COOL FOR CATS
How ‘smart’ Marco Polo was — that is, in terms of his cerebral acuity — is debatable. On the one hand, the Venetian explorer and his family foresaw the overthrow of Crusader rule in late 13th century Constantinople, and accordingly diverted their commercial efforts towards the jewellery scene at the western reaches of the Mongol Empire; on the other, he mistook rhinos for unicorns.
As for how ‘smart’ the adventurer was in the sartorial sense, a surely hyper-romanticised. The Oscar-winning costume designer Tim Yip (of fame) delved into museum archives, history books, films, and the knowledge pool of various Venetian tailors when fine-tuning the character’s heavily dashing, if occasionally -esque, wardrobe.
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