A day of culture at GG Park

It's actually rare that I take a true "weekend" day (usually my weekends are taken up with mentoring and errands), so W and I decided to have a day date, and spent most of Sunday at Golden Gate Park. The Yves Saint Laurent exhibition at the de Young closes in two weeks, and I've been itching to go to the California Academy of Sciences, so we made the I-280 road trip.

First, the Yves Saint Laurent show:

(from Style Frizz)

I thought the show was fantastic; there are so many "classic" Saint Laurent looks (Le Smoking, the Piet Mondrian shifts) that I totally forgot the boundary-pushing he did with some of his silhouettes and fabrics (there were some beautiful things displayed involving rooster feathers, sequined fish scales, bubble dresses, knitted cocoons, and hand-embroidered pinstripes). Without images, however, I can't really do this justice, but I am so glad I got a chance to see this:

Hand-knit wedding dress, 1965

Next, we went to the California Academy of Sciences. Understandably, this place is popular with families. The announcer guy kept reminding the ticket line that there were no more available reservations for the planetarium or 3-D bug show (yeesh) for the rest of the day. Because we only had about 3 hours, we stuck mostly with the aquarium, and then made a quick jump up to the Living Roof.

The aquarium had some very beautiful displays, and I think they tried to show the ocean as a multi-functional organism (there was a contiguous reef tank, that you could view from different parts of the floor); however, I found it hard to navigate, and some stuff just seemed designed for "wow" factor (there was a convex window that was meant to bring you into the display, but I just wound up hitting my head against the plexiglass). However, we didn't have a lot of time to check out the rest of the Academy in depth (all the educational stuff went by the wayside), so I want to go back when I have more time to really explore. Plus, I must-needs see that rainforest.