Debbie Reynolds' costume auction

On the 18th of June, Debbie Reynolds (from Singin' in the Rain and also known as Carrie Fisher off Star Wars' overbearing mother) will be auctioning off her collection of film costumes and memorobilia.  She initially tried to find a single museum buyer but, sadly, that didn't happen and now her huge collection will be sold off piecemeal.

I really hope that some of her items do turn up in a museum, because she owns some astonishing stuff, like Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat, Laurel and Hardy's suits, dresses worn by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, that dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch (you know the one...) and a pair of Dorothy's ruby slippers.

She also has the curtain-material playsuits worn by the Von Trapp Family Singers in The Sound Of Music.  Joy.  Actual joy.

You can download the catalogue online.  Here are a few items I would buy for sentimental or pure greedy reasons if I had the funds.  This is just a small smattering, because the catalogue is a whopping 319 pages long. 

Thanks to Penny Dreadful Vintage for bringing this to my attention.

Marion Davies monumental oil painting by Federico Beltran Masses from Davies’ estate

'Messala' historic winged charioteer helmet rom the 1925 Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Left - Eleanor Powell “Clare Bennett” black velvet jacket designed by Adrian in Broadway Melody of 1940. Right - Jean Hagen “Lina Lamont” camel coat with monkey-fur collar from Singin’ in the Rain.

Carole Lombard 'Connie Randall' gown by Travis Banton from No Man of Her Own

Left - Debbie Reynolds “Kathy Selden” green & white leaf patterned sleeveless dress from Singin’ in the Rain. Right - Ginger Rogers “Dinah Barkley” gold lamé dress from Barkleys of Broadway

Rita Hayworth “Maribelle Hicks” two-piece dress from Cover Girl.

Left - Susan Hayward “Jane Froman” pastel rainbow-hued ball gown from With a Song in My Heart, right - Jane Wyman “Belinda McDonald” green dress and tan sweater from Johnny Belinda.  If you haven't seen Johnny Belinda, watch it asap.  You will cry buckets.

Emerald-green felt “Ozmite” jacket designed by Adrian from The Wizard of Oz.

Go on, guess which film these costumes are from.

Cleopatra large-scale original concept painting of Elizabeth Taylor “Cleopatra” in her Alexandria apartment

Cleopatra large-scale original concept painting of Antony and Cleopatra on her royal barge by Ed Graves

Cleopatra large-scale original concept painting of a harbor scene by Duilio Savina

Théâtre de la Mode

I saw these on How To Be A Retronaut and they were too good not to share.

The Théâtre de la Mode was brought about at the liberation of Paris in 1944. Parisian fashion houses were only just starting to re-open their doors after several years of limited or non-production.

The purported story is that there wasn't enough fabric to make full-scale dresses, so two feet tall wire models were kitted out with the finest in couture and displayed, first in Paris, then around Europe and North America until their acquisition by the Maryhill Museum of Art in Washington.

More than likely, it was a more cost-effective way to remind the world that Paris was still the epicentre of fashion, despite living through occupation, starvation, oppression and war. While fabric was rationed and still at a premium (especially silk, which was used for parachutes), Parisian women defied the Germans in any way they could, usually by flouting stringent material rationing and wearing dresses and skirts made with yards and yards of whatever they could get their hands on.

Breaking the law and looking chic at the same time - those Parisian women knew their stuff.

The first five photographs were taken by David Seidner in 1990. He deliberately set the dolls in a recognisably French, warlike background. At first, I thought that these photos were taken in the 1940's. In actuality, all 237 (!) dolls were put on display in 1944 as part of a number of scenarios designed by artists like Jean Cocteau, amongst others.

David Seidner, Lucien Lelong, 1990

David Seidner, Balenciaga, 1990

David Seidner, Marcel Dhorme, 1990

David Seidner, Madame Gres, 1990

David Seidner, Robert Piguet, Raphaël, Pierre Balmain, 1990

Jean Cocteau's 1944 setting, Ma Femme  est une Sorcière (source)

For more info, read Theatre de la Mode

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.

Prokudin-Gorskii - Pioneering photographer

Where do I start...

Sergei Prokudin Gorskii was a photographer and chemist who invented a method of developing colour photographs that resulted in an unusual vividness and clear colours. The photos below don't look so remarkable by mordern terms,but when you find out that they were all taken before 1915, your opinion might change.

The photographic process was extremely long and involved taking three photgraphs in quick succession under yellow, red and blue filters, and then combining the negatives onto one glass plate, which resulted in amazingly clear colours, but often slightly fuzzy outlines and double (or even triple) exposures if the subject sneezed or was an especially fidgety child.

Prokudin-Gorskii used these techniques to take a photograph of Tolstoy, which became very famous. Off the back of that, he was commissioned by Tsar Nicolas II to document pretty much everything that Russia had to offer, including ethnic and peasant costumes, art, architecture and religious paraphenalia. The result is a remarkable document of Pre-Revolution Russia (and you can see all 2606 slides online on the National Library of Congress website - possibly one of the best ways to while away a rainy day)  in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOUR! Fanfare please...










Loads more photos after the jump. 

When I hear 'GG' I don't think 'Gossip Girl'

I think 'Grey Gardens'.

This post was originally going to be an examination of female relationships through clothing in Grey Gardens and Ghost world, with a focus on Little Edie and Enid and the clothes they wear.  Then I realised that this is a fashion blog and I don't want people falling asleep in the middle of my verbal contortions on how Edie is like Enid because of how they dress and... eh... yeah.  I still have that post in my mind, but I have to make it workable on paper before I go and confuse myself by writing a post.

















I bought Grey Gardens a few weeks ago and loved everything about it.  The Maysles Brothers and the editing unit were masterful with their material and the Bouvier Beales are knowingly entertaining, funny, sly and vulnerable all at the same time.

The fashion fascination with Little Edie stems from her identity defining headscarves, canny knack for colour co-ordination and her ability to turn fashion inside out and upside down, often literally.  I wonder how much of this ingenuity stems from living with such amazingly limited means, and how much of it stems from her relationship with her mother.  When Grey Gardens was filmed, Little Edie was in her fifties, but you can barely tell.  Not because of her face, but because of her flirting with the Maysles, singing, dancing and exclamations and affirmations of her own character.

Her boundary testing stretches to her wardrobe.  Her shirts are turned upside down and pinned and gathered in an avant-garde way, she wears net curtains as skirts and a swimsuit as a top.  Her sweaters are pinned with a gold brooch over her head to disguise her baldness.  And like a woman who is still finding her identity, she is continually experimenting with what she has, placing one item over another, casually knotting skirts and shirts, blending colours together and fixing what's broken. She's a teenager in a middle-aged woman's body - that's what makes her such an inspiration despite the dismal settings..

You can read Little Edie's obituary and some interesting GG tidbits here.
And if you want to know even more, visit this Grey Gardens blog here.

Kinderwhore - not as original as one might think

So, for most people, the word kinderwhore brings to mind images of Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland wearing torn, dirty baby doll dresses and thick smeared red lipstick with messy, peroxide-blonde hair. Bad little girls up to no good.





People might think that Both Love and Bjelland have fought about who came up with the disengenuous combo of clumsy make-up with children's clothing, Love even going as far as to allegedly say that she got it from Christina Amphlett on the cover of the Divinyls 1982 album, Desperate.



Erm, yeah. Totally.

But I'd like to introduce you to the granny and grand dame of Kinderwhore.







Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She is the result of a dirty battle between mutton and lamb with a crooked referee. Baby Jane is duplicitous, nasty, childish, impetuous and a terrible singer. More than a coincidence that Hole and Babes in Toyland chose to adopt this image?

Diana Vreeland and colour

Watch the above clip (ignore the fuzzy audio) and you'll see that Diana Vreeland, former editor of American Vogue and contributor to Harpers Bazaar, had a amazing knack for description - the kind of verbal dexterity that I wish I had just so I could walk around the town talking to myself and being utterly confident that every word I say is utterly engrossing.

I've been reading her autobiography, D.V, and it's full of passages and asides that are precise in their description and beyond camp.

Diana talking about post-Nijinsky Parisiennes on the Bois de Boulogne:

"The colours! Before then, red had never been red and violet had never been violet. They were always slightly... grayed. But these women's clothes in the Bois were of colours as sharp as a knife: red red, violent violet, orange - when I say "orange", I mean red orange, not yellow orange - jade green and cobalt blue. And the fabrics - the silks, the satins and the brocades, embroidered with seed pearls and braid, shot with silver and gold and trimmed with fur and lace - were of an Oriental splendeur. There's never been such luxury since. These women looked rich."

Inspiration 1 - Club Kids

With yesterday's post still firmly stuck in my mind, I can't help but be reminded of the Club Kids.

My obsession started with renting out Party Monster with my sisters.  We watched it once.  Then I watched it again.  And again.  Anyone acquainted with their brief moment at the forefront of cutting edge cool will know the seedy story that overshadows their outfits (in short, movement leader Michael Alig, along with drug dealer Robert 'Freeze' Riggs, killed another drug dealer, Angel Melendez and disposed of his body in an incredibly brutal fashion).  Which makes their appearance on the Joan Rivers Show more than a little bittersweet since the phrase "you're not hurting anyone" pops up all over the place.



Before the clubs became saturated with drugs, however, the Club Kid ethos was a series of Situationist pranks (scatology, mutilation and lactation were common themes for club nights and outfits) and guerrila parties, which took place in McDonalds and Macys departments stores, amongst other places.  To tap into the Club Kid psyche, just listen to your inner freak.  And maybe have a look at these here pictures.

EDIT - Here's a few more pictures of Club Kid trading cards, used as publicity tools for Disco 2000 club nights.

All photos from Collection of All That is Good

Ritualism

So last month, two things happened. Someone in my family died and I bought a book. These two things might not seem connected now, but it will make sense soon, I promise.

The book was 'Isms... Understanding Fashion ' by Mairi MacKenzie. It's a pocket-sized book with two-page spreads explaining every major fashion wave from the sixteenth century to present day. From Baroque to blogging, it's all there in concise, clipped paragraphs. Precursors, related trends, even lists of where you can see costume archives of a particular trend are organised according to country at the end of every list.

But I'm jumping ahead. A month ago my grandmother passed and I found myself in my hometown with a duffel bag full of glittery dresses, army boots and coloured tights that I must have packed in a peyote trance. The crumpled clothes in the bag look like something a Care Bear would puke up after overindulging in too much sunshine and rainbows.   I went into town to try to look for something appropriate. I picked the first black dress I saw and went home. I didn't want to make a statement, I didn't  want anyone to admire my taste, I didn't want anyone to look at me.

So, for the last month or so I haven't really cared about anything fashion-y. Last week I bought a dress for my sister's 21st birthday party to find that I was no longer a small size 10 (6 to you US readers) and that I couldn't fit into my pre-picked party dress. That was what snapped me out of it. Until then I was wandering around feeling a bit sad, looking very sloppy and totally unsure of what to do.

There are dress guides for weddings, for dates, for job interviews. But no-one seems to set out a dress code for funerals anymore. It would be so much easier if all the hard stuff was done for us. All the worrying about whether you look respectful and proper (probably the only occasion that worries me in that way).  Mourning is so hard that worrying over a trivial thing like what to wear while doing so makes it all the harder. And if only there was a way of letting people know before they bound up to you in the street and breeze 'How are you, any news?', with the inevitable awkward, 'Well, my Nan died there last week'. And then the terrible silence...

L-R Plate of a child's mourning dress from an Ackermann's catalogue c. 1809,  Middle class family in mourning dress, 1913 (analysis here ), Queen Mary in Mourning Dress, 1913.  Jordan take note - homegirl liked her bling.

This is where I tie in with 'Isms..'. One of the fashion movements the book covers is called Ritualism - the strictly regimented system of mourning during the Victorian era. Women had to jump through a seemingly never-ending set of hoops to show that they were mourning properly and not to do so was a source of public shame. Books and women's magazines pored through the subject much in the manner of Trinny and Susannah, with less emphasis on Spanx and droopy boobs. One of the American books I found, The Art of Dressing Well (1870) is viewable in full online and is full of bon mots concerning heavy mourning, half mourning and non-fat, sorry, 'light' mourning.

Think of it like a school uniform - universally hated, but still useful in deflecting the dilemma of what to wear in what could be an emotionally fraught situation.  I don't think that we should go back to the days of mourning for women at the threat of losing their social respectability by any means (because that means so much in this day and age...).

I suppose it would just be nice to not have to tell people that you're mourning, not to feel like a shallow idiot when you can't decide what to wear, to have something to make you look ok and like you're holding it together for the first couple of weeks when all you really want to do is wear pajamas all day and watch The Jeremy Kyle Show.