Glamour Girl
The world of fashion is full of beauty, glamour, fantasy, bravado, and, let’s face it, bull***t. The pronouncements of a few supposed know-it-alls on what’s in and what’s out (a constantly changing proposition, of course, else how would anything sell?), the artistic claims, the preening, the prancing, the phoniness, the exaltation of the freakish, the strained explanations of the inexplicable, the breathless exclamations of “genius!”
It all can get to be a bit much.
Then again, it can also be a lot of fun.
Especially when its denizens are uniquely themselves.
I guess most people these days will automatically think of Lady Gaga and her wild outfits. Or, for those of us of a certain age, Madonna. But other than those pop culture icons, the fashion eccentric is becoming extinct (or maybe I’m just being one of those fashion gasbags making a pronouncement!).
When I think of fashion eccentrics, I think of two people: Iris Apfel and the Marchesa Luisa Casati.
Iris Apfel has been written about many times over the past several years. An Upper East Side grande dame, she wears huge round glasses, and revels in bright, clashing colors, bold patterns, feathers, furs, and all manner of glittery, sparkly, spangly things. She is, in the words of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which dedicated an exhibition to her, a Rara Avis.
That exhibition has now moved on to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, as you can read about in this Boston Globe article, which also contains a delightful video interview with Apfel as well as scads of photos (including the one above by Bruce Weber).
The thing that comes across most profoundly with Iris Apfel is joy. Sheer joy. Since, as she and countless others have said, we only go around once, why not make that go-round as jubilant as possible? Why not wear joy as well as exude it?
I don’t know whether the Marchesa Casati exuded joy or not, but she sure looked like she was having fun. Dark kohl-rimmed eyes, with pupils dilated by tinctures from the poisonous belladonna plant, fiery red hair (sometimes dyed green—she was punk before there was punk), snakes as necklaces, a leashed cheetah as a pet—these were the attributes of the willfully wacky Luisa Casati (married to a nobleman, thus the high-falutin’ moniker “Marchesa”).
That portrait, done in 1908, is by Giovanni Boldini, only one of the artists who painted, fêted, fitted, and fawned over her. Picasso, D’Annunzio, Fortuny, Cocteau, Erté, Cartier, Augustus John, Man Ray, Colette, Schiaparelli, Chanel—all came under her spell. There have been several characters based on her in movies and books, as well as books written about her, none more thorough and illuminating than the two volumes by the most devoted keepers of her flame, Scot Ryersson and Michael Yaccarino, who maintain this fascinating website. Even today, over 50 years after her death, she continues to be a muse to designers such as John Galliano and Karl Lagerfeld.
Casati’s battle cry (which you can hear on that website) was, “I want to be a living work of art!” So not only was she punk pre-punk, she was also a performance artist before there was performance art. Sadly though perhaps not surprisingly, she died in poverty, in 1957, emotionally spent and virtually forgotten.
Now I confess there’s a certain Norma Desmond-esque element here—I mean, how much of such a person is inspiration and how much a freak?—but then I think back on a rich history of colorful characters who appeal to us, whether they’re the esteemed court jesters of the Middle Ages or the stock characters of Commedia dell’Arte or, closer to home, the drag queens of John Waters’ movies, the most fabulous of whom, of course, was Divine (fair disclosure—Divine lived in my house years before I came to Baltimore, and my bathtub is the one he bathed in, so maybe I’m channeling here).
There’s something about these people that draws us to them, that inspires us, that lifts us out of our workaday lives and quotidian concerns and lights up the air around us. I think that’s what distinguishes the true eccentric. And what makes them worthy, at least in part, of emulation and adoration.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/28/10 at 04:39 PM
