Empress Elisabeth of Austria, shown in the header* as a young girl in a painting by Carl Theodor von Piloty (1826–1886), one of the most important representatives of the genre of historical painting of his generation, is emblematic for this Blog.Why?
She was a spectacularly goodlooking and stylish woman. Beauty was her life. Different from today's celebrities, she was stylish for style's sake, not to draw attention to herself. (She was extraordinarily shy.)
Although many things about her appear faddish, even obsessed, - and no doubt she was a deeply troubled, neurotic woman - what remains is the sheer delight at a beautiful human work of art.
The Peak of Chic discusses briefly at her wonderful blog the appropriateness of two quite different royals, the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor as style icons:
I know that they were certainly a controversial couple, but it can't be denied that they were quite stylish. With Elsie de Wolfe as a mentor and the firm of Jansen as her decorator, the Duchess of Windsor couldn't help but be surrounded by beautiful things.They were indeed. The reason why I will refrain from making them a subject of my discussions** is the fact that they were evil (sorry for the naive-sounding epithet, but that's what they simply were) and I just don't like to research anything about them because I'd plainly hate to look at their mugs. That is, however, a matter of personal taste and I can understand that others have a higher or entirely different repulsion threshold.
The good thing is that I won't be caught in such a predicament all that often. Somehow it doesn't seem to be easy to find "evil" people who might be, by any definition, described as "stylish". Hitler? Or all other Nazi-celebrities, for that? The very epitome of lower-middleclassness! Stalin? All the many flashily uniformed second- or third -rate dictators hung with glitzy decorations? Right now, I can't even think of other "second rate evil" people, like that couple, who are stylish. Maybe Diana Mosley fits the bill, which would lead to the question whether the English upper classes are able to produce people who are evil, yet stylish. Oh my God! A can of big fat worms!However, style, as I see it, is a bit more than the thin veneer that meets the eye at first glance and I intend to discuss its many fascinating manifestations, of which clothes and interior decoration are just two.
Update Spring 2018:
*As I have totally re-styled this blog and changed the header, here is the Piloty-painting of the young Elisabeth (later of Austria).
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| On April 27, 2017, the painting was sold for EUR 1,540,000.00 (USD 1,699,999 .00) to the highest bidder at the Palais Dorotheum auction. |
**On a second note, owing to the recent addition to the British Royal Family I have refrained from my decision, not to discuss "evil" people. The Duchess of Windsor plainly deserved a mentioning in this entry, the more as the circumstances confirmed my theory that, although she, the Duchess, was, "evil" people are very rarely stylish.
