One Pug at Home

A lazy life

Vintage in Brussels: PIÈCE UNIQUE

Place Brugmann and the surroundings are in my favourite quartier in  Brussels:  not only works here my hairdresser David but there is also a most interesting Vintage shop, very nearby actually.

"Pièce Unique"  - always an Aladins Cave for finding something which has only been waiting for you apparently.
 Last time I was there and found a whole bunch of Issey Miyake clothes, in very good condition - told some girls and off they went to have a look!
I myself have been circling a very classic and sober black Tods bag, but it was gone, when I came back to have another look. The more you look around, the more you find... and even in not so small sizes!! SO..

The shop belongs to a very quirky french lady - called by her friends "N.G." and a self confessed fashion victim ( this means, the ideal background for the enterprise!) - she is french, through and through, has been for a long time in the Antiques Bussiness  and has opened her premises in Brussels only in January 2010 - and the thing is taking flight now more and more.

We always have a good talk, be it over the question, whether people buy or not used shoes; about sizes, which are often a problem in the Vintage Market, or the Chanel vest, which I dream of and am still looking for. On the racks there is Chanel, Lanvin, Hermès ( not only foulards..) Mugler ( great black jacket!), Inès de la Fressange, Balenciaga ( alas, small sizes) and many more.There are also very  nice bags - one I am still keeping an eye on, but will not tell you which. Actually, I hasten to say, that you can bubble of here in perfect english - la Polyglotte Parfaite!

One of the very exclusive treats you find here is a collection of the jewellery made by Philippe Ferandis - there are shops in Paris, but here in Brussels it is the only place to my knowledge, where you can find those breathtakingly beautiful and unusual fashion jewelleries - I just love them. They are interesting, very well made and a real showstopper - just put on a little with dress, or if you prefer the black one, hang one of these marvellous colliers around your neck and be ready to face the world. Great!

N.G. told me, that she will start this weekend most probably with the "pre-Sales" - so if you are around, just pop in and have a look. I certainly will do... walking like a cat around the milkpot around the mentioned bag...

"Pièce Unique"

Vintage Accessoires de Mode, Créateurs, Couturiers, Bijoux

Rue Franz Merjay 167/169

1050 Brussels

Tel. 02 347 48 96

mail: pieceunique@gmail.com

Why don´t you...? 9

- take time to wonder more?
Most constructive occupation, I can tell you. best done while doing some mechanical movements, like peeling potatoes, weeding the garden or vacuumcleaning ( yes, it works!)
So...

- wonder what your parents really think or thought, cherished and wanted from their lives?
The great unknown. I wonder really sometimes, if we know our parents in reality? Unfortunately my father is long dead; I would have loved to know him better. Parents do have a hidden life of their own and when we, often very late or only after their death, find out some details we did never guess, we are shaken in our deepest hearts. But there it is. Everybody has his own little garden in his heart.

-  wonder about your expectations in life?
Any reason to think to have a right to something? Have you got what you wanted? Or does it transpire that expectations are a gift from the bad fairy godmother? Or are they not...? But then, were would we be, without our beloved expectations in life...

- wonder about the beauty you see everyday in front of you, for free?
I know, I repeat myself here - but it is worth to drum it out to you there: Cherish beauty, be aware of it and take time to take it in. It is so important!

- wonder why people like and sometimes even love you?
When you are toldso and you are far from being perfect, you start to wonder. Until you find out, that, inspite of being the one you are, there are always people who like you the way you are. Remember Bridgets Jones´ diary, where lovely and maladroite Mr Darcy tells messy Bridget, that he just likes her the way she is? Who of you did not have a melancholic second???

Thank you!

Good morning to you all out there,
just to let you know, that my blog has reached the 2000 clicks!!!!  Being there for 4 month now, this gives me great pleasure and the support to go on airing my opinions and preferences. So pleased!
Have a lovely day, even if it is raining in Brussels,
Jola

PINA, by Wim Wenders, Germany/France 2010

Went yesterday, finally, to see the latest film by Wim Wenders - "Pina" - a sort of memoir in hommage to Pina Pausch (1940-2009). Her company "Tanztheater Wuppertal" was and is famous for the unrelenting innovation in the approach to dance and the digging into the unspeakable.

The film consists of slices of some retrospektive famous productions by Pina Pausch and then, for the most of the film, commentaries and interpretations of the people in her company, how they saw her, what she meant to them, what they learned form her. In this it is in fact a documentary, but the calm, hidden and very emphatic hand of Wim Wenders give the film a dreamlike finish, in the best sense of the word. Here for once I think the 3D technique comes into itself in a marvelous way - after all, we sit in the audience and feel like we are sitting indeed in the theater and watch the performances ad hoc. It is no story about Pina, she is even seen not too often - though her performance in "Café Müller" is for me heartbreaking - it is more a puzzle of impressions by the people who worked for and with her for often many years. And she is behind this all.

I really was moved to see this film. I understand virtually nothing of dance. My home is more the 17th and 18th century, be it in music and art. But this was different - I was compelled and utterly absorbed - the way another, for me unknown language is applied is almost some sort of a shock. I did not all understand, what she was trying to convey, but I have the feeling, that I understood after all pretty well what she wanted to say. More I cannot tell you about it. I can only tell you, what came to my head and what made me think in a myriad of different directions. There is a stream of associations which were unlocked when I watched the dancers dancing, the surroundings taking its place in the dance and the expression of their faces.
First of all, the sheer bodily capability of control. The very haggard faces of the older dancers, as if they were spent and worn out. Then also the fact, that this are not dancers in the sense of classical ballet - beauties and skinny and etheral - no, here are real people, well trained, but real. Old and young ones, heavy built and skinny, tall and small  - all of them with wonderful talking eyes. It touched me to see their eyes.

Then there are some breathtakingly beautiful spaces where the performance is presented - for me rooms are always so important and I was smashed by the beauty of the surroundings - especially a glasstructure in the midst of the woods, then a crate landscape of the "Ruhrpott", the mancreated moonlandscape of coals and steel. The spaces in those industrial buildings are overwhelming - a beauty of majesty and not aggressive, as industrial buildings can often be. At least I did not perceive them as aggressive.

One thing I also noted and I am not sure, if I can convey to you what I mean with this. Just let me say it: This is a very "german" film. In a good sense. Let me give you my impressions, which came floating in and out while watching and then perhaps you understand what I want to say with this. It is very german in the sense of its utter earnestness, the heavy significance, the unspoken tragedy, associations of C.G. Jung, Egon Schiele, early greek fertility rituals in an almost oppressive intellectual interpretation, of "Romantik" in the german sense of Runge and Die Blaue Blume. Of Expressionist paintings. Thomas Mann and Zauberberg. More superficial and therefore not so compelling, Bert Brecht and Kurt Weill.
Even with the dancers coming from all nationalities, it is through and through german. Whatever this means.
Great film. If you have the possibility to see it, do, by all means. Go in with a blank mind and give you over to the impressions - very Romantik in the best sense of the early 19th century Germany.

What Diana thinks about it...

Diana Vreeland, the great style icon of the 20th century ... I quote here some of her sayings, found in a book called "D.V."   - written by herself and edited by George Plimpton and Christopher Hemphill, 1984/ 1997, New York.

The book is great fun, great gossip and a source of innumerable anecdotes and fashion-wisdom.
The italics are her own:

"Chanel No.5, to me, is still the ideal scent for a woman. She can wear it anywhere, anytime, and everybody - husbands, beaus, taxi drivers - everybody loves it."

"There is a whole school now that says the scent must be faint. This is ridiculous. I´m speaking from the experience of a life-time."

"You should never put scent on immediately after your bath. That´s the biggest mistake going - there´s nothing for it to cling to."

"Elegance is everything in a shoe. ... This is a serious subject with me. At last ... we´re on a serious subject. This isn´t fashion stuff, this is the real thing."

About Roger Vivier Shoes:
 "These shoes have been awfully good to me. I´ve been wearing some of them for twenty years - that´s how well they´re made."

"Unshined shoes are the end of civilization."

" I much prefer talk. Good conversation is rare and becoming increasingly so. ... It is totally wonderful when you can experience an evening at someone´s house - a small, intimate gathering - when a good talker takes over and stimulates a good argument."

"Good cooks, jolly fellows - that´s what makes a dinner."

"My favourite dinner partners are the English because they never laugh. I  am spellbound and overcome by the mood they create through their language. Their wit is what is so supreme. A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is."

Want more?

Textile Hangings on the Wall

The Power of Wallhangings has been a bit obsolet lately - but it is an instrument for decoration in a house which should not be underestimated. There are several possibilities of displaying lovely textures and fabrics on your walls. Here I will not speak about tapestries, as very few of us have the possibilities to hang those, nor the means to aquire them. I will talk of those easy and affordable examples, which need only a little bit of an eye and imagination.

I grew up with fabric next to my bed - my mother used to hang simple curtains next to our beds on the wall and I have ever since done the same - it gives a room right away another feeling of cosiness.

Our guestroom in Brussels

 In all my humble abodes I have always used this simple trick for my children in their rooms - they felt cosy and I think it is lovely for them to fall asleep next to a beautiful textured or designed cosy material, and not to a blank wall.

I also remember in the 1980ies being in England, to visit an old polish aunt - they lived in a smallish house somewhere in the outskirts of London. The room, where I was to sleep, belonged to an uncle, who at the time was not present and I had a room for myself: it was a small darkish room, full of books, and the old Bateaubed had at the wall a kelim and a ceiling hanging in some fabric, which must have been some cashmere paisleyshawl - it was wonderful, with an exotic, oriental and very masculine feeling. Restricted, not luxurious, but full of personality.

At home I found an old kelim, which somehow was waiting for me in the attic and got it in my treasurebox - and when I moved on to university, and had my first room rented, I hang it next to my simple mattress-cum-feet which also doubled as a sofa - a bed-sitting-cum-study. I felt at home and chez moi.

I have used that Kelim ever since as a bedhanging, in all possible places where I lived, be it in Portugal, in Turkey or in Belgium. Recently I had it taken down and actually I miss it. Textiles hanging at the wall make a room lived in and give it a certain atmosphere.

Biedermeier Trunk and turkish woolhanging

In Turkey I bought, out of utter joy, a wollen wallhanging in vivid green, which I had thrown over a Paravent, standing behind my writing desk in the salon - it was an eyecatcher and made the salon a little bit less formal, gave it a quirk, which I always consider as essential in interior decoration. Nowadays it hangs in the hall in our first floor, over an old trunk I brought with me from Bavaria - it is filled with fabrics of all sorts, and also, if I remember well, my weddingdress.

Also I remember vividly a beautiful embroidery an american friend had ( and hopefully still has!) hanging over a gustavian commode in her flat then in Ankara - every time I was at her place, I admired it and wished to possess one myself.

In Portugal is a very old habit of hanging a huge piece of embroidered or quilted of fabric in front of the doors or over a sofa on the sitting room. Normally those hangings display the armories of the family, to which the rooms belong, and it gives some grandeur and feeling of selfconscioussness to the room. Not to impress, but to convey a feeling to be "at home", in my view.

The most talented of hangers though is my brother in Regensburg. He and my sister in law inhabit one of the most original houses I know - a medieval townhouse, with a smallish and reclused garden in the back. The rooms are small and low, but give you immediatly the impression of coming home - not at least also in their way, how they display kelims and oriental and even african fabrics in the rooms. One of the bedrooms has a bed, which is almost an alcove - I have never slept better than there and the whole idea, coming from the middle ages, to make a room less cold and protect you from a draught has come here to a new meaning: like a smallish place only for yourself, not bare given over to winds and looks from outside.
It must be a very old heritage, this feeling of being safe and secure.

PS: My brother is taking a whole new approach to hanging fabric on a wall - he recently made a series of drawings, gardenscenes and also architecture which after were printed on a longish piece of fabric, which can be hung alone or in a series on the wall - thus providing a sort of background, which gives interest to an otherwise bare room. In the end, it is following in the tradition of the great landscape-wallpapers, which were all the furor in the late 18th century in France and England: just think of the beautiful wallpapers by Zuber in Switzerland, with landscapes in a great scale or chinoiseries. The Regensburg hangings are meant for the small appartment, with little space and a need for having something of interest hanging behind your chair. And so a room is furnished, with more or less nothing...