let's face it, designer sunglasses are made in italy.

I have been aware for some time that I have a problem.  It began in Cairo, January 2009.  I bought a pair of Police sunglasses with a friend of mine, who bought Givenchy for 770LE.

...And what followed??

And then...

This was the last of them, I thought, surely one cannot find a more perfect pair of sunglasses than the Ray-Ban Wayfarer...  But no.  I was seduced, in November of 2009, by MANGO in Cairo...

And, most recently, most shamefully, a pair of Wayfarer imitators to counter-act my Wayfarer originals...

The first thing I look for in a pair of sunglasses is its weight.  You can tell if a pair of sunglasses has a perfect weight, they're designer.  Not that I care so much about owning designer sunglasses; 3 of the 5 pairs you see above are not designer sunglasses (MANGO does not count as designer!) -- however, it's just a habit I've developed, discerning whether certain brands of sunglasses are authentic by their weight, the materials they use.  Quality is important.  For instance, I was in a shop in Cairo looking for the (somewhere) above black wayfarers, and the salesman gave me a great deal on a pair of Ray-Bans - 510LE, about $90USD.  This is $20 less than most places.  The catch?  They were 100% fake, although they looked immaculate and like the real thing.  How could I tell?  The way they had written "MADE IN ITALY" on the stem.  Wayfarer doesn't write Made in Italy.  They write, Hand Made in Italy.

So, they might as well have been...

Let's face it, designer sunglasses are made in Italy, and there is no comparison.  I know, I know.  I have a problem.  Who else sits around on Friday night with all of her sunglasses sprawled out on her bed thinking, "Let's do a photo-shoot!"  What's sad is, I have 2 pairs of sunglasses I left out of this photo-shoot.  

To be fair, I just got back from a great class on BOLEOS with Fernanda Cajide, and my feet hurt, and I am only writing this post because I am waiting for a video I took to upload to YouTube so that you can all see some of the tango bootlegging I did tonight...

BE ITALIAN!

j.a.

un homme et une femme

Early Valentine's day gift, I couldn't help myself:

From "Un Homme et Une Femme" (1966), Pierre Barouh sings the Samba Sarava.

the black lace fan

Dear J. Peterman,

It was carnival season, and I was sitting at a café on the Piazza San Marco.  The city seemed to be overflowing with tourists, stragglers, and mysterious, old-world types of beautiful dress who might as well have been inducted into a secret cult the night before.  I was having an espresso when a man, dressed in a white shirt and a tweed vest, a white silk scarf tied under his collar, approached me. He did not say a word, but rather dropped a red envelope on my table, and then vanished. Suddenly a wild old woman was in front of me. "My Dear, what an honor, the Duke's masquerade ball!  But do you think you can go just as you are now?" She pulled something from her cloaks. "Here, you will need this."   

One black lace fan, purchased in Venice in July of 2009, now sitting on my wall next to a mirror and a picture of a man with a cat.  Perfect for the Cairo heat??  Oui, mais malheureusement I feel more Victorian than I do elegant when I carry it around...  Sorry Mr. Peterman.

But it's nice and striking when it sits there on my wall, no?

...  Will I bring it to life next summer?

back to buenos aires

Nostalgic video by Federico Aubele, Argentinian musician with a sometimes tango twist - I remember dancing to his song "Pena" in Cairo.

This is "La Esquina," from his first album Panamericana:

Gold, melancholy: los recuerdos del ayer.

j.a.

classic egyptian cinema

Chéri je t'aime, chéri je t'adore...

Do you enjoy this as much as I do?? Many of my Egyptian friends have always argued that the films that were made in Cairo in the 40s, 50s, and 60s are equal to, if not better than most of the films coming out of Hollywood at the time. How true this is, well - that's a matter of a very biased opinion (of course).

This is from a film called "Il Hob Kida" ("Such is Love"), 1961. The song, "Bahebak ya Moustafa" ("I Love You, Moustafa") speaks for itself in both French and Arabic:

Oh the franco-egyptian glamour!!  The first time I saw "Chit-Chat on the Nile" (the 60s film portraying the "decadence of the Nasr period" and based on a book by Naguib Mahfouz) with a friend, I was literally shocked to see Egyptians smoking hash, having illicit rendez-vous on a houseboat, driving around drunk, and all on screen!  The Cairo cinema today is laughable if not propagandistic for an oppressive government. So these little clips of celebrations, giving us a hint of the glamour of a different world, are like silly gems at the bottom of a very polluted Nile.

Chéri je t'aime, chéri je t'adore...

j.a.