Dolce & Gabbana start Milan shows with "extreme beauty"

By Marie-Louise Gumuchian
MILAN (Reuters) - Milan's menswear shows kicked off in style on Saturday with the first of the major Italian designer names duo Dolce & Gabbana looking for "extreme beauty" for next spring's fashion.
Their show was one of the first of some 40 catwalk runs during Milan's spring/summer 2010 menswear fashion week, which runs until Tuesday and comes amid hopes for a recovery for the Italian sector, hit by the global financial crisis.
With a heavy focus on embroidery, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana sent out male models in sparkling black jackets over black trousers that were rolled up to the ankle, as well as smooth silk shirts tucked into short, tight swimming trunks.
Italy's most famous designer duo said they paid homage to the "hedonistic beauty of a sartorial suit studied to its finest detail" from the proportions of the lapel to the fabric.
They put sparkling silver, gold and shiny black embroidery on jackets, scarves, trousers and velvet slippers as well as a comfy-looking dressing gown. They accessorized the look with caps, square-shaped sunglasses and small square-shaped bags.
Their blue and black jeans were ripped all the way down, revealing a second layer of material.
Brazilian model Jesus Luz -- whose name has been linked to singer Madonna -- led out models in black embroidered jackets and smooth trousers for evening wear.
Ermenegildo Zegna, known for its luxury suits, took a relaxed approach for next spring with "nomadic nature" theme.
It presented two or three piece tailoring, some with slim double-breasted jackets and loose trousers. Casual, short jackets were coupled with slimmer trousers, which were also topped with light overcoats and slightly oversized cardigans.
As accessories, models wore raffia hats, featherweight ties that resembled summer scarves and vintage-look sunglasses.
Some even had a harness-like coat carrier, made up of belts and worn over the shoulder. Zegna stuck to soft colors -- ivory, mauve, grape, sand sage and stone.
The group's Chief Executive Gildo Zegna told Reuters the consumption of menswear fashion had changed during the crisis.
"Men are going for a more deconstructed, soft look and this is why we had a very luxury casual fashion show," he said.
After a "frosty" start to the year, Italy's National Chamber of Fashion says some positive signals are emerging for the industry, with 15 percent more collections presented this week compared to the January winter shows.

Source: Reuters

Darwin's evolutionary effect on art in new UK show

By Paul Casciato
CAMBRIDGE (Reuters Life!) - What do Thomas Malthus, a Degas sculpture and the elaborate mating dance of a Malaysian pheasant have in common?
The answer is Charles Darwin, according to a new exhibition at the University of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, where high art, the sketches of naturalists, contemporary books and stuffed animals paint a picture of the 19th century world that shaped and was shaped by Darwin's theories on evolution.
"Endless Forms, Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts" started on Tuesday at the Fitzwilliam, but has been in the making for the last five years, curator Jane Munro told Reuters.
"What you do with a subject as big as Darwin and art takes a bit of thinking," Munro said as visitors wandered among related paintings by Tissot, Cezannes and a display case stuffed with hummingbirds collected by a contemporary of Darwin's and displayed at London's Great Exhibition in 1851.
The show's widely varied range of nearly 200 exhibits is broken down into seven parts: Darwin's Eye, The History of the Earth, The Struggle for Existence, Animal Kin, The Descent of Humankind, Darwin, Beauty & Sexual Selection and Darwin & The Impressionists.
The narrative leaps from the straightforward concept of the visual influences that paintings, sketches and the detailed botanical drawings of his Cambridge university mentor, John Stevens Henslow, would have had on Darwin to the effects that Darwin's theories later had on cartoonists, postcards and artists such as Cezanne, Monet and Degas.
Munro said visitors to the exhibition -- which includes the sculpture "Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen" by Edgar Degas, rare pieces normally hidden from public view and a number of other famous works on loan from museums around the world -- need to have an open mind to follow the sometimes complicated narrative.
"If they come with that, they might be rewarded," she said.
The show deftly relates Darwin's own works: "The Origin of Species," "The Descent of Man" and "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals" to some of the unusual objects on display, such as a video of the mating dance of Malaysia's Great Argus pheasant and an 1864-65 painting by John William Inchbold comparing the head of a girl with the plumage of a Bird of Paradise.
Plenty of evidence of Darwin's own interest in the theories of natural selection, including his copy of Thomas Malthus's "An Essay on the Principle of Population" alongside a wealth of scientific material from taxidermy, fossils minerals and skulls are also on display in the show, which ends October 4.
A giant painting of prehistoric beasts attacking each other on land, in the sea and in the air commands the eye on one wall of the exhibition nearby to Hubert von Herkomer's painting "On Strike," linking man to nature's struggle for survival.
Herkomer's painting shows a man with no work staring off from a doorway, his wife's arm draped around his shoulder and in the other a baby, with another child in the background. It is a comment on the dark underside of the industrial Victorian world.
"Every work in this exhibition has a link to Darwin," Munro said. "These ideas were current...why wouldn't the artists respond," Munro said.

Source: Reuters

Allen Toussaint rediscovers New Orleans on new album

By Jeffrey Jones
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - R&B legend Allen Toussaint has done with his music what America has been forced to do since Hurricane Katrina laid waste to his hometown -- take a new look at what is in danger of fading away.
His new album is a collection of New Orleans classics such as "St. James Infirmary" and songs from outside the Big Easy that Toussaint reworked into the style he grew up hearing, like Thelonious Monk's "Bright Mississippi," from which the album takes its name, "The Bright Missisippi."
The result is a departure from 1960s and '70s Rhythm & Blues and pop tunes for which the 71-year-old pianist and composer is famous, hits such as Lee Dorsey's "Working in a Coal Mine" and the Rolling Stones' "Fortune Teller."
But if the album differs from Toussaint's best-known work, it couldn't be closer to his roots in New Orleans, a city undergoing a slow recovery from the 2005 hurricane. There, the traditions of marching bands and jazz funerals have endured.
"There's been a resurgence of this kind of music," Toussaint said. "Also, I'm very glad about the New Orleans traditional jazz brass bands who help keep this genre alive, even though it's a little rougher than what we're doing on this particular album."
The soft-spoken Toussaint recently spoke with Reuters by phone before heading on tour to St. Paul, Minnesota, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Calgary, where on June 22 he headlines a jazz festival with Big Easy stalwarts, Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
LEADING LIGHTS OF JAZZ
"The Bright Mississippi" is filled with performances by leading lights of today's jazz scene, including clarinetist Don Byron, who joins Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Toussaint for the trip through old New Orleans with the song, "Just a Closer Walk with Thee."
In a bit of musical irony, Toussaint's new songs offer his fans a fresh look at older tunes such as "Egyptian Fantasy" penned by jazz pioneer Sidney Bechet and "Winin' Boy Blues" from the masterful Jelly Roll Morton.
The idea for "The Bright Mississippi" came from long-time collaborator Joe Henry, who also produced Toussaint's 2006 record with Elvis Costello, "The River In Reverse."
Katrina, and the bungled response to the natural disaster, loomed large over "River," which debuted at the first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival after the storm.
But now Toussaint, whose own house was destroyed in the flooding that followed the hurricane, is optimistic about the city's recovery and the state of its music scene.
While musicians have struggled -- many still live hours outside the city and return to play -- efforts like the Musicians Village, spearheaded by singer Harry Connick Jr., and other programs have been bringing them back, Toussaint said.
"I'm excited about it, because we're flexing new muscle," he said. "Things we didn't know we could do are being done, so the future looks really good."
A high-note to emerge from the Katrina debacle has been that the public reacquainted itself with New Orleans' unique people and culture, he said. Continued...
Source: Reuters