The menswear shows have kicked off in Milan and until the beginning of March fashion weeks will unravel – a movable feast of collections, celebrities and Internet breaking designs. Obviously we will also start seeing more Instagram posts or features about inspirations for collections and designers acknowledging their muses for the next season.
Who knows, maybe one day somebody will also mention Aimée Crocker (1864-1941) as their inspiration for a fashion collection. This year marks the 160th anniversary of her birth, making her ripe for rediscovery.
The heiress of a railroad fortune, Aimée was an unstoppable eccentric known for her escapades in the Far East, extravagant soirées, multiple marriages, and a penchant for tattoos and, well, snakes.
Born Amy Isabella Crocker in Sacramento, California, to the immensely wealthy Edwin and Margaret Crocker (founders of the Crocker Art Museum, which is still going), Aimée travelled a great deal in her life, marrying five times (or, as she quipped, twelve times if we consider her seven Oriental unions, unrecognized under Occidental laws). Her life was punctuated by peculiar adventures and the story goes that even King Kalākaua, the last monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, fell in love with her, inviting her to tour Hawaii and bestowing upon her an island and the title Princess Palaikalani – Bliss of Heaven.
After six years in the Far East (Crocker wrote about her Far East adventures in a book of short stories published in 1910, "Moon Madness and Other Fantasies"), Aimée reappeared in San Francisco and New York, adorning herself with tattoos and serpents, shocking the conservative upper crust. Her opulent parties, such as a Robinson Crusoe-themed soirée in Parisian treetops in 1905 or a country circus party at the Hippodrome, then the largest theater in New York (here she appeared as a dairy maid and arrived on the back of an elephant…) left indelible marks on societal norms.
Aimée also threw a party for the "Maharaja of Amber," concealing that the maharaja was her pet boa constrictor Kaa, which she found exotic and erotic (as you may guess, the animal ended up terrifying her guests…). Aimée also had a passion for tattoos and throughout the years she acquired a tattoo of a snake and of a butterfly among the others.
Invited to portray herself on Broadway in Rennold Wolf's vaudeville piece "Hell", and inspiring characters in various plays (modern society comedy "The Lassoo," by Victor Mapes, and George M. Cohan's comedy "Broadway Jones," and musical "Billie"), Aimée's romantic relationships (with actors, painters, literary figures, princes and opera singers among the others) included a decade-long affair with occultist Aleister Crowley, vividly documented in his journals.
Named "The Queen of Bohemia" (1921) and "The Most Fascinating Woman of Her Age" (1937) by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Aimée published in 1936 her autobiography, "And I'd Do It Again". The book narrates extraordinary adventures, from evading headhunters in Borneo to surviving poisoning in Hong Kong, but there is also a knife-throwing attack in Shanghai, and sensual encounters with a boa constrictor and an orgasm induced by the rapturous music produced by a peculiar violin, an adventure that she lived in a mysterious establishment that she calls "the House of the Ivory Panels." ("I was amazed to see the luxury inside, for the outside of this house, though clean and decent, would never lead one to suspect the richness that it concealed. The walls were paneled. The paneling was composed of strips of carved ivory, worked into lace-like ornamentation, and bound, every panel, in polished teakwood, likewise carved to frame the beauties of the ivory.")
Intriguing and colorful, the book was meant for publication by Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press but slipped through his fingers. Yet maybe, the tales of bizarre escapades, flirtations, and dangerous encounters in the volume make Aimée's life suited not just for a mere fashion collection, but for a film. For today, just grab a copy of the biography and enjoy immersing yourself in the life of this daring nonconformist muse.
Rispondi