Halloween is by far my most favorite time of year. I simply adore costumes and the seasonal tipping point in weather that once again allows serious fur into the wardrobe. The leaves still clinging to the trees are at their most dramatic, acidic hues, in the final encore of their swan song, as fog creeps around, veiling things in no particular order to try and confuse the passerby. The air even smells different. Scents of moss, nuts, smoke and perfume are so much sharper and seemingly truer as they hover, slightly chilled in the breeze. It is in short, dramatic. So much more mysterious than the obvious hedonism and sweat of summer, or fluffy, faux merriment of deep winter.
Christmas (not the religious bit) is an apt distraction created by people from North Europe, where winter is so dismal, hypothermic and dark, that they would otherwise have no reason to live until the spring. The Americans then capitalized on the profit margins of such a holiday to mask the depressing fact that their country is largely culturally bereft between the outskirts of New York and Los Angeles. One holiday fits all, fits nothing, empties your pockets and makes the world seem a tackier place until next year. At which point you’re on your own, fending pointlessness off until spring with only the pathetic lifejacket of Valentine’s Day possibly thrown in your general direction if you are not totally unlovable.
So Halloween wins with drama, hands down, lounging on a chaise in the back of the fumoir smoking opium. Purely because it does not take itself seriously, there is nothing serious that anyone cares to even try and remember about it. Except for that thing about dead people and souls, but their dead anyway so they must have a sense of humour by now.
The world is a much more inspiring and fun place when people take a little of the edge off seeing themselves too seriously and dress up. Perhaps the grand high deity of this was and still is the Marchesa Luisa Casati. Infamously stating, “I want to be a living work of art!” she conducted her entire existence in an appropriately fantastical fashion. Aristocrat, patron, muse, femme fatale and spendthrift, she enthralled countless artists and writers throughout her life from Robert de Montesquiou to Jean Cocteau. Captivating them with her exaggerated, trademark black kohl circled eyes and electric shock of fiery-red hair. Her portrait was interpreted by many of the great names of the 20th century: Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, Boldini and Marinetti to name a few.
She invited art and exhibitionism into every fold of her existence, patronizing the avant-garde fashion designers of the time Poirot and Fortuny. Swathing herself in their alternative creations, she accessorized with eye-watering diamonds, emeralds and live, writhing snakes. When this became too base for her restless tastes, she took to walking her pet cheetahs on diamond-studded leashes, wearing a matching fur coat and nothing else.
Today those such as Lady Gaga (or their stylists) have picked up shards of Casati’s shattered mantle of extremism. There are more pepperings of inspiration that can be seen glimmering in such fashionistas style as Daphne Guinness, Diane Pernet and the late Isabella Blow. Though in more tamed forms. Many designers too constantly draw inspiration from her from Galliano to McQueen and most famously the designers of Marchesa, the brand named after the woman herself. Though the Marchesa fashion brand’s design’s are far too sugary and twee to maintain any of the high-octane, idiosyncratic dark glamour of Casati.
The Marchesa’s most famous residence was the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in Venice, now the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. It was here that Casati held many of her most lavish parties. Reported to have last for days, guests were fuelled by cocaine served by her Abyssinian servants dressed only in gold leaf and silk sashes. Though some of those seated at the table were exotic monkeys and disturbing wax mannequins. As wayward legend would have it, some were filled secretly with the ashes of lovers-past. Of course the party had to end finally, though unfortunately for Casati this did not come in the form of premature death like some of her contemporaries with something fashionable like tuberculosis. Instead she went bankrupt in 1930. More than $25 million in debt, her entire self-invention, all her smoke and mirrors came under the hammer in what must have been an auction more spectacular than that of Wallis the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels. Even Madame Coco Chanel and Schiaparelli were bidding.
Fleeing to London, she spent the rest of her life in near poverty, surviving to the age of 76. Rather like an inverse Miss. Havisham, she was buried modestly in full black and leopard skin regalia, false eyelashes and her favorite, taxidermied Pekinese dog in Brompton Cemetery in 1957.
The images above by Man Ray are of Casati in her hey day taken in 1922 at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. Ironically, though taken around the same time, they show two very different foreboding sides of this complex and enigmatic character. One is close cropped of her head and neck, very contrasted, dramatic and hypnotic as she would wish to be seen. The Marchesa looks almost possessed of some mystical powers. She is probably as close to a living work of art captured on film, as it is possible to get. All rawness an drama. It is considered one of the most significant Surrealist photographs by Man Ray.
Christmas (not the religious bit) is an apt distraction created by people from North Europe, where winter is so dismal, hypothermic and dark, that they would otherwise have no reason to live until the spring. The Americans then capitalized on the profit margins of such a holiday to mask the depressing fact that their country is largely culturally bereft between the outskirts of New York and Los Angeles. One holiday fits all, fits nothing, empties your pockets and makes the world seem a tackier place until next year. At which point you’re on your own, fending pointlessness off until spring with only the pathetic lifejacket of Valentine’s Day possibly thrown in your general direction if you are not totally unlovable.
So Halloween wins with drama, hands down, lounging on a chaise in the back of the fumoir smoking opium. Purely because it does not take itself seriously, there is nothing serious that anyone cares to even try and remember about it. Except for that thing about dead people and souls, but their dead anyway so they must have a sense of humour by now.
The world is a much more inspiring and fun place when people take a little of the edge off seeing themselves too seriously and dress up. Perhaps the grand high deity of this was and still is the Marchesa Luisa Casati. Infamously stating, “I want to be a living work of art!” she conducted her entire existence in an appropriately fantastical fashion. Aristocrat, patron, muse, femme fatale and spendthrift, she enthralled countless artists and writers throughout her life from Robert de Montesquiou to Jean Cocteau. Captivating them with her exaggerated, trademark black kohl circled eyes and electric shock of fiery-red hair. Her portrait was interpreted by many of the great names of the 20th century: Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, Boldini and Marinetti to name a few.
She invited art and exhibitionism into every fold of her existence, patronizing the avant-garde fashion designers of the time Poirot and Fortuny. Swathing herself in their alternative creations, she accessorized with eye-watering diamonds, emeralds and live, writhing snakes. When this became too base for her restless tastes, she took to walking her pet cheetahs on diamond-studded leashes, wearing a matching fur coat and nothing else.
Today those such as Lady Gaga (or their stylists) have picked up shards of Casati’s shattered mantle of extremism. There are more pepperings of inspiration that can be seen glimmering in such fashionistas style as Daphne Guinness, Diane Pernet and the late Isabella Blow. Though in more tamed forms. Many designers too constantly draw inspiration from her from Galliano to McQueen and most famously the designers of Marchesa, the brand named after the woman herself. Though the Marchesa fashion brand’s design’s are far too sugary and twee to maintain any of the high-octane, idiosyncratic dark glamour of Casati.
The Marchesa’s most famous residence was the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in Venice, now the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. It was here that Casati held many of her most lavish parties. Reported to have last for days, guests were fuelled by cocaine served by her Abyssinian servants dressed only in gold leaf and silk sashes. Though some of those seated at the table were exotic monkeys and disturbing wax mannequins. As wayward legend would have it, some were filled secretly with the ashes of lovers-past. Of course the party had to end finally, though unfortunately for Casati this did not come in the form of premature death like some of her contemporaries with something fashionable like tuberculosis. Instead she went bankrupt in 1930. More than $25 million in debt, her entire self-invention, all her smoke and mirrors came under the hammer in what must have been an auction more spectacular than that of Wallis the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels. Even Madame Coco Chanel and Schiaparelli were bidding.
Fleeing to London, she spent the rest of her life in near poverty, surviving to the age of 76. Rather like an inverse Miss. Havisham, she was buried modestly in full black and leopard skin regalia, false eyelashes and her favorite, taxidermied Pekinese dog in Brompton Cemetery in 1957.
The images above by Man Ray are of Casati in her hey day taken in 1922 at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. Ironically, though taken around the same time, they show two very different foreboding sides of this complex and enigmatic character. One is close cropped of her head and neck, very contrasted, dramatic and hypnotic as she would wish to be seen. The Marchesa looks almost possessed of some mystical powers. She is probably as close to a living work of art captured on film, as it is possible to get. All rawness an drama. It is considered one of the most significant Surrealist photographs by Man Ray.
The other photograph “Crystal Ball”, probably unintentionally, presents Casati as a deranged new age woman, possibly a witch. Flat grey mid-tones do nothing to detract from her frazzled hair poking in all directions, and the huge bags under eyes make sure you know she is human. Squatting sadly behind a little glass curiosity cabinet, she becomes an odd sort of curiosity herself. Desperately trying to be a living work of art again? Lonely and isolated by protective veneers, it is obvious there are so many things, secrets, she is hiding even from herself with the relentless facades of the ‘Marchesa show’. It makes one think of her sad end, all alone, penniless and delusional wandering the streets of Kensington looking through dustbins not for food, but feathers for her hair.
Perhaps she did not get the recipe quite right, but by her extremism, she left a breathing space of creative freedom for others in an otherwise stuffy world of society reforms, which is still very relevant to today: to live a little. Even if it is only to undo a button, add another feather in your hair, dress up instead of wearing Juicy Couture or look at something in a new way.
"Jetset Violet"
1 comment:
There are two fabulous books on the Marchesa - Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati and The Marchesa Casati: Portraits of a Muse, which contains over 200 images!
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