PARIS 2e

Labels: FASHION, Talking Pictures

Episode V 'The Collection'

Labels: Art, FASHION, Talking Pictures

Episode III 'Rituals'





Episode IV 'Sleepless Nights'

Labels: Art, FASHION, Talking Pictures

On special request, here is the full first episode of the documentary row on CHANEL






Enjoy, because the second episode is comming up: Right here!

Labels: Art, FASHION, Talking Pictures

Labels: Art, Art Galleries, Paris street stuff (NOT a TOILET)

The breathtaking show at the Grand Palais



audacious, perfectionist, unique, passionate, and visionary

and a short part of an intimate Chanel documentary:

Labels: FASHION, Talking Pictures

First televised interview with Gabrielle Chanel in 1959



Ok it's in french obviously, but, for non french speakers, try to enjoy it for the pleasure of the eyes... ok that's stupid I know, I'll translate bits for you:

1st Question: can you tell us what fashion will be like this year?
Coco: No!
Q: Why, because you don't know?
Coco: Because I don't know! And even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you!
Q: But is it possible that you don't know it? Your fashion show is in 3 weeks after all.
Coco: Yes, but in 3 weeks one can do lots of things. Even change fashion! You understand, because it goes very fast and it is impossible - first of all I never finish any of the dresses, so I don't know what may come out of it, I keep them until the last minute, because, you know fashion is something like this you know (making hand gestures).
Q: You work on them until the last moment.
Coco: Oh, until last moment, you can even say until last minute: I take away all that what I find useless.
Q: In what state are the dresses at this moment?
Coco: Huh! In pieces, Monsieur, in pieces!! And I'm telling you the truth.
Q: This is true?
Coco: It's true! It's absolutely true.
Q: Fashion in these last 10 years has been very often eccentric. Are there eccentricities you wanted to point out?
Coco: Mh, I din't find fashion eccentric. I found it extravagant, which isn't the same thing. I don't like extravagance.
(...)
Coco: Fashion to me is not stuck in history. Fashion is onwards, not backwards; you don't move backwards! One has to live with one's time.
(...)


Ok I'm not going to translate that whole thing, unfortunately, but If there is any request, I may find the time to do so...

For now, enjoy a 1959 fashion show:
Sidenote: the models are allowed to comment on the fashion they wear...

Labels: FASHION, Talking Pictures

Labels: shopping, VINTAGE

Labels: Art, Art Galleries, exhibitions, Paris street stuff (NOT a TOILET)

Micronations are countries (often without territories) conceived by artists, eccentrics, malcontents or egocentrics.
Not a thematic group exhibition, Grow Your Own (at Palais de Tokyo) is an artist project that blurs any ability to distinguish between art, politics, anarchy and fiction. The governments, societies and artists involved have created various recognizable symbols that range from seals, anthems, languages, mottos, constitutions, flags and all the icons with which they establish their sovereignty. Thus projects by artists with international reputations (Michael Ashkin, IRWIN, Gregory Green or Atelier van Lieshout) are presented along with uniforms (Allison Smith), a coin-making machine (State of Sabotage), maps (Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland), national anthems (Empire of Aerica), documentary films, portraits of kings and queens from a micronations summit, flags, passports, stamps, coins or letters of citizenship from some forty nations including the Empire of Atlantium, the Principality of Sealand, or the Kingdom of Pinsk. Applications for citizenship and naturalisation can be completed and filed by exhibition visitors.

Some of those countries have quite a funny history, such as the Kingdom of Bannesled:
On June 12, 1998, Queen Emily I of Bannesled started a chain reaction that led to the formation of this absolute hereditary monarchy: she bought her bedroom from her parents.
Then on June 24, 1998, by signing The Declarations of the People of Bannesled, she successfully separated her bedroom from Canada.
With a population of 6, Bannesled covers just less than 130 square feet and is surrounded on all sides by Ottawa, Ontario. A strict class system is firmly in place in this micronation; citizenship is open only to the personal relations of current citizens. Most belong to the “peerage” of the Queen, who rules by absolute right. Although they have no power themselves, they do have the ability to sway decision-making power. The majority of Bannish citizens are female but there is great ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity between citizens. All share the same Bannish Culture and believe in the ideals of the Bannish Nation.

The Republic of Molossia:
Originally founded in 1977 as the Grand Republic of Vuldstein, The Republic of Molossia is located just outside Virginia City, Nevada, in the western United States.
The Republic does not accept applications for citizenship but has led the way diplomatically on the micronational scene, establishing the first micronational Olympics in which His Excellency, Kevin Baugh, Molossian president, won a gold medal in discus (using a Frisbee).
The four citizens of Molossia also celebrate the international holiday Norton Day on January 8th, after the infamous Joshua Norton of San Francisco declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. Molosia has minted its own currency, the Valora, which is divided into 100 Futtrus. The economy is based on the relationship between the Valora and a tube of Pillsbury-brand cookie dough, currently 1:3.
Because its borders are in relative proximity to the largest U.S. Marine base, Molossia has instituted obligatory military service. It has also banned smoking. Molossia has pioneered micronational space travel, opening an observatory (a telescope) and launching a balloon-powered space probe in 2003. Hypérion Balloon Flight and Ariel Survey became entangled in local trees. The space program is still determined to produce aerial photographs of the republic.


Principality of New Utopia:
The Principality of New Utopia is an economic paradise being built in the Caribbean approximately 120 miles west of Grand Caymen.
This manmade island offers a substantially tax free economy in connection with any commercial enterprise promoting the development of banking, financial services, insurance, and securities brokerage services. New Utopia began as an entrepreneurial dream by Howard Tutney who later changed his name to Prince Lazarus Long.
The prince’s island could grow to be 400 square miles and will be built by Flotilla Company, which specializes in building houses out of floating concrete.

Labels: Art, exhibitions, Politics, Royalist stuff

The new Fouquet's Barrière hotel building by french architect Edouard François is giving coherence to this block of 7 buildings from different styles: 2 haussmannian ones mixing with 2 recopied hausmannian style facades. François invented this new concept called "moulé-troué": a fake hausmannian wall made of concrete blocks and put on the ancient 1970s building structure underneath it.

This luxury hotel boosts 107 rooms (55 suites) with interiors by reknown interior designer Jacques Garcia. The architectural project cost 50 million euros.

Edouard François is well known for his ‘tower flower’ in Paris, built in 1999; a residential building disguised in bamboo trees.

This is an add-on to the previous post about the Hotel de Païva at the Champs Elysées

I did some research on this extraordinary place, and I scanned some pictures of the interiors out of my books for your delectation:
Thérèse Lachmann, later Mme Villoing, later Mme la Marquise de Païva, later Countess Henckel von Donnersmarck (1819-84)

Today [1857] la Païva has the best and most elegant hôtel in Paris, her dinners are reputed to be exquisite, she entertains many artists and men of letters, and her conversation is said to be witty .. .

I have seen [continued Viel-Castel] the plans of a palace which Mauguin, the architect, is building her in the Champs-Elysees. The land and the building, without the furnishing, will cost a million and a haI£ La Païva displays two million francs' worth of diamonds, pearls and precious stones on her person. She is the great debauchee of the century.’

[...] The hôtel Païva was to be, as its châtelaine intended, the most luxurious private hôtel in Paris.

Its architect was Pierre Mauguin; and for ten years he laboured at his creation. He organised what were virtually workshops in the ChampsElysees, where all the work was done in his presence, after his designs. Even the marble and onyx he ordered were carved on the site, as cathedral builders might have carved them in the Middle Ages. La Païva would often arrive, on her way back from the Bois, and inspect the building; once, it is said, she found a carpenter who had been happily settled in some obscure small room for five years. 'What!' she cried. 'You're still here! You must be God Everlasting.'

[...] The new hôtel stood in a Champs-Elysees which, at the end of the Second Empire, was still unspoilt by signs of plebeian commerce. There were no shops, but half-a-dozen nearby private hôtels dazzled the eye and imagination. There was Prince Napoleon's neo-Pompeian palace; there was Emile de Girardin's Roman palace, a scholarly reply to Pion-Pion's architectural paganism. There was the Gothic castle of the Comte de Quinsonas, the Tunisian chateau of Jules de Lesseps, the remarkable rose-coloured hôtel of the Duke of Brunswick. And, finally, among these grandiose pastiches, there was now the hôtel Païva (which alone remains, as The Travellers' Club, today). The hôtel Païva was mentioned in the guide to the sights of Paris. It stood out, like la Païva herself, as a symbol of the Second Empire; and whether or not one admired the intensity of its ornamentation, it represented, and that with splendour, the taste of the time.

The vast salon, lit by five tall windows, seemed a kind of temple dedicated to the worship of physical pleasure: it was hard to take ones eyes off the magnificent ceiling where Baudry had painted Day chasing Night away. The four quarters of the day were represented by mythological divinities: Apollo bending his bow, Hecate with her silver crescent preparing to wrap herself in her starry mantle, Aurora still asleep on her rosy cloud, Vesper melancholy and pensive. All the figures converged towards the centre of the oval vault, and they were connected by pairs of genii which symbolised the hours. Cabanel and Gerome had also contributed paintings, famous sculptors had carved the mantelpieces in the smaller rooms; but some critics thought that Baudry's ceiling (which would prepare him to paint his great frescoes in the new Opera) was alone worth all the other treasures in the hôtel. 'I want to have been the only person on earth to enjoy your delectable painting,' Mme de Païva had told Baudry. '{ think I have the right, since I paid you the price you asked for it. You must pray to God that I live!'

Yet what other treasures there were! The salons were hung with crimson damask, specially woven at Lyons for eight hundred thousand francs. The staircase, lit by a massive lustre in sculpted bronze, was made - steps, baluster and wall - entirely of onyx. Mrs Moulton, the American banker’s wife, seems to have heard some rumours of its splendour. She recorded that 'a lady, whose virrue is someone else's reward, has a magnifIcent and much-talked-of hôtel in the Champs- Elysees, where there is a staircase worth a million francs, made of real alabaster. Prosper Merimee said: "c' est par là qu'on monte à la vertu.’ (It was reported that Augier, the dramatist, asked to compose some lines in honour of the staircase, replied with the devastating quotation: 'Ainsi que la vertu, Ie vice a ses degres.') The first floor, to which the staircase led, was reserved for la Païva: for her bathroorn, bedroom and boudoir, and a room for Henckel von Donnersmarck. The bathroom, said Gautier, was worthy of a Sultana in the Arabian Nights. Its walls were onyx and marble, enhanced by Venetian ceramics, and by a ceiIing in the Moorish style. The bath was solid onyx, like the lavatory under the window; it was lined with silvered bronze, with gilt, engraved designs representing fleurs-de-lys. The three taps, sculpted and gilt, were set with precious stones. The bedroom insolently proclaimed the triumph of la volupté. The locks on the doors were said to be worth two thousand francs apiece. The bed, encrusted with rare woods and ivory, delicately wrought, stood like an altar in an alcove, under a ceiling on which Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn, hovered in the empyrean. It had cost a hundred thousand francs. 'Fifty thousand francs?' la Païva had cried, when she saw the original estimate. 'Do you want me to have fleas? Put a hundred thousand francs!' The visitor felt himself in the presence of a single idea: the defiant, obsessive idea of personal glorification.

At [one of her mansions], so the legend went, there was a servant whose only task was to open and shut one hundred and forty windows; he began his work at six in the morning and finished it at midnight, and he fmally died of exhaustion. The park [...] was Dante's Hell for the gardeners, who were said to be fined fifty centimes for every leaf found on the ground. Mme de Païva, in person, collected the fines at dawn.

Païva and her Prussian husband were exiled from France under suspicion of being spies.
In 1878, she was now a pathetic fIgure. She had had a stroke, and she had smashed the Venetian mirror in her room so as not to see her physical decline. Four personal maids had been unable to disguise the signs of her paralysis and degeneration. She would take a series of baths, in vain, to counteract the acidity of her blood: a milk bath, a lime-flower bath, a scented bath; and once, it was said, she tried to bath in champagne.
But she had heart disease, and her body swelled unmercifully. She died at Neudeck [Donnersmarck’s castle] on 21 January 1884. She was sixty-fIve.

excerpt from Joanna Richardson, The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in 19th-Century France (London: Phoenix Press, 2000)

Labels: Architecture shot, Art, Paris Mansions, Paris street stuff (NOT a TOILET)

Ready. Steady. Here we go:

Work in the Palais de Tokyo is still going on for the upcoming show 'La Marque Noire' which will open next week as you can see.

Labels: Architecture shot, Art, MUSEUMS, Paris street stuff (NOT a TOILET), urban art