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Through February 6, 2005, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture is presenting The Castellani and Italian Archaeological Jewelry, the first exhibition to explore in depth the artistic and scholarly contributions to jewelry made by three generations of the Castellani family in 19th-century Rome.
This landmark exhibition, organized by the Bard Graduate Center, will also be seen in Rome at the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia and in London at Somerset House.
Comprising more than 250 objects from major public and private collections throughout the world, The Castellani and Italian Archaeological Jewelry explores the work and legacy of the firm in a comprehensive fashion, illustrating the wide-ranging aspects of the family's artistic and cultural activities.
For the first time a representative selection of Castellani jewelry from the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia and the Capitoline Museums in Rome is being seen abroad, along with pieces from the British Museum, Musée du Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris), and other public institutions and private collections.
The cocurators of the exhibition are Dr. Susan Weber Soros, founder and director of the Bard Graduate Center, and Dr. Stefanie Walk
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Designer Joseph Abboud has more clothes than he should.
He knows -- and even sort of agrees with -- the oft-written "rule" that if a garment hasn't been worn in two years, it should be forced to give up its precious spot in the closet. His excuse for keeping a 20-year-old leather bomber jacket that he bought in Paris is that he keeps it for reference.
"My closet is my laboratory," he says with a laugh.
Abboud is breaking a few rules these days.
His book "Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High-Stakes World of Fashion" (HarperCollins) doesn't airbrush the industry's imperfections in favor of the glossy photos that fill so many other fashion books.
He writes, with Ellen Stern, about how designer names can be overvalued:
"My ties are made in Italy. So are Armani's. One season a few years ago, we both used the same fabric (an honest mistake; not every coincidence is 'tie-jacking'), and both ties were manufactured in the same factory at Massimo, in Italy.
"Armani's linings and knots were thin. Mine had more body, better bar-tacking, and details like a self-loop in the back to pull the tail through. His ties retailed for $105, and mine were $75. Why? We all know why. His name was bigger, his awareness was greater, and his presence as a designer had existed for 20 years before I got there. I understand that.
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Canada's most celebrated wedding dress designer got her start hand-stitching in her attic. Today, Justina McCaffrey sells dresses across the continent, and she calls it a labour of love ... based on her own marriage.
"It all started when we got married," McCaffrey explains. "I made my own wedding dress. It was a very large and involved wedding dress."
She married David McCaffrey of Winnipeg, whom she first me at the age of six. McCaffrey hand-stitched her gown, which bore hundreds of beautiful silk roses. Everyone wanted one just like it.
"I started making dresses that had no owners," she said. "All these dresses and David was getting angry with me saying: 'What's going on?'"
The couple had three children and David worked for Ottawa's food bank. Then one day, he decided to take Justina's dresses on the road.
"I packed these dresses in the back of this Oldsmobile and I drove across the United States and knocked on every door," David says.
His efforts paid off. In what seems to be a fairytale come true, the couple showed Justina's wedding gowns at New York's Fashion Week. For American buyers, it was love at first sight.
"How did you cope with all the orders?" CTV's Rosemary Thompson asked the dress designer in an interview.
"That's a great question because originally we had no plans to open a factory," M
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Mick Jagger was there that night in 1996, watching the cheering boys with dreadlocks and the girls in shirts embroidered with the enigmatic logo that Tommy Hilfiger created a decade before, when he was still a nobody. The rock star was among hundreds of people gathered in a tent near Lincoln Center to see Mr. Hilfiger, the charismatic clothier from Elmira, N.Y., receive the Menswear Designer of the Year award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Back then, everything in the world seemed to be going Tommy's way. "There were these city kids, along on this magical ascent, because Tommy had crossed the barriers - he'd crossed both racial and demographic barriers," said Joseph Abboud, the clothing designer and a friend of Mr. Hilfiger, who was there that night. "Tommy had become the darling, he was at the pinnacle; he had transcended the whole preppy-Ivy League-Ralph Lauren-wannabe image to create a whole new paradigm of what the market looked like."
Driven in part by the association with hip-hop stars like Snoop Dogg and Coolio, Mr. Hilfiger's business boomed. And it is still huge: For its last fiscal year, the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation posted revenue of $1.9 billion, by selling mostly casual clothes throughout the world, and by licensing its name and red, white and blue logo for accessories like handbags, watch
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Cashin had a definite view that clothing should be both functional and fashionable. So she spent 70 years shrugging off notions of how a fashion designer should work and who she should design for; Cashin created her own designs and put them on the backs of women the world over.
Her refusal to compromise paid off: She built a fashion empire that today continues to shape retail successes such as Coach Inc. Cashin's now known as "the mother of American sportswear" -- along with fellow designer Claire McCardell -- owing to her lively imagination, willingness to learn and ability to communicate creativity and independence.
Cashin (1915-2000) was born in Oakland, Calif., and spent her childhood playing with textile swatches as she moved down the California coast with her dressmaker mother. She later credited her "apprenticeship " in her mother's stores for shaping her craft.
She loved clothing, and was eager to learn everything she could about creating the final product. She sketched out her ideas constantly, and sewed them to test them out on herself. But she wasn't sure she wanted to spend her life with fabric -- she wanted to be a showgirl.
At her first audition, however, she realized that the long-legged competition was what directors wanted -- not a diminutive 16-year-old. Deciding not to leave empty-handed, Cashin tu
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