the balkanization of fashion

I had never been to a catwalk, so yesterday’s Sarli defilé at S.Spirito in Sassia was a première for me, thanks to my friend GB. We were not spared our share of crepages de chignons among ladies fighting for their place on the bench next to us. Tom Ford dashed en grande forme to the director’s cabin in order to see and not be seen. The sponsor’s logo, a constructivist roman she-wolf, très mutine.

The clothes were indeed impressive. The inspiration came from the universe of René Gruau, and the sartorial prowess of the couturières and petites-mains behind the scenes emerged from fan motives, plissés, floating silks, elaborated accordeon shoulders and origami collars. Mmmh…I quite like this one, a balancing act between 1940s Katharine Hepburnesque boldness and vague reminiscences of the 80s without bulky excess, with a blessing of shogun aesthetics on top. And I have already the shoes and gloves that go with it!

Emerging markets were taken care of and carefully targeted with the fabulous fan motives, once more inspired by Gruau…look at this fabulous rising sun…

When you think to these couturiers you realize that the Sarli and Valentino of this world are agé gentlemen, and what will be the future of these brands, these archives, this craftmanship going forward?

Similarly to our best monuments and triumph arches, their creations are icons of design of their respective ages. But if you read the press the recurring words are polemics and clash, especially surrounding the organization of the events. Some designers flock to Paris, other to Milano, Rome seems unable to canalize efforts.

Therefore the contrast with Berlin’s “raw energy” (Suzy Menkes, IHT) is even stronger.  Sweatshirt-trimmed sportswear is no “mikado overcoats with fan-shaped sleeves, boucled palettò brushed with yellow feathers”. But the polemics de basse cour sound like an insult to the hands who are behind those plissés and jais body-tattoos.

Berlin seems to take good care of its street-wear designs and budding couture, even when not ripe yet. When fostered and encouraged, talent can blossom. On the other hand, Rome’s blasés institutions are too busy in navel-gazing and leave the juicy craftmanship treasures unnoticed, while pushing balkanization scenarios a step further. Very Visconti, very Gattopardo indeed. Splendeur et décadence vs. bread and butter?

Photos: Repubblica, Alta Roma Alta Moda, Bread and Butter

Kastanien, Kapuziner season

Even with the current S-bahn chaos in Berlin, it was a pleasure to get to Berlin late at night on Wednesday. Kastanien trees lining Berlin streets are gorgeous in this season, by day but also by night, the strong graphic pattern of the trimmed leaves against the nordic sunset sky. U-7 actually had just a bit of a “pendler” traffic pattern (umstiegen 3 times), but the only inconvenience was extra 10 minutes for the journey from the airport to our Kiez. The air was full of flowery scents from the neighboring park…

Once more a busy 72 hours of ticking to-do lists while hopping on and off the U-bahn, one moment with sun and blue sky, at the following station with heavy rain and strong wind shaking the linden trees vigorously. Always have a waterproof jacket at hand, was the takeaway of these 3 days in Berlin.

On Friday morning I allowed myself a break and went for a trip to Mitte. First of all I stopped at Gendarmenmarkt, I was curious to see the Shan hairstyling cafe’, but I forgot the look up the address and ended up visiting Joop’s Wunderkind store. The first time we visited Berlin 7 years ago, Quartier 219 and Jean Nouvel’s Galeries were the newest additions, and since then I didn’t particularly fancy visiting the boutique street, with so much to discover in Berlin. An illycrema and I moved on.

Like a country mouse going to visit the cousin city mouse, I went to have a better look to the gallery streets, Auguststrasse and the like. Had a look to the Do you read me? magazine-store, where I could discover more about a new magazine called Abstieg und Fall whose advertising haunts Berlin streets in these days. I was curious but I preferred to have a look at the beautiful AKRIS book. We need beauty in our lives. Especially with such capricious weather.

Talking about beauty, I was lucky not to miss the work of Nanaé Suzuki at the Stella A gallery…beautiful watercolours staging Kapuzinerkresse, flowers which flood the blaconies of our neighbors in the Kiez and which I used to grow with success (also to the benefit of my salads) when I still had a garden in Triest.

I was curious to explore Gipsstrasse after the Monocle article and talking about Made in Berlin, I found something I like a lot: the atelier (in the real sense, ie the laboratorio) of Claudine Brignot. I love the skirts and jersey tops she creates. Especially this black heavy satin and gray sweatshirt trimming skirt of the Berlin Maritim collection. To me what she does is “distilling powerful German aesthetics”! Moreover her clothes seem also very comfortable. Ok, I am not on the way to “memérisation” but I love clothes in which you can move around in the city, work, go for an aperitivo, catch a plane or a bus or even hop on a (motor)bike, not those merely decorative clothes and heels who are suited only for being (trans)sported in air-conditioned cars. Because form follows function etc etc!

Tacheles, Clärchen Ballhaus, everything is around the corner, but my journey in German design was far from over, I went back to work in the afternoon. You will know more by visiting our sister blog, Aflatinberlin…

Menkes sees green shoots in Berlin

It was a pleasure today to discover in the International Herald Tribune an article about Berlin, not covering politics, or elections, but…fashion. The occasion was the Bread and Butter fashion show at Tempelhof.

Suzy Menkes writes about Berlin. You’ve been warned! In the same page of the online newspaper “Haute faces uncertain times” and news on the Lacroix tears. The energetic, maybe confused, but definitely vital and vivid green shoots of a new era? Maybe some shoots are still very green…but Michael Sontag does things I’d love to wear tomorrow, between a meeting, a plane and an aperitivo at the Astor Lounge.

“How long will it be before Berlin comes up with designers whose creativity has a unique voice?” asks Menkes…probably a while according to Joop (“Berlin has good productions, good red carpets, good parties, better hangovers, but the fashion still needs some work.”). But maybe we’re at a turning point, and times are ripe to “distill that powerful German aesthetic”…

Berlin raw energy

• PermalinBBy SUZY MENKESBerlin raw energy

by Suzy Menkes

Published: July 6, 2009

BERLIN — Scattered slabs of concrete, still daubed with their original graffiti, are pertinent reminders that 2009 marks 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the cultural revolution that came with the fusion of the city’s East and West is even more visible as arty photographs in smart spaces, music pulsating from abandoned government buildings and fashion that reflects this hot, hip and happening city.

don’t G8 me, please…

Mobile phones scrambling. Delegations with all their buro-paraphernalia filling the lobbies at Via Veneto’s hotels. Dante’s Inferno crowds at Fiumicino airport. First ladies planning sightseeing in Rome.

The coming week seems even messier. Rome could be hit by the tsunami wave of sherpas, delegations and bureaucrats escaping from l’Aquila if nerve-racking (and security apparatus stressing) earthquakes shake the G8 show a bit more.

Also, we’re out of Schengen, for a couple of weeks we’ll be needing to show patte blanche and brandish our passports for any tiny transfer within compact Euroland.

Don’t G8 me, please…

And let the poor tortoises alone, they seem trapped into the logo’s fishing nets. Like L’Aquila citizens, unwilling extras in this tragi-comedy.

Heat and SoundCloud

The tropicalization of Rome is proceeding at good speed. In the park close to home, villa Torlonia, we have already a colony of green parrots. No kidding. Every afternoon we get our tropical storm at about 5pm. Sometimes with hail, buy hey, you cannot ask for perfection.

I hear from friends that also Berlin is quite warm in these days. I am a bit nostalgic of the perfect early spring weather in Moscow one month ago…linden trees, fresh wind, sun…That’s why now I found quite refreshing tuning in with the Sound Cloud and listening to Rob Babicz during these hot summer evenings. I must admint that Astor / re-work is a great piece or babicz style. Pale folder/hollow is great..

Of course I am now on SoundCloud (any idea on how to upload the groovy widgets? ) and I found there gorgeous remixes of my favourite Depeche Mode and Jazzanova tracks…

back to fundamentals…yours, essentially

There has been quite a hot debate in the press lately on the concept of “most liveable city”. Mercer’s, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Tyler Brulé’s Monocle and Micheal Skapinker on the Financial Times (”There is more to city life than convenience”), everybody joins the fight.

The ranking is indeed tricky. In the 80s and early 90s I remember Triest being always ranked as “one of the wealthiest cities in Italy”. So why so many graduates were leaving the town? Maybe because Triest is an old town from a demographic point of view, and the number of empty nestlers who had T-bonds in the bank were a measure of wealth? Or because in Triest many people go to the theater(s)  on a regular basis and theater in Italy was considered elitarian? Italians are supposed to be fond of calcio, right?

I guess that focusing on what motivates a CEO to live in London or Shanghai is not representative of a city’s attractiveness. The possibility that kids, students, elderly, families, single women, with various levels of income can share a metropolitan micro-cosmos makes what is called “a city”. Using public transport, going to school, making use of parks and gardens, sharing the public space safely, job opportunities, careers in the public, private, no profit sector. Gateway of ideas, incentive to share them. Mix of different age groups. But also nationalities, orientations.

Definitely, opportunities matter. But opportunities are not only a better paid job. They may be also a good public education system. A reasonably priced real estate market. Transportation which is not clogging citizens in their cars for 2 hours every working day (and weekends). Opportunity means not only salary, but also the value for money that can be bought with that salary in a specific city.

So, among all rankings, I looked at my personal fundamentals and you know what? Monocle’s ranking makes sense to me. It is skewed towards environmental policies, and I guess this is becoming increasingly important going forward. After all, we breath the same air, regardless of our disposable income. Living in gated communities (by fences, like in Brazil, or by policies, like in London) is not my cup of tea. The problem is…too many cities are growing fences at the moment…

democracy, activism and social networks

There!

It’s exactly what I wanted to elaborate yesterday in my post (but we had an invitation to dinner and had to rush ).

The economist Loretta Napoleoni tells it very clearly today on D di Repubblica. “Is internet shutting activism down?”. Check out the article here (and babel-fish it, it’s in italian), issue n.652, page 19.

Basically, what she says is that participation (to democracy) is not the same as being connected online. You do not discuss themes which impact society in the same way if you are at dinner with friends, online or in a public gathering (a political party meeting or an assembly). Some things need to be done by being physically there, in the street.

On the other hand, two important events this year.

The Obama election. He’s no Gandhi, ok. But maybe this time the grass-roots movement (especially for the financing of the campaign) really made the difference. And the fact that he was online. The web was not a sticker on this candidate product. It was part of him.

Second event, the Tehran events on Twitter. When I read an account of the precise events of Paris, May 1968, what struck me is the fact that demostrants had to resort to Ancient Greece methods to communicate, namely: run. Run between one barricade and the other, bringing messages and information on where the police was. Even in the WWI trenches the transmission of messages was more efficient. But hey, these boys and girls could just use telephone boots and tennis shoes. Now Twitter brought us the events unfolding in Tehran before CNN. If we want to talk things italian, since we are approaching another G8, it’s on YouTube that you can find the reportage of what really happened in Genoa that night at the Diaz school and in the barracks of Bolzaneto (english witnesses).

I guess that social networks should be an additional mean towards participation and information but not an objective per se. I blog, I twitter therefore I can act. But sometimes the illusion of “feeling in touch with others” can be predominant and annihilate participation. As Napoleoni says “in the end, you are in your pajamas, at home. Alone”. So get in those jeans and get out and meet those people.

Because the Divided Cities exist. The fact is that the wall is not a vertical one that you can stumble upon when walking. It’s horizontal, above our heads. And we move like little ants or busy bees under the slab of grey reinforced concrete that we call “democracy”.

PS
I just saw by browsing on bora.la that the foreign minister Frattini is Twittering from the G8 in Triest…beware…

Berlin Wall, Italo Svevo, social networks

This week Italian students concluding the High School with their Matura exam had 3 main themes to choose from in order to do their dissertation en italien:

a) the state of democracy in Europe 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall

b) “La coscienza di Zeno” by Italo Svevo and the importance of psychoanalysis

c) youth cults: social networks and facebook.

The last theme was picked by 33% of the students, the second by 18% and the first by 7.9%.

Quite an intriguing tryptic…psychoanalysis/social network/democracy…and not only for me. Read on Bora.la more intriguing stuff.

Is facebook the Alice in Wonderland interface between psychoanalysis and democracy? Are there new walls, not so apparent like the Berlin one, and disguised by an apparently unparalleled “access” to information?

The Berlin wall had one advantage. It was physical, and visible.

moscow: crimson red (continued)

The weather we had in Moscow is exactly today’s weather in Rome. Blue sky, sun, fresh wind, late-spring temperatures bordering on “cold” in the evening. The Triest weather, without the sea.

The reds of the Red Square were particularly bright under such light and made the recent “PEMOHT” or “remont” (refurbishment of buildings) even more shiny.

MeinMann was in Moscow for a long week, myself for just a weekend, so my comments will not stretch far. Just a bit of color on the surface of things.

teasing you about Berlin (and Rome)

A very packed week, but filled with interesting meetings and impromptu social clips and plenty of food of thought beyond the bread and butter rat-race…witty discussions, clever views, that’s one of the pleasures of Rome in June: friends but also business partners flock to Rome and make it more exciting!

It’s  friday night. The Monocle copy is under my arm. This one is a gift by an Aficionado (or addicted, just like us) to both the magazine and Berlin. So even more appreciated! The weekend starts and a light breeze is mitigating the baking-oven heat. The groceries will be delivered on our doorstep by the e-shop. Jazzanova is spinning the records. Perfect…

We are going to take it easy in Rome, which is something quite unheard of for locals during the week. We morph in tourists for the weekend, and like them, we are not commuting to Tuscany in tight air-conditioned car-sauros wearing Tod’s loafers but rather seize the best of Rome in Birkenstock style. We’ll be spotting the first cinema en plein air venues, and we planned brunches in the shade for today and tomorrow.

Friends in Berlin and London: please send us a bit of proper rain showers and we’ll give you plenty of sun we can part with. Reading the morning papers in yet another good cappuccino place with the metallic smell of dust being moist by the first fat drops of rain is a pleasure in the summer.

And yes, we are reading this issue’s Editorial by Tyler Brulé, “Observation” with a connoisseur’s smile…in August we’ll be at our buen retiro in Berlin…can’t wait…

So here we are, teasing you with the preface and a nice illustration from the Editorial, tempting you to discover why Brulé is now observing “love at the second glance” Berlin…

“What would win your heart - an alluring first impression or a tempting parting glance? For Tyler Brûlé it was the latter that had him dreaming of relocating the Monocle team to Berlin and bagging a summer retreat”.

Source: picture and quote = Monocle