“Galliano dares us to find beauty in the dark, creating a world at once delicate and distorted, hard to look at, yet impossible to look away from” says Susan Zelouf…
Let’s talk about birds. Do you have a favourite? Barn Owl, Bean Goose, Black Guillemot. Corncrake, Cuckoo, Curlew. Garden Warbler, Goldfinch, Goshawk. Irish birds all, and we’re only lucky-dipping from the first seven letters of the alphabet. Spring mornings over coffee, we watch neighbourhood birds fly at the hanging feeders in our walled garden, scoring a fat-coated seed here, scattering a few errant suet-glazed nuts on the frosty ground there, morsels for the clean-up crew, birds not physiologically suited to clinging to mesh, still hungry though, looking to score. Can you name them? House Sparrow (poet Mary Oliver’s “dun-colored darlings”), Song Thrush, Skylark. Each brown bird has its own distinctive markings, its own particular call, language, dialect, each one a beauty. “Know thy neighbour as thyself,” urged writer Pearl S Buck; we’d wager that, albeit grudgingly, you can tell the Kardashians apart. Or the 1990s supermodels: Naomi, Cindy, Christy, Helena. Tyra, Amber, Linda, Kate. You might even have an opinion on which one of these beauties is the most beautiful. But naming birds, bugs, plants, trees? Sigh. Who are we?
The thing about birds is that you never hear them tweeting disparagingly about the shape of their beaks, warbling whiningly over the width of their wingspans, quacking up at the shake of a showy tail feather (mostly useless in flight), wishing they looked more like Zendaya. Granted, the US actor and singer slayed in angular bangs, corseted in a horse-tailed black Schiaparelli gown during Paris Fashion Week, but not an envious peep was heard from an oblivious bird population, unless you count “the goldfinches that have gathered/in a field of thistles/for a musical battle,/to see who can sing/the highest note,/or the lowest,/or the most expressive of mirth,/or the most tender”. In “Invitation”, Mary Oliver invites us to linger over the songs of goldfinches “as they strive/melodiously/not for your sake/and not for mine/and not for the sake of winning/but for sheer delight and gratitude”.
“Galliano is a master at finding beauty in the misbegotten and the disreputable.” Cathy Horyn
Miuccia Prada defined Miu Miu’s SS24 collection A Rationale of Beauties as “pieces of life”, an exploration of ideas and ideals of modern beauty: “Not beauty but beauties, an embracing of unique characters, the joy of life.” The looks cycled through history and across genders, the materials deliberately rendered imperfect, loved-up, lived-in. So what is beauty? Is it better to be beautiful or interesting? Emerson defined ugliness as being uninteresting. In her blog The Marginalian, essayist Maria Popova cites “the key to being interesting is being interested – in the world, in other people … what we call beauty might just be another word for the thirst for life.” Before her death in 2004, American writer Susan Sontag urged her readers to “Pay attention to the world.” Anyone paying attention to the world should resonate with the urgent ugly cry of Galliano’s stunning spring 2024 couture collection for Maison Margiela. Galliano dares us to find beauty in the dark, creating a world at once delicate and distorted, hard to look at, yet impossible to look away from.
A blessing and a curse, we live in interesting times, and attention must be paid. When it feels almost impossible to sort the beauties from the beasts, why not listen out for the chorus of goldfinches, as did Mary Oliver? “Believe us, they say,/it is a serious thing/just to be alive/on this fresh morning/in the broken world.” @susanzelouf
1. I’M TRAVELLING back to the future via Daniel Roseberry’s SS24 surreal Schiaparelli catwalk.
2. I’M LOVING Alaia’s Le Coeur crossbody bag in black calfskin. www.maison-alaia.com.
3. I’M SENDING a raven (à la Game of Thrones), as cell phone coverage is patchy in the Irish midlands.
4. I’M CHANNELLING my spirit animal, big brave beauty Jennifer Coolidge.
5. I’M CRUSHING on Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan, a beauty unafraid to be a beast.
6. I’M ADMIRING Black beauties spotted in Vienna’s cultural demimonde by Ghanaian portraitist Amaoko Boafo.
7. I’M REMEMBERING the beauty of Robert Mapplethorpe and bestie Patti Smith, captured by Norman Seeff in 1969.
8. I’M HONOURING misbegotten beauties via Galliano for Maison Margiela SS24.
9. I’M PAYING attention to the beauties of the world, prompted by poet Mary Oliver – borrow from your local library.
10. I’M SHOWING off well-turned calves in Jimmy Choos.