Dear Friends…

I owe you all an apology. I’ve been extremely unwell, hence missing for an month and a half, without a warning. Some of you expressed concern, which touched me a lot. I won’t go into details, but I hope I’ll be fine now.

Anyway, let’s not stay on such a note, for as surprising as it may be, things happen even when I’m not around. I know, I can’t quite believe it myself. And what happened? I hear the sleepiest of you wonder.

Shoes happened! And especially this pair of Camilla Skovgaard:

Skovgaard FW 2011

The connection between the leather of the ankle strap and the upper material is not exceedingly virtuosic, yet it works in its brute way. But the sole geometry is really good. I’d love to try a pair and check whether function follows form here. And I love the rust. This is as close a shoe can be from the poetry of decaying cargo ships.

As I lay…

… sniffing platinum salts in order to recover from the Dionysiac abuse of Swabian Riesling, and from the nerd overdose of talking three days with a handful of peeps who you know are maybe a third of the living people remotely interested in what you do and understanding it, as I lay (said I) I realize it’s been a while since I posted.

I owe you.

And while I try to cure an intoxication by another intoxication, I thought I should share with you some of the top dope of the history of music. Watch out the mystic fumes, you may begin to feel you have a soul before you know it. Here it i: Johannes Ockeghem’s Deo Gratia. 36 voices Canon (Motet, actually). This stuff is seriously good. Listen to the circling voices at the end.

And while we’re at it, why not ask ourselves some deep sartorial question. Assume you’re invited by this most refined friend, a choir director himself, for a concert of Flemish 15th century sacred music in the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent. The place is beautiful, the performance will be excellent. You need to match. But such spiritual events call for a very toned down femininity. But you wouldn’t want to look like a nun either: you’re not one, you respect them, and literalness is at best a risky business, when it’s not downright stupid.

I found exactly what I need in Missoni’s collection:

Exactly the right amount of Christianity

Of course, I wouldn’t be caught dead in this aberration of a boot. But this little pair of Thakoon would do a perfect job at keeping the whole outfit suitably in tune with loosing myself in the counterpoint subtleties of the early Flemish Renaissance.

Keeping the correct notions. Forgetting about wellies

 

I woud certainly add a coat. Ghent is often chilly. A discreet biblical allusion, sheep on my shoulders, and this parka trend defused by wearing it on not too soir clothes. That’s what I call being attentively inattentive to fashion trends.

Iceberg, unsheepishly

Good people…

… I can’t tell you how pleased I am when I read all the carefully expressed thoughts everyone is sharing there. It makes me proud! Please keep it coming!

And now I’ve said it and I feel all… something, and without further ado, I’ll proceed to the topic of the night. Jules Verne. I hope my faithful non-French readers had an opportunity to read this (in a good translation). It’s scifi, but from the 1880. He invented a future and did not miss the mark that much, in some ways. He was absolutely the 19th century guy, absolutely enthusiastic about science and especially mechanics. Reading him and others writer sharing the same spirit (Doyle is a good example) one is projected in a most curious temporal structure, a past future. A future where everything is mechanical, wood, copper, brass and steam.

So here you are, and you’re dating that guy who’s a steampunk fan, and he invites to some Verne’s event, and since you want to match the context you’re wondering what shoes you will wear. The cliché is to go Mary Poppins. Laced booties, bobbin heels. But you’re not the cliché girl. And you’re in trouble, because the industry seems to think that steampunk is not a viable market segment, so designer are not that much into the Nautilus for inspiration. McQueen had a genius stroke last year,

Steampunk McQueen

but they unfortunately never hit the marketplace. But that’s until today. Because an hour ago, as I was surfing the shoe waves of the internet, I found this:

Jonathan Kelsey will take you around the world

It’s all in the heel. Now you’re set, you can take Nemo with you and go to that party. You’ll fit in quite well.

EDIT: That’s what happens when you don’t read ALL your Bubbles… You become so last week… Had I done my reading, I wouldn’t have missed what Marie Parsons did on Manolos for Louise Goldin AW11. Quite steampunk, don’t you think?

Blahnik meets Verne

Grand début

Will this lead anywhere?

This is supposed to be a fashion blog. Or a philosophical blog, perhaps, but with a heel fetish? Unless it is the diary of a schizoid babe in consumerland? Who knows? Genre theory has always been something of a vain — if necessary — exercise, if you ask me.

We will, I suppose, be talking about everything that makes life worth living. And what is that? one may ask. In my view, it usually amouts to the more or less sophisticated ways we invent in order to deal with sex and death.

But enough generalities for now, let us take a case: the Lady Gaga haute butchery feat for the last VMA.