Wake Me Up Before You Go Go

This is probably one of my favorite doodles ever ever ever. I drew it not long after Alexander McQueen's death, based on some images I saw from the beautiful Sarabande collection. It's a little melancholic but also very graceful.

Looking at this image makes me think of ECCO, in a strange way. I'm glad we had this semester together. I really felt I grew as a person: I became more independent and mature, and I know what my goals for the very, very near future are (write thesis about Boticelli, party, graduate, have Rahm's babies). I had so many laughs with all of you--both ECCO students and italiani--and I'll miss you all.

Guh.

I do so love me some silver foxes. And I do love men in glasses. Which is why you need to see Anderson Cooper in glasses.

By the way, this reminds me of when my friend Emily and I accidentally went on the EVIL BLOG known as Rahmbamarama. DO NOT GO YOU WILL BE SCARRED FOR LIFE DON'T CLICK ON THE LINK WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS I WARNED YOU. It's a blog dedicated to Rahm/Obama slash. Which is gross. And Stephen Colbert and Rahm slash. Which is funny. And David Axelrod and Rahm slash. Which is weird. And Michelle Obama Rahm slash, which is just ????. Anyway, it's a blog dedicated to writing weird things about my imaginary boyfriend. But the point is is that someone once posted a bunch of photo manips of Rahm wearing glasses, and just like the other Silver Fox mentioned above, he looked ten times hotter, as if that were possible.

Valentino...T-shirts?

What do you think of when you hear "Valentino"? Maybe big, poofy ball gowns. Elegant couture. The color red. An extremely tanned little elf of a man. Well, now Valentino is making T-shirts.

 Valentino/ The Business of Fashion

According to Christina Brinkley of the Wall Street Journal, the couture house started to make extremely high-end T-shirts. They are simple jersey T-shirts, but they are adorned with all of the signature Valentino trimmings: lace, sequins, silk. The shirts range from $395 to $3,000. The company's co-designers, Maria Grazia Churi and Pier Paolo Piccioli, have introduced ten of these shirts to the market and plan on creating ten new T-shirts each season.

In a way, the T-shirts make sense. As one can easily infer from the 2008 documentary about Valentino's last runway show and eventual retirement, The Last Emperor (which I just realized I haven't reviewed yet. Hmm, I guess I'll have to go back and watch it...), after Valentino retired and the company was sold, the new owners are far more interested in the bottom line than any integrity to art or to the house's legacy. And this isn't to say that Chiuri and Piccioli are bad designers, or that the T-shirts aren't secretly awesome, just that this very commercial decision is a sign of the times. The T-shirts have been selling very well, and they are a clever mix of not only the high-low sensibility of the moment, but also, in some ways, the green movement (the embellishments are all made from fabric scraps. Thing extremely high-end American Apparel). Even though the house's legendary gowns are extremely expensive, it is clear that the owners of Valentino want to turn a bigger profit more quickly by entering the world of sportswear.

This post originally appeared on Contrast.

Tiramisu I Have Known

In anticipation of going to Treviso to go to Antico Ristorante Le Becchiere, the birthplace of tiramisu, I am going to write about all of the tiramisu I have divested myself of.

1) The one, the only, Rita's:

 I already posted about it, but it's still one of the greats.

Her recipe calls for putting chocolate in with the egg whites. When the tiramisu has had time to refrigerate properly, the chocolate tastes like fudge. Definitely not traditional, but still incredible.

2) Zabaione

 I had this in Venice the night of Carnivale. Zabaione is tiramisu's close cousin: it's eggs, sugar, mascarpone, and rum. When it's warmed up, like here, it's the perfect remedy for the early spring chills! Since tiramisu is a Veneto invention, it's pretty safe to assume that it evolved from this drink, a traditional elixir on wedding nights. It is pretty orgasmic.

3) ZaZa

 ZaZa is an amazing restaurant in Florence. Special thanks to my friend Allie R for recommending it to me! I had told Will and Alessandra about this place, and they made reservations at this place without realizing that I had recommended it. They do traditional Italian food and beautiful roasted meat. *Sigh* Anyway, their tiramisu was okay. There was a little too much coffee on top.

4) Napoli

 This was at this restaurant in Napoli where we had a prix-fixe lunch. It was the very beginning of our Ecco adventure in Napoli (spring break) and I'm very sorry to say that it was an inauspicious beginning! The antipasto was amazing, but the gnocchi they gave us was greasy, flavorless, and, in some cases, burnt. The tiramisu was easily the worst I've ever had. Ever. It's not like tiramisu is difficult. How can you fuck it up? Well, the mascarpone wasn't fresh, the savoiardi had been soaked in too much rum and coffee for far too long and there was way too much coffee on top. It tasted like it had been sitting around for at least a day. Gross. We had better luck with our food elsewhere in Naples!

5) Easter

I don't have a picture of this, but one of my housemate's friends brought a tiramisu for Easter dinner. It was so good! The perfect amount of creamy and cakey and rum. He also put little sugar hearts on top, so when I ate leftovers for breakfast (NATURALLY), the sugar had all melted and it was amazing the end.

6) Osteria dell'Orso

 Osteria dell'Orso is a fantastic restaurant right around the corner from Ecco. The portions are huge and the food is cheap. It's just excellent. I was a little worried when I ordered my tiramisu because my sandwich, while good, was not as good as it could have been. I also had a really hard time attracting the waiter, so when one did came by doing something else, I was like, "Um, sorry can I order a tiramisu? Sorry for the interruption!" He took 50 cents off of my cheque for being so nice. Anyway, this was a perfectly competent tiramisu, even though there was cocoa on top (not my fave look).

7) My Tiramisu

I attempted to make a tiramisu by myself. I am physically incapable of separating eggs, someone needs to get me one of those machines that does it for you because this is getting far too comical. Anyway, I successfully separated my first two eggs (one of my housemates and her boyfriend watched me, mesmerized). After they complimented me, I got so flustered that I cracked the next egg too hard and egg went all over the table... and yolk into the eggwhite bowl! I was able to get most of the egg out but when I cracked the final egg, the yolk ran all over the place. CONSPIRACY.

 Eggs were the cause of all my troubles Friday. I had PMS-induced panic attacks because of finals. THANKS, EGGS.

Anyway, I decided to toss the eggwhites out. What I was left with was custard and Kahlua, and I could have made an awesome zabaione. Or I could just make a custard sandwich. Which is what I did. And grated dark chocolate on top.

Victory.

Illuminating

Oh, hey, speaking of the Met, my friend pointed me to this exhibit called The Art of Illumination. This is an exhibit OF EVERY SINGLE PAGE OF THE BELLES HEURES OF JEAN DUC DE BERRY DO YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS MEANS?????????????????????

I'm sure everyone knows what an illuminated manuscript is: vellum that's been painted over. There's more to it than that, of course. Pages were carefully planned out in red pencil (which it is still possible to see sometimes). Pigments were incredibly costly. And then there is the painstaking work of painting the beautiful curlicues, palaces, clothes, etc. The Belles Heures is justifiably one of the most famous book of hours (a book of prayers for a private patron). The illustrations are simply incredible, and as can be seen at the exhibit's website, the artists--the Limborg Brothers--were extremely innovative.

I'm a bit of a manuscript geek. I almost considered taking a class on illuminated manuscripts at Bologna, but it was three hours long and met on Friday and Saturday mornings, and I don't like them THAT much, but still. These things are so beautiful, so delicate. The Met making the exhibit's website into a blog is especially genius: now, incredible hi-res scans of the Belles Heures are available to anyone. For me, they encapsulate everything I love about medieval and Renaissance art: the bright colors, harmonious compositions, humor, humanity, observations of everyday life.

I've also been busy looking at manuscripts in Italy. The Museo Medievale in Bologna has a lovely little room dedicated to old choir books:

By the way, this Met exhibit ends on June 13th, and I think I get back to the states on June 11th. If I miss this exhibit I will be extremely depressed.

American Woman

The fashion world is all abuzz; that wonderful time of the year has come again: the Costume Institute Gala and the accompanying exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute. This year, the exhibit is called American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity (May 5, 2010-August 15, 2010).

The exhibit itself has a pretty interesting history. The Brooklyn Museum could no longer afford to maintain its impressive costume collection, so in 2009,  the Met agreed to take charge of storing and maintaining the collection while the Brooklyn Museum still has access to it. As if to prove that point, American Woman does not have its own exhibit catalog. Instead, it is sharing a catalog with the Brooklyn Museum's sister exhibit, American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection (May 7, 2010-August 1, 2010).

The Met's own exhibit seeks to define the American woman as she presented herself at the beginning of the 20th century. According to WWD, the exhibit is divided up into several sections--the Heiress; the Gibson Girl (a Victorian prelude to the flapper); the Bohemian; the Suffragists; the Patriots; the Flapper; and the Screen Siren. The last room has videos and photographs devoted to America's style icons past and present.

Kyle Ericksen/ WWD

The categories are a somewhat curious choice, considering that some of the styles presented in the exhibit--most notably the Suffragists and the Bohemians--didn't affect the majority of American women. Obviously, the curators, as well as sponsors Vogue and the Gap, want us to draw connections with today's fashion trends (with varying degrees of success). The exhibit comes with the inevitable discussion on what, exactly, makes American style American. And who personifies American style? 

Most agree that American style is defined by a certain functionality, simplicity and independence, which Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton hopes each section of the exhibit encompasses. As for the quintessential American woman, he says that it's Sarah Jessica Parker (who narrates the audio guide tour).
"She is such a style icon, but apart from that, she is very adaptable in terms of the clothes she wears,” Bolton said. “She is somebody who costumes herself into roles. When you think of Sarah Jessica Parker, you almost think of a flapper, because she has this remarkable joie de vivre about her. Michelle Obama represents this idea of a democratic way of dressing high and low and is a contemporary patriot or suffragist. Chloë Sevigny may be a Bohemian, and Scarlett Johansson the Screen Siren."

The fact that you can't really name one perfect example of American style, or that all of these women are celebrities in some way, speaks volumes about how we as Americans treat fashion today.

This post also appeared on Contrast.

Make over!

My lovely room mate Gerta gave me a makeover. Grazie, Gertina! <3