More Inspiration

A designer I'd never heard of until now is Stéphane Rolland. He's had his own line since 2007 and has worked as a costume designer and for Balenciaga.

My very favorite of his Haute Couture Spring 2011 collection is this amazingly draped gown. I am so unknowledgeable about fabrics...looks like crepon, crinkle cotton, but this can't possibly be a simple cotton, but has to be a silk of some kind.



I love its Edwardian-like shape. I'm imagining it in a dark, but vibrant blue. Something to day dream about while I'm at work...

Today's Inspiration

The creations of John Galliano for Christian Dior Couture Spring 2011 leave me weak in the knees. After a week of film noir at the Noir City Film Festival, I'm ready for some non-murderous beauty.

These are my favorite three in the collection. I love the strong dramatic look, subtle color, and clean lines and swoops.







Style.com tells me that this collection is "...Galliano's salute to René Gruau, the illustrator whose work for Christian Dior in the forties and fifties created the house's most iconic imagery..."



This one was not created for Dior, but, as the name suggests, for designer Marcel Rochas.



Happy that I have some days off at the end of the month and can work on my dress project...have to keep my inspiration high until then!!!

Beautiful Images Wednesday - Illeana Douglas as Pauline de Rothschild

Last night I was looking through old magazines; flipping through a few trying to remember why I saved them. This New York Times Magazine from Fall 2000 was one I saved because of a beautiful piece about Pauline de Rothschild by Mitchell Owens with photographs of a fav actress I haven't seen in a movie for awhile, Illeana Douglas. She posed as Pauline in some amazing outfits and she's never looked better, more poised, more regal, more beautiful.

Photography by Brigitte Lacombe, styling by Barbara Turk

Mitchell writes, "My closets...burst with file boxes stuffed with love letters and diary entries, creased photographs and grubby engraved menu cards, newspaper clippings, and family reminiscences recorded on tape, even a scrap of silvery brocade from her bed. They are the building blocks of a biography still under construction, a story that beings in the bedroom of a rented flat in the 16th Arrondissement and ends in the lobby of a California hotel...."

"...Pauline de Rothschild was style personified. What she read, whom she loved and where she traveled...how she lived is still part of the vocabulary of stylish living." "She arranged her world like nobody else. She really was an artist, which is why people are interested in style are still mesmerized. It's all about individuality, which today is in short supply."

"...de Rothschild's unconventional mode of living remains the penultimate statement of life as a carefully considered work of art."

San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Part I

Another weekend of silent film! It was San Francisco Silent Film Festival's 15th year, yay festival!! It's a great time to surround yourself with some of the best aspects of the past: a solid excuse to pull out the 1920-30s outfits from the closet, gorge on movie after movie, and take in the beauty of the Castro Theatre.

Being Tuesday morning, my post-festival depression has lifted a bit and I can, with a clear head, contemplate all the fabulousness of the weekend.

Three films where the highlight of my weekend: Metropolis, Haxan, and Man with a Movie Camera. The music was a big part of the success of these films, so kudos to the evocative and drop-dead beautiful music for Haxan by the Matti Bye Ensemble from Sweden and the amazing, spectacular, dead-on, and sometimes overwhelming music for Metropolis and Man with a Movie Camera by the Alloy Orchestra.

The tireless and always smiling Margarita Landazuri, festival writer and program editor, said about Man with a Movie Camera, "It's like I'd never seen it before!" I felt the exactly same way. Dziga Vertov's documentary about a day in the life of a Russian city (actually shot in three cities: Moscow, Odessa, and Kiev) contained visuals that are engaging for what they show of little daily details of life in 1929: waking up in a typical apartment, getting ready in the morning, at the beauty salon, inner city transportation, leisure time, at work, lots and lots of visual information plus shots of the cinematographer at work. Then add the Alloy Orchestra to bring a sense of urgency and movement to all the shots of people doing and going and you have an experience that is simply amazing.

I loved the shots of the cameraman on a motorbike.

The topper - the film with the Alloy score is out on DVD! CORRECTION! I just realized that the version of the film seen at the festival is the brand new, full-length version with a slightly revised score to cover the additional footage. I understand this new version with the Alloy Orchestra is due out on DVD and Blu-Ray November 2010. Ack! What am I saying! I've confused Man with a Movie Camera with Metropolis!! It is Metropolis that is getting the new version released with the extra, complete footage!!

This DVD of the old version (not complete)