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On Friday night, the Art Gallery of Ontario went full on Bowie for the opening party of its costume retrospective celebrating the gender bending rock star, David Bowie is. Some guests took his various personas literally, while others used them as jumping off points to let their inner freak flag fly. Bowie style makeup jobs were everywhere, from Aladdin Sane’s classic lightening bolt to Ziggy Stardust’s shimmering gold forehead globe. As for the clothes, Bowie inspirations ran the gamut from Style Panelist Leah Gust‘s gold onesie, to AGO publicist Laura Banks‘ pink animal print getup. While many of the evening’s guests spent hours poring over the exhibit (the recommended exhibit time is 65 minutes, but we barely escaped all that beautiful excess at the 120 mark), others partied on the main floor to the Bowie-esque spun sounds of Odessa Paloma Parker, who played DJ for the night in head-to-toe glam garb.

See photos from the David Bowie is Exhibit »

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Bowie Earthling Album Cover

David Bowie wearing Alexander McQueen on the Earthling album cover

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David Bowie Kansai Yamamoto Aladdin Sane

David Bowie wears Kansai Yamamoto on the Aladdin Sane tour

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Bowie Thin White Duke

David Bowie’s Thin White Duke period

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David Bowie and William S Burroughs

David Bowie and William S Burroughs

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Brian Duffy scary monsters

David Bowie wears a Brian Duffy “scary monsters” costume in the video for “Ashes to Ashes”

The Art Gallery of Ontario is on a rock god roll as of late and its latest exhibit, a costume retrospective examining the transformative performance gear of David Bowie, is its crowing moment. Originating at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London earlier this year, David Bowie is (September 25-November 27, 2013) spans five decades of Bowie-isms, including 300 objects from the pop culture chameleon’s personal archive including stage costumes, hand written set lists, diary entries, sketches, photographs and video excerpts.

The exhibit attempts to take a deeper look at the importance Bowie places on his costumes as an expression of his various personas (one cannot separate Ziggy Stardust the character from Ziggy Stardust the album, for one) with various tableaux dedicated to those looks. It’s a sensory overload so lauded by international press and museum visitors alike that it’s sure to be a bang on success in Toronto as well. In anticipation of today’s opening, we interviewed co-curator Victoria Broackes on all things Bowie is.

See our top 10 model celebrity couples »

Rumour has it that Adam Levine has decided to put a ring on it. It, being Victoria’s Secret model Bahati Prinsloo’s finger. Though we find it hard to believe that the singer, who doubles as a notorious modelizer, is wanting to settle down already, the musician’s publicist has confirmed that the engagement rumours are indeed true. Prinsloo and Levine first started dating shortly after the singer’s very public breakup with fellow Angel Anna Vyalitsyna (that has to call for some back stage tension). The tatted Maroon 5 front man and star of hit show The Voice refuses to embrace the womanizer label he’s been given, telling Details Magazine he just really loves women.

David Bowie is, the widely publicized multi-media exhibit on pop culture icon David Bowie will soon be leaving its current home at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and heading on a much anticipated world tour. First stop, Toronto! That’s right, come September The Art Gallery of Ontario will be welcoming the exhibit complete with its 300 objects from the legendary British artist’s personal archive.

Bowie, who is known for his genre-defying music is one of the industry’s finest performance artists, having experimented with everything from surrealism to mime. The British sensation, dubbed the culture chameleon, maintains a personal archive of more that 75,000 objects. Archivists and curators from the Victoria and Albert Museum were given full access to explore and pick the items for display.

Recognized for his radical fashion sense and powerful influence on art and design, audiences can expect to see some of the most memorable costumes and objects from Bowie’s long career. Fifty stage get-ups, including the celebrated Ziggy Stardust bodysuits, will be combined with a selection of music videos, set designs, photographs (namely by Helmut Newton, Brian Duggy and John Rowlands) and album artwork for the exhibit. The experience promises to expose Bowie’s collaborations in the fields of fashion, sound, theatre, art and film. On a more personal level, the exhibit will also display Bowie’s own handwritten set lists, lyrics, diary entries, instruments and sketches.

Leave it to David Bowie to, once again, redefine cool in less than six minutes. Ahead of his first new album in a decade, The Next Day, the Thin White Duke has released his latest single “The Stars (are out tonight)” along with an epically stylized new video which co-stars Tilda Swinton, Andrej Pejic, Saskia […]

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“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Sky Ferreira opines about the conflicting aspects of her sound, a duality in tastes that has seen her through gritty Debbie Harry–esque melodies to raw Jon Brion–produced ballads. The 19-year-old singer is a bit of a dichotomy herself: she will unabashedly profess her adoration for Britney Spears in the same breath as her love for David Bowie, and makes no apologies for being tricky to label.

Word: Callipygian

Meaning: Having beautiful buttocks. No, really. It’s from the Greek kallipygos, from kalli- + pyg? Buttocks.

Usage: “Those dusky Afro-Scandinavian buttocks, which combine the callipygian rondure observed among the races of the Dark Continent with the taut and noble musculature of sturdy Olaf, our blond Northern cousin.” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Halloween has snuck up on me and I’m still without a costume. Have any recommendations for a girl with no time to spare? Thrift stores may be picked over, but beauty counters are still stocked full of vivid red lipstick, electric blue eyeliner, and sometimes-garish glittery eye shadow. Your costume options are endless when your […]

The post Afternoon beauty fix: Oh, Halloween is THIS weekend? We’ve got you covered! appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Word: Ailurophile

Meaning: cat lover (in the swish Greek lexicon)

Usage: “An ailurophile can’t be curious; she could never kill a cat.” ― a terrible joke I made up

David Bowie, Station to Station (Deluxe Edition)
It’s my personal opinion that David Bowie is an almost perfect musical creature. You might even consider him an otherwordly artistic genius whose four decades of music continues to influence pop culture and leave imprints on our creative souls. That’s why I’m happy to sneak him in here just before Halloween so you can rethink your Ziggy Stardust costume. Again. Incidentally, it’s also the perfect time to dust off your favorite Bowie albums, and maybe even add to the collection, since he recently released the 40th anniversary of Space Oddity, as well as a deluxe edition of 1976’s Station to Station that includes live versions of “Stay,” “Queen Bitch,” and “Fame,” all currently on repeat in my world. The original release of the album marked the introduction of Bowie’s alter ego, the Thin White Duke, who had a tendency towards aggressively apathetic romanticism, a love for Adolph Hitler, and a severe drug problem. The album feels like running through a dream towards a soulful love affair with your own ego. No matter how many delicious fame monsters follow, I still prefer the original. (Also look out for the War Child David Bowie tribute album that was released this week.)

Okay, I’m too obsessed with synaesthesia. But to me, band du jour Amazing Baby sounds just like black licorice—their dark metal love all glammed over with sugar-high sighs and synthesizers, their nouveau-’70s psychedelia at once familiar (MGMT is the obvious style influencer, but there must be a reason I’m thinking of Wolfmother, too) and a little off (maybe it’s more like ’80s Bowie, after all). Their shaggy head-banging schtick won’t delight all tastes, but if debut album Rewild isn’t in heavy rotation at Urban Outfitters by the end of next week, I’ll eat my “Headdress.”