The Gene Kelly Palette

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Fashion weeks are a bit like a movable feast nowadays, a sort of glittery and glamorous yet dark circus on a perpetually endless tour, so, before continuing with further posts about collections from New York or London Fashion Week, I’m going to have a break and leave you to ponder with this image of Gene Kelly in Invitation to the Dance.

Kelly stars in different roles in this movie, but this image is from the “Circus” segment of the film with Kelly as Pierrot. The costumes in this segment, in a wonderful orgy of colours (check out the masks on the legs), are by Elizabeth Haffenden and, somehow, they make me think of Clown Alley in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus.

It is indeed almost impossible while watching this image not to remember the words of Buffo the clown in Carter's novel (applicable also to some fashionista...): "...we take to clowning when all else fails. Under these impenetrable disguises of wet white, you might find, were you to look, the features of those who were once proud to be visible (...) It is given to few to shape themselves, as I have done, as we have done (...) But once the choice is made, I am condemned to be 'Buffo' in perpetuity (...) Yet am I this Buffo whom I have created? Or did I, when I made up my face to look like Buffo's create, ex nihilo, another self who is not me? And what am I without my Buffo's face? Why, nobody at all. Take away my make-up and underneath is merely not-Buffo. An absence. A vacancy."

Invitation to the Dance won in 1956 the Golden Berlin Bear and the Berlinale closes today (find some tips about a famous film on tonight at the Berlinale with wider connections with fashion in this post; in the meantime, well done to the Taviani Brothers for winning the 2012 Golden Bear for Best film with Cesare deve morire), so this seems to be the perfect image for today.

I also have another more personal reason for choosing this picture: I’m Italian and on Tuesday my home country will be celebrating Carnival, a feast about masquerading, dressing up and essentially overturning all ordinary rules. Hope you enjoy this image as much as I do.