The film Hamnet has been prominent in the cinema of late, but I came across, online, the 2018 'All is True' film, directed and starring Kenneth Branagh. It's another version of the Hamnet story, written by Ben Elton. I enjoyed the final scene with the 3 women, Anne, Susannah and Judith, each reading a sonnet's verse at Shakespeare's funeral. (The sonnet is from Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2, where it is sung as a dirge, by Guiderius and Arviragus, over the pretend-dead body of Imogen.)
Fear no
more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
Come to dust.
It could be so with Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garcons Spring Summer 2026, Ready To Wear collection, 'After the Dust'.
RK's statement, "I believe in the positiveness and the value that can be born from the damaging of perfect things."
She has a gift for creating distorted shaped beauty out of humble materials, such as burlap, jute, canvas and calico. Adding lace and brocade to the extreme proportions helps to transform the garments into fascinating clothing forms.
Much of the collection was that CdG rejection of the "proper way to do it", so seams are exposed and edges left raw.
Are you wondering what burlap is?
Have a look at this textile artist's work with it; it is also known as hessian.
As I have often made reference to in previous blogs, Rei Kawakubo is very clever at delivering her astounding collection garments in more wearable attire. Here are garments which demonstrate that for 'After the Dust'.
'After the Dust', a collection demonstrating that beauty can rise from damage, where reconstruction becomes an act of creation.
Could Rei Kawakubo have been contemplating the catastrophic wars of destruction that are currently being perpetrated? Is she expressing her creative hope for an emergence from all that devastating rubble and persecution? I hope so.
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| Palestinians walk out of the rubble, covered in dust after an Israeli attack on Abu Aisha family house, in Gaza, June 14, 2024 (Ali Jadallah photo) A Ukrainian hospital left in rubble and dust (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)  In 2017, London's Whitechapel Gallery presented an exhibition based on the theme of dust. Artworks and documents were brought together and presented under the title, 'A Handful of Dust'. Not to be mistaken with...  The exhibition traced a visual journey of dust, from aerial reconaissance, wartime destruction and natural disasters to everyday dirt and dust. It began with a photograph taken by Man Ray, on the occasion of a 1920 visit to Marchel Duchamp's studio.  Man Ray photographed a sheet of glass covered in dust. In 1922 he published the photograph in a Parisian journal. That same year, T.S.Eliot published "The Waste Land', in a London journal. This masterpiece work contains these lines: And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you, I will show you fear in a handful of dust. The exhibition curator, David Campany wrote. "A thickness of dust is a measure of time. It's also a latent sign of actions or processes. It's domestic but cosmic too. To see the world from the point of view of dust will give a different perspective of history and civilisation."  This link will enable you to view much of what can be found in the book. https://davidcampany.com/a-handful-of-dust-2/ |
I like David Campany's comment about dust being "domestic but cosmic too.", as it takes me to stardust.
A year after Toni Morrison's death in 2019, Maria Popova, author of The Marginalian blog, presented this...
What is stardust?
This is a book to give an answer to that question.
Go forth and prosper little starchild!
Stanley Kubrick's starchild, always perplexing.
An interesting Natural History Museum article, 'Are we made of stardust?' I like the idea that we are.
And...
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| Photographer Mick Rock |
'The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars' 1972 -1973
This amazing alter ego of David Bowie's made his first appearance in February 1972, at The Toby Jug pub in Tolworth, Surrey, with something like 60 people in the audience.
But the 5th of July 1972 appearance on Top of the Pops, recording 'Starman', is the moment Bowie became his own Star man.
The Spiders From Mars came out of Bowie's first trip to the USA in 1971, when he decided he wanted his version of a back-up group like Iggy Pop and The Stooges, or Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.
The Ziggy look came from Bowie's fascination at being better than Marc Bolan, and an interest in music as theatre. He was also very intersted in space, Japanese culture and fame. David Bowie was never shy about taking inspiration from other people. He said. "I'm a person who can take on the guises of people I meet. I'm a collector, and I collect personalities and ideas."
July 3, 1973 was Ziggy's last show. As one of the Spiders from Mars, Trevor Bolder, said, "He couldn't be Ziggy Stardust for the rest of his life."
January 10, 2016, at 69 years of age, David Bowie returned his, ashes to ashes, dust to stardust.
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The song's original title was 'People Are Turning To Gold', and Bowie saw the song as his way of "wrapping up the 70s" for himself.
The chosen title, 'Ashes to Ashes' was taken straight from the 'Order for the Burial of the Dead', Thomas Cranmer's inspired piece in his 1549, Christian Book of Common Prayer. 
"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust". Three simple phrases, one truth: we are returning from whence we came; the earth, the soil, the dust. The inspiration comes out of Genesis 3:19 scripture "for you are dust, and to dust you shall return"
Professor Brian Cox says it this way:
"Our story is the story of the universe. Every piece of everyone you love, everyone you know, of the things you hold most precious; was assembled from the forces of nature in the first few minutes of the life of the universe, transformed in the hearts of stars or created in their fiery deaths. And when you and I die, those pieces will be returned to the universe in the endless cycle of death and new birth. What a wonderful thing it is to be a part of that universe. What a story. What a majestic story." (Stardust!)
Take a Stardust Voyage, with Lebanese Haute Couture designer Tony Ward's Spring Summer 2023 collection, inspired by space and stars.
Still with the cosmos.
Moon Dust. It's a problem.
Lunar dust consists of grain sizes less than 1 millmetre. Being so fine, it's very difficult to clean off.
This is the site that explains the problem. https://www.pocketobservatory.org/moon-dust/
And I totally share the problem on earth. Dust, dust, dust, I never seem to get away from it! Maybe this is the poem for me.
When I think of dusty rooms, one particular character from literature comes to mind...Miss Havisham, shut up in a dark, dirty and dusty room, attired in her decaying wedding gown.
Pip's visits to the reclusive inhabitant of Satis House, in Charles Dicken's Victorian novel, Great Expectations.
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| Martita Hunt, 1946 film, Great Expectations, directed by David Lean. |
Miss Havisham is like a broken bride, who is permanently stuck in a dusty decaying time zone, after her devastating betrayal.
For the CdG 2005/06 season, Rei Kawakubo presented her Broken Bride collection. Asymmetrical collared shirt garments with fabulous lace embellishments reflected a Victorian style in a contemporary aesthetic. Someone may have been thinking Miss Havisham, when they wrote "crumpled, lived-in feel, as if the dresses were unearthed from the closet of a widow, untouched for decades since her wedding day."
And the makeup that was used added to the ghostly sun-deprived look of Miss H.
Even South Park?! 
Do you know, Miss Havisham isn't as old as you might think she is.
'Havisham' is a new perspective of the story of her trauma https://watersidearts.org/events/havisham/
I have seen this contemporary one-woman show, which starred Helen Moulder. She was great in the role.
Here is a very interesting connection with Miss Havisham and Hikikomori, which is a Japanese term for severe prolonged social withdrawal.
And, the beautiful 1991 film, 'Daughters of the Dust',
The title 'Daughters of the Dust' refers to the Gullah women of the South Carolina Sea Islands, who are descended of enslaved Africans. These women are portrayed as the keepers of an ancestral and "dusty" (earthly/traditional) culture. Dust represents the land they live on, their connection to the earth and the memory of the ancestors.
'Daughters of the Dust' is often described as a "dreamlike film with its own theatrical poise." Take a look at this NZ film society site, it presents images from the film, plus a trailer.
Apparently the imagery and style of the film inspired Beyonce's Lemonade video. I'm throwing in some links to images from that video. I don't know too much about it as a work of art, but I appreciate the concepts behind it. They are worth viewing.
There are lots of wonderful white garments in 'Daughters of the Dust'
Here are two wonderful white garments from the CdG 'After the Dust' collection
and, you know how RK is very canny at producing more "wearable" garments that bear a reflection of what has been in the collection, well I think this CdG new season Gathered Blouse, reflects something of the two above outfits.
I think it apt to finish with the first stanza from a Maya Angelo poem,
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
sltsltbsigns off in dust.
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