Amateur. Paris’s Fashion Celebrity

Paris’s Fashion Celebrity
A rare guest to the city on the banks of the Neva has arrived in Petersburg. It’s Leon Bakst, an artist who has become of the most fashionable and popular figures in the Parisian artistic circles in two or three years.
It can be said without exaggeration that Bakst is the only trend setter in women’s fashion. Any novelties invented by him are instantly picked up.
According to the artist, it’s because of the routine and dullness of modern life that he decided to devote part of his taste and talent to fashion.
“There aren’t any bright spots. A seeking, “hungry” eye has nothing to delightfully feast on,” Bakst explains. “And, meanwhile, you’re longing for joy, for splendor of colors. Of course, we cannot go against our time, but we ought to and should embellish it”
A catch phrase – “Living after Bakst” – has lately become popular among ladies of the Italian and Parisian society. Here’s a glimpse of such life:
Last summer an Italian noblewoman and millionaire, countess C., threw a brilliant ball in her Venetian palazzo.
Smartly decorated gondolas arrived to marble stairways covered with tiger and leopard skins… The young, lovely hostess wearing a fantastic “Bakst’s costume” was meeting the guests in the garden.
She held a parrot in one hand, and with the other one she held a golden chain with a tame tiger on the other side of it. Her bare left hand, from the shoulder to the elbow, was painted by Bakst.
The young woman was surrounded by tall, half-naked Negroes acting as her honorary guards.
The dinner and dance took place in the garden, an invisible orchestra playing, hidden behind the trees. After two in the morning, when the dinner was over, the countless fleet of gondolas crowded in the Grand Canal, with ladies dressed as dogaressas, and gentlemen dressed as Titian’s aristocrats, headed towards Saint Mark’s Square.
Bearing in mind his personal tastes and the modern conditions, Bakst has repeated what the great Da Vinci did for the Medici and the Sforza several centuries ago.
Amateur.