Eccentric Savoir Faire

I was reading the An Aesthete’s Life the other day and a name cropped up which I was familiar with and had done a bit of research several years ago on the woman behind the name. What prompted me was I was reading Mary Stewart’s “The Gabriel Hounds” and one of the main characters was a modern day version (1960’s modern) of Lady Hester Stanhope. I re-read the book again earlier this year and just filed away Lady Hester in my subconscious only for her to reappear last week.

To say that Lady Hester had her ups and downs is a bit of an understatement. She started life in1776 as the favourite daughter of Lord Charles, 3rd Earl of Stanhope. Impoverished and orphaned at the age of 27, after her father gave away his fortune, she then became official hostess of William Pitt her uncle the Prime Minister of England. After being jilted three times in love she fled England at the age of 33, never to return.

She showed an initial sense for travel and savoir faire when still a child she was curious about France, she climbed into an empty boat on the English Channel and started rowing east, only to travel about 6 yards before being caught.

While travelling to Cairo in 1810, her ship was wrecked on the island of Rhodes, where without clothing; Lady Hester had to borrow Turkish Costume and thus began her favoured mode of attire, of dressing like a Turkish male. She continued to travel through the Middle East inspiring awe where ever she went. She saw herself as “Queen of the Desert” and thus lived appropriately to this status. By now Lady Hester had begun to believe she had a destiny. She claimed to have heard omens from various sources, from fortune-tellers to prophets, and that her destiny was to become the bride of a new messiah.

After her constant wanderings she finally settled near Sidon, a town on the Mediterranean coast in what is now Lebanon, about halfway between Tyre and Beirut. Here she built for herself a palatial palace Her residence, known by the villagers as Dahr El Sitt, was on the top of one of the hills surrounding the village.

In her new setting, she wielded an almost absolute authority over the surrounding districts. Her control over the natives was enough to cause Ibrahim Pasha, when about to invade Syria in 1832, to seek her neutrality, and this supremacy was maintained by her commanding character and by the belief that she possessed the gift of divination.

In her lonely Joun residence, a house "hemmed in by arid mountains", and with the troubles of a household of some thirty servants only waiting for her death to plunder the house, Lady Hester Stanhope's strength slowly wasted away, and she died there in 1839. The disappointments of her life, and the necessity of controlling her servants as well as the chiefs who surrounded Joun, had made her haughty and bad-tempered. She became a recluse and her servants began to take off with her possessions because she could not pay them. She would not receive visitors until dark and then would only let them see her hands and face. She wore a turban over her shaven head. After her death, the British consul arrived from Beirut to settle her affairs and found her quarters full of junk.

More Savoir Faire on the Lips

I remember as a child playing with a little brass pig that my mother had given me. This little pig was full of surprises. Not only was it a great plaything, but a highly decorative and functional item as well. For a small boy it was not only enough that you could play with it as an object, but it had moveable parts as well.


Pull the head off and you were confronted with a long brass tube. In the pig’s other life it was lipstick holder!


My mother had received it from a gentleman admirer in the 1950’s after one of his recent trips to Paris. I am not sure who had made it as the only markings are Paris-Depose, however it just oozes of surrealistic undertones and savoir faire. I am sure a few eyebrows were raised when my mother would pull this out of her purse to touch up her lips in a powder room somewhere. I still have this little pig and I still love it.

Truly an article de-luxe, that carries with it a lot of panache and savoir faire!

Some Friday Savoir Faire 1961

Some Friday Savoir Faire in the Place Vendome, Paris , from couturier Jean Desses.

Savon Faire!

Ok, I am a sucker for good soap and for good packaging, so if you put both of them together, well…... I am in heaven. Since time immortal soap has come a long way, with a virtual plethora of different soaps on the market from the humble toilette soap to incredible savons de luxe.

I always used to try and buy the matching soap to my colognes, however nowadays this is becoming increasingly difficult as the days of layering fragrance seems to have fallen out of fashion for men at least.

I am always on the hunt for good soap, but find myself falling back to a few old favourites, that not only do the job of keeping me clean, but look good in or out of their packaging.

One of my favourite brands is from Roger & Gallet, that veritable French Perfumery which has been around seemingly forever. I love the fact that the soaps come in their own plastic travelling case, so that they are instantly portable for vacation. Actually love all of R & G’s products!

Who knew that the Portuguese were any good at making soap, however two stellar brands come out on top on the soap scale.

The first being Luxo Banho soaps from Portugal. This giant luxury bath bar became the toast of Europe during the decorative 1920’s. The ornate Art Deco became synonymous with the new glamour and chic of modernism and is still available today.

The second Portuguese contender is Claus Porto founded in 1887. I love their packaging and the soap itself is milled 7 times. These can be bought singularly or in wonderful gift boxes containing several different bars, and the effect of all the labels is just brilliant.

Last on the list but by no means forgotten is one that we would always think of our mothers or grandmothers’ using is Yardley’s Old English Lavender. This is a true classic, as who can beat the scent of lavender for man or woman.

So lather up with some savoir faire and enjoy!

Savoir Faire in Venice

Well, Savoir Faire followers, vacation has been booked and I am ecstatic to say that we will be heading for la dolce vita in Italy and then onto Turkey for a couple of days in September. Espresso on the Via Venetto in Rome, maybe a negroni or two in Florence and of course the Guggenheim in Venice await.

What visit to Venice would be complete without a visit to the Guggenheim, Peggy Guggenheim’s palazzo on a canal turned into a museum? Poor Peggy, the expatriate American millionairess who amassed one of the world's foremost collections of modern art, certainly had a life full of ups and downs and plenty of savoir faire. A father who died on the Titanic, a luxurious and stifled upbringing in New York she threw herself into wild Bohemian life in Europe, and went through husbands and lovers as if there was no tomorrow. She was a patron of the arts and companion to the avant-garde whom the rest of society had shunned.

She collaborated with some of the most famous names of the day, in artistic ventures, or either married them or took them as lovers. Jean Cocteau,Djuna Barnes, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp,Constantin Brancussi,Kandinsky,Antoine Pevsner, Henry Moore, Henri Laurens, Alexander Calder, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, George Braque were just a few who crossed her path. And from all of these she bought and bought and bought amassing as I said before one of the most significant collections of modern art of the 20th century.

Over the years she had had several attempts at opening galleries in London and New York, however mostly these were commercial failures, as her taste was too avant-garde for the general public. One of her Galleries in New York featured some wonderful plywood chairs designed especially for the space and two of these are in the current Surrealist exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto.

The failure of her commercial ventures didn’t stop her from collecting, and eventually she had decided in the 1960’s to exhibit what she had already owned in her Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in Venice.

She ruled over Venice like an Empress and the public were her court. She took on an almost majestic appearance in her gondolier with her trademark bizarre sunglasses and her dogs around her. On her death she donated her large home and her collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. With true savoir faire she is buried next to the museum with her beloved dogs.

“If Venice sinks, the collection should be preserved somewhere in the vicinity of Venice.”

Our Lips Are Sealed with Savoir Faire

All of us at one stage have seen that group of iconic posters by Rene Gruau for the French lipstick Rouge Baiser. Through the instantly recognisable Gruau style, these posters are masterpieces in graphic design. With just a few simple lines we get the impression that the lipstick was all a woman needed to make her sexy and irresistible. This is even more reinforced by the fact that Gruau covers his women’ eyes, so that the emphasis is on the lips the lips and nothing else. They stand out against the white of the background and the black lines of the drawing.

Mary Quant uses a play on her name to create a sensuous and sexy add, by calling her colour “Bloody Mary” This is playful and fun, drawing the viewers attention to the lips and colour by making them the same shade as a bloody mary.

Roger and Gallet has their model applying her lip colour in a gauntlet like gloved hand, as if she were going into battle and the final touch needed was a touch of colour to carry her through.

Helena Rubinstein ushered in the space age with ad below, with the colours imitating the cool clinical space age look of the late 1960’s. Again as in the Rouge Baiser ads the eyes are covered, so as to draw attention to the lips. Notice how the Rubinstein photographer has used the same lines as one of the Rouge Baiser ads

Just showing the lips in these ads was a very effective tool in selling the lipstick and emphasised that if you need some sort of macquillage, the lipstick was necessary. In all these ads both photography and the drawn line are equally effective, conveying the message with comparative ease

So ladies, whip out the lippy and put some savoir faire on your lips.

Stained Glass Savoir Faire

Stained glass as a form of decoration is familiar to all of us, especially in cathedrals and churches and to a lesser degree in Victorian domestic architecture in Australia and the UK. The focal points of most churches are their stained glass windows, which were invariably donated by a benefactor of the church, to pave their way to heaven. There are some incredibly beautiful and monumental examples around the world which tourists and normal worshipers are undoubtedly impressed by. To go to the other end of the scale Victorian terraces and houses abound with stained glass in doors and windows and it is a pleasure walking through suburbs at night to see these humble cousins of the church window illuminated at night.

However, stained glass seems to have fallen out of favour for major architectural projects of the last 50 years or so, only to be replaced with vast expanses of clear glass. Two exceptions where stained glass has been used are the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne from 1967 and the American Airlines terminal at JFK from the early 1960’s. Both buildings use stained glass in totally different ways, creating different effects, but no less stunning in their final appearance.

The National Gallery of Victoria was designed by Roy Grounds and is a classic example of a rather brutal approach to architecture. However this is redeemed when stepping into The Great Hall of the gallery where one looks up to see a monumental stained glass ceiling. The ceiling designed by Leonard French is one of the world’s largest examples of suspended stained glass. This is a huge space, which would lack any sort of savoir faire if it were not for that ceiling. It is awe inspiring and gives the room an almost cathedral like quality. When entering the space you cannot help but whisper in hushed tones for fear of destroying the ambience it creates.

On the other end of the spectrum stained glass was used to create a totally different effect on the American Airlines terminal at JFK completed in 1960. The terminal was designed by Kahn and Jacobs and became known for its 317 feet (97 m) stained glass facade designed by Robert Sowers, which was the largest stained glass installation in the world until 1979.

Whereas the National Gallery’s stained glass could only be viewed by the public from within in the space, the American Airlines installation could be viewed from both outside and inside. From the exterior the window swept along the gentle curve of the building and gave the effect of an abstract mural. From the interior whole walls shimmered with muted tones providing intimate lighting for the spaces within. Sadly the facade was removed in 2007 as the terminal was demolished to make room for the new Terminal 8.