Greek rhapsody

Published 2 January, 2010 Art and exhibitions Leave a Comment
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he National Gallery of Victoria is currently featuring an exhibition of couturier dresses which rely on the technique of drape, a technique derived from the garments worn in ancient Greece.

The exhibition includes designs by Jean Patou, Versace, Paco Rabanne, Christian Dior and Rei Kawakubo that illustrate the two main expressions of the technique: ”clinging drape” and “elevated drape.”  It traces the line of inspiration from the three archetypal garments of ancient Greece, through the various re-discoveries and homages paid them in the last century or two.  And the homages paid to homages. 

It’s a brief, stimulating exhibition that would fill perfectly a spare holiday hour. It opens with a display of a red clay urn, dated to 420-400BC, showing figures wearing all three of the classical garments.

The chiton, according to curator Paola Di Trocchio, was

a piece of cloth wrapped around the body leaving one side open, fastened at the shoulder and corded at the waist.

The himation, was “a cloak draped diagonally over a chiton,” while a peplos was

a tubular cloth folded over so that the top of the tube reaches the waist and when gathered at the waist creates the appearance of a second piece of cloth, or peplum.

*****

The star of the show is also, alas, the least photogenic. 

It’s a dress — nay, gown — designed by Gianni Versace shortly before his murder in 1997, before his poor, ill-favoured sister turned it all to dross.  It’s single-shouldered, bias-cut and of an unearthly silk.

It’s as if a giant pearl had been unwrapped and floated, like gold leaf, over a woman’s body.  All the dulled opalescence, the miniscule crêpe are here, though discernible only at intimate quarters.  The hem is sewn with invisible weights, and extended in a shallow curve on the back edge. 

The result is a gown that’s remote, even chilly, which nevertheless invites the closest, most lingering scrutiny. It’s a gown fit for a queen.  Or, better, the gods.

A more rambunctious creation is provided, naturally enough, by that star of mischief, Vivienne Westwood. Her gold Wedding Dress from 1999 is magnificent, and its placement next to a Day dress, made by an anonymous designer in England in 1883, both eloquent and strangely moving.

Paola Di Trocchio writes,

Westwood’s intense love of historical costume and spectacular silhouettes present a lustful femininity that exudes aristocratic, even royal, power.

As in the Versace gown, the dress generates much of its power from contrast or tension.  In the Versace, it’s the tension between remoteness and invitation.  In the Westwood, it’s the tension between abandon and enclosure.   The spectacular spill of molten silk is gathered up, at the last moment, into something that looks like a fantastical icecream cone.

And take a closer look at the Westwood’s country cousin, the dress from 1883.  Look at the detail near the hem: the successive tiers.  First, two rounds of stepped pleating (narrow-wide-narrow), then two rounds of ruching. One can only salute the unknown maker, and his or her profligate devotion to craftsmanship and beauty.

*****

Drape is on at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne from now until June 27.  Entry is free.

*****

Images: by me; beginning letter courtesy of Jessica Hische: “Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische”

9 ways to become a popular blogger (Or, how to suck your readers’ brains out)

Published 31 December, 2009 Philosophy and culture 8 Comments
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  1. Set Copyblogger as your start-up
  2. Put a number in every — every — blog title
  3. Use paragraphs of one sentence, and sentences of one word. You. Heard. Me. One. Word.
  4. Write 500 words about nothing 3 times a day
  5. Pretend to be a man
  6. Delete all styles except numbered list
  7. Know the answer to everything and the question to none
  8. Consider non-US English a foreign language
  9. Write a “how to” post. Just. Like. This.

*****

A dash of nightgown: Quotes from December

Published 30 December, 2009 Great blogs , Quotes from the month 6 Comments
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Anyone who reads this blog will know by now that I like a good contrast. Serious … silly … serious … silly … is how my mind works. Previously, I might have been described as having catholic tastes if only the word hadn’t died, if not by disuse then surely by association. If I’d been born in the 18th century and not a woman, I might have been described as a dilettante. 

Well, the catholic-minded dilettantes out there might just relate to this month’s round-up of quotations.  First, the girls at Go Fug Yourself (“fugly is the new pretty”), and second, David Runciman in the LRB on someone who became, unexpectedly, my favourite blogging character of the year: Bill Shakespeare (aka Clinton).

*****

If Heather and Jessica at Go Fug Yourself had been born in the 18th century and not women, they’d have been Jonathan Swift.  They nail celebrity “culture” as firmly as ever did the Houyhnhnms Gulliver.  They are merciless, very silly and extremely funny.  Here they are on someone called Daphne Guinness (could that be the beer heiress?) …

This is totally Lady Gaga plus Annie Lennox plus Elvira with a touch of Nefertiti and a splash of Anna Wintour — just a splash — multiplied by a head injury and then divided by a vat of absinthe.

(And if you want to know what something like that looks like, I’ll put it here (but be warned it’s seriously disturbing)).

Here they are on the actress Anne Hathaway in a deeply unfetching dress.

And I guess Anne Hathaway just didn’t notice that the bodice makes it look like her boobs sprang a leak and are slowly deflating. She’s going to be mighty surprised when she accepts delivery of the tiny bike pump I’m clearly going to send her for Christmas.

I get a laugh just out of their tags which include:  JUST … WOW, WTF, FRUMPATHON, OLD FOR HER AGE, and my favourite, SCROLLDOWN FUG.  Which looks like this:

And out of their imaginary dialogues, like this one between the two actresses, Christina Ricci and Mandy Moore.

CHRISTINA: Oh my God.

MANDY: What, what?

CHRISTINA: You are GIANT.

MANDY: Maybe you’re just small. 

CHRISTINA: Maybe, Gargantua, but you are TALL. You are a tall drink of water. Except you’re wearing black, so I guess that’d be unfiltered water.

MANDY: Your dress interests me. It’s very graceful and interesting, and yet it also looks like my bathtub after a shower, with all the hairs that fell out of my head lying tangled on the porcelain.

CHRISTINA: Poetic, Luke Skyscraper. And yours kind of looks like a cross between Angelina Jolie and Mary-Kate Olsen. With a dash of nightgown. I don’t know what to think.

MANDY: I think, somehow, we might BOTH be rocking it.

CHRISTINA: You might be right, Tallda Swinton.

MANDY: Okay, enough with the names, I get it. I’m tall.

CHRISTINA: Seriously. Your legs START practically at my boobs!

MANDY: Let’s just throw this to the poll and call it a night.

*****

David Runciman in the LRB also does funny, though as you’d expect from a Cambridge don in Politics and a former Guardian journalist it has a little more politesse (while I’m on the subject is it strange that he should end up a Cambridge don at early-40-something while starting at The Guardian? Is it a natural career path?  He is an heir to something, though definitely not beer, so perhaps that helps?) 

He’s also helped by his marvellous subject, my old friend Bill Clinton, as featured in the new biography by Taylor Branch, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History in the White House.  He opens with a great study of George Stephanopoulos, Clinton’s former aide and press secretary. 

Stephanopoulos, apparently, wrote a memoir of his time at the White House in which he made it sound “thrilling, monstrous, deranged.”  A time in which,

a group of super-smart men … fought around the clock to pin down their super-smart, hopelessly promiscuous president (promiscuous with his time, his interests, his attention, rather than in the more obvious ways).  Speeches got written at the last moment, policy was endlessly being reformulated, old enemies were reached out to while a train of new enemies was picked up along the way.

At the heart of it all, Runciman continues, there was George, “fixing, fighting, cajoling, despairing, scheming, outwitting, getting outwitted, and all the time feeding off the power.” 

Why do I keep thinking George Costanza?  Maybe because of this:

At one point, our hero (George, not Bill) takes a fancy to Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze’s costar in Dirty Dancing, and he gets his people to sound out her people about whether she fancies a date … He goes to gatherings of Greek-Americans and they crowd round wanting to know when he is going to lift the curse of Dukakis (which says that short Greek men can’t get elected president, because they look ridiculous in tanks.)

How’s that?  Even Clinton’s henchmen make for funny lines.  As for the man himself, Runciman via Branch paints a picture of an immensely vain, often odd individual.  Some quotes:

… Clinton has more kind words to say about Major than he does about Tony Blair, who was perhaps too much of an easy catch for Clinton’s tastes, as well as being a bit squeaky clean.  Clinton liked politicians who played dirty because they made him feel better about his own peccadilloes.

There are moments when his inability to waste any piece of information makes Clinton seem, frankly, a little mad.  After Major’s defeat by Blair in the 1997 election, Clinton tells Branch that he still has a soft spot for him, “despite their political differences, and remarked oddly that Major seemed to slump forward because the back of his head was square rather than round.”  How do you respond to that?  Branch [who was interviewing him at the time] doesn’t even try, and instead moves swiftly on to a discussion of Iranian clerical politics, about which, unsurprisingly, Clinton is very well informed.

The most compelling scene in the book comes near the end, with an extended account of the meeting Clinton had with Gore after the election was finally lost.  The ideas was for each man to say what he thought had gone wrong, in a spirit of reconciliation, but they are soon baring their teeth.  Gore can’t get past Lewinsky, and Clinton can’t get past the fact that Gore is still using Lewinsky as an excuse for all the failings of his campaign … Gore wants Clinton to apologise to him personally for what he did, whereas Clinton feels he has been doing nothing but apologising.

… Bill appears here to be genuinely fond of his wife, and genuinely frightened of her.  He is thrilled when she becomes a senator and he shows plenty of respect for her political judgement — she spots that Colin Powell is all medals and no trousers well before he does.

*****

Images: Go Fug Yourself (the women); George C’s mind (the man)

Scenes from a road trip: To be or not to be

Published 28 December, 2009 How to live , Philosophy and culture 5 Comments
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There were three of them: a husband, a wife and, probably, a sister.  All in their early 40s, they sat at the white plastic table in the cafe’s garden courtyard, the only place for miles open so soon after Christmas.

Arriving late, the trio had been ushered past the pokey rooms inside, filled with greying couples staring at anything other than their partner, to the shade-cloth out back. 

And because their table was round and much bigger than required, unlike the earlier arrivals, they didn’t have to try to avoid each other’s eyes. Instead, they could just stare wherever their eyes fell. 

They were speaking – I heard a snippet – though it was that special kind of conversation in which nothing is said.  Even if I hadn’t heard, it was obvious from their pose.  Each leaned an elbow on the table and hovered their hand around their mouth as if to underline their muteness.

Anne Tyler, the novelist and great chronicler of middle-age, once had a character describe a conversation in which “too little was said, and too much communicated.”  If she’d seen this trio – vacant, staring, utterly enervated – and their counterparts inside, silent or muttering “pass the salt” – she might have described a conversation in which too little was said and even less communicated.

Yet one can see this kind of “conversation” everywhere one looks: people bored and vacant and mouthing platitudes.  I’ve noticed it particularly in the Christmas period and its lead-up.  Tables of friends and acquaintances, husbands and wives, extended family, all having this kind of “non-conversation.”

“So what?” you might say, “nothing new there: people run out of things to say, and if you’re wise, you just accept it.”  But here’s the thing.  This Christmas I also saw something I hadn’t seen before.  I saw that in every one of these non-conversations, there was a moment when it could have been different.  There was a moment when I saw a hunger for real conversation, a longing to speak about what really matters: about regrets and disappointments, about losses and triumphs, about fears and hopes. 

It was a hunger mixed, in almost equal parts, with dread, yet it was hunger nevertheless.  And the presence and strength of this hunger, this longing to speak of real things, have been palpable to me recently.

*****

Since doing the Landmark Forum about 15 months ago, I’ve experienced different aspects and capacities of existence at different times.  Like many people, in the days following the course, I experienced the amazing sensation of having crowds part before me, so to speak, and heads swivelling wherever I walked.  As if I were generating some kind of unseen power. 

I think of this phase as the state of being “full of being,” though it’d be more correct to say it’s the state of having depleted stocks of “non-being.”  And it’s in this phase that one sees other people vividly for the first time, in particular, their suffering and the style or flavour of the way they suffer.  For example, my particular style or flavour of suffering is always about guilt.  For others, their style of suffering will be about bitterness or resentment or sorrow and so on.

Many graduates of the Forum say it’s as if other people are wearing a neon sign on their forehead spelling out what ails them so pre-eminent is their ability to “read” others during this period.  In my case, this ability has waxed and waned during the last 15 months.  Some days, other people occur to me as being extraordinarily transparent; other days, they’re opaque. 

This waxing and waning happens, I assume, because of the waxing and waning of my state of being.  And it also happens according to what I’m being trained in at the time.  At the moment, I’m being trained in leading introductions to the Landmark Forum, and it cannot be a coincidence that suddenly everywhere I look I see people hungry to speak of what really matters to them.  If only they were given the chance, if only they — if only we — would put aside for a moment the boredom and longueurs of our many “non-conversations.”

*****

Image: Andy Sotiriou/moodboard/Corbis

Socks and jocks

Published 22 December, 2009 Craftwork 2 Comments
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Well, the car’s half packed, the wine’s chilling, the presents are wrapped and the socks knitted.  Here’s the pair I showed you before, all ready for my brother (no need to worry about spoiling surprises; no-one from my family and few of my friends read this blog).

My brother’s not usually on a first name basis with yellow (I was thinking yellow would give the illusion of warmth when he was in New York for the northern winter, only he went and changed plans on me, and now he’s back under the too-yellow sun of Sydney), yet they’re so his era.

Then there’s this pair for my friend, Jane.

And this which I received from my friend of over 30 years, Theresa: a “knit one, sip one” coffee mug.

*****

Thank you to all who’ve read my blog this year and commented and encouraged me.  It really does make a difference when I’m wondering what’s the point, or when I feel as if I’ve got nothing to say. Thank you in particular to my three star commentors:

  • the redoubtable Mr Phillip S Phogg, Esq,  a truer and more stalwart commentor a blogger never had; Phoggy, your curiosity, wide knowledge and thoughtfulness have greatly enriched this blog
  • the host with the mostest and best-selling author, Mr Andreas Kluth; Andreas, your warm and enquiring mind is a pleasure to be in
  • my good friend, Mulberry; dear R, your grace and empathy are an inspiration to me.

May you and all my readers have a happy Christmas, and a year of joy and satisfaction. SGxx

Living forwards from the future

Published 17 December, 2009 How to live , Philosophy and culture , Weirdness of time 8 Comments
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Remember how a little while ago I was thinking about time?  Well, I was saving up the absolute best bit.  Not only is the best bit about time, it’s the best bit – my favourite, juiciest insight – from doing the Landmark Forum.

“The main presumption of existence,” according to Laurel Sheaf, a Landmark Forum Leader, “is that life is one thing after another.”  We think that time is a

one-way, no return, take-your-lumps deal.

For example, we live our lives assuming that it’s our past – our education, our parents, our culture, our good and bad experiences, and so on – which determines who we are in the present. 

We read the story of our lives in retrospect, as it were.  “Oh, I’m no good at swimming,” we might say, “because my parents didn’t take me to lessons early enough.”  Or, “I can’t speak in public because I embarrassed myself in school that day.”  Or, “I’ll never have a happy marriage because my first one didn’t work out.”

And it doesn’t have to be “negative” experiences.  For example, we might say something like, “I always make people laugh, ever since that day when I was at my best friend’s party and I told that joke that everyone loved.” 

Laurel Sheaf quotes Tom Robbins on the point,

we become frozen in that glad ice, turning ourselves into living fossils for the remainder of our existence.

We automatically assume that our past is what determines who we are in the present.  And yet, this is not the case.  What determines who we are in the present is not our past; it is our future.  It is the future we’re living into that determines who we are being in the present.  As Laurel Sheaf says,

What inspires us, and what moves us, or what stops and defeats us, is essentially due to how we see the future in front of us.

For example, last week I made a decision to go to France in May on a long dreamt-of Grand Perfume Tour.  Straightaway, I became someone who was excited at the prospect of a holiday, someone who was inspired at making something happen that was not going to happen, someone to whom it might matter on what days the International Perfume Museum in Grasse is open, someone who might suddenly notice an advertisement to visit the frankincense plantations in Oman on the way, someone who might start telling clients I’ll be unavailable in May, and so on.  Yet on the day before I made that decision, I was none of these “someones.” 

Sounds too simple, huh?  Or wrong.  Or dumb.  Yet this is how existence works.  So how is it that we don’t notice this normally?  How is it we all seem to be under the same delusion that it’s the past (not the future) that determines who we are in the present?  Well, that’s a story for another day, or for anyone who does the Landmark Forum.

*****

8 minutes of genius

Published 15 December, 2009 Art and exhibitions , Philosophy and culture 4 Comments
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Why have 15 minutes of fame when you can have 8 minutes of genius?

Watch what this beautiful young woman creates from the Russian experience during World War II.  Over 20 million Russians were killed in the war, among them, the grandfather of my friend I mentioned yesterday.

Watch and be amazed.

The smell of the West, and how to smell better

Published 14 December, 2009 Perfume , Philosophy and culture 3 Comments
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One of my closest friends was born in Russia.  Soon after we met she told me about the first trip she’d made out of Russia.  It happened when she was studying science at Moscow University and was invited to a conference in the US. 

She told me how when she arrived in the US she was overwhelmed; not so much by the sights and the people, as by the smells.  It was “the smell of the West,” she said, and it wasn’t until later, after she’d migrated to Australia that she worked out what that smell consisted of.  It was the smell of “Radiant and Omo”; the laundry powder and deodorant and the scores of smelling-things we are heir to in our society.

And if the smell of the West was overwhelming to an uninitiated nose in the late 80s, it’s only become more strident since.  In fact, we are being subjected to a kind of smell overload in the present.  Most of it is a toxic mélange of stabilisers, preservatives and other chemicals found in personal hygiene products, cleaning products, furniture, paper, clothing, and so on. 

This past winter, for example, I had to give up wearing the Italian net stockings I’ve worn for years because they smell of chemicals when I take them out of the packet, and the smell doesn’t diminish even after 3 or 4 washings.

This is why a perfumer like Serge Lutens, whom I mentioned the other day, can say we’re being virtually “embalmed.” And why a perfumer like Emma Leah of Fleurage is predicting a turn away from mainstream, synthetic perfumes towards essential oils and botanically-derived perfumes. 

Happily, Emma produces just such “natural” perfumes in her showroom and workshop in Prahran, Melbourne, which is where I spent a very cosy time last week sampling, in particular, a “chypre” made to a 150-year old recipe. 

The chypre family of perfume is probably the most distinctive of all.  The combination of animalic, mossy/woody and citrus elements shouldn’t perhaps work; yet by the curious alchemy of “high perfume,” the combination gives rise to a smell that is, paradoxically, ultra-classic and ultra-abstract. 

Most perfume aficionados, by definition, will be aficionados of chypre.  Because of this classicism and abstraction.  And because of the semi-mythical story of the perfume created by Francois Coty in 1917: the original Chypre,  the progenitor, as it were, of all similar perfumes, including those made before 1917.

Such was the fame and success of Coty’s Chypre that it’s become the yardstick by which all perfumes are judged by aficionados: the promise — eternally undelivered, eternally renewed — that one day there may be another perfume of its mythic status.

*****

For these reasons, I had a great time at Fleurage with Emma’s Chypre which, I want to state plainly here and now, is so much grander, richer and truer than my weirdo 31 Rue Cambon.

Emma also kindly contributed a suggestion to the itinerary of my Grand Perfume Tour in May: to the house of Caron in Paris to decant a sample from their famous Baccarat crystal samovars filled with perfume.  This sounds so compelling it’s gone straight to the top of my list.

To purchase Emma’s classic, natural perfumes, or to participate in one of her perfume courses in 2010, visit the Fleurage showroom and workshop at 4C Cecil Place, Prahran, tel: +61 3 9533 8657.

And check out the Fleurage website here: http://www.fleurage-natural-perfume.com.au/

*****

Image: Women performing enfleurage, the method, virtually abandoned nowadays, of strewing flowers on glass trays coated in animal fat until the fat becomes saturated with the fragrant oil of the flowers (in the Fragonard perfumery in Grasse) (top)

Paris, France

Published 10 December, 2009 Great blogs , Perfume 4 Comments
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Do you have a secret dream of something you’ve wanted to do for years? Something you’ve put in your too-wild, too-stupid basket? Something, nevertheless, you keep finding on the floor, away from its basket?

I’ve got several, and today I’m finally going to make one of them happen. Because today I’m booking a flight to Paris in May and putting together the itinerary of a Grand Perfume Tour I’ve dreamt of taking for years.

I’m a perfume nut from way back, and not just the stuff that comes in bottles. All smells: flowers, sand, laundry, earth, river water, body odour (yes, really). In fact, I’m with Jean-Claude Ellena, founder of the Parisian perfumery, The Different Company, when he says perfume can be “too perfumey.” *

These days I’m less interested in wearing perfume than I am in sampling and learning about it. Especially the so-called “niche” stuff. The stuff that smells dirty and grungy and lascivious and complex and unsettling, and most of all, uncompromising.

Some of these niche perfumes are actually made by niche perfumers: very small, artisan makers. Some are kind of accidentally niche: made by larger, more mainstream perfumers, yet still smelling niche.

And it’s niche, plus probably a few old faves, I’ll be pursuing in France and thereabouts in May.

So I’m thinking something like the following:

  • 3-4 weeks in total
  • few days to start with in London
  • my old friend, Eurostar, to Gare du Nord
  • a certain “traditionnel” hotel in the 16th arondissement
  • 2 or 3 visits to Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido to roll in the creations of the perfumer closest to my intellectual sensibilities, Serge Lutens, who said of his latest perfume, L’Eau Serge Lutens, L’Anti-Parfum, “This creation is my response to a world that is overscented … I might even say ‘embalmed’” ·
  • a trip to the aforementioned Jean-Claude Ellena and his daughter, Céline, at The Different Company in the Marais
  • Comme des Garcons
  • Miller et Bertaux
  • a train to Versailles to visit the Osmothèque Museum, the perfume conservatory
  • another train to Grasse in the south of France, the perfume capital of the world, to visit the International Museum of Perfume and some of the old-time, classical perfumers like Molinard, Fragonard and Galimard
  • a few more days in the south of France visiting all the beauty spots
  • back to London and then, time permitting, a quick trip to County Clare in Ireland, country of my ancestors, to visit The Burren Perfumery (thanks, Loretta)
  • and then back, via Dubai, to Australia.

I’ve also got this idea that I’d like to select 10-12 of these niche perfumes to import and sell in Australia, that land barren of great perfume. The land where it’s either Allure from Myer, or sidling up to the fantastically disobliging staff in the paltry two or three “speciality” perfume shops to beg for a spray. And by “speciality” here we’re talking Creed or Kingdom, not Sous le Vent or something from the Histoires de Parfum line.

So, that’s something else I’m thinking of doing on the trip: choosing and arranging to import a hand-picked dozen – the crème de la crème of niche and niche-smelling – for the poor, deprived women of Australia.

And if I could pick up, for my own delectation, some Feminitè du Bois in the original, pinky-plum bottle, and track down the mysterious Guet Apens by Guerlain, I’d be really rather pleased with my trip.

*****

It must be said that I have no idea how I’m going to pay for this trip, or how I’m going to do it in general. Yet, just as I decided to give up the word “why” earlier this year, and — a couple of weeks ago — the word “but”,  I’m now giving up the word “how” as well.

Paris, France, here I come.

*****

* As quoted by Elena Vosnaki in her great perfume blog, Perfume Shrine.

Taken at the flood: Quote for the week

Published 7 December, 2009 Art and exhibitions , Quote for the week Leave a Comment
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Today I’m starting a new column for Mondays: a quote for the week.

Unlike the quotes from the month series, it will be a prospective quotation: a quotation to live into.

The first is from Shakespeare.  Why not start at the top, hey?  This one’s a favourite, and today I find its spirit running through my veins.

*****

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Julius Caesar (Act IV, Scene 3, l.216)

 

*****

Images: “Our magic hour” by New York artist, Ugo Rondinone, installed at Richmond, Melbourne just across the river from where I live (photographed by my very talented friend, Emma)

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This blog is about …

paying attention to the things in my life that are creative, and in such paying attention being creative.

 

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