I put on my green and white striped suit and walked into Arco, the huge art fair in Madrid. It was right before the pandemic and the place was packed with gallerists, collectors, artists and their admirers. One painting stood out from all the other works: ‘Quiet Listening’ by Peter Uka. The painting depicted an elegant young man listening to records. It sang of another era and yet it is completely contemporary. It spoke of memory, music, and beauty. This summer (2021) I was delighted to interview Peter Uka for Metal magazine. We talked about art, music, 1970s culture, and identity. You can read the full article here.
Visit Peter Uka’s solo exhibition, ‘Longing’, at Mariane Ibrahim gallery if you happen to be in Chicago. It’s on view until January 15th, 2022.
Peter Uka, Quiet Listening, 2020. Courtesy the Artist and Mariane Ibrahim
Denge Pose II, 2018. Courtesy the Artist and Mariane Ibrahim
Peter Uka, Still Riding 2, 2021. Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim
Recently I had the chance to
go to Marrakesh to celebrate the birthday of my beloved friend, Patricia, a
poet and alchemist. It’s only a couple of hours
from where I live and I’ve always dreamt of going to Morocco so I packed my
most demure 1970s garb (inspired by peak Yves Saint Laurent) and a sketchbook and headed down to Marrakesh. As we drove into the city, we
saw stone walls, discontent donkeys with matted fur, and a couple of camels crouching
beneath palm trees. We walked into the labyrinth of the old souk, down shadowy
alleyways, until we arrived at an inconspicuous wooden door.
Suddenly a French
man and his dog opened the door and invited us inside a riad. We walked into
this secret courtyard dripping with vines, bright foliage and blossoms.
Hundreds of pomegranates lay at our feet. He led us past yellow-painted doors,
to our colorful rooms, each decorated with different local embroideries, fresh
flowers, and books in various languages. When we returned from our lunch of
salads, falafel, spicy hummus, and kiwi juice, a fire was blazing in the hearth
of every room.
Over the next few days, we
explored the city on foot. We admired the sunken gardens of orange trees and
palace ruins. Later, a cool café offered shade and bitter orange cake as Stevie
Wonder played in the background. An old man threw a live monkey at our friend as we
crossed the famous Djemaa el-Fna square. The creature clung to his arm before
he handed it back. A meter away, a fellow wrapped a long cobra around a boy’s
shoulders. A nearby table was heaped with fruit, being sliced and squeezed into
fresh juice. There was so much to look at in every direction. Later, we drank
the colors at the Yves Saint Laurent museum and gardens, overflowing with hot
pink bougainvillea, blue architecture, and tall cactus plants. There was a beautiful
little restaurant where we sampled orange blossom, pistachio, and date ice
creams.
Another day we headed to a
different market. My friend Marta and I bought harissa and loose tea made of
dried verbena, flower petals, and curved leaves. We asked some local women for
directions and they kindly walked us to the square we were looking for. On
Patricia’s birthday we sat at a long candlelit table and feasted on crisp
pastries stuffed with soft cheese, crunchy salads, hot pears sprinkled with
cinnamon, massive artichokes, limpid green beans, clay pots of vegetable stew,
and a date cake covered in white, creamy frosting and nuts.
HERE ARE A FEW PLACES I RECOMMEND VISITING:
The Badi Palace, a large ruin with pool, trees, and a view from upstairs.
Bahia Palace, an elaborately decorated palace.
The Saadian Tombs.
The Yves Saint Laurent Museum & Jardin Majorelle & the small Berber Museum. You can get all three on one ticket. If you love fashion, the bookstore at the YSL Museum is excellent – bring a tote bag! The restaurant in the garden is delicious. Try the desserts.
Djemaa El Fna- a lively (intense) square filled with tourists by day and locals on weekend nights. You can find snake charmers, sad monkeys, hunks of meat, and outdoor dining at communal tables.
Various markets: carry cash in the local currency, and bargain. Look for spices, unusual teas, necklaces, leather goods, cotton pajamas, and argan oil. Try the fresh pomegranate juice.
Leave the center, dressed appropriately (cover your limbs), and explore. There are lots of fascinating things to see. I felt more comfortable when walking with a two-meter-tall Dutchman…so go with a friend.
Have you read all the articles and juicy interviews in my portfolio? Check out my conversations with Jeremy Scott, Kaws, Futura 2000, Massive Attack, KR, Nan Golden, Alec Soth, Alan Aldridge, and many more at margofortuny.com .
Have a great summer!
Saturday, 1 April 2017
Vienna, The Charmer
Chocolates from Demel
Two hours of sleep, dry
sandwiches in the morning, and then we were flying over Swiss mountains. The
plane cruised over a sea of clouds lapping at the bottom of the bluish peaks.
We changed planes in Zurich and landed in Vienna.
A few hours later, after
devouring hot wiener schnitzels with lemon basil sauce at an excellent vegan
diner, we stepped into The Purple Cave. It was a small, slightly expensive
vintage shop packed to the rafters with 60’s hotpants, 70’s dresses, patterned
shirts and collectables including a white mini trench-coat and a leatherette
catsuit with cutouts down both sides. I tried on an Ossie Clark-style navy wool
dress. My company (El Lobo and Viri the pretty Hungarian) lounged in the tiny
bar in the back of the store, surrounded by art books and torn sexy cinema
posters. They sipped cold beers and listened to records. I bought the dress.
The Purple Cave
That afternoon we wandered
around Vienna’s elegant streets past dapper old couples and horse-drawn
carriages. A white-haired gentleman in a plaid three-piece suit put his
camel-colored coat around his sweetheart’s shoulders. An Austrian Aphrodite
with wavy red hair scurried to the metro in a long coat and stiletto heels. A
young man with an angular face and sad eyes clutched a bunch of flowers on the
tram. He looked just like an Egon Schiele painting. A car discreetly nearly ran
us over…but everything was so calm and quiet we forgot about it moments later.
After investigating the
whereabouts of the best Sacher Torte in Vienna, we visited Oberlaa Café. No
queues, no obscene prices, just a café filled with locals and a glass case of
sweet concoctions. We ate omelettes dusted with chives and oozing with melted
cheese. And dessert? Behold the famous chocolate Sacher Torte and a Himbeer-Schaum Schnitte. The second
treat was made of a layer of moist sponge cake, cream, tart juicy raspberries,
and a thick layer of gooey meringue on top. I also recommend the Austrian version of a Monte Bianco, a
moist chestnut torte. It’s the perfect fuel for a museum marathon.
Industrial Vienna, very different from the rest of the city
Another day, another thrill
for the sartorially inclined: the dirndl outlet, right in the center of town.
Imagine a forest of old-fashioned cotton dresses in every color. Viri and I
parked the fellas at 1516, the nearby pub, while we tried on pale blue dirndls with
cherry red aprons and crisp white blouses. I felt like Liesl in The Sound of
Music, running to the gazebo.
We drifted in the frosty
sunshine to a crowded restaurant, where El Lobo and I had a dramatic quarrel,
the kind where you unearth shards of past arguments and present them with minor
disappointments of the day. Tears on eyelashes. Silence. He smoked
a cigarette. I nibbled on a lemon wafer. Apologies. We walked in the fading sun
looking forward to ice cream cones and the peace of sleep.
MARGO’S GUIDE TO VIENNA
(with
help from the beautiful Martina)
TO DO
-Visit the museums. There’s a great Egon Schiele exhibit on
at the Albertina (until June 18, 2017) but if you miss it the Leopold has a
collection of Schiele and Klimt paintings.
The upper Belvedere has a surprisingly boring collection, with the exception of
Klimt’s ‘The Kiss.’ Skip it if you’re short on time. Vienna’s natural history
museum is excellent.
-Hunt for vintage clothes and stop for a beer at The Purple
Cave. (Neubaugasse 78.)
-Buy spices, little gifts, and Middle Eastern snacks at the
Naschmarkt (market) on Saturday.
-Visit old-fashioned, smoky coffeehouses like Café Bendl (Landesgerichstrasse 6,
open late some days.)
-If it’s sunny and warm hang out in the bars by the canal.
-If you like traditional dress buy a dirndl. They’re pretty and usually very
expensive…unless you go to an outlet like Original Salzburger Trachen, on
Weinburggasse 8, near the metro Stephensplatz. Try on a size smaller than you
usually wear. They also have new but vintage style suede shoes, blouses, and
bras.
TO EAT
-Try the wiener
schnitzel (a flat, breaded cutlet of veal, pork or chicken, often
served with potato salad and a slice of lemon.)
-If you’re vegetarian/vegan Vienna has lots of options. I
love Swing Kitchen, a cheap, casual vegan
diner with fantastic schnitzel, “chicken” nuggets, homemade cola,
apple soda and beer. Schottenfeldgasse 3, close to Zieglergasse metro station
and The Purple Cave.
-Drink spicy chili
beer and sample the apple strudel (a delicious combination) at 7 Stern
Braeu, a microbrewery in the 7th district. Seibensterngasse 19.
Open 11 am-midnight.
-Snack on dreamy
pastries at Kurkonditorei Oberlaa. Neuer Markt 16. Metro:
Stephansplatz.
-If you like fancy
chocolates in beautiful boxes buy presents at Demel. Kohlmarkt 14.
-Have a drink at Das Moped. They make a tasty curry mango cocktail and it’s open
on Sunday. Avoid the cake though. Salmgasse 23, Metro: Rochugasse.
-->
CITY NOTES: Most shops and many cafes and bars are
closed on Sunday, though most museums are open. If you’ll be zipping around
town a lot get a 2 or 3-day metro pass. Many cafes and bars allow smoking
inside (Das Moped has an awesome though fragrant 60s smoking room in the back.)
Dogs are welcome in many restaurants, shops, and on the metro.
In addition to designing for his own label and his collaborating
with adidas, Jeremy Scott is currently Moschino’s Creative Director. Here’s one
of my interviews with him, where we discuss Tokyo street style, 90's looks, and inspiration. (This was before Peak Beard in London…you’ll
see what I mean if you read on.)
Exit Magazine, 2009
Jeremy Scott x adidas Autumn/Winter 2009
JEREMY SCOTT: POP
DESIGNER
OR UNDERGROUND SENSATION?
During London
Fashion Week, I hung out with the effervescent Jeremy Scott in the Adidas
ObyO Pop Up Shop at 6 Newburg Street. We talked about Tokyo versus London, the
exposure of the underground, Lady Gaga, and Jeremy’s colourful collection for
Adidas. The Autumn/Winter 09 collection is a playful homage to 90s African
influences in pop culture, mixed with safari imagery. Photographs of the new
collection have galvanized the online community to discuss, buy, or freak out
over Jeremy’s unique designs. EXIT investigates why.
You take a lot of fashion
risks. Is that intentional or is it the shock of the new? Is it your way of
being mind expanding?
Well
I definitely think it’s important to always expand one’s mind and to try to do
that as a designer, to try to open people’s imagination and make them think
differently about something. (When it comes to ObyO trainers) there are wings
sprouting from the shoe or three tongues per shoe but at the same time I just made
it because I think it’s beautiful. So it’s not just done in a purely
provocative sense.
What city right now is taking
the most fashion risks?
Well
you know Tokyo is on its own planet. The kids there are doing the most elaborate
and unexpected combinations. London in general is a much more youthful
fashionable city, compared to New York. London has a lot more fun young
fashion. But for very extreme looks, Tokyo is still winning that race.
Is it like just in the book Fruits?
Yeah,
it’s the new generation of Fruits.
Tokyo is amazing compared to New York or anywhere else. I don’t know about
London because I don’t spend as much time here, but I know people are
definitely a lot more into eccentric looks. You know in New York, if you grew a
beard some dude on the street might shout, “Yo what is THAT? What you wearing?”
and they have this liberty, they can just tell you about it. But in Tokyo no
one looks at you or talks to you about it at all. And so the first trip I went
there I just kept pushing it more and more everyday. I thought, I’m going to
make you talk to me. I had a racoon tail and I hooked it into the back of my
pants so I had this tail swinging around and I couldn’t catch people’s eye for
the life of me, cause they just won’t stare. Obviously no one was laughing or
sniggering or pointing. It is such a wildly liberating feeling of I can wear
whatever I want and do anything I want. And especially if there’s two people
there, two boys, two girls, girl and boy, they both decide “oh we’re gonna wear
clown shoes and big clown glasses” or something like that and they have their
own trend and they just walk around together. They’re in their own world and
think “yeah of course everyone should
have a bowtie this big…” It’s inspiring it really is. And it’s how everything
goes at the same time, how they look at the way American or European culture is
and the way they’ve appropriated it makes you look at it in a different way. Not
even the exciting aspects of visual culture, it’s things we might think are
mundane and boring. They’ve rendered it totally different because of how
they’ve curated it. It’s amusing, ‘cause you see it through their eyes. It’s
very fascinating.
Your new Adidas O by O collection
has a lot of 90’s hip hop shapes and African patterns. What was your
inspiration behind the collection?
I
did think about Africa as my kind of inspiration and ideas.You see these documentaries on TV and people
will be wearing these clothes from Europe, kind of thrift store vintage sports
wear but then they mix it with their sarongs and loincloths and beaded things
and jewellery that they’d made.I wanted
to take this idea of African sports wear and create my own version, taking
elements of the visuals in these documentaries then do it with sportswear
fabrics. I developed these hybrid styles, and at the same time I was inspired
by early 90s culture like Dwayne Wayne and A
Different World.
How much sleep do you get? I’ve
read that Noam Chomsky and Tom Ford get about four hours sleep a night and I
was wondering if there was a prerequisite minimum amount of sleep for success.
There
are times that four hours has been regular, probably six on average.
Do you have a favourite Lady
Gaga costume?
I
love the yellow one in the Paparazzi video. It comes directly from the show. I
made it especially for her as a jumpsuit. When it was revealed she went with it
so far with the glasses and everything that it became iconic in the video.
Who is someone you’d like to
dress?
Dolly
Parton. But in a way I kind of want to leave her alone because she’s so great.
It’s a Catch 22; like I love you so much but maybe I shouldn’t bother you.
What do you think of
underground versus popular culture?
I
think they both lend things to each other and nowadays there’s more exposure to
the underground than ever before, because of the way information is transferred
everyone kind of knows everything. In this way there’s no real room for
incubation, for things to be underground as in the past. I’m a pop artist so
I’m all about pop culture and being as inclusive as I can be. At the same time,
my work is provocative, challenging and out of the ordinary so it’s a new
combination.In a way, it is underground
and aboveground. I definitely love niche culture and the history of it from
different periods and different times. The underground is important but at the
same time I love and have always loved pop culture.
Words
and interview by Margo Fortuny
Exit Magazine, 2009 One of Jeremy Scott's inspirations (2Pac stars in this episode):
Various Interviews (Alan Aldridge Exit Magazine (Print edition) KAWS, Exit Magazine (Print edition)… Email me if you'd like to see pdfs of the interviews or other articles (Tim Soth, Nan Goldin, Thomas Ruff, Futura 2000 etc.) Interview with Samantha Sweeting:Motilo
London Fashion Week just ended. My friend Martin, Dalston-based co-head of Purlstitch Knit Club, and I were photographed several times as we left fashion shows and parties… Since you’ve probably seen what was on the catwalk, here's what we wore this week:
I wore this vintage (1970s) dress to the Liberty’s party.
I wore this vintage suede skirt and Shu-Ba top (feathers added) to the METAL/Lina Osterman party.
I wore this satin kimono and leather obi sash to the PPQ show.
Martin wore this to the METAL/Lina Osterman party. Check out the miniature birdcage necklace.
Martin wore this to the Roisin Murphy / Linda Farrow party. Cape, shirt, hat vintage.
Martin wore this to the PPQ afterparty. Couture trousers by Sara Loi. Coat by W.S. Wilkenson & Sons.
Margo Fortuny is a writer, lyricist, and artist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Cabana, Exit, Wallpaper, and other publications.
Read more at www.margofortuny.com. For the latest info, follow her on Instagram @thefortunyverse and @margofortuny.
Send your thoughts and any assignments to pensforeverything (at) gmail.com or send a message on Instagram for a quicker reply.
All text and photographs are by Margo unless otherwise specified. Get in touch first if you would like to use any images or excerpts.
