The Wallace Collection, in my mind, is a fine complement to National Gallery. Located not far from Selfridges facing the lovely Manchester Square southwards, it is indeed a much better place to have quiet enjoyment sitting in front of Rembrandt and thinking wildly.

But fewer visitors may not work well for such a grand gallery which owns a beautiful courtyard restaurant and an armoury. Directors and curators must be really tortured with this problem and eventually they paved the way to attract more and younger people into the place by reintroducing a prestigious fashion brand and its shoes in glass domes. How smart they are, aren’t they!

Thus I decided to visit the gallery with great curiosity to try to find out the “icon from the world of contemporary fashion with Wallace’s outstanding collection that has been an inspiration to artists since it opened to the public in 1900”, as introduced by the exhibition – An Enquiring Mind: Manolo Blahník at the Wallace Collection.

Unfortunately I wasn’t successful to link the shoes to the artworks, either physically or spiritually. Maybe because I am not a proper shoe/fashion lover and I wear shoes more to walk than to worship. I was expecting to see the installation close to what was shown officially. And that did not happen that day.

Nevertheless, I was still happy to spend the whole afternoon inside the gallery to see these old friends (and I always admire the exceptional quality of the Wallace Collection’s own art works) while outside, the sun was throwing arrows of burning heat to earth and the sky was so blue without any single cloud.

When will it rain?

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