The 66th edition of the Venice Film Festival is drawing near, the event is indeed starting on 2nd September 2009.
The big news about this year's programme is that it will include also Tom Ford's first movie, A Single Man.
Taken from the eponymous Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel and starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode, the film plot revolves around a gay professor who tries to go on with his life and his usual routine after the death of his partner.
The film will be launched in the section of the festival dedicated to new American directors that also features Steven Soderbergh’s The informant! and Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. The movie has got an obvious connection with fashion since Ford is a designer and on the screen Firth wears outfits from Tom Ford menswear line while many costumes were designed by Arianne Phillips (nominated to the Oscars for the costumes in Walk the Line), so it's only natural that the press filed A Single Man in the cinema-meets-fashion category that saw films such as Veruschka, The Devil Wears Prada and Valentino: the Last Emperor being premiered at previous editions of the Venice Film Festival.
While waiting to see if the fashion meets cinema connection works in A Single Man, I dug out this “vintage” Elizabeth Arden advert that was rather popular in the summer of 1967 on Italian magazines. The title, “Venetian Glow/Venetian Glory”, is a reference to the "Venetian Look", a make-up line that comprised a lipstick (Venetian Coral), eye shadow (Silver Brown), blush (Frosted Evening) and powder foundation (Venetian Glow).
Despite the name of the line called to mind the light face cream (Venetian Cream Amoretta) Arden launched after 1912, the make-up range was actually inspired by Venetian opulent designs, gilded Byzantine mosaics and Venetian wealth and power.
The ad, featuring beautiful Veruschka, promised the new make-up range - the same used by Ursula Andress, Julie Christie and many other film stars and celebrities - would have helped women to get that golden/bronzed look the Venetian ladies who inspired Vittorio Carpaccio's paintings used to get after sunbathing for a few days during summer.
Maybe Arden's glamorous "Venetian Look" would be the perfect make-up choice for the few privileged ones who will be able to attend Tom Ford's premiere.
For the meantime, though, let's just hope there will be enough substance and not just a healthy dose of bland glamour in A Single Man.
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