The Dialogue of Fashion and Death

DAY EIGHT-AND-TWENTY: RENAISSANCE; OR I AWAKE FROM DESIGN REVERIE AND REJOIN THE WORLD AS A CITIZEN

2010-12-02T21:48:00.000-08:00

Dearest Darling Readers,

I really must apologize for my disappearance

these past few months.

You see this horrid little thing called a

Graduate Collection has rather

had his wicked way with me and thus stole me from you.

We have been spending numerous hours together not for a second could we part. You see I love him and he me.

We are but the same person now.

I'm quite proud of how he has grown and often with a mind of his own taking on the form of Orlando himself.
Fashion and I are no longer just friends.
We have eloped.
Highly recommended if you have what it takes.

In general it has involved many sleepless nights, a general loss of friends, and no social life.

That is what it means to take on a lover is it not?

However we are are now in the petty comfort that comes with time when you spend so much of it with one person, or thing.

He and I have come to an agreement that we must both make something for ourselves in this world and thus my rebirth, re-emergence or renaissance so to speak.

Watch this space for snippets of him. I have made quite a few grand friends along the way.

Choosing a life as a fashion designer leads to a great many meetings of very interesting people.

All my love,
Lady Orlando xo

DAY SEVEN-AND-TWENTY: VICTORIAN ERA MONSTERS

2010-06-27T22:24:00.001-07:00

The Art of Travis Louie:

Travis Louie’s paintings come from the tiny little drawings and many writings in his journals. He’s created his own imaginary world that is grounded in Victorian and Edwardian times. It is inhabited by human oddities, mythical beings, and otherworldly characters who appear to have had their formal portraits taken to mark their existence and place in society. The underlining thread that connects all these characters is the unusual circumstances that shape who they were and how they lived. Some of their origins are a complete mystery while others are hinted at. A man is cursed by a goat, a strange furry being is discovered sleeping in a hedge, an engine driver can’t seem to stop vibrating in his sleep, a man overcomes his phobia of spiders, etc, . . .Using inventive techniques of painting with acrylic washes and simple textures on smooth boards, he’s created portraits from an alternate universe that seemingly may or may not have existed.
They are beautiful and couldn't keep the all for myself...

STAND STILL FOR A PORTRAIT HERE

DAY SIX-AND-TWENTY: WANT TO BE A VICTORIAN? THE TOP TEN CREEPIEST THINGS ABOUT BEING ONE

2010-06-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

10. VIGNETTES -
creepy relayives dressing up to amuse other relatives. Nan as a nymph: not something my psyche wants to see. Ever.

9. POORHOUSES -
Poorhouses were government-run facilities where the poor, infirm, or mentally ill could live. They were usually filthy and full to the brim of societies unwanted people...

8. PEA-SOUPERS -
fogs so thick you could barely see through them. The pea-soupers were caused by a combination of fogs from the River Thames and smoke from the coal fires that were an essential part of Victorian life.

7. FOOD -
The Victorians loved offal and ate virtually every part of an animal. This is not entirely creepy if you are o.k. with the weird and the wonderful, but for the average person, the idea of supping on a bowl of brains and heart is not appealing. Another famous dish from the Victorian era was turtle soup. The turtle was prized above all for its green jello-like fat which was used to flavor the soup made from the long-boiled stringy flesh of the animal

6. SURGERY - In a time when one in four surgery patients died after surgery, you were very lucky in Victorian times to have a good doctor with a clean theatre. There was no anesthesia, no painkillers for after, and no electric equipment to reduce the duration of an operation.

5. GOTHIC NOVEL -
The red room in Jany Eyre. Yes please. No thanks.

4. JACK THE RIPPER -
How could you not know?

3. FREAK SHOWS -
Including Hysteria.. Enter Diane Arbus.

2. MEMENTO MORI -
Enough said.

1. QUEEN VICTORIA -
When her husband Albert died in 1861, she went into mourning – donning black frocks until her own death many years later – and expected her nation to do so too. She avoided public appearances and rarely set foot in London in the following years. Her seclusion earned her the name “Widow of Windsor.”

AN HOMAGE TO SOMEONE WHO DID IT BEFORE ME

DAY FIVE-AND-TWENTY: MEMENTO MORI, THE VICTORIAN ERA'S OBSESSION WITH DEATH

2010-06-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning “Remember you shall die” as commentated in a previous post (avid readers will be aware of this). In the Victorian era, photography was young and extremely costly. When a loved one died, their relatives would sometimes have a photograph taken of the corpse in a pose – oftentimes with other members of the family. For the vast majority of Victorians, this was the only time they would be photographed. In these post-mortem photographs, the effect of life was sometimes enhanced by either propping the subject’s eyes open or painting pupils onto the photographic print, and many early images have a rosy tint added to the cheeks of the corpse. Adults were more commonly posed in chairs or even braced on specially-designed frames. Flowers were also a common prop in post-mortem photography of all types. In the first photo above, the fact that the girl is dead is made slightly more obvious (and creepy) by the fact that the slight movement of her parents causes them to be slightly blurred due to the long exposure time, while the girl is deathly still and, thus, perfectly in focus. They are a sad and beautiful reminder. Exactly what they are described as Memento Mori

TRAIL OF BONES STARTS HERE

DAY FOUR-AND-TWENTY: TWINNESS

2010-06-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

There will always be something visually arresting about twins...They know things. Secrets. Its in their eyes....

CLICK HERE FOR MORE
CLICK HERE FOR MORE

DAY THREE-AND-TWENTY: THE SEDLEC

2010-06-23T02:32:00.000-07:00

The Sedlec: Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to the Palestine (Holy Land) by King Otakar II of Bohemia in 1278. When he returned, he brought with him a small amount of earth he had removed from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. The word of this pious act soon spread and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site throughout Central Europe. During the Black Death in the mid 14th century, and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century, many thousands of people were buried there and the cemetery had to be greatly enlarged. Around 1400 a Gothic church was built in the center of the cemetery with a vaulted upper level and a lower chapel to be used as an ossuary for the mass graves unearthed during construction, or simply slated for demolition to make room for new burials. After 1511 the task of exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel was, according to legend, given to a half-blind monk of the order.

Between 1703 and 1710 a new entrance was constructed to support the front wall, which was leaning outward, and the upper chapel was rebuilt. This work, in the Czech Baroque style, was designed by Jan Santini Aichel.

In 1870, František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the bone heaps into order. The macabre result of his effort speaks for itself. Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a large Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms, and the signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance. Its creepy and its wonderful, I can't wait to see it in the flesh - or lack there of!

(WIKIPEDIA TELLS YOU MORE)

DAY TWO-AND-TWENTY: STEAMPUNK AND STEAM POWER

2010-06-17T02:02:00.001-07:00

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction and speculative fiction, frequently featuring elements of fantasy, that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steampower is still widely used — usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era Britain.

These illustrations look back to the works of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Mary Shelly, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Rice Burroughs. It appears to be a mix of Victorian, beginnings of the industrial revolution, maybe a pinch of the Western explorers, and maybe a touch of Goth if you wish. The illustrator of these beautiful drawings is a blogger who goes by the name Doug and has been in the visual arts field since 1989. These drawings and sketches are a snapshot in time.

ALL ABOARD THE MYSTERY TRAIN

DAY ONE-AND-TWENTY: THE SECRET MUSEUM

2010-06-12T05:17:00.000-07:00

Flamingos - dead or more dead, whatever takes your fancy.

Finches, these poor little things...

Wouldn't want to pat that!

Bird Collection

Nineteenth century wax models, with REAL human hair!

Fetus skeletons changed and re-arranged...

The backroom

More of the back room...(how cute are the owls in the background?)

Goat under a table, because everyone has one...

Various busts, scale replicas

Aaaah! The Birds!!!

This bizarro collection of photographs spans from a world-wide p a n o r a m i c view. From Paris to Chicago, blogger and artist Joanna Ebenstein travels the world photographing these virtually unseen curiosities. I particularly like the wax models with human hair - so creepy. Taxidermy has had a strange hold on me of recent, it both disgusts and compels me to want to know more, to see more...
(I bought a vintage coat with fur trimmings today, it seems I have crossed over to the darkside - past the point of no return!)

HERE FOR MORE CURIOSITIES...

DAY TWENTY: URBANDON

2010-06-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

"The Count of Monte Christo rides to his beloved"

"Freedom to be his true self"

"These pieces are all about (urban) protection. Alhough some of them could stop a bullet, what protection do we have against the evil eye? invasion of personal space, facebook privacy? government internet filters?"

~~~

These beautiful pieces of jewellery are by an artist who calls himself Urbandon. Urbandon scavenges for junk metal and obscure findings creating machines that transport him in time and space, I think he took me for a ride when I discovered his page.... His fascinatingly wearable curiosities are created uniquely using items that range from bird bones to egg beaters. I wear spoons on necklaces, but this stuff is just gorgeous. Its an aesthetic that I associate with.

IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE, SHE SMILES. (GET LOST IN IT HERE)

DAY NINETEEN: THANK HEAVENS FOR LITTLE GIRLS

2010-06-10T05:56:00.000-07:00

Sadism

Indifference

Ignorance (is bliss?!)

Alcohol abuse (But Bacchus is actually a friend...)

This monument in Moscow city depicts the children (standing in the middle) surrounded by filthy grown ups - each grown up has its own flaw or sin, one of the most common sins of the modern society, together they stand guard around the innocent children in an apparent abyss - going to either side would lead to some kind of attachment. Children can never be taught wholly right from wrong, each person has their flaws...

I KNOW MINE, WHAT ARE YOURS??

DAY EIGHTEEN: "IT IS THE FACE OF MY SOUL!"

2010-06-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

DIALOGUE BETWEEN BASIL HALLWARD AND DORIAN GRAY

"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine." The voice that spoke was cold and cruel.

"You are mad, Dorian, or playing a part,"muttered Hallward, frowning.

"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man, and he tore the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground.

An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at!

The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat.

Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion.

It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered?

He turned and looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He passed his hand across his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat.

The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy.

There was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.

"What does this mean?"cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.

"Years ago, when I was a boy,"said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower in his hand,"you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks."
"One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment that, even now, I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer. . . ."

"I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible. The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible."

"Ah, what is impossible?"murmured the young man, going over to the window and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.

"You told me you had destroyed it."

"I was wrong. It has destroyed me."

"I don't believe it is my picture."

"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian bitterly.

"My ideal, as you call it. . ."

"As you called it."

"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr."

"It is the face of my soul."

"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a devil."

"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil,"cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.

Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it.

"My God! If it is true," he exclaimed,"and this is what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to be!"

He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY BY OSCAR WILDE

"DORIAN GRAY" BY IVAN ALBRIGHT

DAY SEVENTEEN: ALL ART IS QUITE USELESS

2010-06-10T05:03:00.002-07:00

Preface:-

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

- OSCAR WILDE

DAY SIXTEEN: DIANE ARBUS

2010-06-10T04:09:00.000-07:00

Diane Arbus was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people "(dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, circus performers ) or else of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal to the normal eye. A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid... that she would be known simply as 'the photographer of freaks'; however, that term has been used repeatedly to describe her. This description of such a profound photographer stems from a fear from people who fail to understand the beauty in the unusual. These people are not freaks, they are extraordinary human beings.

It is as Oscar Wilde states in the preface to the Picture of Dorian Gray; "The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault."

Arbus was outside of normality. She went above and beyond, breaking rules and conventions to become who she really was. This takes guts and a lot of strength, but sometimes you have to have to say "Fuck society, I'm going to do it my way." She did and she made a mark on the world.

TO FIND BEAUTIFUL MEANINGS IN BEAUTIFUL THINGS, CLICK HERE

DAY FIFTEEN: J'AI BAISE TA BOUCHE

2010-06-10T03:51:00.000-07:00

Salomé is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde. The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published. The play tells in one act the Biblical story of Salome, stepdaughter of the tetrach Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but to the delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils.

These images above are from the first publication of Salome that was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and the grotesque erotica, which were the main themes of his later work. Some of his drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga, featured enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations were on themes of history and mythology; these include his illustrations for a privately printed edition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and his drawings for Salome, which eventually premiered in Paris in 1896. The first image is of the climax of the play "J'ai baise ta bouche, Jokanaan; I kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan."

J'AI BAISE TA BOUCHE (HERE) XX

DAY FOURTEEN: THE STRANGEST SHOP IN PARIS

2010-05-27T04:24:00.000-07:00

I could not help but pat him if I saw him...He ain't gonna bite..

Private party, and you're not invited.

Preserve your cherished pets? No thanks...

Forget skeletons in the closet, how about a boar in the den?

“la boutique la plus étrange de Paris”

Paris has many unusual shops, but one of the most unusual has to be Deyrolle, a 170-year old establishment on rue du Bac, not far from the Musee d'Orsay on the Left Bank.

To describe it as a taxidermy shop hardly does it justice. The ground floor looks like a fairly ordinary small home and garden shop (apart from a couple of stuffed gazelles standing on their hind legs and dressed to look like humans). But walking up the stairs is like passing through a time warp. The second story (which in France is considered the first) appears to have changed little since the store moved to its current location in 1881. It's dusty, chaotic, and crammed with stuffed animals of all shapes, sizes, and poses, as well as ancient wooden cases full of insects, shells, botanical prints and a variety of curiosities.

As the pictures here suggest, it's really a museum masquerading as a store.

DEYROLLE
46 RUE DU BAC
PARIS 75007

DAY THIRTEEN: UNE SEMAINE DE BONTE

2010-05-17T05:49:00.000-07:00

Une Semaine De Bonte trans. A Week of Kindness.

These strange, but true images are of the very real surreal from a book by Max Ernst of the above title. The Figure of the male as bird is interesting and creepy in his anonymity. Not something I would like to wake up to. Their beady eyes and long beaks - too much! But they are lovely things to look at. Macabre.

Une semaine de bonté comprises 182 images created by cutting up and re-organizing illustrations from Victorian novels, encyclopedias, and other books. Ernst arranged the images to present a dark, surreal world. Most of the seven sections have a distinct theme that unites the images within. In Sunday the element is mud, and Ernst's example for this element is the Lion of BelfortThe element of the next section, consequently, this section features numerous characters with lion heads. Monday, is water, and all of the images show water, either in a natural setting, or flowing inside bedrooms, dining rooms, etc. Some of the characters are able to walk on water, while others drown. The element associated with Tuesday is fire, and so most of the images in this section feature dragons or fantastic lizards. The last of the large sections, Wednesday, contains numerous images of bird-men.

The element of Thursday, "blackness", has two examples instead of one. The first example, "a rooster's laughter", is illustrated with more images of bird-men. The second example, Easter Island is illustrated with images portraying characters with Maoi heads. Friday, the most abstract part of the entire book, contains various images that resist categorization. They include collages of human bones and plants, one of which was used for the cardboard slipcase that was meant to house all five volumes of Une semaine de bonté. The final section of the book, Saturday, contains 10 images. The element given is "the key to songs"; the images are once again uncategorizable. The section, and with it the book, ends with several images of falling women.

No full interpretation of Une semaine de bonté has ever been published. The book, like its predecessors, has been described as projecting "recurrent themes of sexuality, anti-clericalism and violence, by dislocating the visual significance of the source material to suggest what has been repressed."

EIGHT DAYS A WEEK

DAY TWELVE: DISCE MORI

2010-05-17T05:17:00.000-07:00

The intrigue of taxidermy is explored through jewellery by artist Julia deVille. These beautiful pieces are inspired by Memento Mori jewellery of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and Victorian Mourning jewellery. DeVille combines traditional gold and silversmithing with materials that were once living such as jet, human hair and taxidermy. They are reminder of our mortality. These pieces are bizarre, but have a strange sense of beauty. It goes back to the Freudian theory of fascination and repulsion - we are afraid to look but want to see more, finding it hard to take our eyes away from them. I want one. Taxidermy is a celebration of life, a preservation of something beautiful...

WANT MORE? FOLLOW THE WHITE RABBIT

DAY ELEVEN: MEMENTO MORI

2010-05-03T02:05:00.001-07:00

BRIEF HISTORY OF MEMENTO MORI
AND VICTORIAN MOURNING JEWELLERY

"Throughout the ages coffins, skeletons, and death heads (skull and cross-bones) have been used to symbolise the imminence of death and our own mortality.

Within the fourteenth century came the Bubonic Plague, which swept out some twenty five million people, one third of Europe by the beginning of the sixteenth century. Death was very much a part of every day life. Prior to this Death had been represented as the devil, horned and cloven-hoofed, forcing the sinful into the the mouth of hell. Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Death began to take on a more familiar and human form, the skeleton, which was soon to appear in jewellery.

First rings were made with inscriptions such as; 'C'est mon ure' (my hour has come) and ESPOIRIER DE MY SANS FYNE (Pray for me always), to remind the wearer of the approach of death and the need to prepare for it. "

WANT TO READ MORE? CLICK HERE FOR DISCE MORI

DAY TEN: WALKING A LOBSTER

2010-05-02T04:22:00.001-07:00

[DECADENCE IS...]

hothouse flowers natural silk suit dyed hair sex with your spouse or lover painted lips streetlights walking a lobster a beautiful sunset an ornate china teapot wild flowers
velvet suit naturally red hair sex with a prostitute rosy lips moonlight walking a dog an opium absinthe hallucination an ornate china teapot that doesn't work

NEVER WALKED A LOBSTER BEFORE? THEY ARE QUITE AGREEABLE CREATURES TO WALK

DAY NINE: LOVED TO DEATH

2010-05-02T03:58:00.001-07:00

These delightfully-creepy little things speak the ultimate dialogue between fashion and death. Who can resist the allure of taxidermy?
Not I!

Tiny little feet hold on to keyholes, wish bones, acorns.
Loved to death? Or love death? Fashion becomes death. Wear death as fashion.
They are so bizarre I almost want one, but the politics behind taxidermy, wearing fur, etc. - the animal conservation aficionados
out there will have my head! (Though the idea of that somehow ironic to the very nature of this post...)

These bizarre jewelery creations by Loved To Death are made using the preserved body parts of dead animals. According to the creator, all animal parts used to create these pieces have been professionally preserved and come from recycled sources. No animals are killed specifically to make this jewelery.

FOLLOW FASHION TO FIND DEATH

DAY EIGHT: MON ONCLE

2010-04-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

The "awful contortion of the face produced by the constant use of an eye-glass." or monocle. Usually worn by slightly older gentlemen around the age that uncles ought to be. My uncle (Mon Oncle) wearing a monocle.

From: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV (Dec, 1851 - May, 1852) New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers. Pg 860.

DAY SEVEN: WHEN THE POLICE OUGHT TO INTERFERE

2010-04-09T02:35:00.001-07:00

Engravings 1, 2 and 3 of The Round Hat read as follows:
1. When it is all very well.
2. When it is objectional.
3. When the police ought to interfere.

Cartoon from Punch, 22 September 1855.

Note:
From the mid-1850s the hat reappeared to challenge the supremacy of the bonnet. Punch cartoons poked fun at these wide-brimmed hats which proliferated like mushrooms in the English countryside and on beaches. By 1857 the style became modified into a smaller version with the dipped front brim and leather plume, worn for riding and walking. The streamers which floated behind these hats were called 'follow-me-lads'.

SOURCE: CUMMING, V. (2006). THE VISUAL HISTORY OF COSTUME ACCESSORIES. FROM HATS TO SHOES: 400 YEARS OF COSTUME ACCESSORIES. NEW YORK: QUITE SPECIFIC MEDIA GROUP. P. 101.

DAY SIX: THE EXTREMES OF FASHION

2010-04-09T02:14:00.001-07:00

Such Things Are, engraving 1787.

Note:
Throughout the eighteenth century and beyond, the absurdities of fashion provided ample subject matter for caricatures. Young men were a favourite target and this example dissects the details of the extreme fashion.

SOURCE: CUMMING, V. (2006). THE VISUAL HISTORY OF COSTUME ACCESSORIES. FROM HATS TO SHOES: 400 YEARS OF COSTUME ACCESSORIES. NEW YORK: QUITE SPECIFIC MEDIA GROUP. P. 70.

DAY FIVE: ALPHABET SOUP

2010-04-08T04:30:00.000-07:00

This is certainly the most morbid alphabet I have come across. Although not typically related to fashion, it is related to literature. For words are made from letters of the alphabet, are they not? Key letters re-arranged, repeated and contorted. You can see the metamorphosis.

G is for... GASHLYCRUMB TINIES

DAY FOUR: THE DANDY

2010-04-08T04:21:00.001-07:00

Its witty.
Its Funny.
Its coy.
A play on words: true to the essence of the dandy.
Would Oscar Wilde approve? most probably.
Good enough for me.

LIKE HIM? SEE MORE HERE

DAY THREE: THE DIALOGUE OF FASHION AND DEATH

2010-03-30T01:34:00.000-07:00

The Dialogue of Fashion and Death

Fashion:
Ho, Madam Death, Madam Death!

Death:
Wait till your hour comes, and I’ll come to you without your calling me.

Fashion:
But, Madam Death ——

Death:
Go to Beelzebub with you! I’ll come, sure enough, when you don’t want me.

Fashion:
Come to me, indeed! As if I were not immortal!

Death:
Immortal, quotha! No, no — as the poet says, “ A thousand years and more have passed since the times of the immortals ceased.”

Fashion:
Madam seems to spout her Petrarch as if she were an Italian lyric poet of the fifteenth or eighteenth century.

Death:
Aye, I love the sonnets of Petrarch, for in them I find ample record of my triumphs, and they abound in mention of me. But again I say, be so good as to be off.

Fashion:
Oh come! By the love you cherish for the seven cardinal sins, stop a moment and look at me!

Death:
I am looking at you.

Fashion:
And do you mean to say you don’t know me?

Death:
You should know that my sight is bad, and that I can’t use spectacles, since the English now make none that suit me; and if they did, I have no nose to stick them on.

Fashion:
Why, I am Fashion, your own sister.

Death:
My sister!

Fashion:
Aye; don’t you remember that we are both the children of Frailty?

Death:
What have I to do with remembering — I, who am the sworn enemy of memory?

Fashion:
But I remember the circumstance well; and I also know that both of us are alike employed continually in the destruction and change of all things here below, although you take one way of doing so, and I another.

Death:
Unless you are talking to yourself, or with some person you have there inside you, I beg you will raise your voice a little and articulate your words better, for if you go on muttering to me between your teeth like that with that voice like a spider’s, I’ll never hear you, since, as you know, my hearing is as bad as my sight.

Fashion:
Well, although it is not good manners to speak plainly, and though in France nobody speaks so as to be heard, yet, since we are sisters, and need not stand on ceremony with each other, I’ll speak as you wish. I say, then, that the tendency and operation common to us both is to be continually renewing the world. But whereas you have from the beginning aimed your efforts directly against the bodily constitutions and the lives of men, I am content to limit my operations to such things as their beards, their hair, their clothing, their furniture, their dwellings, and the like. Nevertheless, it is a fact that I have not failed at times to play men certain tricks not altogether unworthy to be compared 80 to your own work; as, for example, boring men’s ears, or lips, or noses, and lacerating them with trinkets which I place therein; or scorching their bodies with hot irons, which I persuade them to apply to their persons by way of improving their beauty. Then again, I sometimes squeeze the heads of their children with ligatures and other appliances, rendering it obligatory that all the inhabitants of a country should have heads of the same shape, as I have ere now accomplished in America and Asia. I also cripple mankind with shoes too small for their feet, and stifle their respiration, and make their eyes nearly start out of their heads with tightly laced corsets, and many more follies of this kind. In short, I contrive to persuade the more ambitious of mortals daily to endure countless inconveniences, sometimes torture and mutilation, aye, and even death itself, for the love they bear toward me. I say nothing of the headaches, and colds, and catarrhs, and fevers of alls sorts, quotidian, tertian, and quartan, which men contract through their worship of me, inasmuch as they are willing to shiver with cold or stifle with heat at my command, adopting the most preposterous kinds of clothing to please me, and perpetrating a thousand follies in my name, regardless of the consequences to themselves.

Death:
By my faith, I begin to believe that your are my sister after all. Nay, it is as sure as Death, and you have no need to produce the birth certificate of the parish priest in order to prove it. But standing still exhausts me, so if you’ve no objection, I wish you would run on alongside of me; but see you don’t break down, for I run at a great pace. As we run, you can tell me what it is you want of me; and even if you would rather not keep me company, still, in consideration of your relationship to me, I promise you that when I 81 die I’ll leave you all my effects and residuary estate, and much good may it do you.

Fashion:
If we had to run a race together I don’t know which of us would win, for if you run fast, I positively gallop; and as for standing still in one place, if it exhausts you, it is bane to me. So let us be off, and as we run we’ll talk over our affairs.

Death:
All right, then; and since you are my own mother’s child, I hope it will suit you to assist me in my business.

Fashion:
I’ve already told you that I have heretofore done so more than you would suppose. First of all, though it is my nature forever to annul and upset all other customs and usages, I have never and nowhere done anything calculated to put an end to the custom of dying; and thus, as you see, it has prevailed universally from the beginning of time till now.

Death:
A precious marvel, forsooth, that you have abstained from doing that which it was not in your power to do!

Fashion:
Not in my power, quotha! It is very evident that you have no idea of the power of Fashion.

Death:
Well, well, it’ll be time enough to discuss this point when the custom of dying comes to an end. But in the meantime I want you, as a good and affectionate sister, to help me to prevent such a result, and to attain its very opposite, even more effectually and more expeditiously than I have yet done.

-- Giacomo Leopardi [1798-1837]

DAY TWO: SOMEONE TO SHARE A NAME WITH

2010-03-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

Beautiful drawings by a Spanish illustrator called Lady Orlando. A face to the name of Orlando (image 1).

LADY ORLANDO'S PAGE

DAY ONE: I AM ORLANDO

2010-03-30T00:03:00.000-07:00

Everything has a beginning, just as everything has an end.
For things to end, they must have started somehow, hence the beginning of an end.
But endings are always beginnings for new adventures.
We seek, we talk, we delve and try and set ourselves apart from everyone else.
I think I am unique, but I'm just as surreal as you are.
I wake as you do and I sleep as you do.
I am your reflection.
A watcher of the world, my own worst enemy.
I am Orlando, neither masculine nor feminine.
I am a form fashion.
Beautiful and cruel.
Alive one day, dead the next.
Fashion and death share the same domain.
They hold secret conversations.
Night epiphanies.
They hold an endless conversation.