Fashion Friday: Margarita Freire

I had planned on highlighting a traditional clothing item further east along the Mediterranean than this, but since I recently found the website of Spanish designer Margarite Freire and her recent collections of trajes de flamenco, I had to share some of her designs instead.

Definitely for a younger crowd (or young at heart) Freire's colors and patterns bring a smile to my face.

And the backgrounds of these photoshoots just make me ache to jump on the next plane to Seville

For someone who claims not to enjoy loads of ruffles and embellishment, I always succumb to the charm of flouncy flamenco dresses.

Classic large polka dots and a low back, ay...

Something about them feels both so feminine and yet very strong;

More froth than a cappuccino...But I love the look of a high waist and tailored shirt.

I particularly love when those long skirts are mixed with Andalusian (-inspired) riding jackets.

All we need now is a feria to wear them to!

Check out the extensive 2008 and 2009 collection on Margarita Freire's website.
Besos.

All images courtesy Margarita Freire.

Scenes of Essaouira

We interrupt the tale to bring you a link to an excellent blog, Marakesh Xanthe, and her timely and visually stunning post on her wanderings through Essaouira -

You may also enjoy my old post (from when we were there) of the Cats of 'Souira...

Check back in for Fashion Friday and 'till then - ciao!

First image courtesy Marrakesh Xanthe.

Road to Essaouira: Part II

So, our fore-mentioned hoodwink, our ruse, our get-us-out-of-here! trick for the roadblocks was provided courtesy a friend of a friend who worked for a media outlet in Morocco. This person had kindly donated a few decals with the media’s logo on them to our friend, enough to slap one on every side of our vehicle.

As “Jay’s” car was of a utilitarian nature (no air conditioning, temperamental seatbelts, and no head-rests on the backseat which resulted in a serious case of whiplash for Lydia, given the road’s propensity for sharp turns or passes alongside over-loaded lorries and Jay’s fervent belief that one should both break and accelerate with gusto) and as the decals were official-looking, we “passed” as it were for journalists, or at least crew members. I must admit that it certainly helped to have two youngish, gainfully-employed-looking Moroccans and a bespectacled foreigner in the back to carry it all off. (And for the record, we never actually told anyone were were journalists...Does blogging make you a citizen journalist?)

And so, we passed through most of the roadblocks with minimal questioning and sometimes merely a slight deceleration as the security detail pointedly did not look at us but continued to windmill his forearm in a clear indication of “passez, passez”…

However, at one of the early stops somewhere just outside Rabat on the road to Casablanca (it was only 4:30 or so in the morning, so we weren’t surprised to be halted during twilight) we were called to a full halt, a flashlight shined in our direction, the foreigner forgot not to smile and the two Moroccans put on their stone faces. But it didn’t matter; two of the three standard issue guards – reglementary dingy uniform, check; thick and bristly mustache, check; large belly straining at buttons of said uniform, check;- just scanned us over quickly with their eyes, but the smaller of their number, a gleam of delight in his eye briskly clapped his hands together and nearly jumped like a sprite – frankly, I’m surprised he didn't kick his heels together in mid-air- and said “ouiiii!! [name of media here]!!”

Maybe he’d just had a lot of coffee, but we three managed to keep our mouths shut face à nos trois

moustachequetaires; when they shortly afterwards sent us along our way, leaving the rotund little one with a wide smile beneath his broom behind in the rearview mirror, we all about died laughing. And so, “ouiiii/wheeee!! [name of media here]!!” became our inside joke of the weekend. In a moment of silence later on in the most arduous part of the drive someone would burst out a “wheee!” and send us all into fits of laughter. We may have done it in public too but we were by far the least of the odd people in Essaouira that weekend, so I doubt we attracted much attention.

Now, I mentioned before our little ruse for getting past the road blocks, which was really quite effective, though at two different points it did have some drawbacks.

The first occurred in the seaside town of El-Jadida, where for some reason, possibly the balmy sea-side weather, the denizens of El-Jedida favor putting on track suits and sometimes their veils and going for a good power walk early in the morning; this is where we stopped for breakfast (number 2) around 8 or so in the morning. We’d been on the road about 5 hours and decided to park, take a walk and have ourselves a hearty meal.

Now our friend “Jay” is from the north of Morocco where a dish of fried onions, sometimes meat and the rich, ghee-like rancid butter* smen is folded up into a crepe and pan fried ( –it can be awful or it can be mouth watering) is called “melwi”; further south i.e. in El-Jedida, it’s called “msmen”. Same thing, two different names.

So Jay, who by now is being entirely guided by his rumbling stomach and not his brain, is walking around everywhere asking people for “melwi”. And because of the wonderful Mediterranean trait of either never admitting you don’t know what something is or else wanting to be of aid to others (depending on how cynical you’re feeling at any given moment) keep telling us “oh yes, just down the street and to the right” or “no, you have to go back towards the bus station then turn left.” Eventually my husbands comments that “melwi” is called “msmen” here somehow penetrated Jay’s brain and we finally got some directions to a little hole-in-the-wall grill where the proprietor was serving up msmen, boiled eggs, and harcha bread (similar to cornbread, made with semolina) to hungry workmen. And tea.

We had ourselves a breakfast and later some coffee (humans need as much fuel as machines) at a café. Jay went to go fetch the car from where we’d originally parked it and ended up being tagged by a very motivated young man who was an events promoter. He handed Jay oh-buddy-oh-pal his business card and walked with him back to the car where the decals were en evidence, and asked Jay if he would please come film the huge party he was organizing in a few days in El-Jedida on our way back from the festival. Jay scratched his head and said “inchallah” and managed to break free of the unsuspecting promoter. I at least give the guy extra brownie points for motivation and guts to assume “official” crews would just swing by his place on a lark and possibly play the footage on the news (???)

That was the more benign of our close calls of having to admit we weren’t really press…

The one that really put a chill in our blood happened later on, at the gateway to Essaouira in the sweltering desert, at the final roadblock before reaching the Windy City, and a run-in with the grand moustachu himself, a higher-up in the national security forces…

So come back tomorrow to find out what happened, and I swear I won’t talk about decals on this trip any more!

*Smen sounds disgusting, but it’s not.

And so it begins...Road to Essaouira part I

As a testament to Moroccan planning abilities* my husband, our friend and I debated for several days how we were going to make it down to Essaouira from Meknes for the Gnawa Music Festival.

By debate I mean, one person brought it up briefly over coffee at a café terrace, another brought it up again in the offices of our friends who swore they were absolutely coming with us, then ducked out of the trip at the last minute, and finally on the evening before the festival began, sitting in our friend’s apartment going “well, are we going to do this?”

To which our friend, we’ll call him J- or “Jay”, said: “let me make some tea and we’ll talk about it…” So one Will Smith-dubbed-into-French film and two pots of mint tea later it was decided: he’d drop us off at my mom-in-law’s house, (by then about 1:30 a.m.) we’d all round up our things and then head out on the road. “Sois spontané!”** in Morocco is not a commandment, it’s a way of life.

We were leaving this early partly because 1. we could and 2. a MAJOR heat wave covering all of West Africa had already begun and was scheduled to hit full stride that weekend. Essaouira, "The Windy City" and a surfer's haven, is usually many degrees cooler than the rest of the country. Clearly, 'Souira was going to be the place to be that weekend, if only to escape the heat.

My husband’s mom groggily helped us pack, reminded us not to forget her silverware in Essaouira, and gave us two affectionate kisses on the cheeks while our friend wailed on the horn from the street. It was now about 3 a.m. in Meknes and only the street cats, bakers, bums, and late-night partyers were about.

As we piled into our friend's car, I asked the guys what our estimated travel time would be..."About 6 or 7 hours" they said. Please refer to* again.

Now, every time a big event in Morocco comes around, the national security service usually rolls out its best and brightest to man the endless road blocks*** they set up all along the route to wherever you want to go. Supposedly this is for national security, and it surely does help, but I think it’s a safe bet that it’s also for the personal yet modest enrichment of Mouha and Hassan le gendarme and further on up the ladder.

In an effort to circumvent this annoyance, or at least to spend less time (and potentially less money) stopped at them, and at the risk of revealing our ingenious method, I will share with you how we managed to pass for journalists and create our own inside joke somewhere along the road in the pre-dawn darkness between Rabat and Casablanca following a giddy gendarme’s display of emotion upon seeing our little vehicle pull up at his road block.

Tune in tomorrow pour la suite!

* See this post for further details.
** “Be spontaneous!”
*** See Fouad Laroui’s novel De quel amour blessé for more on the joys of roadblocks and car travel in Morocco.

Road Trip à la marocaine

I meant to do a series of short posts on our summer 2008 road trip to the Gnawa Music Festival in Essaouira, Morocco earlier this month (in early July, just as this year’s festival was coming to an end) but with so much on my plate, I didn’t get to it.

So, as a prologue to this upcoming road story, allow me to inform you, dear reader, that very soon you will be privy to a lively and rumbling (and possibly rambling, please forgive me in advance) story involving an African heat wave, a lost key, press-posing travelers, giddy mustachioed security forces, the perfume of paradise, a revealing look at some aspects of Moroccan society, and soul-vibrating music…but not in that order…

And it all started out, as perhaps many stories set in Morocco will, over a pot of mint tea at 3 o’clock in the morning…

*cue wavy lines and harp strings*

Fashion Friday: Espen Salberg & latin dancewear

Ok, so this doesn't look like Mediterranean fashion, right? Well, it's not, or at least, not quite.

The designer, Espen Salberg, originally hails from Norway and Indonesia, but his atelier is in Italy and he is a former international dance champion. Hence all the spandex, chiffon and black black black. And prints. Oh, the prints.

Now me, I have a great admiration for dancers and I get shivers watching those shimmies, wiggles and long strides on a latin dance floor. You can keep all the tulle and feathers and your Johann Strauss and ballroom waltzes, thank you very much; I'll take latin dance, please, with a side of puro pimenton.


I also find it a fascinating subculture in which the slavs are clearly taking over* (I dare you to find more than two couples whose names don't end in -ova, -ko, or -ov in the finals) but the Japanese and North Americans are still holding on by tooth and toenail. (And the real Latins, I've noticed, seem few and far between. Chalk it up to classism(?) and not needing a judge to know they've already got ritmo.)

I firmly those onesies I see everywhere, which make me shiver & cringe, are something a sadistic man designer dreamed up lately and had a marketing-genius friend help him out with as a lark. However, if you must wear one, you might consider the above...

At any rate I LOVE the clothes and the way the dancers really show them off to good effect when they're performing. In a land where every all the women are either bleached-blonde and day-glo orange tan or raven-haired and day-glo orange tan, I suppose screaming patterns and cut to there skirts are the norm, the standard, the expected- and who really has such poor taste as to not be able to appreciate, if only with a slight chuckle, the dazzle of head to thigh (since, again, we're talking short hemlines here) sequins, fringe, skin-tight semi-sheer tiger print, or cuts that would garner laughter anywhere else. But hey, you need someplace to wear this stuff.


I have to admit the other reason I like latin dancers is that the women aren't rail thin. They are by no means plus size**# but they are heavy because they've got so much muscle. I'll take a dancer over a model any day***.


And some of it is really nice: flowly, soft fabric, comfy yet still feminine. I like Espen and in dancewear there's a whole range to choose from, so I say: to each her own and-a-one-two-cha-cha-cha

one-two-cha-cha-cha...

For more latin dancewear sources, visit:

-Dance Shopper- by far my favorite because they care a wide range of European and American dancewear, including Espen International.

-Latin Dance Fashions has a wide range of styles, some of which would put you in the skank category if you dare wear them off a parquet floor, so watch out! (But they update regularly and do have some nice things, so it's worth it.)

-e.K. offers a nice line of affordable, "modest" (in a subculture where anything past your crotch can be considered modesty) outfits with great tops and pants **AND IN PLUS SIZES (yay!). (They also have a blog.)

-For unusual leotards, tights and more athletic-style dancewear, try Dancewear Solutions.

*(If only the Soviets had foreseen that their citizens would conquer America through ballroom dance, I suspect there'd be a lot more toe-tapping and hopefully few bombs in Russia these days...)

-Santoria***

***although that's clearly not reflected in these photos. Oh well, check out Santoria for how great a real dancer can make this stuff look.

#Ok and I have seen some plus size dancers, especially in flamenco, and those ladies have got the moves...I'll have to dig up those pics somewhere.

Silent Music: A Story of Baghdad

One day my boss had asked me to look at some books in consideration for a certain prize committee she is associated with, and then promptly handed me a stack of illustrated children's books.

This is the fun part of my job: "I get paid to sit here and look at pretty books?" (Unfortunately this task doesn't come around often enough in my opinion but I'm not going to complain when it does!)


Many of the books were lovely, educational, all you could want, but when my eyes alighted on Silent Music: A Story of Baghdad by James Rumford I had to take a breath.


The composition and story are original and thought-provoking. The book has already won numerous awards, and since they already reviewed it so well, I quote the James Addams Peace Association in their summary of the book:

Ali, a boy living in Baghdad today, loves soccer, parent-rattling music, dancing, and, most of all, calligraphy. His lively life, extended family and thoughtful nature flow from pages that weave calligraphy, intricate patterns and backdrops of golden brown into their design. Drawing strength from explicit visual and textual references to Iraq's long history of literacy, the story of Ali's passionate practice of calligraphy, first, highlights the power of literacy as a creative force in the midst of war, then, as a metaphor, invites reflection on the difficulty of practicing peace.

Intricate layers of calligraphy, ink drawing, collage and geometric pattern underlie Ali's narrative, one that I think many children would be drawn to, especially if an adult can help them to understand the deeper meaning of both the text and the culture. A great addition to you (inner) child's library.


All images courtesy of Amazon.

Book review: Los Ninos del Mundo

I came across this beautifully illustrated children's book at the library recently and decided to improve my basic Spanish* by reading it...and it was a great way to stretch those simple conjugation and vocabulary muscles, let me tell you!

In fact, I learned a marvelously resonant new word in Spanish: cuentacuento ("storyteller").

And a picture to go with it!

Of course when I opened to the first page and came upon the soothing blue-green and white illustrations in Morocco (Essaouira to be exact), you know I was hooked!

Available in Spanish and French so far (though I suspect it may soon be published in English, too...) "Children of the World" is a great book for kids interested in learning about how other children and families live around the world - from a mixed-race Maori family in New Zealand, multi-generational families in Greece, Peru, and Cuba, and wealthy and impoverished families in Europe, Japan or Africa.

Introducing simple and more complicated concepts, everything from food, games, common names, "hello" to the realities of child labor, migrant parents in search of work, even child soldiers, this book is realistic yet joyful. Not too folkloric, and yet representative of some of the world's richness and diversity of life.

And the illustration by the very talented Mayalen Goust is subtle and enticing: on the Greek page shadows of an olive tree are cast against the balcony where the family stands, or the shadow of the fluttering laundry hung out to dry in Essaouira, the combination of hand-drawn and digital imagery with vibrant colors is effective and lively.

And the people are real characters - the children are endearing but the older folks really have a lot of personality - check out la bomba mama in Cuba, or the soccer mom in Montana (you should see the bedhair on the next page!)



But if I have to levy one critique on this book it's this: just as I would not want a child in Spain, France or wherever to think the bronc-riding Montanans depicted here represent me or life in the U.S. I think it's wholy unfair that a masai, yurt-dwelling Mongolian, and quecha indian families are chosen as the representatives of African, Central Asian and South American cultures, respectively. What about urban Nigerians or Senegalese? What about children in the favelas of Brazil?


The book is definitely skewed towards European culture and in my opinion the best remedy for this would be a second book, Children of the World II, same illustrator, same author!

I'll be keeping my eye on the bookshelves for that one, too...

*I know, it's confusing, the title is in French - but that's the pic I found, and now you know!

Most pictures copyright and courtesy Mayalen Goust, (go visit her site, she's great!) others my own.

And...we're back

And for a slow start to my return from a much needed vacation, enjoy...

a Marrakesh photo essay from German paper Zeit Online - with a few very evocative images. (Perhaps even more interesting if you read German...)



There's another series of Pablo Picasso, the later years (satyrs and pen sketches, my favorite period) in his home in Cannes.