RAISE THE RED LANTERN: Green Hot Chili Peppers, Year of the Dragon, & Asia Street Style’s Nana Chen
Even when you’re scared art is no dictionary. –Frank O’Hara
Green Hot Chili Peppers Dress: Street stall next to Sala Deang BTS, Bangkok
I once read an interview with Daniel Craig where he explained why he accepted the hefty mantle of becoming the new James Bond. He didn’t want to be a sad sack in his dotage, Craig said, sitting on a barstool, knocking back the Jameson and saying to everyone and anyone who cared to listen that he could have been Bond.
I moved to Bangkok for the same reason. Because I never wanted to explain to anyone–myself in particular–why I didn’t. When I could have. When I was not yet old and no longer young.
Red silk belt: Thrift store, Oxford, UK
For RAISE THE RED LANTERN, Nana Chen of Asia Street Style photographed me at midnight off a not-quite-deserted intersection in Bangkok’s Sathon district. An International Herald Tribune photographer out for a late dinner, tattooed drunks, and the occasional cockroach scuttled by. Bangkok being Bangkok (hard to surprise), none of them paid us much mind.
I picked up the green hot chili peppers dress from one of the Sala Deang street stalls I mentioned in last week’s post, FU MEETS ASIA STREET STYLE. I forgot exactly how much I paid for the dress, but it was under 250 Thai Baht ($8). Nana and I found the lurid blue-green peppers a little phallic at first blush; both of us agreed that a belt would solve the phallus problem.
White leather bracelet: leather accessories street vendor in Shida night market, Taipei
My favorite (& only) black leather bag: this bag has no label; I swear I’ll find the little Bangkok shop again one of these days
Nana also styled me and did my makeup for this shoot (see the bottoms of this post for product details). The nightlight is vintage Southeast Asia–an eerie mix of halogen and Chinese lantern. Chinese New Year has come and gone and now we are left with the Year of the Dragon. Dragon years are volatile to say the least–anything can, and will, happen.
Today I’m housebound with a wretched Bangkok flu. An hour ago I dragged myself down from my apartment, to my local market street, for a chicken-broth resupply. As I walked past the mango lady I heard an obnoxious cacophony of cymbals. I winced. I cursed. I reached for my Tiger Balm. And then I looked up: I was headed straight for the jaws of a dragon.
Bow-tied wool pencil skirt: Diane Von Furstenberg
Jade windchime earrings: by U.S. jewelry designer Hazel Cox (gift from FU’s Anna Demetraides)
Black plastic bracelet with elastic: H&M, Geneva
Tube top: Benetton, Taipei
Keep in mind this happened on a Tuesday at 11:30am in the middle of nowhere. The “dragon” was comprised of six Thai boys in matching red t-shirts and paper-mache. I put a 20 Baht bill between the monster’s fangs and watched him go on his jangling way. I watched the mango lady feed the beast a handful of 10 Baht coins; the noodle soup man slapped a generous 50 Baht note on the dragon’s tongue.
A few things I know about myself: I’m pathologically restless. I build on nothing. Like the Chinese, I burn my paper houses and walk away. This Dionysian photoshoot with Nana reminded me of lines from a favorite poem by Frank O’Hara:
becoming ultimately local and intimate / repeating the phrases of an old romance which is constantly renewed by the / endless originality of human loss the air the stumbling quiet of breathing / newly the heavens’ stars all out we are all for the captured time of our being
–“You Are Gorgeous and I’m Coming” (1959)
Notes on makeup by Nana Chen:
