Viv

“It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity.”

“I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring. To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I've got books I need to read. More people should read books. It's the most concentrated experience you can have. You know, all those incredible geniuses concentrated their lifetimes' experiences in books. It's much better than chattering away to somebody who's never read anything and knows nothing at all.”

“Culture is necessary for human beings to evolve into better creatures.”

"If you wear clothes that don't suit you, you're a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better."

"I may be a rebel, but I am not an outsider."

"If in doubt, dress up."

Yet another icon has departed, on a mission to make Fabulon a more stylish place...

RIP, Dame Vivienne Westwood DBE RDI (8th April 1941 – 29th December 2022)

Festive baubles...

...Amanda LePore style!

Have a good one...

The dark time of the year

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year.
- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Montol, Brumalia, Lohri, Yalda, Koliada, Dongzhi, Mid-winter's Day, whatever you call it, the Winter Solstice - the longest night - is today.

Roll on Spring...

REAL Royalty

[click to enlarge]

HRH Princess Margaret and her "courtiers" on the island of Mustique.

An apposite musical moment

Klaus Nomi - Cold Song [Purcell]

What Power art thou,
Who from below,
Hast made me rise,
Unwillingly and slow,
From beds of everlasting snow?

See'st thou not how stiff,
And wondrous old,
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold.

I can scarcely move,
Or draw my breath,
I can scarcely move,
Or draw my breath.

Let me, let me, Let me,
let me, Freeze again...
Let me, let me, Freeze
again to death!

Indeed.

She had all the gifts

RIP, Dame Beryl Grey CH DBE FRSA (11th June 1927 – 10th December 2022), pioneering dancer, producer and director in the companies of English National Ballet, the Royal Ballet and London Festival Ballet.

On the Jukebox this Weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers

Clandestine encounters

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like today's birthday girl, Miss Alexandra Danilova!

Bolly, Stolly, sweetie, darling?

Good grief. I missed a significant cultural anniversary last weekend!

The first episode of Absolutely Fabulous, otherwise known as The Campest Programme Ever, appeared on our screens on 12th November 1992.

Happy 30th birthday, sweetie, darling!

Absolutely Fabulous - Best of Series 1

Ab Fab - Wine Tasting

An inpiration.

Peek-A-Boo

Another day, another centenary!

Sharing her celebration with a whole cornucopia of unconnected "names" such as our current King Charles III, Claude Monet, Louise Brooks, Letitia Dean, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Freddie Garrity, Barbara Hutton, Dick Powell, King William III, King Hussein of Jordan, Fanny Mendelssohn, Wendy Carlos, Astrid Lindgren, Michael Robbins, Aaron Copland, Russell Tovey, Condoleezza Rice, Paul McGann, Big Daddy, Michael Dobbs, and fellow centenarians Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the first BBC radio news broadcast...

...it's one hundred years today since the birth of the exotic Hollywood screen icon, the "Peek-A-Boo Girl", Miss Veronica Lake!

Facts:

• Her trademark "one-eye-draped" hairstyle was a (happy) accident on set for her first film They Wanted Wings.
• She was famously the model for "Jessica Rabbit" in the 1980s, and her image inspired many "femmes fatale" over the decades like Lizabeth Scott and (later) Kim Basinger.
• She had numerous affairs (many while she was still married), including with the likes of Howard Hughes, Aristotle Onassis and Marlon Brando.
• She didn't (ahem) get along with a number of her leading men, however: Joel McCrae refused ever to work with her again; she and Frederic March despised each other and fought throughout filming I Married a Witch; Eddie Bracken referred to her as "The Bitch". The esteemed Raymond Chandler called her a "Moron" ("Moronica Lake") during production of the film version of his The Blue Dahlia.
• Her hair may have become a fashion sensation, but during WWII she had to make a public broadcast warning women working in war munitions factories who had copied her style to tie their hair back to avoid it being trapped in machinery.
• Her high-flying career during the "Golden Age of Hollywood" didn't last; she went bankrupt at least once, was "rediscovered" working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, and tried her hand at television and on stage in both Broadway and the West End, but never regained her iconic status.

Hers was an archetypal rags-to-riches-to-rags-again tale of the perils of stardom - but by heavens! Her "look" is immortal, and for that we are grateful.

Veronica Lake (born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, 14th November 1922 – 7th July 1973).

[More Miss Lake here]

The pioneer

One hundred years ago today, the divine Miss Dorothy Dandridge - the first black woman to be nominated for a "Best Actress" Oscar - was born.

All hail.

Weekend Reading

Demons, spirits and faeries abound!

By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.

Happy Samhain - get those portals to the Otherworld open!

Gothic

The Hallowe'en Whitby Goth Weekend saw in the demise of British Summer Time in its usual spectacular fashion.

[click any pic to enlarge]