Summer On The Run

I can relate to the girl on the go in the amazing Elmer Batters photograph above. Over the last few months, I have been absolutely mad trying to prepare for a gallery exhibition while still venturing out on my almost daily hunts for all things beautiful and fabulous. I have been wearing many hats, both figuratively and literally.

My art making process and my vintage hunting and gathering process have many similarities. The art making process begins with a concept and then a pursuit resulting in an often frenetic gathering of images and materials. My eyes are trained like an aesthetic athlete to sort out the rubbish, to know when, where, what and why. When hunting for vintage pieces, I must be able to instantly size up whether I can see it being worn by a fantastically chic individual, and I must stress the word individual.

Below is a wonderful summer photo of Grace Kelly about to set sail, at least, in her imagination.

My art has taken me all over the world and given me a chance to peruse insane, labyrinthine flea markets where I have found countless treasures, some too genius to share, like in France, where I found my beloved original Paco Rabanne chain link bag, or in Holland, where I found a divine and perfectly cut leather jacket that I wore until the lining began to disintegrate into a long, black fringe that would trail behind me like a gothic pirate or an urchin in a Dickens novel. At my favorite flea market in Berlin, rusty dental tools share company with unbeatable Soviet movie posters and stacks of black and white photos of questionable characters in unsavory situations, often in uniform.

Below are a few gorgeous photos of the Austrian actress Romy Schneider.

I love this photo of Romy Schneider looking sexy and happy, caught in the paparazzi's flash.

I am the first to admit that I have never been the summery type. I am much more suited for drizzly days that cast silvery shadows on wet cobblestone streets, the type of weather that begs for velvet and greatcoats. Born in the wrong era, a constant refrain...

The summer does bring me a few sublime delights, such as the first bloom of my rare Oriental lilies. Their color, saturated and sublime, like fire roasted peaches in Champagne.

This summer, New York City is awash with superb art and fashion exhibitions. "Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a must-see for anyone interested in the history of fashion and the direct role art plays as an inspiration for a designer. My love of Elsa Schiaparelli's designs is well known, and this is a perfect and unprecedented opportunity to see into the grand dame of the surreal's wonderfully twisted mind. The exhibition runs through August 19th.

At the Whitney Museum, Yayoi Kusama wraps you in walls of "Infinity Nets" and dazzles with unbridled obsession, sometimes magical and sometimes frightening, but always genuine and inspiring. This exhibition runs through September 30th.

Below is a photo of a free spirited mother and child that reminds me of my earliest summer memories.

Summers in California were dry and smelled of wildflowers. Color abounded on the summer frocks girls would wear with wild hair and beachy tans and on children's faces with the designs of flowers and clowns painted on flushed cheeks by hippie chicks with braids and macrame bags.

I have an affinity for the psychedelic. I love bold patterns that have a hallucinatory kaleidoscopic effect. I am happy to see girls today embracing wild psychedelic maxi-dresses this summer. It looks so fresh and easy, but still dressed up. I love the pairing of wild patterns and ethnic jewelry topped off with the perfect floppy hat.

Summer in the city is all about garden parties held under lantern strung trees. These festive settings are the perfect occasion for dressing up. I prefer an exotic look, maybe wispy chiffon in the deepest emerald green paired with an armful of 1960s jeweled bangles, wild and gorgeous clamper bracelets with glittering, snarling animal faces, or Chinese silk pajamas worn with a coolie's hat and golden Moroccan slippers, what could be more chic?

Below is a beautiful 1920s photo of the Brooklyn born and bred vaudevillian actress Lilyan Tashman, fully embracing the Chinoiserie glamour I adore, perhaps she even graced a garden party right here in Brooklyn.

Keeping cool as temperatures rise is priority number one and everyone knows that the best way may just be a proper cocktail. This summer, we are spicing up the mix and then throwing it on ice in a concoction that we have created in honor of the best of summer fashion that we call "The Psychedelic Sizzler".

Cocktail Of The Week: "The Psychedelic Sizzler"

serves four

ingredients

4oz silver tequila

3oz pulpless orange juice

4tsp sugar

1c fresh raspberries, rinsed

1tsp sriracha

3oz chilled champagne

shaved ice

directions

in a blender, blend tequila, sugar and raspberries until smooth.

pour mixture through a fine sieve into a glass bowl

in a cocktail shaker, combine orange juice and sriracha, shake well

add champagne to orange juice and sriracha mixture

in four champagne flutes, divide champagne/orange/sriracha blend equally between glasses

to each flute, add shaved ice to about 3/4" below rim of glass

spoon raspberry tequila mixture over shaved ice equally between the glasses

Enjoy!

In closing, we have one of my favorite Japanese jazz bands - Soil & "Pimp" Sessions - with their classic song "Summer Goddess".

Fall Fashion Inspiration - Deco and Daphne

I'm back in New York. Autumn is in the air. I'm sitting in my car on a strange street in a strange neighborhood. It's early morning and I'm on the hunt for something great. 

For me, autumn is a sort of rebirth. Excitement is all around. The fashion collections are about to be presented, fall fashion week is about to begin and the art world is coming out for the slew of art openings beginning this week. 

I am a September girl and this week I will celebrate my birthday. I have decided to reward myself for a year's worth of hard digging, fabulous finds and lucrative sales with an amazing mid-century necklace by Hattie Carnegie that I found a few months back. I have been waiting for the fall to present it in the Pearl Modern store, but over time I have begun to love it too much to share. Sorry, jewelry collectors! Maybe it's my goth past, but I am really drawn to this necklace's cold grey metal heart. There is something about the steely color and industrial design that thrills me. 

Hattie Carnegie was quite a character. As legend has it, somewhere on the journey from Austria to the United States in the year 1900, the young Henrietta Kanengeiser asked another passenger the name of the richest man in America, to which they responded "Andrew Carnegie". Soon, the entire family changed their last name to Carnegie, an obviously fortuitous decision.

Below is my favorite Hattie Carnegie large gold plated mechanical goose necklace.

 
                                                                                                                                           Available here

Below are a few beautiful Hattie Carnegie ads from the 1930s and 1940s.

I love the change in seasons, when you take a breath and the air is tinged with a hint of icy-cold alluding to the cold winter ahead, coat weather. I adore dramatic clothing. I can't wait to throw a voluminous velvet cape on over a fitted 50's dress. A great, well-cut coat can be so sexy, an anticipation of what's underneath. 

Below is a beautiful photograph of the actress Ida Vollmar.

Below is a mysterious photo of the Russian actress Olga Baclanova, also known as "The Russian Tigress". 

Recently, I have been inspired by film noir costuming, the genius orientalist fashions of Paul Poiret, the draped dresses of Madeleine Vionnet and the designs of fashion houses Berthe and Premet. 

Below is a portrait of the great couturier Paul Poiret.

Below is a photograph of the legendary art doyenne Peggy Guggenheim in a luxurious, oriental patterned Poiret dress.

Below is a 1920 illustration by Raoul Duffy, "Croquis de Modes no. 7" from the Gazette du Bon Ton.

Next are three examples of Madeleine Vionnet's designs.

 Below are illustrations from Berthe and Premet.

There is something wonderful about the outfit worn by this Romanian girl in the photo below from the 19th century. I have always had an affinity for the peasant dresses that Yves Saint Laurent designed. This skirt reminds me of those iconic designs, with its beautiful pattern and luxurious drape.

Below is a photograph from the 1920s of the actress Anna May Wong. I love the drama of the long sequin mesh scarf worn as a headdress.

There was a wonderful retrospective exhibition this summer of the great couturier Madame Gres at the Musee Bourdelle in Paris. Below are a few photos and illustrations from the designers oeuvre. 

Below is an illustration from 1948 of an outfit from Madame Gres (on the left) and another from Elsa Schiaparelli (on the right).

Below is a fantastic Madame Gres ensemble from 1960.

I am very excited to visit the upcoming exhibition of Daphne Guinness' select pieces from her vast wardrobe presented at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The show runs from September 16, 2011 to January 7, 2012. This exhibition is not to be missed if you are at all enthralled with the mastery of the modern couturiers from Karl Lagerfeld to Alexander McQueen. 

In a decidedly goth mood, here are two photos of the perpetually dashing Rudolph Valentino, whose styling I am looking to for winter inspiration. This hat is gorgeous!

Below is a still from the 1921 film "Camille" starring Rudolph Valentino and Alla Nazimova.

Finally, being that it is September, one must start considering their Halloween costume. Inspired by the amazing photo below, I am considering dressing up as a manic and disheveled Cleopatra. Who will you be?

Treasure Hunting - Ignorance Is Golden

I have just spent a wild two weeks digging in gold country, not for gold nuggets mind you, but for other buried treasures. You would think that great finds would be few and far between in the middle of nowhere, but this trip has been absolutely brilliant! 

I started out early each day, navigating open highways, then two lane roads that eventually turned into spooky dirt roads punctuated with abandoned, rusted-out pickup trucks and fallen down clapboard lean-tos. 

These roads sometimes lead to a once grand Victorian mansion down a shady lane, glorious in former days, its gaily painted gingerbread now faded and peeling, its handmade sign announcing its new life as an antique store.

I love when shops bust at their seams with any and all manner of things. Like a natural high, I thrive on the process of sorting through the chaos, digging through the layers of time and brushing away the dusty silt of history to reveal the signature of a great master, once heralded, now forgotten, primed to be rediscovered by today's savvy collectors. 

It was down a dusty road like this, while following a sign directing me to the historic downtown that I came across some of my first fabulous finds. 

The historic downtown turned out to be a one block long transplant from the Old West. The first shop was jam packed with the same chipped china patterns that I always see, so I left. Across the street was a storefront with an impressive assortment of antique suitcases and vintage embroidered Western shirts. The shop was overloaded with frocks, frills and tarnished silver. After flipping through countless moth-eaten frock coats and unraveling lacy petticoats, I came upon a giant snake-charmer's basket overflowing with silk scarves. Like a clown trick, one after another, I pulled out psychedelic, op-art Vera scarves until I reached the bottom and pulled out the most magnificent blue silk Schiaparelli scarf, as voluminous as a schooner's sail. 

That same day, I decided to drive ridiculously far to a one horse town where I had once by chance happened upon an excellent antique fair. Unfortunately, it was Monday and I soon discovered that all of the antique stores were closed. I decided to walk the main drag, hoping to come upon an open shop so that I could quell my itch to find something new. Empty storefronts were now occupied with temporary operations selling well-used children's gear like duct taped strollers with wobbly wheels. 

Next door was an old-timer's steakhouse called the Palomino Room. It was around the corner from a delightful establishment named Miss Bunny's End-Up Bar.

I wandered into a Western wear store and asked the saleslady if she knew of any shops that sold "different kinds of things". She directed me two miles up Main Street, past Antelope Road, with the directions "you can't miss it, it's between the Holiday Market and the Long John Silver's". 

Inside, there was row after row of bric-a-brac on shelves that betrayed the location as having once been a convenience store. The first thing that caught my eye was a gorgeous black and apple green Murano glass ashtray. Its sexy, voluptuous form seemed to still be molten, the glossy green inside flecked with gold aventurine. This glass piece was sitting on top of a long, clear glass topped vitrine.  I scanned the vitrine with eagle-eyed intensity at the random, crappy jewelry and dimestore watches that you always see. Suddenly, as if hit in the eye with the beam of a pen flashlight, a glint of gold emerged from the muck. Sitting there on the top shelf of the glass case was a large, gold brooch in the shape of an Aztec warrior mask. 

This brooch was clearly made of gold, with finely cast features that were powerful and haunting, with a beard of golden teardrops. I turned the piece over to examine its maker's mark. On the back it read "Marbel, Mexico". This was to my surprise, astonishingly, a creation of the genius Mexican metalsmith Salvador Teran, cousin of the great Los Castillos brothers. Besides being one of the most accomplished silversmiths of his time (the 50's and 60's) he also created fantastic mosaic pieces for both the wall and the tabletop. 

                                                                                available here


This fantastic gold brooch was made especially for the glamorous Marbel department store of Mexico City. How such an unusually beautiful and obscure piece of jewelry history ended up in this glass case in the middle of nowhere next to broken toasters and faux Hummel figurines is anyone's guess. Discoveries like this keep me searching further out down the road. Needless to say, I grabbed up the gold fast, paid and got out of there. 

The next day, while exploring the country backroads, I discovered a small, nondescript shopping center with a grocery store, a bait and tackle shop and the ubiquitous Western wear and saddlery. In this strip mall I found a shop that was half animal shelter, half antique emporium. Serenaded by yipping, yapping and constant meowing, I set upon finding something interesting. On a tall shelf, crammed between souvenir ash trays from unsavory destinations and wind-up, sad-faced angel music boxes, I glimpsed a porcelain cream and sugar set that I immediately recognized as being both genuine art nouveau and as pieces of extremely fine quality. The patterning was refined. The hand painted lines and gold banding initially reminded me of favorite Egyptian revival pieces, but the motifs spoke more of a Viennese taste, therefore older. I gently flipped the sugar bowl over and was thrilled to see a hand painted mark that read "Jul. H Brauer, Hand Painted China". Knowing I had a rare treasure, I carefully removed the creamer, hoping that the teetering tower of ashtrays wouldn't come crashing down. At the cash register, I asked the shopkeeper/kennel operator if she knew anything about the pieces and she looked at the bottom of the sugar bowl and said "These aren't anything special, just some not-so-old dishes made in China". Laughing hysterically inside of my head at the woman's sheer ignorance in not knowing the difference between hand painted china and Made in China, I smiled, paid and left the store. 

This stunning cream and sugar set was designed and painted between 1910 and 1920 by the famous Pickard Chicago Porcelain Company and Limoges artist Julius Brauer, who after leaving Pickard and taking their best artists with him, started his own workshop, producing fantastically beautiful pieces that are now quite scarce. In my hands I held pieces of decorative art history, just waiting to sit proudly on a fine silver tray in a beautifully appointed room, appreciated for their elegant good looks and fascinating history.

On my last weekend in gold country, I woke early to attend two estate sales. At the first sale, after the crowd's mad rush through the door, I was astonished to see these people, whom I was sure were educated pickers, grabbing everyday household items like old Bundt cake pans and napkin holders, failing to size up the contents of the house, missing the fact that this woman, while she was alive, had amassed a very fine collection of Asian porcelain.

While making my rounds, I noticed a glass fronted china hutch that people kept running past without looking in. Inside was a beautiful set of fine porcelain rice bowls and condiment dishes, as well as a lovely, small hand painted Chinese tea pot. When I flipped one of the rice bowls over, I saw that it had a yellowed label from an auction house with a lot number and an inscription that read "Japanese Imari, over 100 years old". The pieces were in fabulous condition, their indigo and rust decorations clear and vivid.

At the second estate sale, I made my way around the many rooms, circling back countless times as to not miss anything. I noticed a cardboard box containing various perfume bottles. On closer inspection, I realized that they were clearly crystal. When I asked about them, the person running the sale said that no one was interested in them because they were plain glass, without decoration. I took all four, as well as a flowered hat box containing a wonderful, veiled white French hat. When I got the perfume bottles back to my room, while examining the largest one, I was extremely excited to see the identifying mark of early Baccarat crystal etched into the bottom. This perfume bottle, insultingly accused of being plain and unadorned glass was, in fact, a very fine and beautiful antique French Baccarat crystal perfume bottle from around 1905 that had been passed down and clearly loved by this woman, kept and treasured for over one hundred years.

One of the other perfume bottles had a beautiful design with a distinctive wave shaped stopper. The bottle itself felt wonderful in the hand, its sides softly grooved to fit a woman's fingers. On the bottom of the bottle, it was marked "Zofaly, France". After much research, I discovered that it once contained the famous scent named "Passion de Zofaly" from 1946.

These rare treasures, temporarily lost to time, often misunderstood or overlooked, are mine and my vintage collectors reward for weeks of digging, not for gold, but for beauty.

If you have any stories of similar discoveries, we would love to hear them!