Around the World in 80 Dresses

For Christmas dinner I am filling up my supply on red wine from the Cape at my favoured wine estate Groot Phesantekraal . Once the owner asked me about purchasing sources for a gobelin from France. Meanwhile, she has acquired the beautiful wall carpet you can see behind me at their wine tasting room. I can only admire the masterful embroidery in the traditional French style. © John Penny The carpet is forming a bridge to my other home in the South West of France. There, in a tiny neighbouring village our friends have just to look out of their kitchen window to enjoy this artwork in stained glass at the village church. In winter deer is sometimes to be seen in some solitary garden just as in the gobelin. The elegant European buck seems to me close to the South African antelopes.  © theodysseyonline.com I admit to fancy English Christmas canes like a child. That's why the jumpsuit with the candy stripes was an obvious choice for wine shopping on a hot pre-Christ...

Shopping for Christmas in midsummer is always a bit strange. So I need a respite from the Cape’s blazing sun at Melissa ’s. Melissa was the first to introduce the concept of Deli cum coffeeshop to South Africa and she is still the best. Today my outfit happens to match her French style furniture and it goes as well with the sign board of my local fruit market who is wishing me a Merry Christmas. I am no chameleon seeking camouflage but fitting in with your surroundings can be so satisfying not the least during the Happy Season. Some say it is the Silly Season due to all that shopping and merry-making frenzy. Who cares? My Christmas tree in the from of a red poinsettia will be greeting me at home and I am looking forward to a balmy evening with Carols by Candlelight in the semitropical garden of the Shuttleworth family whose son has done a trip to the International Space Station some years ago. May be, he has yearned to watch them celebrating Christmas from above?

The ball season in Cape Town starts in autumn that is to say in March/ April. On those chilly nights a plushy hood comes handy. In Johannesburg where the House of Alfalfa is based the evenings are always chilly. The matching cuffs of my dress are a nice addition and I do like the petrol tint. When in Germany or France for the season I switch to midnight blue georgette from Petronella. No hood but still long sleeves and my preferred colour. Dark blue seems to me more romantic and complements the skin tone better than black.

After the dramatic drought Cape Town experienced last summer this summer season is starting with rain so much longed for by the Captonians. Water restrictions are lifted, lawns are changing their colour from brown to green and I honour the rainy weather with a visit to the MOCAA. This stunning museum is the foremost gallery of contemporary African art on the continent (see also my post Clever Klûk of. March 15, 2018). The current exhibition Five Bhobh assembles 29 artists from neighbouring Zimbabwe in a remarkable show covering all aspects of life and history of the country that got a new breath of life after the 32 years' misrule of autocratic Robert Mugabe came to a sudden end. Here he is posing as Jesus with his disciples in a Last Supper sunrrounded by other African and international dignitaries. Five Bhobh that is to say life is like a run for five bhobhs (five kilometers) on a communal minibus. Kenian artist Cyrus Kabiru is playing with the African theme of masks. ...

As the Cape forms a huge peninsula between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean fish abounds. My local fish monger assures me that eating fish will give my brain a kick. I am easily convinced because I do love to indulge in fish and seafood. I try to merge with my rustic surroundings in a combination of silky slacks and shirt in unobtrusive beige and a locally hand-crafted neckless made of shells and ostrich eggs. Oldies always wear beige, isn't it so? © fishthesea.co.za Freshly harvested mussels from the Atlantic is my catch of the day and a big slice of the appropriately named mussel cracker is following. We discuss the best recipes at length. T𐌾he fish monger approves to do the mussels à la Francaise in white wine with a bit of cream and garlic and a lot of parsley. For the fish, however, he insists on having it braaied , barbecued in the South African way that is to say basted with some ready made mixture of oil and herbs and accompanied by a hot sauce.

After so much winter I am back at the sunny Cape of Good Hopes. One of my first outings led me to my favourite art association. Rust en Vrede is the name of the historic Cape Dutch venue. What they do there is far from rest and peace. It is full of life and creativity. The vernissage was all about ceramics. Internationally renowned land arist Strydom van der Merwe obliged and contributed a magic circle of small ceramic pieces in earthy colours. Many of the other objects were not less intriguing. The installation of Karin Lijnes was as simple as it was inventive and skillfull. She had put together a square of black and white bottles which she had first slip-cast and then painted. They looked like readymade plastic bottles, thus turning Marcel Duchamp's strategy upside down. For my first sunny morning here I had chosen a sun coloured suit from Zara  and a night blue top from Stefanel as dark blue as the Southern sky at a clear night. It turned out that two of my lady f...

Eroll Arendz from Cape Town is a magician. He knows how to make women look good. The shapes of his dresses and coats are rather simple. His secret lies in the cut. Add lovely fabric and fluid forms. I have chosen the long brown dress and a beige coat enveloping me in the lightest wool you can imagine. On colder days I change the coat for the fun fur west by Wanama from Buenos Aires. Their motto is Live better dreams . Well, Live your dreams would have done it for me, but Argentinians like to exaggerate. Adding a pale aquamarin shawl to the dark brown makes the dress fit for an outing for dinner in town. The plain brown dress offers endless possibilities for accessorizing. Playing with accessories is so much fun. It does not matter if it is classic, fancy or crazy, if it is costing next to nothing or preciously hand crafted by a renown arrtisan. With Eroll Arendz' dress everything goes.

There are coats to keep you warm, coats which match a dress and coats for special occasions. The grey flannel coat with ample rhinestone applications at the sleeves comes from a shop in Singapore specializing in French prêt-à-porter vintage. You needn’t wear an expensive dress as the coat is absorbing all the attention. The embroidered black piece from parory in India is more a tunic than a coat. So, it asks for matching slacks and a top to go underneath.  I found the coat in a shop of Cape Town’s pitturesque fishing village Kalk Bay on a visit to The Court Yard Café , a charming little restaurant on the Main Road facing the harbour and run by the daughter of my friends. © holmespj, Harbour, fishing boat, pixabay The hand woven linen coat with an ethnic touch made by Giwa vyed for my attention in Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand. It goes well with skinny jeans. Their shape hints at tight Asian pants and their material tones down the ethnic look. © jenn...

Velvet used to be a rare and precious fabric. Not so much any more but it still creates a festive atmosphere. You think of a candle light dinner or a room illuminated by crystal chandeliers.  My favourite Cape Town designer  Eroll Arendz   may have had this in mind when he created the west of copper coloured silk incrusted with matching velvet and adorned with velvet wristbands. A less formal take on velvet is the vintage purple suit with loose pants and a shirt by Jeff Gattana, Paris. It fits perfectly to the knitted coat from Argentina’s Andean city Córdoba.  Raquel Rossetto has used the velvet sparingly, just for the buttons. The curvy applications on the coat remind me of Córdoba’s baroque cathedral. The second biggest town of Argentina has a much more Spanisch ambiente than cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. The colonial past is still lingering in the streets and the old buildings with the backdrop of the Sierras Chicas.     ...

Les Bleus, the French equipe mastered the semifinals and may win the trophy of the soccer world cup tomorrow, one day after their national holiday. I am celebrating with some more bleu-blanc-rouge. These lovely colours are polyglott. They spell not only France but also sailing in the great blue or just enjoying summer at the Waterkant. The trendy neighbourhood at Cape Town's Table Bay and Bo Kaap, the adjoining Malay quarter, offer a backdrop of candy coloured houses along cobbled lanes. 

You cannot afford a painting by a famous French artist? Don’t worry.   Buy a scarf with the same image. So did I at the Musée Fernand Léger in Biot at the Cote d’Azur. The same you can do with the Haute Couture labels where even a silk scarf can cost a small fortune but will accompany you for years on end. I have chosen the dark brown geometry on beige by Charles Jourdan , the plain squares of hot pink and mustard by Rodier , the jungle leaves on light wool by Grès, who are now making perfumes only. From a friend who owns a boutique I got my signature leopards on a scarf by Etienne Aigner and a somewhat heraldic pattern by Hermès .  It says grande uniforme which means splendid military uniform. The French love that. You wouldn’t think that they ever had a revolution. On a vintage sale I made a lucky find, a silk scarf signed by Michèle Morgan, the French blonde icon of yesteryear with the cat eyes.       The ostrich fe...