Cose Ipanema Boutique all the women go AH H H

NEWS FLASH

Every garment, shoe, bag, faux fur, glove, ring, earring, scarf, belt, elegantly French and Italian evening dresses, hats by outstanding milliners Naomi Goodsir and Christophe Coppens and soft German hats by Scha now 70% off at The South Yarra Cose Ipanema Boutique at 177 Toorak Road.

Sale garments from Italy and Japan.

Cose Ipanema. All Gigli Photos by Jaqueline Mitelman.

From 1987 through to the beginnings of ’89 I was cultural attaché at the French consulate in Melbourne looking after a large cultural program France had given to Australia for the Australian Bicentenary.

I was working 80 hours a week and was expected to attend endless cocktail parties and dinners.

Gigli’s ideal client was a woman who described herself as an ‘intellectual bohemian’.

The French liked me to wear French clothes when attending public events but in early 1989 I discovered the Italian Designer Romeo Gigli at Cose Ipanema and became hooked on his bohemian colourful way of dressing – a more sophisticated bohemian aesthetic than my university days.

Cose Ipanema Boutique started life in the Block Arcade selling high end fashion in 1976. Established by Portuguese born Luciana Pinto and her mother Francelina. 

Within a few years partnered by her husband Toni Da Silva and Luci’s father, Cose quickly expanded to five shops by 1997 establishing Cose Ipanema as a fashion institution in Melbourne.

In the 1990s Cose Ipanema stocked the then avant garde designers Comme Des Garcons, Issey Miyake and Yohje Yamamoto as well as Dolce & Gabbana, Marni and Dries Van Noten.

The shops were affectionately known as Cose. Yes Cose Ipanema like most high end fashion shops was expensive but their sales were fantastic – often reducing garments that had been thousands of dollars to just peanuts.

Cose didn’t ignore emerging young creative designers both internationally and in Australia and Sam Hussein was particularly good at choosing truly gifted milliners particularly Christopher Coppens from Belgium who made delicious quirky hats and the highly original Australian milliner Naomi Goodsir who went on to greater things in Paris. 

In 1989/90 Cose Ipanema purchased the Romeo Gigli collection from Milan in South Yarra and all of Gigli’s subsequent collections before Gigli left his signature company in 2004. In the 80s Romeo Gigli had described the women who he designed for as an “intellectual bohemian” that was how I viewed myself.

Gigli’s universal variation of the ancient sari as pants and tops.

Each item from the Gigli collection was exquisitely packed in individual Gigli boxes wrapped in tissue with its collection number on the box. 

The collection was truly breathtaking- a sumptuous collection of romantic aesthetics timelessly elegant. Shawl collars, dropped gentle shoulders, tulip skirts, narrow pants – universal variations of the ancient sari as skirts and dresses. Oh, the colours were exquisite referencing Byzantine mosaics, Florentine court dress in chiffons, velvets, silks heavily embroidered. It was obvious that this and the subsequent collection had been influenced by beautifully exotic Persian court dress. Gigli used extensive appliques inspired by the Byzantine period and other romantic periods of the past – every garment imbued with the mystery of the orient. In some of the dresses and skirts Gigli attached hand hewn coloured antique beads that tinkled while you walked. I felt like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan.  

It was a totally different fashion sensibility from the previous decade of padded shoulders and power suits.

The designer Romeo Gigli himself was a fascinating man – from a wealthy aristocratic Italian family in Faenza he had studied to be an architect. His one great influence in his life and fashion had been the 20,000 antiquarian books in his father’s family library. (I too am passionate about books but alas only have 500.)  

Cose like most high-end fashion shops in Australia and internationally, received a damaging blow from Covid when there was an enormous shift to digital shopping.

Cose is now fighting for life with the ever-present Toni Da Silva still manning the beautiful gallery like store in South Yarra.  

Everything at Cose in South Yarra is on sale and Cose still remains the best place in Melbourne to find that ‘special treasure’ you need for a very special event now at a fraction of the original price.

Lets celebrate Cose Ipanema Together.

Why don’t you send me a photo of yourself wearing a Cose outfit and share an anecdote about Cose to celebrate 48 years of outstanding quality fashion.  

awaters@bigpond.net.au  with your permission I will write about your stories in my blog. 

Media Launch of the Alliance Française Film Festival

 

 

 

The film Eva (1962) was directed by Joseph Losey who was inspired by The New Wave and Italian auteur films of the 60s paying homage to the two men who were at the time were the supreme masters of Italian cinema – Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. Eva was a French and Italian co production.

Director Joseph Losey, 

Watching this film at the Astor cinema in Melbourne in October 2018 made me only too aware of how dated this film is today, it seems many young people in the audience found it unintentionally funny. It is extremely melodramatic and its moral imperatives adultery, sex, gambling, drinking, fraud are all acceptable in 2018.

The film is about Eva, played by Jeanne Moreau – a glacial goddess of manipulation and destruction who is totally corrupt but a beguiling femme fatale. Eva wins the soul of a famous pretentious writer Tyvian Jones ( Stanley Baker) whose supposedly latest book is called rather ironically L’etranger en enfer The stranger in hell. The film is set in Venice in winter and is visually stunning albeit in black and white.

Sociologically its a fascinating film. When the writer slaps the feisty Eva across the face she retaliates by saying “only my husband is allowed to do that”. How times have changed.

Moreau’s face and voice are as always beguiling but it is the clothes and sound track that are totally mesmerising. In the film the character Eva is compulsively listening to a Billy Holiday’s song “ Willow weep for me “ that becomes the soundtrack of the film. The clothes were designed by Pierre Cardin of whom Moreau had a romantic five year relationship. She twice wears his iconic cropped jacket with large buttons and a rosette and appears in Cardin’s stunning brocade evening gown with a crystal beaded skirt. The wardrobe and hats that Eva wears in the film are très très chic proving that if you want to be a successful femme fatale you certainly need a glamorous wardrobe.

http://afclassicfilmfestival.org/

 

 

Quotes by Jeanne Moreau

On the film director Joseph Losey – “I love the way he films; it’s very personal, very brilliant”

On life – “Don’t take care of yourself because you want to stop time. Do it for self-respect. It’s an incredible gift, the energy of life. You don’t have to be a wreck. You don’t have to be sick. One’s aim in life should be to die in good health. Just like a candle that burns out.”

“Age does not protect you from love – but love to some extent protects you from age”

“If you want to live through to the end, you have to live dangerously” 

 

 

Private Collections Made Bare

Private Collection Laid Bare

My latest assignment for the Waters Group Publicity and Public Relations was publicising not one, not two but three fabulous private collectors, designer label collections at ridiculous tiny prices for Hawkeye Vintage. Joy, bliss and bargains all rolled into one fantastic sale in South Yarra in Melbourne.

The brainchild of fashion finder Danielle Goodwin owner of Hawkeye Vintage, the sell out sale became three frenetic days, selling 2,500 items and stoking the fires of Melbourne’s fashion fanciers. Danielle Goodwin and her staff were absolutely amazing, dealing with queues that started at 7am in the morning and trailing all the way around the block.

The sale was a total sell out, bringing a warm and wonderful respite to Melbourne’s chilly winter weather.

Alison Waters Hatmatters

Authenticity

Authenticity Sept 2017

Allan Mitelman Paintings MARS Gallery 23 September to 14 October 2017

The opening at MARS Gallery on Saturday 23 September epitomised the delight of a very familiar Melbourne art scene. With lots of old remembered faces going back through decades of artistic achievements.

The enigmatic Allan Mitelman has been a well loved and admired practitioner and nurturer of the arts. He never names any of his paintings – all of them are untitled.
I decided after viewing his latest exhibition of paintings that I would personally call his exhibition luminous solitude because that is the emotion they created in me.

I find his paintings sing, soar and descend. They glitter like coloured stones. They are like the contemplative silence after the feasting. 

The detail and nuance is somewhat lost when Allan’s work is photographed

 On Sunday 24 September we went to see I am not Your Negro a powerful disturbing and confronting movie that challenges your complacency, takes you out of your comfort zone and demonstrates how we are blind to things we do not wish to see.

This film is based on the notes and letters written by James Baldwin made for his book Remember this House. Baldwin is a compassionate, articulate, brilliant writer and essayist. He chose to be a witness to write the story of Black America – the message is universal.

Selma, Montgomery 1965 – Martin Luther King in middle

Through out the movie Baldwin’s presence in his 60s suit, thin black tie, the ever present cigarette in his elegant fingers, talks with conviction and passion. By examining and showing us graphic images of the lives of Black Americans from lynching to police brutality the film maker, Raoul Peck, highlights what Baldwin describes as the “moral apathy” of most white Americans. He examines the concept that in the mindset of most white Americans the black man signifies terror” or “dread” yet he suggests there is nothing to support this notion – “but it seems its ever present in white America’s minds”. This is still true despite the 400 years of black oppression.

Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X

In an interview in the film Baldwin mentions, “I forgot who said human beings can’t take too much reality (in fact it’s a quote from TS Elliot’s Part 1 of Burnt Norton). In the same interview he articulates the psychology of the reality or fantasy of black/ white relations – it’s chilling.

 

Hats Off to NGV Dior Exhibition

On Thursday the 25^th of August, I attended the media launch of the NGV exhibition opening of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture.
It proved to be a stunning exhibition, wonderfully organised with a hundred and forty rapturous garments.

AW modelling couture in 1973

AW in couture, wearing Christian Dior chapeaux, 1950’s

Being a hataholic I was certainly taken with the exhibition of Steven Jones’ wonderfully whimsical hats.
This exhibition also showcases designs by Dior’s successors, Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferre, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri.
This is by far the best costume exhibition I have seen in the last thirty five years at NGV Victoria.

Certainly when Christian Dior debuted his ‘haute couture’ at his 30 Montaigne headquarters on February the 12^th 1947 it provoked rapture, scandal and changed the way we see fashion forever.
Dior had an aesthete’s sensibility, he loved traditional and modern art, music, flowers and costumes – ideal qualifications for an outstanding couturier.

“Fashion tells us things about ourselves that codify or idealise our existence.”
Said Maria France Pochna, a significant author and researcher on Dior.

 

Christian Dior hat, spring-summer 1956

Dior assembled around him, superb staff at Maison de Couture, but in my reading about Dior over the last thirty years I especially admired the creative imagination and bravado of Madam Mitzah Bricard, Christian Dior’s “empress muse.”
She was amazingly, spontaneously creative, conjuring a hat for one of the collections “Just get me a few straws” or “that dress needs a dog collar, or a bit of chiffon around the neck to soften it.”
Asked who her favourite florist was, she replied “Cartier.”
Dior could not do without her – she was his ideal of womanhood.

 

The bejewelled and turbaned Mitzah Bricard, photographed by the legendary Cecil Beaton.

 

Mitzah, as well as being his muse, edited Dior’s collections. She was never seen at Avenue Montaigne before midday wearing an elegant turban, her pearls, and stiletto heels – the personification of elegance, glamour, and hauteur. Mitzah made men tremble – Alexander Liberman, Editorial Director of Conde Nast described her as “feminine seduction incarnate.”

 

 

 

 

Tacit Art Galleries Triumphs

Pause II

Tim Bateson 20 year Retrospective

Tacit Art Galleries
123 Gipps Street,
Collingwood

 

Tim Bateson, curator of Tacit Contemporary Art in Abbotsford with his partner, director Keith Lawrence launched their new Tacit Galleries on Wednesday July 5, at 123 Gipps Street, Collingwood with a retrospective exhibition of Tim’s work spanning a 20 year period.

It was a terrific opening, with fine speeches from Tim Bateson and the mayor of Collingwood, Sandra Cooper. The exhibition was officially opened by Euan Heng who began with “I have been working on getting rid of this Scottish accent since I arrived in Australia 40 years ago”. Heng congratulated Tim on a fine exhibition and noted that when Tim and Keith started Tacit Galleries he asked Tim, why they had chosen the word Tacit. Tim replied that Tacit meant, “understood or implied without being stated a fitting description of Tacit Galleries.

John Hoerner and Alison Waters, The Waters Group.

It was wonderful to see that some aspects of contemporary gallery life simply don’t need changing, with the traditional element of speeches, fine wine and good cheese and crackers present during the evening. Who said physical galleries were dead! This was certainly not the case at the official opening of Tacit in Collingwood, which is going from strength to strength.

The exhibition includes Tim’s paintings, drawings, printmaking and digital imagery. Tim will now be the director of the new gallery in Collingwood while Keith will retain the well-respected Tacit Contemporary Art in Abbotsford.

At a time when many art galleries are struggling, this new venture sees Tacit Galleries expand it’s already very successful eight gallery spaces in Abbotsford, providing yet more opportunity for artists with the launch of Tacit in Collingwood where there are now 11 elegant gallery spaces covering 520 square metres.

Centre Tim Bateson (Director and Artist) with well known artist and official guest speaker Euen Heng.

Fictitious Realities

The Gallery at Bayside Arts and Cultural Centre,
Corner Wilson and Carpenter Streets,
Brighton

July 1 to September 3 2017

The gallery was packed in spite of the freezing Melbourne winters day but thoroughly warmed by the words of guest curator, Robert Lindsay, former director of McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery who gave a wonderful oration profiling the nine artists exhibiting in the Fictitious Realities exhibition. “The intention underlying the exhibition can be encapsulated by the words of Pablo Picasso, ‘We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth” (1923). The narratives in this exhibition are presented as imaginative scenarios with a definite quality of believability, but their significance rests above all else on their capacity to engender heightened perception along with a deeper appreciation of reality and our humanity”.

Guest curator Robert Lindsay.

Cr Alex Del Porto, Mayor, Bayside City Council said Fictitious Realities exhibition was the sixth exhibition in the gallery’s Midwinter Master series and ‘this exhibition promises to be a highlight on the cultural calendar in Bayside’- a mental and visual challenge to examine the notion that what you see is not really reality but imaginary.

The guests were refreshed with fine food and wine and intrigued by the visual conundrums presented by the exhibition- a stand out being the depiction of a hermit crab seeking a new shell to make home – a metaphor for disruption and relocation in our challenged global community.

Guest curator Robert Lindsay, Mayor of Bayside Cr Alex del Porto and Chair of the Board Angelina Beninati