Out of nowhere today rain clouds stormed in and ruined what had, this morning, been quite a nice autumn day. Tomorrow is set to be, in the sad tones of the weather announcer, "a bone-chiller of a day" and although it is exciting to get out coats and scarves and boots and all my old winter-weather friends, it's not so exciting when, dressed in my favourite sandals and flippy skirt, I was caught outside in the wet and wind today. Now it's only 5 O'clock and the sun has set, it's dark outside and I've had to close all the windows, turn up the heater, and put on some extra layers. And I'm sick. In short, I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself as I sip on Turkish Apple tea and make best friends with the tissue box.
This photo is pretty marvelous. I have to say I've gone off the Sartorialist lately, through no fault of his own, but rather a combination of factors - I thought the subjects of his photos had become predictable, I read a couple of very bad articles about him, and then he did a couple of posts where he said some pretty questionable things. But that's all by the by. Especially when he shoots something like this. Eva Fontanelli is one of his old school subjects - you know the ones, from way back when he wasn't with garance and caught Yasmin Sewell laughing in the Tuileries in what would become his standard, renowned street style pose. This may very well be the best photo he has ever taken (although this one comes close, and so does this one, funnily posted one after the other way back in September 2008). When I went to go get my book signed and meet him back in, oh, it must have been 2009 now, I remember he asked me what my favourite photo of his was, and I said it was this one, incidentally enough of Eva in her jeans and fur coat, who I have always loved. He said that she had an Audrey Hepburn character about her, and wrote in the book that she wears some crazy things, but it's all part of her appeal. You sit back and watch the show. I love that because it reminds me of one of my best friends. You can never quite put your finger on her style or why it's so lovely, but it is, and you do.
This photo is amazing. It has that cinematic quality that people love about Italy, the colour, the effervescence, the exuberance, the light. It has a pretty girl with a beautiful smile and the classic, brash clashing of patterns that has become so synonymous with Italian fashion. Yet, there is not a skerrick of leopard print or a hint of va-va-voom Monica Belluci Italian fashion in this picture. I think this is what I love so much about this photo, it's Italy, but old school Italy, all Bellini's at the original Harry's Bar, yachting down the amalfi coast and rooms with a view. It's that glamour, untapped and unbridled and totally, wildly uncontrollable, that wafts from every circle skirt and every bright print and every thin belt buckled easily around the (real, not high) waist. The fashion crowd love Italy. They love setting editorials there so they can dress the models in what they call "classic sexiness" and the male models in "suave threads", so they can devise scenes where a couple can shoot across pigeon-strewn piazzas on little vespas, share a heaving bowl of spaghetti with green-as-envy basil leaves and recline gracefully against the walls of old forts.
Italy doesn't disappoint. Sure, there's less of the vespa-zooming and graceful reclining to be found in the tourist traps of Venice, Rome and Florence, but it's still achingly, overwhelmingly beautiful. At times there is too much to take in and too much to admire that you have to close your eyes for a second. And that is true beauty. This is what this photo by the Sart captures. He captures that over stimulated, awesome feeling of being in Italy. Awesome in the sense that you are faced with something so much more, well, incredible than you. Eva is beautiful and her smile is captivating and it looks like she's wearing a great little outfit with cute shoes. But it's not really about that, is it? There's so much going on in this shot that it becomes more than Eva, more than the framing - although if it had been a different girl, how would the photo have looked? - it's all about Italy.
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