On trend shoes at the Goya show

Fabulous fabrics and detail in the portraits at the National Gallery's current Goya exhibition.
In particular, very on trend shoes....Here on the Marchioness of Santa Cruz.

Love this scanned tapestry tray..

It matches someone's  nails...

YSL in detail at the Bowes Museum

Another chance to visit the YSL exhibition at the Bowes Museum over the weekend. Amazing that so many of the garments are not behind glass and it's wonderful to be able to examine them so closely... The whole show has an other worldly air (Who wears these clothes and when? Who can afford them?) and you feel that visitors are transported by it to a sort of fairy tale reality where you can be Cinderella for a day.
An invigilator tells me too that lots of keen seamstresses visit and there's as much interest in the process (the various toiles on display) as in the final result: someone asked if they had turned a dress inside out to look at the seams....

Tiles at a Bosphorus boat stop

Tiles on Besiktas boat station on the Bosphorus. To compare with these decorative edges and lines of tiles and geraniums outside the Midland Hotel, Manchester.

Cafe mosaics

Love these lamps at a roadside cafe near Kabatas tram stop in Istanbul. They're mosaic-ed - if that's a word.
Fabulous Byzantine mosaics in mosques and churches ....here echoed on the street.

A prayer mat in the Yeni V. Sultan Mosque, Istanbul

A prayer mat in the women's gallery of the Yeni V. Sultan Mosque in Uskadar, Istanbul. This is on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.

Our project Stitch looking at the cultural and social power of fabric and embroidery has links with Istanbul.

Ghostly words at the Bowes Museum

Wonderful transparent black panels in the Bowes Museum at the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition with quotes from the man himself:  the best make-up is passion and the most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves...

Beneath the skin or the skin beneath

These leather gloves (embroidered with silk and silver gilt thread) in the V&A, London, are 400 years old but it's still possible to sense the owner's hands beneath the leather. They're so human it's unsettling.
Gloves were hugely important in 17th century etiquette - you can imagine these were a pretty impressive social statement. But they were clearly worn, not just touted around.