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Marchesa Casati – A dash of eccentricity

Earlier we’ve blogged about how art inspires fashion, but how about when the artistic inspiration is a person – a muse? One such person, the Marchesa Luisa Casati, has inspired many writers, painters and also fashion designers .

The Marchesa was born into a wealthy Austrian-Italian family in Milan in 1881. A patron of coutouriers such as Paul Poiret, Mariano Fortuny and Erté and jewellers like Lalique, Casati astonished European society for the first three decades of the 20th century with her eccentric personality and outrageous style. In his autobiography Erté described her as the “the most extravagantly odd woman I have ever met”. She would wear living snakes as jewellery, throw parties where her servants were covered in leafed gold from top to toe and parade her pet cheetahs around in Venice on leashes covered with gold and diamonds whilst wearing nothing but a fur coat. Her hair was a dyed a deep henna red, her skin powdered pale white and her eyes heavily kohled.

The Marchesa painted by Augustus John to the left. Carina Roitfeld as Casati, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld.

More after the jump

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Tags: Carine Roitfeld, Chanel, Christian Dior, Couture, Giorgio Armani, John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld, Marchesa Luisa Casati, muses, Tilda Swinton, Tom Ford, Yves Saint Laurent

Favourite Part of a Female

No…not a question from Dr.Hannibal, but when you look at a female, which part would you notice first.

Many people would say eyes as they are said ‘the window to heart’, how much can you see a person from looking into the eyes. Christian Dior’s least favourtie part on a femal is actual the knees. And that is the reason he always had all his skirt length to be ‘just over the knee’. He obviously quite prefer the female waist and therefore invent the ‘new look’ with cinched in waistline. However, Coco Chanel thinks that was a backwards move since she freed women’s body from corset by dressing them in cotton jersey which is at the time a common material for mens underwear.

I personally favour John Galliano’s choice, the back view of a female. It could speak so much attitude with a simple back view. Johnny Depp admits when he first time saw that beautiful female back in a Paris hotel lobby, he knew he had found the one—Vanessa Paradis.

And that’s why so many designers are focusing details on the back. Australian designer Willow had this quite cleverly done on a ready-to-wear day & night dress.

It’s romantic, yes it’s powerful too.

Tags: Chanel, Christian Dior, John Galliano, Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis

Fashionomics

The past three months have been insanely busy, so I haven’t had the opportunity to post much. However, I have been writing a few drafts in this period that I will try to wrap up and post in the coming few days. First one up – Fashionomics!

There’s an economic theory that says that hemlines rise in good economic times and drop in poor times. If one was to judge by the hemlines at some of the fashion show weeks this season, the economy is definitely skyrocketing next year and the recession will finally be over.

Yulia Kharlaponova in Lanvin.

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Tags: anja rubin, Chanel, ginta lapina, lanvin, lisanne de jong, prada, proenza schouler, spring/summer 2010, versace, yulia kharlaponova

Must-see frockumentaries

Maybe it’s because of all the recent hype surrounding The September Issue, Valentino: The Last Emperror and The Day Before, but as of lately I have a new addiction – watching fashion documentaries.  What I love about documentaries like the ones listed below is that you get to see what things are really like behind the scenes. You get an insight into how the designers work and what inspires them. Here’s a few of my favourites from YouTube:

BBC: The Secret World of Haute Couture >> Playlist

Loïc Prigent: Signe Chanel >> Playlist (episode 1 – 5)

Loïc Prigent: Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton >> Part 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09

Masters of style: John Galliano >> Playlist

Vivienne Westwood >> Part 01 | 02

Yves Saint Laurent >> Part 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06

Although I do like to watch fashion reality shows and find them entertaining, I find it kind of sad that a lot of people seem to think that reality shows like Project Runway is what fashion is really all about.  As Loïc Prigent told Maya Singer in a recent interview:

I’ve seen a little bit of these reality shows, and whatever they’re about, they’re not about fashion. Competition, making fun of people, but not fashion. It’s very hard to convince people to do a real fashion show— there’s a prejudice against fashion people in TV, even in France.

I really hope that the recent popularity of the fashion documentary genre will help change this and that people realise that there’s more to fashion than creating dresses out of chocolate wrappers (heads up to Hershey’s for the great PR effort though!).

Photo source: NY Magazine/Christopher Anderson

Tags: Chanel, Haute Couture, John Galliano, Loïc Prigent, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, vivienne westwood, Yves Saint Laurent