Jena Ardell

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If there's any sign that festival fashion trends are going mass-market, it's that Burning Man, the ultimate outlier festival, has now provided inspiration for this summer's TopShop makeup line. Burning Man is merely the next event in a series of festivals to undergo large-store treatment -- think of LF stores' guide to Coachella, or endless fashion blog posts about "that perfect festival dress from Urban Outfitters."

But unlike most summer festivals, Burning Man is less about watching beautiful people and more about turning yourself into one by means of "radical self-expression," one of the ten official principles of the festival. That translates to kitting yourself out -- the crazier, the better. An additional challenge is dressing to survive the desert conditions of Black Rock, Nevada, in which 100+ degree weather, sandstorms, winds, rain and even ice are all fair game.

In that case, what do you wear? LA Weekly spoke to longtime Burner and self-styled playa expert Dusty Bacon (his Burning Man pseudonym), who runs Dustycouture.com, a blog dedicated to fashion at Burning Man.

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Shannon Cottrell

The League of S.T.E.A.M., when they aren't fighting Victorian ghosts and monsters

​See more photos in Shannon Cottrell's gallery, "The League of S.T.E.A.M. Prepares for San Diego Comic-Con."

In 2008, Robin Blackburn decided to make a ghost costume to wear to the annual masquerade Labyrinth of Jareth. She wanted her husband, Nick Baumann, to make a ghost costume as well. Instead, he chose to dress as a "Victorian-era ghostbuster." They got some friends to join them, went to the ball and the costumes were a hit. By the time Labyrinth of Jareth rolled around the following year, The League of S.T.E.A.M. had evolved into a bona fide group of performers.

We've been on the trail of the League, a motley crew of steampunks ghost and monster hunters, since we first met several members at Malediction Society's Steampunk Ball in 2009. That year, they returned to LOJ with a zombie butler and a variety of fantastic heroes in tow. Not long after that, they took the lead at San Diego Comic-Con's steampunk panel and then made their public performance debut aboard the Queen Mary for Pyrate Daze.

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Mistress of the Shattered Path

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The circus came to Venice on Saturday night, where an almost exclusively female coterie of performers enchanted a small crowd under the stars with a bill of sultry music, inspired clowning and acts of derring-do.

An accordion-heavy array of Bulgarian drinking songs performed by the trio Demonite Na Khaosa set the otherworldly tone of the evening, which unfolded in an Abbot Kinney lot transformed by sculptor and Mistress of Cermonies Robin Murez into the moonlit fairyland of Robin's Sculpture Garden, an intimate performance space where the organic and the industrial collide to great effect.

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Photo by John Frame, courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

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When people ask John Frame what his work is about, the curators of "Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame" write in the show's catalog, "he feels that the real answer should be that it isn't about anything. That is not to say that the work is meaningless, rather that it carries the meaning in its own ways and on its own terms."

The particular 'works' the curators are referring to are not the sculptures this California artist started producing in the early 1980s, when he first emerged as a historically and literary-minded figurative artist, but a collection of movable, posable dolls, stages and props that Frame has been working at since 2006 out in his idyllic home studio in Wrightwood, deep in the Angeles National Forest.

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Check out more of Shannon Cottrell's photos in "LACMA's Muse 'til Midnight Gets Neo-Victorian."

Known for his portraits and, specifically, his realistic approach of depicting the male body, Thomas Eakins championed the use of photography and motion capture photography as an aid to painting. Right now, you can see a smattering of his work, including the photographs, sketches and studies that led to his large oil paintings, at LACMA.

Shannon Cottrell

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"Manly Pursuits: The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins" opened in late-July and will continue through October 17. With this exhibition in mind, LACMA's fourteenth annual Muse 'til Midnight event was a neo-Victorian fete. It was a party that made perfect sense, combining the work of a maverick of the Victorian era with the L.A. underground's current fascination with the retro-futurism of steampunk.

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Good god almighty. Steampunk dildos?! As the lovely girl who sent me this link said, "Yes, you read that right." And steampunk vibrators.

These babies are courtesy of one Lady Clankington, who invented the world's first steampunk sex toys. Oh wait, that would be, the world's first steampunk sex toys available for purchase. Who knows what you guys are making out there. Lady Clankington's vibrators and dildos are retro-futuristic, Neo-Victorian and hypoallergenic.

Yes, these "infernal devices" are for real.

No, she will not make a holster for your pre-existing dildo.

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Voltaire is a Renaissance man for the convention circuit. An animator, comic book creator and toy designer, he has a lot of reasons to hit up events like San Diego Comic-Con. But Voltaire's best known occupation, the one that brought the Con crowd out of the Gaslamp Quarter and into North Park venue Queen Bee's last Saturday night, is musician.

Shannon Cottrell

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View more photos in Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss' "Malediction Society's Steampunk Ball" slideshow.

Sunday night, goth and industrial club Malediction Society celebrated its fifth anniversary with the annual Steampunk Ball. As we mingled between the men and women decked out with top hats and pocket watches, we spotted the gentleman below.

Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss

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You might recall that we recently posted about an amazing steampunk Star Wars cosplay that we saw on Facebook. Based in Atlanta, Outland Armour, has recreated characters like Boba Fett and Princess Leia in a neo-Victorian sci-fi aesthetic.

Dim Horizon Studio

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Dim Horizon Studio

Steampunk Boba Fett by Outland Armour

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Outland Armour is a multi-talented costume and production company in Atlanta. They travel to anime and science-fiction conventions across the country and frequently sit on steampunk and costuming panels. Check out more photos of their amazing steampunk Star Wars cosplay on Facebook.

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