A Hymn to Intellectual Beauty: Creative Minds and Fashion

  • About me
  • About this blog
  • Writers
    • Charles Baudelaire
    • Lord Byron
    • anne carson
    • Jean Cocteau
    • Dante
    • Charles Dickens
    • Benjamin Disraeli
    • Gustave Flaubert
    • Bernard-Henri Levi
    • Gabriel García Márquez
    • Yukio Mishima
    • Edgar Allen Poe
    • Jean Rhys
    • Gertrude Stein
    • Oscar Wilde
  • Artists
    • Salvador Dalí
    • Jean Cocteau
    • Sonia Delaunay
    • Gilbert and George
    • David Hockney
    • Frida Kahlo
    • Amedeo Modigliani
    • Louise Nevelson
    • Georgia O’Keeffe
    • Andy Warhol
    • James McNeil Whistler
    • Ai Weiwei
  • Musicians
    • David Bowie
    • Björk
    • Maria Callas
    • Miles Davis
    • Herbert von Karajan
    • Franz Liszt
    • Sonny Rollins
    • Sugar Vendil and the Nouveau Classical Project
  • Other
    • Amal Alamuddin
    • Alcibiades
    • Beatrix Ost
    • Beatrix Ost, pt.2
    • Cecil Beaton
    • Charles and Ray Eames
    • Laurence Tubiana
    • Neil DeGrasse Tyson
    • Rudolf Nureyev
    • Sofia Coppola
  • Reflections
    • Mary Beard
    • Belle da Costa Greene
    • Creative Vision: Le Corbusier’s Glasses
    • Degas/Cassatt
    • The Flamboyants
    • Henry James
    • Moncler Scandal
    • Vladimir Nabokov
    • Proust and Fortuny
  • Facebook
  • Fashion Designers in Crazy Rich Asians: The Book vs The Movie
  • Barbara Jatta
  • Beatrix Ost, pt.2
  • Beatrix Ost
  • Laurence Tubiana
  • Isak Dinesen
  • Benjamin Disraeli
  • Creative Vison: Le Corbusier's Glasses
  • Maria Callas, pt.2
  • Degas/Cassatt
  • Amal Alamuddin
  • Gabriel García Márquez
  • Proust and Fortuny
  • Sonia Delaunay
  • David Bowie
  • Maria Callas, pt. 1
  • Cecil Beaton, pt.2
  • Marc Bolan, T. Rex
  • Cecil Beaton, pt.1
  • James McNeil Whistler
  • Sonny Rollins
  • Oscar Wilde, pt.2
  • Belle da Costa Greene
  • Anne Carson
  • Ai Weiwei
  • Gustave Flaubert
  • Björk
  • Amedeo Modigliani
  • Dante
  • Gilbert and George
  • Franz Liszt
  • Sugar Vendil and the Nouveau Classical Project
  • Edgar Allen Poe, pt.2
  • Alcibiades
  • David Hockney
  • Henry James
  • Neil DeGrasse Tyson
  • Andy Warhol, pt. 2
  • Louise Nevelson, pt.2
  • Gertrude Stein
  • Georgia O'Keeffe
  • Herbert von Karajan
  • Salvador Dalí, pt.2
  • Charles Dickens
  • Rudolf Nureyev
  • Jean Rhys
  • Bernard-Henri Lévy
  • Edgar Allan Poe, pt.1
  • Concerning Dresses and Stresses
  • Frida Kahlo, pt.2
  • Mary Beard
  • The Flamboyants
  • Oscar Wilde
  • Andy Warhol, pt.1
  • Vladimir Nabokov
  • Jean Cocteau
  • George Gordon, Lord Byron
  • Charles Baudelaire
  • Louise Nevelson, pt.1
  • Charles and Ray Eames
  • Frida Kahlo
  • Yukio Mishima
  • Miles Davis
  • Salvador Dalí
  • Sofia Coppola

Degas/Cassatt

On May 31, 2014 By Deborah Parker
Edgar Degas styles Mary Cassatt memorably in Mary Cassatt at the Louvre.  The exhibition Degas/Cassatt at the National Gallery has an entire room devoted to this painting.  The next time you think of asking someone to photograph you in a museum, you may [...]
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Proust and Fortuny

On April 8, 2014 By Deborah Parker
Is there any writer who has written of a designer in more evocative terms than Proust has of Fortuny?  In In Search of Lost Time, Madame de Guermantes, the epitome of aristocratic elegance, owns “heaps” of Fortuny gowns.  Marcel’s lover Albertine covets them.   As the two passages below show, Fortuny’s gowns summon reveries [...]
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Concerning Dresses and Stresses

On March 3, 2013 By Deborah Parker
Excerpted from Jill Alexander Essbaum’s “A Poem Should Not Be Mean But Behave: Good Breeding for Poems” Fashion and beauty have little in common, though fashion has wiles enough to mimic what’s beautiful. A remarkable hat will not suffice when paired with a hideous ensemble. Never waste a peerless title on a frumpy or unkempt [...]
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Mary Beard

On February 23, 2013 By Deborah Parker
Cambridge Classics professor, Mary Beard, has been at the center of a controversy recently in the UK.  After expressing her views on immigration on a BBC debate show, Beard received an avalanche of hate mail, the bulk of which attacked her appearance.  Beard has her own look: she keeps her long [...]
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