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While I've been very busy lately with my research for my PhD and other projects, I've also been finding myself quite busy with some press of my own. My interest in the history of clothing, which has become by career, started in many ways with my interest in the vintage clothing I found in my grandmother's closet and at car boot sales. This has led me to accumulate quite a large collection, which brings me a huge amount of joy and which I love to share. I was filmed for StyleLikeU two years ago, but it was nice to do an update in my new apartment for both Tales of Endearment and Lucky magazine.
Natalie Joo's lovely blog, Tales of Endearment, is all about vintage fashion- a perfect fit for me!
My profile in Lucky Magazine, April 2012.
Seven days of my outfits (mainly from Paris fashion week) on Lucky Magazine's website.
Anyone who follows me on Twitter has probably realised that I love it as a medium for the transfer of knowledge and as a way of connecting with people. I've met some really intriguing, wonderful, creative people through it, including some very good friends in real life. One of the people I connected with on Twitter is Kay Montano, an amazing British make-up artist who, after a career working with every major magazine and campaign, is now seeking to redefine our limited notions of what is beauty. We met for tea and talk, and she asked to interview me for her blog, where she showcases beauty icons, gives helpful hints and also tries to open up the discussion around ideas of beauty (see her interview with Thandie Newton on hair as a great example).
My interview on Kay Montano's blog.
Aside from fashion, one of my most obvious interests is cats so it was great fun to be interviewed by Claire, of the blog Lola is Beauty, for her series Bloggers + Cats.
Misha, Laser and I.
It's officially the first day of spring! Let's celebrate it with a gorgeous editorial from 1959 full of perfect little dresses - and the most adorable lamb!
The time of the bare cotton pastoral is just a calendar page away, or, if you live South, right now. This season's cottons are all-out pretty, and very largely pink. They offer wide, starchy skirts and demure little tops. The young cotton pastorals (before you) put pink gingham checks to especially becoming purpose, and restore quilted pink flower prints to service. Result: the most beguiling country day-to-dark dresses.
A pink beach-club dress that is apropos at nearly every gathering from luncheon through dancing. Lightly printed over the pink are clover blossoms in full, white bloom, By Anne Fogarty, in quilted Everglaze cotton by Everfast. About $40. Fresh spring make-up by Milkmaid - "Cherry Pink" lipstick, "Violet Frost" EyeShadowStick.
A pink gingham check with a white organdie overband at the hem and neckline to provide a charming look of crispness, no matter how sultry the day. By Junior Accent. About $35. Pumps, Delman.
A further exploration in pink gingham checks. By Man'selle. In junior sizes. About $35. The hat by Richard Englander.
Spring opens a space in the lives of all of us for the gentle, pastoral cotton that suggests a clearly romantic spirit (it was not by chance that Irwin Shaw called his remarkable study of the susceptibility of the make "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses"). This spring cottons are more irresistible than ever.
One of the most delicious prints of Provence - a many-coloured length of field flowers - is here turned into a dress in every way proper to it. There are fragile little sleeves, and a devotedly tucked bodice. By Amerique, in Loomskill cotton lawn. In junior sizes. About $24. Hat, Richard Englander.
Two approaches to dotted Swiss - the one on the left is a pure shirtwaist (about $55); the one of the right (about $55) has a nice, shawl collar. Both by Malcolm Charles, in Stoffel cotton.
Photos by Francesco Scavullo for Harper's Bazaar, April 1959.
Chairs flank the top executive's work area, equipped with a mini-computer. Desk is design in book-matched mahongany with a lizard surface. Swivel chair is covered in rich leather.
High tech and soft tech combine in a rich and luxurious office suite to demonstrate the principle of motivating successful business relationships through calculated design
In any design job, furniture is as important as space and architecture. Yet often it is subordinated to the architectural design. In designer Angelo Donghia's belief, this is a great mistake. The primary consideration should be given to people and their comfort level. When people are comfortable, they relax and feel good. When this level of feeling is reached, they also look more attractive, and thus a state of confidence results that - in a business environment - helps to encourage achievements.
By following this philosophy, Donghia has built up his business over the past 20 years to a point where it now has six divisions involved in design services, textiles, wall coverings, accessories, home and contract furniture and showrooms, As president of such an empire, he must present a public face that is impressive and fitting. The suite shown here was developed as a model presidential office, reflecting his personal ideas of what an executive workplace should look like.
His interior design guideline is the private library at home, a quiet, serene atmosphere with comfortable seating, well-chosen artwork and subtle lighting. In this office, walls are wrapped in dark green plush fabric, and the ceiling with recessed lighting, is covered with gold-leaf tile. The streamlined executive desk is surfaced in lizard and contains a hidden technology drawer, with telephone and remote control for lighting, heating, cooling and operating windows and doors.
View from the executive desk toward a relaxed conference seating area, with tub chairs and matching sofa.
To streamline the desk top, telephone and other remote controls are built into the right-hand technology drawer.
To achieve a hushed atmosphere, walls and reception desk are covered in decibel-controlling acoustical fabrics.
Plan of the executive suite shows relationship among foyer, executive office and conference dining room.
Integral to the Donghia presidential office complex is the conference room. This space is multi-functional, serving as board room, communications center and executive dining facility. To achieve all these objectives required close collaboration between designer and communications experts.
The conference room reaches beyond the function of a room for projecting information from slide to film. It is equipped for city-to-city video-conferencing and for simultaneous showing of film and slides, as well as a live speaker. Equipment records the whole meeting on cassette or disc for future use, which saves executive travel time and expenses. A stand-alone roll-around console unit is used to control the technology. All the electronic equipment is built into one wall, and closed off when the conference room becomes a dining room.
Because people must sit for long hours in the board room, Donghia made a point of introducing curvilinear forms "to soften hard edges." Thus the conference table is boat shaped, and the walls of the room echo the curve of it. Chairs are especially comfortable , so they give the user a sense of floating. A sensor network system addressable on wall-switch panels controls the room temperature as well as the illumination level.
The boat-shaped table is designed in three sections, resting on steel cylinders. Pendant lights hang from the ceiling, to augment recessed spotlights. Comfortable swivel armchairs arecovered in red plush fabric. The walls of this neutral room are surfaced with a marblized paper placed horizontally to resemble the real material.
At dining times, an adjustment in the lighting dramatizes the table top, which becomes a stage for fine crystal, silverware and china, reflecting the designers regard for quality and good taste.
It's really no wonder that chief executive officers such as Pepsi-Co's Donald Kendall call on Angelo Donghia when executive spaces are required. What is subtly created here is a complex that looks decidedly modern and up to date but nevertheless feels traditional (a very important requirement in top corporations whore directors mostly feel comfortable with conservatism around them).
The Donghia style is also one of familiarity, based on a residential approach: "I see no reason why men and women should not enjoy the comfort and style of their homes when at work." Donghia cautions that we are not in the year 2001 - yet. So furniture does not need to look like it belongs in a spacecraft. He likes warm wood and soft textiles, adding that shape is the real story.
His original pieces designed today strive for a classic style that will look as good 20 years from now, will not date or place themselves in history easily. The Donghia touch may be easy to explain but harder to accomplish.
Conference room/communications center is equipped with a wall of electronic devices, including three video receiver monitors, dual monitoring unit, video disc player, video cassette receiver and player, portable color camera, cassette and reel-to-reel recorders.
Lunch for 14 set in the board room, which with versatile lighting, acoustic ceiling tiles, handsome textiles and carpeting becomes an elegant executive dining room. Silverware, china and crystal are carefully selected to emphasize the traditional-modern touch. For dining, doors close off the electronic communications center at one end of the room. The door covering matches the rest of the walls in this soft-edged curvilinear space.
Photos by Michael Dunne. Scanned from Designer' Workplaces by Beverly Russell, 1983.
Editorial by Bruce Laurence from Vogue UK, March 15, 1973.
The onset of spring always brings with it more showers than we would like... And it seems my eternal problem to never find a suitably attractive, preferably vintage, raincoat such as the ones seen in this editorial. Anyone have any ideas?
Photo by Glen Covalli from Playgirl, May 1977.
Madame Lou-Lou. Photo by Mikel Covey from Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, January/February 1978.
I can't wait to get my hands on the new book coming out on Wet, written by its founder, Leonard Koren. Making WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing charts the creation of this seminal California avant-garde magazine in the late 1970s, whose back issues are still some of the most intriguing and exciting magazines to look through (and the most heavily referenced).
Illustration by Loren Salazar from Playgirl, May 1977.
Photograph by Patrick Bertrand of a Courreges dress, from L'Officiel 635, 1977.
Betty Page by Bunny Yeager.
I can't remember which one of Bunny Yeager's books I scanned this out of- sorry!
Alexandre of Paris with models showcasing his hair creations. Photographed by Guelgan for L'Officiel 561-562, 1968.
Anita Ekberg in Esquire, November 1954.
Eve Arnold, Ladies' Room, the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
Wonderful photo of a Charles James' La Sirène evening dress- for me, as a fashion historian, there is nothing better than a photograph of the original wearer in a dress (except a video of them moving in it). James' gowns are technically so wondrous that it can be sometimes hard to imagine them ever existing in another realm that the museum platform. The intimacy of this photo shows the pulls and the gapes, the qualities a dress takes on only when it becomes one with a human body.
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