Pierrot and Columbina

"I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other."

"And then of a sudden I saw... a black Pierrette with her face painted white. She was fresh and charming, the only masked figure left and a bewitching apparition that I had never in the course of the night seen before. While in everyone else the late hour showed itself in flushed and heated faces, crushed dresses, limp collars and crumpled ruffs, the black Pierrette stood there fresh and neat with her white face beneath her mask. her costume had not a crease and not a hair was out of place. Her ruff and pointed cuffs were untouched. I rushed towards her, put my arms around her and drew her into the dance. Her perfumed ruff tickled my chin. Her hair brushed my cheek." Der Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse Pg. 199-200

Skirt suits and sherbet

I don't care what the weatherman says... I still have a Clueless influenced obsession with sherbet mohair and skirt-suits. Endless summer!

Grayson Perry en famille

I love this photo of Grayson Perry and his family. Especially his ballsy, style-icon wife, Philippa.

Fashion and Textile Museum - The Glamour of Bellville Sassoon

 

Tonight, I was lucky enough to be invited to the preview of of the new exhibition at Bermondsey Street's Fashion and Textile Museum; The Glamour of Bellville Sassoon.

Bellville Sassoon was the ultimate old-money couture house, catering to the 'debs and duchesses' of the British establishment (almost every dress exhibited seems to be borrowed from an owner with a title).  The clothes were designed to be supremely chic, but understated. Always in style, but not setting the style. These are dresses that do what dresses are meant to do; make the wearer look and feel like a princess - or whatever a princess wants to look and feel like. An empress?

Unsurprisingly, Bellville Sassoon had strong royal connections and a whole room of the exhibition is dedicated to outfits made for Diana, Princess of Wales and other members of the Royal Family. David Sassoon not only created stunning dresses for his clients but obviously built up an incredible rapport with them. One of the sweet things about the exhibition is the volume of thank-you letters and testimonials from happy customers

As usual, FTM delivered a fascinating and tight exhibition for the fashion insider and enthusiast alike. I recommend anyone with a passing interest in style make a beeline for Bermondsey Street and visit this very underrated museum.The exhibition kicks off at the end of the week, just before the Bermondsey Street Festival.

 

 

 

The Glamour of Bellville Sassoon - 20 September 2013 – 11 January 2014

Live review: Love This Giant

"Love This Giant developed like many a New York City-bred friendship. Both parties are kind of hazy about how it began, but after a couple of semi-chance encounters, David Byrne and Annie Clark, who records and performs as St. Vincent, embarked upon a creative dialogue that has flourished over the last three years." lovethisgiant.com

The Love This Giant show at Roundhouse a few weeks ago was a charming evening with music’s odd couple, a band and an eight-piece brass section.

When Annie Clark and David Byrne first released their collaboration Love This Giant over a year ago, the pairing seemed a bit, erm, random. Generations apart; her, a flash-in-the-pan hipster darling (albeit one I came to love) and him a legendary founding father of pop. In the year between them releasing their record and me finally getting to see them play it live, I finally ‘get it’. Their partnership seems natural and obvious now; they are even beginning to look like each other now that Annie has bleached her hair white.

At our show, almost at the end of their epic tour, Annie was shuffling around on her toes all evening like a ballerina in the Nutcracker. David roved with a radio mike and led the band in calisthenics. All the brass players not only got a plug for their own records, but a chance to sing a few lines. The partnerships worked so well that St Vincent songs and Talking Heads songs all blurred into one and sounded like Love This Giant songs.

I really hope we'll hear more from the two of them, but until then, I'm going to keep listening to their free EP, the geniusly named Brass Tactics.

Last of the summer outfits and Visions of the Universe

Shirt - TopShop via a charity shop, Jeans - Gap, Sunglasses - Ray-Ban

Sigh. Look how nice and sunny this photo from Saturday is. I hope this wasn't the last day of summer. Especially since the Bermondsey Street Festival isn't until the 21st September. It really needs to be good weather because Vauxhall  City Farm are coming and they are bringing an alpaca.

Star Trails, Blue Mountains © Ted Dobosz, 2009. Canon 40D DSLR camera with Tamron 17-mm lens at f/3.5

The photo of me was taken on a picnic in Greenwich Park after seeing the Visions of the Universe exhibition, where I rediscovered my childhood love of all things space.  Is 28 too old to start training to be an astronaut?

Things I learnt at Visions of the Universe:

• There is probably rainfall of small diamonds on Neptune and Uranaus.
• ‘Deep Space’ is everything beyond our solar system
• NASA and co. are not very good at naming space things. For example, there is a Crab Nebula, a Black Eye galaxy and the state-of-the art telescope currently being developed called the European Extremely Large Telescope. Orginal.
• Astronomers look at photographs in the negative as it is easier to see faint stars,
• The constellations in the Southern Hemisphere all have newer names (the Greeks couldn’t see them to name them).
• If you take a photo of the night sky from earth on a long enough exposure to see stars, you will just get a sky full of circles as the exposure track the earth’s rotation (like the photo above). Modern telescopes move with the rotation to take a sharp picture.

Live Review: Bjork - Biophilia - Alexandra Palace

Bjork’s final Biophilia show at Alexandra Palace last week celebrated life and the possibility of technology.

Wearing a grey, glossy dress that looked like an open oyster, a wig like mouldering candyfloss and a painted-on blue beard, Bjork performed the twenty-three song show in the round with two musicians and a choir of Icelandic girls. The stage set up and art matched the song perfectly, from the terrifying looking singing Tesla Coil to the moon that waxed and waned in time to the beat.

Ally Pally was packed full of fans. One older man in the front row was so determined to see the show that he kept having the bouncers escort him back to his spot every time he fainted. Eventually they got tired of this and took him away.

The show, which was being filmed for DVD, was hyper and faltering at the same time. Bjork was a ball of nervous perfectionist energy, repeating songs, apologising, being accidently shoved by her choir/girl gang and grooving to the percussion in her songs. When she came up to the front of the stage to sing to the crowd, you could see her twitching and biting her lips with convulsive effort. During one quiet song, the bars outside started recycling millions of glass bottles. I really hope she gave the management a good telling-off.

The sadness at the end of the Biophilia was palpable from all the performers but the rest of us have the DVD to look forward to and the knowledge that this spectacle was recorded for posterity. As the voiceover explained, Biophilia is a love of living things.

Pink purple glow

Secretaries, you deserve the best of everything.

'Tell me,' she said, leaning forward, 'how you met your wife.'
'At a party in Greenwich Village when we were both twenty four... She was a ballet dancer, or at least she was taking ballet lessons three hours a day, and I was working in an advertising agency. During the day I wore a grey flannel suit and at night and on the weekends, I used to hang around the Village."

The Best of Everything - Rona Jaffe

90s Fashion on film - Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion and Clueless

90s fashion is all over the place at the moment. You can't brush past a shelf in Topshop without having an avalanche of Juju jelly sandals fall on you. I'm in that awkward spot where I saw all these styles the first time round and was too young and awkward to wear them so I really feel like I have unfinished business with crop-tops, chunky platforms, mesh and big plastic rings. I still want the style of Cher Horowitz and Romy White, just as I did when I was 10 and trying to convince my mum to buy me clothes in Tammy Girl.

To preserve some dignity, I'm trying to scratch this itch by watching my favourite 90s style films instead of going out and blowing a load of money on chokers, over the knees socks and ying-yang emblazoned t-shirts.

Both Clueless and Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion were costume designed by Mona May, who seems like possibly the sweetest woman ever born:

"Color is my love, so I think the world is wearing too much black. I understand it—I have to wake up really early, and at five a.m. black is the easy choice. It’s one more step to go and pick something purple. But we all have hidden artists in us, and it’s fun to play with colors like they’re crayons." NYLON, 2008

Here are my favourite 90s outfits from her two greatest films. I'll let the likes of Rebecca do 90s style properly and resist the temptation to dig out my old jelly platforms... for the moment.

 

Oh Clueless. Oh, Romy and Michelle. Check out this blog for lots more pictures.