A yarn to be proud of: Manos del Uruguay

There is a new anxiety in my life.  It lurks quietly in the background before ambushing me and inducing panic.  ‘Lack-of-project’ is the name I’m giving it but it really needs something more terrifying than that.  It struck me recently as I came to the end of knitting a cowl and suddenly realised I had nothing planned next.  Luckily a stripey scarf came to save me – the classic use for left-over yarn and that is coming along nicely.  For a newbie, it is a good test of accuracy and consistency to knit row after row of ribbing in alternate yarns , trying to keep good straight lines and not allowing the stitches to run out of order on a new line.  So this project is keeping me in line and it is satisfying to see the scarf growing and the colours blending.

I am conscious too that I need to be learning more and so I have booked another of Tribe Yarns’s excellent courses to knit a ‘top-down’ cardigan.  It is always exciting to be facing a new challenge but I am feeling particularly inspired by the yarn this time.  I have chosen Manos del Uruguay’s Maxima merino in Grapevine and already, whilst knitting my test swatch, I’ve been captivated by watching the colour of the yarn change as I move through a row.  The overall effect is almost like a tie-dye.  A chunky merino yarn, it is easy to work with, doesn’t split and is wonderfully soft and tactile.

When I checked out Manos del Uruguay I was even more impressed.  The yarns are hand dyed and hand spun by artisan women living in small villages in Uruguay.  Formed in 1968 by women for women, to improve quality of life for those living in remote rural areas, it remains a non-profit organisation with workshops in 12 co-operatives.  Each skein of yarn comes with a label showing the name and location of the artisan who made it, and being a handmade product, every one is unique.  So thank you, Fatima, for enriching my life with your beautiful merino yarn. This is a very special product and I am going to make sure that I do it justice.

Yarn Therapy II

Four weeks and four classes after my initiation to knitting at Tribe Yarns in Richmond I have completed my first finished garment.  It is a simple woolly hat but I feel immensely proud of it.  I know it intimately, as only the maker can.  I know the stitch where I encountered a fluff ball of unspun yarn, the moss stitch that was actually supposed to be ribbing, the concealed thread that finished the top and bottom, even the moment when Amazon rang the doorbell and my stitch-marker fell out.

I knitted it in the course of a week while listening to an audiobook version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Originally chosen as a suitably seasonal entertainment and a book I’d always meant to read, as the chapters progressed it got me thinking about the relationship between creator and their creation.  Though Frankenstein is ultimately consumed by his obsession, he can never escape his fundamental connection to it, nor his subliminal pride and sympathy with it. My hat is highly unlikely to inflict a similar fate on me but I did experience a powerful attachment and driving force to make the necessary progress over the week, then a boost of elation and pride in seeing my creation come into existence.

Like Frankenstein’s creation it is somewhat primitive and rough round the edges but like the creature too, it has the right instincts.

So this is my Frankenstein hat but, unlike Frankenstein, I suspect I shall be making another.

The Most Beautiful Umbrellas in the World

It can take M Heurtault more than 300 hours to make one of his umbrellas or parasols, depending on the style and detailing, which could include antique lace, ostrich feathers, embroidery, jade or horn.

These umbrellas bear no resemblance to those that you might pick up in a convenience store during an unexpected shower. These are hand-crafted accessories, carefully calibrated to bathe the holder in a flattering glow and to sit beautifully balanced in the grip whether sheathed or open.

The silk twill is sourced from the same suppliers as the top fashion labels and treated to be fully waterproof and the whole umbrella is intended to be a life-long artefact not a disposable commodity. The mechanism is firm and sturdy in the hand: these umbrellas are built to stand wind and rain as well as to look stunning.

M Heurtault has been awarded France’s highest honour of artisanship: the Master of Arts, his workshop a Grand Atelier and you have probably seen his work in films and TV.

He sells his beautiful constructions at Galerie Fayet, a jewel of a shop in the picturesque Passage Jouffroy, only a few steps but a world away from the neon of the Boulevard Montmartre. Here in the shop, you enter a world in which a walking cane can hide an epee or a stiletto, or perhaps hold a minature picnic kit.

I found a wonderful umbrella here. It was a simple monochrome striped silk twill, sleek and light as a quill but with a steel frame strong as an exoskeleton. It was an accessory straight out of Cecil Beaton’s conjuring of Ascot races for My Fair Lady.

Now, equipped with my brolly and a rather natty Maison Michel black fedora, I’m ready for whatever weather the English autumn throws at me.

http://www.galerie-fayet.com
http://www.parasolerieheurtault.com

Manolo Blahnik at the Wallace Collection: An Enquiring Mind

The Wallace Collection’s current display of Manolo Blahnik’s shoes – An Enquiring Mind – is a show of pure genius.  The magnificent collection of paintings, furniture and ceramics is the perfect setting to highlight the breadth and depth of this shoemaking genius’s inspiration.Most impressive of all is the sensitive and careful placing of each style of shoe to form perfect clusters to complement the art around them.  The notes to the exhibition enlarge on this and the outcome is that there is something to delight the eye whichever way you direct your gaze.

In the East Drawing room, under the magnificent painting, The Riches of Autumn (Jacob Jordaens, 1593-1678) we find a collection of shoes and boots in the richest black velvet , luscious golden satin, beaded and feathered and displaying all the abundance of the season.

The Great Gallery features a teal lace stiletto picking up the colour of the peacock’s tail in Peacock and other Birds (M d Hondecoeter, 1636-1695).  A cluster of pastel satin shoes and mules, delicately laced with pearls and rosettes is the perfect companion to The Infanta Margarita Maria (after Velazquez, 1599-1660), picking up the silk of her gown and her jewels.

There is humour too.  What better to accompany Frans Hals’s Laughing Cavalier (1584-1666) than a reinterpreted cavalier’s boot, its cuff dropped from knee to ankle.  The positioning of boot and painting suggests the subject is enjoying the joke too.

The high point of the display is the Oval Drawing room – a small room of Fragonard and Boucher paintings that houses a selection of shoes made for Sophia Coppola’s film, Marie Antoinette.  Here, Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour (1703-1770) presides over shoes that look as light and fanciful as macaroons.  Though Pompadour lived a generation before Marie Antoinette (and seems to have been significantly more politically astute), she would surely have appreciated the power of these shoes to maintain court hierarchies.

Thank you, Wallace Collection for a beautifully conceived show, perfectly juxtaposing painting and craftsmanship.  It is thought-provoking for sure but it also manages to capture the sheer joie de vivre of the art of artisanship, seasoned with a dash of wit.  This is the perfect way to show fashion and we need more like this.  And I need some more Manolos…..

A transatlantic embroiderer’s treat

 

Woman’s ceremonial robe, Metropolitan Museum, New York

 

New York’s Metropolitan Museum and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum are each providing a feast for an embroiderer’s (tired) eyes.   London’s V&A is celebrating the Opus Anglicanum – perhaps one of the earliest examples of national branding of a commercial product in which the collective skill of England’s medieval embroidery industry was focused on the production of ecclesiastical vestments and chivalric devices.  It is truly a wonder, not only of art and artisanship but also that so many of these fragile pieces have survived through the centuries.  See it in London or online before it closes on 5 February 2017.

The New York Met offers us a complete contrast with the Secret Life of Textiles, a tiny gem of a display in a single room (gallery 599 until 20 February 2017) that shows us some of the earliest examples of the lavish embroidery, voided velvets and brocades that are currently gracing every fashion publication for the autumn-winter season.

We see an exquisite Chinese ceremonial robe (above, Quing dynasty, nineteenth century) in a bright blue silk, trimmed with cat fur as a cheaper alternative to sable, ermine mink or fox.   Despite economising on the fur, the silk is lavishly embroidered (see below).

Also from the Quing dynasty but an earlier eighteenth century piece is this badge of rank (below), executed in satin embroidered with silk, peacock feathers and gold thread.  It shows a bear as the insignia of military rank.  The elevation of the rank is underlined by the use of peacock feathers that also give the piece an iridescent glow, offsetting the gold embroidery perfectly.

 

Chinese, Qing Dynasty badge of military rank, Metropolitan Museum New York

 

There is also European work on display, including a cut voided velvet in a lush midnight blue satin fabric.  This is just the kind of fabric that inspired the young Fortuny.  In fact, a contemporary, Henri de Regnier, described the scene:

‘Mother and daughter open a massive chest in the corner of the room….The first appears: a fine piece of dark blue velvet made in the fifteenth century, goffered with stylish arabesques.  The shade is strange, deep and pure, like the colour of night.’ (Peacock and Vine, A.S.Byatt (2016) p52-3)

 

Voided velvet fragment from fifteenth century Italy, Metropolitan Museum New York

 

If you can, see both these wonderful exhibitions and marvel at these early examples of exquisite artisanship and technical skill.

The top tips every milliner should know

London Hat Week, founded by the redoubtable Georgina Abbott and Rebecca Weaver goes from strength to strength.  This year it delivered a cornucopia of instruction and advice to the budding milliner.  Workshops covered trimmings of all kinds, base construction as well as specialist courses and a tempting suppliers’ fair with some very tempting offers.

Workshops offered the opportunity to learn from some of British millinery’s greatest – Bridget Bailey, Edwina Ibbotson just two of the stellar names on offer – but for me, the advantages were as much in the hints and tips on offer in the sidelines.  So here, for fellow millinery enthusiasts, is a small digest of the small but important hints and tips on offer.

Spray starch, ironed into silk organza helps it to hold pleated folds and is a labour-saving way of preparing the fabric.

For light fabrics prone to fraying, metallic binder set in place with some glue helps to ‘finish’ the edges that are unavoidably exposed. Though, equally, never be afraid to try some ‘artistic’ fringing or fraying of edges – sometimes it works beautifully.

For intricate pleating, use bondaweb to hold fabric in place to make it easier to sew into place once you are happy with the effect.

When stiffening felt hoods use a 50-50 solution of stiffener and methylated spirits – the alcohol helps drive the solution into the felt and reduce the risk of creating white marks.  The purple colouring of the methylated spirits is also a useful reminder that you have made up the solution.

When stiffening felt, use a short-haired round brush (a stencilling brush cut down is perfect) to drive the solution into the hat in small areas.  Put a pin in the base of the hood to remind you of the start-finish point as you spiral down from the crown.

When draping felt, let the hood and the steam dictate the folds.  It can be a daunting experience but allow the felt to adopt its natural folds.  Then use dressmaker pins to score it and hold it in place and leave it to harden overnight.

 

Faced with a choice to two alternative thread colours (for base and trim) always choose the darker – it will be more invisible.

12cm is the standard cloche depth (measured ear-to-ear over the top of the head) – go deeper or shallower for a more extreme effect.  Remember if you go shallow that you might need to wire the edge to hold the hat on (and then hide the wire under petersham or another trim).

Thread a needle using the end of the thread from the reel not the cut you have just made – your sewing will work with the weave of the thread and it will be less prone to knotting.

Use the thimble on your middle finger to push to needle through stiff fabric.  It leaves the index finger free to direct the needle and will help you stitch faster with practice.

Mark the front and back of a felt hood with soap and/or bright tacking thread – ‘X’ for the front and ‘I’ for the back as the couture milliners used to do.

File down cut edges of felt to even and soften the line with fine sandpaper or a nailfile.

Though London Hat Week is over for this year, Atelier Millinery and many of the other master milliners continue to offer workshops year round so it is always worth checking their websites for details.

 

Is there enough velvet in your life?

Kim Basinger smoulders in the film LA Confidential

Velvet – isn’t it just the height of glamour? Always chic but especially on-trend this winter, with Prada’s luxe midnight velvet hiking boots, Gucci’s gorgeous teal velvet bag and Demna Gvasalia’s strapless gowns for Balenciaga.

Why do we love it so? Its extreme softness and delicacy has made it a luxury down the centuries. Elizabeth I actually made it illegal for any subject below the rank of knight to wear velvet, so concerned was she about devaluing its currency as a mark of nobility.

Collection of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris

She need not have worried: velvet has maintained it luxury edge down the centuries. When Charles Worth, the man widely credited with creating the first haute couture fashion house, opened his design salon in 1858, he quickly became known for lavish fabrics and embellishment. This richly beaded velvet jacket from Worth even draws clear inspiration from tudor style with its structure and puffed sleeves.

Velvet seems to have originated in Baghdad in the 9^th century.  It reached Europe in the middle ages through Venice, the main thoroughfare for the spice route between Asia and Europe.  The city has maintained a close association with velvet through the ages, culminating in Mario Fortuny’s exquisite devore and printed velvet cloaks, coats and tunics, produced in the city in the early twentieth century, and recently celebrated by A S Byatt’s excellent book, Peacock and Vine. Fortuny was an inventor and an artist – fashion was only one of his talents which also extended to lighting and theatre set design. To this day, no one has managed to discover the process he invented (and patented in 1909) to create his signature creased and crushed silk “Delphos” dresses. Lucky ladies buying the dresses received them rolled and wound in boxes.

Velvet can be made from cotton and linen – typically heavier textiles – as well as in lighter silk or silk/rayon mixes. The fabric lends itself to a range of textural effects, from devore, in which the velvet is burnt with acid to create a pattern, to crushed velvet (see left). It can also be woven in combinations of colours to make it appear iridescent.

Since the start of the twentieth century velvet has featured strongly in every decade’s fashion. In the Jazz Age of the 1920s flappers wore lustrous embroidered velvet opera coats, referenced by John Galliano in his 1998 haute couture collection for Christian Dior (below).

Christian Dior haute couture 1998 opera coat from the collection of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris

1913 illustration of a “white velvet coat embroidered with pearls”

Art deco of the 1930s brought a more minimalist feel in which colour and design were pared back to bring out the beauty of luxury fabrics themselves, as seen below in a panne black velvet necktie trimmed with ermine.

The 1940s and 50s saw the return of colour and pattern, especially in hats as velvet was used for percher hats and half-hats. The shimmer of the fabric highlights and flatters skin tone (see above).

Balenciaga green velvet opera coat from the collection of the Fashion and Textile Museum, London

The greatest couturiers of those decades, Christian Dior and Cristobal Balenciaga, also used velvet frequently in their collections. Dior’s H-line collection (Autumn-Winter 1954-55) was inspired by tudor court dress, while Balenciaga manipulated green velvet into a pattern mimicking astrakhan fur for this opera coat.

The 1960s saw the rise of perhaps one of the greatest designers to use velvet in his collections: Yves Saint Laurent. Who can forget his black velvet flamenco hat from the iconic portrait of Lou Lou de la Falaise by Steven Meisel? Black velvet was a staple ingredient of his evening dresses and featured strongly in some of his most famous collections – as bodices in the “Russian” collection of 1976 and as knickerbockers in the “Chinese” collection of the following year.

Lou Lou de la Falaise by Steven Meisel

Lou Lou de la Falaise by Pascal Chevallier

And what better lesson for us all in how to wear it than to study Lou Lou above? Velvet needs attitude for sure but it also needs a little disrespect. Pair it with jeans for Parisienne glamour, with leather for a rock chick edge, vamp it up with black jet to reference Victoriana, or go classical with contrasting white satin.  No wardrobe is complete without it.

This post first appeared as a guest blog for The Gathering Goddess

 

 

The pillbox hat – glamourous minimalism

A black velvet pillbox hat is a classic example of 1960s minimalism.  This one reminded me of the fabulous little pillbox that Audrey Hepburn wears in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, especially with the addition of some white spot veiling to recall the more flamboyant white feather on the front of Miss Hepburn’s hat.

The film clearly shows the transition from 1950s studied glamour to 1960s spontaneity.  The clean lines of Hepburn’s Givenchy wardrobe and hats have the simplicity of combinations she has come up with on the spot.  They look youthful and fresh compared with the high glamour of Patricia Neal’s Pauline Trigere ensembles that have the feel of an entire top-to-toe ‘look’ crafted by the designer.  Over a decade after the original ‘New Look’ of Christian Dior in 1947, it was time for a fashion re-set and the pillbox was then, and is still, the perfect minimalist touch.  Add a few feathers or a veil and create some drama.

Are you going to London Hat Week?

#LHW London Hat Week 6-12 October 2016

http://www.londonhatweek.com/

The turban hat is the perfect topper for autumn

As summer shades into autumn there is always a pull towards more luxurious and lustrous textiles and a turban hat is the perfect way to use them.  The informal design of the turban lends itself to spectacular fabrics, combinations and trimmings.  Take inspiration from London’s Fashion and Textile Museum and its current jazz age show to embellish with a Poiret-style feather, or go for forties practicality with a fabric-only version.

The forties turban is closely associated with the milliner, Madame Paulette but her most famous hat style was originally a wartime improvisation. She received so many compliments on the black jersey she had wrapped around her head that she started to experiment with different designs.  Once the superbly practical design was taken up by beautiful young Parisian women, a trend was ignited.

Need inspiration for London Hat Week or the London Hat Walk in Covent Garden on Sunday 9 October?  Look no further.

 

 

Re-styling the bowler hat

A bowler hat, or chapeau melon in French, can be difficult to pull off for a female.  Its a very masculine style, very traditional and, with its small, turned-up brim does not offer much scope for framing the face.

As with all things, however, everything is in the styling.  Take off the hard masculine edge and introduce some flattering veiling and it is transformed into something much more feminine, and rather dramatic.

London Hat Week is around the corner, including the London Hat Walk in Covent Garden on Sunday 9 October.  Perhaps a bowler could be just the thing?