Lun*na Menoh's "Collar Tea Set" 2013

 collar tea set
made by men's used white shirts 2013l

"Man Automated " Jean Paul Yamamoto

Lun*na Menoh and her band Jean Paul Yamamoto.  2007

Lun*na Menoh's "Couture Salvage" (2008)

from my Couture Salvage show 2008 at Track 16

here are the artworks/pieces from that show.  All works are recycled material to make wearable art.

I picked up this couch  from the street 

and I made this dress

from this  vacuum cleaner 

I made this vacuum piece

Detailed image of the Vacuum Cleaner piece

from TV

I made this dress

To see the short documentary of Lun*na Menoh's "Couture Salvage" go here:
http://vimeo.com/8502931

Vinyl Listening Party with Lun*na Menoh (among other people) at the Velaslavasay Panorama

As a benefit for the XYZ Club and the Velaslavasay Panorama, Lun*na Menoh is participating in The Record Listening Party curated by Tosh Berman.  Her and her cohorts will be playing their favorite piece of vinyl or a record that somehow changed their lives.  Lun*na promises to play an Enka record from Japan.  Tickets are $30 which also includes a light dinner and drinks.   The others who are participating are Joey Altruda, Anna Biller, Lawrence Gjurgevich, Kristine McKenna, as well as Tosh.

The List of Films Represented in Lun*na Menoh's "Cinema Boutique"

An old flyer for Lun*na Menoh's "Cinema Boutique" that took place at TENOVERSIX.

The films that inspired Lun*na to make the artwork/clothing are:

Blind Beast 1969 Yasuro Masumura

Daises 1966 Věra Chytilová

8 1/2   1963 Federico Fellini

Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 

L'Atalante 1934 Jean Vigo

Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola

Band Of Outsiders 1964 Jean-Luc Godard

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome 1954 Kenneth Anger

The Deer Hunter 1978 Michael Cimino

High and Low 1963 Akira Kurosawa

Pink Flamingos 1972 John Waters

Pandora's Box 1929 Georg Wilheim Pabst

Reservoir Dogs 1992 Quentin Tarantino

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg 1964 Jacques Demy

Lun*na Menoh's Cinema Boutique - Make Dress From Movie Series "Taxi Driver"

The text on the clothing is based on a conversation between Travis Bickle and Iris in a coffee shop

The Inside World of Lun*na Menoh's Studio

The inside world of Lun*na Menoh's studio

"The Mothra Girl" a new song by Lun*na Menoh

Lun*na Menoh's "Cinema Boutique" 8 1/2 by Fellini

Lunna Menoh created Cinema Boutique, a project inspired by, and paying homage to films   Today its Fellini's "8 1/2"

Lun*na Menoh's "Dirty White Collar Painting: The Beatles

Lun*na Menoh's "Dirty White Collar Painting" The Beatles

Lun*na Menoh's "Improvising Sewing Service Show" with Jean Paul Yamamoto

These images are from a sewing performance that took place at the Royal/T in Culver City in 2008.  It was the "Improvising Sewing Service Show."   They would take orders and will have to make a dress within 20 minutes.   As they were making the clothing the sewing machines were attached to speakers and a mixer for a live mix with Jean Paul Yamamoto's music.  

Lun*na Menoh's Stripped Down Sewing Machine

Photograph by Lun*na Menoh

As one can gather, Lun*na Menoh has a large collection of sewing machines.  She uses them to make clothing and artwork of course, but also as an instrument for her current music project 'Les Sewing Sisters.'

Being a curious mind, she wanted to know what a sewing machine looks like without its shell or cover.   She stripped one of her working sewing machines to its very basic look.  She thinks that the machine is beautiful in the first place, but when you strip it down to its nuts and bolts, it is especially drop-dead gorgeous.  And the machine works perfectly in this state of 'undress.'

Lun*na Menoh - Spring and Summer Collection 1770 - 1998

Spring summer collection 1770-1998 by Lun*na Menoh, 1998 (Photo: Relah Eckstein)

Spring summer collection 1770-1998 with models by Lun*na Menoh, 1998 (Photo: Steven Nilsson and Jennifer Cheung)

The following film is the complete "Spring Summer Collection 1770-1998.

Watch the video here:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d4eT8CSKGA

Some early work by Lun*na Menoh.   This is work that is really focused on the history of female clothing from the year 1770 to 1998.  A history lesson?  Or re-inventing history?   Alison Bancroft from her book amazing Fashion and Psychoanalysis: Styling the Self makes some interesting comments

 "Fashion is not a discrete or enclosed collection of fixed objects.  A garnet is not an independent, fully formed entity that is superimposed on the blank canvas of a woman's body.  On the contrary, it exists only when it is in the process of being worn; when fashion is encountered in contexts other than the act of being worn, it can often evoke a sense of disquiet.  Elizabeth Wilson has remarked that, 'Clothes without a wearer, whether on a second hand stall, in a glass case, or merely a lover's garments strewn on the floor, can affect us unpleasantly, as if a snake has shed its skin.'  This unease that wearer-less garments can induce is expired in the fashion / art installation "Spring Summer Collection 1770-1998 (1998) by Lun*na Menoh, which demonstrates the processual nature of fashion with a linear depiction from left to right of consecutive changes in style through time.  More interestingly, though, it demonstrates how imperative the wearer is to the operation of fashion.  These ghostly garments, devoid as they are of any corporeal relation, are suggestive of a sinister otherworldliness that Sigmund Freud calls 'The Uncanny.'  They are simultaneously familiar, almost mundane, in the way that only something as ubiquitous as clothing can be, and also alienated, following their removal from their expected context.  As Freud puts it, '... the uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has brome alienated from it."

Lun*na Menoh's Recording Studio

This is Lun*na Menoh's recording studio.  And yes that is a sewing machine on the table as well.  She uses the sewing machine as an instrument for her music.  Les Sewing Sisters will arrive sometime next year.  More information as it comes.... to here.

The XYZ Club: Lun*na Menoh Hosts a Panorama View of Dirty Collar Collection at The Velaslavasay Panorama

Dirty Collar Music by Lun*na Menoh

This specific event took place on October 20, 2013 at The Velaslavasasy Panorama in Los Angeles.


Lunna Menoh has pioneered research in the field of the Dirty Collar since '99.

Historically, the phenomenon has made a stain on many fields including, but not limited to, fashion, iconography, psychology and chemistry. 

These marks will come to light via a sewing salon (attendees are encouraged to provide an item of clothing with a stained collar to be augmented by a team of professionals), a petit fashion parade in the theater of Collar Couture, a talk show interview of Lun*na Menoh in person, and representations of headless but collared historical figures.

Moeko the receptionist

Saori and Lun*na Menoh maintaining the sewing machines for the Panorama Event on October 20, 2013

Lun*na Menoh's Jared Collar

"The Biggest Ring Around The Collar" by Lun*na Menoh

"The Highest Ring Around The Collar" by Lun*na Menoh

"The Looong Ring Around The Collar" by Lun*na Menoh

The Big Ring Around The Collar" by Lun*na Menoh

"Ring Around The Collars" by Lun*na Menoh

"Ring Around The Collar Sculptures" by Lun*na Menoh

"Ring Around The Collar" display at The  Panorama

Photographs by Steven Nilsson and Jennifer Cheung.