Old images, new trends

We all know that trends continuously come and go and what was fashionable many years ago often becomes really cutting edge and therefore covetable today.

This is what I’d like to concentrate on in this post since, while leafing through some books a few days ago, I found three old images that make me think about current trends/collections.

The first one was taken by Mariano Fortuny in 1913 and portrays painter Giovanni Boldini with Marchesa Casati at Ca' Venier dei Leoni.

In the photograph the ever-trendy Marchesa is wearing an extravagantly beaded costume influenced by the Oriental fashion.

Rows of pearls criss-cross the costume that features elaborate embroideries with encrusted gems and beads.

Though the costume as a whole calls to mind elaborate beaded looks such as the nude coloured raw silk mini-dress encrusted with multi-coloured gems and vintage looking rhinestones from Etro’s S/S 09 collection, the trousers that open up around the knees make me think about a trend we recently saw during London Fashion Week at Meadham-Kirchhoff's catwalk show.

Edward Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff combined all the right ingredients in their A/W 09 collection inspired by luxury and desire and with a few hints to their cinematic passion for noir films, coming up with a perfectly balanced mix.

There is opulence and a touch of kitsch in their trousers covered in silver and gold embroidered appliqués and paired with Manolo Blahnik’s bead-encrusted boots, but it's the almost anatomical detail in the trousers that, peeling back at the knees or around the shins, reveal brightly coloured fabrics that makes me think about the Marchesa Casati look.

The second photograph portrays English actress Ellen Terry in William Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. Terry is wrapped up in a dress complete with veil that makes her look a bit like a classical statue that emerges from a block of marble, exactly the same effect that we saw at Viktor & Rolf's A/W 09 catwalk show. Modern versions of Terry’s dress are the draped nude jersey dresses or black tulle tunics from Sophia Kokosalaki’s AW 09 collection.

The third one is a picture of Danish silent film actress Asta Nielsen in Urban Gad's Zapatas Bande (Zapata's Gang, 1914).

Asta Nielsen (1881-1972) featured in over 70 films between 1910 and 1932.

Her dark eyes and boyish figure allowed her to interpret many different roles: she starred as an English female liberationist who places a bomb in the Parliament in Die Suffragette and even interpreted the role of Hamlet playing a woman disguised as a man.

In Zapatas Bande (1913) – the story of a troupe of actors shooting a drama about gypsies in Italy who end up being taken for real bandits – Asta wears a pair of ripped trousers matched with boots.

It’s a look that makes me think about a crossover between Prada’s A/W 09 designs, in particular the thigh-high boots paired with shorts, Pam Hogg's highway women robbers and Vivienne Westwood’s creations for her A/W 09 collection, in particular those large pieces of fabrics worn as cloaks, her asymmetrical dresses and rolled down socks.

Asta Nielsen was a talented and charismatic actress, in many ways she was an icon of style, and, to pay homage to her, I'm going to leave you with this extract taken from Zapatas Bande so that you can see her in action.