A 25 000 dollar Panama hat anyone?
My late friend Myles’ “Super Fino” Panama hat
You heard that right, I got that price straight from the elegant and knowledgable hat maker extraordinaire, Orlando Palacios, owner of Worth & Worth in New York.
A rich man’s dream: The Getty Villa on the California Coast
The Portico of the Getty Villa
After a grueling road trip in morning rush hour (see yesterday’s post) I managed to revisit the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades after its massive restoration. Initially built by the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, its design was inspired by the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. The Getty Villa opened in 1974 to the public as a museum, housing the entire original Getty Collection but was never seen by Getty, who died in 1976. The Villa now houses just the Antiquities Collection.
Busts of Alexander the Great and his close friend Hephaestion
My obsession with all things Roman (and Greek) was greatly satisfied, the Villa houses an astounding collection of objects and also a beautiful collection of Antique jewelry. It was hard not to contemplate a heist…
Roman Ring
The Villa dei Papiri that served as the inspiration for the Getty Villa was buried by the ashes of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii in A.D. 79 as well as nearby Herculaneum. Shortly after its rediscovery in the 1730s, the richest finds were from a villa that came to be called the Villa dei Papiri, because it also yielded upward of a thousand papyrus rolls–the only library ever to have been recovered from the classical world. To the great excitement of contemporaries, the papyri held out the tantalizing possibility of the rediscovery of lost masterpieces by classical writers.
Fresco from the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum
You might find the whole thing a tad too “Nouveau”, but I think it is a triumph, the Romans themselves were “Nouveau” compared to the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians, but they brought living standards up to a level, not seen again until the Renaissance.
The Peristyle of the Getty Villa
Where are the days when traveling required dressing up and great luggage?
Is there anything more depressing than the huddled masses you encounter shuffling through airports and train stations? What happened to dressing smartly when traveling? Have we given in to comfort over style all together? Here a few reminders what we could look like when on the move:
Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim in the 1960’s, Jane is wearing Chanel
Can a remake of a masterful classic film ever be as good or even better?
That is the big question in Hollywood: which film can we remake to capture the audience of today? I vote for the 1999 remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair” with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, find “Create the Look” of Rene Russo’s looks below.
Pierce Brosnan in the remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair“
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
Khalil Gibran
Drawing by Khalil Gibran
Much is written on the concept of kindness, the correctness of kindness and the philosophy of kindness, but I simply think the most important question one can ask about a fellow human being is: “Is he or she kind?”
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