Incredibly, it’s been a year since the greatest entertainer of all time left this Earth & those of us that are die-hard fans are still reeling from the loss. It was selfish of us to want to keep him here, to be poked at, prodded, and ridiculed by the same public that raised him to his pedestal. Thankfully, he left a legacy that will ring on into eternity. And Michael Jackson left us more than music. He was a fashion visionary that was always dressed and never costumed, but rather stayed true to that singular and stellar rhythm that beat in him and through him. We love you, Michael!

Who’s Bad? by eighty jane featuring Alexander McQueen

Jamon! by eighty jane featuring Old Navy t shirts

Annie, Are You O.K.? by eighty jane featuring Dries Van Noten shoes

Smooth. by eighty jane featuring Marc by Marc Jacobs shoes

Human Nature by eighty jane featuring Marc by Marc Jacobs pants

photos: scrapyourtrip.com, IvanMIchellePerezEnciso @ Photobucket.com, ilkerugur.wordpress.com

Incredibly, US Harper’s Bazaar landed the first interview with Janet Jackson since the tragic death of her older brother Michael. Janet’s looking good on the cover and I can’t help but hope that she might be able to turn a colossal lemon into the sweetest lemonade. That is, can she flip the frenzy over her brother’s death is an genuine comeback? Is that selfish? I know it is – but I can’t help it! There has GOT to be a wealth of unpublished MJ music that she could record. Sigh…

The last time Janet saw Michael was on May 14, two days before her 43rd birthday. It was a family celebration, the Jackson kids were running around, and she and her big brother hung out, ate Thai food, and tormented each other. “We had so much fun that day,” she says, her soft voice almost inaudible. “We kept calling each other after and saying how great it was.”

Janet left soon after to start work on Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too. She was on set in Atlanta when she got the call that Michael had died. She immediately returned to L.A., plunging headlong into a private family grief served up to a ravenous public. Of course, one of the most moving images from the memorial service was of Michael’s daughter, Paris, who stepped up to the microphone and said, “Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine” before grabbing her aunt Janet for support. “I was really proud,” Janet recalls. “People said to me that Michael’s daughter speaking really gave them a sense of how he was as a father, in her words. Paris is incredibly smart; they are all so smart. She’s a sweet girl. The kids are doing well. They’re with all their cousins; that family love will keep them going.”

After the service, Janet and sisters La Toya and Rebbie went to speak to the fans. Janet, who said a brief and quiet thank-you, was greeted with thunderous applause. “I don’t remember that at all,” she says. “I really didn’t want to say anything. I left that night to go back to Atlanta to film.”

Work has always been a tonic for Janet. Today she is sitting in a bunkerlike recording studio in Hollywood, writing songs for a new album, due out next spring. Nickelodeon is on the TV (perhaps the only network not doing Michael 24/7), incense is burning, and she is trying to discourage her French bulldog, Bullwinkle, a birthday gift from brother Jermaine, from nibbling at her towering Azzedine Alaïa lizard sandals.

“I’ve been doing okay,” she says. “Work helps focus all of that energy on something that is of value to you.” She’s just back from vacation, a princely three days on a beach. “It was the first time I had to myself since Michael passed, the first time I could get away since all of that.”

Janet doesn’t like talking much, so it’s not hard to understand why people applaud when she opens her mouth. While she is the baby of the Jackson family, she is, in many ways, its nexus. “I have no clue why,” she says, “but maybe sometimes when there’s someone you don’t hear from, it’s the person you want to hear from the most.”

The article sneaks in a bit of fashion, too:

Janet’s smile is magnificent. “People have actually said that I should get it insured, but I never liked my smile until about six or seven years ago. I thought it was too wide, that it looked like the Joker! So sometimes I wouldn’t smile too wide and would just kind of grin.”

Even though Janet has her trademarks — that smile being one of them — her style is evolving. Currently on the curvier side, she is exploring her love for the 1940s: “I love shoulder pads, a nipped waist.” Today she’s in harem pants by Ellie Mae Byars of Mizzae, a denim jacket, and armfuls of black bracelets by Claudia Tate. “Since I was 16, I used to shop at Maxfield in L.A. I loved Thierry Mugler, Gaultier…” Now Janet is a fan of Roland Mouret and Alexander McQueen, and she sheepishly admits she just had a room built for her shoes: “Louboutin, YSL, Alaïa, and Giuseppe Zanotti.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Harper’s Bazaar’s October issue on stands Sept 22nd

Sigh. Now that the King of Pop/Rock/Soul is dead, everybody wants to ride his glittery coattails. Harper’s Bazaar‘s so-called tribute to Michael Jackson is not only late but terribly terribly executed. I mean really, who’d they get to put this one together, someone from the National Enquirer???

It’s clear that no thought whatsoever was put into this spread. Agyness isn’t style so much as costumed and, frankly, the it-girl model is bring no life, no finesse whatsoever to the shoot. Concept: fail. Styling: fail. Modeling: fail. Photography: pass, but just barely. I mean look at the shot of Agyness with the chimp. The look has no subtly and she’s standing there like an ANTM reject! What an utter disappoint. See more of this disgrace from the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar here.

Now if you want to see a well done fashion magazine MJ tribute, look no further than Grazia Magazine. This spread is gorgeous and shows what a tribute is all about: inspiration and interpretation, not imitation. The styling is graceful and sophisticated, even when poking slight fun at the superstar’s legacy. See more from this spread at michaeljacksonstyle.blogspot.com.