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...

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.

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.

Little Red Riding Hood in the midst of French greenery and no wolf to be seen. The red turtle neck jersey and the knitted beanie are staples of my winter wardrobe. All the fashion gurus advise that you get rid of older items once a year. I confess to be guilty of conservatism. At least the mocassins from Geox are new.  

Leather and soft elegant grey. I didn’t think that could match until I found the suit  made of supple velvety leather. Grey on grey or less formal yellow wool on grey from Thierry Mugler . Leather is most versatile. Gone are the coat and the jacket of the quatres pièces by Evelin Brandt . It was too much of the same. The pants and west look better with the less formal cordury jacket in a different colour.  Evelin Brandt used to be in West Berlin at the times when the city was divided. Like many others she succeded in implanting her label in the reunified city in West and East.                                                                                                  Berlin has a long tradition of garment manufacturers...

The petrol deux pieces with assorted coat is holding its ground in my wardrobe as it is pure Karl Lagerfeld vintage from his series Impression made of the finest worsted wool. © PublicDomainPictures, Paris, pixabay It goes without saying that it was created in Paris, the capital of fashion. The colour of the pants suit by Tara Jarmon also from Paris is reminding me of the glorious mosaic  I saw on Persian mosques. The cloisonné box I brought home from Isfahan has the same shade of turquoise. 

Romain Courret, my favourite couturier (see post of January 24) had invited to his défilé of the season and he played it grand. We could enjoy his inventive fashion in the beautiful courtyard of the golf hotel Chateau des Vigiers. Romain had named his new collection  Nouvelle Ambassade / New Embassy.  The German equivalent  Botschaft  has the double meaning of embassy and message and a message he did convey. It spelled vivid creativity and playfulness. As a hommage to the mixed nationalities of his viewers Romain had dedicated each outfit to a diffferent nation. The défilé took place on French Heritage Day. The Chateau was just the right frame. The French flair for keeping their tradition alive was the other messsage. They hold skilled handicraft, the creation and the restauration of beautiful objects in the highest esteem. Couturiers, jewellers, glass blowers, cabinet makers, uphol...

Grey is the new black. It is so elegant and softer. My dress comes from Denmark made by Charlotte Eskildsen for the label Remix. I purchased it in Bergen, Norway. For me the colour is reflecting the silvery grey of an overcast day in the North. Bergen seems to be one of the wettest places on earth. There they love to tell you all sorts of jokes mocking their rainy weather: An American tourist asked a boy: Tell me young man, is it raining here every day? I don’t know, madam , did the lad answer, I am only eight years old.  The gathers in the front of my dress add just that bit of playfulness needed for a less sober look. Draped jersey is Charlotte Eskildsen’s speciality. Grey has the great advantage that it lends itself to endless possibilities of combinations. Sometimes I add violet boots and bag and a lot of silver, sometimes I feel more like jazzing it up with gold and an Asian spencer. The plushy spencer is doubling as a wind screen for chilly days. A red turtle neck swe...

Guess were this photo was taken. No, neither in Hawai nor in Fiji. The huge banana is growing in my French garden. Three years ago I planted an offshoot I had got from my neighbour. By now the banana has grown excessively, branched out and is forming a bush three meters high. I can just stay in my garden to experience wam and humid days. In summer this area is simulating the tropics. You can still see wooden sheds in  the fields where farmers used to dry their tobacco crops. Now it is all wine, wine from Bordeaux.     Tropical bananas are asking for bright yellow and lots of fool's gold. My South African earrings and golden snake are just right. 

This brilliant summer with endless blue skies and sunshine I am having  la dolce vita ,  the sweet life. No cloud is to be seen, even in the South West of France where rain showers are normally quite frequent. Not this year. In the bastide town Eymet the fresco from the famous Italian film is evoking a Roman summer and so does the weather. No Fontana di Trevi close by but a glass of diavolo citron, the coolest of French soft drinks, and jingling ice cubes. The restaurant under the arch on the main square is adorning the evocative film kiss of Marcello Mastrioanni and Anita Ekberg with the inimitable Italian mixture of a song of love and some washing hanging on the line. - C'e solo l'amore che mi da la forza di vivere!                   -  Alora vivi l'amore.               -  Only love is giving me the energy to live.            ...

Wax and kita explained Alice Ehui Eba are the very fabric of Ivorian society. These brightly coloured  pieces of cotton with their genorous curvy patterns  made a big splash in my small French town and created an atmosphere of  joi de vivre à l'Africaine.  In West Africa they go back to early colonial times and to the Asian technique of batik.   Nowadays the patterns and colours are printed on the fabric, but the name of the wax used for batik sticks. Alice, the stylist from Ivory Coast showed her amazing creativity in a fashion défilée for women, children and even men. Ample pelerines, swinging dresses, bomber jackets and coats, all made from wax. The traditional meaning of every colour and curve was duly explained. Red means rich and blue love, some patterns are hidden love letters. These connotatios may be lost to the Western customer, but the riot of colour is intriguing. Some ladies in the audience already showed off their West African blouse o...