Method to my madness: Revolutionary geniuses

The Futurists felt it was their obligation to have a say on every matter possible, from cuisine to female fashion.

The above photo - a Christmas present for my god-daughter Camille (whose mother Marina is the world-famous meat-eater & an incredible art curator, truth to be told...) is a proof of how widespread their ideas became in their lifetime. The inscription on the back of the photo is Christmas greetings as well, sent some 83 years earlier - in Rio de Janeiro in 1926. And the girl, Mariana, is being called 'Mademoiselle Futurista' by her mother.

In a book "Social history of fashion" that I read over the summer in Rio, I found the following delightful exerpt from the Futurism Female Fashion Manifesto published in 1920: "It is absolutely neccessary to proclaim the dictatorship of the Artistic Genius over the female fashion ...that will also act as a cure against the routine... A gifted poet or an artist should be put in charge of all the most important female fashion houses. Fashion is art, just like architecture and music. Superbly planned and well-used item of female clothing has the same value as that of a Michelangelo's fresco or Titian's Madona. The Futurist Woman should have the same courage in wearing clothes of this new style as we did when we first exposed our thoughts to the public. Female fashion will never be extravagant enough. We shall also start abolishing the symmetry. We will do zig-zag decolletes, sleeves different one from the other, shoes varying in shapes, colors and height. We shall create surprising, unexpected, transformable outfits, armed with springs, sharp objects, photographic lens, electric currents, fireworks. We will project the most fascinating contemporary achievements on to women. Therefore we shall have a woman-pistol, a woman-radio antenna, a submarine-woman...An elegant woman will turn into the living plastic arts ensemble".

Only one comment: reading this made me feel very very good, or as we say paraphrasing Shakespeare, another Revolutionary genius: "There's a method to my madness".