The Birds is the fifth collection by Alexander McQueen for his fashion house. It was inspired by ornithology and the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds. The collection centred around sharply tailored garments and emphasised female sexuality. The runway show was staged on 9 October 1994 and the venue was a warehouse in the London district of King's Cross. The Birds was styled with imagery of violence and death; some models were covered in tyre tracks and others wore white contact lenses. Reception was generally positive, although the styling drew accusations of misogyny. The show's success allowed McQueen to secure the financial backing to stage his next show, Highland Rape. Garments from The Birds appeared in both stagings of the retrospective exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. Seán McGirr heavily referenced The Birds for Autumn/Winter 2024, his debut collection as creative director for the Alexander McQueen brand. (Full article...)
Farnese Artemis in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples
... that while the objects on the Farnese Artemis(pictured) had initially been identified as female breasts, the museum housing the statue now describes them as bull scrotums?
1874 – The Universal Postal Union, then known as the General Postal Union, was established with the signing of the Treaty of Bern to unify disparate postal services and regulations so that international mail could be exchanged easily.
Li Fu Lee (1904–1985) was a Chinese engineer and teacher who in 1925 became the first Chinese woman to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She majored in electrical engineering, a course which some undergraduates at the time described as the most difficult major. She was one of the 25 women who graduated from MIT in 1929 and one of the first women to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering at MIT. After graduating, Lee returned to China, where she became an engineer and taught at university. She fled with her family to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War and later returned to the United States, residing in Chicago. This 1925 photograph shows Lee at MIT's radio experiment station.
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