For us, our biggest project yet. For our city, who needs this. For our designers, who make life beautiful. For our kids and all future lovers of fashion, who deserve a place to dream about clothing. IT’S TIME TO DRESS UP AND MESS UP! COME SHOP WITH US TODAY & ONWARDS.
When you’re a writer, it’s not often that your work gets to be the cover girl. Thank you @panandthedream for the highest honour and for letting me write my dream piece: an imaginative, indulgent essay about the history of Rococo clothing. It is so very close to my pink, pulsing Rococo heart. There are innumerable treasures inside this stunning publication—please find a copy to flip through if you love Marie Antoinette even half as much as I do…
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‘Marie Antoinette had her considerations. These were not matters of the state, nor were they cogitations upon her newfound role as queen. Her considerations were what she called her undergarments; two sweeping, stiffened semicircles which she tied around her waist to thrust the hips of her dress outwards. She wore her inner life in layers: chemise, corset, considerations. White cotton, whalebone, and pale flesh were held tender within the shining conch shell of her dress. Her dress was an imposing thing, a wall of pastel silk that rose up from the floor then funnelled down to a narrow bodice and sleeves, which then splashed open into great cascades of lace. It was threaded with candy- striped ribbons, roped with strands of pearls, and sprinkled with rosettes. This bounty of adornments would have threatened to pull her down into the ground, were it not for her hair which rose like a great powdered Cumulus cloud, blooming upwards with diadems, ostrich feathers dyed pink, and, in one memorable instance, a model sailboat. Whatever considerations she had were rendered invisible.’
‘My wardrobe is a museum’! Thank you so much @vogue.polska for featuring me, my colourful home, and the inner workings of my closet in the December issue—what an honour. Beautiful pictures by @emmaharries 💖 (can someone in Poland send me a copy?!)
A few of my favourite pairings from Costume Art: a 1960 Pierre Cardin look and an 18th/19th century reproduction of a bust of Minerva, wet drapery from Ancient Greece and Di Petsa, Master Heinrich of Constance’s 1310 sculpture of The Visitation in which Mary and Elizabeth have crystal cabochon bellies and a Loewe resin breastplate by Johnathan Anderson, a Yiqing Yin dress and an 18th century medical mezzotint by Dagoty, Rudi Gernreich’s ‘Pubikini’ and an Egyptian statuette of a nude woman from 1550 BCE. Garments and artifacts that defy words, really, and stand as proof that clothing has been essential to human expression since the dawn of our time and is worthy of our observation without caveat or comparison. 🤍
Domenico Gnoli: beloved by Miuccia Prada, Marc Jacobs, Diana Vreeland, and all other obsessive, detail-oriented fashion types (myself included) who would rather draw the same collar a hundred times over than consider a vast and unfeeling landscape to be ‘the whole picture’…you must go and see for yourself ! ❤️
IS FASHION ART? (And does it even matter?!!?) this month in the newsletter. Interspersed with images of the museum favourite (and always striking) ‘The Tears Dress’ by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí, 1938. ⚡️
