Friday, 5 November 2010
MILLY ..." La Foret Enchantée"
MILLY-LA-FORET.- Purchased in 1947 with Jean Marais, Jean Cocteau’s house in Milly-la-Forêt was the theatre of creation for his most important works. Born within these walls were the unforgettable words of Testament d’Orphée and Requiem, along with numerous paintings, drawings, and pastels. He lived the last seventeen years of his life here with his companion, Edouard Dermit. From the death of the poet in 1963 until 1995, the latter watched over the objects that had made up Cocteau’s daily surroundings. With its ideal position near the town centre, the harmony of the buildings and gardens, and the aesthetic qualities of the property, Jean Cocteau chose to make his “refuge” a work of art in its own right, in keeping with his image, his reveries. Less than an hour from Paris, he created connections in Milly-la-Forêt between the space and his work, integrating set elements from his films – sculptures especially – into the gardens.
The Maison Jean Cocteau is an important expression of the artist’s tastes and private life, now offering the public, after five years of preparation, a perfect reconstitution of the bedroom, office, and main sitting room, which notably contains a masterly canvas by Christian Bérard. The renovations, led by architect François Magendie and the team of Dominique Païni-Nathalie Crinière (who organised the Jean Cocteau exhibit at the Centre Pompidou in 2003), also allow for the display of a selection of drawings from the Cocteau estate, which includes, in addition to the best of Cocteau, works by Picasso, Warhol, Modigliani, Buffet, Blanche, Man Ray... Photographs, manuscripts, letters, newspapers, and posters recall important moments from the life and work of Cocteau (film, theatre, music, childhood, adolescence, wars, friendships...). On the ground floor, a screening room shows films by and about the poet. Light dining is available under the pergola in the garden, and a museum shop concludes the visit.
The garden, orchard, and woodland (two hectares in all), entrusted to landscape architect Loïc Pianfetti, are also ideal places for the visitor to stroll. The main elements of this exterior are the omnipresent water, crossed by numerous footbridges, the colours of the flowerbeds (roses, peonies, lilies...), the fruit trees planted by Cocteau, and the neighbouring chateau.
Pierre Bergé, who holds the moral rights to Jean Cocteau’s work and is the president and patron of this project, acquired the property in 2002, with the support of the Ile-de-France Regional Council and the General Council of the Essonne department (both of which were also partners in the refurbishing), in order to create a place to remember and rediscover Jean Cocteau’s work.
Just outside town, the Chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples, with its frescoes by Jean Cocteau, houses his tomb. The opening of the Maison Jean Cocteau gives new resonance to his epitaph: “I remain with you.”
Monday, 1 November 2010
ELSA SCHIAPARELLI
In Paris, Schiaparelli - known as "Schiap" to her friends - began making her own clothes. With some encouragement from Paul Poiret, she started her own business but it closed in 1926 despite favourable reviews.[2] She launched a new collection of knitwear in early 1927 using a special double layered stitch created by Armenian refugees[2] and featuring sweaters with surrealist trompe l'oeil images. Although her first designs appeared in Vogue, the business really took off with a pattern that gave the impression of a scarf wrapped around the wearer's neck.[2] The "pour le Sport" collection expanded the following year to include bathing suits, skiwear and linen dresses. The divided skirt, a forerunner of shorts, shocked the tennis world when worn by Lili de Alvarez at the Wimbledon Championships in 1931.[2] She added evening wear to the collection in 1931, and the business went from strength to strength, culminating in a move from Rue de la Paix to the Schiap Shop in the Place Vendôme.[2]A darker tone was set when France declared war on Germany in 1939; Schiaparelli's Spring 1940 collection featured "trench" brown and camouflage print taffetas.[2] Soon after the fall of Paris on 14 June 1940, Schiaparelli sailed to New York for a lecture tour; apart from a few months in Paris in early 1941, she remained in New York until the end of the war.[2] On her return she found that fashions had changed, with Christian Dior's "New Look" marking a rejection of pre-war fashion. The house of Schiaparelli struggled in the austerity of the post-war period, and Elsa finally closed it down in December 1954,[2] the same year that her great rival Chanel returned to the business. Aged 64, she wrote her autobiography and then lived out a comfortable retirement between her apartment in Paris and house in Tunisia. She died on 13 November 1973.
Schiaparelli was an innovative woman and fashion designer. She had a lot of "firsts" in the fashion industry. Her career began with her introduction of graphic knitwear to the world of fashion with knit patterns and emblems. These led to her fanciful prints of body parts, food, and many more unusual themes. She was the first to use brightly colored zippers, appearing first on her sportswear in 1930 and again five years later on her evening dresses. Not only was she the first to use brightly colored zippers, but she was also the first to have them dyed to match the material used in her garments. She was the first to create and use fanciful buttons that looked more like brooches. They came in the shapes of peanuts, bees, and even ram’s heads. In Parisian fashion, she invented culottes, introduced Arab breeches, embroidered shirts, wrapped turbans, pompom-rimmed hats, barbaric belts, the “wedge,” a soled shoe that would trend through the 20th century and into the next, and mix-and-match sportswear, the concept of which would not be fully recognized for another forty to fifty years. While her innovations in fashion design were numerous, it was her creation of the runway show as we know it today that was most influential. Her modern idea of a fashion show included a runway with music and art, and the use of elongated, shapeless women as models. She believed that this boyish figure would best display the clothing. Many people do not realize the true sum of her impact on fashion and the fashion industry.(wikipedia)
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