So the other weekend I went down to Bendigo to see the Age of Couture exhibition. In all honesty Bendigo is actually surprisingly quite a lovely town, with its old Victorian style buildings that have escaped from being demolished and reformed into an awesome block of “modern style” apartments. The word ‘quaint’ comes to mind if I had to describe it in one word. Being there for half a day and a night didn’t leave much time for me to wander around (It would have been a whole day if Melbourne transportation actually ran as accordingly like it’s supposed too... but that’s for another time.) But from what I saw and this coming from a pampered middle-class city chick, I will admit it is quite liveable.
Anyways back on track, the couture exhibition featured many works of famous haute couture artists such as Dior, Balenciaga, Fath and many others from during post war Paris & London during the 1950s. Now I had been looking forward to this exhibition for some time now after spotting a postcard for it many months back. What caught my eye originally was this particular dress that was featured on the postcard.
For yonks now that dress has been a personal favourite of mine and a lot of inspiration for my own work has come from that one dress. So here I was darting around corners hoping to see this fantastic piece of art but after scouring each room I came to the sad realisation that it was not there... what a bummer... but putting that aside it was still worth the trip down. It was interesting to see how much thought and detail was put into each piece of work, something that is somewhat absent from today’s clothing, and it all looked oh so incredibly elegant and well refined... it was kind of depressing. *Le sigh...* Oh well what can one expect from a city that thrives on over mass produced clothing. Seriously though, I walked around the CBD the other day and walked into four different shops and they shared almost the exact same stock, just with a different price tag. But that’s again another story.
For yonks now that dress has been a personal favourite of mine and a lot of inspiration for my own work has come from that one dress. So here I was darting around corners hoping to see this fantastic piece of art but after scouring each room I came to the sad realisation that it was not there... what a bummer... but putting that aside it was still worth the trip down. It was interesting to see how much thought and detail was put into each piece of work, something that is somewhat absent from today’s clothing, and it all looked oh so incredibly elegant and well refined... it was kind of depressing. *Le sigh...* Oh well what can one expect from a city that thrives on over mass produced clothing. Seriously though, I walked around the CBD the other day and walked into four different shops and they shared almost the exact same stock, just with a different price tag. But that’s again another story.In short the exhibition was most awesome.
