A museum dedicated to hats

  

    The "Museo del capello Borsalino", opened in 2006, is a museum created to tell people the story of the Borsalino company founded by Giuseppe Borsalino in 1857. Borsalino was an Italian hat artisan and is  widely known today for his fedoras, or Borsalino hats, which he gave his name to.
  The museum, housed at the historical Sala Campioni in Palazzo Borsalino in Alessandria, Italy exhibits more than 2000 hats (chosen from about 4000 hats), including many models of different eras the company has produced, exposed in historical cabinets of the '20s. Along with the hats visitors can see also other products of the company such as ties, watches, perfumes, clothes and helmets.
  The collection is also supported by a well informed communication material, which includes old posters, prototypes, photos and films telling the story of the famous hat and presenting the production of today's factory.
  This museum contributes a lot to fashion history by telling us not only the story of the borsalino hat, but the story of a great part of fashion, which is the hat. Hats today may miss the significance they had for an outfit but fortunately there are such great ideas to remind us of it...

Vintage advertising poster

 Borsalino perfume "Borsalino pour elle"

Borsalino helmet

Classic borsalino hat

Poster of the movie "Borsalino"starring
Jean-Paul Belmondo & Alain Delon

Vintage advertising poster

A Swan Lake

    When I first watched Aronofsky's multi-awarded "Black Swan" last year, I didn't expect theinfluence that it had a few months later, not in cinema but in fashion, as Jean Paul Gaultier's

haute couture show for A/W 2011-2012 seemed to be inspired of it and of Tchaikovsky's "The Swan Lake" in general.

  Ballet accessories like  chic midi length tutu skirts and tutu skirted dresses and also high heeled pointe shoes and playful elements like the plissé-finish jackets made their appearance along with a lot of feathers -from hair accessories to skirts- implying the film's strong influence. But ballet is not only for women; and Gaultier pointed that out by resuggesting men skirts continuing his idea of fluidity of the sexes. Of course, all these were characterised by Gaultier's unique theatrical mood.
  However, there was something in all this that made me feel like I had traveled back in the '80s watching  one of l'enfant terrible's first individual shows. Maybe it was the reintroduction of some of his '80s innovative elements like the man skirts and the cone bra (which is probably due to his currently three-decade-plus career retrospective running at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), maybe the wide use of leather, especially when it comes to long coats or it was just the whole "irreverent" atmosphere...

second part:

   

East meets West Vol 2

  Trying to analyse a Vivienne Westwood's show is like solving a really complicated puzzle. It's as difficult as for a Junya Watanabe's show.
  However, both of them remain of my favourites.  That's why in every one of their shows time stops and you empty your mind of anything else except the show. The same happened when I first saw V. Westwood's Spring/Summer 2012 fashion show; it felt like watching  a new Tim Burton movie: the gowns, the huge magnificent wedges, the make up created a little bit of neo-gothic atmosphere combined with the japanese tradition- which they were all inspired from- and  revealing at the same time Vivienne's West roots through draped dresses and accessories like hats, high heels and "I heart crap" purses. At last there were the extremely romantic 19th century "Corpse Bride" lace gowns.. Anyway, it was one of the season's most immersive shows!
 At last, I think it's better let the clothes speak for themselves...