This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like today's birthday girl, the lovely coloratura soprano Lily Pons!

Facts about Lily:

• Born in Cannes, France, she began her long career playing the piano and singing for soldiers during WW1, before taking formal training as an opera singer.
• Between her engagement with the company in 1931 and her retirement in 1960, Mlle Pons was one of the New York Metropolitan Opera's most enduring sopranos, performing there more than 300 times.
• She was widely used in advertising, becoming the "face" for Lockheed airplanes, Knox gelatin and Libby’s tomato juice.
• For a while (until it became too much to handle) she had a pet ocelot.
• In 1955 Mlle Pons topped the bill for the first broadcast of the long-running TV series Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
• She was awarded the Croix de Lorraine and the Légion d’honneur by the Government of France.

And here is the lady herself with one of her favourite roles (she performed in this opera 96 times!)...

Lily Pons - Bell Song from Lakmé (Delibes)

Wow.

Expert put-downs, the Kappelhoff way

It's Doris Day again! All hail...

Many happy returns, Miss Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff (born 3rd April 1922) - she's 97, you know?!

It's a look

The estimable surrealist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, “a marginal figure in art history who was a raucous ‘proto-punk’ poet from whom Duchamp allegedly stole the concept for his urinal”.

Apparently.

[Needless to say, we have featured the bizarre Baroness as an "exhibit" here before...]

Sic Transit Gloria

Art Deco and Miss Swanson. Made for each other.

Gloria Swanson (born Gloria May Josephine Svensson, 27th March 1899 – 4th April 1983)

Sparkle, Honey!

...it's Miss Ross's 75th birthday today. All hail!

Diana Ernestine Earle Ross (born 26th March 1944)

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like today's birthday girl, the legendary ballerina Miss Ruth Page!

On the garden fair

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
[From The Sensitive Plant by Percy Bysshe Shelley]

It's the Vernal Equinox, dear reader, known in some quarters as "The first day of Spring".

From now on, the days get longer - Summer's just around the corner...