Fashionistas - Of Oak and Decadence, The Art of Sublimation

For all those readers – I fancifully imagine a broad audience –who do not live in that present-day fashionista den of luxurious profligacy, a.k.a the metropolis Antwerp, a word of introduction is required. Suffice it to mention that I, not a novice to either town or milieu, have been suitably impressed this weekend by the sheer opulence my home town blazons. Ever since the emergence of the Antwerp Six in the eighties that I humbly witnessed from its very beginnings when I was still young yet far from innocent (à vingt ans, monsieur, j’étais déjà superbement perdue, to quote Juliette Greco’s song) and frequented the hang-outs where they hung out, it has been reputed for its booming fashion area. Nothing prepared me however for the extent it has boomed over the last twenty years. Always a city that professed to adhere to the beliefs of what is readily called ‘the pleasures of life’, the sensualist’s paradise, I shall politically correctly mention here that its flirtation with extreme right has rocketed appallingly in the last two decades as well. As a very subjective objective observer it befalls to point at the ugly stains on the otherwise blinding blazon.

For a tour de table of what it has to offer I refer to other sites and blogs. There are no Holmesian sleuthing skills required to find a multitude of recipes for a fabulous shopping weekend on the web. A warning should be given though, personal damage litigations being de rigeur these days: leave the VISA card at home. Pattern yourself on Odysseus, who knew what was coming when he wanted to hear the sirens sing and instructed his men to put wax in their ears and bind him to the mast of their ship lest they should all go to the bullocks. This was no idle precaution, as those familiar with ancient lore will know.
It has much to offer beyond the fashionista’s kettle of fish. A cognathèque with 150 different sorts of traditionally distilled cognac, an erotic sweets shop, a few renowned Havanna cigar stores, a jewel designer who exhibits the fruits of her craft in the intact interior of a preserved 1885 Parisian button store, a glove shop dating from 1884 – the only surviving one in Antwerp that should be put on the Unesco’s World Heritage list, where you’ll find gloves made of the finest stag and lamb leather, hand-made, in wonderful patterns and designs and 16 different sizes: driving gloves, elbow gloves, gloves that bare and accentuate in fetish-19th-century-fashion the slenderest of wrists, to pick at random from a choice list of selections, numerous exquisite petit restaurants, lots of art, and the glowing remains of a glorious past. You will certainly not get bored. Incidentally, I can strongly recommend 'The Gulden Bock', Schutterhofstraat 11 – a lunch experience worthy of the most demanding palate that is the embodiment of the embarrassment of riches. You go there for lunch and you will have a crisis: what to choose from that post-modern Rubenesque horn of plenty displayed. Theirs – and it is a policy – is a visual menu. What you see is what you get. But the things you can get! After excruciating deliberation, I eventually decided upon guinea fowl in a creamy truffle sauce with a myriad of mushroom varieties and wafer-thin pasta pockets filled with a substance that cannot be described but as scrumptious decadence beggaring description, of the kind one would sin for. If Goethe said that he preferred crises to the insult of an ordinary fate, believe me, this is the place to go.

What struck me though is that supreme informal yet elegant je m’en foutisme that pervades the otherwise very upper-classiness and that sets Antwerp apart from Jermyn or Bond Street London, or from the insufferable haughtiness of Lafayette Paris. Breughel gusto doused with French verve has wedded the British stirred not shaken stiff upper lip style of James Bond. The former editions of the latter impersonation, I should say, Daniel Craig not being up to the profile I have in mind.
The result is breathtaking. Perhaps the crossbreed is more like George Clooney.
Take the glamorous Martini-bar next to Verso, Lange Gasthuisstraat 9, which is very Martini Baby. White crocodile chairs, beige flint wall, a giant mirror that reflects the thousand scintillations of three oversized baroque chandeliers. This is the real thing. Here 007 and Clooney walk in, sit down side by side and order their drinks. Stirred not shaken, what else, and they do look as if they care, in contrast to Mr Craig.
Mindful of the earlier warning given and at risk of having visions much like H.C. Andersen’s match girl, one should pay a visit to the extraordinarily beautiful Verso store, housed in what used to be the Banque de Commerce’s temple at the turn of the (previous) century. The origins of the building date back to the 16th century, but the feel nowadays is still very much that of opulently rich early 1900s – spacious as in ‘spacious’, oak floor, stained glass roof, marble everywhere.
With only very big names in clothes and accessories, it breathes an ambiance of a million bucks, a foreigner’s website mentions. It does. It also breathes perfumes that are dazzling one’s olfactory senses. No ordinary Christmas decoration or tree here. For heaven’s sake, the idea!, you could almost hear the male assistants and interior decorators exclaim under their breath in shock-horror. They could have rolled their eyes and bared the wisdom tooth without impairing the ecstatic moment, to quote P.G. Woodehouse’s Bertie Wooster, who said this about a kennel of Aberdeen terriers.
No, Verso’s idea of Christmas feel is a wonderfully hued cloud of tulle, from the faintest shell-pink to the most feathery creamy white, made into a dress that Cinderella’s godmother has just conjured up from scraps and bits that were lying around, tied together below the bust with a satin creamy-pink ribbon – and this is ingenious, draped sash-like with a lambskin, as if it were a pinafore, vaguely reminiscing the shepherds that stood by the manger. Glo-ori-a In excelsis de-o. When the kings bearing gifts came by.

Frankincense to offer have I,
incense owns a Deity nigh
Prayer and praising,
all men raising,Worship Her, Worship Him, God most high.

Oh, the fragrances wafting around. Verso has a long counter filled with the most exquisite perfumes, mostly in the masculine line domain. The one that took me, and took me in completely, was Eau Noire, the most intriguing of Christian Dior’s cologne trio.
It is not the cologne though that took me in, but the candle scent – Eau Noire Maison, in passing by. I instantly got weak at the knees and succumbed with rampant abandon – coup de foudre, vraiment– to what appears to be Francis Kurkdjian enticing creation that fuses oriental lavender, cedar wood, white thyme leaf and bourbon vanilla bean into a delicate, yet bold bouquet.
QED what science states. Pheromones is what does the trick, ladies and gentlemen. Nothing but pheromones.
A must have, which I have burning right now at the time of going to press. A subconscious substitute for male presence in the house, I suppose. I might even be tempted to buy the cologne, spray my pillow and the inside of my elbow and snuggle through the night with this black-tie scent balanced with woodsy and irresistible, natural charm. The dreams I’ll have. The art of sublimation, indeed.

The Dior candle is advertised on the Dior website as follows:
From traditional form, glass of the Dior candles passed to the arch before being enamelled. The Dior grey is rigorously the same one as that of the living rooms men located at the "40 Rue François 1er", the varnished blank paper label takes again the panelling XVIIIe of Christian Dior with characters in relief. Each stage of manufacture is artisanal [sic]. Each Dior candle is sold in a luxurious box out of thick Bristol-board and chechmate [sic], of round form, on which one finds the mouldings Louis XVI of the "Avenue Montaigne".
One would buy it for the packaging alone.

Victoria, editor and unless otherwise stated writer of Bois de Jasmin, an independent online publication offering articles on perfumery including fragrance reviews, painted the following palette that I wish to share with you for the splendour of the imagery and language used:

“Eau Noire ornaments a vision of dark woods with the honeyed bitterness and the caramelized sweetness. Its multifaceted quality resembles the richness of colours in Baroque paintings, where the golden hues merge into the vivid carmines against the textured interplay of light and dark. The initial floral sweetness of lavender is woven through the rich herbal mélange, reminiscent of the windswept hilltops under the blistering August sun. ...Helichrysum with its scent reminiscent of fenugreek and celery seed drizzled with dark buckwheat honey lends a surprising facet to the composition. Also known as immortelle, everlasting and curry plant, helichrysum (helichrysum italicum) indeed resembles a scent of masala, an Indian spice mixture used in curries, and its exotic spiciness lends a luscious, intoxicating element to the composition. As it darkens, the arrangement attains a subtle sensual quality and the herbaceous bitterness melts into the resinous sweetness of woods, taking one from the meadows and into the old castles, where the candle smoke has permeated the wooden panels on the walls and the flames of the fireplace have charred the polished stones.”

This is sheer poetry. And it is indeed what the candle fragrance evokes. “Eau Noire”, she then continues, “is in the category of fragrances that I enjoy first and foremost for myself, given its comforting and warm quality that wraps around me like a blanket of sweet darkness. Although the initial stages of the composition are made rather masculine by the honeyed bitterness of helychrisum, the drydown softens considerably. An abstract patisserie note is swirled through the darkness of woods, which have nutty warmth that is between caramelized juices dripping from Tarte Tatin and antique cedarwood panels.”,
which demonstrates the limitations of the power of the word. For not a thousand words can express satisfactorily what your nose would know in an instant. That this is a scent to die for.

“Eau Noire is associated in my mind with one of the most remarkable of Velázquez’s painting, Las Meninas, both for its darkness, its ability to make the elements of the composition to fall into place with an effortless precision, and a poignant emotional aspect. Looking at Las Meninas, I am touched by the precocious dignity of the golden haired infanta and by the sullen presence of the court dwarfs who are there to amuse a little girl tired of posing for a painting. The lustrous trappings of the court life conceal the ambiguous undercurrents. Eau Noire is a far more abstract composition, however its baroque richness conceals an introspective quality and a gentle touch of vanillic sweetness balancing out the darkness, just like Velázquez’s compassion for the individual softens the deadpan realism of his work.”

This is in effect what Eau Noire does to undersigned. Perhaps that I personally would not think immediately of Velázquez’s Las Meninas, but the old castles, the resinous dark wood of libraries, the introspective quality, the comforting spicy warmth and sensuality combined with dark ambiguous undertones associate it in my mind with what, and rather whom, I consider, with deadpan realism, the epitome of seductiveness in real life. Everything a man should be. Resistance is pointless.

Painting: Diego Velázquez. Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor). 1656/57. Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. http://boisdejasmin.typepad.com/_/2005/12/fragrance_revie_4.html

Let’s now swivel and turn the eye, before leaving, for a tiny moment to the city’s other opulence, that of cultural diversity on a handkerchief compared to the size of other world cities, where the population can only dream of the above like H.C. Andersen’s match girl. Walking along the Van Wezenbeekstraat on Friday afternoon, after a hearty Italian lunch right in the Seefhoek, I crossed a tiny, wrinkled elderly Chinese woman who dragged along a shopping bag full of exotic vegetables bought in one of the many Asian shops - this is main street Chinatown – while merrily singing a traditional Chinese song, anachronistic and out-of-place and so at home on that very street.
Let’s balance out the fashionista’s opulence with that of the Asian community, the Jewish community, the Zairese and Lebanese one, the Moroccan, the Russian and Albanese, with that of the world of human trafficking, that of The Matrouchkas. Deadpan realism which very dark tones I like to soften with that hummed Chinese song. A tribute to this kaleidoscopic metropolis that is my home town.

The wandering songstress (from the end of the earth to the farthest sea ... with English substitles)

All Saints

On n'oublie rien (J. Brel)

Wonderful as sung by Juliette Gréco, but this English version of Jacques Brel's inoubliable chanson is quite amusing.



Brel's "On n'oublie rien" in English. From "Back to Back to Brel". Anthony Sarankin, Rachelle Demby, Jacqueline Keenan and Gordon Ross at the piano. Live performance.

On n'oublie rien de rien
On n'oublie rien du tout
On n'oublie rien de rien
On s'habitue c'est tout

Ni ces départs, ni ces navires
Ni ces voyages qui nous chavirent
De paysages en paysages
Et de visages en visages
Ni tous ces ports, ni tous ces bars
Ni tous ces attrape-cafard
Où l'on attend le matin gris
Au cinéma de son whisky
Ni tout cela, ni rien au monde
Ne sait pas nous faire oublier
Ne peut pas nous faire oublier
Qu'aussi vrai que la terre est ronde.

On n'oublie rien de rien
On n'oublie rien du tout
On n'oublie rien de rien
On s'habitue c'est tout

Ni ces jamais ni ces toujours
Ni ces je t'aime ni ces amours
Que l'on poursuit à travers coeurs
De gris en gris de pleurs en pleurs
Ni ces bras blancs d'une seule nuit
Collier de femme pour notre ennui
Que l'on dénoue au petit jour
Par des promesses de retour
Ni tout cela ni rien au monde
Ne sait pas nous faire oublier
Ne peut pas nous faire oublier
Qu'aussi vrai que la terre est ronde

On n'oublie rien de rien
On n'oublie rien du tout
On n'oublie rien de rien
On s'habitue c'est tout

Ni même ce temps où j'aurais fait
Mille chansons de mes regrets
Ni même ce temps où mes souvenirs
Prendront mes rides pour un sourire
Ni ce grand lit où mes remords
Ont rendez-vous avec la mort
Ni ce grand lit que je souhaite
A certains jours comme une fête
Ni tout cela ni rien au monde
Ne sait pas nous faire oublier
Ne peut pas nous faire oublier
Qu'aussi vrai que la terre est ronde

On n'oublie rien de rien
On n'oublie rien du tout
On n'oublie rien de rien
On s'habitue c'est tout

That's all



Juliette Gréco, Non monsieur je n'ai pas vingt ans

Friday on my mind

Ha, well. The door is shut, the locker tied up. I am fatigued and dead, the latter quite befitting this Hallowed Evening. My sister-in-law undoubtedly will have illuminated her garden with a big grinning pumpkin, the contents of which she made into a superb soup last Saturday. For those interested, here’s the recipe:

Apple Pumpkin Soup

1 large onion, chopped
1/2 pound of bacon, chopped
one 15-ounce can of pumpkin (or equivalent)
1 cup water
2 cups apple cider
1/4 cup brown sugar
4 cubes chicken bouillon
1 apple, chopped and unpeeled
dash of liquid smoke
salt, to taste
2 teaspoons white pepper
1/3 cup crystallized ginger, chopped

Sauté onion and bacon lightly in large pot. Add pumpkin, water, apple cider, brown sugar, chicken bouillon, apple, liquid smoke salt, white pepper, and crystallized ginger to the pot. Cover and simmer for 1 hour. Stir frequently. Blend to thicken in blender-size batches. Serve with sour cream: one teaspoon on each serving.

I particularly like ‘a dash of liquid smoke’. This is where language becomes poetry. It conjures up images of Macbeth-fashion cauldrons and real mean, ugly witches – not that new age Wicca naf crap. It speaks of mists and fogs and slow burning wood chips. Of course it is not quite PC since the European Food Safety Agency has established it is slightly carcinogenic, but so are cigarettes, the latter far more I daresay. The effect of a dash of liquid smoke is quite negligible compared to my daily intake of tar and nicotine, which rather peaks at this time of the year. Stress, you see. Hard work. When under duress, etcetera. My guardians and well-wishers will not approve, but I don’t care, she said defiantly, lighting another one.

Hallowe’en. We should be paying tribute to the evil spirits in the wake of All Saints Day, to placate them. According to the Celts the boundary between the living and the deceased dissolved on this day, and the dead became dangerous for the living by causing problems. Ah, see, that is why my being fatigued and dead tonight becomes more dangerous for the living. I am going to cause some problems, indubitably. Watch me.
Those who know will have noticed a certain tendency toward moody irritability this morning and witnessed some small outbreaks of irrational and compulsive behaviour on my part, snapping at people (under the guise of mumbling to myself and snatching scraps of paper out of someone’s baffled hands) for almost no reason. I said, almost no reason. A woman has to defend herself, justifying her taking everything personal and all that. Let no man tell a woman that it might be hormone terrorism lest he spend the rest of his life like the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow.

Now the curious thing is that twenty years ago no-one in his right mind in the old world, being our good old Europe and in particular the continental part of it, would have thought of celebrating Halloween. Two decades later, this quintessential American custom has been embraced with unabashed enthusiasm, which belies the prevailing anti-Americanism that marks the overall European response to the reign of the Bush II empire. Even the smallest village in the remote Flemish hinterland runs riot with it, as testified by my sister-in-law’s grinning pumpkin. I predict that Obama, should he be elected and I sincerely hope he will, assisted by the banking crisis boomerang, will turn good old Europe into Thanksgiving adepts as well in four years’ time. Mark my words.

The American Dream in the sixties, the American Nightmare fifty years later. L’histoire se répète, toujours. As Gibbon so expertly demonstrated, Roman customs and culture had never been so fervently embraced in every remote nook and cranny of its crumbling, weakened empire than when its hegemony was dropping dead from exhaustion. Its cultural imprint survived the onslaught, lived on, transmuted, giving rise to an astounding new amalgam. As it always does. There is nothing dark about it.
I am not being pessimistic. Growth and development hinge on death and rebirth. Waiting for the Barbarians has lead to the birth of Europe, which in its turn lead to the birth of the US.

No-one has expressed that concept more beautifully than Claudius Claudianus, 4-5th century AD, in his 'On a Crystal Enclosing a Drop of Water' (De crystallo cui aqua inerat, verse XXXVI (LIX):
See this vein which runs in a bright streak through the translucent ice. This hidden water fears not any blast of Boreas nor winter’s chill but runs this way and that. It is not frozen by December’s cold, nor dried up by July’s sun, nor wasted away by all-consuming time.

Compare that to D.H. Laurence, Winter in the Boulevard, 1916:
The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt.

Brutal, but wonderful. Both inextricably linked to the same idea. The ciclo del enfermo.

While we are waiting for the Barbarians, we better enjoy ourselves entretemps. I have been listening to Brave marin revient de guerre as sung by Kiki de Montparnasse, whose creed was “all I need is an onion, a bit of bread, and a bottle of red wine; and I will always find somebody to offer me that."
A woman with balls.
Speaking of which, that is exactly what I professed to be in the company of one of my colleagues, who paradoxically admires women who make clear from the onset that they are not hunting for the steady relationship, and what I was thinking of when smoking my last office cigarette of the day in the company of the female cleaners. All of them women with balls, in a different, tougher, far more admirable sense. I was listening in to poignant yet amusing stories related, with tender humour, by one of them about her demented 80 year old mother and her imaginary lover, when in walked the new male cleaner of Croatian descent, wearing sky-blue latex gloves, for his Friday cigarette.
“My, do you smoke?”, exclaimed the one who related the story of the demented mother, “I have never seen you do that.” “Nowadays only on Fridays”, he replied. “I used to smoke two packs a day”. Admirable, I think by myself. That man has stamina.
Good-looking, winning smile, a quick glance. Asks me most charmingly if he can borrow my lighter. But of course. I notice how the right arm muscle flexes, the brachioradialis to be precise. And my imagination starts running riot and tends to get physically very explicit. It doesn’t do that so easily on a lightning bolt meeting with strangers, certainly not so with male Croatian cleaners at least 15 years younger than my own interesting self, who guards her present-day modesty with admirable restraint. I will not go into details since this would lead me into all the clichés of the blue movies I usually sneer at. Suffice it to say that I would have asked him home if the others hadn’t been around. If I would have got there. It could have been mid-stairs for all it mattered, to give you an idea. Interesting phenomenon. My guardians and well-wishers will nod approvingly and exclaim there is hope at last. They will also harbour some smug smiles that they will use against me on every possible occasion. ‘Ah, you said that women are different?’ I can just hear them say it.

I better get on with the affair of the eighteenth century cow creamer. Much safer ground. Now cow creamers, indeed, are a very peculiar thing. I happen to have one myself and always thought I was one of the very few in the world to have such a quirky object in their possession, having inherited it from my grandmother. Mine, of glazed painted porcelain, is definitely not eighteenth century, more early 1920s mass production. It is utter kitsch and objectively speaking quite ugly. I took an absurd fancy to it as a child. Don’t ask me why.
I had actually forgotten about the whole cow creamer were it not for the delivery of my library arm-chair, which in turn, as it goes, led me to P.G. Wodehouse’s well-known novel that centres around the affair of the eighteenth century cow creamer. My curiosity was awakened. A search on the net revealed that cow creamers are a major industry. Ever since the populace took to drinking coffee, which they did from the early 18th century onwards, cow cream jugs have been massively popular, the first ones made by the Dutch. I read that “The hollow cows could be filled through an opening in the back, with the mouth serving as a spout and the tail as a handle”. That is exactly what delighted me as a child. “The popularity of these jugs was not diminished by the fact that they were very unhygienic and were potentially the cause of salmonella poisoning”. Ah, again not very PC. Not surprising I like it.

Should one sneer at a cow creamer?

It’s All Saints by now. The evil spirits have been placated. I am no longer fatigued, no longer dead, on the contrary, I am very much among the living, my virtue assaulted but it held its own very well, norms and values thrown to the wind like caution, yet nothing happened. That is irony. Or pragmatism, whatever you like.