~
Today the Viewfinder hit 1,111,111 Pageviews
Thank you to the many readers of my blog who have supported me the last thirteen years.
~ Styrous®
Styrous® ~ Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Showing posts with label Legion of Honor Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Legion of Honor Museum. Show all posts
September 14, 2022
September 13, 2022
Guo Pei ~ boots 'n shoes
~ 
Viewfinder link:
Lincoln Park
100 34th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94121
415-750-3600
YouTube links:
FF Chanel ~ Guo Pei | Fall Winter 2019/2020 | (Full Show)
Wall St. Journal ~ Meet Guo Pei, China's 1st Haute Couture Designer
Guo Pei ~ Fantasy Fashion Designer
~ I only recently, less than a year, heard about Chinese fashion designer, Guo Pei, the stereotypical "Overnight" sensation who worked for decades before being "Discovered".
Guo rocketed to international stardom when singer/actress Rihanna wore the gown shown at right to the 2015 Met Gala. The theme of the gala that year was, China: Through the Looking Glass. As they say, the rest is history!
Rihanna later confessed to Vanity Fair that she was not all that confident of herself in it and "Felt like a Clown."
Guo had been creating her fantasy fashions for Chinese celebrities for decades, was considered a national treasure, was funded by the Chinese Government but was unheard of outside of China until that fateful evening.
Jess Cartner-Morley of The Guardian
wrote, "Rihanna's wardrobe is the most talked-about, influential
and dissected in pop right now" and that whatever she wears "is
immediately reproduced on the high street, because it sells".
Guo was born in Beijing in 1967 to two members of China's Communist Party, her father being a former battalion leader of the People's Army and her mother being a kindergarten teacher. In an interview with Forbes magazine, she recalls her father having thrown away her sketches and paintings as a child.
In the same interview Guo says she got her start in sewing at the age
of 2 years old, helping her mother make clothes for the winter and
developed her love for dressmaking. During her childhood, Mao suits were considered the only correct form of clothing and Guo Pei defied this with loose-fitting dresses.
When the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco opened their exhibition, Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy, in April of this year, I decided I HAD to see it. I finally did last month and was completely blown away!
I
managed to get dozens of photos of the wildly visual creations which
are a brilliant melding, mixture, blending or collision, however you
want to describe it, of fashion and art. I have not seen anything like them since my days
working with Obiko in San Francisco (link below); I wonder if she ever saw those shows?
Viewfinder link:
I will group the images into categories for separate articles in order to keep them from
getting totally out of hand and tedious for reading. I will post them in the links below as I do. I hope you enjoy
them.
The exhibition will be open until
Sunday, November 27, 2022, Tuesdays through Sundays, 9:30 am to 5:15 pm.
I have every intention of returning to see it in more depth.
Lincoln Park
100 34th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94121
415-750-3600
Net links:
SCAD ~ Guo Pei ~ Couture Beyond
YouTube links:
FF Chanel ~ Guo Pei | Fall Winter 2019/2020 | (Full Show)
Wall St. Journal ~ Meet Guo Pei, China's 1st Haute Couture Designer
December 5, 2017
San Francisco Panama–Pacific International Exposition ~ 1915
Yesterday, December 4, was the anniversary of the closing of the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition after an almost year-long run.
The Panama–Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) was a world's fair held in San Francisco,
in the United States, between February 20 and December 4 in 1915. Its
ostensible purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. There was a postcard printed showing new
buildings in San Francisco, with earthquake ruins and bear in
foreground, and two small images of buildings of the Exposition at
bottom.
The fair was constructed on a 635 acre (2.6 km2) site in San Francisco, along the northern shore, between the Presidio and Fort Mason, now known as the Marina District.
The fair was constructed on a 635 acre (2.6 km2) site in San Francisco, along the northern shore, between the Presidio and Fort Mason, now known as the Marina District.
aeroplane view -1915
The centerpiece was the Tower of Jewels, which rose to 435 feet and was covered with over 100,000 cut glass Novagems. The 3⁄4
to 2 inch colored "gems" sparkled in sunlight throughout the day and
were illuminated by over 50 powerful electrical searchlights at night.
Tower of Jewels_night
At the west end of the central court group was the Palace of Fine Arts which was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who took his inspiration from Roman and Ancient Greek architecture in designing what was essentially a fictional ruin from another time..
designed by Bernard Maybeck
Palace of Fine Arts drawing
designed by Bernard Maybeck
It was one of ten palaces at the heart of the Exhibition. It is the only surviving structure. Constructed from temporary materials (primarily staff, a combination of plaster and burlap fiber), almost all the fair's various buildings and attractions were pulled down in late 1915. Intended to fall into pieces at the close of the fair (reportedly because the architect believed every great city needed ruins), the only surviving building on the Exposition grounds, Palace of Fine Arts, remained in place, slowly falling into disrepair (although the hall used to display painting and sculpture during the Fair was repurposed as a garage for jeeps during World War II). The Palace, including the colonnade with its signature weeping women and rotunda dome, was completely reconstructed in the 1960s and a seismic retrofit was completed in early 2009. The Exploratorium, an interactive science museum, occupied the northern 2/3 of the Palace from 1969 to 2013; the city-owned Palace of Fine Arts Theater, has occupied the southern 1/3 since 1970.
photo by Styrous®
There are other buildings from the Exposition that still stand today, the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium at Civic Center Plaza (link below) and the Japanese Tea house, which was barged down the Bay to Belmont, California and currently operates as a restaurant.
The Legion of Honor Museum, in Lincoln Park, was the gift of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, wife of the sugar magnate and thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder Adolph B. Spreckels. The building is a full-scale replica of the French Pavilion from the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, which in turn was a three-quarter-scale version of the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur also known as the Hôtel de Salm in Paris by George Applegarth and H. Guillaume. At the close of the exposition, the French government granted Spreckels permission to construct a permanent replica of the French Pavilion, but World War I delayed the groundbreaking until 1921.
images from Wikipedia:
Fountain of Energy
India Block
Palace of Horticulture
Palace of Horticulture & the Tower of Jewels
Panama Canal
more postcards
Tower of Jewels -
left, Italian Tower - right
Panama–Pacific International Exposition - Project Gutenberg
Panama–Pacific International Exposition - Project Gutenberg
Viewfinder links:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)