Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology

Intrigued by Ports 1961’s silhouettes, shapes and materials

The Ports International brand was originally launched in 1961 as a luxury sportswear line. After focusing on Asia in the ‘90s, the company was re-launched on the American and Canadian markets in 2003 with the help of designer Tia Cibani who injected in it new life and inspirations.

I was recently browsing through Ports 1961’s site and discovered some stylish clothes from both the A/W 08 and S/S 09 collections.

The cut of some dresses from the current Autumn/Winter collection is a bit retro, with perfectly cut capelets and cocoon sleeved capes that make me think about chic creations from the 30s, while the Spring/Summer designs are dominated by the mimosa colour and by unusual materials such as rubber, employed to make fringed coats, or Japanese paper ikat silk and French tulle, used for elegant yet practical dresses.

What really intrigues me about this brand, though, are the shapes and materials Cibani uses for her accessories. North African-born and Vancouver-raised Cibani wisely mixes in her designs her background, the personal memories from her travels abroad and her experiences and associations with multicultural and creative communities to create strikingly unusual and unique pieces.

Cibani’s hats from Ports 1961's A/W 08 collection have a retro yet avant-garde flavour that makes me think about the hats worn by Paola (Lucia Bosé) in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Cronaca di un amore (Story Of A Love Affair, 1950). Defying gravity, the undone flamboyant felt ribbons that decorate the hats raise high up in the air, creating an illusion of movement.

The favoured materials for the headpieces of the S/S 09 collection are rawhide fabric, raffia and linen and while the outlandish shapes and silhouettes of the pieces call to mind modern architecture and traditional African masks, the tall headdresses also make you think about totem poles, a reference to the works of Canadian expressionist artist Emily Carr to whom Cibani inspired to create this collection. Carr often painted motifs from the Canadian native culture such as totem poles, forests and native villages.

These natural themes inspired Cibani the beautiful sandals with sculpted wooden wedges and unusual copper and yarn, abalone and leaf or bark necklaces from the S/S 09 collection.

In Ports 1961’s A/W 08 collection, wood elements were integrated in quite a few necklaces, but wood was also used to create linear handles for bags or sculptural swirling details that adorned refined leather clutches.

I love the innovative way Cibani employed these natural materials, but I’m totally in love with another material she often uses, rubber.
Cibani designed for Ports 1961's A/W 08 a series of bib necklaces that she decorated with what looks like penne shaped rubber pasta in various shades, or mixed rubber tubes with pompoms and wool yarns. 

For this Summer Cibani explored again the possibilities of rubber taking colourful balloons, twisting and turning them, and integrating them in a long necklace, producing a fun piece that could be worn also on a formal dress, to create perfect contrasts of colours and styles.

I don’t think I will be able to resist this necklace for a long time, but, not having $795 to spend on it, I think I will have to do my own interpretation of it. Maybe the results won’t be as nice as those achieved by Cibani, but I’m sure it will be definitely fun to make and wear such a necklace.

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Book Preview: Vanitas, Inshallah by aleXsandro Palombo

Multi-talented Italian designer aleXsandro Palombo is well known for his striking colour combinations and for the voluminous and unusual shapes of his knitwear creations. During the ‘90s Palombo worked for various maisons based in Milan, Paris and Hong Kong. In 1998 he launched his own fashion house, producing collections that never followed any particular trend, but were the result of his surreal visions, inspired by art, fashion, dreams, traditions and religion.

Last year Palombo joined forces with French L'Arsoie, a famous manufacturer of haute couture hosiery since the early ‘20s under the brand Cervin Paris, and produced a high fashion collection called "aleXsandro Palombo by Cervin Paris". The 100% made in France brand always had the reputation of producing very fine stockings characterised by a unique transparency that were favoured by many famous icons of fashion and cinema, from Marilyn Monroe and Catherine Deneuve to Dita von Teese. The Palombo collection for Cervin Paris featured his signature designs and colour combinations, but also precious embroideries and high quality materials such as cashmeres and silks.

Palombo’s new project is not a special collection or collaboration but a book. Entitled Vanitas, Inshallah - XI anni di onirico colore (Vanitas, Inshallah – 11 years of oneiric colour), the volume is going to be released in February by Hazard Edizioni as part of its imprint dedicated to great illustrators “Chic et Simpliciter”, that also features books by Ruben Toledo, Antonio Lopez and François Berthoud.

The book features around 100 illustrations by Palombo in which the designer analyses eleven years of his creations, accompanied by a symbolical figure, a melancholic yet exuberant little clown called Vanitas who, turning into a Virgil-like figure, guides him through the personal memories and dreams behind Palombo's collections. The reader joins them through this journey,  takes part in the making of the various garments and sits down in the front row to see the final catwalk, which represents the climax of this adventure into the world of fashion. During the final catwalk Vanitas presents Palombo’s new creations while the designer makes a satire of the fashion universe and of its main representatives.

In his previous collections and catwalks Palombo explored religious themes, but also the clashes between the East and the West and the Christian and Islamic worlds, with models wearing balaclavas, military symbols and keffieyhs, this is why in the book there are references to Oriana Fallaci, the Italian author and journalist who produced great pieces of journalism for decades, but focused in later years on writing against Islam.
The book also features brief pieces by people who met Palombo and had the chance of getting to know his work and personality.

There are some elements in Vanitas - the figure of the clown, the chromatically vivid illustrations and the dreamy moods - that make me think about Federico Fellini’s atmospheres and drawings. I hope Hazard Edizioni will publish further fashion illustration titles in 2009, I would really love to see volumes by David Downtown and Steven Broadway. 

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Zero gravity, movement and colour: United Nude

I recently did an interview with Clara Brito, one half of design duo Lines Lab for Dazed Digital, and I was very happy to hear that they would like to collaborate one day with United Nude. I'm totally mesmerised by this iconic brand, established a few years ago by Dutch architect Rem D. Koolhaas and designer and entrepreneur Galahad Clark.

The story behind the brand is rather romantic as it started with an architect unmotivated by modern and contemporary design and with a broken heart who wanted to create something innovative that also had a strong connection with the female universe. After meeting Clark, Koolhaas, the architect in question, launched a new shoe company, United Nude that produced shoes inspired by modern design concepts.

I have already explored the connection between architecture and shoes in a previous post, but United Nude deserves a post dedicated only to its designs as each single pair of shoes is a reinterpretation of an architectural object or represents an exploration of different materials and colours.

The first shoe created by United Nude was called "Möbius" and it was inspired by the Barcelona chair created by Bauhaus director Mies Van Der Rohe for the International Exposition in 1929. The uniqueness of this special sandal stood in the fact that it was characterised by a single strip that formed the sole, heel, foot-bed and upper of the shoe. The first "Möbius" shoe inspired different models such as an elegant leather boot with a single strip that forms a hollowed-out wedge.

An aluminium office chair by Ray and Charles Eames inspired instead the “Eamz” series, featuring pumps, lace ups, boots and Mary Janes integrating in their heels a detail of the chair foot, a feature that seems to suspend the shoe in mid-air, giving the surreal impression that the wearer is almost fluctuating in a zero gravity environment. The United Nude sites features brief but helpful animations that show how the various architectural and design features were incorporated in the shoes.  

But the brand didn't stop only at architecture, exploring the possibilities behind movement, colours and materials: for the "Fold" boot the designers took a single strip and wrapped it up as if it were a scarf around the foot, creating a fluid movement, while the “Peel” explores the motion of one leather line that wraps around the foot becoming the heel, an idea from an original concept by Dutch product designer Waldo Reijnders.

For the "Elastic" court shoe United Nude focused on the use of vividly coloured elasticised materials with linear motifs that create a simple but striking pattern, while the leather and canvas "Cup Booty" features a moulded heel integrated in the upper and the “Stealth” is an elegant, dynamic and sexy platform shoe inspired by the straight lines and styling of the Stealth F117 fighter plane.

I do like every single model created by United Nude, but I find the “Mono Jane”, a classic Mary Jane wedge fully moulded in lightweight EVA with a leather strap available in almost all the colours of the rainbow (even in a sort of mimosa yellow, one of the shades of 2009) ideal for the Spring/Summer. 

Throughout the years United Nude has become a sort of creative collective, gathering architects, fashion designers, magazine editors and photographers. Among United Nude’s next projects there are also pieces of furniture and clothing lines and I'm looking forward to seeing how the brand will incorporate its architectural signature designs in its new products. 

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My "It" bag? My aunt's bag

A few magazines and sites recently stated that the revamped Roberta di Camerino "Bigné" bag is the latest “It” bag. Though I have great respect for this historical Italian brand, I don't find this bag particularly exciting as I think its fuchsia details make it look a bit too cheap for my tastes.

The Italian brand Roberta di Camerino was established by Giuliana Coen Camerino, who first started designing red, blue and green bags embroidered with golden motifs and with the brand’s initials during her forced exile in Switzerland where she flew with her husband after the racial laws were passed.

At the end of the war, Giuliana went back to Venice and her bags became an instant hit both in Italy and abroad. Even before the birth of the "made in Italy", many international fashionistas already loved her bags. Journalist Elsa Maxwell favoured the red and green velvet trunk-shaped “Bagonghi” bag, while actress Eleonora Rossi Drago opted for a black and beige Bagonghi, a bag that also Grace Kelly loved.

Giuliana Coen Camerino's first creation was a bucket-shaped bag she had made by disassembling and reassembling an old bag. All the designs that followed were iconic and striking, made with the help of highly-skilled Venetian craftsmen: brass artisans helped her forging the studs and locks for her bags; textile experts created a type of velvet (technically called in Italian "velluto soprarizzo") woven on ancient looms and in the darkness to preserve the uniqueness and preciousness of this fabric. From accessories the designer expanded into clothes, designing at first collections characterised by bold colours and simple and geometric lines with ironic trompe-l'oeil prints of buttons, shirt cuffs and pockets.

Last summer the Sixty Group bought Roberta di Camerino. I'm not a great fan of Sixty's brands, but I know the line of bags they re-launched for Roberta di Camerino’s Spring/Summer 2009 was created respecting the principles of the historical maison (apparently, the velvets used for Roberta di Camerino’s S/S 09 evening bags are still handmade).

I developed a passion for Roberta di Camerino’s creations when I was a little girl as my aunt owned a few garments and accessories by the designer, and she also owned what I thought was an extraordinarily chic-looking bag. Well, to tell you the truth she still owns it and keeps it well guarded from me as she knows I have the bad tendency to steal clothes and accessories I like from my relatives' wardrobes. 

My aunt's bag is not as soft as a “Bigné” nor as rigid as a “Bagonghi”, but has a sort of '40s look; it's made of dark red chamois leather and features a simple but beautiful swirling black décor on its front, back and on its sides. There's no classic “R” letter outside the bag, but on a small pocket inside the bag there is written "Made in Italy by Roberta di Camerino". To open the bag you have to squeeze in the two little brass balls on the barrel-shaped clasp, a system that I simply love as it allows the bag to have a linear shape that remains virtually unbroken by its opening.

As my aunt took good care of it, the bag is in an amazing condition, but you could easily guess from the materials used to make it that this is the sort of bag that could last forever and that, no matter what you’re wearing, can really make you feel as glamorous as a true fashion icon while you’re carrying it.

If you ever happen to be in Venice and want to know more about Roberta di Camerino, don’t forget to visit the designer’s atelier located in Palazzo Loredan Grifalconi, I’m sure you’ll find there many accessories that will inspire you and make you fall in love with this historical fashion house.   

 

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Optimism, colours and creativity: TudiCofusi

Marcia Higuchi is 29 years old. A graduate of the Visual Arts course at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), she nowadays works as art director for an events agency in São Paulo; Keila Akemi, 30, also graduated in Visual Arts but from São Judas University, and now works as art director in one of São Paulo’s Hot Shops; Alexandra Fernandes, 28, is a SENAC postgraduate student who graduated in Fashion Business at the Universidade Anhembi Morumbi and works as designer for a young fashion brand in São Paulo, while her sister Stella, 30, who also graduated in Visual Arts at UNESP, is a web art director and a partner of São Paulo’s Design Studio. Prompted by their love for art and fashion, the four girls started around three years ago TudiCofusi, a Brazilian brand which focuses on creative freedom.

Until their latest collection, graphic and fashion designer, art director, stylist, DJ (resident at Bar Secreto, a popular São Paulo club where Madonna was recently invited) and musician Ademar Ferrera was also part of TudiCofusi’s creative team. Ferrera is well-known in the Brazilian fashion scene for his work with important companies such as Zoomp and Alexandre Herchcovitch and he fostered TudiCofusi from its early days. His styling is characterised by a mighty bold and vivid aesthetic (check out the playful paper accessories, such as the bags and headdresses, he came up with for TudiCofusi) that calls to mind crazy and daring 80s atmospheres. Ferrera is at present working on developing a new brand, which will be launched in March, together with a team of artists, photographers, movie makers and other famous Brazilian fashion designers.

Can’t wait to see what Ferrera’s got up his sleeve, in the meantime, you can read my interview with the TudiCofusi girls on Dazed Digital.

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Something for the weekend: The London Vintage Fashion, Textiles & Accessories Fair

Christmas has gone and has left you with the wrong presents, while the after-Christmas sales weren’t really as good as you expected? Don’t worry, you have almost the whole week to organise yourself and make sure you don’t miss the London Vintage Fashion, Textiles & Accessories Fair, taking place on Sunday 11th January at Hammersmith Town Hall.

The event is the brainchild of antique dealer Paola Francia-Gardiner and Alberto Ricca, who under the name P & A Antiques have been organising throughout the last few years many exciting events.

During the late 70s, Paola bought and sold vintage fashion, building a great network of dealers and contacts. When in the mid-to-late 90s the sales of the vintage fashion market dramatically dropped due to changes in trends and dealers were left with unwanted stock, Paola decided to launch an innovative fair that offered visitors not only vintage clothes, but also accessories and clothes. The event was very successful and it was replicated throughout the years. Indeed P& A Antiques organised during the last nine years around 12 vintage fashion fairs a year, as well as other fairs dedicated to antique textiles, tribal art, decorative antiques and even a contemporary designers’ fair. Paola's brilliant intuition got her the merit of having coined the term “vintage fashion”.

The London Vintage Fashion, Textiles & Accessories Fair  takes place every four to five weeks and it’s a definitive source of inspiration and one-off bargains as it features hundreds of vintage fashion dealers from the UK and abroad selling under the same roof items - from clothes to shoes, from hats to costume jewellery, textiles and trimmings - spanning from the 1800s to 1980.

Prices are obviously more competitive than in shops and at auctions and the atmosphere is relaxed and informal, so the fair definitely offers the chance to make a bargain for everybody and to meet like-minded fashion lovers, but also fashion and costume designers or fashion students. The fair is also open to non-dealers who are usually able to sell vintage clothes and accessories they may have found in their attic at a special designated stand.     

Are you looking for that very special present you didn’t get at Christmas or haunting for a bargain? Are you a vintage addict desperately searching for that perfect item to create your unique look or are you simply too skint to buy anything but still want to take a few notes on fashion history? Well, try not to miss this week’s vintage fashion fair at Hammersmith, chances are you’ll find there what you’re looking for. 

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Things to look forward to in 2009: the next issue of DV Man International

In the last few weeks there’s been a bit of a debate about what will happen with American Vogue in 2009 with rumours spreading about Condé Nast replacing Anna Wintour with French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld. I’m curious to see how the Vogue saga will end, though I think it’s unlikely we will see the scary but universally knowledgeable Wintour going, and while I’m eagerly waiting to see the arrival of brand new fashion magazines in 2009 such as the British biannual Love, published by Condé Nast and with Katie Grand as Editor-in-Chief, I can’t wait to see the Spring 2009 issue of DV Man International.

Published by Bonnier Tidskrifter, this is the English version of Swedish magazine DV Man. The publication covers both the Swedish and international fashion scenes, and also features articles on beauty and accessories. What makes it different from other men’s magazines is the lack of laddish culture, so don't expect to find in its pages photographs of semi-naked women and articles on sport cars. The focus is indeed on intelligent, well-written and researched fashion features concentrating on timeless design and quality clothes and accessories.

The latest issue I have – Winter 2008 – includes very interesting features on Swedish shirt manufacturers Stenströms and Eton and on Nicolaj d’Étoiles’s duo Anders and Tobias Björkstedt, an interview with Brad Pitt and an extensive reportage about six of the best contemporary Japanese designers – Arashi Yanagawa, Dai Fujiwara, Kiminori Morishita, Kazuyuki Kumagai, Mihara Yasuhiro and Rynshu Hashimoto. I found the “Icons of Style” section - four pages in which the style of a particular icon is explored through pictures of clothes and accessories that may help achieving that specific style - interesting with its rather unusual choice of icons that includes Yves Saint Laurent, Winston Churchill and Ingemar Stenmark.

The Winter 2008 issue also features an extensive spread on the season’s essential trends, from velvet trousers to tartan suits, leather bags and chunky jewels. The emphasis in DV Man International seems to be on high quality products (I swear this is one of the few international men’s magazines I have ever seen including in one of its trend features an accessory by Corneliani – one of the most stylish Italian brands), yet there are also reviews of more casual clothes, such as trousers and sweaters or winter jackets in technological materials. The best fashion photo shoot of the latest DV Man International issue is the one featuring Stockholm's next generation of hip hop singers and musicians presenting a new bling-free style.

I think the words "stylish" and "cool" summarise rather well the spirit of DV Man International and, while I think there are a few interesting avant-garde men’s magazines out there, there isn’t anything specifically dedicated to modern mature men that also offers a fresh approach to fashion. A final warning: this magazine is not only for men, but also for all those women who want to keep up to date with what’s going on in the world of menswear or who are looking for intriguing ideas to achieve a perfect androgynous style.  

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Brave and bold new world: KTZ

Sasko Besovski, aka Sasha B, must have thought fashion was a boring old business otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to revolutionise it with his daring designs. But then being revolutionary has always been in his DNA. Originally from Macedonia, Besovski flew his country while he was still studying construction engineering and ran away to the West where he became a DJ and fashion designer.

A friend of designer Marjan Pejoski, he launched a whole new fashion philosophy and lifestyle: Besovski is indeed the co-founder of fashion and music retailer Kokon To Zai, a store that has helped taking new and cutting edge designers to London and Paris, and the mind behind the crazy creations of the store’s house label KTZ.

While the Kokon To Zai shops are safe havens for artists and helped launching new and exciting designers such as Bernhard Willhelm, Raf Simons and Cassette Playa, the label creates must-have designs for people who are young or young at heart and in search of something different and more striking than what’s usually on offer on the market.

Joyful, subversive, dynamic, versatile and comfortable are the keywords to understand KTZ’s unisex collections, all characterised by bold colours, experimental prints and tribal-techno graphics. The KTZ collections usually feature brightly coloured leggings, oversized jumpers and hoodies, drop-crotch pants and dresses with experimental silhouettes. The modern aesthetic of KTZ’s designs ensures the wearer to stand out in the crowd and express their individual style.

Take the Autumn/Winter 2008-09 “The World to Come” collection with its sculpted knits, jersey separates and sophisticated yet practical sequinned dresses or the Spring/Summer 2009 collection with its adventurous robotic and erotic designs, with shiny and glossy fabrics in vivid nuances and appliquéd gems that form surreal faces and geometrical patterns on mini-dresses, sweats, leggings and hoodies. Just by looking at this collection - a mix of ready-to-wear, urban wear and modern art - it becomes easy to understand why the brand has become in just a few years extremely successfully and well-known not only in Europe but also in the rest of the world.  

KTZ’s designs come with a warning though: these pieces call up to re-examine yourself and question your wardrobe and they are a threshold to a whole brand new and exciting world made of fashion, art and music. Are you brave enough to explore it?

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Focus on fashionable art: Graham Little

In the last few weeks I have neglected exploring the connection between art and fashion. Though I mentioned in previous posts fashion or photographic exhibitions I haven’t given a lot of space to art. I’ll try to make up for things today with a brief post on Graham Little.

Born in Scotland, Little studied at Dundee's Duncan of Jordanstone College before getting his MA from London’s Goldsmiths College in 1997. Since then he has taken part in various solo and group exhibitions internationally with his work that filters the world of art through fashion.

I first became aware of Little's work when he did a solo exhibition at London’s Alison Jacques Gallery that featured drawings inspired by images from 1980s fashion magazine ads. I can’t draw, so seeing the details Little featured in his coloured pencil and gouache portraits, made me incredibly jealous as the artist managed to perfectly recreate the glamorous clothes and accessories of the women he portrayed in different environments, often surrounded by everyday objects or posing in stylish backgrounds.

It was in that occasion that I discovered Little had done more drawings inspired by models in 2003 that featured young women on roller skates and skateboards precariously balanced on plinths as if they were sculptures and with a light that recalled Caravaggio’s paintings. I’m not sure of the technique Little uses, but he seems to be able to draw textile patterns in 3D.

His models often look like ghosts that, coming out of fashion magazines, have entered a painting: Little seems to deconstruct the fashion environment they belong to and to give the models the chance to live in a brand new arty world. By displacing the models from the ads or from the pages of a fashion magazine and transporting them into a more conventional art world, Little tries to challenge the preconceptions of the viewers.

Last month the Alison Jacques Gallery organised a new exhibition of Little’s works, among them there was his sculpture “Facts are Stupid Things (Fruit Vs Fashion)”, a mixed media collage of cube-like components decorated with still-life motifs and bright colliding geometric patterns with what looked like a runway protruding from it. The exhibition also featured a triptych of drawings on paper representing his pregnant wife. The portraits reminded me a bit of his early drawings of models, as he used again Caravaggio’s light in them, while the poses in which he portrayed his wife seemed to be taken from glamorous fashion magazines.

I would love to see a spread in a fashion magazine featuring Graham Little's drawings (maybe with models wearing garments from the Spring/Summer '09 collections) or a photo shoot that uses his collage-like sculptures as props. I hope this will really happen in 2009 as I'm sure Little's work would fit nicely in an avant-garde fashion mag.    

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2009: the year of the hat

It’s a status symbol, you can find it in many different shapes, colours and materials and it can have a practical and protective function. What is it? The hat. If you happen to have among your family photographs pictures of your relatives from the past, you will easily realise that there was a time when hats ruled. Women looked more mysterious in their feathered or veiled hats; men looked more charming, and I’m sure everyone felt more confident as the right hat can really make you feel self-assured.

Unfortunately, though, there have been bad times for hats caused by trends that tried to sweep away this vital accessory, often considered frivolous and unnecessary. For years the figure of the milliner was in danger of extinction, not only because hats went out of fashion, but also because industrialised manufacturing of hats replaced the milliner’s craftsmanship, simplifying the design of this accessory, yet at the same time introducing new and more advanced techniques in hat making.

But trends at last year’s Spring/Summer 09 fashion weeks proved that 2009 is going to be the year of the hat, also thanks to the exhibition “Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones” at London's Victoria & Albert Museum. I have already mentioned the exhibition and briefly explored Jones’ art in connection with Italian designer Simonetta’s in a previous post, but I can assure you I will dedicate in future more space on this blog to the power of the hat throughout this year.

In the meantime, yesterday, to celebrate the arrival of the new year, my birthday (yes, I was born on 1st January) and the opening of the "year of the hat", I stole from my mum's closet a hat from Anna Rizzo’s latest collection and re-read the book L’arte di fare i cappelli by Anna Maria Nicolini. The Anna Rizzo factory has been producing hats since 1881. The factory is based in Foggia, but the showroom is in Signa, near Florence, a town famous for its straw hats and for its straw museum.

The Anna Rizzo hat I stole from my mum is the sort of hat that can help you achieving a perfect Anna Piaggi style. It's rather tall and its short but asymmetrical brim reminds me of some of Simonetta’s creations. The hat is made of a black PVC -like material with a narrow and rigid white ribbon around the brim.

Anna Maria Nicolini’s book is an amazing manual: it’s a slim volume in Italian and English and it’s the first proper manual ever published in Italy about hat making. Nicolini is a milliner who decided to pass on her knowledge to younger generations gathering in book format her secrets and suggestions. She does it in an unpretentious way, listing all the milliner’s tools, techniques and procedures and adding a vital and very useful glossary as appendix to the book. 

The author also explains how to make different kinds of hats, such as a Borsalino, a small velvet hat decorated with feathers, a beaded bonnet with a netting motif and crystal fringes, a cloth beret, a broad-brimmed straw hat and a floral headdress.              

Is your ideal hat a cloche, a beret, a Borsalino, a pillbox, a broad-brimmed hat or a small evening hat? Do you prefer felt, wool, satin, velvet, brocade or moiré, a simple hat or a heavily embroidered and decorated one? You don't know yet? Well, don't panic: you have a whole year to find out what kind of hat suits you. What I can assure you is that, as soon as the right hat appears on your head, almost by magic, a beautiful smile will appear on your lips.

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