Snippets

"The first thing to do, my love, is to arrange to be born in Paris.  After that, everything follows quite naturally."  -- Diana Vreeland

Paris Street Fashion - Paris Fashion Week

Paging Angie Harmon!

This past week I was in Paris visiting one of my best friends, Julie.  I had three main things I wanted to do: go to rue du Dragon and shop my little heart out, visit the Rodin Museum, and check out the Paris Fashion Week madness.  

Bright and early Monday morning, we headed over to the Stella McCartney show at the Paris Opera house, which was one of the hottest tickets of the week.  Within minutes of arriving at the show, we saw Paul McCartney drive into a back entrance.  But it all happened so quickly, I wasn't able to get any pictures of him.

As many of you have seen on the blog, I spent a few days at London Fashion Week.  But let's be clear, Paris Fashion Week is on a whole other level: the crowds, the press, the clothes.  And the people watching is incredible.  Above is the Editor in Chief of Vogue Japan.

Whenever someone famous would arrive at the show, swarms of people and press would surround the celebrity.  One of the biggest swarms occurred when Salma Hayek and her husband, François-Henri Pinault arrived.  Pinault is the CEO of Kering, a luxury and sporting goods conglomerate, which is a 50% stakeholder in Stella McCartney's company.  Needless to say, Pinault and Hayek were a very fashionable pair.

And then I pretty much died when I ran into Linda Fargo -- the style gatekeeper at Bergdorf Goodman's.  If you haven't already, check out the documentary Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's.  Fargo is featured prominently in the film.  When I saw her at Stella McCartney's fashion show she was super friendly and smiling brightly.

After the show ended, models streamed out of a side entrance.  A dozen or so motorcycles with drivers were waiting by the side entrance, so as to race the models off to the next fashion show that started in ten minutes.

As I was getting ready to leave the show, I turned around and saw Angie Harmon. Like most people I take pictures of, I asked her if I could photograph her.  She smiled demurely and nodded her head.  So there Angie Harmon and I were, on the steps outside of the Paris Opera House, me taking a couple of pictures.

Later that day, we headed over to the Elie Saab show in the Tuileries.  And who did I run into?  My new best friend, Angie Harmon!  She was a quick change artist -- as she had on a new fantastic plum and beige dress that looked great on her.  

I loved seeing Nina Garcia!  She had an uber cool leather jacket on, and I loved the way she wore it -- just draped over her shoulders.   

As the last few people trickled out after the Elie Saab show ended, I spotted Olivia Palermo.  Let me say this, she is just as beautiful and flawless in person as she is in all the pictures.  When I asked to take her picture, she was incredibly polite and nice.  Quite a fun experience at Paris Fashion Week -- here's to many more!

Refuge

Recently, I had the opportunity to take a guided tour of Commerce Bank’s art collection, which was created in 1963 to “provide a stimulating environment for employees, customer and the general community.” While nothing’s quite as wonderful as a grand museum like the Louvre or the Met, there’s also nothing quite like the intimate charm of a small collection.  The quiet moments of getting lost in a painting can be all the more special.  And it is quite a neat experience to peak into the heart and mind of the collector, with each painting discovering another facet of the collector’s personality. 

During the tour, we stopped at a painting by Neil Welliver, called Mountain Stream.  Someone commented that they always had found Neil Welliver’s art to be serene and peaceful, and thus, were surprised to learn of all the turmoil that had occurred in his life.  In 1976, his daughter died from sudden infant death syndrome, and six months later his wife passed away.  Fifteen years after that, his twenty-year old son died.  Later, another son died.  

Welliver was known for beginning each canvas in the upper left hand corner and completing it in the lower right hand corner.  Perhaps his painstaking process was an attempt to create order in a tragedy filled life.  Perhaps his art was a refuge for him.  As art is a refuge for many people.

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Claude Monet believed the Musee de l’Orangerie would provide a refuge for Parisians.  The bright white oval rooms swathed with the colors of flowers, bleeding into each other, curving into infinity.  Monet said of the space, "Nerves overwrought by work would relax there just like the relaxing example of those stagnant waters, and, for whomever inhabited it, this room would offer asylum for peaceful meditation amidst a flowery aquarium."

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The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, provides a similar refuge for those who enter its doors.  The Chapel contains a hallowed octagonal room.  Fourteen purple-black Rothko paintings adorn each of the walls.  Despite the canvasses’ dark colors, the Chapel has a silvery, transcendent quality. The blurry edges of Rothko’s color blocks soak up visitors’ sadness, despair, loneliness.  John and Dominique de Menil commissioned the space and from the beginning, intended it to be more than just an art gallery.  Rather, they meant for it to be “a gathering place ‘of people who are not just going to debate and discuss theological problems, but who are going to meet because they want to find contact with other people.  They are searching for this brotherhood of humanity.’”