Thursday 29 March 2012

Venice – Experiences



Venice is the city of love and death in literature and in movies. My favorite movie about Venice is “Summertime” from 1955 with my beloved extraordinary beauty Katherine Hepburn. I have seen it a hundred times. Enjoy it. They’re still selling the red goblets…

Our hotel was full of Belle Epoque funiture and a bit shabby, too.



Lying in this bed we recognized that the ceiling was completely made out of golden mirrors, very hot.

Of course Venice is much more crowed than in the old movies, but it still has its magic. We tried to move anticyclical to the tourist masses and we found a lot of lonely places that way. First we stept into a little gay shop full of funny dramatic decoration and opera music. I loved this little rabbits hat:


And the town made me an unexpected birthdaypresent – the Diana Vreeland Exhebition. I just finished reading the “Allure” book about the great trendsetter, so I couldn’t wait to see something from her work on HARPER´S BAAZAR and VOGUE or something from her spectaculary privat life.



Sadly taking photographs was forbidden inside of the bad illuminated Fortuny Museum. But see what I did anyhow:

One of her favorite private outfits back in the 30s.

What a wig! I need this for OPALICON.

My friend bought me the exhibition catalog full of great fashion illustrations from the 40s to the 70s – love it, have to post some scans soon. If you like Diana Vreeland too, watch the great movie “Funny Face” with Kay Thomson playing the character Meggy Prescott – who is inspred by Diana.


The only plan I made at home was to visit the palazzo of Peggy Guggenheim, because I read two books about her and I wanted to see her collection of sunglasses, her collection of earrings and something that illustrated the excentric picture of her that I had in my mind. But there was nothing like that.

taken from here

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection  “just” included great paintings and sculputes from the last century. But they had the original paintings of Max Ernst, an artist I adore and so did Peggy, she was in love with this beautiful man for a while.

Max Ernst:The Robing of the Bride from 1940

Thank you Peggy, as a lady born with a silverspoon in hand you did well to promote all these great artists and your palazzo is the most beautiful. So RIP next to your puppies.


After we had seen all this it was time for good food, and the Italian knows how to do. One of the pink ones was my birthday cake. Enjoyed whit lots of Aperol Sprizzes, THE Venize drink!,


To round up the experiences, we had come a bit closer to the death theme in Venice. For that we had to go to the Cemetri – an island just full of graves. It was so special and silent there. I admired the pictures on the graves from peoples gone by in the WWII time.

The Entrée


The green field on her grave was 
filled with little blue forget-me-nots.

The Russian art critic and former of the Ballett russe Diachilew 
had lots of flowers and ballett shoes on his tombstone.


Sitting on a bench in the shadow we talked about our lives and what we both want to change in the next year: more effort to the career, losing weight and say once more to our loved ones at home, how big their meaning is to us.

We left the “Island of the Dead” via watertaxi, felt the sun and the wind in our faces a bit more intensive as we did before and we had a deep happiness in our hearts about beeing just alive!

Venice, I will surely come back…

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Venezia – travel outfits


I’m suffering on wanderlust all the time. Travelling means a lot to me, it clears my head and refills it with new insprations of every sence. I like city trips with accommodations in exlusive hotels as much as I enjoy camping with just a backpack and no planned route. 

But when you travel you have to wear comfortable clothes which need no ironing, mostly flat shoes and you have to reduce the assesoiries to a packable minimum... so it is not about the full glamour.

When we visited Venice I could pack a bit more:

 Dress: bought in Rome, years ago
Sunglasses: Orsay
  

 Blouse: custom-made from Charming Styles
Pinafore skirt: nudeedudee
Seamed Tights: Pamela Mann


 
 Cardigan: H&M
Pants: Heydey
  

 Leopard Socks: H&M
Wedges: my proven ones from Istanbul years ago
Bamboo Bangles: Bijou Brigitte, Fleamarket
Green Bakelite Bangle: etsy
Water: Canale Grande
  

 Dress: TaraStarlet
Bag: thrifted
Matching Clipons and brooch: 50s vintage ebay.uk


 Polo neck sweater: Forever 18
Leopard Skirt: Chic Star
Hanky in Hand: I suffered on a hard hay fever

More from the Venice-experiences we had in the next post.

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Grannie's Treasures

Last month, my grannie passed away and left a lot of things
I must say I have to sell now. But there where some treasures I´m going to live with...

 50s tea table set

 50s African plaster mask

and this cute little lady, she is my favorite!

Friday 16 March 2012

Lunchbreak

Today the sun showed up - finally!
So I can show you a outside outfit-post taken in my lunchbreak.

Dress: Jasmine Guinness
Tights: Pamela Mann
Boots: Anna Field

Thursday 15 March 2012

Making of a Glorious Basterd


The last client for OPALICON was a lady with a preference for Quentin Tarantino movies. So we made her dream come true and changed her into three different characters: Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill and Diane Kruger in Inglourious Basterds.

As we all know, Inglourious Basterds played during the WW II. I always love to create new OPALICON-characters and build a new world out of decoration, clothes and make up - but to create something from my favorite period of style - the 1940s -  was a special delight.

My guideline: 

                                                  


taken from here

For the top I had to recreate her special blouse-collar. So I bought a simple blouse in a second hand shop for less. I cut the cuffs off, ironed them, closed the hems and sewed one cuff on the other in the special waveshape. I used a fat pencil to hold always the same spaces. I sewed it all by hand - I love to do crafty things with my hands.
For the shooting I just rolled the regular blouse collar under and fixed my creation with pins on the jacket. It turned out well:



Our model had short dark hair, glasses and wears no make up normally. So the changing-effect was huge.
The Costume
Clipons: 40s vintage

Hair
Blonde longhaired wig, which I used for the nurse scene, too

Make up
Foundation: La roche Posay
Eyeshadow/Eyeliner/Lipstick/Powder: Kryolan
Rouge/Facecountur: Zoeva
Eyelashes: Art Deco

We changed the writing on the card in the hat. Can you remember which great female Tarantino-character J. Brown was?