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

Vintage Space Helmets to Project Ourselves into the Future

This has been a difficult and confusing year for the entire world: 2020 was indeed marked by Coronavirus, a global pandemic that has affected 218 countries and has killed more than one million people (1,816,125 to be exact, at the time of writing this post).  

A few hours separate us from a brand new year that we all hope will be better and healthier for everybody and will reunite those of us who have been separated by Covid-19. 

Most of us have been wearing face masks since March, but ,for today, let's put an imaginary helmet on our head that may protect our minds from negative thoughts. Some ideas? Well, here's a vintage selection of headdresses by the late Pierre Cardin.

You can choose between a Space Age helmet comprising a PVC visor, a hat inspired by a rocket and a sculptural design combining futuristic forms with the classic shape of ancient helmets (Cardin had introduced molded space helmets in the late '50s, even though they became more popular in the '60s).

Cardin designed these pieces thinking they would have been the perfect accessories to travel into outer space, but we can imagine wearing them to project ourselves into the future and skyrocket into the new year in an energetic and dynamic way.  

Fashion Obituary: Pierre Cardin, Fashion Designer of the Space Age (1922-2020)

The Fine Arts Academy announced yesterday that fashion designer Pierre Cardin, one of its members since the early '90s, had died at 98.  

Together with André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne, Pierre Cardin was considered in the '60s at the forefront of Space Age fashion.

Born in 1922 in San Biagio di Callalta, near Venice, Pietro Cardin moved to France when his family fled from Fascism. During World War II he served in the Red Cross. He then moved to Paris, worked at Paquin and Schiaparelli's maisons and joined Dior's in 1947. Excelling in mathematics and geometry, Cardin soon showed a special skill for constructing impeccable dresses. 

Three years later he founded his own fashion house and rose to fame after launching in 1953 his first collection. The latter featured architectural pieces such a pleated coat that sold very well in the United States and helped him getting noticed by fashion editors such as Carmel Snow and Diana Vreeland.

His fame quickly spread all over the world: in 1957 he went to Japan with news photographer Yoshi Takata and spent a month teaching three-dimensional cutting at Bunka Fashion College (his class included Hanae Mori and Kenzo Takada).

In 1958 he launched a ready-to-wear collection at Parisian department store Printemps, a first step towards what in our times has been called "fashion democratisation" that shocked Paris' fashion elite at the time.

In the following years he introduced experimental shapes and was very influenced by Space Age designs and technology. His 1964 "Cosmocorps" collection included for example designs made with vinyl and metallic fabrics, and he started creating dresses and body suits that seemed to echo Star Trek's style.

His fashion pieces (among them also unisex designs), often modelled by his muse Hiroko Matsumoto, fascinated many stars and iconic celebrities, among them Brigitte Bardot, Lauren Bacall, Alain Delon, Jacqueline Kennedy and Raquel Welch.

The designer also invented in 1968 a synthetic fabric dubbed "Cardine" made by molding a bonded, uncrushable Dynel fiber into three-dimensional patterns.

His passions remained the space and the future: in 1969, Cardin took an inspirational trip to NASA, where he became the only civilian in history to wear an original space suit worn by an astronaut.

During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Cardin continued making clothes often inspired by architectural details or by the design of computers. In 1973 he took part in the so-called  "Battle of Versailles", a fashion show that turned into a symbolic duel between American and French designers. 

He also organised ground-breaking fashion shows at the Great Wall of China (1979; this show featured 300 looks) and in Moscow's Red Square (1991; attended by over 200,000 people).

In the meantime, his empire kept on growing: in the late 1960s, Cardin began licensing his own name and a monster-like expansion quickly followed with worldwide licenses for consumer products ranging from furniture to fragrances, from pens and bags to bed sheets, alarm clocks and even beach umbrellas.

Critics accused him of being a sell-out, but this business operation was secretly admired by more commercial fashion houses that struggled to replicate his success.

Licensing meant money from royalties and with more than 850 licenses, Cardin bought the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs in Paris (now Espace Cardin) and Bistro Maxim's; the extraordinary Palais Bulles, designed by architect Antti Lovag for industrialist Pierre Bernard, and purchased unfinished by Cardin (who called it an "architectural folly"), and a castle in Lacoste, France. 

In 2011 it was announced that Cardin wanted to sell the company, but, being quoted at €1 billion and with the designer stating he would have remained at its helm as Creative Director, no powerful fashion groups dared buying it. 

Cardin created throughout the decades many iconic designs, from the "target dress" from his 1960s "Cosmocorps" collection to kinetic dresses, illuminated clothes, lenticular printed designs, dresses with plastic hoops that designed flying saucer-like geometries at the waist, elbows, wrists and knees, bubble dresses and capes tracing spherical shapes around the body of the wearer, and 3-D molded tunics; from his investigations into unisex garment design and trendsetting menswear, to the two-piece day suit comprising a pencil skirt and jacket in red wool twill purchased by Jacqueline Kennedy in 1957 that became the look of choice for the Kennedys' first state visit in May 1961 to Canada, a  stylish and formal suit that complemented the uniforms of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The designer also created garments for singers and bands like The Beatles and Dionne Warwick (who wears a Pierre Cardin gown with jet crystals on the cover of her 1964 album "Make Way for Dionne Warwick"), and film and theater costumes. He started when he first helped Jean Cocteau with the costumes for the 1946 film "Beauty and the Beast" and then continued with the costumes for some episodes of "The Avengers" series, for Mia Farrow in "A Dandy in Aspic" (1968) and for Jeanne Moreau. 

The French actress met Cardin in the '60s and they had a relationship that lasted around 5 years: she often donned some of his elegant looks in films such as "Eva" and "The Yellow Rolls-Royce". Cardin was so famous in the '60s that he got a mention even in cartoons: in an episode of "The Jetsons" from 1963, one of the characters wears a Space Age evening gown by "Pierre Martian".

Throughout his career Cardin designed, cut, sew and finished his own clothing, but he also focused on designing furniture, lighting, and automobile interiors.

Quite often there were connections and correspondences between his dresses and jackets and his furniture pieces, while his upholstery, taillights and strip detailing for cars such as the 1972 Javelin, and the Atlantic Aviation's Westwind 1124, inspired different fashion designers including Miuccia Prada in Miu Miu's Resort 18 collection.

Cardin also remains the most copied, but rarely acknowledged, designer in the history of fashion: if you know Cardin's history, you will indeed spot connections between his designs and a wide range of contemporary pieces and collections by Tom Ford, Thomas Tait, Marc Jacobs, Céline, Comme des Garçons, Alexander McQueen, Miuccia Prada and JW Anderson, who has often moved from Cardin's beloved circle to build the patterns for his designs.

More recently there were Cardin's echoes in Maria Grazia Chiuri's designs for Dior's Haute Couture S/S 18 collection, and in Jean-Paul Gaultier's Haute Couture S/S 18 collection (as a young man, Gaultier worked for him as a studio assistant) with one of Gaultier's futuristic designs on the runway dubbed "Cardinella".

Last year the Brooklyn Museum organised an exhibition about him, "Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion". The first New York retrospective dedicated to the designer in 40 years, the event featured 170 objects that date from the 1950s to the present, while the documentary "House of Cardin" directed by P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes was premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2019 (in Venice there is still a Pierre Cardin Creative Space where it is possible to rediscover his designs).

There are questions, doubts and dilemmas about the future of his brand and of his licences: a man who owned it all, even though nobody owned him, Cardin leaves his fortune to his nephew Rodrigo Basilicati (Cardin didn't have any kids and his long-term business partner and life partner, French fashion designer Andre Oliver, died in 1993). So it will be interesting to see what will happen to the house that Pierre Cardin, visionary designer of the Space Age and branding pioneer, built. 

Uncanny Fashion Objects: Schiaparelli S/S 21 Vs World War I Facial Prosthetics

Due to Covid-19 face masks have been the unexpected star accessory this year. There have been multiple features on all sorts of publications about how to make them, how to wear them and which materials to choose.

Some fashion designers and textile companies also started to manufacture face masks, and in some cases the results were surprising; in others they were rather questionable.

Daniel Roseberry accompanied his S/S 21 collection for Schiaparelli - that featured among the other designs a button-down shirt with Surrealist hand-painted breasts on the front and a clever broderie anglaise dress with faces - with extravagant gold jewelry pieces. 

There were chunky zodiac sign necklaces, earrings shaped like noses, eyeglasses with enamel blue eyes, fingertip talons and nipple buttons. Now, Surrealist jewels of this kind are clearly nods to Salvador Dalí's iconic designs, but among the other pieces there were also gilt masks, one of them molded on model Maggie Maurer's lower face.

These face masks seemed a bit disturbing and, the more you looked at them, the more you wondered if they were actually devices to enforce silence upon the wearer or if the model in the shoot had just been kissed by King Midas.

Gold masks maybe prompt many of us to think about funeral trousseaus found in tombs - think about Egyptian funerary masks used to cover the face of a mummy or at the mask of Agamemnon discovered at the ancient Greek site of Mycenae (View this photo). 

Yet in the case of Roseberry's mask for Schiaparelli, the face coverings didn't seem to be linked with funerary masks, but had a disquieting connection. Indeed, the more you look at the designs, the more you think about prosthetic technology from the First World War.

Prosthetic technology took a considerable step forward during and after the First World War: injured and disfigured soldiers became a familiar sight at the time and sculptors such as English Captain Francis Derwent Wood and American sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd worked directly with surgeons, creating restorative face masks for WWI soldiers.

Facial injuries were disheartening as soldiers had to deal with the physical loss and the psychological stress. Derwent Wood and Ladd's masks, modelled from photographs taken before the injury and painted in oils to resemble the former features of the patient, were attached to a patient's face from the eyeglasses or secured behind the ears (the same system used for Schiaparelli's mask).

Elsa Schiaparelli wanted to be surreal, ironic and fun with her designs, while these face coverings rather than looking extravagantly original, just seem to be a bit puzzling.

The gold pieces designed by Roseberry for Schiaparelli also call to mind another fashion connection - Claude Lalanne's gold sculptures for Yves Saint Laurent created for his Haute Couture A/W 1969 collection. Even though in that case Lalanne created mainly bustiers and bodices, the bright gold material and the idea of an anatomically inspired piece to wear on the body link those designs to these ones.

Who knows, maybe Lalanne's designs for Saint Laurent were also behind Roseberry's custom Schiaparelli Christmas gown in a green palette inspired by the Grinch character that he designed for Kim Kardashian.

The design featured a moulded leather superheroine-like six-pack bodice and a green silk velvet skirt with thigh-high slit. The design was also reminiscent of moulded corsets and of a 1979 dress by Mugler that featured a gladiator-style green leather breast-plate with matching chiffon skirts (Kardashian seems to have a thing for Schiap... remember the case of her perfum bottle?).

Who knows, maybe Roseberry has been taking inspiration from anatomy rather than surrealism, but you wish his researches had led him to something less disturbingly puzzling and more ironic and original.   

End of the Year Hor(r)o(r)scope: Thirteen Women (1932) by George Archainbaud

At some point around the end of December you always stumble upon magazines or sites with long features about horoscopes for the new year.

As 2020 was a particularly difficult year because of Coronavirus, it is only natural for most of us to hope, dream and wish that the new year will bring us some unexpected and well-deserved joys.

But, if you distrust horoscopes or if you want to add some dark nuances to the horoscope theme and also watch a fashion film, check out the 1932 revenge movie "Thirteen Women" by George Archainbaud with costumes by Josette de Lima.

The film, based on the best-selling eponymous novel by Tiffany Thayer, adapted for the screen by Bartlett Cormack and Samuel Ornitz, and produced by David O. Selznick for R. K. O. Radio Pictures, could be defined as a psychological thriller.

The plot revolves around a group of women, all of them female alumnae of the St. Albans Seminary sorority group. Many years after their graduation, they start sending "round robin" letters to keep in touch with each other.

One of them mentions the famous New York-based astrologer, Swami Yogadachi (C. Henry Gordon), so they all write to him for their horoscopes. Sadly for them, the man foresees in their futures death, murder and tragedy and the predictions become true.

Yet, unbeknownst to the women, the Swami is under the influence of their former classmate, Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy), described in the film as "half-breed", "half-Hindu, half-Javanese or something," and "half-caste Indian".

A woman with a hypnotic gaze, Georgi rewrites the Swami's horoscopes to exact her revenge on the sisters who refused to allow her to join their sorority and who snubbed her because of her mixed-race heritage. 

While the other women really meet their tragic destiny, sorority leader Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) is skeptical, and some investigations will eventually lead her to the truth.

The film is 59 minutes long, so there isn't an in-depth analysis of most characters, but there are some great fashion moments in this movie based on revenge, a classic trope of horror films.

The first fashion moment comes courtesy of two trapeze artists, the Raskob sisters (Harriet Hagman and Mary Duncan), who wear matching costumes with large round sequins and a sequinned beret that wouldn't look out of place on a Prada runway.

Hazel Clay Cousins (Peg Entwistle) makes a short appearance in an elegant coat and then an evening gown with appliqued sequinned flowers.

Helen Dawson Frye (Kay Johnson), a married woman who has lost her child, mainly appears to be dressed in sober black or black and white dresses, a sort of mourning attire. 

While Grace Coombs (Florence Eldridge) is more conservative in her style and she shows complete faith in the Swami's horoscopes, Jo Turner (Jill Esmond) mocks the horoscopes and has a more carefree attitude than her friend as proved also by her attires. For the evening, Jo wears a long dress with a zigzag print, a flattering square neckline and cut-out motif in the back.    

Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) is a wealthy divorced woman, happy to be alone and independent, who loves living on her own with her child, but she isn't a saint as we will see from the way she addresses Ursula towards the end of the film. 

Laura seems to own a variety of gowns, from functional day dresses with a decorative bow on the front to elegant evening gowns with appliqued daisies.

The most stylish lady in the film is undoubtedly Myrna Loy as Ursula, who represents in this film the quintessential Art Deco woman: a femme fatale with hypnotic powers that allow her to manipulate people and even push them to commit suicide, she is a monster but she is also impossibly sensual and beautiful.

When we first meet Ursula she's at the Swami's house and she's wearing a long metallic backless gown in a liquid fabric that elongates her figure, turning her into the embodiment of Erté's gyneographies or graphic formulations of the modern female form. 

In the rest of the film she appears at times in more exotic attires, like an evening gown with a veil and bejwelled buttons, but she also looks stunning in architectural dresses with matching hats and skull-caps, like the final outfit, a black ensemble with a minimalist layered motif around the shoulder area.

The main theme of the film is racism and Ursula attacks in particular those white women who contributed to her exploitation and who denied her protection, becoming complicit in the violence she suffered.

"What have I done, what has anyone done, to make you so inhuman?" Laura asks. Ursula hints at rape, "Do I hear the very human white race asking that question? When I was twelve-years-old, white sailors..." Laura interrupts her, accusing her of being crazy,  and Ursula's sentence trails off.

Later, she asks Laura "Do you know what it means to be a half-breed, a half-caste, in a world ruled by whites? If you're male, you're a coolie; if you're female, you're... well... The white half of me cried for the courtesy and protection women like you get. The only way I could free myself was by becoming white."

As Ursula passes as white, denying her identity in the hope of being accepted, she also becomes more revengeful, scheming to kill Laura's child. 

There's a real-life horror story linked with this psychological thriller: the film features the only film appearance of actress Peg Entwistle. She had a longer role in the film playing Hazel Cousins, a married woman who kills her husband and goes to prison, but the movie was edited and her screen time was reduced to four minutes.

Entwistle saw her Hollywood dream fading away, so she committed suicide jumping to her death from the Hollywood Sign on September 16, 1932. The film was released shortly after her death.

Her story inspired Netflix's series "Hollywood" created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, with Camille Washington, a black actress, auditioning for the role inspired by Peg Entwistle. 

"Thirteen Women" closes tragically with Ursula meeting her fate, as foreseen by the Swami and while the drama is still not perfect, and plays a lot on the Art Deco dichotomy Asian women/sensual danger (while Laura, representing white women gets away with it and doesn't get her punishment), it is still worthwhile watching for some Streamline Moderne style tips.       

From Ancient History Inspirations to Tributes to an Iconic Jewelry Designer: Wonder Woman 1984 by Patty Jenkins

In yesterday's post we looked at inspiration from an ancient civilisation. Studying ancient history can be inspiring not just for fashion designers, but also for costume designers, especially those ones creating costumes for superhero films, such as Lindy Hemming.  

Lindy Hemming has created costumes for the theatre and film industry throughout her career, designing the wardrobes for all of the James Bond films from GoldenEye (1995) to Casino Royale (2006), for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, as well as for Christopher Nolan's Batman films (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises). She also won the Academy Award for Costume Design for Topsy-Turvy and the Costume Designers Guild Awards Best Costume Design in a Fantasy Film for The Dark Knight.

To create the costume for the main character and for the Amazons in Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman (2017) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020; originally scheduled to open in June, but postponed due to Covid to 25 December in theaters and on HBO Max), Hemming researched ancient Greek armors combining them with athletic fashion trends.

The costume of Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, in Jenkins' films has got a more modern and practical appeal, but the interesting thing about this costume is that, rather than being enhanced by computer graphic as it often happens in superhero films, this design was actually handcrafted.

For Wonder Woman and the Amazons' costumes, Lindy Hemming and her team opted indeed for leather armors that were dyed and gilded.

The designs were then steamed and molded onto mannequins based on body scans of the actors. In this way the armors fitted perfectly but still allowed the wearers great dynamism and freedom of movement.

Also the Golden Eagle armor was handmade (even the wings were built) with prop modellers and designers Pierre Bohanna and Steve Gail who produced also the chainmail-like textile underneath the armour and the mirror-like texture that was used for the wings and that was especially made to reflect surfaces in a sort of blurred way (to avoid reflecting the film crew).

The accessories were handcrafted too and the shoes also had some connections with ancient times: Wonder Woman wears what may look like armoured boots, but close-up shots reveal golden leather wedge court shoes on which they mounted a red leather shin guard with leather straps, so imagine a sort of higher version of the ancient Greece shoes called kothornos (or corthornus). 

There are some fashion connections with this film as several brands launched capsule collections to tie in with its release, among them Lauren by Ralph Lauren, Miu Miu, Revlon, EleVen by Venus Williams and Swarovski.

Reebok also launched a range of garments and accessories, including holographic gold leather sneakers inspired by Diana’s golden eagle armor, but dedicated them to real heroines: the products were indeed launched with a campaign featuring six female health-care workers from Boston who have been fighting the Coronavirus pandemic this year, to remind us that nurses are real wonder women (View this photo). 

But the film has got a more subtle connection with fashion: at a party at the museum where she works, Diana Prince wears a white gown à la Halston and an 18-karat yellow gold version of Elsa Peretti's classic Bone Cuff.

As you may remember from a previous post, Peretti designed this fluid piece - available in its small, medium and large version - moving from anatomy, the cuff incorporates indeed organic forms paying homage to the human body. While the cuff goes well with the idea of Wonder Woman who wears golden cuffs that deflect fire and other attacks, the Bone Cuff appears in the film as the director is a Peretti fan.

Jenkins owns indeed a Bone Cuff and also decided to add a final tribute to Peretti at the end of the movie: after the credits there's a cameo with Lynda Carter - who played Wonder Woman/Diana Prince in the popular TV series from the '70s - as Asteria and she wears a mesh bib necklace by Peretti and a large Bone Cuff (a sort of subtle message - she is the first Wonder Woman and wears a larger cuff as opposed to her younger counterpart Gal Gadot, who wears a medium one). 

Jenkins' tribute to Peretti was timely: in October the designer celebrated a double anniversary - 50 years since she created the Bone Cuff and 45 years of working with Tiffany (for the occasion limited pieces and a new assortment of bone cuff designs, more affordable than the ones in gold and silver, were released).

Archaeological Mood: The Thermopolium as a Fashion Inspiration

Pompeii and Herculaneum have been constant inspirations for fashion designers: season after season the ruins of these two ancient sites (they were both destroyed in AD79 when the Vesuvius exploded) have provided ideas for moods, prints, photoshoots and accessories. The best thing about these places is that discoveries never end and the more archaeologists dig, the more they find wonderful treasures (the ruins of Pompeii were discovered in the 16th century and the first excavations began in 1748; since then they never stopped).

Last March for example the Thermopolium of Regio V had started coming to light in the northern part of Pompeii, in a space between Vicolo delle Nozze d'Argento and Vicolo dei Balconi.

The thermopolium remains one of the places that fascinates the most modern visitors since it was an early version of a restaurant, or rather of a fast food or street food establishment. Here it was possible indeed to buy warm ready-to-eat food such as coarse bread with salty fish, baked cheese, lentils and spicy wine. There were around 150 thermopolia in Pompeii, mainly used by the poorer citizens who didn't have cooking facilities at home. Thermopolia customers were therefore usually mocked and scorned by wealthy people.

Architecturally speaking the thermopolium consisted in a building with a masonry counter on the front. Inside the serving counter there were holes with embedded earthenware jars (called dolia) used to store dried food (for example, nuts). Quite often the food remains in these places allowed archaeologists to make further discoveries about eating habits in ancient times (carbonized remains of nuts were found for example in the thermopolium attached to the House of Neptune and Amphitrite in Herculaneum).

Some of these establishments such as the Thermopolium of Asellina in Pompeii, were decorated with frescoes, and this is also the case with the Thermopolium of Regio V, that had a ground floor with the counter, a back room and a first floor.

Last March archaeologists uncovered part of the counter with a painting of a Nereid on horseback in a marine environment and another section of a painting representing a man with a table and some amphorae. In the last few weeks archaeologists continued their work despite Coronavirus restrictions and unearthed other section of the counter, painted in a bright yellow (a colour that goes well with the floor in polychrome marble) with other frescoes of a chicken and a dog on a leash (the latter accompanied by an insult left by a homophobic patron stating "Nicia Cinede Cacator", meaning Nicia - a freedman's name - is an inverted shitter). Archaeologists also found human remains of two men in this area.

Food-wise they discovered remains of a dish that included meat, fish and snails, so it was a sort of paella, and wine fortified with fava beans (the beans were supposed to improve the taste of the wine).

Regio V, which will hopefully open to the public next year, is the most intensive dig at the site since the 1960s, and if you're looking for further inspirations about Pompeii while this new section gets ready to open, you can check out the Instagram page of Massimo Osanna, the site's outgoing superintendent, who often posts pictures of beautiful pieces (such as the bronze herma from the house of Marcus Fabius Rufus).

Fashion-wise the thermopolia could still be a great fashion inspiration and they must have indirectly informed Gucci Pre-fall 2019 lookbook: as you may remember from a previous post, the lookbook featured models eating take away food and sweets around Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

Wearable Art as a Post-Modern Christmas Tree to Put the Horrors Behind Us: Atsuko Tanaka's Electric Dress (1956)

In 1956 Japanese avant-garde artist Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005) created the Denkifuku or Electric Dress, a wearable piece of art consisting in a kimono-like sculpture. The kimono was made with hundreds of lightbulbs painted with primary colours by enamel.

The artwork moved from traditions, but paid homage to modern industrial technology (the lights were inspired by neon advertising signs) while also inviting the viewer to consider the potential threat of modern times and of alluring technologies (the electric circuits of the kimono represented a danger for the wearer).

Tanaka would wear the piece to create a performance: the lights would indeed blink on and off every two and a half minutes. The moving lights hinted at blood pulsating through the artist's veins and body, symbolically turning into electricity.

The sculpture looks a bit like a post-modern Christmas tree, but the main idea of the artwork was transitioning from the past into a brighter future.

Tanaka was part of the Gutai group, an avant-garde artists' movement that wanted to mix art and life, go beyond the borders of existing art, encourage artists to create innovative works never created before rather than imitating artists from the past and find new beginnings to put the horrors of the war behind them.

So, for today let's use Tanaka's Electric Dress as a symbolic Christmas tree that may help us putting the horrors behind us. In this very atypical Christmas many of us may be experiencing isolation and separation because of Covid-19, but let's try and have the best day as possible.

Read, watch TV, play, write an email, chat with distant friends and family members online, make something creative for yourself or for your house, remember those ones who are not with us anymore because of Coronavirus and don't forget all those essential workers who have kept our communities running throughout the year. Merry Christmas!

Divine Geometries as Christmas Baubles: Mathematise Your Decorations with Luca Pacioli's "De Divina Proportione"

Most of us have by now decked their houses for Christmas. But, if you haven't done so yet or if you're looking for something unusual for your Christmas tree or have time on your hands as new lockdowns during the festive season have prevented you from getting reunited with your dear ones, try and get inspired by the illustrations featured in the book De Divina Proportione (About the Divine Proportion, 15th century).

Written by the mathematician Luca Pacioli in the vulgar language around 1498 in Milan and first printed in 1509, the book studies in its first part the golden ratio from the perspective of mathematical proportions, pondering on its applications to geometry, visual art and architecture and discusses the ideas of Vitruvius (from his De Architectura), comparing the proportions of the human body to those of artificial structures, with examples from classical Greco-Roman architecture.

Pacioli, who credited Fibonacci as the main source for the mathematics he presented, shared his interest in the study of proportion with Piero della Francesca and indeed some of the content of this book (the third part) is a translation into the Vulgar tongue of an earlier book by Piero della Francesca, De quinque corporibus regularibus (On [the] Five Regular Solids). Pacioli actually doesn't credit him, but seems to plagiarise Piero della Francesca.

Leonardo Da Vinci drew the sixty illustrations of solids in colour that complete the book, drawings that look extremely fascinating for their perspectives. The drawings go from spheres to a polyedron with 72 faces, passing through three-dimensional polyhedra with opaque faces or hollow polyedra. 

In the illustrations the polyhedra are suspended in space, as if they were hanging from a thread, almost to prove they come from the divine sphere, yet they are also characterised by a precise volumetric density so that their divine essence is somehow materialised or corporalised.

For your decorations you may want to try and reproduce the basic five solids - tetrahedron, hexahedron, icosahedron, octahedron and dodecahedron - or opt for more complex polyedra such as the hollow hexahedron or the stellated dodecahedron.

If you have a 3D printer or a 3D printing pen it may be easier to recreate some of these figures, but a basic material such as paper will provide you with endless fun and with rather unique Christmas decorations or with interesting elements for rather original accessories (remember Prada's geometrical earrings from the S/S 16 collection).  

Fashion Obituary: Stella Tennant, Model (1970-2020)

British model Stella Tennant has died at the age of 50, her family announced, asking to respect their privacy. Her death was "sudden" and police said there were "no suspicious circumstances". The model was known for her androgynous looks, pixie haircut, presence and aristocratic heritage.

Tennant was born in 1970 to the Hon. Tobias Tennant and his wife Lady Emma - daughter of the 11th Duke of Devonshire Andrew Cavendish, and his wife Deborah Mitford, the youngest of the famous high-society Mitford sisters. She grew up on a farm in the Scottish Borders and Tennant studied sculpture at the Winchester College of Art.

Discovered by Vogue photographer Steven Meisel, she was reluctant to become a model, being afraid she may have been objectified by what she considered a shallow world.

Her first shoot by Meisel eventually appeared on British Vogue in December 1993. Entitled "Anglo-Saxon Attitude", the shoot focused on eccentric British style and the images were considered controversial at the time as Tennant had a nose ring that she didn't want to remove for the photographs. The nose ring ended up adding a punk attitude to the shoot. 

She then worked with many designers including Alexander McQueen (she also walked in the Spring 1996 show "The Hunger" and in the Spring 1997 show "La Poupée"), Nicolas Ghesquière, Riccardo Tisci, Calvin Klein, Jean Paul Gaultier and Burberry.

Tennant combined a tomboy attitude with a ladylike elegance, qualities that fascinated many designers: she became indeed a muse to Karl Lagerfeld, who chose her to be the face of Chanel in the '90s, and Versace (the Italian fashion house paid a tribute to her on Instagram with the message: "Versace is mourning the death of Stella Tennant. Stella was Gianni Versace’s muse for many years and friend of the family. We will miss you forever Stella. Rest In Peace.").

In the late '90s she married French-born photographer David Lasnet and after her first pregnancy she retired from the industry. The couple had four children and Tennant returned to the runways at the beginning of the 2000s. She also starred in the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games, wearing a gold and aluminium chainmail suit by Christopher Kane, alongside fellow British models Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell.

In 2017 she lent some of the designs from her collection to the exhibition "House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth", a celebration of Chatsworth House, in the heart of Derbyshire Peak District National Park, home to the Cavendish family since the 16th century. One of the images included in the show (taken by Mario Testino in 2010) featured Tennant next to her proud grandmother Deborah Mitford Devonshire, the 11th Duchess, at Chatsworth. 

Tennant’s final British Vogue cover was in 2018 and was shot by Meisel; the model recently walked the runway during the Valentino Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2020 show.

Tennant's main passion remained sculpture and she also established a studio at her home, a farmhouse located in Berwickshire, where she worked with her sister Issy on their luxury homewares brand, Tennant & Tennant. In more recent years she became very passionate about environmental issues and took part in campaigns for nonprofit organisations. 

The fashion community and designers who worked with her expressed their sadness to the model's sudden passing on social media. Tennant, who had turned 50 just a few days ago, is survived by her husband David Lasnet, and their children, Marcel, Cecily, Jasmine, and Iris.

Jewels as Sculptures: Rediscovering Mirko Basaldella

Among the most important architectural features considered as sculptures and developed between 1950 and 1951 in Italy there is the bronze gate by Mirko Basaldella at the Mausoleum of the Fosse Ardeatine, a Memorial Cemetery and National Monument that remembers the mass killing of 335 civilians and political prisoners carried out in Rome in March 1944 by German occupation troops during the Second World War as a reprisal for an attack against German soldiers.

This piece marked an important inversion in trends for what regarded the history of Italian sculpture as the gate was a conglomerate of intricate curving lines interweaving to evoke a series of concepts. Charged with tension, the lines evoked the tragedy of the war, the trajectory of the bullets, the victims' fear and the executioners' violence.

There is a choreography of lines and woven signs in this design, interrupted by empty spaces that pierce the dense rhythm of desperation formed by the lines, shattering their darkness to let us see the light.

This is an extremely dynamic work of art and the main principle behind it was also applied to Basaldella's jewelry pieces. Some of them were part of an auction that took place last week at Sotheby's and that in a way marked Basaldella's 110th birth anniversary.

Born in 1910 in Udine, Basaldella studied art in Venice, Florence and Monza, exhibiting for the first time in his home town in 1928, with his two brothers Afro, a painter, and Dino, a sculptor.

He moved to Rome in the '30s and in 1934 he exhibited in Rome bronze sculptures inspired by the works of his mentor Arturo Martini that already showed a very mature technique.

In the mid-'30s Basaldella represented the Roman School at the Venice Biennale and took part in the II Quadriennale in Rome, exhibiting a series of bronzes made with the hollow wax technique. Around the same time he started making jewels that were originally intended for his wife Serena Cagli, sister of the painter and friend Corrado.

In the meantime, his sculptures began to evolve and the artist started exploring spaces and dark and light areas in more innovative and experimental ways.

His new works exhibited between December 1939 and 1945 showed Basaldella had been influenced by other artists, including Donatello, Pollaiolo (in the bas-reliefs made with the "stiacciato" technique), Hellenistic sculptures, Michelangelo's works and Aztec mosaic sculpture.

In the mid-to-late '40s Basaldella went through a post-Cubist phase and around the same time Mario Masenza expressed his interest in Basaldella's jewellery. Masenza owned a jewellery shop located in via del Corso, Rome, and he was very open to experimental pieces created in collaboration with painters and sculptors from the early 1900s. These jewels, characterised by gold and coral, precious gems and refined chromatic combination were made with "Masenza gold 64", also known as green gold, a distinctive mix of silver and gold with a shade that called to mind the gold used by the ancient Etruscans and Romans.

At first Basaldella wasn't convinced about this collaboration, but then he developed designs for Masenza, and the artist also exhibited a gold brooch at the Triennale in Milan in 1948.

In the meantime, Basaldella's sculptures evolved and mutated and intertwined motifs and spaces started prevailing. The interwoven motifs on the bronze gate of the Fosse Ardeatine became Basaldella's trademark.

In the 1950s Basaldella travelled to Syria and Jordan and later on he created pieces inspired by Pre-Columbian America and the East, revolving around the theme of the idol and the monster or representing rhythms and arabesques.

Appointed director of the design workshop of Harvard University, Massachusetts, in 1957 (he died in Cambridge,Massachusetts, in 1969), he made monumental sculptures for private and public collections, while taking part in group shows in Italy.

During the '60s Basaldella painted more, but also created key cycles of sculptures and worked with different techniques, including wood, cast bronze and styrofoam, combining technological and recycled materials, industrial wrecks, and objects of common use. Basaldella had a talent for creating small pieces and monumental works of art as well, but he was largely forgotten in Italy for a long time and rediscovered only in more recent years when the Fondazione Prada bought in 2017 his statue "Sacerdote" (1967).

Sotheby's auction was another way to rediscover his work: there were intriguing pieces on sale, from his amethyst and rose quartz demi-parure to his turquoise and ruby demi-parure with open work star motifs. One bracelet (sale price: £8,190) and a coral ring (sale price: £4,410) were made with an abstract open work design that looked very similar to the one of the Fosse Ardeatine gate. The most expensive piece was a diamond demi-parure (sale price: £ 20,160) depicting scenes of abstract figurines, followed by a synthetic ruby necklace (sale price: £9,450) with panels embossed with various symbols (that called to mind the unintelligible hieroglyphics and geometrical signs and symbols on the walls of Arnaldo Pomodoro's labyrinth). Their sale prices proved that jewels designed by artists can genuinely be considered as fine (and wearable) works of art.