Upper Class Living

 

   Having little care for what passes for entertainment television in this day and age - and how fuddyish of me to consider that I wish Dick Cavett, Michael Parkinson and Michael Aspel were still the leaders of chat shows - I nevertheless chose to watch the latest in class-based reality television, E4's Made in Chelsea, an anaemically produced and performed "inside view" into the lives of monied twenty-somethings that resembles a televised version of the The Sun's photostories, albeit more unintentionally funny and with the crowning achievement of being less intelligent. I wonder if they share scriptwriters; that insipid line about eyelashes could only have come from the mind of one raised on a diet of softcore porn, Dynasty and Brookside

   Of course, even this sterling material cannot quite survive when delivered by a group of young turks who, despite their varying degrees of attractiveness, function under quite a glaring charisma embargo. This concept might have gone over better if they had employed genuine actors with the requisite backgrounds and who would at least delivered the necessary irony to make this more palatable. Of course, the ones I am thinking of - Eddie Redmayne, Imogen Poots, Harry Hadden-Paton - presently have better things to do

   Why were the most poignant comments of the show about eyelashes - from the fellow with great hair as he struggled to reciprocate his girlfriend's gushing compliments about his character - and pineapples - from the pompous-but-lovelorn-so-he-might-be-alright-in-time fellow stroking a globe and openly praying for posterity to record his alleged greatness and socio-economic acumen? Why did they have an ostensibly 15 year old girl socialising in Raffles and hanging around modelling shoots? Why did they not concentrate on the lead girl's singing, a trait infinitely preferable to the written-for-automatons-by-automatons lines she delivered on the subject of her ongoing "love triangle?"

   Aside from the laughs, I gained one nugget of information - The Troubadour on Old Brompton Street is still in business. We are all honour bound to support our aged, ramshackle haunts, after all

   Although he no longer lives here and would have to go online, I wonder if viewing this will cause that Laguna Beach Blogger Fellow - the most SW3 of us all - to experience copious flashbacks to his 1980s days

   I may tune in next week, primarily for the girls, of course. Not for the reasons one might imagine, however - I simply have a theory that most of them prefer the company of dogs to the company of men. And I will never sleep again until this is proven

A Blast of Bombast

   For all the simplicity of the palette I chose, this might be the most forceful colour play of mine, thus far:

It is certainly fair to say that my Holliday & Brown aggressive abstract acid shirts are getting quite the workout; teaming one with H&B collaborator Prada (the bootcut dress trousers) and the Spencer Hart-designed Aquascutum coat, gives the wearer an overall look of a hedonist in search of a happening 


Adding to the fun, in the Lobbs I am just shy of 6'4"


Photograph by Harry L

Tie Up

   Edward Sexton, also known to me as "My Favourite Tailor," presents an instructional on the four-in-hand, the only tie knot that connotes an unfussy mind when it comes to necktie styling. His dummy's name is Ben Fogle, reporting for NBC as part of a piece on morning dress:

   Thanks to Edward's assistant, Dominic Sebag-Montefiore, for sending this to the MP inbox

A Wake

   

   Popular culture is perpetually at a stage where its degradation is marked by the passing of its figureheads perhaps as much as the dwindling of the culture itself. And at this time, I'm not certain we are superseding those luminaries with anyone better

   That said, I may just be venting from having memorialised more interesting dead people than I'd like on this column over the last year. But the thought persists, nonetheless

   For the most part, I could possibly muster more energy on these performers if I spent more time with my age 18 and below relatives. But they keep asking me to pay for the MP3 downloads and sing into their hairbrushes with them. I might look like I am made out of money, but I will only ever accommodate them on one of those requests

   It's the latter, in case you were wondering

   I think that for now, I will stick with the dissections of the old school, thank you. At least the past  can still feel perpetually alive

Beastie Boys - 'Make Some Noise' (Cornelius Remix, 2011)

All I can say is, they have all made me a very happy man today. Given the influence the middle-period Beasties had on Cornelius's middle-period 69/96 album, this is a more natural pairing than one may initially be led to assume


Maestro? Some noise, please:

The Greenbrier Revisit

   Now with added video, as the hotel's leadership itself has seen fit to join with the YouTube generation. Needless to say, it is a document of a different time; a few familiar celebrity visages abound as The Greenbrier  in 1948 is shown to reassert itself as a hub of aureate activity and sybaritic sensations. We now know how long that lasted

   With thanks to Virginia S

Aquamason

  The nice thing about the word "iconic" in relation to buildings is that it lends itself much easier to styles than to the individual constructions themselves. Which is why it is quite the delight to be able to talk about the ones that endure in the increasingly blipvert-based times of our lives and the ineluctable erasure time brings to taste, memory and the prevailing view

   So, do take a moment to be charmed by Frank Lloyd Wright's famous 1935 form, Kaufmann Residence. Or as it is more famously known, Fallingwater. Not many buildings can maintain such a resonant appeal, but its lessons of simplicity scale, space and congruence with its surroundings - Man + Nature + Insight = Sui Generis Architecture - persist to this day (fun, though possibly apocryphal, fact, as related by draftsman Edgar Tafel: after weeks without the emergence of any plans or drawings from his studio workshop, Wright, with his draftsmen, Tafel and Robert Mosher, eventually, and in a bout of focused genius, created the home's plot plan within the two hours it took Edgar J. "E.J." Kaufmann, Sr. to arrive for a long-desired , albeit impromptu, discussion of the construction at Bear Run). Any look at a Taschen Architecture Now! volume will affirm that

Now, what makes this feat all the more astonishing is that Fallingwater stands, or appears to stand, not upon the solid earth of some Middlewestern prairie but upon air. Cantilevered out over Bear Run by means of almost invisible concrete supports - Wright called them "bolsters" - the house and its series of terraces seem to float in saucy defiance of gravity above the waterfall. To the south, facing the view, its walls consist almost entirely of glass; to the north, its walls are of rough sandstone, hewn from a nearby abandoned quarry. Wright said of the house, "I think you can hear the waterfall when you look at the design. At least it is there, and he [Kaufmann] lives intimately with the thing he loves." Looking over the elevations and plans with Wright, Kaufmann proved the old man's equal in coolness.

With characteristic aplomb, Wright made no effort to disguise the peculiar fact that the house as he designed it was the one place from which it would be impossible to gain a glimpse of the waterfall. On the contrary, he emphasised the peculiarity, saying, "E.J., I want you to live with the waterfall, not just to look at it"

 -- Brendan Gill, Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright, 1987

   One other nice thing about Wright: he did not let only his work speak for him. Here, he talks about his perceptions of... well, pretty much everything. I am not in favour of every sentiment expressed, but an affirming screed that regards creativity, knowledge and Nature as our reasons for being? Hell yes:

Royal Show

George Tupou V, King of Tonga. Ever think that spats could be appealing again? This is your movement's new frontman! 


See the photographs from his coronation; classical statesman style in action

Princes Charles and William, accompanied by their wives, present for last night's festivities in black tie. And whilst Charles is always the leader, particularly in this milieu, such a potentially enduring image of a famous father and son pairing is all that really matters here

Sarah and Catherine

   My celebrations for today's Royal Wedding, which was indeed less moving though more stirring than I expected, were mostly horizontal. This is a common occurrence when one lives rather close to a 24-hour convenience shop, I candidly admit

 Via MSNBC

   Having spent the past month fielding a number of personal questions regarding the most famous nuptials on the planet since, I don't know, Michael and Lisa Marie (though I regretfully think William and Kate will not be making high comedy out of a Nightline appearance any time soon), I was prepared to affect a vaster-than-usual emotional distance from the spectacle, pomp and grandeur - diminished since 1981's Big Day, naturellement - but seeing Sarah Burton's virtuosity at play on the former Catherine Middleton's body (oooh, matron!) has fired up the prolix machine that is Mode Parade just to say, "Damn good job, woman." Between this prestigious commission and her appointment as creative director of Alexander McQueen last year after its namesake founder's unfortunate existence failure, her position in couture history may now be ironclad

Burton is pictured on the left, via Creative Minds

   Firstly, the dress is of a fittingly demure characteristic; the better to complement the decorum of the occasion and how very pretty the new Duchess of Cambridge is. Secondly, despite the archaic medieval aesthetic it seems to identify with, it is gratifyingly stylish in an intelligent way: aware, rather than subsumed by, tradition yet open. I remember when Jigsaw tended towards "cool," so it is difficult to watch a former employee circling the public eye whilst dressed as a woman ten years older with a penchant for purchases from the clothes shops of Tunbridge Wells. Thirdly, it is a balancing act, like all clever dressing is; the plunging 'V' juxtaposed to the elegant sweep of the train and the graceful embroidery on top of the pellucid lace says "I'm a blushing bride on the happiest day of my life, but this might be easier to remove than you might think, dear husband"

   Naturally, the collaboration does not end here; those of us who have already started pondering if Burton might become the Mainbocher to Kate's Royal Wife forebear, Mrs. Simpson, will be mustering additional words for the second and also rather tasteful dress the Duchess adorned for the rest of the festivities. William does indeed work fast:

Fuzzy dice for newly minted brides?

   "Damn good job" to both women, indeed. If editors, trend watchers and the middle classes the world over are very lucky, this could be the start of a beautiful something