Section: Fashion Freaks

Here are the requirements for being a Lip Service model:

• You must be at least 18 years of age.
• You must be in the Los Angeles area and available during the time-frame of the shoot.
• Women must be near a size 5 and be between 5 ft. 5 in. and 5 ft. 10 in. tall.
• Men must be approximately a size 32 in. pant and slim to medium size top.

Model Submission Form

1. Your Name(required)
2. Age (must be 18+)(required)
3. Location(required)
4. Sizes (tops, skirts/pants)(required)
5. Measurements (bust/waist/hips)(required)
6. Headshot(required)
7. Full Body Shot(required)
8. Additional Shot #1
9. Additional Shot #2
10. Additional Shot #3
11. Email(required)
12. Website
13. Message

 

cforms contact form by delicious:days

That’s right! We’re writing the book on the first 25 years of Lip Service! But the story won’t be complete without the most important part …

YOU!

We’ve had lots of great milestones along the way and know you’ve had great milestone moments in Lip Service, too. We want to include them in the book we’re compiling.

Was Lip Service there …

… at your wedding?
… your graduation?
… a landmark moment in your life?

We want to see it and read your Lip Service story!

Send us your photos, your memories, your stories to complete the history of 25 years of Lip Service.

Do you have a kick-ass story about some amazing, funny, or utterly crazy thing you did in your Lip Service gear? Send us that too! If you have photos, even better!

Have a killer pic of your multi-generational Lippy Addict family? A photo that brings the early days of Lip Service to life? We want those too!

There are no hard and fast specifics. Just like Lip Service, this story is not bound by pre-conceived limitations. It is our story of 25 years … yours and ours … 25 years of fashion freaks making kick ass clothing for their fellow fashion freaks! Help us tell it!

To submit photos and stories, please email 25years@lip-service.com.
Any questions? You can email us there, too.

We can’t wait to relive it all with you!

We know lots of you Lippy Addicts are bummed as hell because you can’t make it out to the sale this weekend. So, we put together a little something special so you can still get some savings on some new Lip Service gear!

Just shop in the Lip Service webstore Saturday and Sunday and use the promo code at checkout to save 10% on your order. When you get to the checkout screen, you’ll see a box marked “Promo Code”. Just type in the phrase:
samplesale09

That’s it! You just saved 10%! Pretty fucking cool, huh?

Here’s the fine-print:
Discount code is only effective between around 12:01AM Satuday, October 17 and 11:59 Sunday, October 18. Times are Pacific Standard. Code must be entered into the checkout screen at the time of order and cannot be applied retroactively.

The discount Promo code can be combined with a Lip Service gift certificate or webstore credit. Just enter the credit code into the appropriate box and add the discount code into the Promo Code box to purchase your discount order with credit.

Happy saving!!

Oct. 1, 2009

Wow, I can’t believe people actually find me interesting!  First off, I want to thank Mich for the AWESOME announcement on the website – I was expecting my name and maybe a little picture, at the most :)

Today was definitely a day when the cameramen would be plotting fake dramas to spice up the show, were I to have my own reality crew following me around.  Highlights are as follows:

12 Noon

I show up at Lip Service’s bargain basement, after sitting in the parking lot called the Los Angeles freeway system for far longer than anyone should EVER be in traffic.  Felt a little out of place walking in, as today was the first day of my new part time job teaching violin at an elementary school, and was thus carrying a giant violin case and dressed like… well, a school teacher.

Nonetheless, after narrowly escaping being trapped inside a pair of legging-like pants from the Psycho Circus Act III line, I walked out of the warehouse with the most awesome set of blue vinyl pieces for my show tomorrow night, a benefit for the Support the Troops organization, who sends care packages to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2:08pm

I arrive at the elementary school I am to start teaching at.  This school happens to be in a rough part of LA, and a famous home base for gangs, so understandably I’m a bit nervous.

So nervous, in fact, that when I see parents crowding the school’s lawn, watching intently for their offspring alongside a few police officers, and children being escorted out in single-file lines, I immediately panic and call the school to inquire if everything’s ok.

Too bad I forgot that 1)I’m teaching an after-school program and 2)there are quite often officers monitoring various aspects of public school workings, these days.

An awkward meeting with the school principal (who answered the phone moments before) ensues.

5:13pm

My dog encounters a rock garden on our evening walk.  I spend the next ten minutes trying to introduce him to the large rock in the center of said garden, as he scrambles to run, terrified, from the big scary rock.

10:34pm

Now, as I write this, my insane puppy (who often prefers playing games on his own) has thrown his current toy of choice under the couch and is frantically digging for it.  Delicious vegan peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream is churning in the kitchen and I’m getting ready for a long weekend.

Oct. 3, 2009

I AM LOSING MY FUCKING MIND.

Before elaboration on that statement, our show on Friday night was AWESOME.  We raised our goal of $500, and had a blast partying with some awesome people!  Earlier that day, my amazing friend Laura Kaye came into town with her son, Elijah, on business with their company, Wood Violins (who I rep for).  We recently picked up two new artists, Jesse Spencer (House) and  (Smashing Pumpkins), two amazing musicians and all-around people, and Laura came down to personally present them with their instruments/see Jesse’s show tonight, with his band, Band from TV.

Back to my brain.  I volunteer at an animal sanctuary, and, as of late, they’ve lost one of their three employees.  All of the volunteers are back to school for the year, so I went from volunteer status to full-time employee, temporarily, as the other half of the staff is manning a booth at the LA County Fair.

Breathe here.

I didn’t go in today thinking the other employee would be running the shop, so I could make a gig at 3:30pm and Band From TV at 9pm.  Turns out, he didn’t know he was supposed to go in, and has class at 3pm.  So, no one’s running the shop.  Then, on my way to my gig, I find out I have the date wrong, it’s TOMORROW (and no one else can run the shop then either).  I feel like Stuff Smith, one of the first electric violinists, who was said to have only been on time to a gig once – but was a week late!!!

However, I’ve only seen Laura and Elijah for a couple minutes so far, when they stopped by to get some presents from me (clothing, Universal Studios ticket/coupon, a LS catalog ;-P), and now I have time to go to dinner with them before Band From TV tonight!

Oct. 5

With “Dr. Chase” and Laura Kaye!

So, first off, Band from TV was certainly not disappointing, and Jesse’s new Sabre violin sounded awesome – everyone kept complimenting him on his tone (and he was definitely not too shabby himself)!  Laura was thrilled because, even though Hugh Laurie (Dr. House) wasn’t there, she got to meet hottie James Denton from “Desperate Housewives”!

Sunday was a blur of giggingness, as I played nearly 2 hours straight in 5 inch stiletto patent gladiator sandals on the marble stairs (with VERY uneven and ankle-breaking runners) of an enormous mansion in Beverly Hills.  The staircase alone was most likely the square footage of my house!

As for today, at the animal sanctuary you meet some very interesting people.

Last week, I had the pleasure of a seemingly homeless woman falling into the back door screaming, “SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!”  That help, of course, was because she was completely insane and couldn’t calmly tell me that there was an infant squirrel in a box in her car (who I got to hold while being bottlefed later).

Or the guy who ran in, screamed, “KITTIES!!!”, ran out, then ran back in again to throw chicken nuggets at the cats before once again dashing off (yes, he was an adult).

Today, a Beverly Hills Bitch came in and demanded to know where all our dogs were.  I informed her that we were split between the shop and the LA County Fair and were temporarily housing our animals in foster care, to which she replied, “Why don’t you just go to the pound and stock up on animals?”, as if they were merchandise.  This led to her babbling to me and the dog: “What does it do?  SIT.  SIT.  Why doesn’t it do anything?” 

When I explained that she was hit by a car and couldn’t use her back leg and thus couldn’t sit, she commented on how animal sanctuaries were just so much more convenient for her than the pound, but how the Bel-Air animal sanctuary actually had GOOD animals, they must get top-of-the line pick, whereas we get the leftover “junk”.  Fortunately for her, someone stepped in to tell her about all the pedigree animals we’ve rescued, as I probably would have otherwise strangled her with a leash until her fake boobs and Botox exploded.  She then ran from a shop, as a cat had touched her (she’s afraid of them, even though she has one).

Tomorrow is the new job I dread, as my 5^th grade violin students have a behavior level less mature than the 4 year old class I used to teach (of which one boy refused to take lessons without wearing a Superman muscle suit, which had a hole in the crotch, something he wished to point out quite often).  Must prepare so I can go in tomorrow and take charge!

In closing, I leave you, dear readers, with the final event leading towards my dog’s official breed name becoming “Pinchehuahua” (”pinche” is Spanish slang, and translates roughly into a colorful adjective in the English language rhyming with “trucking”):

Thank you again to Alyson for letting us follow her around for the week!

Next week, On the Road with Stretch Fuck’n Jeans goes to Europe to hang out with Kevin Preston and Prima Donna, while they tour Green Day!

See you then!

The Week in the Life contest has closed and we have our winner! We had some interesting people give us a slice of their life and we thank them all. But Alyson grabbed us right from the jump. How can you not be chomping at the bit to hear more after an introduction that begins, “My life is an unseen, unheard hit reality television series.”

Sure enough, we read on and Alyson is, indeed, a person we’d most like to follow around for a week. Here are a few excerpts to give you an idea of what we mean:

“I develop a new product for my store, Peanut Butter Cat Poop (carob covered, of course)!”

“I attend a Latin adaptation of an Aristophanes play, involving giant balloon penises, a shit-powered giant beetle, fudgesicles passed out to the audience (then declared frozen shit on a stick), massive humping, the masturbation song, and Aristophanes himself popping a boner or two (literally). Old snobby people all around me hail it as a “unique and modern look on a classic”. I sit in the background laughing at the absurdity of it all.”

Add to that, we have come to discover, after contacting Alyson, she is a Grammy award-winning violinist who plays in five different bands, one of which (God’s Weapon) just opened for George Clinton and P-Funk at the Nokia Theater. She also works closely with a local animal sanctuary (All the Same Wild and Tame)and creates her own line of jewelery (El Rockerachi) to donate funds to the cause, too. So, beside wondering when she finds time to sleep, we can’t help but be excited to see what a week with Alyson is all about.

Alyson will be our guest Blacklist columnist On the Road in next week’s edition (October 7)

Oh, yeah, and we’ve also discovered she rocks the hell out of Lip Service gear, too.

Here’s a little taste of what rock violin can do with some fun, funky stream of consciousness video thrown in for kicks:
Robot Octopi Rendezvous (credited as follows)
Jeff Musial – songwriting, engineering
Damon Cisneros – drums, mastering
Brian Netzley – bass
Gelsomina – Viper, verse and chorus solo writing

Alyson has worked with:
Mark Wood/MW Rock Orchestra
, Gretchen Bonaduce/Ankhesenamen , Mariachi Divas
, Dee Snider
, Cherie Currie
, Mark O’Connor
, Jeff Musial Band
, Archways
, Bill Clark Star Vehicle
, Wayne Foster Entertainment
, Mix Entertainment
, Jean Michele Danton
, Houston Youth Symphony, Virtuosi of Houston

Check out her MySpace music page at Ghost of Gelsomina or read more about her full career and background (or how to get her to play for you) at her website:

Join Alyson for a week in her (incredibly busy) life next Wednesday, October 7!

I’m a mother of two from the UK, and I am a Lippy Addict and proud to be one. I was however slightly disgusted when some freakin’ idiot suggested that my daughter was a ‘poor baby’ because she was photographed with me wearing Lip Service in a pic which I put on the Lippy group on Facebook.

Surely we are in a place in the universe now where you can wear what the heck you like! It’s pathetic really. There are plenty of Mums on the lippy_addicts board. It’s not like I was standing holding my daughter in a gimp suit I was wearing a GP top!

I even dress my daughter in some DIY Lippy and she looks absolutely adorable in it. I like that we can match sometime, although I know people will probably find it a bit creepy!!

Every so often, The WebMaster and I check out DeviantArt, one of the best places to check out some of the finest established and up-and-coming artists, to see what they’re doing with Lip Service. Here are some of the shots we found. Just click the photos to visit the full-sized image in the artsts’ portfolio.

This world is bleak.

There are several things that can account for the state of things but in the end, we are here because hardly anyone is honest with themselves anymore.  Most people are just one giant ball of repression and self hate.

Believe me, I’ve been there.

And then somewhere around 16 I let go of that junk. I became honest with myself and who I really was. It’s still a daily practice but 9 times out of 10, I really do love myself. There are a few people who are really intimidated by that and I find that really sad. You are the only one who wakes up with yourself and will die with yourself for certain. You better learn to love yourself while you’re at it.

And it’s with this mentality that I began to relish in taking gory/fucked up photos of myself.  In time the photos turned into more traditional fetish work but I like to think they always held their own creepy undertone. To this day I still engage in many blood soaked sets. (Note the brand new ones I’m sharing in this post!)

Modeling has always been a positive experience for me.  I didn’t get into this  to impress anyone. I didn’t starve myself. I never felt “ugly” or “unwanted”.  I know many men/women who have done all of the above and much worse. They are very unhappy with themselves and their careers. – And that’s no way to be.

I’m not sure what’s out there after we die but I do know what’s right here, right now, right in front of me. It’s called life and it’s amazing.  It’s also far too short and there’s no point in wasting it on hate. Espically if that hate is directed at yourself and what you are doing.

So cut it out!

Sometimes life is as simple as covering yourself in red liquid and standing in front of a camera. – That’s the Gore Manifesto!

Get out there and find something that makes you feel alive and never give it up. Challenge yourself and embrace who you are.

Then report back to me.

<3

Nos

There is little we love more than beautifully executed photography. When the artist masters the subject, composition, lighting, mood, and all the little nuanced intangibles, there’s a wonderful magic in it. This is why we occasionally shine a spotlight on emerging artists whose work we love and want to share with everyone.

You may remember Saida Inkeri’s work from our photo contests, back in the day. Her eye for a great photo stood out then, with great shots like her self-portrait in Teach Hit Me with a Ruler. Her post work in photoshop was also apparent, especially in her Summer submission. We’ve kept an eye out for her and are so glad we did. Her recent work shows a fatastic gift for visual storytelling, with exceptional beauty.

When I asked Inkeri whether she would like to be featured here, she sent me an in-depth and lovely letter about her photography, inspirations, and thoughts about the process of creativity. It really would be a crime to edit it down, so I am keeping the whole thing intact for everyone to appreciate the thought that goes into her process.

You can view more of Inkeri’s work on her pages at DeviantArt and Model Mayhem.

I’m from a small town in northern Finland. I’ve always wanted to work in some creative field. When I was small I wanted to be a dancer, a ballerina, and did go to ballet lessons for a while, but I guess it never took off (My sister got more into dancing and things, she’s now an aerial acrobat. I suppose the artist’s life runs in the family or something.). Later on I wanted to be a writer, a comic book artist, an actor, director, the list goes on.

I arrived at photography by accident, I guess, since I was never really that good at drawing and photography felt deceivingly easy compared to that, though it really isn’t. I photographed nature a lot at first, nature is always at hand and I just wanted something to do. Finland is a pretty good place to start, the seasons are very varied here so there’s a lot to photograph. Eventually I started liking photography more and more and went to a kind of a community college/vocational school/trade school. I graduated from there about a year ago and, now, am starting at the University of Applied Sciences, focusing on becoming a producer.

As for photography, I like symbolism a lot in mine. I like to photograph secret or surprising things that might not be immediately obvious to the casual observer. Photography is often either about showing something others might not have seen or preserving something you feel is precious to you or somebody else. Today’s digital photography has changed that a bit; you can preserve almost any moment, no matter how insignificant and it is a bit of a challenge to try to make your photograph special in that atmosphere. I’ve tried to be more subtle, not so ambitious, and just want to photograph things I feel are just pretty or nice.

Small moments.

I like details and macro shots a lot, textures like wood or peeled of paint, and have a huge love for abandoned houses, factories etc, and the same idea in nature, places where you can feel that nobody has been here for ages. It feels like time has stopped and like maybe you can sort of look into some other era. In nature, I like how it’s sort of eternal, it’s always been here and it goes on despite what people do. In abandoned houses, I’m fascinated not only by natural light and textures (which both are awesome and often unique) but also by why people left and what they left behind. Did something of them stay behind? I’d like to explore that in photos even more that I’ve done now, the feeling of peeking, almost without permission, inside somebody else’s old life.

But, then again, I’m kind of superficial. I really love fashion and clothes, so I obviously love photographing them, too. I feel there are a lot of contraries; I like the gentle, subtle, organic feel of nature, but also simply love pretty, artificial things like lace and frills and shiny things. I want to photograph people wearing lovely clothes. I chose a lot of fashion/glamour photos for this article, because I felt those would be what Lip Service Webzine readers might be interested in the most. I tried to but in some nature photography, but I don’t feel they work well in the same context. Nature has a completely different feeling.

I style my photos and my models myself and want to mix different styles, but mostly am in what you’d call gothic style. I’m kind of against considering gothic clothing as a fetish, just like I’m against considering models just being sexy or items for fantasies. I don’t think everything is about sex. I’d like to show people being beautiful and incredible without the idea that they’re just posing to be sexy. I’m very much a feminist, which might sound like a contradiction because I often like to photograph others as well as myself in revealing clothing. I just would like to challenge the idea that women are pretty just to please men or that they pose just to be objects. My ‘models’ are usually my friends or acquantainces and, while they’re all gorgeous, they’re not supermodels. And I don’t want them to be, I truly believe everybody can be beautiful and make a beautiful picture. That being said, I would like to someday work with professional models too, to see what somebody who’s trained in being in front of camera would react and how they’d work the photograph.

I also like to do self-portraits a lot. Sometimes I feel self-conscious about it, in our culture it’s considered very narcissistic to do that. I’ve always had problems with the way I look, I’ve never liked it and have considered myself to be down right ugly and disgusting. I guess self-portraits came from a place where I wanted to look pretty and grew more into this exploration of how I want to see myself. In self-potraits I can choose who I am, can control myself. Of course people seeing the picture will think what they think, but I still give them the tools. I decide what I want them to see and what I don’t. I read about a Finnish photographer called Miina Savolainen who had a project with girls from an orphanage, where she took pictures of them to focus their feelings of self-worth and love, to give them an opportunity to be photographed as who they wanted to be and not just orphans from bad homes and bad situations (Note from WebMistress: You can read about this wonderful project at THE LOVELIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD –PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT). Her idea felt really close to how I feel about self-portraits. It’s like I can re-create myself in my own photos, be who I am or who I want to be without fearing what others think, because in the moment of taking the picture, I’m the only there. Most of them are pretty intimate and often have some kind of secrets with myself, like some things that only mean something to me.

All in all, I like hiding small things in my photos sometimes, like puzzles.

I use a lot of photoshop, which is another thing I’m often kind of torn about. I love to bring something fantastic or dreamlike to photos, something unreal. But then again, it’s very slippery slope to start fixing people and make them look unreal too. I’m definitely against creating unreal expectations of what people should look like. Of course everybody wants to look nice, everybody wants to look their best, is it okay to fix a few zits? Take out a few pounds? It’s a very thin line.

There’s still a lot I need and want to learn about photography. Maybe in the future I will focus on studying it more, or maybe find some kind of mentorship or intership somewhere that could help me out. At this point, I’m still mostly doing it because I enjoy it. One day I hope I can make it more meaningful.

~ Inkeri

You can’t get much more dedicated than getting an awesome dagger tat! Check out the new ink that Dirty Diana in Nürmberg, Germany got on her arm. Diana, you are a hardcore Lippy addict! You rock!

Check out her Myspace page:
www.myspace.com/sweet667

Do you have a Lip Service themed tattoo? Maybe you have a dagger emblazoned on your laptop skin, modded clothes, car, wherever? Well, we would love to see it.

Send photos or video of your Lippy pride to the editor or submit them through the site.

Then we’ll be writing about how fucking awesome you are!