Chopine

Chopine (pronounced choh-peen or chop-in)

(1) A shoe having a thick sole, usually of cork, suggesting a short stilt, worn especially by women in Europe in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries and said to have been introduced from the Ottoman Empire.

(2) A bottle of wine (usually Bordeaux) containing 250 ml, 1/3 of the volume of a standard bottle.

1570–1580: From the Middle French chapin, from the Old Spanish chapín (type of high shoe or clog, raised by means of a cork sole), from chapa (plate of metal), the construct being chap(a) (from the Middle French chape) + -in (the adjectival suffix).  The original, the Old Spanish chapín, was probably imitative of the sound made by the shoe when walking.  Dictionaries note a number of cognates of chopine including choppins & chapiney but, as might be imagined, it must have been a word in limited use (by cobblers, fashionistas etc) because there are no entries for the word (or similar forms such as cioppino or choppino) in English / Italian dictionaries of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries; perhaps it was at the time: "The shoe that dare not speak its name".  It's possible the equivalent in Renaissance Italian was zoccolo (familiar as the English plural "clogs") which may come from the Italian zocco (stump or block of wood) but adding to the murkiness, in one English / Italian dictionary, the word chopinos appears in the definition of the plural zoccoli.  Chopine is a noun; the noun plural is chopines.

Portrait de Chopin en Dante (drawing of Chopin as Dante, 1849), graphite pencil on paper by Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), Eugène Delacroix National Museum, the Louvre, Paris.  Inscribed Cher Chopin (Dear Chopin), the drawing is believed to have been sketched on 31 October, 1849, upon the artist learning of the composer's death some two weeks earlier.  It remained in Delacroix's bedroom until his death.

Unfortunately, chopiner is not an English noun meaning “one who makes or wears chopines” but a French verb meaning “to drink to excess” while the English adjective Chopinian carries the sense “of or pertaining to the Polish composer & virtuoso pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)”.  A macabre footnote in Chopin's story is that Hans Frank (1900–1946; Nazi lawyer and governor of the General Government (1939-1945) in German-occupied Poland during World War II), whose rule in Nazi-occupied Poland was an appalling and bloody tale of corruption and depravity, when on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, in all seriousness (as an experienced trial lawyer) offered in mitigation for his conduct the fact he'd established in Kraków a Chopin Museum, something he noted: “the Poles had never managed to do”.  The belated attempt at redemption came apparently at the instigation of Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1933-1945) who, although as evil as any of the Nazis, was at least clear-headed enough to understand carrots were in occupied territories at least as useful as sticks.

Defendants in the dock at the First Nuremberg Trial (Frank circled).

Acting under instruction from Berlin, Frank’s regime actively had attempted to eradicate Polish culture and while his methods were never subtle, the worst excesses included mass-murder of “the intelligentsia” (writers, artists, journalists, academics, priests etc) but the governor-general, bizarrely, had a personal obsession with Chopin, based on a genuine fondness for the music and many had been drawn to what been described as its “quasi-improvised” quality; the French composer Georges Bizet (1838–1875) spoke of Chopin’s work as “…charming, strange, unique, inimitable”.  Frank too clearly was charmed but understood the long dead composer would need to be “Germanized” to be acceptable in the Third Reich (1933-1945), taking measures such as spelling his name in a Germanic-sounding “Schopping” and banning performances of his compositions for Polish audiences.  The centrepiece of this improbable Nazi attempt at cult-creation was what Frank called the “temporary” Chopin Museum in his official headquarters at Wawel Castle in Kraków, a permanent structure to be erected once Germany had won the war.  In typical Nazi style, Frank dispatched his (by then well-experienced) agents to loot occupied Europe for Chopin artifacts, manuscripts, letters, death masks and memorabilia, managing to acquire (ie steal) even an original Pleyel grand piano that had belonged to the composer.  Despite that interest, in May 1940 he had made only a token attempt to prevent the destruction of the famous bronze Chopin Monument in Warsaw's Łazienki Park, the 16-ton statue cut into pieces and melted down for the benefit of the German war machine.

The Nuremberg Trial, 1946 (1946), oil on canvas by Dame Laura Knight RA (1877-1970), IWM (Imperial War Museum), London.

Dame Laura Knight’s large canvas The Nuremberg Trial, 1946, now hangs in the Imperial War Museum in London and is one of the most re-produced images from the trial.  An unusual blend of two aspects of realism achieved by a juxtaposition of defendants in the dock and a devastated Nuremberg cityscape (including corpses), the artist did change a few details to suit her didactic purposes, Hans Frank seated not in his usual place but at the painting’s bottom-right, presumably better to show the wrists damaged by a failed suicide attempt.  In court, Frank wore gloves to conceal the effect but these Dame Laura choose to remove.  Curiously for such an accomplished artist, some of the likenesses achieved of those in the dock are not impressive but it remains one of the trial’s most memorable images, despite at the time being received by the critical establishment without enthusiasm.

Sketch of Frank in the dock by New Zealand-born political cartoonist David Low (1891-1963).

For the museum’s opening ceremony, Frank personally selected Ludmilla Berkwic (1910–2005), a fine Polish concert pianist and piano teacher who, on Chopin’s Pleyel, preformed several pieces for an audience of high-ranking Nazis, the recital very well-received.  Unfortunately, Frank’s staff hadn’t dug too deep and what they failed to detect was that Ms Berkwic had since the start of the war being living under false papers because her father's family was Jewish.  That might have gone undetected were it not for Dr Goebbels having arranged for the performance to be filmed and, in an attempt to show how benign was Nazi rule in Poland, distributed throughout Europe on propaganda newsreels.  By 1943 he probably realized that might be a futile project but his energy for the Sisyphean task never waned.  However, an unexpected consequence of the publicity was it prompted one of Ms Berkwic’s jealous rivals to denounce her for having Jewish heritage.  That forced her and her mother to obtain from the Polish Underground new sets of forged papers and, strange as it sounds, they fled to Germany where they could be absorbed into the millions of captive Polish workers.  Hiding, as it were, “in plain sight”, she survived the war working in a munitions factory and in 1947 emigrated to the US, setting in New York.  Frank’s gesture did not make much impression on the judges of the IMT (International Military Tribunal) sitting for the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946): They convicted him on counts three (war crimes) and four (crimes against humanity) and handed down a sentence of death by hanging.  As a trained lawyer, Frank was at least a realist, the prison psychologist recording that when asked his reaction to the verdict, Frank had smiled when answering: “I deserved it and I expected it.”  Unlike the most recalcitrant of the defendants, he seemed aware too of the magnitude of the crimes being tried, admitting: “A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.”  Some of what Frank stole for “his” Chopin Museum was recovered and today, the most comprehensive collection of the composer's memorabilia is housed in the official Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw, established in 1954 and operated by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.

The ultimate platform shoe

How they worked.  Chopines were a kind of wonder bra for the feet.

Chopines began as a purely functional device; a means of raising women’s shoes and the hems of their dresses above the dirt and filth in which they were often compelled to walk; in the age of horse-drawn transport, streets sometimes were "rivers of blood, mud and horseshit".  It's said the chopines were brought to Europe by traders from the Ottoman Empire where they'd been worn in bath houses by concubines, courtesans and others, the speculation being they were originally a modestly proportioned device designed as a health measure, a means of protecting the feet from infection, bath houses being warm, dark and moist, the perfect incubation environment for bacteria.  As sometimes happens, they became a status symbol with prestige determined by their elevation, the tallest extant examples reaching 20 inches (508 mm) although some historians claim they were built as much as ten inches (254 mm) higher.  Students of the art suspect that if true, such things may have been constructed for shop-window displays rather than being worn because at that height they're really "stilts".  Beyond a certain height, practicality (ie stability) would certainly have become marginal but there's evidence highly stylized examples were worn outside the bath house on ceremonial occasions, the wearer presumably "mostly static".  Chopines were most popular in Spain and Italy in the late sixteenth century and when they spread to England, they were sometimes referred to as "the Venice" because of the perception that was their city of origin, a notion that seems to have arisen because of their mention in widely-read travel journals of the age; Venice was a popular destination for such travellers.  Their impracticality must have made them a niche item because they never became part of any defined English costume or style of dress but whether alpha-males objected to women suddenly appearing taller is lost to history.

Variations on a theme of chopine.

As shoes, they had a short life because their sheer size dictated they be made from lightweight materials like cork and wood although some surviving examples do have a metal framework.  The style, in a less extreme form, was briefly revived with the cork-soled platform soles of the 1970s which had the effect of creating a short-lived investment bubble in the Portuguese cork industry although, as economic theory would predict, as the craze faded a Portuguese "cork glut" saw prices collapse.  The absurdity of the style attracted the attention of writers:

"It is ridiculous to see how these ladies crawl in and out of their gondolas, by reason of their choppines [clogs]; and what dwarfs they appear when taken down from their wooden scaffolds; of these I saw nearly thirty together, stalking half as high again as the rest of the world."  (John Evelyn, diary entry, June 1645)

"By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine." (Hamlet, act 2 scene 2, William Shakespeare, 1602)

"He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine... "(Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922).

Continuing the chopine tradition but with rather less elevation: Lindsay Lohan in Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots, New York, March 2019.

Shoes have not since ascended to the heights of the chopines but the attractions of elevation have endured.  The lovely elegance of a five-inch stiletto heel of course remains incomparable but while as a piece of design they’re there to be admired, at a certain point a stiletto becomes unstable.  As a piece of math, heel stability can be reduced to about as complex a problem in mechanics as one cares to make it, the significant variables being the heel height, heel-tip area, shoe geometry, the wearer’s centre of mass, foot position, ground reaction force, and the stiffness of the shoe & ankle as an encapsulated system.  So, the “tipping / stability problem” can be conceptualized (even if individual human variations make it difficult to produce a simple model) and the basic idea is that when standing, ground exerts a “vertical ground-reaction force” through the foot; if the shoe is stable, resultant force falls within the “support polygon” (essentially the area defined by the heel and forefoot contact points).  As a general principle, a shoe’s sole being broad and long (thereby distributing forces over a large contact area), what is critical is the heel, a structure with a much smaller contact area.  Essentially, the remains stable as long as pressure doesn't move beyond the available support area.

Saint Laurent Billy leopard-print platform boots from the Pre-Fall 2018 collection.  The large contact area of the kitten heel and height of the sole means stability is achieved but the style does demand some practice because one's "walking technique would need slightly to be adjusted.  

However, the slenderness of the stiletto operates as a multiplier effect, the heel height changes the geometry of the entire foot, not merely the size of the heel.  As the heel’s height increases, the foot shifts into plantar flexion causing a movement of the upper body, meaning the centre of mass relative to the heel changes.  For any given individual, with enough data points quantified, it would be possible to produce an equation that would find a “point of optimal stability” before increasing a heel's height induces “tipping”.  Beyond the “tipping point”, a shoe ceases to be neutrally stable and achieving a static equilibrium isn't possible without muscular compensation or movement.  That can be modelled in software but the practical complication is a human is not a rigid object standing atop an always flat, unmoving surface, ankle, foot and leg continually make corrections, often so minute and instinctive they’re imperceptible to the owner of those body parts.  Thus, a stiletto can statically be geometrically stable yet dynamically unstable.  That’s why heel-tip diameter is so critical in achieving stability and to illustrate that, imagine an example demonstrating not all four-inch (100 mm) stilettos have the same intrinsic stability.  Consider two otherwise identical 100 mm stilettos, one with an 8-mm heel tip, one with 20-mm, the latter allowing a greater movement of the centre of pressure before the ground-reaction force reaches the edge of the heel.  Math nerds can no doubt run the numbers and what they’d find is the intriguing result that doubling the heel height roughly halves the angular tolerance, while doubling heel-tip radius roughly doubles it.  Women used to stilettos of course don’t need an equation to tell them a shoe with an extremely narrow, high heel has a very small stability envelope; the "heelprint" is a vital part of the "footprint".

Lindsay Lohan in Christian Louboutin Madame Butterfly black bow platform booties with six-inch (150 mm) stiletto heel.  What the elevated sole does is change the foot's angle, meaning a similar stability is attained as would be achieved with a 100 heel used in conjunction with a conventional sole.

Hence the frequent use of thicker soles and while opinion can be divided on the look, the elevated platform mechanically is interesting because it allows the heel to be higher while keeping the foot at a less extreme angle; it’s a fudge and not always admired by those for whom the acute angle of the wearer’s foot is one of the most alluring aspects of the stiletto’s aesthetic but if done well, it can be pleasing; it’s not the classic look but needs to be judged on its own terms.  An example of the math is one of differentiation: A 120-mm heel with a 30-mm platform doesn't behave like a 120-mm heel on a flat platform; because of the additional height in the sole, the effective pitch (and thus stability) will be something like a shoe with a 90-mm heel and conventional sole.  Engineers call this the TBA (true biomechanical angle) and in the practical mechanics of the human foot it's of significance because the foot safely can tolerate only a certain maximum angle of incline angle before the ankle undergoes structural plantarflexion failure (where the foot is extended so straight the ankle loses all lateral muscle control).  All this was once a rarely explored exercise in equation-making because shoe designers could tell by looking at design whether it would be practical to wear; they didn’t need the math.  Engineers building humanoid robots did however need to do the sums even though they could, if need be, emulate millions of years of evolution and make feet and ankles more accommodating.  As the recent Humanoid Robot Olympics (August 2026) in Beijing demonstrated, the billions of dollars invested under the watchful eye of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) must have resulted in many correct calculations because what was achieved was impressive (including breaking the world record for the men's 100 metre sprint).  While the CCP surely is interested more in robots for factories and the military than “making a better stiletto”, it’s not impossible a Chinese scientist might gain a Ig Nobel Prize by publishing a by-product of humanoid robot research: the equation for the “perfectly stable stiletto”, designers able to “plug-in” their angles and dimensions meaning the “stability threshold” ceases to be theoretical and becomes just another metric.

Flamingo's Exotic Dancer's boots in baby pink are an example of what can be done if one can cast adrift what's possible from the moorings of what's practical.  Available in calf (left), ankle (centre) and thigh (right) length in a variety of heel and sole heights, there's both a commonality of design elements and interchangeability of components, meaning a high degree of production-line rationalization, making the range economic to produce.  It should be noted "exotic dancer" is a vocational euphemism so the target market is limited but there may be some demand from non-professionals who can see the potential for "home use".

Style by necessity, Paris circa 1942: The chopine's methods of construction and use of materials staged a partial comeback in occupied France (1940-1944).  The sculptured heel both lent style and reduced weight.

Wartime shortages of leather forced French cobblers to turn to more readily available materials such as wood or cork when repairing or replacing heels and soles and the improvisation quickly became characteristic of French footwear during the Nazi Occupation.  Of course, being French, mere functionalism wasn’t enough and identifiable styles emerged, creating a unique “fashion language”; in other words, a fine example of wartime necessity becoming fashion.  Supplies of leather for civilian consumer goods greatly were restricted in many countries during wartime but in places subject to Nazi occupation the deprivations were most severe with the German war machine absorbing the bulk of what was available.  Consequently, French shoemakers increasingly substituted wood, cork, textile, straw and whatever artificial materials could be adapted or re-cycled with wooden clogs becoming a common sight.

French open-toed pumps, circa 1944, Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Constructed on a wooden sole & heel with a raffia upper, the shoe is embellished with a polka-dot ribbon, the only leather component two small cuts for the contact areas of the sole and heel, covered with re-cycled material.  Although a product of necessity, the raffia/word combo does sometimes appear still in modern catalogues and, of course, polka-dots never really go out of style.  So, material supply was a problem but if anything that may have encouraged designers to explore the possibilities offered by materials not previously exploited.  Rather than simply forming blocks of wood or cork into a simple wedge that would have “done the job”, the photographic record makes clear women were wearing raised soles (some quite substantial platforms) and sculptural heels, some as extravagant as was possible within the limitations imposed and augmenting this, ribbons provided considerable scope for decorative variation; in a quirk of the wartime economy, ribbons were for some time among the few materials not subject to rationing.  Cobblers proved imaginative and French commerce rose to the occasion, shoe shops developing a fashion vocabulary: semelles compensées (platform/wedge soles) and semelles articulées (articulated soles) among the coinings.

Semelles articulées, Paris, circa 1942.  The look was soon in vogue.

The articulated creations were ingenious attempts to make wooden soles flexible enough for walking and while it was not possible wholly to emulate the behavior of leather, there were partial solutions, one using thin wooden strips and in 1941 there was the more intricate Smelflex in which the articulation interacted with laminated or hinged sections of wood; with dark irony, the occupying authorities noted the system was derived from a German patent.  In an example of the way in which populations adapt to circumstances, the look became a recognised fashion phenomenon of Occupation-era France and designers made no attempt to disguise their creations as leather, the wooden soles and heels presented explicitly as a blend of “ingenuity and Parisian elegance.”  In an amusing footnote, the shortage of leather and metal did answer the many pre-war complaints about the trend for extremely high, thin talons-échasses (stilt heels) that much pleased the men as they gazed at their drawing boards in Parisian fashion houses but were far from comfortable to wear for much beyond a photo-shoot for a glossy magazine.

Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999, left) with Xi Jinping (b 1953; General Secretary of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and paramount leader of the PRC (People's Republic of China) since 2012, right) (far left), Carla Bruni-Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (b 1967, left) and her husband Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955; President of France 2007-2012, right) (centre left), Marco Rubio (b 1971; US secretary of state since 2025) (centre right) and how it's done (far right).

In politics, the chopine lives on in the form of "elevator shoes" that can "add" as much a four inches (100 mm) to an individual's height through the mechanism of the "built-up" internal heel.  Politicians are known to wear them including Mr Putin, Mr Sarközy and Mr Rubio, indeed the latter's use of the shoes was exploited by Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) who coined "little Marco" as his opponent's moniker during the 2016 Republican presidential debates although that use is in abeyance while they maintain their at least temporary friendship.  As the elevation increases it's obviously necessary also to add to the upper so (1) the trick is concealed and (2) the ankle retains some lateral support; that's why many elevator shoes are really "elevator boots".  Either way, they work best if trousers are cut accordingly; done well, worn by a well practiced wearer, they should be unobtrusive unless closely inspected.

Vanity

Vanity (pronounced van-i-tee)

(1) An excessive pride in one's appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc; character or quality of being vain; conceit.

(2) An instance or display of this quality or feeling.

(3) Something about which one is vain or excessively proud.

(4) Lack of real value; hollowness; worthlessness.

(5) Something worthless, trivial, or pointless.

(6) A small case, usually used for make-up items.

(7) A usually small dressing table used to apply makeup, preen, and coif hair. Normally quite low and similar to a desk, with drawers and one or more mirrors on top; often paired with a bench or stool to sit upon.

(8) A type of bathroom fitting, usually a permanently-fixed storage unit including one or more washbasins.

(9) An alternative name for a portfolio maintained as a showcase for one's own talents, especially as a writer, actor, singer, composer or model.

(10) Any idea, theory or statement entirely without foundation (UK only, now obsolete).

1200-1250: From Middle English vanite, borrowed from Old French vanité (self-conceit; futility; lack of resolve) derived from the Classical Latin vānitās (emptiness, aimlessness; falsity (and when used figuratively "vainglory, foolish pride”), root of which was vānus (empty, void (and when used figuratively "idle, fruitless”).  A more precise equivalent in Latin was probably vanitatem (emptiness, foolish pride).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wano-, the suffixed form of the root eue- (to leave, abandon, give out).  English also absorbed many synonyms and related words: egotism, complacency, vainglory, ostentation, pride, emptiness, sham, unreality, folly, triviality, futility.  Except in religious texts, the old meaning (that which is vain, futile, or worthless) faded from general use, the modern meaning (self-conceited), which endures to this day, is attested from the mid-fourteenth century.  The first reference to furniture was the vanity table, dating from 1936, a use adopted by manufacturers of bathroom fittings in the later post-war period.  The first vanity table seem to have been advertised in 1936.  Vanity is a noun, vanitize is a verb and vanityless is an adjective; the noun plural is vanities.

Art Deco walnut veneer vanity table, circa 1935, with a large, triptych mirror apparatus.

Vanity tables were well suited to the motifs of art deco because the aspect ratio often was similar to the representational public architecture most associated with the style.  This one, believed to have been built in northern Italy is a classic example of art deco, featuring perfect symmetry and a mix of austere straight lines and curves, the proportions elegantly balanced.  Although it's structures like buildings and bridges or the memorable cars of the 1930s that are most often used to illustrate art deco, the niche of the vanity table was in some was more interesting because the size lay between the tiny (such as a vanity case) where the detailing could achieve its effect through intricacy and something on a grand scale like the Chrysler Building (1930), one of New York City's landmark skyscrapers.  

The Old Testament, Savonarola, and the Bonfire of the Vanities

Vanity of vanities, said the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2, King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611)).  The word translated as "vanity" appears 37 times in Ecclesiastes, more than in the entirety of the rest of the Old Testament so is clearly a theme of the text.  The meaning of vanity is used here in its original form of something that is transitory and quickly passes away.  In that it’s a literal translation of the Hebrew hebel, best understood in this context as meaning breath of wind, something which, whatever its immediate effects, is soon gone.  Unfortunately for nihilists, emos and other depressives trawling texts for anything confirming the pointlessness of life, biblical scholars agree the phrase is not an assertion that life is meaningless or that our labors in this fallen world are ultimately useless.  Instead, it’s a saying to help people put their lives in the proper perspective.  Ecclesiastes is not saying all our efforts are worthless, just observing that all we do in our three score and ten years upon this earth is but a brief prelude to our eternal existence and much of life escapes our understanding, for we cannot comprehend how everything fits into the grand story of creation.  All very poetic but, perhaps sadly, improbable.  It’s more likely the universe is a violent, doomed, swirl of matter and energy, life is pointless, right and wrong are just variable constructs, everything is meaningless and all any can hope for is a fleeting false consciousness that might make us feel briefly happy.

Nascita di Venere (the Birth of Venus, circa 1485), tempera on canvas, by Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510), Uffizi Gallery, Florence.  The work was painted on a commission from the Medicis; this one was not tossed onto the flames.

What historians came to call the “The Bonfire of the Vanities” was an event in Florence on 7 February, 1497, orchestrated by the fundamentalist Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498).  The Church was at the time riddled with priests who disapproved of just about everything but Savonarola was a true radical who thought direct action more pleasing to God than mere pious words so directed his followers (including many enthusiastic children) to scour Florence for “sinful objects”, including looking glasses (mirrors), musical instruments, books not the Bible or other religious texts, cosmetics, fine clothing, pagan artworks and such.  These objects he ordered gathered and tossed onto a huge, multi-tiered pyre erected in the Piazza della Signoria (the city’s public square), the pile topped by an image of Satan (a nice touch).  Savonarola’s interpretation of scripture demanded people living lives of extreme austerity and, given mankind’s state of constant sin, a constant state of repentance, his aim to purge Florence of secular corruption, his mood much encouraged by the recent expulsion of the Medici family.  Part of the legend of the Bonfire of the Vanities is that Sandro Botticelli was so moved by Savonarola’s apocalyptic sermons he threw some of his own pagan-themed paintings into the fire but there is no contemporary evidence supporting that although, it’s not impossible the artist, sniffing the political wind, decided it wise publicly to sacrifice a few lesser works.  The myth however has always appealed to writers lamenting that barbarians are always with us and in Civilisation (1969) Lord Clark (Sir Kenneth Clark (1903–1983)) wrote the loss of even a few Botticellis seemed “…a heavy price to pay for religious conviction.”

The Florentines Renouncing The Vanities By Order of Savonarola (1890), engraving by an unknown artist.  For fundamentalists, book-burning has never lost its appeal although in places like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, the process is now virtualized.

Kenneth Clark was a cultural elitist of a kind now perhaps either extinct or rendered silent by a less deferential culture, and, to avoid offending those prone to being offended, some editions of Civilisation subsequently appeared with the title Western Civilisation.  Whether Botticelli really had a “road to Damascus” moment or was just making a “good career move” will never be known but, after the bonfire, a stylistic shift in his art towards the deeply spiritual was obvious but not too much should be read into this: a good artist knows his market.  The Dominican order to which Savonarola belonged had been formed to “combat heresy in the Christian church” and in places in France and Italy where the order had a presence, between the thirteenth & fifteenth centuries there were quite a few such bonfires but what made the one in 1497 most remembered is the historic significance.  Savonarola had for years been preaching about an “end of times” moment, predicting the Apocalypse would come in around 1500 and while in Christendom such messaging was hardly novel, Savonarola was better at it than most and he found audiences more receptive as the corruption in Church and state under the Medicis (Florence’s ruling family of Florence) became more blatantly extractive.  Inflamed by his incendiary words, in 1494 a mob burned down the Medicis' bank and, taking the hint, the family fled the city.  Inspired, Savonarola took power and turned his attention to other un-Godly symbols, notably vanities such as what would now be called “contemporary art” and indulgences such as extravagant clothing and the powders & potions people (including men) used to “beautify themselves”.  Especially offensive were deemed the female Biblical figures in paintings of the time.

Girolamo Savonarola, gemalt von Langenmantel (Girolamo Savonarola Preaching Against Prodigality, 1879), oil on canvas by Ludwig von Langenmantel (1839–1904), Saint Bonaventure University (a Franciscan institution), western New York State.

So, the proto-Talib had his moment of triumph as a particularly practical art critic but among more thoughtful Florentians his reputation suffered because they were appalled their heritage and culture was being threatened just to satisfy one friar’s obsessions; while many were glad to see the end of the Medicis they were not pleased by the loss of the art.  As it was, although Savonarola got to watch the glory of the incineration, his victory over vice proved pyrrhic because he over-reached by dabbling in politics, opposing Alexander VI’s (circa 1431-1503; pope 1492 1503) Holy League against the French; summoned to Rome, Savonarola ignore the order and further defied the Holy See by preaching under a ban, demanding reform of the Church and more bonfires.  The pope in 1497 excommunicated Savonarola and with this most of his popular support evaporated.  On 23 May, 1498, after typically brisk legal proceedings in both civil and ecclesiastical courts had condemned Savonarola and two other Dominican friars who had remained loyal, the trio were hanged and their bodies cremated at the same spot in Piazza della Signoria were the Botticellis had burned; his “end of times” came a couple of years early.  There the matter may have ended but Savonarola's devotees (the Piagnoni (the lamenting ones)) went “underground” and maintained into the next century the cause of religious reform and republicanism, the sect not suppressed until Rome in 1512 engineered the return to power of the Medici.  Seizing the moment, the Medici arranged their own “re-insurance” by securing the throne of Saint Peter for “the Medici Pope” (Leo X (1475–1521; pope 1513-1521)) who may never have uttered the famous phrase” “God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it” but it certainly summed up the way things were being done “under new management”.  Although damned by many as a barbarian or philistine, some early Protestants (including Martin Luther (1483–1546) himself), regarded Savonarola as a vital precursor to the Protestant Reformation.

Vanity Fair

Published in 1678, John Bunyan’s (1628–1688) The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of the Christian’s spiritual journey through the sins and temptations of earthly existence to the salvation of the Kingdom of Heaven; a symbolic vision of an English worthy’s pilgrimage through life.  In the village of Vanity is a perpetual fair, selling all things to satisfy all desires and Vanity Fair represents the sin of man’s attachment to and lust for transient worldly goods, a critique echoed later in secular criticisms of materialism.  Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), although making no mention of Bunyan or his work when he published Vanity Fair in 1847-1848, could rely on his readers being well acquainted with the symbolism of the earlier allegory.  By the mid-nineteenth century when Thackeray’s portrait of British society was published, the term had become laden too with secular and class-conscious meanings, suggesting the imagery both of self-indulgent playground and the sense of that stratum of society where the only habitué are the idle and undeserving rich.  Memorably, Thackeray explored both although the work obviously is dated and structurally not without error (published originally as a 19-part monthly serial, it does seem the author may have written the latter volumes without having re-read the earlier parts, meaning inconsistencies do exist).

Lindsay Lohan. Vanity Fair Italia, August 2011.

Over the years, on both sides of the Atlantic, a number of periodicals have used the masthead Vanity Fair.  The current one has its roots in Condé Montrose Nast's (1873–1942) purchase in 1913 of (1) a men's fashion journal called Dress and (2) Vanity Fair, a magazine devoted to the performing arts with an emphasis on theatre.  After a brief, unsatisfactory foray as the combined title Dress and Vanity Fair, in 1914 there was a re-launch of Vanity Fair and success was immediate, continuing even until well into the troubled 1930s.  For magazines, the conditions of the Great Depression were curiously different to the vicissitudes of the digital age of the twenty-first century.  Then (as now) revenue from advertising had collapsed by by the Condé Nast in 1936 folded Vanity Fair into his companion title Vogue, circulation had reached an all-time high.  The problem was the cover price of an issue wasn’t enough profitably to cover production and distribution costs; advertising was essential.  In a situation familiar to newspaper publishers in their halcyon days, it wasn’t always financially advantageous to achieve higher sales; unless one's title has the right readers (the prized "A", "B" (and maybe "C1") demographics), the more copies that were sold, the higher the losses.

Condé Nast Publications revived the title with the first issue appearing in February 1983.  Like most print publications, its advertising revenue has declined but, critically in this market, so have newsstand sales.  The subscriber base is said to be stable but Condé Nast doesn’t release data detailing the breakdown and it’s thus unknown how much of this is made up from less lucrative bundled packages.  Newsstand sales of single-issue copies are a vital metric in this market, editors judged by monthly sales, a school of analysis now focused on deconstructing the relationship between the photograph on an issue’s cover and copies sold; editorial content, while not ignored, seems less relevant.  The magazine’s future is thus uncertain as are the options were it not to continue as a distinct, stand-alone entity with a print version.  It’s a different environment from 1936 when it was absorbed into Vogue and different even that things at the turn of the century when Mirabella, a similar publication facing similar problems, closed; the now well-practiced path of ceasing print production and going wholly digital may become attractive if circulation continues to suffer.  While it true Condé Nast already has digital titles that would seem to overlap with Vanity Fair, that’s less of a concern than cannibalization in print where the relationship of production and distribution costs to individual sales is different; both are marginal in gaining additional digital subscriptions.

Vanity Cases 

Enamel vanity case by Gérard Sandoz, Paris, circa 1927 (left) and cigarette case by Cartier, Paris, circa 1925 (right).

It was during the 1920s, the small vanity case's shape and size evolved into what remains the familiar modern form.  Most exquisite were the art-deco creations designed as companion pieces to the cigarette cases newly fashionable with women as the social acceptability of young ladies smoking spread.  As a concept, the vanity case is an ancient accessory, one 3,000-odd years old and made from inlaid cedar containing ointment, face-paint, perfume and a mirror of polished metal, discovered during one of Howard Carter’s (1874–1939) archaeological digs.  Well known in something recognizably modern from the fourteenth century in France and Italy, they became fashionable in England only during the 1700s and then for men, as a small box called a “dressing case”, designed to fit into larger “dressing case”.  The shift to small, portable devices for women came in the late-eighteenth century, just as the handbag (in the modern sense) was becoming a fashion item as well as a functional receptacle.  The essence of the vanity case became its role as a "portable beauty parlour", the inside of the lid fitted with a small mirror while the case contained what was required for "touch-ups" (of eyes, hair, lips, cheeks etc) while on the move or away from one's boudoir.