I think today should be...

...a "Say Something Hat Day" - courtesy of today's birthday girl Elsa Schiaparelli!

Don't you?

More Elsa here and here.

Warped?

It's just a jump to the left...

And then a step to the ri-i-i-i-ight...

Put your hands on your hips

And bring your knees in ti-i-i-ight!

Do the pelvic thrust - It nearly drives you insane...

Let's do The Timewarp again!

Balls - my favourite!

Seventy years ago today, Don Carlos de Beistegui y de Yturbe held a masked costume ball, which he called Le Bal oriental, at his Palazzo Labia in Venice.

From an article by Nick Foulkes in The Rake:

Don Carlos de Beistegui, or Charlie, as he was known to his circle of intimates (of whom there were few), was one of a small group of cosmopolitan plutocrats who dominated European high-life in the years between the Second World War and the beginning of the Jet Set era. They swept into mid 20th-century Europe on a tide of money. Their fortunes, built on the backs of labourers in Central and South America, may have come from unpleasant and malodorous beginnings in silver mines or the exploitation of centuries-old deposits of guano, but they dissipated them in Europe with style and liberality. In the first half of the 20th century the words ‘South American millionaire’ had much the same ring to them as ‘Russian oligarch’ or ‘Chinese billionaire’ have today...

...In 1948 he had happened across the crumbling Palazzo Labia, and, as he walked into the once-grand, dilapidated ballroom, with its flaking frescoes and peeling walls, he was able to see beyond the years of neglect. According to Life magazine, he bought the palace for a reported half a million dollars and spent another three-quarters of a million dollars doing it up.

Then, in the spring of 1951, cards inviting everyone from New World film stars to Old World nobility began to arrive, requesting the honour of their presence at half-past-ten on the evening of September 3 at the Palazzo Labia for an 18th-century costume ball at which masks would be worn. In all, 2,000 of what Life dubbed “the world’s most blueblooded and/or richest inhabitants” were invited.

However, it would have been a mistake for anyone to regard this as a jolly evening on the Grand Canal underwritten by an eccentric millionaire. “Ce n’était pas un bal pour s’amuser,” says Jacqueline de Ribes, who attended the ball as a young woman. “...It was a ball to be happy. But not for fun.”

For Beistegui, his guests were little more than living pieces of furniture with which to dress his Venice creation; as well as wearing costumes, they would also have to make an entrance... literally present a tableau vivant, which would require careful thought and could involve a dozen other, appropriately costumed, guests...

...Venice never had and never would again see anything like it. Over the coming days the city would witness the sort of grandiosity, imperious behaviour and outrageous displays of opulence not seen since the days of the doges. Only the doges did not have to contend with the world of colour magazines and gossip columnists, who were drawn to Venice like iron filings to a magnet...The Duchess of Devonshire wrote to her sister Diana: “I must say, it was fascinating in its way, and the ball itself a real amazer.” Even the private detective who screened each guest on arrival was in period clothes. Anyone who did not adhere to the dress code was quickly whisked out of sight, though most people had invested months and huge sums in their costumes - this was fancy dress as an Olympic sport, and just as competitive.

>

Arturo López Willshaw, the multi-millionaire scion of a Chilean guano dynasty who lived in an intriguing ménage with his wife, Patricia, and his wan young lover, Baron Alexis de Redé, was said to have spent $55,000 on a set of costumes that represented an 18th- century Chinese ambassador and his wife. Of course, his lover, de Redé, was a member of the party, clad in robes embroidered with real gold thread, along with a number of other friends and relatives as attendants ... all with masks and excessively long false fingernails, their entrées enhanced by accessories such as songbirds in gilded cages.

...“Daisy Fellowes, regularly voted the best-dressed woman in France and America, portrayed the Queen of Africa from the Tiepolo frescoes in Wurzburg,” recalled the Duchess of Devonshire in 2010. “She wore a dress trimmed with leopard print, the first time we had seen such a thing (still fashionable today, 60 years on).” She accessorised this memorable outfit with her famous ‘Hindu necklace’, a platinum-set suite of jewels by Cartier combining diamonds, emeralds and sapphires in the fashionable ‘tutti-frutti’ style. She completed her outfit with a phalanx of scantily clad male attendants.

And standing there, at the top of the stairs, was the host.

Beistegui was transformed from his normal 5’6” in height to nearly seven-feet tall in giant 16-inch platform shoes concealed by scarlet robes of a Procurator of the Venetian Republic, his disdainful features framed by the curls of a huge wig that cascaded over his shoulders and down his chest...



















Oh! How I wish I could have been there...

She cried all the way to the altar

Today's birthday girl was a helluva woman, as the marvellous Tom Lehrer explains...

Tom Lehrer - Alma

"Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary that has ever been my pleasure to read. It was that of a lady name Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel who had, in her lifetime, managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men in central Europe, and, among these lovers, who were listed in the obituary, by the way, which was what made it so interesting, there were three whom she went so far as to marry.

"One of the leading composers of the day: Gustav Mahler, composer of Das Lied von der Erde and other light classics. One of the leading architects: Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus school of design. And one of the leading writers: Franz Werfel, author of The Song of Bernadette and other masterpieces. It's people like that who make you realise how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age - he had been dead for two years.

"It seemed to me, I'm reading this obituary, that the story of Alma was the stuff of which ballads should be made - so here is one:"

The loveliest girl in Vienna
was Alma, the smartest as well.
Once you picked her up on your antenna,
you'd never be free of her spell.

Her lovers were many and varied,
from the day she begun her beguine.
There were three famous ones whom she married,
and god knows how many between.

Alma, tell us: all modern women are jealous,
which of your magical wands
got you Gustav and Walter and Franz?

The first one she married was Mahler,
whose buddies all knew him as Gustav,
and each time he saw her he'd holler:
Ach, that is the Fraulein I must have!

Their marriage however was murder.
He screamed to the heavens above:
I am writing "Das Lied von der Erde" -
and she only wants to make love!

Alma, tell us: all modern women are jealous,
you should have a statue in bronze
for bagging Gustav and Walter and Franz.

While married to Gus, she met Gropius,
and soon she was swinging with Walter.
Gus died and her teardrops were copious.
She cried all the way to the altar.

But he did work late at the Bauhaus,
and only came home now and then.
She said: "What am I running, a chow-house?"
It's time to change partners again!

Alma, tell us: all modern women are jealous!
Though you did not even use Ponds,
you got Gustav and Walter and Franz.

While married to Walt she met Werfel,
and he, too, was caught in her net.
He married her, but he was careful,
because Alma was no Bernadette.

And that is the story of Alma,
who knew how to receive and to give.
The body that reached her embalma
was one that had known how to live!

Alma, tell us: how can they help being jealous?
Ducks always envy the swans who get Gustav and Walter
- you never did falter -
with Gustav and Walter and Franz!

Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel (born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler, 31st August 1879 – 11th December 1964)

Ageless Style

• "I never care much what people think. I honestly don’t; I don’t pay any attention to the fashion police.
• I don't do minimal."
• "Clothes are not frippery. Properly done, they can be an art form... They are a great vehicle for explaining who you are."
• "I’ve never tried to be a rebel or upset anybody. I just figured if I pleased my husband, and my mother didn’t get upset, then I was okay."
• "People with a lot of money don’t dress as well as people who have to make do, who have to be inventive. Those are the people who are always more interestingly dressed, I think."
• "Diamond necklaces don’t appeal to me at all. I prefer fun jewellery with big stones - so large they would be untouchable if they were real."
• "Now, don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate Daddy Warbucks-size stones, like a big, flawed emerald. I love stones that are inherently flawed: rock crystal, turquoise with big veins."

We have a very special centenary today - and, for once, the celebrant is very much alive!

Many happy returns, fashion muse, Patron Saint, style icon, model, businesswoman and inpiration to everyone concerned about getting older, Miss Iris Apfel!

Iris Apfel: Ageless Style

Iris Apfel (née Barrel, born 29th August 1921)

On the Jukebox this weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers - a "without moving my lips" special

[click any image above to enlarge, if you dare]

Oh, the horror.