Just a quick post on something cool I did today. Fashion Class had a trip to the Salvatore Ferragamo museum, which was pretty awesome. We had a nice tour guide who showed us all the amazing shoes that Ferragamo designed -- he was both resourceful and intelligent and was famous for making incredibly comfortable shoes without sacrificing style. Way to go, Ferragamo. The exhibits were chock full of shoes, because he very cleverly always made two pairs of shoes when he had a client -- one for her, one for him. So there are 14,000 pairs of shoes in his collection. Whoa.
In addition to the shoes, the museum had a really big exhibit on Marilyn Monroe. I've always known who she is and her iconic-ness and all that, but this was very cool. Marilyn was smart. She did a lot of things to enhance her image that were both clever and awesomely sneaky. For instance, we went through a big room full of Renaissance art juxtaposed with photographs of her. Marilyn did her homework -- Botticelli's Venus, Leonardo's Leda and the Swan, Michelangelo's Dying Slave...she quoted them in her poses!
They also had some of her journal entries on display, which were...sad. That girl did not have an easy life. She said in one that she wanted to die, but she didn't know how to do it. She thought about jumping from a bridge, but they were all so beautiful, she loved bridges...so she couldn't do it. Not quite sure what to think about that.
They also had a letter that she'd written to a director that she wanted to work with. It was a good letter. And she basically said "look, I'm still getting through a lot of stuff, but I can't get anywhere unless I work. And I want to work with you. And I've talked to Marlon Brando about it too so it's all good."
The photos above I took sneakily in the last room of the exhibit ("E VIETATO FARE I FOTO"). It's a giant collection of the dresses she wore in many of her movies. Can I just point out that the white floaty dress from The Seven Year Itch is there? Like, the one she actually wore? Yeah.
So, that was actually really cool. Who'da thought I'd go off to Italy and learn about one of America's biggest icons?
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