Icon tuesday. Tuesday´s irresistible beauty…tuesday for Elizabeth Taylor.
Three oscars, five golden globes, and eight marriages marked the life of ¨The girl with the violet eyes¨.
I will always remember her role on ¨Giant¨or the one on the ¨Cat on a hot tin roof¨.
¨The Hollywood Gentleman¨.
The essence of what a true gentleman should be. Always impeccable and in his place.
The essence of the male elegance
Images:
I already told you in my January log that I’d started the year by attending a portrait workshop called “I love me”. The workshop is lead by Rebeca López from “Kisikosas”, and this was the workshop’s first edition, however Rebeca has already started a second, and I’m sure a third will come soon or later.
One month spent sharing moments with 15 women: Ampario, Araceli, Bea, Mima, Ira, Sara, Sylvia, Verónica, Eva, Beatriz, Karola, Maria José, Natalia and Eva. Some of them are highly recognised photographers, and to share this workshop with them for a whole month as friends and colleagues has been a real honour for me. We’ve shared doubts, concerns and moments filled with happiness and laughter… a lot of laughter.
The workshop is very personal, and aims to be more of an intimate meeting with your inner self than a mere photography course, originating from the creativity and way of expression that each of us carry within. From “I ♥ me” Rebeca’s objective is for us to speak out about ourselves, who we are, who we would like to be, what we like and don’t like, what we speak about and what we would never speak about.
The third week’s work was titled “Pretending to be…”
My idea was to represent the different characteristics of women in the Twenties. I decided that that week’s work would be to try and change my own expressions. I would use the same setting but every take would try to represent something different. A 20’s woman varying with every take.
Lo primero es identificar a la mujer de los locos 20s:
The first thing was to identify the Roaring Twenties woman:
The 20’s decade put the start of our emancipation into progress. The fact that in this decade, after a great battle, we gained the right to vote freely for the first time, liberated us from numerous ties to which we had been previously submitted.
The freedom of the vote came with freedom in many other areas. We managed to abandon the corsets, the complex and awkward hairstyles, the thick black tights and the ankle length skirts of the nineteenth Century, giving loose reign to a new woman. We passed from being submissive housewives to unarguable limelight stars at important social events. We started filling universities and we turned into Queens of the night. The big parties, jazz concerts, theatres and casinos were amongst some of the places where we let loose to our new lifestyle.
Smoking, driving fast cars, playing sports such as golf or tennis, dancing a Charleston or a tango were some of the activities that we had never even dreamed of doing, and of which, from this moment on, would turn into something compulsory for any woman that gave importance to being up to date on the latest trends.
After my small reflection on this Golden period I will leave my personal view and idea of the women from these years…
Submissive, innocent, sensual, shameless, promiscuous and sophisticated women…
I am lacking a lot of technique, I’ve been taking manual shots for barely three weeks. However, I wanted to share my vision of the Twenties with all of you, and above all, I wanted you to know about Rebeca’s work.
I hope you like it…
Icon of Tuesday, tuesday for the Diva with capital letters. This tuesday with ¨The Little Wolf¨
The queen of melodrama, with an intense emotional and dramatic expressiveness.
She knew how to communicate with her gaze a clever charming and a very singular beauty.
She never retired,she knew how to adapt over the years her strong personality.
Bette Davis is for me…one of the greatest
Gema Molina is a journalist that has been living in London for a few years now. Her passion: social media, what do they mean in today’s world and the revolution that they have already started in the online world.
Creator of the blog Social With It a place that was born with the aim to keep up-to-date in an easy and accessible way a community of social media lovers and specialists with different views since the online evolution of the social media it’s different in each country. The goal is simple, to offer small businesses a guide so they can dive with success in the social media world. She pays special attention to communicate, share, or start debates about the hottest topics in your industry, both in English and Spanish, making the collaboration between communities seamless.
And for a few months now my right hand in the UK, my guide to lead the way in the market that loves antiquities and everything vintage, a market in which I would find difficult to progress without her valuable help and advice.
Gema is a passionate worker and constant fighter which allowed me to find in her my perfect complement since she puts in the work she does from the UK the same passion and creativity that I put in mine here.
I think that together we make a great couple at work, which makes me feel pretty confident that 2013 it’s going to be our year in the English-speaking countries.
Thanks a lot for your visit Gema, it has been a real pleasure to put a face on your emails after more than three months working together over the internet.
Best wishes.
Tuesday for icon. Tuesday for fragility. Tuesday for Gregory Peck.
With a seductive body and a fragile and serene beauty, he was able to give great depth to his performances.
But of all his wonderful films I´ll stick with ¨Roman Holiday¨, a romantic comedy full of freshness that made Audrey Hepburn become a great star.
Icon Tuesday. Tuesday of elegance with capitol letters… tuesday of Royal Highness.
Her impeccable elegance and her delicate and quiet beauty, made her not only turning her into a princess, but raise her to one of the most charismatics and eternal women ever.
The Eisenberg Company was founded in Illinois, Chicago, in 1914 by Jonás Eisenberg, an Austrian immigrant who arrived to the United States around 1880.
At the beginning the company only produced high quality women’s clothing; however every one of its dresses came accessorized with a very special piece of costume jewellery. These accessories were brooches hand sewn onto the dress by the company with Swarovski crystals imported from Austria, as well as rock crystal and fake pearls.
The idea was a novelty at the time and managed to change the company’s history.
This detail, which every one of its designs included, created a different look to the rest of the dresses that were being sold at the time, and before long Eisenberg’s designs were nearly more famous for the accessories that they sported than for the actual model itself. His brooches were so sought after that people started stealing them off the clothes. The clients wore the dress’s brooches to show them off on their own pieces of clothing.
This made the company rethink certain things, finally leading to Eisenberg’s first collection of brooches in 1930. Soon after, the collection expanded and started to include necklaces, bracelets and earrings.
Eisenberg has never been a cheap brand. Its pieces have always been distinguished for their quality, design and high price. In the Fifties the prices for the pieces of jewellery were already marked around 10 to 30 dollars.
The first collections of the “Eisenberg Originals” were great designs and loaded with stones. However, in the Forties, due to a restriction on metals during the war, Eisenberg used sterling silver and the pieces became lighter and more detailed. There were rumours during wartime that the diamonds were smuggled into the United States, hidden as precious stones from Eisenberg jewellers, yet this has never been proved.
From 1940 to 1972, Ruth M. Kamke was the chief designer. She practically created all the pieces from the “Eisenberg Ice” and “Eisenberg Originals” brands.
Eisenberg designed so many necklace, earring and bracelet sets in the Forties that they currently reach extremely high prices on the Vintage market.
His motto during the Forties:
“The jeweller’s of the future, so clear and radiant like an iceberg under the light of the sun.”
Tuesday Icon, Tuesday of Casablanca,Tuesday for Humphrey Bogart
His eternal cigarette smoking between fingers; His distant gaze,cynical and with an absent smile, made him became an atypical handsome man that will always be remembered for his temperamental main characters.
Images: Wikipedia
On Friday afternoon I went to visit the “El Legado Casa de Alba” (The Legacy of the House of Alba) Exhibition. We were lucky enough to enjoy a private visit with Maria of Cuenca. A real luxury to be able to have the experience of listening to her exclusively and an absolute delight to wander through the exhibition rooms with her.
The exhibition has reunited about 150 works from the Liria Palace. Many of them are being exhibited to the public for the first time in history in what we could call the most important cultural exhibition of the year.
By opening this exhibition the House of Alba Foundation has wanted to make known the extremely important work that it carries out in order to maintain and conserve one of our country’s most important private collections.
If I must choose only one piece from the exhibition it would be the “White Duchess” by Francisco de Goya. This painting fascinates me, I had been wanting and hoping for the chance to see it in real life.
It was months ago that I requested a visit to the Liria Palace and I am still awaiting a reply. Amongst my greatest desires is that of being able to enjoy this painting in its original location; to wake up in the morning, enter one of the living rooms of your house and admire this work by Goya, it must be something difficult to describe.
The painting is magnificent. Doña Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silvia and Alvarez of Toledo, the XIII Duchess of Alba, was one of the most attractive women of the Enlightenment in Madrid. Her beauty has been sung about by poets and musicians; it was said of her that she was so beautiful that when she walked down the street the whole world looked out at her from their windows and even the children left their toys and games in order to admire her.
Doña Cayetana had a strong temperament and was well known throughout the Madrid suburbs for dressing as a ‘maja’ (xviii and xix century inhabitants from certain areas in Madrid who dressed in resplendent costumes) in order to participate in traditional festivals. She was a strong defender of actresses, poets, painters and bullfighters, she even managed to cause dispute over the favours of handsome young men with other courtesans, including the Queen herself. She was a real character of her time, an assertive and restless woman with whom Goya fell in love with from the very first moment he met her.
Goya knew how to capture her assertive, restless and daring personality that she possessed for the time she lived in. An elegant dress of white gauze was chosen with a red ribbon around the waist, a coral collar and various ribbons of the same colour over her chest and in her hair. The bows reminded me of those flowers that the Duchess of Alba used to wear for all her public outings, I think this was a gesture towards her ancestors. Her hair is loose and curly, something that would have been unthinkable for a high bourgeoisie Lady like her, something perhaps more appropriate for the courtesans of the period. To her right is her lapdog with a coquettish little red ribbon around his paw as a symbol of fidelity. Possibly the same fidelity that the painter professed.
Other works of art worthy of mentioning are “The Virgin of Granada”, a unique painting belonging exclusively to the hands of Fra Angelico, never before exhibited in public. Or well known documents such as Christopher Columbus’ autograph letter collection, the most extensive one we know, just like the first edition of Don Quixote.
Other pieces that really caught my attention were those related to Maria Eugenia of Montijo. One was a marble bust of which I attach a photo in bronze (I haven’t found any of those belonging to the House of Alba). What particularly grabbed my attention about this work of art was the broach worn on the neckline, as seen as I have two very similar models in the shop.
As a summary of the exhibition I leave you with the words of D. Carlos Fitz-James Stuart and Martínez of Irujo, Duke of Huéscar: “Our intention is to share the works and pieces that make up the Casa de Alba Foundation’s collection with an audience that is increasingly familiar with and interested in culture and history. This exhibition enables us to present various works and documents that have survived the ups and downs of history and that form the greatest treasure of our family’s legacy. “
The exhibition is an authentic journey through Spain’s history, guided by the hands of one of the most noble and title-holding families of the world, I don’t recommend you miss it.
It is open until the 31st of March
Video: The Legacy of the House of Alba