Exploration #9: Mayfair On London's West End is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the world: Mayfair. The area was named in 1686 by King James II, as he chose it as the place to host the annual, fortnight-long May Fair, at the site of what is now Shepherd Market*. Mayfair is bordered by Hyde Park on the west, Oxford Street on the north, Piccadilly to the south, and Regent Street to the east. I came across Mayfair while looking for a Vivianne Westwood store. I didn’t have any expectation of the are*a, but it became very clear to me once there what the area was all about. There were high-end stores all around, mostly large international corporations that would have stores in any major city. Apart from the shops, there were some seriously expensive-looking apartments/townhouses, and some restaurants. It is by walking through Mayfair that I came across the Royal Academy of Arts, which was a lovely surprise. Other famous institutions in the area include the Grosvenor House Hotel, the Ritz Hotel, and the Burlington Arcade. Overall, I wouldn’t say I was very impressed with Mayfair as a whole. Likely, some of that is due to me being a college student without thousands of dollars in disposable income on hand. In places like this, it feels like having a hefty wallet is kind of like your passport or entry-ticket to enjoy the area. I couldn’t afford to shop in most if not all of the stores, nor could I likely afford a single meal at any of the surrounding restaurants, which leaves not much to do. I’m also very much “over” traveling around the world just to find the same luxury stores everywhere; I don’t see the appeal in flying from New York to London or London to Dubai just to shop at Gucci or Louis Vuitton. These fashion houses of course have attributes of their own, but they don’t speak whatsoever to the local character of the spaces they inhabit; they’re basically just copied and pasted all around the world. The Royal Academy museum had some free exhibits, and the Alexander McQueen store in Mayfair also had some interesting and free activities. I was glad to see the Vivienne Westwood flagship store so recently after the Dame’s passing, a very specific and monumental moment in time for the company, which I believe, on the whole, to actually have a valuable perspective and voice. Mayfair wasn’t horrible by any means, but I think one trip was enough for me.
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Exploration #8: Alexander McQueen Flagship Store Alexander McQueen’s London flagship store on Old Bond Street is a store, museum, and design studio all in one. The experience takes up several floors, one for womenswear, menswear, and one dedicated to displaying old couture pieces that once graced the runway. These pieces are displayed on models, and posted around each piece are photographs, drawings, and textile samples that give insight into the process of creating each item. One of my favorites was a dress made with the patterns and shapes naturally found in a beehive. The fabric in the top of the dress was sewn into hexagons, which eventually led to the skirt of the dress which was adorned with hundreds of small, hand-sewn bumblebees. Another piece was made with a rough burlap-type fabric and covered on top with embroidered flowers that snakes across the dress on vines. There was also a small room you could step into that featured a projector on a spinning axis, which showed a model walking in McQueen couture down a runway, decked head-to-toe in roses, so that she gave the impression of a walking garden. Walking through this space made it evident how much inspiration Alexander McQueen takes from nature. Almost every piece had elements of plants or flowers, roses especially, or some kind of insect. In the back of that same room was a table, scattered with designs, drawings, samples, and more. Around the table were several designers chatting; I wish I could offer more details on their conversation but unfortunately their tones lowered immediately when we walked too close. While the actual merchandise in the store was far out of my price range, the exhibition on the top floor was totally free, and there was even a table stacked with free posters. I really enjoyed getting to see a behind-the-scenes of the design process, especially with real designers using the space to create more of the beautiful work we were touring. Exploration #7: Brick Lane Today, Brick Lane is a hotspot for vintage stores, street food vendors, and street art, but its history began hundreds of years back in the 16th century. For much of its history, Brick Lane was outside of the city and wouldn’t be connected by roads to London for a few hundred years. In the 18th century, the Brick Lane Market came about in its first iteration as a place for farmers to sell livestock and produce outside of the city boundaries. Also instrumental in Brick Lane’s development was the brewing industry. The most notable brewery in the area was purchased by Joseph Truman in 1679, and the brewery remained in use until the 1980s. Today, the brewery's iconic brick chimney still towers above the area with “TRUMAN” written out in large white lettering. The 17th century brought large amounts of Jewish settlers, the 20th many Bengali immigrants– Brick Lane has consistently been a diverse place in many different aspects. The large Bengali community began the area’s tradition of renowned Curry restaurants, and walking around Brick Lane you can find dozens of such establishments. Usually, I don’t even like curry, but walking around Brick Lane I felt I had to give it another chance and I was not disappointed. What has most drawn me to Brick Lane, a place I’ve visited a few times now, is the abundance of vintage stores. The largest of those is the Underground Market– second hand clothes Heaven. The Underground Market is filled with different clothing, jewelry, and accessory vendors (+ a bunch more miscellaneous items), with pieces from the 1920s until today. The space also has a food hall on the upper floor. The Underground Market can be a bit overwhelming by its extensiveness and the sheer quantity of items there; you could spend a whole day there and not get through it all. In a word, Brick Lane is busy, busy, busy. There is so much going on, so many stores and restaurants and vendors and so many people, mostly young people, milling about. It is a place filled with life and activity and no chance of boredom. I can’t recommend it enough, but you definitely have to have the energy to keep up with the pace of it all when you visit. Sources “The Cultural Trail.” Www.towerhamlets.gov.uk, www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/lgnl/leisure_and_culture/local_attractions/cultural_trail/cultural_trail.aspx#:~:text=Brick%20Lane%20Market%20developed%20during. Exploration #6: The Royal Academy of Art At the beginning of the semester, I came across the Royal Academy of Arts after taking a walk through Mayfair. The museum's collection includes a sixteenth-century copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, the only marble sculpture by Michelangelo in the United Kingdom, and works by leading British artists in history and today. The Academy has a permanent collection that can be viewed for free, which I explored, as well as more specific exhibitions that vary by season. Earlier this year was their show on Spain and the Hispanic World, which has now been replaced by Soul’s Grown Deep Like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South. I’d be interested to see how a British institution executes an exhibit about American culture and how my impression of it might differ from that of a Brit’s. One of the most famous pieces in the museum is the copy of the Last Supper, commissioned by Duke Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d'Este in the late 15th century; the original painting is located in the Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. This copy, painted sometime around 1520, is almost the same size as the original except for the top third of the composition of Da Vinci’s. The copy was attributed to Marco d'Oggiono and later to Giampietrino, a pupil of Da Vinci, though that still cannot be confirmed with complete certainty. The Royal Academy bought the painting for six hundred guineas in 1821, the most expensive work of art they had ever purchased, intended to be an example for students to emulate. The Michelangelo sculpture displayed in the Academy is titled “The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John” ca. 1504-05, and was bequeathed by Sir George Beaumont in the 19th century. This piece is actually unfinished, the reason why is still debated amongst experts, though this wasn’t entirely evident to me as a viewer. I actually kind of like that it's unfinished; it adds to the feeling of the piece being frozen in a moment in history and transported to the modern day. I found it interesting that the two works the Academy boasts most proudly of are both of Italian origin, being that it's supposed to be an institution showcasing the talent of the United Kingdom. I would’ve loved to see the Hispanic World exhibit, but at the moment I didn’t feel like paying the extra fee. In the spirit of an Academy, a place of learning and thus social mobility, I think the seasonal exhibits ought to be free as well– but that’s a concept for another post. Exploration #5: Covent Garden
Covent Garden Market is a great gem in the heart of London. It’s only a twenty-minute walk from Gower St, and is surrounded by several other popular attractions like the Royal Opera House, the Coulthard Gallery, and the Transit Museum. The Market began in the 17th century, and is famous for its countless food and shop vendors. I consider The Market to be the many pop-up, small vendors; however the square is surrounded with brick-and-mortar stores from big brands like Dior, Chanel, Apple, etc– in my opinion, stores with much less character. The street vendors sell a wide variety of goods; there’s a lot of vintage and handmade clothing and accessories, antique pottery, art, jewelry, and much, much more. I really enjoyed my visit to Covent Garden Market, however I didn’t feel that it was especially unique. Street markets are extremely popular these days, as clearly they have been in the past, and they usually sell the same array of things. At this point in my life, I’ve been to so many vintage stores, thrift shops, markets, antique dealers, etc in so many different places that it’s become a bit mundane to me. This is a bit ironic as the objects that typically fill these places are interesting because you can’t get them in chain stores or mass-produced online; but I think one can only look through so many curated, second-hand goods before it seems a bit monotonous. Overall, I wouldn’t declare Covent Garden as London’s best market. Though, this is kind of a great statement because it testifies to the quality and quantity of attractions in London. Covent Garden is widely popular and well-known, and it really is great, but there are better places. Exploration #4: Liberty Founded in 1843, Liberty is one of the most famous department stores worldwide. My mother has always loved floral prints and fabrics, so naturally I’d heard of Liberty from a young age, and so when my Mom came to visit me this semester, we had to take a trip to see the legend I’d heard so much about. This building itself is massive and made in a mock-tudor style. Standing in front of it, it exudes the energy of a true, venerable British institution. Of course, the store had just about any fashionable item one could dream of. Each section was breathtaking just by the scale of it, one floor on the second story would open up to a triple-height ceiling with more and more sub-sections of clothing, which would go on seemingly forever if you tried to walk to the end of it. My favorite part was a room within the Home department dedicated just to Persian rugs. The space was filled with stacks of rugs built up several feet high and more hung on every wall. I was delighted and took a lot of photos (see below), though I saw a “NO PHOTOS” sign on my way out, so part of my trip bordered on illicit. I have no regrets. Department stores are by no means a rare occurrence these days, and oftentimes I find myself feeling genuinely nauseated by their fluorescent lights, overly perfumed air, and general stench of consumerism, however Liberty felt different. I didn’t experience any of the negative feelings I usually do. Liberty has an air of class that a place like Bloomingdales doesn’t. It feels a little less desperately capitalistic and more artistic and relaxed. The building is architecturally interesting and made of wood, crafted in interesting shapes– as opposed to the mind-numbingly straight lines and dull tones of most shopping centers. It feels like a place that has retained and remained faithful to its history. For the most part, the products they displayed were interesting, different, not all big-name designers like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, etc. Don’t get me wrong, it was still insanely expensive, but they were at least artisanal products. Liberty was a shopping experience that didn’t make me feel horribly depressed about the world, environment, economy, etc etc, as I usually do. In this day and age, I think that’s kind of a feat. Exploration #3: The Beams The Beams in North Woolwich is a music and art venue converted from several old warehouses. I recently went with some friends to an exhibit they hosted called “Thin Air”, which featured several of the warehouse spaces with different kinds of lights projected to create art and immersive experiences. It took a good hour to get to the venue from Bloomsbury via train, and at the end a walk through and along various abandoned industrial parks and bulldozed lots. I was a bit skeptical at first. When we got there, the first room we entered was massive and empty apart from the light fixtures and people. Countless lights fixed throughout the entirety of the ceiling and every wall were programmed into different sequences to give different effects, accompanied by hidden speakers that continuously boomed a soundtrack of ambiguous noises that gave the impression that one was within an immense dishwasher. The effect was, in a word, trippy. It was a bit overwhelming initially and I needed a few moments to adjust to the intensity of it all. Once I did, the experience turned ethereal. A doorway in the back of this room swung open intermittently, emitting a warm, orange light like a portal to another world, the entryway to the next room.The light gave way to a tunnel and beyond that another, smaller room with bean bags throughout the floor. It seemed to me that the lights in this room were programmed to emulate the movement of water, from the perspective of being underneath the tide on the ocean floor. There were about five or so more rooms in the exhibit, each with different light effects but none of them using any medium other than lights and blank spaces to project them on. Being immersed into this other world of extreme colors and noises made it weird to adjust back to the “real world” at the end of the exhibit. I feel they did an excellent job making an experience of art that fully enveloped the attendee, crossing the line between having viewers and having participants. Exploration #2: The British Museum For this post, rather than focusing on something I saw in the British Museum, I want to focus on something I did not see. On arriving here, I was very pleased to hear that most of the museums in London are free; I think it’s important to make art, history, education, etc. as accessible as possible. On Friday, we went to the British Museum and got in free of charge, of course. The coat-check cost about £2, which was annoying, but whatever. We looked at the Egyptian, Greek, and Chinese exhibits, and wanted to see the Rosetta Stone before we left. However, on our quest to find the stone, we were made aware that visitors have to pay to see the real one, and only a reproduction is open to be viewed for free. This was very much a disappointment and the three of us decided we weren’t going to pay to see it. I believe it is £18 per-ticket for adults to enter the exhibit that has the stone. Of course, that isn’t an impossibly large price tag, but it isn’t nothing. For a group of college kids, for example, that’s actually kind of a lot. That £18 could be lunch, breakfast, or an Uber home. My point in focusing on this is that this financial barrier is a reminder of the persistence of class divisions even inside an institution that is supposed to be for everyone. If you don’t have the £18 to pay, you receive a less genuine experience. Your tour of world history is a little less real. The wealthier people are entitled to parts of history you are not. Of course, the British Museum did not create the Rosetta Stone, nor did it originate in their country. Many would say that they effectively stole it from the Egyptians. But regardless, they deem themselves justified to profit off of it and exclude whomever they please from seeing it. That would be like me stealing the Mona Lisa, putting it in my house, and making people pay to see it. Oh, and also, putting the Mona Lisa on hundreds of merchandise products and selling them out of a gift shop in my kitchen. It would be a bit strange. For me, this issue brings up more questions such as: Who owns history? Is it moral to profit off of a collective world history? Who gets to hold on to which artifacts? Personally, this experience solidified in me the sentiment that education and the arts should be for everyone. If the British Museum isn’t going to return the Rosetta Stone to (in my opinion) its rightful owners, then they ought to at least make it accessible to everyone. Otherwise, it’s just exploitation of stolen art for profit and the perpetuation of class divisions. Exploration #1: Natural History Museum While in the natural history museum, I found myself most drawn to the geological exhibits with rocks, gems, and fossils. This is for two reasons, one being that I love jewelry and find precious stones to be mesmerizing, and the latter being that they are incomprehensibly old objects. I was in a building thousands of miles away from my home, standing in front of fossils created hundreds of millions of years ago. I’m not sure I can even put into words how that makes me feel: excited, dumbfounded, enamored, shocked– words that don’t even begin to cover it. I thought about what that impossibly large stretch of time represented, the existence of the human species only a minute fraction of it. That amount of time dwarfs churches built hundreds of years ago, dwarfs the venerable Redwood trees, dwarfs ancient Egyptian societies– dwarfs it all. This rock has existed for all of human life and death and struggle and love and pain. It has outlasted civilizations, genocides, natural disasters, the extinction of dinosaurs. And now it's sitting in a glass case in front of me, a person who is comparably only a blip in the timeline of this world. I felt similar emotions standing in front of a piece of moon rock. Moon rock! MOON ROCK! That’s insane! I got the opportunity to be inches away from part of the floating sphere I see in the sky every night, and furthermore, learned that “most of the material in the Moon was once part of the Earth, but it was separated by a giant impact early on in our planet’s history” (British Museum of Natural History). I love the perspective these types of things give me;I find it oddly comforting. They remind me that I am an organism like all the others that came before me and that will come after me. I find it an honor that I get to exist on this planet like the crustaceans fossilized in the rock before me, if only for my tiny pocket of time. We’re all taking part in a beautiful cosmic cycle and we’re all doing it together on the same beautiful planet. This experience reminded me of one of my favorite poems, “Ancestral Mathematics” (unfortunately I can’t figure out who the author is :/) “In order to be born, you needed: 2 parents 4 grandparents 8 great-grandparents 16 second great-grandparents 32 third great-grandparents 64 fourth great-grandparents 128 fifth great-grandparents 256 sixth great-grandparents 512 seventh great-grandparents 1,024 eighth great-grandparents 2,048 ninth great-grandparents For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total sum of 4,094 ancestors over the last 400 years. Think for a moment – How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many love stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? – did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment…” |