Out with the old...

...with Mae West!

...Anita Ekberg!

...Betty Grable!

...Ms Scarlet Clara Bow!

...and Ann Miller!

Happier New Year, dear reader!

Aventurier et iconoclaste

And so, farewell to the last of the truly great fashion designers of the post-War era, M Pierre Cardin - departed for Fabulon, where he will no doubt improve the decor and attire.

Always ahead of his time, his creations were futuristic, daring and, ultimately, wildly popular - it was his collarless jackets that made the Beatles' image so instantly recognisable, and all the premier fashionistas of the day flocked to wear his clothes. He premiered couture for men, as well as off-the-peg fashion lines, and was the first of his ilk to use his name as a brand for non-fashion ranges such as sunglasses, watches and perfume.

• Read my previous tribute to the great man

Repose en Paix, Pierre Cardin (born Pietro Costante Cardin, 2nd July 1922 – 29th December 2020)

Do I hear a Waltz?

Scandalous goings-on in the film Wonder Bar (1934).

Boys will be boys, indeed...

The woman who invented beauty

"I fell in love with beauty a long, long time ago, but what I wanted was to create beauty - not to be blinded by it."

"I've always thought that a woman owes it to herself to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity."

"American women had purple noses and grey lips and their faces were chalk white from terrible powder. I recognized that the United States could be my life's work."

"Work has been indeed my best beauty treatment. I believe in hard work. It keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and the spirit. It helps to keep a woman young."

"I have never had my face lifted. I prefer to have my spirits lifted. In my opinion, the effect is very nearly the same."

"Beauty is power. The greatest power of them all."

Facts:

• Born into a poor Jewish family in Krakow, Poland, she fled the arranged marriage her family had planned for her by emigrating - changing her name to Helena Rubinstein on her identification papers and wiping 10 years off her age in the process - and began her cosmetics empire in rural Australia.
• She expanded her horizons when she opened beauty salons in Mayfair, London (in 1908), Paris (in 1909) and eventually, in New York.
• In 1928, she sold her business to Lehman brothers for $7.3m - but when the stock market crashed a year later she bought it back for $1.5m, a business move that helped her become one of the richest and most famous women in the world.
• In 1941, when she was told she couldn’t buy an apartment in her New York block because of her Jewish heritage, she thwarted the anti-Semitic residents by buying the entire building.
• When she died aged 93, her fortune was estimated at more than $100m.

Helena Rubinstein (born Chaja Rubinstein, 25th December 1872 – 1st April 1965)

Look at winter with winter eyes

Winter Eyes
by Douglas Florian

Look at winter
With winter eyes
As smoke curls from rooftops
To clear cobalt skies.

Breathe in winter
Past winter nose:
The sweet scent of black birch
Where velvet moss grows.
Walk through winter
With winter feet
On crackling ice
Or sloshy wet sleet.

Look at winter
With winter eyes:
The rustling of oak leaves
As spring slowly nears.

Oh, how I love that last thought - for today is indeed the nadir of the year; the longest night - and everything from here on in will be getting lighter again...

Midwinter's Day aka the Winter Solstice.

On the Festering Season Jukebox at Dolores Delargo Towers

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like today's birthday girl, the remarkable Dame Gladys Cooper!

[...who shares her day with a bizarre range of mis-matched "names" including Betty Grable, sex god Brad Pitt, Dame Celia Johnson, Christina Aguilera, Fletcher Henderson, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Michael Moorcock, Rosemary Leach, Keith Richards, HH Munro aka Saki, Steven Spielberg, Paul Klee, Willy Brandt, Billie Eilish, Queen Christina of Sweden, Joseph Stalin, Charles Wesley, Ray Liotta and Sia...]