The idea that you openly display your fortune has almost completely disappeared from European culture. For centuries you could calculate wealth (if not nobility) through the cost of materials and labour on your back: raw silk, shorn velvet, golden thread, seams lined with seed pearls and valuable stones reset into rings, bracelets, seals and pendants by each new owner. It must be the current rehash of 90s minimalism that is making me nostalgic for an opulence I have never experienced, being able to identify a real Celine phantom or Cartier bracelet digging in to a chubby wrist just isn't the same.
 |
| Alexander McQueen AW13 / Anne Boleyn, Artist unknown c.1533-36. National Portrait Gallery |
No comments:
Post a Comment