Time Marches On

Happy March, and Happy Autumn to boot! Autumn is my favourite season. So many people are complaining that summer is over already, and it was not much of a summer as it was. “How can it be?” they say on Facebook. I have to resist the temptation to facetiously utter punning clichés, ‘time marches on’ etc.

I have turned over another page of the calendar already, and here is a ‘Forecast of Autumn Fashions’, from the September 1923 edition of British Vogue. The illustration is by Georges Lepape. The woman is decked from head to foot in pumpkin orange.

Is any other colour more autumnal? Burnt orange is one of my favourite colours to wear, although it was not always so. I remember a hideous Fanta orange dress I owned when I was in my late teens. It was the end of the 80s, and I bought it cheaply from a market stall. It had white lace inserts in the pockets. Ironically, the shape of the dress was 20s inspired, with a drop waist—but nothing could save it, least of all the wrong shade of orange.