"Our new range is called DUST and it was inspired by David Bowie's alleged interest in Egyptology and Occultism. We loved this image of Bowie dressed in a sphinx costume shot in 1969 and it pretty much went from there. We wanted the range to look like it belonged to Egyptian royalty, excavated from a tomb, earthy but also quite luxurious.... So we've used raw crystal stones and motifs like hieroglyphics, eyes and snakes in the beaten metal pieces."
Tamila Purvis and Melanie Kemsler of THEMANIAMANIA
Images: range from Edwardian and 1930s archaeologists including Howard Carter on digs to Modern day Cairo via Indiana Jones, Elizabeth Taylor, the Mummy and David Bowie.
I have always, always, always been fascinated and enraptured by Egypt. I can even remember the exact day. Year 2, our first taste of history, studies of Ancient Egypt. We looked at things like mummies, Nefertiti, scarab beetles, enough turquoise to turn your eyes blue and my mum told me that Ancient Egyptians used to tread things like the common cold with panther poo infusions. I was completely in awe. This civilisation is magnificent. Splendour, would be an apt word. There was gold and pyramids - oh! pyramids at age 8 are something marvellous indeed - and huge sphinxes and weird cultural practices and tombs full of treasure ripe for the picking. The first nightmare I can remember happened after I read a book all about Howard Carter's famed discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. The first 'grown up' film I can remember seeing was Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I read, NO, I devoured the Cairo Jim books. Aged 9 all I wanted to be was an archeologist.
Today I've got a little bit more of a balanced mind. I know that there is much more to archaeology than cracking a whip and riding off into the sunset - but by that same token Indy had it right when he challenged the grave robbers "it belongs in a museum. I love watching films like The Mummy, Troy, Gladiator, Cleopatra... Not because they are inherently good films - although Cleopatra certainly knows how to put on a good show - but because they take you back somewhere, maybe not back into the past, but somewhere mythical and magical where history - a film-maker's history - comes alive and you can drink and walk and talk and see what the Ancient Egyptians saw for 2 hours or so. I am a history major, and have recently ended up in lots of medieval and early modern europe classes that I forgot just how much I love Ancient Egypt. I think next semester I'm going to enrol in a few classics classes (anyone remember that time last year when I had read The Secret History and wanted to take up Ancient Greek? well, i think this is a little more achievable than that). Who knows. I might learn something!
Tamila Purvis and Melanie Kemsler of The ManiaMania, who I have a great respect for, are basing their next collection on Ancient Egypt, filtered through David Bowie and Cleopatra (seen above). One can only expect that their natural, roughly-hewn aesthetic will easily adapt to things like turquoise, shining gold chokers and kohl-lined eyes. It is a logical progression to move from the 60s and 70s American Indian motifs of their current collection to something more historical, more earthy, more ancient. The idea that the jewellery could have been sourced from tombs themselves, as if Howard Carter (or indeed, Indiana Jones, or Rick O'Connell, natch) had reached in and pulled a cuff, dusty and sand-entombed, to see the light of day. It's certainly dramatic and powerful. In my mind's eye I'm seeing things like pyramid rings, rough and raw, cut out of hunks of sandstone and amulets in flawed jade with the eye of horus. I can't wait to see what they come up with. If it's anything as wonderful as the jewellery in Cleopatra - think blood red rubies and gold-feathered head pieces - It will be something truly magical indeed.
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