Book Quote Friday: Dior by Dior

My dear friend Abi recently moved flat and city, prompting an urge to down-size her possessions, including, most shockingly, her books. So round I trotted to her increasingly empty flat, more concerned with sadness that she was moving than anything else, but of the 12 or so books she offered me, I picked up 11 and then went back for the 12th. She really does have excellent literary taste (in fact, as well as being my friend, she was also one of the most vocal members of my book club). Dior by Dior, an Autobiography of Christian Dior, was the first of this pile to reach that hallowed spot on my dressing table where hopes are fulfilled and dashed and literary heroes are made....








Literature in Art, Part Two: The Cult of Beauty

     After spending the morning at the V&A exhibit that featured in Literature in Art:, Part One, I spent the afternoon at the V&A’s newest exhibit, The Cult of Beauty. This major collection focuses on the Aestheticism that developed in Britain in the latter half of the 19th century, which featured Keats, William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with Oscar Wilde as the poster boy, believing in truth, love and beauty as raison d’etre - in fact, all those lovely, life-affirming things they sing about in Moulin Rouge!. 

     Of course, finding literary inspiration in a movement that contained quite so much actual literature was never going to be hard; especially when it was so coloured by bohemia and decadence, sensuality and romanticism and a deep appreciation of the ephemeral beauty of life. The poetry practically writes itself, doesn’t it? 







Literature in Art, Part One: Yohji Yamamoto at the V&A

     Last week I went to one of my favorite places on earth - the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the V&A for short - to see the retrospective exhibition of Yohji Yamamoto’s work that has been on show there since March. It was, as expected, beautiful and interesting, and put me much in mind of several writers, nuggets of literary history and distinctive literary styles, as things are apt to do.*