Cecil Beaton: Memoirs of the 40's. Part II

part I

This post is the second part of my review on British photographer Cecil Beaton's diaries from the 40's. (The third one will be the last).

Even though I chose only extracts in which the author writes about fashion related people, it doesn't mean the book is about fashion, because it is not quite exactly.
The book is a wonderful window on Western culture and history during the 40's, and because many of those people were artists, therefore some of those people were fashion related.

I've had problems finding images for the post, what really surprised me, as I thought being key in our current fashion culture would help them to have a place in google images or the like, but it seems it didn't.
I hope this little review brings them back to memory, i think they really deserve it.

[please note that the images have been taken from internet and had nothing to do with the book. I just wanted to support the text with pictures that recreate the story]

* Cecil on Madame Dilés, manager of Paris Vogue studio at the time and before the II World War:

" [...] Then a great contrast: to the Vogue studio for my first shot at Paris fashion photographs for many years. Here again was Madame Dilés to give one a hug of welcome. Madame Dilés, a small birdlike woman with raven's-wing hair and huge thrush's eyes, has managed the Paris Vogue studio and its often difficult "star" photographers through untold phases of fashion. When I first came to Paris on assignments for the magazine I was unable to understand the language and proved inadequate in dealing with both technicians and my illustrious sitters.

But Madame Dirés at once became my friend, and no matter how difficult an editor might be to please she always had an encouraging word. As the years progressed, and my knowledge of French improved and my style of photography became ever more elaborate, Madame Dilé's task increased in difficulties. Yet at a moment's notice, and on a last-minute whim of mine, she would produce fishnets, statues, waxwork figures, cemetery wreaths, and any imaginable assortment of objects as part of my neo-romantic or surrealistic compositions. She did not quail at the thought of going out at midnight to bring back to the studio and old seller of violets from the Madeleine or lobster in pots from the market. Nothing ever surprised or daunted her."

Cecil Beaton: Memoirs of the 40's. page 27

* Cecil on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas and their friendship with a "simple young man named Pierre Balmain"

" During the years of cold and shortages, Gertrude and Alice became friends with a neighbor at Aix, a simple young man named Pierre Balmain, who had a taste for antiques and a natural bent for designing women's clothes. In fact he made with his own hands heavy tweeds and warm garments for Gertrude and Alice to wear during the hard winters.

Now he has opened a shop in Paris. At his first showing to the press Gertrude and Alice arrived with their huge dog, Basket. Gertrude in a tweed skirt, an old cinnamon-colored sack, and Panama hat, looked like Corot's self-portrait.
Alice, in a long Chinese garment of bright colors with a funny flowered toque, had overtones of the "Widow Twankey", a comic transvestite from the vaudeville stage. Gertrude, seeing the world of fashion assembled, whispered: "Little do they know that we are the only people here dressed by Balmain, and it's just as well for him that they don't!" "

Cecil Beaton: Memoirs of the 40's. page 37

Noovo Festival for Fashion & Photography by A. Esteban Librero, part II

part I

My personal trip to Noovo Festival in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. (part II)
by Angela Esteban Librero.


The afternoon of November 1st was the first day of the Noovo Festival, starting with the opening of the photography exhibition co-curated by Diane Pernet.
On my way there, I had time to enjoy Santiago's sun and nice weather as well as it monuments.

My favorite photographers were Miguel Villalobos, Daniel Riera and James O'Brien, who I had the pleasure to meet and admire their work with. I don't know why but I did not take any images except of Miguel Villalobos.










Then the organizers of the festival did the official presentation and speeches. On the right you can see Diane Pernet between the directors Jorge Margolles y Charo González who are responsible for the Noovo Magazine as well.



Then we had some wine and Spanish "aperitivos" with friends before having lunch at San Francisco Monastery.















Graham Tabor and Peter and Christopher from Peter Pilotto



Sara Sáez from YoDona, Ramón fashion editor of Neo2 and L'Enfant Terrible.

Dori, accessories designer for Zara Woman and Basic and Yolanda Muelas, Director of Metal magazine.

November 1st was also the first night for the international fashion show featuring Three As Four, Eley Kishimoto, Patrik Soderstam, Boudicca and Gareth Pugh.
They built a tent in the middle of the Plaza Quintana, which I think it was a mistake because they could have done the shows in one of the amazing cloisters of San Francisco Monastery.
To me, it was one of the best nights of Noovo; those designers set very high standards for the rest.
My favs: Boudicca and Gareth Pugh, I was very greatly surprised by the androgynous looks of Patrik Soderstam, beautiful Three As Four prints and silhouettes and I would love have seen not just S/S Eley Kishimoto.
Here are some photos from the shows, enjoy!

Three As Four:






















































Gaby, Angie and Adi



Eley Kishimoto:
















Marc and his sales representative, who has been working for them for 2 years and now she is leaving, that was her goodbye trip!




Patrik Soderstam:

The artist of the head pieces was modeling and opened the show filming the audience with small video camera nude and just wearing that pink piece around his waist...


















Patrick





Boudicca:















Gareth Pugh:




























After the show we had some cocktails....

From (L-R): Yolanda Muelas from Metal, Miguel Villalobos, Gemma and Henderson from Gareth Pugh (wearing boots and skirt from the show!!! Gareth doesn't need to know that!), Peter Pilotto and Graham Tabor from FLY magazine.


Three As Four team














Patrik Soderstam and the artist that opened the show with the video camera.














Dino Dinco, who was exhibiting his work in the morning, and his friend and artist Gustavo.

A Girls Night and YSL

When Wendy Brandes realized I was a NY-based blogger like her, she very kindly contacted me to arrange a girls night some day.
I was rather excited and amazed as she is one of the funniest fashion bloggers I read and her blog is one of those that lift my day when things go wrong.
Along the way, Jenn from In Your Fashion was "added" to the party and so three days ago the three of us met at a very fancy restaurant uptown.
I arrived late, shame on me, and the two lovely women were waiting and talking and they were so nicely dressed that i felt suddenly a what-the-heck-i-am-doing-here with my jeans, and my hoodie and one of the first bags I designed when i was 16 years old ... Actually the maitre d' stopped me at the door (i never told the girls) to ask me"what do you want?"; he probably thought I just wanted to use the bathroom and the bathroom was "for costumers only"...

The food was amazing but I can't say the same of my talking as there was practically any. I wasn't very talkative that night, so dazzling Wendy and sweet Jenn (just like a Lou Reed song) did the talk and I found myself in awe at their knowledge in all kind of high class matters. They talked and I ate, not bad, right?.
Wendy was wearing, among other amazing pieces, one of her famous poison rings and i regret that I didn't take any picture of her jewelry because it was really impressive and brilliant.

The time passed by very quick and it was time for me and Wendy to go to our appointment with YSL...
Jenn accompanied us to the French Institute where the movies was about to happen and then we said bye to her and she took a cab back home.

In a comment made by riz in Brandes' blog about the great French couturier, she mentioned the feeling she had when watching the docs at IFC in NY: "he was so lost and depressive he could barely speak..." And there's very little I can add to that.
The two documentaries we saw, Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times and Yves Saint Laurent, 5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris, portraits the life of the artist through his friends and persona in the first, and his job in the latter.
The first documentary was unmistakably my favourite and I'm still remembering with shrives the talk of the great couturier for almost 15 minutes about his life, his work, his love for Bergé, his friends... Pierre Bergé does one of the most memorable talkings in the movie as does Betty Catroux, whose extract I could find in Youtube.

extract of the movie Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times

by David Teboul

extract of the movie Yves Saint Laurent, 5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris
by David Teboul

Catherine Deneuve does her part at the beginning of the movie.

Unfortunately the second documentary wasn't as pleasant as the first one, therefore Wendy and me left before its ending.
I found very annoying to see the hypocrisy around Saint Laurent, witnessing how everyone around would say "how wonderful" to everything just for the sake of it and never giving a sincere answer.
Isn't it sad to get to a point in which people is afraid to tell you the truth? So here we left and Wendy went with me to the subway to make sure I was going to be ok which it was such a lovely detail. Thanks W.B. :)

Wendy says bye to me with the program of The Fashion Month at the French Institute in her hands ... Salut!

Noovo Festival for Fashion & Photography by A. Esteban Librero, part I

Those of you who follow Wendy Brandes' blog or Jen's In Your Fashion might already know about the meeting these two lovely women and yours truly had last night in uptown NY.
Please forgive me if I don't post about it today but I would like to publish what my friend and Metal magazine's NY fashion coordinator Angela Esteban Librero wrote for bobble-bee about her experience at the noovo Festival for Fashion and Photography in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where she went with really great people and where she met all those artists I admire and whose work I truly respect.
I couldn't go myself because I was called at the very last moment to do a gig but she kindly brought the good news and wrote about them for me.
Here it's only the first part... more to come.


My personal trip to Noovo Festival in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain.
by Angela Esteban Librero.

Noovo Festival, hosted by Diane Pernet and organized by El Correo Gallego, featured 30 fashion designers from around the world including: Gareth Pugh, Boudicca, Three As Four, Eley Kishimoto, Patrik Söderstam, Henrik Vibskov, Txell Miras, Luxoir, SinPatron, Jan iú Mès, Romain Kremer, Peter Pilotto, Petar Petrov or Mikio Sakabe. In photography, we could see the work of Michael James O'Brien, Miguel Villalobos, Daniel Riera, Pierre Gonnard, Dino Dinco, Ari Versluis, or Ana Laura Aláez.

There were as well special presentations from Magazines like FLY DVD , B-guided and fashion, style and beauty festival You Wear It Well. Before going further, I would like to introduce to all of you the beautiful city of Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia, which is an extraordinary, historic, monumental city and pilgrimage destination.

PART 1

All checked in, Miguel Villalobos, Graham Tabor and I started our trip to Santiago. While we stopped in Madrid to change flights we discovered that there is a Chapel in the new airport!!


Once in Santiago a bus took us to the hotel; Miguel V. happy to be there and Dino Dinco and his friend and artist Gustavo admiring the view from the bus.
In the bus we met the guys from ThreeAsFour, Peter Pilotto and Gemma and Henderson from Gareth Pugh (you can only see their heads!).













Once we checked into the hotel we went to take an "aperitivo" around the city with the lovely Peter Pilotto's duo: Peter and Christopher.
This part of the country is know by their "Empanada Gallega", sea food and Tetilla cheese and that is exactly what we order! How delicious is to be in Spain!

Later in the evening we joined the rest of the group for diner at a sea food restaurant. I arrived late and everyone was already eating…

From left to right starting from the image at the bottom: Gemma and Henderson from Gareth Pugh, Graham Tabor from FLY and Miguel Villalobos, in the center, the amazing Diane Pernet, Robb Young (in charge of the international Press), Peter and Christopher from Peter Pilotto and Mark Eley of the design team Eley Kishimoto. Later on ThreeAsFour guys and Joseph from Seven NYC joined us for drinks.


The gorgeous Diane Pernet posed for me because I wanted to take a photo of the great jewelry she was wearing (the snail was made for her by Miguel Villalobos).

Blogs That make Me Think

The fact that bloggers are creating their own awards is something quite sweet because it means the respect we profess to each other and the value we give to our peers for their time in keeping us informed.
The first award that fashion bloggers started was Rockin' Girl Blogger whose "inventor" I still don't know but whose impact in our busy lives was such that it run like gunpowder through the fashion bloggosphere: smiles, happiness and lots of compliments to each other.
Dear Mahret at F&Art awarded me in August and soon thereafter Stella et Moi did as well. I couldn't be more surprised and happy because "to win" is one of those verbs that don't abound in my vocabulary.

Now it's the Thinking Blogger Award, whose "starter"' this time I know (please follow the link), a reward for those blogs that make us think, which is, mind you, the best award one can gets.
For this reason I'm so grateful to Moni at Miss at La Playa for thinking of me (and please visit her awesome project The Fashion Box) and for giving me this lovely surprise.
Now is my turn to give back the happiness, and so I hope to do ... The winners of my award are:

* Mode et Utopie. This graduate student and newcomer in the fashion bloggosphere has become my fav in just less than three days. She makes me think and sends me news from the side of fashion that i love so much

* Wendy Brandes Jewelry. Wendy makes me think through laugh and there's not better way to do so. Shes funny in the smartest way. Wendy, please don't lose EVER your sense of humor.

* Style Bubble. Should I even say why? I wonder if she hasn't got this award yet but in any case, she is the one and only and without her inspiration my fashion life wouldn't be as intense as it is nowadays. She is the best fashion writer I know and her blog is a true inspiration and pleasure everyday.

* Independent Fashion Bloggers. But basically this award goes to its creator, my dearest Jennine, who started this amazing project with all her generosity, hoping to make us more aware of our little world. This project has made me think about fashion blog issues more than anything else.

* Disney Roller Girl. Her witting is fantastic and the way she expresses fashion facts is very inspiring. She, as Susie does as well, keeps me linked to London and its whereabouts in the most interesting way.

As always, and unfortunately, I have less awards to give than needed as there's other bloggers that feed my mind in a daily basis like F&Art, Parallel Entity or Voluminous and Billowing. So I hope someone invents a new award soon to continue giving and paying my honors.

SANS paroles

It might seem old fashion at this point to talk about a Winter collection when the spring-summer collections are blooming everywhere. But I just discovered the work of the design team Lika Volkova & Alessandro Devito whose label, SANS, took them to be one of the 6 women's wear designers winners of this year Ecco Domani Fashion Fundation's award, a grant of $25,000 (17,241 Euros) to help producing a show during NYFW.
Their designs got my attention for their simplicity and shape-investigation at the same time. The wide range of different volumes and silhouettes is fantastic, and so it's the fact that they only use eco-conscious fabrics created from natural resources such as bamboo and soybean. Who did it say that "progress" couldn't go hand with hand with "nature"?
Their SS:08 collection is up in their website already but i feel mellow and rather to covet winter than summer...

* SANS, Autumn-Winter 07-08

Vintage at $19

Sometimes I get so much spam in my bobble-bee email that, I'm very ashamed to admit it, I don't even dare to open many of them.
But some of them are NOT spam at all, just the subject is not very "inviting".
Chic Today magazine sent me an email with one of their "offers" and I said to myself, "more free subscriptions no, please...". But I was so wrong.
For some reason I opened the email and the "offer" was there, but not the one expected.
Chic magazine is selling a DVD under the name Fashion Flashbacks! with fashion videos from the 60's and 70's, and only for $19.

i don't know if the video, (1h total duration), is worth it or not but the price is very good and the teaser they publised (the first collection of designer Marc Bohan at Dior, who took the control of the French house when YSL, designer at the time, was called for military duty) is very promising. So i might be thinking seriously about it.
If any of you have purchased it already and know more about it, please tell, we're eager to know.

More Bergdorf Goodman For You

I went to the MET this morning to see the amazing exhibition Tapestries in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor, which I hope to speak about very soon and if you are in the city please DO NOT MISS.

Coming back home I passed by Bergdorf Goodman and saw they were removing the windows displays of the front side of the building.

They weren't as spectaculars as the ones I posted before- they showed the Cruises collections and everything was too Spring-y (butterflies, birds...) for the season.
But I had the pictures taken anyway (at the same time as the others) and decided to dig up in my computer to find them and show them to you, considering the success that these windows have among us. They are some piece of "history" now...

PS: In the last trio of pictures, the first one is the only one that don't feature a cruise collection: it's Harper's Bazaar 140th anniversary and Bergdorf Goodman pays homage to it featuring the most famous covers of their history.

Brett Day Windham for Bergdorf Goodman's Windows display

I feel a little like miss Holly Golightly approaching Tiffany's in the morning every time I leave my house late at night to go to Bergdorf Goodman to take pictures of their windows. I stick my face in the glass and it's hard for me to move: I'm in awe.

Now you wonder why on Earth I do go at night instead of choosing anytime during the day I might be passing by. The reason is very simple: at night there's no one blocking the view and the reflections in the glass are none whatsoever. It's the perfect time.

The right side of the building is always the most creative one and it's always the last I choose to photograph (I like to keep the good things for the end).

The artist Brett Day Windham is the person behind the great soft sculptures that surround the mannequins in the current displays. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any information about her anywhere.