Daphne Guiness

(Exceptionally, this week, our Monday's inspiration has gone into Tuesday inspiration).

To describe The Honourable Daphne Diana Joan Suzannah Guinness (1967) as a "fashionista" is poor. The woman is an artist who expresses herself through clothes and "has long been recognized as one of this generation's creative forces for her contribution to the worlds of fashion, art and style".

She's the hiress of the Guiness family (the beer, you know?) and a socialite who grew up in the fashion scene. She has an unique aesthetic sensibility. Her style is dramatic and extravagant with a gothic touch, so McQueen (to whom she was a close friend). Her huge haute couture collection fed an retrospective exhibition of her "visionary style" that took place atThe Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

So the best way to enter her world is taking a look at these videos which aren't new but offers us a glimpse of who she is.





(aviso já que música que acompanha este vídeo é horrenda)



[ Somo more on Daphe:
In an interview for The Daily Beast she lamented the lack of risk-taking in fashion these days. 'People stopped dressing themselves, they let other people do it for them, or they get paid to wear things down a red carpet'. This is a 'blandness that’s spread across the world.'
She added that music, which has always influenced fashion, appears to have less social and political ambitions these days, so has less creative influence on the fashion scene. 'There used to be movements and then that sort of died after the New Romantics and grunge,' she said.
She was abhorrent when asked if she had ever been paid to wear any designer's work. 'No f****** way. That would be terrible,' she told the site. 'Then it wouldn’t be real, and everything I’m telling you now would be a complete lie.]

Frida Khalo

"I paint my own reality. The only thing i know is that i paint because i need to and i paint whatever passes throught my head witout any consideration"

1939

"I paint self-portraits because i am so often alone, because i am the person i know best"

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Khalo y Caldéron (1907-1954) became very popular with Julie Taymor's 2002 film "Frida". I watched the film at Quarteto, in Lisbon, one year before it closed to never opening again. That movie theater was a magical place, just like the old time cinemas, and "Frida" was such an inspiring and moving story.

Las dos Fridas, 1939

Khalo's work and life history are truly impressive. She's was a strong and charismatic painter whose work comes from her belly. Her paintings were called to be " surrealistic" and they always have a great deal with colour by their mexican and indigenous influences. They really have a dramatic symbolism and portray pain, wounds, death and traumatic experiences. But they also celebrate life in my point of view.

Frida was a very active ahead of her time painter. She was politically active and became a feminist icon as she was an independant woman in charge of her own destiny. In adicttion she became a style icon: Frida had a very distinctive and folked inspired look. But she had that beauty which isn't obvious: she has something which isn't well-behaved and some wilderness which for me is what makes her really beautiful. It is that beauty and the beast mixture and it is clear that she inspires me a lot.

Irving Penn series

Gemma Ward in Balenciaga, photographed by the late Irving Penn. For me it is one of the most stunning editorials ever. Nicolas Ghuesquiere is a genius and he'll be soon an issue for a post too.

Irving Penn

(1917-2009)
Fotógrafo americano celebrizado pelo seu trabalho para a revista Vogue. Estudou com Alexy Brodovitch na Philadelphia Museum School, onde se graduou em 1938. Revolucionou quase todas as áreas da fotografia, não só a de moda. O seus trabalhos estiveram, na maior parte das vezes, à frente do seu tempo, de tal forma que fotografias tiradas em 49-50, como as suas séries de nus, só vieram a ser expostas e apreciadas na década de 80. A sua matéria fotográfica variou muito, desde moda, a retratos, objectos, pessoas comuns, tribos, nus, naturezas mortas.

Na Vogue apelidava-se a si próprio de "selvagem de rua entre refinados", o que não impediu que as suas fotografias fossem rotuladas de "aristocráticas", pelo rígido formalismo dos modelos. Clareza, composição, forma, arranjo cuidado de pessoas e objectos e uso da luz são características do trabalho de Penn, que veio, não obstante, a simplificar a fotografia de moda, sendo dos primeiros a fotografar, tendo um simples pano branco ou cinzento como fundo. Criou ângulos estreitos no estúdio, nos quais posicionava os modelos, trazendo o foco para a pessoa e a sua expressão conseguindo assim um sentido dramático inusitado nas suas fotografias.

Em 1950, Penn casou-se com a sua modelo preferida, Lisa Fonssagrives e fundou o seu próprio estúdio em 1953.  [Adaptado da Wikipédia. Mais acerca de Irving Penn, aqui.]


Irving e Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn
1951


É difícil seleccionar algumas fotografias para postar dada a imensidão de imagens geniais do fotógrafo mas comecemos com as icónicas de Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn.

Woman with roses
Paris
1950

Balenciaga dress
1950

Woman in Moroccan Palace
1951

Vogue 1952



 Balenciaga coat
1950

Julgo que posso aventurar-me a dizer que o meu blogue preferido actualmente é o Advanced Style. Isto sim é diversidade e criatividade. Inspiração. Mas o que mais me preenche é a riqueza que o Ari Seth Cohen consegue acumular naquelas páginas. O homem é um verdadeiro recolector. E aquelas senhoras são uma coisa absolutamente impressionante. A sabedoria que transpira do que vestem, da forma como vivem a vida e se cuidam, das estórias, dos valores, das palavras, do facto de se manterem sempre activas, da alegria de viver. Acho que poderia tirar um curso de arte & criatividade e outro vida & vitalidade só de ver/ler as páginas que compõem todo o blogue. Mas houve uma senhora que me impressionou particularmente logo à primeira. Meus senhores e minhas senhoras: Debra Rapoport

E agora ouçam-na: