursal hexagrams, personally. And now I really want a Cagliostro cross (in the middle of the pic, the one incorporating the pentacles).

I definitely time-warped back to seventh grade when I saw Ipso Facto's ad. Fortunately, I managed to put down the Manic Panic just in time.

BLACK SUMMER

One of the best things about working at a bookstore is getting advance reader copies of various unpublished books for free. Last week I picked up a truly fantastic summer read, Precious Metal, from the editors of Decibel magazine. I haven't listened to all of the albums it covers, but the anecdotes from various band members, memorializing their greatest metal achievements, range from illuminating--how the perfect fusion of chance, low-budget studio wizardry, and pure metal fury came together to create monuments to wintry pagan emotions--to hilarious. I particularly love this little off-hand mention of Varg Vikernes getting his fudgsicle on:

"I have a classic memory of Varg stopping by the studio in his chain mail and standing in the recording room enjoying a huge ice cream with a smirk on his face." --Samoth from Emperor

INTERNATIONAL BULLETPROOF TALENT

I've been taking much more notice of menswear this year than I used to. Unfortunately (or sometimes fortunately, depending on the situation), I don't have a particularly androgynous figure... so if I try to wear these awesome, drapey, Japanese-gothic outfits it probably wouldn't be quite the same thing as seeing them on some gorgeous specimen at Dropsnap, for example. But I think we can all agree that Mihara Yashuhiro put together a really killer collection, yeah? Perfect combo of laid-back and formal, plus I love the leather/woven jacket. And whoever that model with the ginger-streaked hair is--he needs to meet me in the back room, stat.

The jewelry for the collection was made by Husam El Odeh, creator of this totally genius "watch," which would be perfect for more than I few people I can think of...