some things old, some things new. part two

taxi rides through muggy Beijing nights, waiting for the rain

Veruschka in Bill Blass, photographed by Richard Avedon, 1967

hair I covet

Tim Walker, Eglingham Children and Swan on Beach, 2002

Harry Shunk, Le saut dans le vide, 1960

i ♥ Liu Wen

Christian Dior, Fall 2010 Couture/ backstage at Dior, 2010 / Zoo editorial, photographed by Aneta Bartos, 2010/ Chanel, Fall 2010 Couture / backstage at Phi, Fall 2009 / Christian Dior, Resort 2011 / backstage at Chanel, Fall 2009 / backstage at Alexander McQueen, Fall 2009

toro toro toro

Every year when I go back to Yotsuba, I go in fear that maybe, somehow, it's fallen from the pinnacle of sushi awesomeness it currently resides on. Each year, I invariably cross over the quiet shop-front, see the lone sushi maestro busying away at the sushi bar and breathe contentment.

Today I made my long-anticipated first visit of the summer. Yotsuba has been famous for a while in Beijing for serving up the city's most authentic sushi (you will nay find a California roll here) in a cosy (read: small) environment. It only opens for dinner and only serves perfectly alliterated sushi, sashimi and sake. (Venture elsewhere for your udon/tempura fix). The word on the street is that the fish is flown in daily from the Tsukiji market in Tokyo. I've never verified this for fact - the great sushi master does not speak Chinese, which I take as a good sign - but their fish certainly tastes as if this might be true.

crab miso soup

my favourite otoro glistening in the middle, next to a wonderful sweet egg omelette

grilled sea-eel brushed with sweet soy sauce

Sitting at the sushi bar instead of the more private tatami rooms is preferable as it's actually quite mesmerising to see all the sushi being crafted. A deft slice, a clap, a dab of vinegar water, a clump of rice, squeeze, squeeze, and hello, my beautiful otoro. Really, the maestro makes it look so easy.

not very far from hotpot heaven...

Anybody who's ever been to China will know of the national mania for hotpot. The concept is really very simple. A bubbling pot of base soup + lots of raw ingredients which you cook yourself and then dip into a sauce before chopstick-ing it straight into your mouth. Healthy and delish. And yes, even in the heat of summer, you blast out the air-con and indulge.

I'd been dying to go to this particular chain Hai Di Lao (海底捞) for a while - rumours of good quality base soups and ingredients, plus impeccable service - but news of ridiculous queues at all of their restaurants always killed the urge. Finally, somebody had the foresight to book and so I made it to their dubiously lime-green hotpot table. I've always had a penchant for spicy hotpot, but usually you spend far too much time trying to fan out the flames in your mouth, so this time we wisely opted for a non-spicy mushroom soup base to focus exclusively on the eating.

Highlights were their speciality beef (remains tender no longer how much you cook it) and my personal faves: duck's blood (freaks a lot of people out, but is actually very good for you + tasty), the cow's stomach (ditto) and enoki mushrooms. You can make your own dipping sauces here but most people stick with the good ol' Beijing favourite - a type of thick sesame paste, which I augmented with some chilli and coriander. All in all, well worth the hype. The restaurant is apparently open 24 hours, ready and waiting to satisfy all those midnight hotpot cravings. Kebabs pah!

Shanghai Dreamers

Maybe the fact that Shanghai often thought of itself as the 'Paris of the East' convinced John Galliano to up all the paraphernalia associated with a runway show and land Christian Dior's Resort collection there this year. Then the boat for Shanghai was pushed out even further with the debut of David Lynch's Lady Blue Shanghai and the global ad campaigns where Marion Cotillard - in a black leather suit and toting her Lady Dior - passionately pulls away from her lover against the backdrop of the Bund.

This series by the photographer Quentin Shih thus presents itself as a continuation of the Dior + Shanghai theme. It follows on from his previous artistic collaboration with the fashion house back in 2008 which resulted in the haunting series The Stranger in the Glass Box. Quentin's work always has its recognisable aesthetic attributes which mark him out as a superior image-maker in China today. Perhaps the greatest value in his vision is the lack of pandering to Western notions of what China ought to look like. There is no disparagement of outside influences to nostalgically lament a disappearing way of life, but neither is any part of contemporary China embraced wholesale. Underlying it all is his pertinent recognition that the fractured way in which Chinese people view their current cultural condition is inherited and irrefutable. These replicated figures in their plastic clothes come therefore, to reflect as much about the historical fate of these particular dreamers standing vulnerably in the vast and exposed spaces/stages as it does about the beauty of couture.

http://www.quentinshih.com/

Istanbul, circa 1975

Reading Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence gave me incredible pangs to see the Istanbul he described. Soon, of course, everyone will be able to see the actual artefacts in the Museum of Innocence he is building for real. Until then...

Line 20, 1970s

South African Verona Bass by the Bosphorus at the Eminonu ferry terminal, 1967, on her London-Kathmandu adventure.

Wooden building, 1970s

And then some Ara Güler...

Iron workers waiting for their shift to start, 1970

Beyoglu (Pera), Istanbul, 1962 (but so great I had to include it.)

The Banquet

Contemporary art in Beijing can be very interesting, but is more often than not a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. Too many people wanting to jump onto the bandwagon of 'lifestyle' living, and not content with their coffee shop/hotel/bookshop being simply just another coffee shop/hotel/bookshop want to throw some art into the mix. With the Today Art Museum it's a bit of the opposite situation - already one of the leading galleries in the city, they've developed the street behind their building and rented it out to coffee houses and smaller art galleries. Wandering there for a coffee the other afternoon, my low expectations for the quality of art in galleries there largely justified, I was pleased to find one interesting sculpture placed just in front of an arts-and-crafts store.

The Banquet (盛宴) by Lü Shun (吕顺), as I later discovered, was a sculpture originally exhibited in 2009 inside the Today Art Museum, but has benefited I think from being exposed to the outside elements. It draws upon obvious parallels to traditions of the Last Supper in Western art, but as the artist points out, two important figures are conspicuously absent - Jesus and Judas. That, combined with the fact that the subjects are all pigs, is meant to reflect the lack of ideology and contemporaneous crises within society. The subject of eating/banquet is also given importance; such an integral part of Chinese culture is made to seem primeval, quite literally 'piggish'.

This type of straightforward symbolism is very representative of the way a lot of contemporary Chinese art can be read and at its root can always be found a deep discontent with society and its values. What made this more engaging was the consideration with which the pieces are executed. More often than not, a lot of projects are conceived with very simplistic symbolism which is then portrayed very poorly. Here, the emotions and figures of the pigs were in equal parts mournful, grasping and exhausted whilst their rotund shapes seen from the back were in an odd way strangely endearing.

"nostalgie"

On one of those days when you're working on a constant cycle of being late for everything, I ended up seat-less and highly flustered at ESMOD Beijing's graduate fashion show. My main interest in trekking all the way to the 798 art district was to see what kind of aesthetics were dominating the work of fashion students in China. I based my predictions on the crop of current Chinese fashion designers: a lot of monochrome, rather androdgynous and possessed of a slightly utility-oriented aesthetic.

The show, to my disappointment, fulfilled these predictions. As one look followed another, it seemed that whatever we might like to believe, black is still very much the new black. Having just admired Galliano's riotous shades for Dior's Fall 2010 Couture that very morning, this seemed a parallel world where colour had gone away. There was the odd person who threw in a half-hearted attempt at mixing orange with grey or mustard with dull green but the majority swayed not. Fashion empires have of course, been built on monochromes, but judging from the way its progressing, every aspiring fashion designer in China is trying to do it. (I did wonder however whether financial considerations might have something to do with it).

After expecting the show to be predominantly womenswear, it happened that this was actually the first time menswear was also shown. A well-timed decision I thought as my favourites were definitely to be found here. Some particularly well-executed jackets and coats from Estère (李林晶) displayed a simple focus on tailoring and fit often overlooked by others. (Sadly my camera let me down at this point, so wasn't able to get any good images.)

Régis (梁磊) showed a collection comprised entirely of trousers: male equivalents of the low-slung harem variety. As the models turned on the runway, the fabric round the back gave a nice, wispy flutter. I did wonder however, if we could find a man to wear them for real.

The other two I particularly liked both produced coats and jackets with interesting outer detailing. Especially Phoébe (袁天) who moulded the shapes of working tools - pliers, scissors, spanners etc - on the outside. Her collection was rather seriously entitled 'nostalgie de la revolution industrielle' but I connected to it on a quirky humorous level reminiscent of the Prada dress which Carey Mulligan wore to the Oscars.

Collection by Eva (陈晓菁)

Coat by Phoébe (袁天)

Despite the fact the theme of the graduate collections had been set as 'nostalgie', romanticism and reverie seemed rather dead. Kiki, who also saw the graduate fashion show by the students at the Central Academy of Fine Arts thought their work to be more artistic and extravagant in style - would have been interesting to see and compare. I also apologise for the poor quality of photos, amidst all the movement and lights, my camera proved more than a little inadequate. Maybe it's time to get one of those swish SLRs...

Another Chanel to want...

Just watched Karl Lagerfeld's new short for Chanel, 'Shopping Fever'.

More than Baptiste Giabiconi's cheekbones, Dree Hemingway's blue-painted nails are to die for. Barely gotten over Jade, still loving Beige and now this to contemplate.

Burberry Prorsum, A/W2010

In all honesty, I wasn't a huge fan of Burberry's new winter collection when I saw the runway photos back in March. Once upon a time I'd coveted a military-style winter coat, but that had been several years back and by now the desire had long diminished. Nonetheless, when my friend Lu offered to take me along to an editors' preview of the collection at one of the stores I jumped at the chance to see the clothes up close and personal. Hence on the hottest day of the year so far in Beijing, I found myself faced with racks of the heavy coats and jackets which had dominated their look for autumn/winter.

After a short talk by their PR director, I found myself coming around to some parts of their collection. What had me fully converted was the quality and sheer practicality of their coats. They were wonderfully made and looked so warm - though the weight of one of the men's coats I picked up was mind-boggling. Even in the middle of summer, I wanted nothing more than to snuggle up in these two:

Another highlight was the double collar seen as a design detail on several of their jackets. After years of jauntily upturned shirt collars, at last, a way of popping the collar that did not brand you as preppy.

At the time of being shown, this collection garnered a lot of attention from being live-streamed in 3D at five other locations around the globe, as well as instant click-to-buy function on their website which seemed to have a positive impact as seen here. Still, I hold my previous reservations about the desirability of some of their dresses, especially that shade of green they chose to align it with the military theme. Evidently, the femininity of the lace and satin dresses were supposed to offset the masculinity of the coats and the hardness of the boots (shearling-lined and adorned with straps or sleek thigh-highs) but both were convincing enough on their own. When the weather cools and the hunt for the perfect winter coat begins again, I know I'll be searching for my own cropped oversized looks.

Florence

Summer in Beijing: hot, humid and devastatingly sweaty. Attempts to be thrifty involve long subway rides, too crowded and too hot to bother reading a book. Entertainment becomes my limited music selection and the TV screens they have in the newer carriages. On my first ride back I caught a short travel programme introducing Florence and amidst the masses of harried commuters, the shots of the Baptistery reminded me of my month there last summer. I had spent September making some effort to learn Italian but really I just loved being there and observing how the Florentines do things. As they play these programmes on the subway TVs on loop I've now seen it about four times in as many days, but still the nostalgia points remain:

Breakfasts at Cafe Giacosa - where each morning began with the rightful appreciation of crisp Italian tailoring on its clientèle and the cappuccino served by slightly superior waiters so delicious I can hardly bear to drink them elsewhere.

I remembered writing to a friend: I now understand why the Sartorialist loves Florence.

Gelato for lunch, and sometimes dinner. Takeaway pizza eaten outside Santo Spirito. Bistecca alla Fiorentina - never over-rated. Tripe - under-rated by too many. Negronis. Sandwiches from I Fratellini eaten crouched on pavements avoiding the pigeons. The rooftop bar at the Hotel Continentale. Il Santo Bevitore for when the amount of Tuscan beans consumed becomes a bit overwhelming.

Staying in the Uffizi so close to closing time the Botticelli room actually gets empty.

City panoramas. Steep climbs up the Duomo via Vasari's frescoes for sunset views. Up the hill to San Miniato to look down from the Piazzale Michelangelo. Seeing the landscape from the Boboli Gardens. Sitting on the bridges. From that window in the Uffizi. Bus rides up to Fiesole.

Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia. A great spot often overlooked in the scramble to see the Renaissance greats.

Santa Maria della Scala; Siena. After witnessing so many attempts where they tried to synthesise old spaces and contemporary art - some particularly disturbing sculptures exhibited in the Roman amphitheatre at Fiesole come to mind - finally a triumph. In this old hospital with its damaged fresco cycles, the exhibition of Francesca Woodman's black-and-white photographs were beautifully displayed and at no point overpowered their surroundings.

On this note check out this article in the New York Times here.

Officina Profumo S. Maria Novella. Still using their Acqua di Cuba.