pieces of journalism part iv

Lauren Hutton and Robert Redford in Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)

What I enjoyed reading this week:

1. What Would Tracey Emin's Bed Look Like Today?, by Sophie Cullinane with lovely photographs by Sophie Davidson
2. Women in Old Films Who Look Like Now is a slideshow that's right up my alley
3. Tavi Gevinson's June Editor Letter for Rookie Magazine calling for action: "This month is about living in the moment in that way that only seems possible in the summer."
4. Patti Smith's introduction to the newly re-published Astragal, by Albertine Sarrazin: "Perhaps it is wrong to speak of oneself while writing of another, but I truly wonder if I would have become as I am without her. Would I have carried myself with the same swagger, or faced adversity with such feminine resolve, without Albertine as my guide? Would my young poems have possessed such a biting tongue without Astragal as my guidebook?"
5. Ryan McGinley: The Most Important Photographer in America, by Alice Gregory, who herself was featured in a lovely Waiting for Saturday post
6. In Praise of Selfies, by Casey N. Pep: "In the digital age, the rise of selfies parallels the rise of memoir and autobiography. Controlling one’s image has gone from unspoken desire to unapologetic profession, with everyone from your best friend to your favorite celebrity laboring to control every word, every pixel of himself or herself that enters the world. Self-portraiture is one aspect of a larger project to manage our reputations."
7. How Getting Rejected by the Cutest Boy in School Totally Changed My Life, by Carlye Wisel: "When you don't get the results you want, it feels like everyone can see through you, watching your failure radiate from your entire being."

audrey classic pyjamas

Finally got around to watching Charade & immediately fell in deep lust with Reggie Lampert's navy silk bathrobe. 

I recalled seeing something similar on the interwebs before and lo and behold -

Poplin, pyjama-maker extraordinaire, has a pair of pyjamas titled "Audrey Classic Pyjamas" that very much resemble Audrey's characters bathrobe.
I am also a super huge fan of their "Bardot Classic Pyjama" & the "Indochine Classic Pyjamas". 

By chance, they are having a Mother's Day sale at the moment.

To get 25% off one simply has to enter "makemamasmile" at the checkout.

As Cary Grant's character says to Audrey's: "How about making me vice president in charge of cheering you up?"
And I think these pyjamas will do just that.

Their Instagram account is worth a look as well.

P.s.: I wrote everything of my own accord. Nothing sponsored here.

the carpet-colored ordinariness of the everyday

"My first thought was, "Can I make a film about breakfast, lunch and dinner with people you like?" But I couldn't. So I then made this huge machine." (x)

Here's the thing to remember about Richard Curtis movies: they are there to be watched on a grey Sunday night in bed with wool socks on. They don't exist to be intellectualized, but rather to revel in the charming failures that are the characters. Criticising his movies is, as Peter Bradshaw put it in The Guardian, "like vivisecting a Labrador puppy."

With About Time Curtis wanted to show that there's happiness in the carpet-colored ordinariness that is our life. And what better way to bring the point home, than with someone who can travel in time - pick any day of his life to revisit over and over again - and then have that person decide "that a perfect day would just be an ordinary day." 

I enjoyed the London tube montage in particular, because living in a city as I do I can't imagine anything more unromantic & day-to-day than the tube. Richard Curtis' London is, of course, "a sanitised, poshified and sucrose-enhanced romcom-parody of the actual city". The tube, however, is about the same amount of horrendous for everyone involved. Yet it is also where I have done about half my life's reading, forged friendships with classmates taking the same route home & ate my weight in kebaps after a night out.

The movie is far from a masterpiece (& Notting Hill will stay forever my favorite), but it is a good Sunday evening watch. Hope everyone's being as lazy as they naturally should on a Sunday!

'People never tell you to have a pleasant journey in the underground, just as people will say 'enjoy your meal', but never 'enjoy your cigarette' if you're a smoker.'

A Northern Line Minute, by William Leith

'Trains show you a particular version of the urban landscape, the unpolished and undressed rear of buildings. I've always liked that about the view from the train, that you're seeing a town or city as it looks in private, before it's dolled itself up to go out.'

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Tube, by John Lanchester

la dolce vita: fendi & valentino

Growing up in this day & age one keeps reading about all the classics one should read and watch.

Compared to today's movies, however, the classics can seem a bit slow, a bit languid. 

And La Dolce Vita certainly couldn't be classified as a fast paced movie, but it's a joy watching the scenes unfold & following Marcello Mastroianna down the Via Veneto, meeting one character more interesting than the other.

The movie is also most certainly a festival for the visually starved eye. As Kate Hudson says in Nine (the musical is based on Frederico Fellini's life): "Every frame is like a postcard!"

And interestingly enough - despite the availability of color film, Fellini opted to shoot the movie in black & white. Kate Hudson's character goes on to say that he "care[s] as much about the suit, as the man wearing it" & Piero Gherardi, the film's costume designer, did actually go on to win an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. The movie as a whole is such a stylish feat, one that is rarely seen in today's world of movies.

Below follow a couple of my notes - especially in regard to how Valentino & Fendi, two of the foremost Italian brands, tie into the movie.

Swimwear for the rooftop pool, back when armpit hair wasn't yet déclassé.

Unusual for movies, Gherardi focused as much on the men's clothing as on the women's.

And unlike its American counterpart, the Italian suit was slim fitting with narrow legs & single breasted. (x)

Sharp & flattering - it was masculine sophistication at its height.

For all of you cool cats who have read Bonjour Tristesse - isn't this exactly how you imagined Anne?

(Let's ignore the movie version of the book, where Anne is blonde and not half as wonderfully affected.)

If your life is a Fellini movie sunglasses are appropriate at every time of the day (& night).

I feel like the idea of Maddalene (Anouk Aimée) is very much what Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli have partly been trying to achieve over at Maison Valentino. After all, the muse behind the perfume Valentina (the ad is a must-watch) is described as "beautiful, radiant with charms belonging to a modern heiress. She sets home in a classical Roman Palazzo but there is nothing she likes more than feeling the heart beat of the vivid city of Rome. She is the only protagonist of a hypnotic, bewitching story full of references and allusions to legendary figures of Italian fashion and cinema." 

Maddalene, the moody heiress, who is tired of Rome and its charms & has too much money for her own good, could definitely have served as inspiration. Valentina, portrayed by Freja Beha Erichsen in the ads, the heiress of today certainly resembles her a lot in spirit, when skipping out on a lavish ball & instead wandering through the streets of Rome & making out with a beautiful male model.

Valentino Garavani is, in fact, often referred to as the coutierer of Rome's Dolce Vita years. (x)

While Valentino has always drawn heiresses as clientele, Chiuri and Piccioli have been trying to steer the brand in a more modern, cool and sophisticated direction - something Maddalene definitely embodies.

They once also described one of their collections as "very uptown goes downtown", which is what Maddalene quite literally is all about. (x)

The modern woman: driving barefoot & then putting on the heels afterwards.

Marcello Mastroianni being is usual hot self in Persol sunglasses.

“I sleep only in two drops of French perfume. And there are three things I like: love, love and love.”

Marilyn says hello. Clearly Anita Ekberg's character was supposed to be a sort of Marilyn Monroe.

The film is, of course, most famous for Ekberg & Mastroianna's frolicking in the Trevi fountain.

It seems, however, the scene has drawn one or two too many tourists to the sight seeing as in the last couple of years the fountain has been falling apart. Not just the fountain, but Italy as a whole. As such the restoration of an Italian monument isn't exactly a top priority.

Room enough for Fendi to swoop in & save the day: "eager to reposition the company at the heart of the Eternal City" Fendi has pledged €2.2 million for the Trevi fountain's restoration. (x)

While their contribution will only be marked with a small plaque on the side, the company has already benefited from its link to the infamous movie scene.

"But the company’s intervention has already gained it publicity money can’t buy: headlines around the world accompanied by a sultry picture of Anita Ekberg, cavorting in the fountain in full evening dress in a scene from Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita." (x)

Roger Ebert, the famous movie critic, certainly counted the movie amongst his favorites &

ended his review of the movie with:

"There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself."

to catch a thief: the french riviera, part 1

Some of the best costume designers out there these days are in my opinion Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina; Atonement; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and Colleen Atwood (Chicago, Alice in Wonderland).

However, back in the days of ye olde Hollywood glamour Edith Head was both of these costume designers combined, and more. She was the costume designer - none other need apply. Winning eight Academy Awards, more than any other woman ever. (With 35 nominations, she also leads the most nominated category.)

Amongst others (Rear Window, Sabrina, Roman Holiday a.k.a. all those fashion favorites) she was responsible for Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief.

Plot summary for those of you who didn't receive this on DVD on their 16th birthday because they weren't a precocious movie buff:
"When a reformed jewel thief (Cary Grant) is suspected of returning to his former occupation, he must ferret out the real thief in order to prove his innocence." (x) Scene of the crime: The south of France.

The guys who walked out with a whole safe of Chopard jewellery worth $1 million at the Cannes Film Festival say hello. Not that the people at Chopard cared: “We have plenty of insurance. It’s great publicity. It’s no big deal.” (x)

Back to the clothes in the movie, however.

Cary Grant wore his own clothes in this movie, as he did in most of his movies.

I think it's safe to say that not a lot of man would get away with a red/white dotted foulard tied around their neck, but, of course, CG somehow does.

And don't the loafers just look like they were made of the supplest leather from here to Milan?

(Tailor-made for Grant by Maxwell's on Dover Street in London.)

Anyway, A+ for appropriate French Riviera attire.

The general feeling of this look reminds me somewhat of the brilliant Hermès Spring/Summer 2014 men's collection.

"You are a man of obvious good taste in everything. Why did you..."

"Why did I take up stealing? To live better, to own things I couldn't afford, to acquire this good taste that you now enjoy and which I should be very reluctant to give up."

With the glacial blue débutante dress Grace Kelly wears in only her second scene, quite some time into the movie, Edith Head was referencing Dior's New Look, which kissed goodbye to the 'make do and mend' mentality of WWII and once again embraced busts and voluminous skirts. (x) It seems to me, however, that the dress with its Grecian roots bears much more of a resemblance to the designs of Madame Grès. 

In any case, the dress sets up Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly) in just one shot: here's someone made of money & not afraid to talk about it. A little bit spoiled, a little detached, but maturer than all the other minxes traipsing around the Riviera and trying to hook their claws into John Robie (Cary Grant). Mind you, despite her mother's preference of cuddling up with her jewellery in bed, Frances is initially seen as wearing no jewellery whatsoever. (A hint as to the real thief?) Only her coiled updo reveals her slender neck and straight posture.

"And so to bed, where I can cuddle up to my jewellery."

While the scarf here is a wonderful addition to the outfit, a little less tan wouldn't have hurt. 

In case you are an oil heiress: here's what to wear to the beach.

"You're here in Europe to buy a husband."

"The man I want doesn't have a price."

"That eliminates me."

[In reference to a beautiful villa they are visiting] 

"Why don't you own a place like this?"

"Palaces are for royalty. We're just common people with a bank account."

Wearing driving gloves these days is sadly about as pretentious as using a cigarette holder. (Can cigarette holders come back in style, please? Would be wonderful if my fingers didn't smell quite so bad whenever I smoke the occasional cigarette. Plus, it classes up inhaling cancer a whole lot.)

And with a heartfelt apology to Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant considered Grace Kelly his favorite female co-star. "I always went to work whistling." (x) Of course, if my day included sharing lunch with Grace Kelly overlooking Monaco, I would as well.

Part 2 to follow.

faded and worn

The clothes featured in Never Let Me Go can only be described as drab, really. But what with all the wool & corduroy it seems rather fitting for this time of year. Set on the British coast, the movie can also be described as one long Barbour ad (x), thanks to the wellies & rain coats worn. There is also the whole boarding school setting to it though & as such stiff collars abound as well. Mostly though, it's a big blob of grey, moss green, burgundy & beige.

“There are no shiny, new objects in the film.  Everything is faded and worn and hand-me-down.  This is where the idea of Wabi Sabi came in. There is always a sense of time ticking, ticking, ticking.  We were careful to put clocks and watches in nearly every scene, because the story is so much about the passage of time and the preciousness of time.  We tried to do that with sound design as well – it’s not just clocks that mark the passage of time but the wind and rhythms of nature as well.” 
Mark Romanek