Monday, December 3, 2007

Madrid day 2, pt. 2 (evening)

On the recommendation of a friend of a friend from Berlin, on Friday evening I went to a club night called "Cool." In the U.S. such a place would inevitably be filled with braying hussies from Cherry Hill, but in Madrid it was chock full of the most fashionable people I have ever seen. Like Berlin it was running very late (not really populated until 3 a.m.), and with excellent music, but it was much more chic.

The looks I saw there were so new to me that they are hard to describe, but I came up with two monikers, which are "Betty-Page Dominatrix" and "Adolf-Hitler-Genderfuck." Yes, really! Basically everything was extremely androgynous, with various elements of S/M couture. I stupidly forgot my camera, but I wrote down descriptions of some of the outfits I saw:
-A "female" (?) wearing a pleated A-line skirt, a vinyl "shawl" binding her torso, and a multicolor/psychedelic socklike thing covering her head (sort of like in photos of the bizarre Australian/British artist/club kid Leigh Bowery).
-A skinny guy wearing an 80s girl outfit, but with the top cut out to expose his nipples and hairy chest. He had a beard + heavy eye makeup. His real hair was normal, short and dark, but he was wearing a big blonde puff on top of that.
-A "male" with a Mussolini haircut, stubble, eyeliner & plucked brows, and a silver lame scarf.
-A woman w/ a Betty Page hairdo and a sock-hop dress, only that the dress was much larger and more exaggerated than the 50s version would have been.
-Someone who was clearly male, wearing a frumpy blouse, tight women's slacks, no makeup or breasts, and his own girlish hairdo.
-A "female" who had a look like one of those large couture hats worn on the side of the head, except it was a big flat wig. And she had a Hitler mustache drawn in.

The next night I went to a club where I saw two of the same people in similar but different outfits, so here are two photos:


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