heybeautyblog:

Inspiration: Rick Genest, A Contradiction

Rick Genest is known to the world as The Zombie Boy, tattooed literally head to toe, until he became a walking skeleton of ink. He’s the living dead, simply put. The thing about Rick was, he kept coming up in Google searches for things I was trying to learn more about: menswear, tattooing, tattoo cover makeup, high fashion, black ink tattoos, etc.

Everywhere I pointed my mouse, I would see his skull-inked face staring back at me—and I couldn’t look away. It was the image above that really knocked me on my ass though, when Genest shot a recent Yves Saint Laurent menswear ad. I stared at the top image for a long time, marveling at how the painstaking precision of layering these fabrics, cut to fit this gentleman perfectly, transformed him into, well, a gentleman.

In this suit, his frightening facial tattoos become art—living art, instead of a sight inteded to stir fear in others It’s a perfect example of how transformative fashion and makeup really can be, without having to radically alter the person wearing either (except the one where they cover all of his tattoos). It’s the power of the frame: we cannot control the way others see us, but we can control how we frame ourselves. This is the tangible, real-world payoff to our individual indulgences in fashion and makeup.

Ideally, we could live in a world in which our appearances would not affect the way other peoeple perceive our character. We don’t. But understanding that we can enrich our “outer story” by being thoughtful—not perfect—custodians of how we look can go a long way toward helping us reach the places we’re trying to go. In this case, a man like Zombie Boy Rick Genest might not look like he would look right in a perfectly tailored, YSL seersucker suit.

But what our eyes find is that the perfection is in the suit, as humans are always going to be imperfect. It shows that the beauty we strive for is as much about the curation of beauty in our lives as it is the creation of beauty on the face. And the reason you feel so awesome in that one dress or blazer isn’t fake; you feel awesome because that piece is beautiful, and it looks great on you, and you should feel good when you know your wearing a little piece of art that you love!

So get out there and werk it like ol’ Zombie Boy, Rick Genest, you beautiful little misfit. We think you look great.

—SM

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ricecakes77:

Sorrow~* on We Heart It - http://weheartit.com/entry/4868898/via/caimilly77

Never regret something that once made you smile.

quickquirk:

A small but deadly picture.

sashiburi:

awww ;;____;;