Isabelle de Borchgrave

Beautiful paper gowns, her work from earlier centuries is far more intricate and complex, but I prefer the richness of the colours in the work I have selected here.


What a studio!


A lot more can be seen here

Pilar Corrias

Corrias is a striking-looking 39-year-old. Blonde with big brown eyes, she has a sleek dress sense: when we meet she's wearing towering black patent-leather stilettos and a printed silk-jersey dress, set off insouciantly by a pebble picked up by one of her sons and threaded on to red string.
Her eponymous gallery opens this week, just north of Oxford Street (to coincide with Frieze Art Fair - the fashionable Regent's Park showcase of contemporary art, now in its sixth year). There are only four other female gallery owners of note in London - Sadie Coles, Maureen Paley, Victoria Miro and Alison Jacques. 'I've no idea why,' says Corrias. 'There are plenty in New York. It doesn't make sense. Gender really shouldn't have anything to do with the job, but it is macho in the art world and there are more male collectors than female.'

Read the rest here

If I had not drifted into art college, but rather thought long and hard about my options I think I would have either gone to Cordwainers to study shoe design, then become a super famous orthopaedic shoe designer!

OR become an Über chic Gallerina. Why did I not think of doing this? what an idyllic profession, still I can always thread a pebble on a piece of string instead..

Golnaz Fathi

She has, however, moved away from the traditional styles of calligraphy -- so emblematic of her Iranian artistic heritage -- and has used the traditional calligraphic form as an abstraction of itself.

On show here or visit her website here

I do love the whole text thing. It is my next project with my year 10 students.

I keep adding to my list of 'must see', Will there be enough time?

Burberry Prorsum

Photos here

For me this was the very best collection of the recent shows. Two articles I have read via The Thoughtful Dresser from here and here really sum up for me the current mood as does Christopher Kane's clothes for Burberry. I am slowly learning the art of layering and it does not get more beautiful than this, I am lucky that I am nearly 5'8 so i can wear longer clothes than many and this is one look I am keen to try. Even his jewellery was good.

No discussion of Britain’s sartorial tics proceeds very far before it collides with a cloud front, a rainstorm and the occasional heatwave. The weather doesn’t merely affect the way we dress, it defines it. It may be no exaggeration to say that most of the enduring wardrobe components this country has given to the world – the trench coat, the argyle sweater, the cashmere twinset, the wellington, the sprigged tea dress – arose from a need to combat the elements. As for our other great contribution, thank 1,000 years of military doggedness. Savile Row tailoring wouldn’t exist without Army uniforms. Without tailoring there would be no mods, no Vivienne Westwood, no easily definable system for telegraphing one’s class. Punks wouldn’t have looked nearly so sharp.

So true, I go on and on about the weather, but it really makes dressing hard. Today for example I have to leave at 7am so it is cold, perhaps 10 degrees I have a 20 min walk in this. But my room gets the sun all day so now it is 28 degrees I have to work all day in this. Walking home 17 degrees! another 20 mins walk and often a long wait on a very very windy station platform. No Brief Encounteresque steamy tearoom for me either. So as you can see it is not an easy day to dress for, hence my obsession with the weather and what the hell to wear each and every day.

ROBYN DENNY

Wonderful collage by ROBYN DENNY

One of the better galleries I saw at last weeks Art London was Jonathan Clark, I loved all the artists the gallery represents, I also noticed some choice catalogues on the website that I may have to get sometime in the future. The gallery is not a million miles from the Michael Hoppen gallery so I can pay them a visit on my way.

Kurt Jackson

On the theme of water, Jackson is one of my favourite painters of this subject. He has a really comprehensive website here

Jessica Backhaus

From here via here

A very beautiful website, it made me feel rather sad and melancholy.