YSL Retrospective

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Montreal was visiting the Musee des Beaux Arts to see the Yves St Laurent retrospective. The exhibition, which opened only a few days before YSL died, spanned forty years of innovative fashion design and was awe inspiring, not least because you could really get up close and examine the garments to see the work that the couturier put into each outfit.


It is only when you get within two feet of a dress that you can truly understand how they can cost thousand of dollars.


All the designer's work was represented from Le Smoking, via safari jackets and the yeti style jackets to the transparent blouses and glamorous evening gowns


Memorable designs were the lattice beadwork fringed tribal dresses and this tiny little black micro minidress on the right designed for Diane Von Furstenburg by Yves St Laurent in 1990. Exquisite.
The retrospective in Montreal has now closed but will open at the de Young Museum in San Francisco on November 1st. Go, and be inspired.

Schmap

You'll have to excuse my ignorance but I'd never heard of Schmap until this morning when I received an email letting me know that one of my Flickr photos had made it to the shortlist for the fourth edition of the Vancouver guide. Even if the photo doesn't make the final cut it's cool to know someone liked it.
We were in Vancouver, Canada in August 2006 for what proved to be the final trip out of the USA to renew our visas. The US Department of Immigration Services requires legal immigrants leave the country to get their visas renewed. Some people go back to their home countries, but we hadn't applied from our country of citizenship when we originally came here and that complicated things. The US Government has a pragmatic solution for people like us: a quick trip to Canada or Mexico.
We had only a few weeks to renew the visas and we intended to go to Montreal or Toronto or Quebec City to get the passports stamped but the wait time for an appointment at the US consulates there was 8-10 weeks. So we looked to see if there was an earlier slot anywhere else in Canada or Mexico. We were really lucky to get a 8AM slot the following Monday morning in Vancouver. We flew out at the weekend, made the appointment and eventually got the stamp. And we had one of the most enjoyable vacations in a great city to boot. I would move to Vancouver in a heartbeat, the scenery is unbelievable, the food is wonderful and Canadian people? It's a cliché but they are so nice.
Here's a link to my Vancouver slideshow. I won't spoil the possible surprise by singling out the submitted photo. But you can guess if you want to. Here's a hint: it's not this one



Enjoy.

More Balls!

Feeding my fascination with Buckminster Fuller and geodesic structures, we visited the Biosphere Environmental Museum in Montreal. This fun, interactive museum is built inside the dome designed by Fuller for the 1967 World Expo. The original structure was protected from the elements by a transparent acrylic membrane that was destroyed when the sphere caught fire in 1976. Now the dome is completely uncovered, which is great for viewing the surrounding landscape and watching the these guys perform a little maintenance.