A Mesozoic Night's Dream
Suddenly everyone seems to be talking about Iguanodons. Apparently they are the new Velociraptors, and anyone who's anyone in Milan, New York, London, Paris and Tokyo is all, like, Iguanodon this and Iguanodon that.
I caught up with Issey Miyake hanging out at the Austrian Fashion Week back in September, and his words were, as always, prescient:
"All I'm seeing is recycled Pre-Raphaelite and Napoleonic velvets, angora and Mongolian fur".
That much was obvious, but I could sense from the distant look in his cultured eyes that he was holding back, and so ordered him another Gin & French.
Mr Miyake likes to wax on, but he is invariably cagey, and so we whiled away many minutes chatting idly about the heaviness of Norwegian wool and how today's man could better express his latent sensuality through low-relief brocades and the "silhouette" palettes emerging from Russia and South America. All this loosened him up to the point where he leant over to me and said:
"With all the focus on Romantic, Imperial and Baroque themes over the past few years, I can't help but think that we have all been overlooking something - and I think that something might well be the Early Cretaceous Period."
I was stunned. Of Course! I mean, Jesus Christ, that would be, what, 46 or so million years of completely unexploited material. All those chalk deposits and high sea levels, the smooth temperature gradients, burgeoning angiosperms and insects, and of course the start of the end for the great Mesozoic Era. If you thought the 80s was pretty cool with all that Metal and Britpop, then you should have seen the Mesozoic. Our current Cenozoic Era has been very drab by comparison.
From the jaunty set of his Saffron Fedora, I knew at once that he had singled out the noble Iguanodon for special consideration. And why not? It was after all the first dinosaur fossil discovered. It had spiky, upturned thumbs that it used for defence, foraging and generally agreeing enthusiastically with everything. Of course masterful artistic talent is necessary to render this magnificent herbivore in its full Cretacean splendour, and one of the best examples comes from Ashley (2nd grade), whose Iguanodon has a bold Fauvist daring so sadly uncommon in illustrated science in our conservative times:
Note the sultry Laurasian sun and the verdant grasses upon which the Iguanodon (bottom-right) nimbly treads as he forages blithely about. In fact, she was inspired to write a poem about it:
Iguanadon (sic)
The powerful rhetoric and cutting denouement bewilder and overwhelm. Such precocity. I showed it to Issey over a rabbit and Belgian endive salad with pomegranate confit at lunch some days later as his entourage travelled through the Alps. By the immaculate presentation of his cuticles I could tell that he was impressed. "Immediate. Timeless. Remarkable."
Then he stood, and the bise noire seemed to rise up, as if its ominous chill was presaging a dark winter collection. "Alabaster," he said, "Faux ivories, topaz, garnets and Balkan weaves."
Allowing the barest of smiles to break beneath his manicured moustache, he raised both thumbs, and said: "At dawn on the fifth day, look to the East."
And like that he was gone.
I caught up with Issey Miyake hanging out at the Austrian Fashion Week back in September, and his words were, as always, prescient:
"All I'm seeing is recycled Pre-Raphaelite and Napoleonic velvets, angora and Mongolian fur".
That much was obvious, but I could sense from the distant look in his cultured eyes that he was holding back, and so ordered him another Gin & French.
Mr Miyake likes to wax on, but he is invariably cagey, and so we whiled away many minutes chatting idly about the heaviness of Norwegian wool and how today's man could better express his latent sensuality through low-relief brocades and the "silhouette" palettes emerging from Russia and South America. All this loosened him up to the point where he leant over to me and said:
"With all the focus on Romantic, Imperial and Baroque themes over the past few years, I can't help but think that we have all been overlooking something - and I think that something might well be the Early Cretaceous Period."
I was stunned. Of Course! I mean, Jesus Christ, that would be, what, 46 or so million years of completely unexploited material. All those chalk deposits and high sea levels, the smooth temperature gradients, burgeoning angiosperms and insects, and of course the start of the end for the great Mesozoic Era. If you thought the 80s was pretty cool with all that Metal and Britpop, then you should have seen the Mesozoic. Our current Cenozoic Era has been very drab by comparison.
From the jaunty set of his Saffron Fedora, I knew at once that he had singled out the noble Iguanodon for special consideration. And why not? It was after all the first dinosaur fossil discovered. It had spiky, upturned thumbs that it used for defence, foraging and generally agreeing enthusiastically with everything. Of course masterful artistic talent is necessary to render this magnificent herbivore in its full Cretacean splendour, and one of the best examples comes from Ashley (2nd grade), whose Iguanodon has a bold Fauvist daring so sadly uncommon in illustrated science in our conservative times:
Note the sultry Laurasian sun and the verdant grasses upon which the Iguanodon (bottom-right) nimbly treads as he forages blithely about. In fact, she was inspired to write a poem about it:
Iguanadon (sic)
Iguanadon (sic)
Do you eat grass all the time?
How many teeth do you have?
I have a lot of flat teeth!!
I don't eat grass all the time.
How sharp are your thumbs?
They are very, very sharp!!
The powerful rhetoric and cutting denouement bewilder and overwhelm. Such precocity. I showed it to Issey over a rabbit and Belgian endive salad with pomegranate confit at lunch some days later as his entourage travelled through the Alps. By the immaculate presentation of his cuticles I could tell that he was impressed. "Immediate. Timeless. Remarkable."Do you eat grass all the time?
How many teeth do you have?
I have a lot of flat teeth!!
I don't eat grass all the time.
How sharp are your thumbs?
They are very, very sharp!!
Then he stood, and the bise noire seemed to rise up, as if its ominous chill was presaging a dark winter collection. "Alabaster," he said, "Faux ivories, topaz, garnets and Balkan weaves."
Allowing the barest of smiles to break beneath his manicured moustache, he raised both thumbs, and said: "At dawn on the fifth day, look to the East."
And like that he was gone.
posted by Thor Harley at 9:57 am
2 Comments:
(Ross)
As I was reading this post, I was thinking that I'd quite like to be an Iguanodon. Then I realised that dressing, not to mention nose-picking, might prove dangerous and that the Early Cretaceous Period didn't have nearly enough hills to roll down; the latter something I'd never have known were it not for the piercing poesy and atypical sagacity of Ashley. Nonetheless, henceforth is it my charge to make green scales the new black and my mission to end all my interactions with silvery profundities as astute as Issey's. After all, tomorrow is another day.
Sadly, Iguanodons, like Tiggers, cannot roll down hills as their tails get in the way.
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