Lost and found

Recently reissued, La Lampe Gras makes its Australian debut at this month's designEx.

Originally created in 1921 by French engineer Bernard-Albin Gras. Production ceased at the outbreak of World War II.



Found via World Interior Design Network's blog.


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The real House of Beauty & Culture

Originally the collaboration between shoe designer John Moore, fashion designer Christopher Nemeth and jewellery designer Judy Blame. Like gods, they fashioned their world, both collectively and respectively, in their own image.




A House of Beauty & Culture cropped white denim jacket, 1980s, the back inset with knitted panel Casa Vaselina together with a bracelet made from slivers of antler, by Judy Blame, with a pair of high-waisted black Demob trousers.



John Moore, London 1981






Legendary stylist and designer Judy Blame.




Detail of the sculpted style of Christopher Nemeth, who has long since decamped for life in Tokyo.


There is a lot of peer pressure today, that didn't exist before. There weren't any reality tv fashion shows back in 1981, to tell you what was cool. Popular opinion/taste is tyrannical. There is so much pressure to be cool today. Ultimately it is a marketing conspiracy . They are selling cool. It sells. And, there isn't anything necessarily wrong with it. Just acknowledge what it is though, and acknowledge there is a difference. What is today mostly isn't art though, it is fashion. There's a difference between what John Moore and people of his generation were doing back then, that really doesn't exist anymore. - from John More Defined a Generation by Joel Nikolaou



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I, Quentin

Quentin Crisp: A Film By Denis Mitchell (1968)

Made in 1968 after Crisp's initial success with The Naked Civil Servant and broadcast in 1970 as part of Granada TV's World In Action series. It was this exposure that led to The Naked Civil Servant being made into a film.


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Now playing: Sting - Englishman In New York
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Preaching to the choir

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness. - Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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Now playing: Jason Mraz - The Beauty In Ugly
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More Grace

My Jamaican Guy


William's Blood




I am guessing La vie en rose


Devil in My Life


Beginning of the encore - the bowler becomes a disco ball.


Slave to the Rhythm


All images courtesy of Christian Newton

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Now playing on iTunes: Grace Jones - Well Well Well
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A force of nature

Grace Jones, Telegraph

There is always the possibility that things won't live up to one's expectations. This was most certainly not the case with Miss Jones and her Hurricane Tour last night.

She opened the show from a raised platform that slowly lowered her to the stage as she sang Nightclubbing. Dressed in a sculpted black jacket, footless tights, and a skull cap with a spike of feathers, the lady looked as if she meant business.

With each song her basic costume of leotard, footless tights, and high (but not outrageous) heels was transformed with a singular addition. This is Life, which followed Nightclubbing, saw the addition of the disc-like mohawk pictured above. For My Jamaican Guy we were treated to a raffia coat with raffia fringe and a hat that resembled the spire of an Eastern temple.


By The Grace of Goude

For the first encore number Miss Jones appeared in this crystal encrusted bowler while lasers beamed down on to it as she sang. Which song? I'm not exactly certain. For nearly two hours, I was in a state of euphoria adrift on a wave of margaritas.


It was a fabulous party. Everyone wore black. And, nobody touched the savories.

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Now playing on iTunes: Grace Jones - William´s Blood
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Beauty merchant

Mme Helena Rubinstein

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Now playing: Frankie Avalon - Beauty School Dropout
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Déjà vu

The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it.
Diana Vreeland

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Now playing: Grace Jones - La vie en rose
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Torero

Nineteenth Century Spanish Suit of Lights
Suit of silver thread on silk with glass beads. Exceptional workmanship. Deaccession in the 80s from a Museum in Seville, Spain.




Yves Saint Laurent's 1979 Fall Couture Collection was inspired in part by the corrida. In particular, the two ensembles to the right most strongly demonstrate the iconography.



Yves Saint Laurent 1979
The shocking pink evening cape owes its influence to the muleta, the small red cape used in the final act.

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Now playing: Malcolm McLaren - Carmen (L'Oiseau Rebelle)
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Old acquaintance

Lillian Hellman photographed by Bill King for Blackglama.

The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be. - Lillian Hellman

As the black eyed peas finish cooking, I just wanted to take a moment to wish all of you the best for the coming new year. As I was saying to someone the other day... it hasn't quite turned out the way I had planned, but I have certainly enjoyed the journey. I was originally referring to my life, but it did strike me as rather apt for here as well.

Happy New Year

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New romantics

Portrait by François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard, 1802.



Portrait by Jacques-Louis David.



The récamier, named for the celebrated French beauty and social figure, Juliette Récamier (1777–1849), née Jeanne Françoise Julie Adelaïde Bernard. At 15 she married, in name only, Jacques Récamier, a wealthy, middle-aged banker some 30 years her senior. Her fashionable salon was, from the Consulate to the end of the July Monarchy, a gathering place for some of the most influential political and literary figures of the time. The most celebrated of her liaisons was that with Chateaubriand, to whom she devoted the latter part of her life. Mme. Récamier counted amongst her circle the very influential writer Mme de Staël and the literary critic Sainte-Beuve.


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Now playing: Édouard Lalo - Symphonie Espagnole, Op. 21: III.
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Paradise lost

I decided to sell everything because the collection doesn’t exist if he doesn’t exist, said Pierre Bergé regarding the sale of the collection that he and Yves Saint Laurent had amassed over the course of their long relationship.



On a telephone table in the library of the Rue de Babylone apartment: the couture house’s original logo, hand-lettered by graphic artist Cassandre, from 1961 (not for sale). The bleached-oak bookcases are by Jacques Grange.

The Treasures of Yves, Vanity Fair.




Yves Saint Laurent in the grand salon of his apartment on Rue de Babylone with model Sibyl Buck, October 27, 1995. They are surrounded by the Surrealist-period Léger painting The Black Profile (1928), sold by the artist’s widow, and Jean Dunand’s 1925 Art Deco brass-and-lacquer vase, among the treasures to be auctioned at the Grand Palais, in Paris, February 23 to 25.

The Things Yves Loved by Amy Fine Collins for Vanity Fair, January 2009.

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Muse

Tina Chow in Chanel jewelry


Tina Chow by her friend the illustrator Antonio (aka Antonio Lopez)
Both images very kindly supplied by Dr. Gilmour



Tina Chow photographed by Cecil Beaton in 1973.



Photographed by David Seidner in 1988 wearing her crystal and bamboo jewelry.



Tina Chow by Andy Warhol



Tina and Michael Chow




The American beauty of Japanese and German extraction that was Tina Chow. She was the muse of minimalism: sleek, clipped hair, minimal makeup, a daily uniform of white T-shirts, black Kenzo trousers, and maybe one of her bamboo-wrapped crystal jewels. The epitome of all that was fresh and captivating about the 80s.

Sadly, her life would be cut short by the specter of the 80s, AIDS. Tina Chow died on 24 January 1992 at the age of 41.

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La bohème

The Bohemian is by nature, if not by habit, a cosmopolite, with a general sympathy for the fine arts, and for all things above and beyond convention. The Bohemian is not, like the creature of society, a victim of rules and customs; he steps over them with an easy, graceful, joyous unconnsciousness, guided by the principles of good taste and feeling. Above all others, essentially, the Bohemian must not be narrow minded; if he be, he is degraded back to the position of near worlding. -    Ada Clare, known to New York in the 1860s as the Queen of Bohemia.

Mrs Fairbairn (Nancy Cunard) by Alvaro Guevara 1919


Tell me whom you haunt, and I'll tell you who you are. - Surrealist André Breton


Nancy Cunard - Heiress, Muse, Political
Idealist by Lois Gordon, who said, My goal is to give Nancy Cunard what seems to me to be her rightful place in history.
Listen to Gordon discuss her book on NPR's, All Things Considered.



Nancy Cunard by Man Ray


Nancy Cunard (Nancy with bracelets) by Man Ray 1926



An important and original copy of Negro, from Bolerium .

Nancy Cunard edited and published Negro in 1934. A 900-page anthology of black history and culture and a call to condemn racial discrimination and appreciate the . . . accomplishments of a long-suffering people. Its contributors included Theodore Dreiser, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes.



All that remains is a furious sense of indignation. - Nancy Cunard



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Warhol Superstar

Joe Dallesandro



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Graphic design

Jean-Paul Goude Retrospective

Ever since the poster and advertising assumed a major part in our culture in the twentieth century, great creative artists have made a huge visual impact on the feeling of every era that they have filtered and formulated. The most outstanding graphic artists gave life and expression to their epoch, making an indelible mark on our memories. - from So Far, So Goude by Jean-Paul Goude

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More Rose Cumming

The original document for one of Cumming’s signature patterns, Banana Leaves—offered in five colors, including green and rust—was also found in the archives. Created by applying painted leaves to cotton, the design was first hand-printed in the Caribbean.



Bird in Circle, a linen hand-printed by Rose Cumming, features the vibrant contrasting colors that marked her textile and interior work. The fabric, simpler and more abstract than her chintzes, was never put into production by her company. It was rediscovered after Dessin Fournir acquired the firm and is available in gold, green and six other colors.

From a Different Cloth: PIONEERING DECORATOR ROSE CUMMING’S BOLD TEXTILE DESIGNS ARE REDISCOVERED
Text by Jeffrey Simpson/Photography by Billy Cunningham
Published April 2007, Architectural Digest

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I have read the book, now I must see the film

Madeleine Castaing's Leves, Photograph by Rene Stoeltie, Copyright 2008.

I have been in torment ever since I discovered that there was a documentary on Madeline Castaing. Madeline Castaing by Christopher Flach, premiered earlier this year in San Francisco and in New York. According to Wendy Moonan, at The New York Times, the DVD can be purchased directly from Mr. Flach. I hope she is correct.

Madeleine was brilliant, witty, talented, very clever and very creative, but she was also very manipulative. Behind the glamour there is something very dark and terrifying in her personality. - Jean-Nöel Liaut author of Madeleine Castaing: From Montparnasse to Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Note - An Aesthete's Lament did a post about this very film back in February.
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Now playing: Madeleine Peyroux - Dance Me to the End of Love
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Some are just born with it

Mr Isaac Hayes, the man who defined cool, has died.



Sam & Dave performing the soul classic Soul Man, which was written by Isaac Hayes and his songwriting partner David Porter.

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Come into my life bonny Jean

11 Montpelier Street was my first port of call when I began my decorating journey. I had hoped that their charming chintz would lend a certain polish to a decidedly unpolished client. At the time they also had the most exquisite collection of plains, small patterned monochromatic chintz, that were produced exclusively for them. Sadly, those are now nothing more that a memory.

In 1961 Jean Monro, daughter of the famous London Decorator of the 1920s Mrs Geraldine Monro, decided to reproduce and market the favourite designs her mother had used over the years, some of which were already being produced exclusively for the decorating company. Thus Jean Monro Ltd. came into being.

In 1998 Jean Monro Ltd was acquired by Turnell & Gigon.


JUBILEE
Taken from a wood-block design of 1853, this design has been given a fresh, naturalistic colouring. The original was so dirty as to make the colours unworkable for such a brightly-coloured flower as the Sweet-Pea. This fabric was named to celebrate 75 years of fine decorating by Mrs Monro Ltd.


HOLLYHOCK HANDBLOCK
A very handsome, large-scale bouquet of Hollyhocks, hand-blocked on heavy 100% linen. The original printer's "fent" was a hideous colour and has not been reproduced. Probably mid 19th century, 73 block applications are needed per repeat of this design.



AMELIA
A climbing design of Roses and Plumbago on a stippled and striped background. Very little alteration was made to the original document
This is a particular favourite in the pink/tan colourway. Which I recently used on a deep buttoned chaise lounge.


POLYANTHUS
The first design to be produced after the founding of the Company and still a "signature" today. Clearly there was an error in the naming of this design as the flowers shown are Auriculas.
The moiré background of this print was typical of their exquisite collection of plains.


LILY/AURICULA
This beautiful design of 1855 is printed using some 24 blocks which have been used for over a century. 96 applications are required to complete one repeat of the design. For many years printed only with a blue ground, in 1983 scraps of 2 further colourways were found and the second colourway added to the collection.




HYDRANGEA/ROSE
Adapted from a block-printed chintz dating from the early 1840s when this type of climbing design was very popular. Roses and Hydrangeas were often featured in Victorian designs and the stippled ground was also a favourite.

Another favourite, which was the first chintz I ever used when I began decorating.

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