Related #5: Clothing as Memory

If you read yesterday's post, then you'll know what this photo is about.

This photo was restored by one of my aunt's friends after she posted the picture on facebook - a really nice gesture.  My grandfather would have been 85 last week.  He was born on the same day as Marilyn Monroe.  Truefax.

I'm usually fine with people reblogging my pictures, but this is a family photo, so please don't copy and paste this. If you like it, then share the link. Thank you.

Related #3: Do it like a Dude

Yesterday's post dealt with women who dress like men, or don't (Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, I'm a-looking at you) to assert their power.

But where there are Queens, there are Kings...

And where there is power, there is also subservience...

So, to veer insanely from one end of a spectrum to another, here are some pictures of women who dress like men to show their love for a man.  Like a king.  The King, in fact. 

These photos were taken by Grey Villet in 1957 for TIME Magazine.  They show a day in the life of Susan Hull, who has decided to take the plunge and get an Elvis-style pompadour, joining the thousand strong ranks of girls and women in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who love Elvis so much that they want to look like him. 

If you want to put it in a modern context, imagine thousands of femme Justin Beiber fans, all with the same, super feathery, peekaboo, come-hither (but not too close, I'm a good Christian) hair*.  Just for the love of the Biebs.  Have you shuddered?  Has an icy cold finger of revulsion crawled down your back?  Good, let's look at the pictures.

All captions from the original article (because they're hilarious)



Susan Hull looks apprehensive as beautician prepare to form lock into Presley sidecurl




IN NEW GLORY: Nancy Hull happily shows off Presley cut.  Beautician who created style stresses convenience for girls who like swimming without caps.




CONFRONTING FATHER outside the beauty shop.  Susan Hull (left) and her sister Nancy, 20, display haircuts.  He was noncommital about new style.




COMFORTING MOTHER, Susan promises not to have her brown hair dyed black.  After showing cut to family, she gave ponytail to 4-year old brother.




CONVINCING SWEETHEART, Susan explains her coiffure to her beau Lew Potter in Motorcycle shop.  At first he threatened to break their next date.




CLIPPED GALLERY sits for a group portrait in Didgson's beauty shop.  The sideburns are standard but the number of stray locks on foreheads is optional


Read the original article here.

*Lesbians who look like Justin Beiber notwithstanding.  The Lesbiebers are awesome.

Licentiate Column 19/05/11: What's Your Time Period?

Everyone has their time period. This isn't a nod to mortality - although, in the fashion world, trends only live for a few months and some careers at fashion houses, even less. Death isn't really relevant.

When a trend dies or fails to get out of the starter gate it is instantly forgotten about, until a designer runs out of ideas and decides to revive it in lieu of actual creativity. Lest we forget, bulky 70's rainbow crochet and macrame are going to be huge this winter. Apparently.

Some trends never die out. That's because they have more meat and room for maneuvering than the average twice-yearly expelling of stress-induced creative juices from a frazzled designer's brain.

The trend is synonymous to a way of life, a philosophy, a musical style or is a vital part of a rich vein in art or literature. It was not gestated by a figure in the fashion industry, but was definitely popularised by several. It doesn't belong to one person, but is eternally tied to young people - all in their teens and twenties, all growing up in one time period.

Everyone has their time period. Whether it's the one you grew up in or one you wish you were there for, everyone has one. It's half misguided nostalgia, half style inspiration and a liberal seasoning of fantasy.

One friend would have fitted in perfectly with the dying days of the debutante balls, in peach satin and white gloves, one foot in the old world and one foot looking towards a different and wholly brighter tomorrow. Another's anarchic spirit wouldn't be out of place in the Manchester of the early 80's, listening to Joy Division and A Certain Ratio, wearing forest green donkey coats and severe buttoned-up shirts.

Once, my father and I were watching a segment on a current affairs programme about 70's punk in Dublin. "You should have been alive then, Sarah", he said to me. " You would have really fitted in."

It was an observation that stuck with me, because up until then I was unaware that my father was any different at twenty than he was at fifty. In my mind he always wore suits and worked in an office and reserved his best terrible floral shirts on holidays. I never contemplated that he could have gone to see The Clash or worn drainpipe jeans or perhaps even taken some pride in looking a little bit like Paul Weller (yes Dad, I know this is conjecture, but your haircut at the time had a definite Modfather vibe).

Everyone has their time period. If clothes maketh the person, then who are you? Are you a punk? A Fab Fourophile? A 30's screen siren? A make do and mend Blitz babe? Are you into the grunge look? Or your time period the one you live in today?

What will it look like to the next generation? We only have to wait and see.

Kinda Sorta Love...

...The Eurovision, which for one night only turns everything the most amazing shade of camp.  This is the Serbian entry Nina, who sang... er, I have no idea.  In my mind, it sounds a bit like this.

Source



Need more pictures of this act. Source

  Coloured tights, bright colours, patterns, sharp bobs, heavy eye make-up, micro minis.  Remind you of anyone?

Sandie Shaw, Eurovision winner 1967.  Source

Backtrack

I KNOW I said last week that some things were better in black and white, but sometimes you need a colour photograph to really get the full impact of the message.  In this case - early photography and national dress.

How many of you have seen black and white pictures of your great-grandparents?  Don't you wish you could see what their favourite colours were?

Ireland

Sometimes you don't appreciate how powerful red is until it smacks you in the face.  Metaphorically.

This picture was taken in the rural west of Ireland in 1913 and was probably one of the first colour photographs ever taken in Ireland.  It is part of the Albert Kahn Archive, just one of over 72,000 colour photographs commissioned in the first three decades of the 20th century in an effort to document all aspects of society and culture.  If you don't know much about Kahn and would like to know more, there was a BBC documentary tv series called The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn, which is well worth tracking down and watching.  There is also a book of the same name.

Here are some more photographs.

West of Ireland

China

Japan

Amazing still life

Macedonia

African colonial soldiers circa WW1

"If you wear a ringer, you're Indie Rock. Period."

Wise words, Daisy von Furth, wise words.

X-girl is the sister to Japanese label X-Large and, as I type, is only available in Japan. In 1994, when the label was launched, the brands directors were Daisy Von Furth and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth *cue fangirl squeee*

While is lasted in it's RIOT GRRRL format, it was pretty darn cool. With all the clean lines and simple tailoring, it reminds me of a no boys-allowed Fred Perry.

X Girl editorial for Vice Magazine 

Did you notice a very young Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola in the video? And Chloe Sevigny was their original fit model. ANDandand and and... *fades into silence*

EDIT - While we're on the subject of music in fashion, you can watch a video of myself and Dawn of Skinni Peach talking about fashion in music with our playlist on the Teen RTE (think Irish BBC) website .  The video will be on the website for a week, so have a click and see what we like!  You'll get to see me move and speak (a bit like an Irish Daria Morgendorffer) and display abysmal posture.  What an incentive.

Who was the real Holly Golightly?

Any fashion blogger worth his or her sodium intake has heard about, if not already read Truman Capote's novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's.  The book's heroine, Holly Golightly, is a gadabout girl-about-town with a predisposition for rich men and total character reinvention.  She's flighty and flirty.  She's a phony - but she's a real phony.

Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in the 1961 film

I've got a real grá (that's Irish for love, international readers) for Truman Capote.  I wrote many essays about him while studying English in university.  He was an enfant terrible, an enigma with a cryptic tongue, an interviewer with an uncanny knack to get details out of any source and reduce macho men like Muhammad Ali to tears.  When it came to being interviewed, Capote was undeniably economical with the truth.

Playboy:  Shortly after publication of Breakfast at Tiffany's, a writer named Bonnie Golightly sued you for $800,000, on the grounds that she was the real-life inspiration for your fictional heroine.  At least four other New York girls about town countered with the claim that they were the prototype of Holly.  Was the characterisation of Holly based on a real person?
Capote:  Yes, but not on any of the people you refer to.  The real Holly Golightly was a girl exactly like the girl in Breakfast at Tiffany's, with the single exception that in the books she comes from Texas, whereas the real Holly was a German refugee who arrived in New York at the beginning of the War, when she was 17 years old.  Very few people were aware of this, however, because she spoke English without any trace of an accent.  She had an apartment in the brownstone where I lived and we became great friends.  Everything I wrote about her is literally true - not about her friendship with a gangster called Sally Tomato and all that, but everything about her personality and approach to life, even the most preposterous parts of the book.
                 - From a 1968 interview with Playboy, click to read


Sorry Truman, I call bullshit on your answer...

People like to search for the 'real' Holly Golightly', just as they want to know who the 'real' Sherlock Holmes is, or the 'real' Sal Paradise.  In fiction, there is no 'real' anything, only composites and impressions drawn and interpreted through that writer's vision.  Even if the German did exist (which, due to Capote's predisposition for embellishment, I seriously doubt), she's not Holly Golightly.  Holly is her and more of the many women in Capote's coterie of female friends, all exceptional, all stylish, all Holly, all the time.  Here's a few of Capote's possible influences.

Maeve Brennan

Maeve Brennan at home - Photo by Karl Blissinger

Maeve Brennan moved from Ireland to the USA when she was seventeen.  Both Brennan and Capote worked at Harper's Bazaar, which is probably where they met.  They also worked at The New Yorker (where Brennan wrote a column called The Long-Winded Lady) at the same time.  She was regarded as eccentric, but this soon turned into obsessive behaviour and she became an alcoholic.  Towards the end of her life, she was committed to a hospital, where she died in 1993.

Just like Holly - Wore trademark black dresses and dark glasses. Spent far beyond her means.  Erratic behaviour.  Often had a case of the Mean Reds.
Not so Golightly - Brennan had a real, taxable job and a creative outlet, writing short stories and a novel.

Read more:  The Long-Winded Lady , by Maeve Brennan and Maeve Brennan: Wit, Style and Tragedy - An Irish Writer in New York by Angela Bourke

Doris Lilly

Lilly in later years

After Capote published Other Voices, Other Rooms, he became very good friends with Doris Lilly, a blonde starlet who famously dated Gene Kelly and Ronald Reagan and with whom he'd eat dinner and talk for hours.  Lilly said "Truman used to come over all the time and watch me put make-up on before I went out..., there's a lot of me in Holly Golightly".  Lilly died in 1991 with no money.  Her mountain of costume jewellery, given to her by her many admirers over the years, had to be sold off to cover funeral costs.

Just like Holly - Had a thwarted Hollywood career, was a gal-about-town, had a famously pragmatic attitude towards men (Lilly wrote How to Marry a Millionaire, amongst other suggestively titled works and said "Millionaires are marrying their secretaries because they're so busy making money that they haven't time to see other girls"), never actually got to marry a millionaire.
Not so Golightly - Can you see Holly Golightly as a leggy blonde?

Read More - How to Make Love in Five Languages by Doris Lilly

Suzy Parker and Dorian Leigh

Parker (left) and Leigh at a shoot for LIFE Magazine

Parker and Leigh were two sisters who were both models.  Leigh was photographed by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton, amongst others. Parker, 15 years younger than Leigh, became Avedon's muse and the face of Chanel during the 50's and 60's.

Just like Holly - Terminal cat owners, use of the fire escape as means of exit and entry, beguiling and hilarious.
Not so Golightly - Both sisters were supposed homebodies and, unlike the champagne and cigarettes Golightly, both were excellent cooks - Leigh even had cordon Bleu training.

Read More - Avedon Fashion 1944 - 2000, by Richard Avedon

There are more women who could be Golightly.  If I was to list them all I'd be writing this post for a month.  But, that's what's so great about Holly Golightly.  She's such a singular character, but she could be anyone.  That's why so many women (myself included) identify with her.

I want to be a Teddy Girl

Before Ken Russell was shocking us with his films and I was astounding the world with my poor command of Photobucket (hence the higgledy-piggledy pictures), he was a photographer.  You could probably say that he was one of the first street style photographers.  His pictures were brought to my attention in a guest post by new Licentiate fave Vagabond Language.  His documenting of the working-class Teddy Boys and Girls in the 50's are a source of endless inspiration.

Throw in a viewing of Nowhere Boy, where the young John Lennon mixes with all kinds of Teds and Julies, and an obsession is born.

Licentiate Column 20/01/11

Have you been watching Mad Men? I was unaware of the hype surrounding the acclaimed American drama until this Christmas, when I was presented with the first two seasons of the show. On Monday, I sat down to watch an episode. A few days, and the development of some very square eyes later, I have finished the box set.

It is an excellent programme; smart, funny, knowing, genuine, mysterious, well-written and excellently characterised. And stylish, incredibly so. Interweaved into the lives of the Mad Men, the ad men in the grey flannel suits, waft three very different woman; Betty, the highly-strung, neurotic ex-wife of leading man Don Draper, Joan, the sexually voracious, va-va-voom office manager and Peggy, the token woman copywriter in a man's man's world.

It's unsurprising then that the style of Mad Men has become a source of inspiration for shoppers and designers everywhere. Prada's A/W '11 collection was lifted heavily from the strict, ultra feminine silhouette of the show, incorporating cat's eye spectacles, sinched-in waists, circle skirts and bouffant do's. 'Mad Men' has become one of the most searched terms for vintage clothing vendors on the internet - for women in search of that perfect 'downtrodden housewife' look.

Every aspect of the show is carefully considered. Even the books that Don and Betty read reflect their personalities and periods of mental stasis in some way. This attention to detail is no different in the costuming; designer Janie Bryant has very specific colours and patterns assigned to each female character. Betty has pretty floral dresses in classic shapes á la Grace Kelly, Joan wears jewel bright tones and form-fitting shapes and Peggy gets the short end of the stick with checks, plaids and a particularly nacreous shade of mustard.

It makes perfect sense that women who emulate the Mad Men style are characterised as either a Joan or a Betty. In one episode of the show, a Playtex campaign is pitched with the conceit that a woman is either a Marilyn or a Jackie. One is straight-up-and-down, the other has an abundance of curves. One is a wife struggling with her husband's numerous infidelites, the other is a fleshpot with a more pragmatic view of human couplings.

In truth, the only difference between Joan and Marilyn or Betty and Jackie is the colour of their hair. Yes, they look great, but would you really want to be either of them?

I like Peggy best. She's smart, she's savvy, her character is the one who has evolved the most consistently, from timid secretary in little-girl dresses to a no-nonsense, helmet-haired boardroom babe in navy fitted suits. She works hard and tackles all obstacles head-on. It's a testament to her character that her wardrobe is the least appealing to the viewers but she manages to retain an aura of chic. I may have a vintage plaid dress or two hanging up in the wardrobe in homage to this particular proto feminist (just not in mustard, my admiration only stretches so far).

In the Playtex pitch meeting, Peggy counters that she is neither a Marilyn or a Jackie. Her male equivalents variously describe her a Gertrude Stein or a young Irene Dunne. In truth, Peggy is neither, but is unequivocally herself. Neither Jackie nor Marilyn, but inimatably Peggy - individuality is a Mad Men style that will always be in fashion.

Catalogue Shopping

There's been a lot of controversy this week over the Elle.es blogging scandal (click to read about it here) which, if anything, has taught us bloggers to be more conscious and aware of the legal implications of reblogging pictures, especially the work of others  If you're like me and have a serious aversion to posting pictures of yourself in different outfits leaping all over the place, then your options are limited and images are sourced from elsewhere.

All images that I take from other blogs or websites are credited and linked appropriately and if not they're usually my own, stock photos or in the public domain (just an FYI).  Here's some images that I came across the other day that I'd like to share with you.



These images are from the back pages of the NME from about '81 to '85 respectively and I think they are pretty darn cool. If the NME still had these kinds of ads I would probably still be buying it and not reading Pitchfork and The Quietus (so good, Google it if you haven't heard of it) online instead. Winklepickers and mohair and bowling shoes, oh my!

This ties in with sourcing photos, I swear. Here's the long journey I took to source these pictures properly.

I saw one of these ads on Self Constructed Freak , one of my daily reads...
which linked back to the Tumblr, Now This Is Gothic, which is chock-a-block with great 80's goth photos...
which linked back to Tin Trunk, a blog with a concurrent vintage shop on Etsy...
who scanned them in from old copies of NME!

Phew.

You don't have to go through this complicated rigamarole whenever you source a photo, I just thought it would be good to illustrate how many places a picture can come from.  If you're ever in doubt about how to source a picture, a good rule of thumb is to remember the photographer and/or where the image first appeared.

If you want to know more about crediting and finding public images, click here.
If you want to know more about photo crediting for bloggers, click here.

And is you want to show me some love on Facebook, click here (gratuitous plug alert).

And a big PS - I'm going on my holidays on the first of January.  While I'm hungover in a series of airports, I'll need a few guest bloggers.  My email address is in the sidebar if you're interested.

Wild For Kicks; The Beat Girl

I want to be this girl - The Beat Girl.




Beat Girl (released as Wild For Kicks) is a 1960 film about a disaffected teenager who hates her stepmother and gets involved with morally suspect beats and a shady striptease bar owner (played by horror maaestro Christopher Lee of all people).  Half cautionary tale and half voyeuristic fable, the striptease scenes meant that this film was given an X rating.  Things start to go downhill when Beat Girl find out about her stepmother's sordid past...

I'd like to be like this - effortless hepcat cool, dishevelled beehive, spasmodic dancing.  Oh well, one out of three ain't bad.

My Family Portrait

I'm totally contravening the laws of blog here but, inspired by this post from Diamond Canopy,  I'm reposting some photos that I already put up on the blog some months ago .  May I incur the wrath of Blog for my sins, but these pictures are way too nice to hide.

These are of my maternal grandmother's family.  A few months after she died, I found a plastic bag stuffed with her falling-apart address book and a ton of photos that she always had by her side.  My nan was a formative influence on my life.  I miss her a lot (even if she wouldn't let me close the door whenever I had boys in my bedroom).

I won't tell you which women is my nan, because my mother already thinks that having a blog means handing out my cup size and bank account details to strangers, let alone revealing who my family members are.  But I will tell you this - pick the most stylish woman below and you'll probably see her.

Decades Festival Inspiration

This weekends marks the second year of the Decades Festival, a massive dress-up weekend that is centred around the many pubs and clubs in Cork City.  The premise is simple - pick a decade in the 20th century, dress according to that decade and see which pubs are putting events to which decade.  Events include 80's raves, dignified dos with flappers and cocktails and (my favourite) a 50's bowling event with milkshake cocktails.  Mmm, cloying...

I've been fantasising about what I might dress up as and, as usual, I've picked the two decades most unforgiving to a real body type, the 60's and the 20's.  Here are some shots from some great magazine editorials.  The first is Face Of '66 for September's L'Officiel Singapore, which is all lithe limbs, Vidal Sassoon hair and meticulously outlined eyes.










Here are a few pages from a much larger spread in TEST.  Shot by Nicholas Lawn using vintage photo effects, it's atypical of the 20's styling we'd usually see (like OTT almost baroque Galliano homages to the Bright Young Things) but it's a good source for inspiration for those who want to do the twenties a little bit differently.








Images via Fashion Gone Rogue

Nan's Legacy Pt II

This isn't strictly jewellery, but...



I love these badges. I've chosen to keep these ones for myself. My gran was a past president of the Soroptimists, which is a worldwide volunteer association of businesswoman. They also organise competitions. It seems a little antiquated now, but schools still take part in their speechwriting and public speaking competitions.

One year I somehow managed to win the county final of the public speaking competition and progressed onto the regional final, which I didn't place in. I would have liked to have won, but wasn't too bothered (I was told later by a judge that they 'weren't looking for funny'). If I was, then the following anecdote would have made me very mad indeed.

We're driving back from the regional. I'm in the front with my father. My gran is in the back. My Dad pats me on the shoulder and sympathises.

"Well, it looks like you won't be going to the final this year".

A voice pipes up from the back.

"I will! I was invited."

Right. Thanks Nan. Thanks a bunch.

Nan's Legacy Pt I

A few months ago, my nan passed away.  She was old and pretty sick, but we weren't really expecting it to happen.  We certainly didn't expect what kind of impact it would have on my family. 

Together, my aunts and my cousin sifted through her things and came up with a box of her trinkets and junk jewellery that she had collected from all over the world over the past fifty years or so.  I say 'junk' but it's not the kind of typical 'Nan' jewellery, the kind of necklaces that are made of plastic beads, globbed together, paint peeling off the spheres, twine turning brown and brittle as paper or, if your family is Catholic like mine, a tangled rats nest of rosary beads from different pilgrimage points around the country. 



Until today, it was left in a box that I keep beside my bed near a stack of books, a packet of Nurofen and a shotglass that I bought in Egypt that is now full of buttons.  It comes down to me to pass some of these on to my sisters and keep some for myself.

Left - rhinestone necklace c late 50's/early 60's.  Right - Christian Dior costume pendant c 1970's

Left - Necklace and bracelet set (half the opals have fallen out of their mounts, but it looks nice that way).  Right - One of a set of enamelled clip-on earrings

Right - Amber bug brooch, Left - Andre Piaso watch with interchangeable faces