People involved in the creative industries are often struck by rather bizarre or controversially demented ideas.
For example, Jean-Louis Sherrer’s fashion house included Nazi insignia in its 1995 couture collection and there were often gangster connections in Dolce & Gabbana’s collections that seemed to be unfortunately timed with Mafia murders.
History also left us with enough controversial works of art or films on which we could maybe write not just one essay, but entire books.
Yet the history of controversy wouldn’t be complete without a list of songwriters and musicians who dedicated tracks or music compositions to dubious characters.
Undoubtedly Madonna contributed in turning Evita Peron into a style icon and a fashionable saint.
From an artist, director, fashion designer, musician and writer’s point of view the bad character is always more fascinating than the good one.
I completely agree about this: telling the story of a psychopath is probably more intriguing than recounting the life of a saint, especially from a psychological perspective. Yet it can be difficult to tell the story of a controversial historical figure.
What made me ponder about this topic is the latest music release by David Byrne featuring Fatboy Slim, a collaborative double CD inspired by Imelda Marcos and featuring 22 tracks recorded together with artists such as Florence Welch, Martha Wainwright, Cyndi Lauper, Sia, Santigold, Tori Amos and Róisín Murphy.
The release is also available in a special edition that also features a DVD with archival footage and a booklet.
The album, entitled "Here Lies Love", the epitaph Imelda Marcos would like to see engraved on her gravestone one day, is supposed to be a conceptual project (amazing what you can do nowadays under the "conceptual" label...) about the life of ex-Philippine first lady and her servant Estrella Cumpas.
Byrne first started working on it five years ago with a musical in mind and took the project first to Australia in 2006 and then to New York in 2007.
The main idea behind this project, focusing on Imelda's early life, came to Byrne after seeing a TV documentary in 2003.
The widow of former President Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Remedios Visitacion Trinidad Romuáldez, also known as the “Steel Butterfly”, became more famous as a young woman for her beauty and passion for singing.
A beauty pageant winner, she married in 1953 Ferdinand E. Marcos who became in the mid-Sixties the 10th President of the Philippines.
In the early 70s Marcos declared martial law to remain in power and abolished the Philippines' 1935 constitution. Marcos's regime was toppled by the four-day People Power Revolution in 1986.
The twenty-one years of regime gave the entire world the chance to get to know better Imelda. A kitsch dream in pastel colours, Imelda had a penchant for dresses with sharp blade-like puffed up sleeves (think Snow White-meets-The Jetsons) and led and extremely glamorous life until she was forced to flee the Philippines with her husband.
Imelda left behind a fashionable treasure comprising hundreds or furs, handbags, dresses and, allegedly, 3,000 shoes (including footwear by Salvatore Ferragamo, Christian Dior and many other popular designers - later exhibited in a museum; the final shoe count apparently amounted to slightly over 1,000 pairs).
But while Imelda's passion became legendary and shoe addicts all over the world started calling themselves after her, for many others it became impossible to reconcile her luxurious extravagances with people's poverty in the Philippines.
The shoes – the detail that made Imelda famous all over the world – are not mentioned in Byrne's project, mainly because the album sort of stops before 1986.
In fact while "Here Lies Love" also features political references to martial law (the track "Order 1081"), the music seem to be more focused on rediscovering Imelda's early years, her passion for music and her past as, ahem, Studio 54 disco queen.
It's undeniable that the album contains from a musical point of view some interesting ad catchy bits and pieces that mix pop, disco, folk and lounge inspirations (thank you Norman Cook, we all wish we had your record collections to sample and play round with...), but I'm struggling to find the most radical aspects behind it.
A social climber and egomaniac with an extravagant lifestyle, a vast collection of jewels and art works and a fetishism for shoes, Imelda committed many crimes against fashion, but even more against human rights.
So I guess for the time being, as bizarre and controversial as Byrne's project may sound, I think I'll stick to Big Audio Dynamite's '2000 Shoes'. Hopefully, I won't live long enough to see Mussolini's speeches and Berlusconi's crooner songs remixed, remastered and repackaged.
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Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
ciao Anna, sono di Pescara. Ho letto ora su Dazed che sei nata qui. La mia società è proprietaria di un network di blog dedicati al fashion e ogni tanto mi capita di leggerti. :-)
Posted by: Maurizio Iorio | April 15, 2010 at 01:36 AM