what are you reading Now?

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Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us. Alain de Botton

portrait of the Grand Duchess Cathrine Alexeevna, as a young bride, around 1745.

I just finished Robert Massie's book Catherine the Great- Here is a passage that I marked,

Catherine refused to leave her room "until I felt strong enough to overcome my depression" (Catherine's words) She remained the entire winter of 1754-55 in this narrow, little room with its ill fitting windows through which freezing drafts blew...To shield herself and to make life bearable, she turned again to books. That winter she read the Annals of Tacitus, Montesquieu's L'Esprit des Lois(The Spirit of Laws), & Voltaire's Essai sur less Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations(Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations). The work of Tacitus, she said, caused a singular revolution in my brain to which, perhaps the melancholy cast of my thoughts at this time contributed. I began to take a gloomier view of things and to look for deeper and more basic causes that really underlay and shaped the  different events around me."

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Reprise: GUINNESS again

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 Delores Guinness-Mrs Lowell Guinness in her mother's Georges Geoffrey decorated apartment-Gloria Guinness portrait at far right.  

Robe du soir en organza de soie de BALENCIAGA, Perles et diamants de CARTIER.

  Philippe Halsman photograph

Revisiting the Splendor of Guinness. 

here at little augury last summer-

image from a previous little augury post here

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Moving Pictures: Written On The Wind

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"But you don't have to take my word for anything. Just try keeping your head clear and your eyes open."

 Film critic Roger Ebert, said of  Written on the Wind,  "To appreciate a film like Written on the Wind probably takes more sophistication than to understand one of Ingmar Bergman's masterpieces, because Bergman's themes are visible and underlined, while with Douglas Sirk the style conceals the message."

 above-the film in full-if you have a hour and thirty nine minutes & forty six seconds

image from the Spring Couture Collection of Valentino

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moving pictures: Midnight in Paris

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making appearances

  

"The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners."

Zelda & Scott

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

Hemingway,far left

 "Paris loves lovers, for lovers it's heaven above
Paris tells lovers, love is supreme, wake up your dream and make love
Only in Paris one discovers the urge to merge with the splurge of the spring
Paris loves lovers for lovers know that love is everything"

 Cole

Juan Belmonte

J’ai deux amours…..Mon pays et Paris.
(I have two loves…..my country and Paris.)

Josephine Baker

"America is my country and Paris is my hometown."

 

Gertrude & Alice 

Pablo

Djuna

Dali,2nd from l.seated. Buñuel,top far r.Man Ray, top far l.

T.S. Eliot

Matisse, seated

 

Leo Stein

Lautrec

Gauguin

Degas,at left

a must see-

Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris

Who’s going to come to this movie?”  “Nobody even knows Gertrude Stein anymore.” 

 

 “Woody felt that you didn’t really have to know those people to appreciate the film,

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director & Best Screenplay

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tea & Valentino

this week's VALENTINO COUTURE COLLECTION was one of the prettiest collection's of dresses I've seen-
So very pretty. 

“We want to do something which is about fragility and beauty,” said Maria Grazia Chiuri of the Valentino design duo.

When I read Hamish Bowles prose on the collection: Four-leaf clovers or posies of violets were printed over airy organza and shadowed with layers of tulle and lace, like Belle Époque tea gowns- my thoughts immediately went to the William Paxton's painting Tea Leaves.

the Freshness,  delicate Embroidery,  elegant slippers, ruffled high collars of  VALENTINO COUTURE

& a favorite girlhood movie My Fair Lady- a favorite period the Belle Epoque-& darling Eliza Dolittle dresses were designed by Cecil Beaton.

& of Audrey Hepburn herself.

& the women captured by the brush of Jacques Emile Blanche-& the pages of Fantasio & the Gazette du Bon Ton. 

Or the photographs of Baron de Meyer de Meyer photographed many notables of the day and his most beautiful subject- his wife- Olga, Maria Beatrice Olga Alberta Caracciolo.

photo by Maria Robledo Darcey’- Valentino- portrait of Comte Beaumont by Baron de Meyer

The Valentino designers cite Belgian painter Paul Delvaux, the portraits of Marie Antoinette, along with stills from the film Marie Antoinette starring Norma Shearer & the photographs of Deborah Turbeville.
I'll take Tea.

See the full collection and Hamish Bowles review at VOGUE.com here
read Sarah Mower's Preview here & see more photographs of the collection.

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What they wore: Yves ,Olivier, Jean Baptiste

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We mustn't confuse Elegance for being a Snob. - Yves Saint Laurent

Olivier Journu

portrait by

Jean Baptiste Perronneau 

more on this painting from the MET here 

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the NEW New Look

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Last week Sarah Burton unveiled her Pre-Fall Collection for ALEXANDER MCQUEEN. The details are pure Couture. As in the startling New Look from Christian Dior's first ever collection. Dior cinched the waist, softened shoulders and gave the ladies full skirts-very full skirts. Feminine. Romantic. Pretty.

Remember this was a war weary sartorial world.

Along with this New Look, women were ready to embrace the same femininity and softness in their interiors. Dior's New Look would hold sway through the decade and some of the most beautifully photographed women like Babe Paley became Swans. She would dress so well she was inducted into the Fashion Hall of Fame in 1958.  The patrician Marella Agnelli was Truman Capote's youngest & only European swan. Agnelli was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1963.These two Swans were referred to by Capote as "Numero Uno"-Babe Paley and "European Numero Uno"- Marella Agnelli.

“a gathering of swans, an aloof armada . . . their feathers floating away over the water like the trailing hems of snowy ball-gowns”  from the 19th century journal of Patrick Conway- that prompted Capote's naming of the Swans.

Capote would elaborate in detail on his swans in photographer Richard Avedon’s book Observations.
The most elegant and memorable interiors of the decade were not Of the decade- No, No-but of another era defined by elegance and romance- the Watteau painting,  the curves of a Louis XV fauteuil. When they did up their rooms however they looked for comfort and light-in this they differed from these more formal Versailles interiors.

Today- Lifestyles don't adapt nearly so well to Dior's New Look. What can we take away from Its idea?  Certainly how we live as much as how we dress is important.
Suggestion-Pare down some of the wacky 50's decor in rooms-add the comfortable fauteuil in an oversize check, a Indiennes print. Take cues from Billy Baldwin's decoration of the Paley apartments at the St. Regis. Refine.

Enter Bill Gaytten with his Spring Couture Collection for CHRISTIAN DIOR that is pure DIOR, & isn't that Appropriate? The beauty of the workroom as seem in The Day Before Dior- by Stephanie LaCava with photographs by Greg Kessler from T Magazine here

Voilà

Beautiful. Feminine. Is there something in the air besides Spring? Women are ready for the breezy prettiness of full skirts. Sheer sleeves and gloves- Yes please to gloves. No collection exhibits that femininity more than Christian Dior's Couture Collection for Spring & Summer in 1957 & no photograph captures that collection more than Cecil Beaton's ladder of  preening mannequins in an elegant ballroom of gilded chairs- and Yes, the uber- sophisticated freshness of a lacquered Louis XV settee in Soigné  grey.

& the SWANS- were still gliding over the ice skimmed lake of Narcissism.

Read the Met's Costume Institute Christian Dior Fashion Bio here
more Marella Agnelli here STYLE.com
more Babe Paley here VOGUE.com

photographs: the New Look silhouette 1947, Babe Paley photograph by Erwin Blumenfeld  from Vogue.com (sited above), Dior fashion in the French Room, & from the collection of images- from the pages of Vogue- Dior ads and drawings from Rene Gruau, Alexander McQueen's Pre-Fall Collection from Vogue.com here,  & the interiors of P Gaye Tapp, Vere Grenney, Billy Baldwin and Jansen and Sister Parish, the bedroom of Marella Agnelli, Turin Italy. portraits of Babe Paley and Marella Agnelli by Richard Avedon.
& 1,2-photographs by Greg Kessler. 3 -photograph by Pascal Le Segreta
photographs: The Spring 2012 Colletion of DIOR,  Cecil Beaton's photograph of Christian Dior 1957 Spring Collection, CZ Guest New Year's Eve 1956. image collection 2-Cecil Beaton's photograph of Christian Dior 1957 Spring Collection, Vogue.com Christian Dior Spring  2012 Couture

Once Upon A Time-when a Letter of Praise to a child was enough

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Lady Margaret Cavendish Holles Harley & her father Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford by Zinke 1727, at about age 12, from the Harley Gallery  here

 

A Letter to Lady Margaret Cavendish Holles-Harley, when a Child~ by Matthew Prior

MY noble, lovely, little Peggy,
Let this my First Epistle beg ye,
At dawn of morn, and close of even,
To lift your heart and hands to Heaven.
In double duty say your prayer:
Our Father first, then Notre Pere.

And, dearest child, along the day,
In every thing you do and say,
Obey and please my lord and lady,
So God shall love and angels aid ye.

If to these precepts you attend,
No second letter need I send,
And so I rest your constant friend.

Today it must be a hospital suite-a rap song- a movie role-a runway -a magazine cover.


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What they Wore: an Apfel & a Queen

'I live in the Dark Ages, the 17th century. Actually, I would have loved to be in Paris in the early 20th century when the Ballets Russes were there and Chanel was designing.' Iris Apfel

Maria Luisa de Orleans, Queen of Spain by Jose Garcia Hidalgo,1679.

a daughter's Grief

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"I can't put in words how it helped me with the grieving process, I was keeping him alive in a metaphorical sense – he was there the whole time I was making it." Jane McAdam Freud said of the 3ft x 3ft x 1ft terracotta triptych sculpture of her late father, Lucian Freud.

Freud's EarthStone Triptych will be unveiled at the exhibit Lucian Freud, My Father in Sigmund Freud's former dining room at the Freud Museum this month. Sigmund Freud was Jane McAdam Freud's great-grandfather. Genius is runs deep in the Freud family to be sure. The dining room was the place Sigmund Freud would introduce his new acquisitions of ancient sculpture as the "guest of honour".
Of her father's death the sculptress said, "I had to face the fact he was dying. In the end, I made it into a triptych because I think he had many sides."

"Dad has one eye open and one eye closed.
When you are drawing it is a way of measuring – so this portrait could be him working, close to death, dreaming or asleep, or all of these things."

the quotes & the photographs on this post are from The Independent here
read more from Jane McAdam Freud and her process here
“Lucian Freud, My Father,” at London’s Freud Museum, January 25 through March 4 of this year.

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