Bellville Sassoon at the Fashion and Textile Museum

I went to the Fashion and Textile Museum during the spring to see the Kaffe Fassett exhibit and recently found out there was a Bellville Sassoon exhibit going on. Bellville Sassoon was a company which designed several royal gowns for princess Diana so of course I was intrigued. 

We arrived about 10 minutes after the museum's opening time so the lobby was pretty crowded. It being a pretty small museum meant that when we were walked in there wasn't enough room to see each piece displayed well. So I started viewing the exhibit from the end room. There were several incredible ball gowns shown from the start up of the company to very recently. 

Some pieces had so much intricate detail and others just flowed perfectly on the mannequins. There was a video of their runway shows which showed catwalk from the 70's to now. Everything was set up so well that you could easily move your eye from one dress to the other and stay wonderfully entranced. 

My favourite room was the front room of the show, a room for the brand's work with royals. There were photos and drawings of the different pieces princesses and the queen wore. There were even letters from Diana saying how grateful she was for a dress they had made for her. I think I loved this because not only did it show the person contact the brand had with their clients, but also the way she interacted with people. 

Overall, I really recommend going to this show, you're not going to see anything this special just anywhere. 

Here's the website for the show: http://ftmlondon.org/ftm-exhibitions/bellville-sassoon/

Milan: Museo del Novecento

During my two weeks off in August I also got to go Italy. During this particular pit stop, Charlotte and I spent less that 24 hours in Milan, but we were able to enjoy some food, shop, and even see a museum. We chose to go to the Museum of the 1900's, or the real Italian name "Museo del Novecento". 

The museum has an incredible permanent collection and there was also a temporary collection showing some pieces by Andy Warhol which I hadn't yet see, and I've seen a lot of Warhol. 

The building was really amazing, it was a modern new building attached to a very old Italian building. The combination of the two was incredible. And when you looked out of the modern window you got to see the Duomo, the biggest cathedral of the city. 

The coolest thing about the museum was that they mentioned White Chapel Art Gallery, in one of the posters. Here's their website; http://museodelnovecento.org/

If you're ever in Milan you should go!

The Photographers' Gallery

A little while ago I went all the way to Oxford Circus to see a photography exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery. The main exhibit I went to see was for the runners up of the Deutsche Borse prize. This prize consists of 30,000 pounds which is given to the winner with the "best" collection of photographs for the year. The gallery is a sort of relaxed, calm space right behind the shopping craze of Oxford Street.

Not only was the gallery showing the photographic work of these competitors but they also had an exhibit by a Finnish photographer with a variety of past Finnish ad campaigns. It was fun to see some of the products I've used in Finland shown in an ad from the 1960's.

There was also a room showing only one image, and everyone visiting the exhibit is invited to draw the photograph. Therefore having to spend more time looking at the image and analyzing it unlike how we may have looked at the other work in the gallery, by just glancing at it. My drawing was featured on the gallery's tumblr page, here: http://whatdoyousee-tpg.tumblr.com/post/52862580199/diana-turchi-this-response-to-the-photograph. Overall, I really liked this gallery because it  was able to show a diversity of work but kept it all tied together due to the simple fact that everything we saw was based on stilled images.

Here's their website: http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/

Last Day in Marrakesh

We were able to do a lot on our last day in Marrakesh. We had planned on seeing the important cites at the south side of the Medina on different days, but we then played with our schedule a bit and decided to see them all at once, after all they're all only a few streets away from one another. 

We started the morning at the Saadian Tombs, where you pay 10 MAD for entrance. The building is at the back of an important Mosque and the tombs are spread out in little different rooms with a green courtyard between the different rooms. Each tomb has at least one door way, where people could go to pray and visit their loved ones. The tombs are decorated with colourful tiles, engravings in wood and brick and many other little decorations. 

It was interesting to see so many tourists looking at the architecture, because that's what we see when visiting very different places such as Morocco. However to the locals it probably means a lot more. I would have liked there to be a more descriptive panel posted near the tombs explaining the background of the tombs so we could all gain a little more insight for why this particular tomb is such an important landmark. 

We then visited the Bahia Palace, which was wonderful. There were indoor and outdoor gardens, and so many small decorative details that we no longer see in Europe. The tiny tiles blended in well with the painted ceilings and stone engravings giving each room character even if it was empty. Moroccans tend to show their wealth by having fountains, because if you can waste water it shows that you have enough money to do so. I think that's an interesting mentality behind a decorative feature. 

The Bahia Palace only had windows when looking into the courtyard but never towards the exterior. This was strange to me because it gave me the impression of being closed off. Their windows however have beautiful curved metal wiring. This is where decoration works well with practicality. 

Lastly we visited the Dar Si Said Museum which was off the main roads. The rooms were dark but there were interesting historical objects showing the Moroccan and the Berber cultures very well. Intricate wooden doors and windows were displayed as well as a group of old fire arms and beautiful praying rugs. The museum had several small staircases which we used to see the different rooms, and we were able to visit most of the building which was an old rich man's house. 

Each different landmark we visited we tried to soak in and understand the most possible about the country and the culture. I truly enjoyed learning so much on my own where each discovery was new to me because I organized the trip myself without much previous knowledge about Moroccan culture. 

Kaffe Fassett

At the Fashion and Textiles Museum in London there is currently a Kaffe Fassett exhibit. He started out as a painter, then fell in love with knitting and needlepoint work. His work has been featured in Vogue and other fashion magazines. He is best known for his use of colour and at the show there is a video where he explains that "a gold next to a green is very different from a gold next to a pink".

His artistic journey is displayed very well in the few rooms of the museum, setting up his background and slowly showing his growth as an artist. I like to call him a composer, because he aligns the colours and patterns so well and particularly focuses on the composition of the whole piece. The rooms are also very colourful but they don't distract from his work.

There is one wall called "Kaffe's feeling wall" and you are allowed to touch the different fabrics he uses, as well as some small bits of fabric he knitted. It was a really cool experience, and it gives you a very different perspective on the world we live in. We are made aware of so many more colours and patterns.

The exhibit costs 5.50 pounds for students, and 8 for everyone else, and it closes on the 29th of June. The gallery also do knitting and textile workshops within the art gallery. This show is really worth seeing.

Here's the museum's site: http://ftmlondon.org/ftm-exhibitions/kaffe-fassett/

and here's Kaffe's own site: http://www.kaffefassett.com/Home.html