Christmas Stars

These dreams of grand dresses come to you from French Vogue (date unknown), photographed by Dominique Isserman. The setting is the magnificent Château de Maisons-Laffitte.

I really like how the Christmas aspect is so pared back: just a few baubles and garlands of tinsel here and there. There is such a beautiful, cool mood to these images – a quiet elegance. It is that which I find more attractive than the gowns themselves. The only one I could ever see myself wearing (if I was tall and slim enough!) is the divine gold lamé Thirties style dress. But who could pass up Yves Saint Laurent?

I have always admired Isserman’s photographs – they have such a dreamy, poetic mood. That has much to do here with the ambient lighting, the gracious lines and open space of the interior, as well as the soft focus lens and grainy texture. They’re restful to contemplate after facing the bedlam of city Christmas shoppers. If only we all had a French château to retreat to!

Looking at these pictures now makes me want to go and watch La Double Vie de Veronique, one of my all-time favourite films, and visual poetry from the Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski. 

The Love Boat

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It’s a Seventies Vogue moment: skirts on a boat for that leggy windswept look – sweet and lovely by day, louche by night.

Prints are where it’s at for the daylight hours, all geometric checks and diagonal stripes. Don’t forget to pack a floppy hat and a scarf or two in contrasting prints. But black comes out for night: clingy jersey with plunging necklines and those pins once again bare.

“A short dress at night, the most glamorous way to look sexy, bare and leggy.” And capture the heart of a prince. Or three. 

Photographs: Ashenhurst, Australian Vogue, August 1973

A Frilling Story

This fashion story is all about customising the clothes in your wardrobe – by adding bows and frills. Dolly even gives us Simplicity pattern numbers. Bedazzler, begone! The illustations, made in the 1980s, nostalgically look back on the 1940s, not only in style, but in the ‘make do and mend’ ethos of the war era. They didn’t throw out unfashionable clothes then – they refurbished.

Before Jayson Brunsdon was a fashion designer, he was a fashion illustrator – I wonder if he came up with the concept of this editorial, or if he was briefed. I rediscovered these pages, torn from Dolly magazine’s special supplement Making It.* 

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I love these illustrations. They strongly remind me of the work of Carl Erickson and René Gruau, who undoubtedly must equally have inspired Brunsdon. I also remember my mum had a Croatian sewing book with coloured plates of 40s fashion illustrations so similar to these. I loved them and often would flip through the book – I’m so sad that this relic of my childhood has vanished. 

Brunsdon’s illustrations are so evocative of a bygone decade that our present obsession with all things quaint, and retro, has infused with glamour. His black lines are bold and decisive; the colours so playful that it is very easy to ignore the fact that the clothes depicted are of the brash 80s – except perhaps for the fact that the colours are so bright they could have come unmixed from a child’s paint palette. Yet if one came across these in a modern fashion magazine, they would not look out of place at all. Delightful!

*There is no publishing date printed in the magazine, but going by the reproduction of an INXS concert ticket printed along with a picture of the band, it is late 1986 or early 1987.

Enough to Tickle You Pink

(Detail) The sweetest little powder puff by Butler & Wilson, only £12.50 … in 1974.

Between the 70s theme of my last post, and reading in the latest issue of Australian Vogue that the 70s are back in fashion (again), I decided to go to the source: a modest pile of original Vogues of that glamorous decade that I have in my possession.

In 1974, British Vogue published two issues in September; I have the issue dated the 15th. There weren’t any ‘glamazonian’ fashion editorials, but these two beauty images shot by Norman Parkinson caught my fancy. I love their ethereal look, the pale styling, the classic 70s hairstyle on the blonde – centre parted and straight on top, curly on the bottom. And how about that bare breast, eh? Risqué, softly seductive, yet sweetly innocent.

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Butler & Wilson’s ‘ladylike powder puff’ with its porcelain head is adorable, a gorgeous piece to take pride of place on one’s dressing table. At £12.50 I’d totally snap that up. Let me do some quick calculations – or rather, punch in some figures on an online calculator … The equivalent today is £91.08, or in Australian dollars, $138.57! Woah!

That’s enough to make me blush. 

Photos: Norman Parkinson, British Vogue, September 15th, 1974

Stripes & Lights

I absolutely love these two photographs from the old Australian magazine, Follow me. They are such strong black and white images, capturing the light of a summer afternoon so beautifully, and the languorous mood that overtakes one in the heat. The striped zebra theme is cleverly echoed in the open slats of the venetian blinds. I even rather like that halterneck top and pants outfit. Aah, they make me want to sit back and relax.

Name of photographer unknown.