Word: cottons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...length of diaphanous cotton, larger than a stole, smaller than a shroud, there is the figure of a tiger, magisterial in its power, surreptitious in its impact. The cloth must be moved, draped just so and drawn at the proper angle to the light before the outline of the animal is even suggested. The effect is cunning, quixotic, magical, and knows no boundary in time. The cloth, in fact, dates only from the mid-20th century, but the tiger, fashioned from phantom stripes of fabric, was tie-dyed with supernal skill, millimeter by millimeter, by a craftsman whose techniques were...
...Costumes of Royal India," of which this fabulous piece of cotton is just a small part, springs into New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art with a vitality and dignity well beyond that of most exhibitions of clothing. All is ravishment: a child's coat made of silver fabric embroidered with gold thread; a woman's costume of veil, tunic and pajamas that plays with sunset shades of gold and violet. Fashion and society are the prevailing standards that squeeze museum costume shows tight, but "Costumes of Royal India" celebrates an ongoing tradition--of craft, of coloration, of symbolic...
...maharajah who stood 6 ft. 9 in.--made of silk and interlined, for warmth, with rustling handmade rag paper. All that captures the eye. But what holds the imagination are the shapes, the folds and the colors, the cascades of fabric in a skirt that uses 300 yards of cotton to move over the wearer like a light wind or that spills around her, when she sits, like a mountain lake. The gold glitters, but what seduces are the accents of color that the gold picks up and reflects, like the green fragments of beetle wings that peek...
Most of the clothes are ceremonial, although the occasion does not have to be grand. Some of the most elegant dresses are of indigo cotton, appliqued with gold, made to be worn during India's harvest festival in the late fall, when the dark of the sky is deepest. There are social nuances in every garment, highborn or not. A man's white cotton overblouse can be tied in 58 ways, each with its own social connotation. The knots at the waist of a courtesan's skirt could be so intricate that only she could undo them: fashion...
Life's a Riot With Spy Versus Spy Etc. (Go-Disk Records) by Billy Bragg: Billy Bragg takes a bit of getting used to. He plays an unaccompanied electric guitar and sings as if he has a pound of cotton jammed in each nostril. After the ear has become accustomed, though, this collection of previously released material, a plethora of political and personal tales of woe, really hits home. "A New England" achieves both the humor and sadness of early Dylan. After all, if the world could grow to love a nasally hick from Hibbing, Minnesota, then...