Thursday 12 November 2009

My Secret Weapon!











I am taking part in a game started by Pip Lincolne over at Meet Me at Mike's. This week, players have been asked by My Bricole to share their special creative weapon. Mine has to be my beloved copy* of Auguste Racinet's The Costume History, first published in the 1870's. A seemingly endless, enormous treasure trove of people, costumes and cultures that I open at random pages regularly and always find something that intrigues me. There's nothing to beat the colour, pattern, detail, interaction between the figures, oddity and variety of human glory that it documents with Victorian zeal. And when I feel that I have been too saturated by this dip into history, I go for something cooler, like Vitamin D. But when I want to go back to the endless glories of human culture, I go back via (Un)FASHION by Tibor and Maira Kalman. Brilliant!

* Until recently I had been borrowing the E N O R M O U S copy of Racinet held by the City Library in Melbourne. Do NOT attempt this unless you have a wheelbarrow. I found my (smaller) copy at The Brunswick Street Bookstore, and it was pretty well priced as Taschen is celebrating an anniversary this year.

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