In my last post I mentioned that I recently visited the Mariano Fortuny museum in Venice in April of this year. This museum had been on my museum bucket list for quite sometime and to say I was not disappointed was an understatement; the museum blew my mind and I would go back again and again.
In April of this year I had the great good fortune to visit the Fortuny Museum in Venice, Italy. The Fortuny Museum or ‘Museo Fortuny’ in Italian is housed in the Palazzo Pesaro a 15th Century Venetian palace. Fortuny or Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (11th May 1871, Granada Spain – 3rd May 1949, Venice Italy was an early twentieth century Spanish couturier based in Venice and is perhaps most famous for his ‘Delphos’ dresses (pictured above) of finely pleated silk with Murano glass beads on a silk cord to either side of the waist of the dress to way the dress down.
Eva Chichester was a Sunday School teacher born and raised in Newcastle, County Down c.1872 and passed away c.1955. Her life spanned the end of the 19th century and saw the advances for women from the early 20th century to her death in 1955 aged 83. Eva was born into a well-to-do middle-class family and appears from photographs to be her parents only child. Although it is worthwhile noting that little is known about Eva’s life outside of her photographs, albums and travel journals that are now deposited in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). A systematic problem that is all to common with women’s history that scant details of their lives exist and we are left to pick up the pieces from what records do survive from their lives.
I have been obsessed with everything old from a young age. Some of my earliest memories are watching such classics as Gilda and How To Marry A Millionaire with my grandmother who grew up in the generation that those films were made in. My grandmother taught me how to pin-curl my hair, give myself a manicure with red nails, how to wear seamed stockings and most importantly for every vintage aficionado how to choose your colour of red lipstick and how to apply it properly.