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.
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)
1 comment:
Delicious description of Verso!
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