We are not worthy

It would have been the 90th birthday today of The Goddess Who Walked Among Us, our Patron Saint Dame Elizabeth Taylor...

All hail.

No ordinary housewife

"My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked."

"You find out who your real friends are when you're involved in a scandal."

"It's not the having, it's the getting."

"I don't pretend to be an ordinary housewife."

It's our Patron Saint Dame Elizabeth Taylor's birthday.

All hail.

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor DBE (27th February 1932 – 23rd March 2011)

Unlikely conversations, #548 in a series...

Elsa Lanchester and Ruth McDevitt


Kim Novak and Vampira


Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin


Dolly Parton and Henry Kissinger


Joan Collins and Liz Taylor

...wouldn't you just love to have been a fly on the wall?

Fun spots?

Tina Turner


McGuire Sisters


Elizabeth Taylor


Jackie Kennedy

The great "leopardskin" debate continues.

One thing is for certain. Some people can take things a bit too far...





“There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.” - Lily Tomlin

He created the 70s

"Halston. Gucci. Fiorucci." Names indelibly associated with Studio 54 and the last, riotously decadent days of Disco; in particular, the first name - the man who made the scene so much of a magnet for the "beautiful people" - Liza, Liz, The Warhol-ites and the pop divas. Halston. So good they named him once.











"You're only as good as the people you dress."

One of the most successful fashion entrepreneurs in history, without his designs (jumpsuits as evening-wear, maxi and midi skirts, kaftans, flowing blouses, bibbity-bobbity hats - couture and off-the-peg), the 1970s would have looked very different. And without Halston's business (and his influential friends), it would be hard to imagine how certain New York night-spots would have survived.



Facts about Halston:

• He designed Jackie Kennedy's pill-box hat for her husband's presidential inauguration in 1961.
• So associated did his brand become with the fabric called Ultrasuede, that it was also used as the title of the biographical movie about Halston.
• His uniforms for Braniff International Airways staff revolutionised the "look" of the airline industry in the age of the "jet-set".
• In an extraordinary move, in 1984, he was fired from his own company (after his drug use began to affect his work) and lost the right to design and sell clothes under his own name
• Even during his final months travelling to and from hospital (he died with AIDS-related Kaposi's Sarcoma), he retained his flamboyance - he purchased a chauffeured $200,000 Rolls-Royce Corniche to transport him and his family around, and instructed them to auction the car after his death for AIDS research.

RIP

Roy Halston Frowick (23rd April 1932 – 26th March 1990)

It's snowing out there...

...keep warm, folks!

Thought for the day

The Rain
by William Henry (WH) Davies

I hear leaves drinking rain;
I hear rich leaves on top
Giving the poor beneath
Drop after drop;
'Tis a sweet noise to hear
These green leaves drinking near.

And when the Sun comes out,
After this Rain shall stop,
A wondrous Light will fill
Each dark, round drop;
I hope the Sun shines bright;
'Twill be a lovely sight.

Vulgarity, commonness and crass bad taste

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, photographed by Cecil Beaton at the Rothschilds' home, Chateau de Ferrières, near Paris in December 1971.

From The Guardian website:

Beaton wrote in his diary: "I have always loathed the Burtons for their vulgarity, commonness and crass bad taste, she combining the worst of US and English taste, he as butch and coarse as only a Welshman can be."

He said Taylor had craved compliments during the brief shoot. "She got none. I felt I must be professional and continued, but not without loathing at this monster... Round her neck was a velvet ribbon with the biggest diamond in the world pinned on it.

"On her fat, coarse hands more of the biggest diamonds and emeralds, her head a ridiculous mass of diamond necklaces."

Ungallantly, Beaton described Taylor's hair as "sausage curls", adding: "Alexandre, the hairdresser, had done his worst. And this was the world's biggest draw! In comparison everyone else looked ladylike."

Cecil Beaton was a bitch.

The photograph is expected to make £12,000 when it is auctioned on Tuesday 22nd May 2012 at Bloomsbury Auctions.

Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci...

From the BBC website:

"There was always a ton of people outside waiting to get in - people from all walks of life," says Myra Scheer, an early fan who later became Steve Rubell's assistant.

"Most never got in, but if you caught the eye of Steve or of (doorman) Marc Benecke suddenly a path opened up.

"Beyond the velvet rope was what I used to call the Corridor of Joy. It had ornate chandeliers and everybody there was screaming with joy that they got in. You could hear the pulsating music as you walked through and then you turned left and there was this dance floor. Everybody on that floor had the energy of being a radiant star."

Among them: Margaret Trudeau, Elton John, Marisa Berenson, Diane Von Furstenburg, Debbie Harry, Vladimir Horowitz, Jerry Hall, Margaux Hemingway, Brooke Shields, Ginger Rogers, Cher, Salvador Dali, Richard Gere, Divine, Ivana Trump, Calvin Klein, Amanda Lear, Halston, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Truman Capote, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Grace Jones, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Liza Minnelli, Gloria Swanson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Warhol and of course the ever-present Bianca Jagger...

New York's notorious Studio 54 opened its doors 35 years ago tonight.