Posts Tagged ‘fashion history’
The Little Black Dress – “Bauhaus” of Fashion
“Scheherezade is easy; a little black dress is difficult.” – Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel Almost every female and sometimes even male wardrobe accommodates at least one LBD (little black dress). The idea of the LBD is often ascribed to Gabrielle ”Coco” Chanel, who might have renegotiated the concept of dress by putting it into the contemporary…
Read MoreLevi’s 501 in the USSR – Symbol of Identity, Consumer Culture and Gender
Consumer goods are the bricks with which we build our culture and create private and public meanings for our possessions. Thus, we identify ourselves by means of goods – available market resources – establishing a certain hyperreality by Jean Baudrillard around us. Then self-doubt, as a result of cultural contradictions caused by marketing manipulations, appears…
Read MoreHaute Couture – In Retrospect
“Haute Couture should be fun, foolish and almost unwearable.” Christian Lacroix Nowadays custom-fitted clothing of couture status produces not only in Paris but also in other fashion capitals such as New York, London, and Milan. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of haute couture, once started in Paris, still stays there with its colourful and vivacious history. Let’s…
Read MoreThe Orchestra of Haute Couture
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle The Fashion Syndicate As officially recognized father of haute couture, Charles Frederick Worth was not only concerned about haute couture clothing but also about all the practical details and legal status of the hand-made craftsmanship. As…
Read MoreA Three-Piece Suit for Vladimir Lenin
One hundred years ago today (October 25 according to the old calendar), the October Revolution led by the Bolshevik party headed by Russian emigré Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin forever changed the history of Russia. On that day Petrograd was suffering a stormy weather. In the morning at 10 am Lenin, wearing a three-piece suit, was writing his…
Read More“Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams.”
In 1898, when the Ritz Hotel in Paris first opened its doors to a “glittering reception”, caviar with champagne came very soon to be one of the signatures of the bar menu. Indeed, caviar is associated with something luxury, exquisite and extravagant at the same time. What is caviar? The term caviar (sometimes called Russian…
Read MoreFrom “Minister of Fashion” to Stylist
Fashion today has turned into a vivid carnival of colours, cuts and styles, where individuals are supposed to find their own personal voice. For some of us identifying personal “style” is an amusement but for others it is quite a challenge. According to Oxford English Dictionary the word style inter alia means a distinctive appearance,…
Read MoreThe Dictator of Paris Fashion Meets “Parachuting” Stalinism
We know Elsa Schiaparelli by her surrealistic absurdity, which after a few collaboration with Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali and Alberto Giacometti resulted in “chocking pink”, “le chapeau-chaussure”, the gloves with nails and many other easily recognisable creations. A few of those were created at Elsa’s atelier in Paris called “Schiap Shop”. What we might not know…
Read MoreThe Simplicity of Roman Elegance
In 1881 an important archaeological site was accidentally discovered in a small town called Rabat and situated outside the gates of the old capital of Malta, Mdina. The discovery revealed outstanding Roman remains from the ancient city of Melite with some ruins, what must have been a sumptuous Roman house belonging to the first century…
Read MoreBehind The Film Scene of the 1910s
The Mediterranean climate and relaxing atmosphere brought my thoughts into the Dream Factory. Therefore I have a desire to share few words about fashion in connection with the film history in Hollywood. Between 1905 and 1915 film actors were required to supply their own garments for film. However, it didn’t directly mean lack of interest…
Read MoreThe “Antichrist of painting”
Three days on Gozo have made me ready for a date with no one else but Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 – 1610). Tomorrow, if everything goes according to the plan, I will with my own eyes behold his ‘Beheading of St John the Baptist’, which he painted while settled on Malta. To Malta he…
Read MoreDepersonalization with Euphoric Touch by Gnoli
Fashion is a manifestation of a visible result achieved by means of an invisible process. It is about ephemeral nature of objects and details, meanwhile art is about eternalising such ephemerality. Domenico Gnoli (1933-1970), a Rome-born-artist, a son of an art historian and an artist, was one, who combined those two phenomena. He both created…
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