Blown Away

Celebrating the Roaring Twenties in a Special Series

A few years ago I came across an evocative image by Georges Lepape (1887-1971), a French illustrator working for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair and Vogue during the Belle Époque era at the turn of the twentieth century.

He is best remembered for his fashion illustrations of the Art Deco period, and more than a few depict wild atmospheric conditions, of which The Hurricane is one. It is not frightening as the name might imply, but rather suggests the winds of change that blow one in a new direction. One might say that the changes in women’s garments in the early twentieth century did blow in like a hurricane in fact – corsets and hobble skirts gave way to the easy movement of flapper fashions. 

While I have never experienced a fierce storm, I do enjoy being out on a windy day – I find it invigorating, and the sound of the wind in the trees exciting. Somehow the sound of the wind always suggests adventure to me, a bit like Vianne, the heroine of Joanne Harris’ book Chocolat, who is beckoned onto the road when the wind blows in a new direction.

Here then nearly a century later is my homage to Lepape’s 1915 picture L’Ouragan. Although his image was made in 1915, I have styled mine à la the 1920s – I deliberately waited until I cut my hair to create this picture. I am wearing a vintage 1970s dress (home-made from what I suspect is curtain material in the style of a flapper dress), a 1950s raspberry striped cloche, and a pair of Noughties ballerina heels.

The backdrop is an image of a storm coming in over Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay, viewed from Rosebud beach that I photographed last year.