A Shakespearean Scent?
Do you ever read something and immediately dial your phone so you can tell someone what you’ve read? Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I get too excited to wait. Well tonight when reading Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form I came across some speculation regarding the origin of Chanel No.5 and nearly rolled out of my chair reaching for my iPhone.
Getting a Good Read
Anyone who know anything about me knows that some of the few things I like more than fine clothes and a good drink are books. So when they have to do with dress and drink, all the better. Sadly, unlike the demand for the latest pulp novel, demand for the best menswear tomes often wanes and they don’t get reprinted.
Learning The Rules
This weekend I saw Renoir’s masterpiece “The Rules of the Game” for the first time. Filmed in 1939 and consciously set on the eve of World War II, the film has a depth and texture unlike any other. I will jump gladly onto the bandwagon and say it is one of the best films I have ever seen.
A Week of Watteau
I spent the greater part of this week awaiting my ticket time at the Royal Academy of Art to see the new exhibition of Watteau’s sketches. Humble chalk never created anything so charming as this massive archive of studies-for-nothing. Watteau often sketched for its own sake, drawing on various figures and studies when necessary for his paintings, but rarely with that end in mind when he put stick to paper.
The Sage of Chelsea – Thomas Carlyle
At the suggestion of Mr. Nick Foulkes, whose opinion on all things Victorian should hardly be ignored, I shuttled myself off to Chelsea today to visit the house of Thomas Carlyle. In a small row-house in that then unfashionable corner of West London, one of the greatest minds of the nineteenth century churned out some of the most critical and comprehensive tomes ever written.
