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

I Wish I Could Live This Year Over Again: Fashion Notes on Alfred L. Werker's "Repeat Performance" (1947)

What would you do if you could live again the year that has just passed? What would you change? Would you prevent anything bad from happening? Would you live more intensely the great moments you had or would you try and alter what made you suffer or the things you messed up?

Guess most of us can't really say "Je Ne Regrette Rien" like Edith Piaf. After all, we are human and therefore prone to committing mistakes and subject to a good, favourable, adverse or tragic fate.

Living again the year that has just passed is what Sheila (Joan Leslie), the main character in the 1947 noir film Repeat Performance directed by Alfred L. Werker wishes she could do.

The film was adapted from the eponymous 1942 novel by William O'Farrell: the film changed the original story where the girl was the villain because it was felt Joan Leslie could not play such a role (the other major change regards Richard Basehart's character, poet William Williams, who in the original novel was a cross-dresser).

When the film opens, a narrator asks "How many times have you said: 'I wish I could live this year over again?'" and then introduces us to Sheila, a Broadway actress, who has just shot and killed Barney (Louis Hayward), her husband.

It is the end of the year and people are partying outside in the streets. Scared, Sheila goes to see her friends to ask for help and starts regretting things. If only she could have the chance to live the previous year over again, she tells her friend, poet William Williams, she would certainly do things differently.

Surprisingly, her wish is granted and she discovers it when she removes her lavish fur coat revealing not the nightgown she was wearing when she killed Barney, but the same elegant white gown she donned on 31st December the previous year.

It is worth remembering that Oleg Cassini was the costume supervisor for this film: the designer worked at Paramount Pictures and established his reputation by creating costumes for films and gowns for Jacqueline Kennedy while she was First Lady of the United States (he was her exclusive couturier in 1961; she dubbed him her "Secretary of Style").

Sober yet very glamorous, the gown that turns back the clock for Sheila features a bodice with sequined half-moon shaped swirls (Sheila also wears a hairclip with a similar shape) and a minimalist long skirt with a sculptural draped motif.

Everybody compliments her about the gown: "That is a stunning dress," producer John Friday (Tom Conway) tells Sheila, "I have to take a better look at it", he adds as he switches on the lights. Her husband tells her the gown is "beautiful and lucky". Sheila asks why it is lucky, he replies "to have you inside it."

From that moment on, Sheila attempts to relive the year without making the mistakes she and her friends committed throughout 1946, but doesn't seem to be able to prevent certain things from happening.

Sheila is not the only glamorous woman in the film, her rival, playwright Paula Costello (Virginia Field) and friend Bess (Benay Venuta) also wear fetching gowns and lavish furs with massive shoulders (à la Mildred Pierce). Paula (who wears a peculiar fur jacket-cum-cape that wouldn't look out of place in a modern collection if it were reinvented in faux fur View this photo) has also got a passion for striking hats, while Sheila is more into elegant coiffures (courtesy of hair stylist Eunice).

Cassini's designs in the film at times feature dramatic décolletages; there is one dress that Sheila wears in a few scenes that is characterised by a striking neckline enriched by a pleated insert. The neckline forms a Baroque decorative motif that perfectly frames Sheila's face and bust.

The fact that Sheila is in the hands of fate is symbolized by the gown she wears when she lives again Christmas 1946, that features an ingenious triple collar covered with golden embroideries and gems and a decorative motif around a pocket forming a reverse horseshoe (while wearing it she asks her husband: "Wish me luck" before leaving to go to the theatre for her performance).

The final glamorous gown we see her wearing, black with a band of sequins highlighting the waist and a complex bejewelled hairstyle forming almost a crown on her head, is more of a costume for the actress as Sheila reveals Paula she didn't have the time to change at the theatre, but went straight back home at the end of the show.

It is unlucky poet William, who will discover the truth about the possibility of changing one's destiny – you can indeed change the dynamics, but not the outcome and fate will eventually catch up with you.

So, since turning back the clock may not allow you to change anything, as the new year arrives, leave everything behind and enter 2023 with no regrets, but with one resolution - next year try to be a better human being.

Punk, Pirate & Pioneering Activist: Dame Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022)

A single word can be more meaningful and more dangerous than a complete sentence. In Vivienne Westwood's case her early T-shirt with a simple message, "Destroy", a Nazi swastika, an inverted image of Christ on the cross, and a Queen Elizabeth II stamp with her head severed by an invisible axe, summarized Westwood's desire to dismantle old values and taboos, surpassing prejudices and discriminations with her anti-establishment punk ethos.

A creative force that defined fashion for decades, the British designer died yesterday at the age of 81, surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London, as announced by the brand on its Instagram account.

Born in 1941 in Tintwistle, in the East Midlands, England, Vivienne Isabel Swire had a happy childhood, playing freely in the woods surrounding her family house, developing as a young child a passion for making clothes, embroidering and reading.

When she was 17, she enrolled in a fashion course at Harrow Art School (now the University of Westminster), but, frustrated by the fact that the course was about drawing rather than making clothes (an art she had learnt following patterns and taking apart second-hand clothes to learn more about their construction), she switched onto jewelry and silversmith. A term into the course she dropped out, then went to work at a Kodak factory and eventually trained to become a teacher. After specializing in art, she started working as a primary school teacher.

In 1962 she married her first husband, Derek Westwood, and they had their first child, Ben, a year later. But her life radically changed when she met Malcolm McLaren in 1965.

A friend of her brother, McLaren passed into history as the manager of the Sex Pistols, but he was also instrumental in a major shift of career in Westwood's life.

Together they co-owned the iconic shop on 430 Kings Road in London's Chelsea that saw many incarnations: launched as Teddy Boy clothing boutique Let It Rock (1973) it transformed into rockers' haven Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die (1973) and, by the mid-70s, turned into the S&M heaven Sex (1974) with its iconic sign in padded plastic pink letters (View this photo).

In 1976, the boutique changed its name again into Seditionaries, while bondage trousers, safety pins and Westwood's "Anarchy" shirt – an old striped shirt with several slogan patches, an image of Karl Marx and the sentence "Only anarchists are pretty" stencilled on the front – marked a key shift towards the punk aesthetics that, rejecting the establishment, ended up influencing generations of fashion designers in the years that followed.

After the death of Sid Vicious in 1979 and the collapse of punk, Westwood moved on: the boutique changed its name again turning into Worlds End, and, in 1981, Westwood debuted her first fashion show in London.

Entitled "Pirates" her first collection combined her passion for modern touches (her pirates' fave accessory on the runway was the Walkman cassette player), with her fascination with art and history, two inspirations that she kept on referring to throughout her life.

Punk was left behind in favour of bold and bright colours and gold shades (albeit the gold on the models' teeth was just the tinfoil of cigarette packets….).

This new androgynous and romantic mood was perfectly embodied by McLaren's new music project, Bow Wow Wow that in the video for "I Want Candy" sported Westwood's creations. Singer Annabella Lwin also donned in the video the "inter titty" T-shirt, that featured a sort of fabric tube that connected the breasts (View this photo). Yet, despite its playfulness, the collection was actually drenched in history as Westwood studied the past in volumes such as Wolfgang Bruhn and Max Tilke's Kostümwerk (A pictorial history of costume) to create her assemblages for the future.

In 1983 with her collection "Witches", Westwood launched the first proper fashion collaboration with an artist when Keith Haring allowed the designer to use for free his works for her prints and jacquard knits.

In the meantime, Westwood's relationship with the often abusive McLaren, who considered her just "a seamstress", came to an end in 1983. Westwood wished to sell the brand to Fiorucci in Italy, then signed in 1984 a seven-year licensing agreement with Giorgio Armani (who got exclusive rights to her name, but never produced anything and was eventually sued by Westwood in 1987 for failing to pay her).

Westwood's inspirations evolved in 1984 when she met Gary Ness who introduced her to Chinese paintings and ballet. Petrushka, staged for the first time in June 1911 by the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, became the starting point for Westwood’s spring 1985 "Mini Crini" collection. The latter featured an iconic garment, a pouf mini-skirt with a crinoline. Some of the designs included in the collection with their cartoonish polka dots also had a Minnie Mouse twist about them.

In 1986 Westwood's fascination with royalty inspired her the orb logo to which she added the ring of Saturn to symbolise her desire to take traditions into the future as she did a year later when she reinvented a traditional British fabric, Harris Tweed.

In her A/W 1988-89 collection, Westwood collaborated with the Wallace Collection and, getting inspired by its armours, created a series of jackets, corsets and coats with articulated fabric plates recreating the structure of personal body armours.

In 1988 Westwood started teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna where she met a student, Andreas Kronthaler, an Austrian 25 years her junior who became her third husband and collaborator.

Awarded an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 1992, Westwood accepted it in a rather sober and conservative gray suit-skirt. Yet, while twirling to show off the photographers her outfit, she unintentionally revealed her bare crotch. Once a punk always a punk, you may argue, and indeed her anti-establishment attitude allowed her to preserve her rebellious stance even in formal occasions.

In 1989 she posed for the cover of Tatler magazine (April Fools edition) dressed as UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (in a suit Thatcher had ordered but not collected) to mock the politician she deeply disliked. The image was accompanied by the caption: "This woman was once a punk".

A committed activist, Westwood tirelessly campaigned for climate and social justice throughout the 2000s: in 2011 she often turned up at the anti-capitalist Occupy the London Stock Exchange camp at St Paul's Cathedral; in 2013, Westwood attended a protest outside the Russian Embassy in London in support of the 30 Greenpeace activists charged with piracy at a Russian oil platform in the Arctic; in 2015, she drove a tank to the house of the then Prime Minister David Cameron in Oxfordshire, in a protest against fracking. She also lobbied the British government to ban the retail sale of fur and was an outspoken supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Never afraid to speak her mind in a fashion world where too many designers simply choose to shut up afraid they may otherwise lose their customers, Westwood often sent out to fashion fans anti-consumerist messages, encouraging people to buy fewer but better clothes or simply to stop buying new garments.
 
Quite often her climate emergency slogans appeared on T-shirts at her runway shows as did her politics: in September 2014, the designer sent out on her Red Label collection runway models wearing "Yes" badges hinting at the Scottish independence referendum.

Westwood actually harboured a special passion for Scotland, and often employed tartan in her creations. She produced her own pattern - the "Westwood MacAndreas", incorporating in it her name and her husband’s.

Developed for her Autumn/Winter 1993 "Anglomania" collection, the tartan was officially recognised in the Scottish Register of Tartans and woven by the world's leading tartan manufacturer, Lochcarron of Scotland.

In 2021, on her 80th birthday, Westwood made a short film entitled "Do Not Buy a Bomb" for CIRCA, which commissions artists to create new works for Europe's largest screen in London's Piccadilly Circus. In a written address accompanying the film, Westwood launched an appeal to stop wars that now, with the war in Ukraine approaching its first anniversary, sounds prophetic.

In the appeal she stated: "I have a plan 2 save the World. Capitalism is a war economy + war is the biggest polluter, therefore Stop War + change economy 2 fair distribution of wealth at the same time: NO MANS LAND. Let's be clear, U + I can't stop war just like that. But we can stop arms production + that would halt climate change cc + financial Crash. Long term this will stop war (…) I have always combined fashion with activism: the one helps the other. Maybe fashion can Stop War. 'Buy Less Choose Well Make it Last' Don't buy a car Don't buy a bomb!"

Celebrated in a retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2004, the designer has often been considered the Alice in Wonderland of fashion: her clothes were indeed deemed "wonderfully mad" or "fantastic enough to be worn at the Mad Hatter's tea party," in John Fairchild's 1989 memoir "Chic Savages". In the book Fairchild considered Westwood one of the world's six greatest designers, the only woman along with the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld, Emanuel Ungaro and Christian Lacroix.

Westwood's radical approach to fashion inspired many designers including John Galliano and the late Alexander McQueen.

But you can bet that her creations - including her tailored Harris Tweed suits, her kilts and corsets; her gold prints on velvet reminiscent of Madame Gallenga's experiments and her ballet costumes; or her perilous platform shoes such as the 5in platform soles and 12in heels that caused a young Naomi Campbell to take a tumble during Paris Fashion Week in June 1993, or her iconic Rocking Horse ballerina platforms - will keep on inspiring younger generations to rediscover her modus operandi and her passion for history.  

There are indeed never-ending connections between art and history in her collections, in particular in her "Portrait" collection (A/W 1990-91) that featured palettes borrowed from the landscapes in the background of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough's paintings, golden motifs inspired by the decorations on the back of a mirror by cabinet maker André Charles Boulle and François Boucher's painting Daphnis and Chloe (View this photo) replicated on corsets.

Her "Cut and Slash" collection presented at Pitti Uomo in July 1990 referenced instead 1500s menswear with slashed doublets made in denim donned by dancer and choreographer Michael Clark who appeared for the occasion on the runway, recreating the Ghillie Callum dance (that he had already performed during Westwood's "Time Machine" A/W 1988-89 show).

This collection also featured other art correspondences: in particular a white knitted jacket called to mind the attire in Giovanni Battista Moroni's Il sarto (The Tailor, 1565), while the pink jackets with geometrical slashes evoked the palette of Moroni's portrait of Gian Gerolamo Grumelli (also known as Gentleman in Pink, 1560).

Westwood is survived by Kronthaler who will bring her vision forward, and by her two sons, fashion photographer Ben Westwood (her son with Derek Westwood) and Joseph Corré, co-founder of lingerie company Agent Provocateur (her son with Malcolm McLaren).

Britain loses its last punk designer with Westwood, but her spirit lives on in the punk aesthetics you may encounter in London, in particular in the creations of Herbie Mensah, a catwalk regular for Westwood, who now sells his designs made from second hand clothes in Portobello Market, London, and through his website, and in the collections of younger designers à la Matty Bovan and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy.

Times changed, fashion mutated, but Westwood never lost her passion for pedagogy: she was often quoted saying that the best fashion accessory is a good book.

So, as a tribute to her, you may want to spend the last hours separating us from the new year with a good book, maybe re-reading her 2016 "Get a Life: The Diaries of Vivienne Westwood", a collection of her online posts chronicling her involvement with art, politics and the environment, and her adventures - from driving in a tank to David Cameron's house to going to Naomi Campbell's birthday party.

 

The Charm of Biscuit Architectures

This year the House of Dior did a monumental takeover of London department store Harrods. Leaving behind the 44 grand window, the spectacular light display and installations that turned some part of the store into a Hansel & Gretel fantasy (or nightmare, depending from your point of view…), the most notable thing of "The Fabulous World of Dior" celebrations (until 3rd January 2022) remains an exhibition with several tableaux reproducing as gingerbread models Granville (Christian Dior's seaside childhood home in Normandy), La Colle Noire (the designer's chateau on the border of Alpes-Maritime and the Var region) and 30 Avenue Montaigne (Dior's flagship store in Paris).

Besides, on display there are also iconic miniature clothing designs from the house's archive reimagined in gingerbread, including the "Junon" dress and the Lady Dior bag.

Yet, you don't need to be a powerful fashion house to create unique biscuit architectures, as proved by the participants of the "Gingerbread House" competition organised at Stockholm-based ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design.

This year the competition moved from a very simple theme - "Around the corner" - and 141 participants interpreted it in very original ways.

Some of the gingerbread models entered in the competition were inspired by minimalist architectures, others were instead incredibly detailed, often decorated in vibrantly coloured icing details.

Among the entries, there are castles and labyrinths; robots and dragons' dens; the royal ship Vasa (that sank 15 minutes into its maiden voyage – certainly she didn't get further than "around the corner"…); an elaborate cat café and Rapunzel's tower; a recreation of the Pacman videogame, a wonderfully ornate version of Skeppsholmen Church, located just around the corner from ArkDes and fairytales books stacked in a pile inviting readers to discover new worlds.

One participant created a dynamic scene, an unusual accident at the corner of Polkagränd and St Lucia, with a reindeer sled that, slipping on the ice, crashed into a convenience store. 

The prize of the public went to a colourful recreation of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking's Villa Villekulla, complete with Pippi and her friends, their clothes perfectly traced with multi-coloured icing.

The first prize for the Architects, Designers and Bakers category went to a tragicomic model featuring a fisherman so concentrated on his catch to be completely unaware that something extremely scary - a waterfall - is lurking just "around the corner".

An elaborate building reminiscent of a grand department store with a long queue of little characters waiting to meet Santa, sitting just around the corner, got instead the "Anyone Else Who Loves Baking" category.

A super colourful sustainable artist's studio with solar cells and a doodle wall where all the people visiting the studio can leave their messages, was the imaginative design that won the children's category.

So, in these last two days of the year, why don't you get inspired by these designs and try creating your own gingerbread winter wonderland? After all, nothing can go wrong with biscuit architecture: if it looks horrible, you can indeed make it quickly disappear by eating it. Nobody will ever know about your architectural failure and there will also be an added bonus - zero material waste.

A Mobile Library as a Laboratory for the Future: Joar Nango's Girjegumpi is Heading to the Venice Biennale

Archives and libraries are currently definitely en vogue and will keep on being so next year. Architect and artist Joar Nango based in Romsa/Tromsø, Norway, will travel with his Sámi Architecture Library to Venice for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (20th May - 26th November 2023), curated by Lesley Lokko.

Nango works with a variety of mediums, developing site-specific interventions, design collaborations, photography, publications and videos, on the themes of Sámi and Indigenous architecture and craft.

Trained at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, he is a founding member of the architecture collective FFB (2010) and has also collaborated with choreographer and director Elle Sofe Sara on a dance performance, "BIRGET; Ways to deal, ways to heal", that will be on next year at the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet. Alongside Snøhetta, Econor, and 70°N arkitektur, Nango is also working on the new Sámi National Theatre and Sámi High School and Reindeer Husbandry School in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, currently under construction.

Girjegumpi is Nango's long-term project: for over fifteen years Nango has been collecting books about Sámi architecture and, in 2018, his Girjegumpi itinerant, collective library finally opened to the public.

The word "Girjegumpi" is derived from two Northern Sámi words: "Girji", meaning book, and "Gumpi" – a small mobile reindeer herder cabin on sledges, often pulled by a snowmobile. The wordplay refers to a library, an archive, and the construction in which the materials are stored and transported.

Girjegumpi features as a whole 500 rare volumes and contemporary books about Sámi architecture and design, traditional and ancestral building knowledge and techniques, resources in changing climate conditions, and approaches to landscape and nature, activism and collaborative work, decoloniality and practices to address the relevance of Indigenous culture in architectural discourse and construction today.

The library is conceived as a nomadic space: it hosts large groups of people, but also offers an environment for study and reflection. As Girjegumpi travelled it expanded and evolved opening up to multiple collaborations, including artists and craftspeople such as Katarina Spik Skum, Anders Sunna, and Ken Are Bongo.

Nango's library will be installed in the Giardini space, at the Nordic Countries Pavilion, representing Finland (Arkkitehtuurimuseo, Helsinki), Norway (Nasjonalmuseum, Oslo), and Sweden (ArkDes, Stockholm).

Designed by Sverre Fehn in 1962, the pavilion was conceived to represent forms of cooperation across the Nordic countries, but in the context of the Biennale the Girjegumpi will open up to an international audience to show that Sámi culture has a lot to offer, especially when it comes to transforming both natural and human-made objects and materials into physical design solutions. 

If you're a fashion designer rather than an architect, you may find the materials about the Duodji Artistic Experiments intriguing: in Sámi culture, the term Duodji indicates "handicrafts", from tools to clothing and accessories, designed to be functional, but made incorporating artistic elements. If you are instead a knitwear designer, you may want to check the architecture and knitwear project Nango did a while back about the "Lavvu", the traditional Sámi tent reinvented as patterns for woollen sweaters.

As the main theme of the 2023 Venice Biennale is "The Laboratory of the Future", Nango's Girjegumpi at the Nordic Pavilion should therefore be conceived as a chance to learn more from another culture and see if any of the Sámi teachings may be borrowed and applied to our collective futures.

Girjegumpi has unfolded in many locations since 2018 - from arts, culture and music festivals to centres for architecture and museums. When it is not travelling, it is based at the Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš (Sámi Centre for Contemporary Art) in Kárášjohka/Karasjok, while a smaller version of the Girjegumpi is held by the National Gallery of Canada in Odàwàg/Ottawa.

For those who may not be able to check the library in person next year at the Venice Biennale, there is still a chance to look through some of its materials thanks to the Virtual Library of Sámi Architecture, a project by Joar Nango, in collaboration with ArkDes.

What Will Bernard Arnault Do with His Latest Real Estate Acquisition?

Nowadays it is common for brands and luxury houses to restore public landmarks or buying prestigious private properties. In the first case, these brands and luxury houses turn into modern patrons of the arts, even though their acts of corporate philanthropy often hide some great returns as they allow them to strengthen their commercial presence, but also to secure tax benefits. Buying private properties allows these companies instead to expand their real estate portfolios, something that may lead to ambitious architectural projects.

The latest acquisition of this kind took place right before Christmas, when Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, bought (through a private negotiation) the 15th-century Casa degli Atellani and Leonardo Da Vinci's vineyard in Milan (the figures of the sale were not disclosed).

Located in Corso Magenta, the property is considered as an architectural jewel: Leonardo moved to Milan from Florence in 1482 and was commissioned "The Last Supper" in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie by Ludovico Maria Sforza, also known as "il Moro" (the Moor), Duke of Milan, in 1495.

Three years later, Ludovico, who had donated the property to the Atellani, a family of courtesans loyal to him, granted Leonardo the ownership of a planted and cultivated vineyard of about 16 rows (around 8,000 square metres) in the field at the bottom of the garden of the Atellani house.

Leonardo left Milan when the King of France's troops took over the city in 1500. The vineyard was confiscated, but returned in the possession of Leonardo who left a part of it to a servant and another to his pupil, Gian Giacomo "il Salaì" Caprotti.

Acquired in 1919 by senator and entrepreneur Ettore Conti, the house was restored by his son-in-law, architect Piero Portaluppi, who also worked on a second restoration as the building was damaged by the bombing in 1943, during the Second World War. The house reopened to the public in 2015 to coincide with the Expo. In the meantime, researchers from the University of Milan excavated the residues of the original roots, identified the stock of the vineyard and replanted the Malvasia di Candia aromatica, an aromatic white grape, reproducing in this way in 2018 Leonardo's wine.

Besides, since it reopened, Casa degli Atellani, that also includes six for-rent (for short stays) apartments, hosted several private events, such as fashion shows and presentations by Dior and Swarovski.

The destination of the property post-acquisition is still to be discussed: at the moment Casa degli Atellani is open to the public for visits and, obviously, it is possible to book the apartments for short stays (LVMH also owns hospitality operators Cheval Blanc and Belmond, so maybe the apartment will pass under their management...), but maybe Arnault bought the property to use it as an exhibition space for his private art collection or as a location for events connected with the brands owned by LVMH (this could be an idea not only during the local Fashion Week, but also for the Design Week).

As Casa degli Atellani also includes a café and in 2013 the LVMH Group took a majority stake in storied Pasticceria Confetteria Cova Srl, owner of the Cova brand and of the Cova Montenapoleone Srl firm, maybe the café will be an outlet for Cova products.

Besides, according to the reports Arnault bought not just the house, but also the vineyard, and LVMH also owns several firms in the wines and spirits category (Ruinart, Dom Pérignon, Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot), so, who knows, there may be plans to incorporate the vineyard production under one of these labels (even though it is possible that being the property considered a common asset of artistic and historical interest by the Italian Ministry of Cultural and Environmental Heritage, there may be some restrictions to some sections of the house and to the vineyard as well).

But this architectural landmark may reveal as inspiring also from a design point of view: Dolce & Gabbana’s 2018 High Fashion show was inspired by the period in which Leonardo lived in Milan, and, after Arnault acquired Casa degli Atellani, some of the fashion houses under the LVMH group (that controls fashion brands such as Dior, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy among others) may want to take inspiration from the property to create prints, embroideries and motifs inspired by the house.

Inspirations may come from the floral elements and arabesques from the Portrait Hall, the astrological symbols from the Zodiac Hall or Portaluppi's motto, "Faire sans dire", literally "To do without saying" meaning "doing things without wasting time/without boasting about them" or "facts not words". So, get architecturally acquainted with this property to spot references in future collections by brands and luxury houses part of the LVMH conglomerate.

Like Trixie, In Transition

In the aftermath of any celebration - even something as special yet ordinary as a birthday - there is a sort of comedown. You get indeed easily overcome by feelings of nostalgia, sadness or, maybe, even loneliness as the excitement and chaos of the previous day abate and relentlessly fade away. The aftermath of Christmas is even harder, maybe because the year is slowly coming to an end and you end up feeling suspended, almost in transition between something old and something new, you feel tired and a bit sad as Christmas is over, but so is another year, while at the same time you know that there is still something to look forward.

There is an image, a photograph by Nan Goldin that we could use to perfectly summarise this feeling of transition or this dichotomic combination of elation and tiredness - "Trixie on the cot" (New York City, 1979) from the volume "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" (1986).

Entitled after a song from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s play "The Threepenny Opera" (1928), this visual diary is a collection of images of Goldin herself, her friends, fellow artists, performers, and drag queens - her chosen family. All the images tell short stories of human relationships, of public spaces and intimate spaces, of love and loss, sex, passion, abuse, joy and pain, euphoria and dysphoria in a variety of environments - downtown bars, bedrooms and bordellos, cars and beaches - and locations, including Boston, New York and Berlin. In these unstaged portraits of the underbelly of society in bright and vivid colours, there's hope and despair.

Like all the other portraits, Trixie's is fraught with contradictions: her pose is reminiscent of Degas' ballerinas putting on or adjusting their shoes, she's glamorous in her 50c thrift shop white party frock with vivid red floral embroideries that evokes '50s Haute Couture dresses and she's wearing heavy pancake make-up. Yet these signs of exaggerated femininity, of identity as a performance, contrast with the messed up satin ribbons in her hair, her run down high heeled shoes (was she dancing hard in them or were they already so ruined? We will never know) and the squalid environment surrounding her.

Trixie is therefore a dichotomic fantasy suspended between the life she would like to lead and the life she is trapped in, between the party fantasy and the post-party phase, she is suspended in a limbo, hesitantly hoping like Madame Butterfly, but doomed as well, exactly like her.

Trixie is in an in-between state: she is beautiful, but also looks dishevelled; she seems carefree as she nonchalantly smokes her cigarette, but she's probably hurting. She's revealing herself, but also hiding behind her hair. Trixie is in transition: between genders, between states of minds, between the day and the night, between the '70s and the '80s, between one excess and the next. You get easily obsessed with her because we are more or less like her - in transition.

We are all collectively transitioning into a new year, leaving behind 12 difficult months and swapping them for an uncertain future; besides, some of us may be transitioning between loves, between careers; others may be experiencing another type of transition, from good to bad health as they confront an unexpected illness or vice versa as they welcome a much-hoped recovery.

As humans we are all dynamic entities, so, like Trixie, we are works in progress, glamorous yet battered, in tattered shoes but with a tiny spark of hope in our hearts and the illusion that a cheap dress can be Haute Couture; worried about the future, but, at the same time, unapologetically not giving a damn. So don't believe those who fake static happiness as that is unachievable because we are all in a constant transformative state. In a nutshell, like Trixie, we are in transition.

Textile Details in a Christmas Card

Christmas cards are a bit of a forgotten tradition in our times of quick posts on social media and messages on smartphone apps. Yet there are some pretty vintage cards that may be worth rediscovering like the ones by Boston-based printer Louis Prang who introduced the Christmas card to the American public.

In 1873, Prang went to Austria for the Vienna Exhibition. Here he had a chance encounter with the wife of his British agent who, upon seeing one of his chromolithographed business cards decorated with flowers, suggested him to market them with a Christmas greeting. The following year Prang decided to test this product in England. Since it was a successful idea, he brought it back to the States and started selling Christmas cards in Boston for the 1875 holiday season.

The business soon went from strength to strength, also thanks to the fact that Prang commissioned talented illustrators who produced for him beautiful cards paying attention to the tiniest details as showed by the first image in this post, an advert for Prang’s products (from the Library of Congress archive) that features a couple in Medieval costumes under mistletoe. The red attire of the gentleman matches with the red holly around the frame of the card, while the pale blue dress of the lady features a pattern of gold fleur-de-lis. Pearls trace the outline of her breasts forming a sort of peekaboo bra that reveals another type of fabric underneath the bustier. 

Prang also launched from 1880 annual competitions to encourage artists and art students to produce designs for his Christmas cards (the first prize winner for this initial contest was artist Rosina Emmet who also designed textiles for Tiffany & Company in New York).

Prang's earliest cards mainly featured flower designs with the words "Merry Christmas", but his most elaborate products included silk fringes, cords and tassels. An example of these textile elements can be found in a card designed by the Symbolist artist Elihu Vedder who won first prize at the second competition organised by Prang.

Vedder's design featured an allegorical figure inspired by his wife with ribbons radiating from her hair (an article from the Cincinnati Daily Gazette of February, 24, 1881 described them poetically, stating: "Several fantastically streaming long ribbons proceed from the mazes of her auburn hair...") set within an Art Nouveau-style border and completed by the words "Thy own wish wish I thee in every place" from William Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost".

The card was decorated with a silk fringe along its four edges, with two tassels hanging from the bottom corners and a string at the top, which would have allowed recipients of the card to hang it on the walls of their home or on their Christmas tree.

We are by now too accustomed to our quick digital messages to go back to writing traditional cards but, when you think about it, a proper Christmas card with some textile details would be a nice token of affection. In the meantime, maybe you can use the words on Vedder's card - "Thy own wish wish I thee in every place" - for your own digital message to a dear one. Have a wonderful Christmas!

Anthropology in a Nativity Scene

At times you can find costume and fashion inspirations in unlikely places including nativity scenes from the Neapolitan tradition. We looked at some examples in previous years, also from special collections like the Met Museum in New York.

For those who may be travelling to Prague during the festive season, there is the chance to admire the Presepe del Re ("The King's Nativity Scene") at the local Italian Institute of Culture (until 18th January). On display in the Baroque chapel of the institute, but usually preserved in Rome at the Museum of Civilizations, this nativity scene is peculiar for its reference to King Ferdinand IV of Naples.

While before him nativity scenes followed specific rules: Jesus was born in a manger, so usually the main group of the nativity scene with the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and the Baby Jesus was placed in an environment similar to a stable, located in the centre of the scene, maybe on top of a mountain; on the left there were usually the sleeping shepherds and the animals, while on the right a village with people going on about their lives and enjoying themselves, oblivious to the birth of Jesus.

Under Ferdinand IV, things became less strict, characters and scenes weren't rigidly separated, and nativity artisans started breaking the rules, maintaining certain settings like the inn or the houses, but placing the Holy Family in a temple with elegant neoclassical columns.

While the sets like the houses made with expanded polyurethane and wood were created in more recent years by artisan Nicola Maciariello, the characters (the scene includes around 100 figures) date from the 18th and 19th century and were restored (over the course of 12 years) by Nicolò Giacalone.

Ethnologist Lamberto Loria collected the figures in 1911 for the Exhibition of Italian Ethnography held in Rome for the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy.

The heads of the characters are made in terracotta, while their hands and feet are made in wood; the eyes of the characters and the animals are instead made of glass and each figurine is usually signed by the artisan who made them (you will usually find the signature under the clothes, often on the chest of the characters).

The clothes shouldn't make the man nor the woman, but in this case it is the opposite as we identify the characters and their roles in accordance with what they are wearing.

Shepherds wear modest attires, often in just one colour, usually neutral ones; the ordinary people populating the streets of Naples and carrying out everyday activities wear slightly more complex designs with buttons and some decorative elements; the clothes of merchants incorporate embroidered sections and sequins, while nobles, clad in fine bright fabrics and wearing shirts and jackets with exquisite details, also wear beautiful accessories, including coral earrings and necklaces. Besides, one of the Three Kings wears a cloak made with bright red silk from San Leucio, near Caserta, covered in silver and gold embroideries. 

The details in this nativity scene are intriguing, especially when it comes to the accessories: St. Joseph wears delicate ankle tie sandals, other characters wear leather boots in sensible colours like brown or in more peculiar shades like bright blue and green.

There are symbolisms behind some of these characters: the group of people asking for alms located under the angels represent the souls in Purgatory asking for prayers and create a sort of channel between Heaven and Earth.

Quite often these nativity scenes are monumental: this one occupies 25 square meters, but the secret while looking at these scenes, is trying to spot the details, from the fine ceramic vases and wax fruit and vegetables (a technique that should be rediscovered maybe to create very unique pieces of modern jewelry...) to the laundry drying on the balconies.

In the case of this nativity scene there is also an "anarchic" element: in the 1700s King Charles of Bourbon banned lottery gambling during Christmas time, but this nativity scene features a lotto place, that is a shop where people can play the lottery with a board with numbers on the door, and a combination of religious and pagan elements, with an image of Saint Januarius in the background and a table with a tiny red horn-shaped talisman, the trademark amulet Neapolitans rely on for good luck. All these elements are testament to the high quality craftsmanship of these scenes related to popular cultures.

From Tableware to Tablewear: Cinzia Ruggeri, Hussein Chalayan & Sputniko!

In yesterday's post we looked at festive celebrations in connection with tableware. Let's continue the thread, but make it fashionable by looking at three examples of "tablewear" instead, that is fashion designs inspired by tables.

The first example is not really a dress inspired by a table, but by a tablecloth: Italian designer Cinzia Ruggeri created in the early '80s the "Abito tovaglia" (Tablecloth Dress), a conceptual piece with a hybrid twist about it.

The minimalist white linen dress with straps that crisscrossed on the back had indeed a long bib-like tongue of fabric on the front that could be unrolled on a table and used as a tablecloth to create an impromptu intimate yet welcoming space that allowed the wearer to invite somebody to a nice meal (in exhibitions it was often displayed with a pink wishbone on a black plate and forks with prawns for handles).

Were eventual stains to be intended as a sort of decorative pattern? Who knows. What is clear, though, is that Cinzia Ruggeri, known for her clever word games, was probably trying to make a connection with the material of the dress - white linen - and table linens (tablecloths, napkins, placemats, table skirting and table napkins...).

The "table linens" here inspire a dress that turns itself into table linens, in a transformative act that temporarily alters the function of the garment from an item that you can wear to an item you can use to create a shared space.

The second example is Hussein Chalayan's table skirt that had a socio-political meaning. The design was part of the "After Words" (A/W 2000-01) collection inspired by the news from Kosovo about people fleeing their houses in a rush during the war and carrying their possessions on their backs. 

Sadly, this theme is still relevant today if we think about the war in Ukraine and people putting their lives at risk to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of a better life. In Chalayan's case, this was also a personal inspiration as the designer was born in the Turkish part of Cyprus, and the collection was a way ponder about the conflict between the Turkish and the Greek populations in Cyprus (the subsequent Turkish intervention resulted in a division of the island in 1974).

Models during the show removed the covers from chairs and turned them into dresses, then the last model stepped into the middle of a round 1950s-style coffee table, lifted it up and transformed it into a skirt. In this way the refugee theme was linked to  the idea of hiding and camouflaging valuable possessions or carrying them along in flight.

The third and last example of table dress is Sputniko!'s (Japanese artist and designer Hiromi Ozaki): her 2010 project Sushiborg Yukari (2010) was inspired by the "Nyotai Mori", an age-old Japanese practice of serving Sushi on naked women.

The main character in this project is a a cyborg designed in Tokyo in the future to serve sushi on her rotating belt that she wears like a rigid tutu around her hips, entertaining in this way over-worked Japanese businessmen after a long day at work. 

When Yukari's artificial intelligence understands she is just being used as a sex object, she struggles to accept her role and, one day, she integrates blades in the table, modifying herself and turning into a lethal weapon to escape the sushi restaurant where she is trapped. In this case there is a horror twist to the table dress as the robot understands the concepts of violation and exploitation and plots her revenge with the mind of a cold killer.

The three designers we analysed today made through their "tablewear" pieces comments about inclusion, social issues and sexual exploitation. Now, the simplest way to create a "tablewear" piece would be coming up with a functional ready-to-wear or elegant Haute Couture design upcycling an old or a new yet cheap tablecloth (or you may commit the final criminal act and trasform some family heirloom linens into a unique design, albeit your mother / granny / auntie may probably never forgive you for doing so...). 

Whatever you come out with, if you like the theme of the table, always remember to do some researches about it to give it a clever twist (or move your inspiration onto another interior design piece that we all have in our houses, avoiding maybe bed dresses, as there have been multiple incarnations of those throughout the years...), like the designers included in this post did, otherwise you may risk of creating something more similar to the "tants", the pants that are also a table that Pops gives as a present to Mordecai and Rigby in an episode of wacky animated series "Regular Show".

Be Their Guest: "Celebrate! From Passover and Keti Koti to Carnival and Diwali" @ The Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

Celebrations - from an ordinary birthday to major religious festivals including Eid al-Fitr, Keti Koti, Diwali and Christmas - imply at some point special food or even traditional recipes. In this age of cultural exchanges, hunger, loneliness and digital social interactions but of physical social alienation, the idea of getting together and sharing a celebration is even more important.

To this purpose, the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, is exploring the traditions and symbols of festive meals with the wide-ranging exhibition "Celebrate" (through 20th August 2023).

Based on different celebrations - such as Lunar New Year, Carnival, Passover, Eid al-Fitr, Keti Koti (a celebration of the abolition of slavery commemorated in various places in The Netherlands), Diwali and Christmas, but including also a children's party, a students' chaotic festival, a birthday, a wedding and a selamatan - the exhibition goes through a variety of festive tables, dishes and stories.

Celebrations may vary, but, since food and drink are always present in such events, ceramics always have a key role. Celebrations require indeed the use of our finest tableware or of traditional pieces passed on from generation to generation.

Curators decided therefore to arrange the exhibition in different tables with twelve installations displaying over 600 objects from the Princessehof's archive, but also cherished objects from people all over The Netherlands, who also shared their memories and traditions in an audio tour compiled by the museum researchers.

Letty provides visitors with an insight on the traditional food for Passover, including matzos, fried egg and horseradish; other guests tell the story of a unique dinner at the Amsterdam Royal Palace in 2017, where they celebrated with King Willem-Alexander his 50th birthday.

Ismahan and Siham talk about Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month-long fasting during Ramadan, while culinary expert Janny van der Heijden demonstrates how she sets her table during Christmas.

Van der Heijden has a passion for porcelain tableware that she developed from a young age. As she explains in one of the recordings: "As a child, I found nothing more fun than looking for dishes at all kinds of celebrayions. I found that some things tasted better on a matching plate. For example, my aunt's stamppot tasted better on a plate with a hunting scene."

Van der Heijden also highlights in her recordings that the most important ingredient at a party is not what you eat, but warmth, the joy of being together. "Often the idea of celebration is equated with abundance," she remarks, "but the essence of that abundance stands for me in sharing things."

Interactive elements have also been added to the exhibition: visitors can share their best party experiences on a door to a student's room, set a royal table, create their own nativity scene and take an over-the-top selfie in the festive photobooth.

The ceramics on display vary, and also include in the section dedicated to weddings some wonderfully kitsch statuines and vases used to decorate a giant replica of a wedding cake.

The rarest piece in the exhibition is a dish from around 1530: from Iznik, in Turkey, the dish features blue and turquoise decorations of grape vines and flowers.

The peculiarity about this dish is that it is the largest Iznik dish with grape motif known worldwide. The piece was purchased by the Ottema-Kingma Foundation from Sotheby's in London and after this even it will enter the permanent collection of the museum.

The object illustrates the interaction between China and the Middle East: the decoration on the dish imitates the Chinese blue-white porcelain from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Much of this porcelain came into the Middle East through trade and was an important source of inspiration for ceramics in Persia (now Iran) and the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey and Syria).

There is a difference between this dish and the original ones that inspired it: in this case the grapes are recreated in reverse, as if they were mirrored. That's probably because the decoration of Chinese porcelain were drawn on a stencil by craftsmen at the Ottoman court and then used for the decoration of dishes in Iznik. In this copy, the ceramic painters combined the cobalt blue with turquoise, a characteristic combination that was applied to Iznik ceramics from the 16th century.

The exhibition also features works by contemporary ceramic artists such as Neha Kudchadkar, Sharon van Overmeiren, Odette Muijsers (her ceramic replicas of sweets in a pastel palette are used to perfectly illustrate a children's party) and South Korean designer Yoon Seok-hyeon, who came up with a sustainable alternative to the toxic glaze on ceramic pieces from his native country (glazed ceramic is usually not recyclable and often ends in the landfill).

To accompany the event the museum also published a cookbook with special recipes by renowned chefs, food writers and bakers, inspired by the museum's tableware collection (the volume is available from the museum shop and webshop).

The point behind this exhibition remains creating a friendly atmosphere, acknowledging the culture of celebration and discovering other cultures. This is something we should remember as Christmas is approaching and some of us may be dreading the usual family dinner or reunion.

In case you do, remember to ignore comments about the risqué colour of your lipstick, your new hairstyle, the fact that you have lost/put on weight, your perilously high heels, the partner you dumped/acquired this year, and other assorted private crimes you may have committed throughout the year according to your relatives, just go Zen and ignore them. It is indeed not worth jeopardising household harmony for just a few hours. So enjoy the feast, enjoy the food and maybe see if the tableware in front of you may bring back happy memories from your childhood.

Image credits for this post

1. "Celebrate! From Passover and Keti Koti to Carnival and Diwali" campaign image

2 - 3. Ceramic artwork by Odette Muijsers, 2022

4 - 11. "Celebrate! From Passover and Keti Koti to Carnival and Diwali" at the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. Photo: Ruben van Vliet

12 - 13. Dish with grapes and flower branches and waves, ca. 1530. Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden, on loan from the Ottema-Kingma Foundation. Photo Courtesy of Sotheby's

14 - 15. Studio Job and Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum, Biscuit Gold, 2007, porcelain. From the collection of the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden, acquired with the support of the Mondriaan Fund. Foto: Thomas Nondh Jansen.

16. "Celebrate! From Passover and Keti Koti to Carnival and Diwali" campaign image. Photo: Maarten van der Wal