“This is a modern-day romanticism, a dramatic sensuality, a dark glamour, with subtle games of provocative intellect,” creative director Frida Giannini wrote about her latest collection.
The Romantics of the 19th century believed Death was Beauty. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther had young men throughout Europe emulating its protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. The Aristocracy made this passionate sensitive temperament fashionable in the 19th century. To be thin, pale, and sickly was Beautiful. The cult of Beauty; was a cult of Disease.
Disease as Metaphor.
Tuberculosis was the Disease that everyone wanted. To look like you had TB; was to look fabulous; to walk the Boulevards in Paris in dark clothing, looking pale and deathly was the height of chic.
People who were of refined natures; who were sensitive; wanted consumption. The afflicted – coughed delicately into handkerchiefs, had a gentle and most becoming flush in their cheeks and experienced a heightened sense of everything before they died! It was Romantic; to live and die young, pale, and Beautiful.
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