The BBC4 drama ‘We’ll Take Manhattan’ shows a young photographer David Bailey in 1962, who got commissioned (by fashion editor Lady Clare Rendlesham) to create a 14 page story for British Vogue in New York and the style had to be ‘young and fresh’. Bailey , as Jean always called David, insisted on using his girlfriend Jean Shrimpton as the model. Jean had a very clean, fresh look to her and was different to all other models working for Vogue. At the time almost everything was shot in  a studio and all followed a classic guideline of poses and looks. David Bailey, being passionate and stubborn about his work, changed all this by breaking the rules. He took offbeat, realistic poses against gritty backgrounds. This changed fashion forever and made David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton fashion icons.

Trailer ‘We’ll Take Manhattan’

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Jean Rosemary Shrimpton (born 7 November 1942) was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and brought up on a farm. She enrolled at Langham Secretarial College in London when she was 17. Director Cy Endfield suggested she attend the Lucy Clayton Charm Academy’s model course. In 1960, aged 17, she began modelling and later appeared on the covers of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair. During her career Jean Shrimpton was widely reported as ‘the world highest paid model’  and ‘the most famous model’. She was described as having ‘world’s most beautiful face’, was dubbed ‘The It Girl’  and ‘The Face of the ’60s’.

Jean contrasted with the aristocratic-looking models of the 1950s by representing the fresh, cute coltish look of the 1960s Swinging London. Breaking the popular mould of voluptuous figures with her long legs and slim figure. Jean (nicknamed ‘The Shrimp’, a name she hated. ‘Shrimps are horrible pink things that get their heads pulled off! ) was also known for her long hair with fringe, wide doe-eyes, long wispy eyelashes, arched brows and pouty lips.

Jean was once engaged to David Bailey. They met in 1960 at a photo shoot that Jean, who was still an unknown model, was working on with photographer Brian Duffy. Duffy told Bailey she was too posh for him, but Bailey was not discouraged.

Jean Shrimpton:”‘Bailey’ was how he introduced himself and that was all I ever called him.” Aged 18, Jean rapidly found herself entwined with the East End boy on the up, who was five years her elder. “We were instantly attracted to each other.” She broke off a relationship and Bailey ended his marriage so they could be together. “He was a larger-than-life character, and still is. There’s a force about him. He doesn’t give a damn about anything. But he’s shrewd, too. He made a lot of money out of me. I’m not bitter, but I’m irked. That’s all. Bailey was very important to me. I’m sure today’s models are a lot more switched-on than we were. Image rights didn’t exist back then. What happened – the creation of the fashion industry – just happened.”

Jean started to become known in the modelling world around the time she was dating Bailey. She has stated she owed Bailey her career. In turn she was Bailey’s muse and his photographs of her helped him rise to prominence in his early career. Yet she was never comfortable with the trappings of their success-when Bailey took her to trendy nightclubs, Jean would take her knitting along…

Bailey ones said of Jean: “She was magic. In a way she was the cheapest model in the world-you only needed to shoot half a roll of film and then you had it.”

Jean’s romance with Bailey did not last long, only 4 years. It was the heady, early days of the swinging 60s and the couple worked tirelessly together, but Jean left Bailey to begin a relationship with Terence Stamp. “Our paths first crossed when Bailey photographed us together for Vogue and then we met again at a wedding. I was aware of him because he was so good-looking. But it was Bailey who accidentally brought us together. Terry seemed ill at ease, self-conscious and standoffish, but Bailey talked to him, as he always does with people, and ended up inviting him to come with us to see my parents in Buckinghamshire later that day.”

But if Stamp’s looks captivated  Jean, his personality was less straightforward. The beautiful duo were soon an item – to Bailey’s dismay – but their three years together left Shrimpton puzzled. Certainly, there is no love lost now: “Terry has said that I was the love of his life, but he had a very strange way of showing it. We lived together in a flat in Mayfair, but he never gave me a set of keys; one day I walked into his room to talk to him and he simply turned his back on me, swivelling his chair to stare silently out of the window. That sort of thing was typical. He was very peculiar.”

Work, though, was good. By her mid-twenties she was known the world over and she’d also made a major, if unwitting, contribution to fashion when she was hired to present prizes for the Melbourne Cup in Australia. Jean’s dressmaker, Colin Rolfe, was given insufficient fabric, but pressed ahead regardless, making four outfits which were all cut just above the knee. The miniskirt was born – to the shock of conservative Australia at the time. (this is one of a few stories about how the miniskirt was born….)

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But for all the fame, the exotic travel and approaches from famous stars such as Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson – “they’re the kind who can’t help themselves, it’s in their nature, though Jack was more subtle than Warren” –Jean was not happy. She loathed the name “The Shrimp” and felt disenchanted with the fashion world. With hindsight, she said her true self only began to emerge in her next relationship, with photographer Jordan Kalfus, 12 years her senior, in New York. “I discovered museums, art and literature. It was an awakening. There was so much happening in American literature at the time. Mailer, Bellow, Burroughs, Ginsberg – they were all the rage.”

She began to read eagerly and bought fine art. Back in Britain a turbulent relationship with the anarchic poet Heathcote Williams was followed by another with writer Malcolm Richey, with whom she moved initially to Cornwall. By now, in her early thirties, Jean was only too pleased to forsake modelling completely. She opened an antiques shop in Marazion and took a series of intriguing black-and-white photographs of local Cornish characters. She has never exhibited the images and has no intention of doing so, but one was of Susan Clayton, then a waitress at the Abbey Hotel. After Jean met her husband, Michael Cox and became pregnant with their son, Thaddeus, she was told by Clayton that the Abbey might be up for sale.

“I jumped at it. If we’d had a survey, we wouldn’t have bought it and running it has been a labour of love, but it’s been my life for over 30 years.” She and Michael had their reception at the Abbey, a million miles from the fashion-world weddings of St James’s. “We had champagne with fish’n'chips, but the only guests were our two registry office witnesses.”

Jean Shrimpton loves the raw, wild beauty of the far west of Cornwall, but does she have any regrets about turning her back on the life she once led? “No, but I am a melancholy soul. I’m not sure contentment is obtainable and I find the banality of modern life terrifying. I sometimes feel I’m damaged goods. But Michael, Thaddeus and the Abbey transformed my life.”

Steven Meisel photographed Natalia Vodianova as Jean Shrimpton voor Vogue May 2009

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Jean Shrimpton : An Autobiography

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jean-Shrimpton-Autobiography-Unity-Hall/dp/0852238584

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Granny Takes a Trip (Granny’s) was a boutique in the 60ties through mid 70ties,  founded by Nigel Weymouth and his girlfriend Sheila Cohen. Nigel was/is a graphic designer, who was mostly responsable for the interior, originally decked out as a psychedelic New Orleans bordello complete with an old horn gramophone and exterior of the boutique. Sheila, who was a dedicated collector of vintage clothes, Victorian and oriental, was responsable for the garments which were sold in Granny’s together with John Pearse, an ex mod and former apprentice tailor at Hawes & Curtis on Savile Row.

The name of the boutique was giving away its policy – ‘Granny’ symbolized the influence of the past, and ‘Trip’ , a colourful world of bougeoing hippie movement and its drug of choice – LSD. Granny’s opened in February 1966 at 488 King’s Road, a previously unfashionable part of the road also revered to as the World’s End, in London. The trio originally started “simply because we think young people have got the money to spend but they want to see more style. So many boutiques are beginning to sell the same things. We can offer an exclusive thing to everyone, because we rarely find two dresses which are identical. Probably the next biggest reason was that we all wanted to work for ourselves.”

A videoclip for the 1967 single, Granny Takes a Trip by the Purple Gang.

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The garments sold in Granny’s were vintage clothes, twisted by John Pearse into the shapes preferred in the 60ties. They mended and cleaned all of their vintage fashions, using “a theatrical costume cleaner who cleans the things beautifully”, and then adapted other items which were handcut and beautifully made into brand new styles. The high prices at Granny’s were determined by the use of expensive fabrics Sheila and John were buying at Liberty fabrics and they were using the same outworkers as Savile Row tailors. As a result, shirts from Granny’s were prized at anything between 4 to 10 guineas. A floral jacket inspired by William Morris designs would set a buyer back an extortionate 15 guineas. Skinny trousers made out of velvet or satin (John: “They were sort of more foppish alternative to levi’s” ) would cost 6 guineas, and satin ties were priced at £1.10. However, the quality of the clothes was very good and John was putting a lot of emphasis on fine tailoring. Velvet suits were tightly fitting with tight buttoning. Double – breasted jackets were tailored in floral-printed fabrics.

One of the sales assistants, Johnny Moke remembers: “We used to cut up blouses and dresses and turn them into shirts or tops for men. What was great about Granny’s was that there were no boundaries. Anything went and they kept on changing. The effect of Granny’s clothes was foppish, flamboyant and decadent – a 1960′s reinvention on fin-de siecle dandyism.

Granny Takes a Trip quickly developed elite clientele. Nigel: ” The first people to sniff us out were the mixture of Chelsea gays and debutantes. Then pop stars started quickly coming after them. We had all these personalities coming through and groups like the Animals would have their photos taken outside”. The relaxed atmosphere was one of the attractions of Granny’s. Anybody who was rich enough to shop there – young upper middle class men, young aristocrats and pop stars enjoyed buying fancy clothes in the casual atmosphere of the boutique which epitomized Swinging London as a fashion epicentre in the 1960′s.

When the unique new designs became a major element of Pink Floyd’s shows (Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett notoriously carried his dirty clothes into the London boutique because he thought it was a dry-cleaners) at the UFO club their clientele soon expanded to include The Small Faces, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Rolling Stones and of course The Beatles. Nigel: “One morning we were sitting around cross-legged on the floor, passing a joint around and these two blokes came in. They looked around and said, ‘This is a nice place isn’t it?’ We looked up and it was John and Paul.”

But not only the clothes sold at Granny’s were revolutionary, the boutique also became known for its changing facade. In 1966 it featured giant portraits of Native American chiefs Low Dog and Kicking Bear. In 1967 the entire front was painted with a giant pop-art face of Jean Harlow and was later replaced by an actual 1948 Dodge saloon car which appeared to crash out from the window onto the forecourt.

Granny’s success, however was short-lived.When Granny started selling Afghan coats, there was a row between John and Sheila over the priorities of their business establishment. John did not like the increasingly hippy image of the shop: “My partners went more in that direction, but I was considered to be more urban creature(…) I never wore jeans (…) I was always more streamlined in my appearance. We may have been construed as being in the centre of hippydom, but we weren’t; what we did had a subtle difference”. Nigel, Sheila and John ended up selling the shop to manager Freddie Hornick in 1969.

Freddie brought in two New YorkerB, Gene Krell and Marty Breslau. They introduced a new, more dandified phase with rhinestones and applique’d velvet suits and stack-heeled boots.

In 1970 a branch was opened in New York and an outlet in Los Angeles. The London boutique closed in 1974 with the acquisition of the name by Byron Hector, who moved the premises along the King’s Road. It finally closed in 1979. The New York and Los Angeles also closed, mid-70ties.

Granny Takes a Trip became a legendary boutique that defined King’s Road of the 60′s. Original garments from Granny’s – especially from John Pearse-Sheila Cohen-Nigel Weymouth  era, are highly sought vintage items. In 2012 a Royal Mail stamp, commemorating contribution to British fashion by designers from Granny Takes a Trip along with other revolutionary fashion designers as Ossie Clark, Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood.

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John Pearse, Salman Rushdie & Paul Smith talk about Granny Takes a Trip

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(I found a lot of information about Granny Takes a Trip on the fantastic blog: http://www.dandyinaspic.blogspot.nl/   )

Anna Piaggi had a long relationship with Italian Vogue as a freelance fashion editor, starting in 1969 as reporter of trends and from 1988 as creator of her famous D.P.-Doppie Pagine (double pages), also revered to as Di Piaggi. Together with her husband, Alfa Castaldi, Anna set out each month to analyze an event, a happening, a garment, an accessory, a personality or a stylist, blending text and photographs in a unique and innovative way to create visual messages of rare effectiveness, admired by journalists all over the world. These double-page spreads were the subject for Fashion Algebra, published in 1998 to celebrate the first ten years in Vogue. The book brings together the best of the Vogue ‘Doppie Pagines’. Fashion Algebra is a very sought-after item,.

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 Anna Piaggi was in possession of sparkling intelligence and wit

In 1978, Anna described fashion to be like a ‘trance’, telling WWD (Women’s Wear Dailey): ”It’s a moment, an expression. My philosophy of fashion is humor, jokes and games, I make my own rules. I never pick up something and just trow it on my back like that. There’s a little bit of study and it’s always better if I think about what I’m going to wear the next day. And what is to be avoided at all costs is the twinset look, the total look.”

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Next week part 2, about her husband Alfa Castaldi, the Fashion-ology exhibition, Stephen Jones and Anna Piaggi’s influence on fashion of today….

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Anna Piaggi: ‘My nature has always been to be superficial’.

Manolo Blahnik dubbed her ‘The world’s last great authority on frocks’.

Anna Piaggi stated she had never been photogenic and, as she got older, she adopted Queen Elisabeth I’s technique to style her appearance, white face, cartoon features painted on like doll-cheeks and mouth, blue and silver waves on her cut-short hair (because it was better to support a small cockamamie hat).  She made the International Best Dressed List repeatedly and joined its hall of fame in 2007.

She combined history with eclecticism and electrified this with eccentricity. Her collages of garments were styled to tell a story, like her famous Doppie Pagine (D.P.) in Italian Vogue were collages of pictures which told a story.

She became a spectacle, an entertainment and both a commentary on as a remark to what was shown on the catwalks. Whatever it was, Anna had one already and had been wearing it for years. Predicting what would come next, through knowing what had come before, was her talent.

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Anna Piaggi and her husband Alfa Castaldi

Alfa Castaldi (1926-1995) has been one of the key figures in Italian fashion photography. He started his career in the ’50s as a reporter in post-war Milan where he worked in a close relationship with Ugo Mulas. The base was the ‘Bar Jamaica’ in Brera where all the artistic and literary intelligentsia of the city used to gather in a sort of bohemian lifestyle. Alfa was a sophisticated intellectual, coming out of an academic career in History of the Arts at the University of Florence. But becoming a critic didn’t appeal to him and soon he became fascinated by the editorial world and the new photographic reportage language. So he turned to photography and started to collaborate as a free-lance with the major italian magazines of the time.

Anna Piaggi met Alfa Castaldi while working as a translator for publishing house The Mondadori Group. They got married in 1962 in New York. Alfa charmed Anna into his bohemian word and encouraged her to work in fashion. Clothes were not her original interest.

In the late ‘60s Alfa opened a studio to work on portraits, still life and fashion in association with Anna. His range of collaborations spanned from the main italian fashion magazines to weekly news magazines until Condè Nast opened the italian Vogue edition in 1969 (Novità became Vogue Italia in 1966) of which Alfa became a regular contributor.He has published two books on the italian fashion scene: “Mass moda” with Adriana Mulassano in 1979 and “L’Italia della Moda” with Silvia Giacomoni in 1984.  He expanded into advertising, creating campaigns for the likes of Giorgio Armani, Laura Biagiotti, Fendi, Gianfranco Ferré, Karl Lagerfield and Ottavio and Rosita Missoni. His magazine coverage also expanded, with his work appearing in L’Uomo Vogue, Vanity, Vogue Bambini, Vogue Sposa, and, outside the Condé Nast Publications, Amica, Panorama and L’Espresso.

Anna Piaggi: ‘It has been a pleasant and moving experience, thanks to the quiet determination and the pure ‘being Aries’ of Paolo Castaldi (both of us were born under the sign of Aries – Paolo on March 21st, I on March 22nd). Fate and for me, the detached but deep sensation of feeling a mother-son bond.

I’m grateful to Alfa and Paolo for this reason, too. I’ve never had children and my story with Alfa was, in a certain sense, ‘monomaniac. We shared a deep affection and the love for our jobs: my admiration for Alfa’s culture had no limits and the same can be said for his ‘entity’ through the bond between us, which gave us a mutual freedom. The shots selected by Paolo express Alfa’s spirit at its best in the world of the Bar Jamaica. I cannot help but thank Paolo and the Bar Jamaica, where I met Alfa in the late 50′s. This was a world that really belonged to Alfa; thanks to his pictures, it still belongs to him today…’

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Anna Piaggi at work

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Anna Piaggi’s Fashion-ology exhibition

The Victoria & Albert museum displayed an exhibition on Anna Piaggi in 2006, named Fashion-ology, which attracted 25.00 visitors. All items were drawn from Anna’s personal archive, which was stored in Milan. fashion-ology highlighted her extensive collection of vintage couture and designer clothing including garments by Balenciaga, Fendi, Galliano and Poiret. Drawings, photographs, faxes, storyboards and Polaroids revealed Anna’s working style and a film brought to life her extraordinary home and archive.

Anna was reluctant to spell out what she did and only very rarely showed her methodological hand. The –ology suffix which transformed the word fashion in the title was an attempt to capture her world of contradictions, her illogical logic as she called it, as well as revealed systems of frivolity, patterns and angles in her work, her algebra of intuition.

The exhibition also celebrated Anna’s love of fashion illustration, drawings by Karl Lagerfeld of her inimitable style, the dramatic spreads for Vanity magazine by Antonio Lopez (see my posts on Antonio Lopez), and a specially commissioned 3D tableau by Richard Gray, the British illustrator who for years contributed to her pages. Luca Stoppini, art director of Italian Vogue and the designer of her Doppie Pagine spreads, had together with Anna created a dramatic work especially for the exhibition. The presence of collaborators showed her loyalty and explained the thirteen ‘favourite’ outfits in the final section, created by the designers she promoted at the beginning of her career. They were displayed on a final A, painted in the bright red used by Ettore Sottsass for the 1969 Olivetti typewriter which Anna Piaggi used daily – and of course the red of her lipstick.

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Anna Piaggi and milliner Stephen Jones

‘Stephen Jones is the maker of the most beautiful hats in the world’ : Anna Piaggi once said.

She was the muse of the British milliner and one of his most loyal fans. She suggested the title Stephen Jones & The Accent of Fashion, referring to the unique accent Stephen Jones brings in every new collaboration with designers.

For the exhibition  and accompanying catalogue, Anna Piaggi, paid homage to Stephen Jones in the form of a photo collage, especially designed for the exhibition. Together with Jones, Brado Fabiani and Luca Stoppini, she created a series of images of her own collection of Stephen Jones hats, in the familiar environment of her apartment in Milan.

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Marc Jacobs winter 2012 inspired by Anna Piaggi and Lynn Yeager

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News Flashes

On Facebook it caused a worldwide negative stir, but Karl Lagerfeld declared: “Paris needs some new things, some stimulation….. I love the idea. I think it’s interesting and it’s important. Something fresh was needed.”, after Hedi Slimane (just appointed new fashion director at YSL  in 2012) decided the company name Yves Saint Laurent would change into Saint Laurent Paris.

Years before (November 2000) Karl Lagerfeld decided to lose weight in order that he could adopt Hedi Slimane’s new skinny silhouette. “Until then, I had got along fine with my excess weight and I had no health problems, or – which would be worse – emotional problems, but I suddenly wanted to wear clothes designed by Hedi Slimane, who now creates the Dior Homme collections,” Karl told the Telegraph. “But these fashions, modelled by very, very slim boys, required me to lose at least six of my 16 stone.” He lost more than 90 lbs over the course of the year.

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Fashion Biography: Dior, Yves saint Laurent & Photography

Hedi Slimane  ((French pronunciation: ​[eˈdi sliˈman]), born in Paris on 5 July 1968, learned the art of photography before he even reached his teens and began making his own clothes at age 16. He studied History at the Ecole du Louvre, before he began working with fashion consultant Jean-Jacques Picart in 1992 on an exhibition celebrating the centenary of Louis Vuitton’s iconic monogram.

In January 2001 Hedi presents his first Dior Homme collection. Karl Lagerfeld documents the scene backstage with a camera. Yves Saint Laurent himself attends Hedi’s show, leading a standing ovation, but he skips Tom Ford’s debut collection for his namesake label…. And Hedi headed up the launch of Dior Homme’s first fragrance under his creative control – named Higher. He designs the packaging and works with Richard Avedon on the advertising campaign to ensure all elements tallied with his new vision for the Dior man..

In 2002, Hedi Slimane became the first menswear designer to be named the CFDA International Designer of the year, presented by Hedi Slimane  fan David Bowie.

Hedi Slimane’s inspiring online photographic blog, The Diary, is launched in 2006 – featuring his pictures of unknown cool kids as well as some of the music world’s biggest stars.  

http://www.hedislimane.com/

In the summer of 2006 Hedi chose not renew his contract at Dior Homme after negotiations with the French house surrounding his eponymous label broke down (LVMH is said to refuse to grant the designer enough autonomy). Dior proposed to fund Hedi Slimane’s own collections but the designer was reportedly reluctant to lose control of his name. Dior announces that Hedi will be replaced by Kris Van Assche, his former assistant. Hedi moves to Los Angeles to pursue photography.

In March 2011, following John Galliano’s dismissal from Christian Dior, Hedi is linked with the job of new Dior creative director. But Hedi never talked about – or even implied- to go back to work at Christian Dior, or any other luxury house in particular. He did publish Anthology of a Decade, a book in four volumes about the past ten years in the four cities – Paris, Berlin, London, and LA – where he had spent most time. Also an exhibit of photographs, “California Song,” debuts at Los Angeles’s Museum of
Contemporary Art.

In early 2012, Hedi is again linked with two of his former employers – Christian Dior  and Yves Saint Laurent – both of whom were seeking a new creative director following the departures of Galliano and Stefano Pilati. In March Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, parent company of Yves Saint Laurent, announces that Hedi Slimane will replace Stefano Pilati as creative director. The label’s design studio will be relocated from Paris to Los Angeles, Hedi’s adopted city.  And in June Yves Saint Laurent announces that it will be renamed Saint Laurent Paris, sparking a media furor and protests from critics and fashion bloggers; Hedi insists that this rebranding will merely return YSL to its 1966 identity, when the Saint Laurent Rive Gauche ready-to-wear line was launched.

Hedi Slimane’s first show for Saint Laurent, Paris   S/S 2013

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In the lead-up to Hedi’s first women’s RTW runway presentation for Saint Laurent Paris in October, the house issues a slew of instructions and rules to the press, sparking media chatter about Slimane’s supposedly controlling nature. He shows his first full womenswear collection for Saint Laurent Paris, which references Saint Laurent’s bohemian influences in the 1970s. According to the fashion press Hedi failed to deliver the visceral, game-changing act of rebellion which the industry expected from this most mythic of contemporary fashion designers. The 1970s haute-groupie looked nostalgic and familiar, rather than agenda-setting or challenging.  The reviews are mixed.

Pre Fall collection Saint Laurent, Paris   2013

And in March 2013, Hedi’s second collection for Saint Laurent Paris is inspired by the grunge period, Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. The disconnect with the Saint Laurent customer seems at times alarmingly wide. In California, where Hedi lives and to where he has moved the design studio, nineties grunge is a deeply felt part of everyday folklore; but in Paris, it is an abstract concept. And the grunge roleplay did not provide much in the way of roles for accessories. There were almost no handbags in this collection – this girl, with her unwashed hair and kohled eyes and fishnets, has no yen for an expensive handbag. Yet the YSL woman, surely, loves her handbag. This was a second act by Slimane which leaves the stage intriguingly poised for the next.

Saint Laurent, Paris grunge fashion show  A/W 2013

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Next week more about Hedi Slimane‘s photography

 “I love, love, love fashion so much, that’s why I became a model in the first place.”

Short Biography

 Super Linda: W magazine Dec ’12, by Steven Klein

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Linda Evangelista by Mario Testino for V Magazine, Fall ’06

Linda Evangelista as Katharine Hepburn, photographed by Steven meisel

Love Magazine, s/s 2012

The Misfits, Photographers: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Stylist: Katie Grand

(Linda Evangelista has modelled for more than 300 magazine covers)

This bikini made me a success.”

 Ursula Andress

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The History of the Bikini

The history of the bikini begins far before the official introduction of the bikini swimsuit in the summer of 1946. Some historians believe that the bikini may have been one of the first public swimming costumes in existence. Drawing evidence from 300 A.D. Roman mosaics, historians point to the bikini as the swimsuit of choice for ancient Roman women. The history of the bikini, however, may begin nearly 2000 years sooner than even ancient Rome! Minoan wall paintings from approximately 1600 B.C. also depict women wearing the seemingly quite popular two-piece bathing costume.

The official history of the bikini, under that name, begins in the summer of 1946, just one year after the tumultuous end of World War II. During that summer, as France was seeking to recover from the dreadful effects of the war, two French designers almost simultaneously created and marketed the bikini swimsuit. Barely leading the charge, Jacques Heim, a fashion designer and beach shop owner in the French resort town of Cannes, introduced his swimsuit creation, the “Atome,” early in the summer of 1946. The swimsuit was named the Atome because of its miniscule size (as compared to the then smallest known particle of matter, the atom). Heim intended to sell his swimsuit in his beach shop. To drum up business and increase awareness of the new swimsuit, Heim sent skywriters high above the Cannes sky, proclaiming the new Atome to be “the world’s smallest bathing suit.”

Sadly for Jacques Heim, another French fashion designer was also hard at work creating a remarkably similar swimsuit in the summer of 1946. Just three weeks after Heim began marketing his swimsuit, Louis Reard, a mechanical engineer who had decided to dabble in swimsuit design, sent out skywriters over the French Riviera. The message these skywriters carried was simple but powerful marketing: “Bikini—smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world.” Perhaps due to Reard’s obvious marketing skills or a simple turn of fate, the name bikini became the official tag for the two-piece swimsuit.

The bikini made its first proper introduction to the world of fashion design on July 5, 1946, as it is was worn and displayed at a Paris fashion show by French model Micheline Bernardini. Reaction to the bikini was immediate and explosive. As one American correspondent put it (in typical Texan style), “All of a sudden, a blond named Micheline Bernardini ambles out in what any dern (sic) fool could see was the smallest bathing in the world, including West Texas. Why folks, that suit was so small that…” Any number of phrases could complete this statement and would adequately describe the male reaction to the bikini. Needless to say, most of those who viewed the new swimsuit were equally shocked and titillated by its minimalist style.

The bikini began to be marketed and sold in the United States just one year after its introduction in France. Reaction to the swimsuit was great, but sales were initially quite slow. Men and women alike assumed that the suit was simply too bare and scandalous for conservative American women to don in public. American women did indeed approach the swimsuit quite  cautiously until the revolutionary decade of the 1960s, in which bikini sales soared tremendously.

The bikini has now become such an entrenched part of swimsuit design that it is a wonder the modern swimsuit is only 60 years old. True to its explosive nature, the bikini has inspired even more shocking innovations in swimsuit design, including the short-lived monokini and the immensely popular thong bikini. It would be interesting to learn if Louis Reard has the foresight to
know of the far-reaching implications of the scanty two pieces of cloth that comprised the original bikini.

The word bikini has rather an interesting etymology. Unlike the word swimsuit, which is entirely functional and descriptive in its purpose, the word bikini implies much more about the bikini’s history than it does the bikini’s purpose.

Most scholars assume that the bikini swimsuit was named after the famous Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. While it may seem strange for the birthplace of the actual bikini swimsuit to be in France and the birthplace of the name bikini to be in the South Pacific, these two areas of the world actually had quite a bit in common during the historical time period of the introduction of the bikini.

When the bikini was introduced to the world in 1946, World War II had just ended the spring before, and the world was still rollicking from the horrendous nature of that war. After detonating the controversial atomic bomb on two Japanese cities to end the Pacific war, the United States was setting off further test bombs on the Marshall Islands during that same summer. Needless to say, the destructive power of the atomic bomb was still quite a shock to people around the world. While Jacques Heim and Louis Reard were simultaneously inventing and marketing their own versions of the bikini swimsuit, people all over the world were marveling at the awesome power of the atomic bomb.

No one knows for sure whether Louis Reard was inspired enough by the atomic bomb detonations in the Bikini Atoll to christen his swimsuit the bikini or if he chose the name at random. Whatever the reason, the name bikini stuck as the official title of the midriff-baring, two-piece swimsuit. Many etymologists have assumed that Reard believed his swimsuit creation would create a shock equal in its reverberation to that of the atomic bomb (as it proved to do in the following years). The term bikini has now become so lodged in the vocabulary of swimsuits that several new types of swimsuits have spawned from it, including the bandini, tankini, camikini, monokini and burkini.

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“A bikini is a thoughtless act.”

Esther Williams

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Modern Swimwear

Vogue Italia Swimwear 2013 by Steven Meisel, model Kristen McMenamy

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most information for this post can be found on: http://www.everythingbikini.com/

February 14, 2006 a photograph of a pond taken by Edward Steichen sold for more than $2.9 million, easily setting a world record for the highest amount a photograph has sold for at auction, Sotheby’s said (today this record has been broken a few times). The photograph, titled ”The Pond-Moonlight” and taken in Mamaroneck, Westchester County in 1904.

There are only three prints which were made under Steichen’s supervision, and are a great example of a rare vintage photograph by an artist who had an influence on later 20th-century photographers. Steichen’s early painterly photographs, possibly naive to our image-soaked modern eyes, helped establish photography as an art form.

The Pond-Moonlight 

A few days ago I went to an exhibition with photographs by Edward Steichen and realised I recognized so many of his pictures, but knew nothing of the man himself. Reading about his tumultuous life, I got fascinated with this multi talent.

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Edward Steichen was born in Luxembourg in 1879, migrated with his parents to the United States only two years later, eventually settling in Milwaukee. In his mid-teens be became an apprentice lithographer and took up photography as a hobby. But his first love was painting and it was painting that inspired him to travel to Paris in 1900. Years later Steichen destroyed the canvasses in his possession, instead he learned to achieve Impressionist effects in his photographs, by blurring his lenses with petroleum jelly or manipulating his negatives and prints in the darkroom.

“ If it looked like a painting, it was art”.

(the photographer struggled to gain the recognition as an artist)

Self Portraits

Steichen with his wife Clara Smith   .

Steichen’s pictorialist period ended in 1917, when he joined the United States Army and created an aerial photography unit in northern France to gather intelligence about artillery positions and troop movements behind enemy lines. And after the war, Steichen’s lifelong interest in horticulture resulted in near-abstract images of flowers, plants and insects.

Then he went through a bad and expensive divorce. By 1922, when Steichen was 43, he was undergoing what we now call a midlife crisis. He had serious misgivings about his talent as a painter and told fellow photographer Paul Strand that he was sick and tired of being poor. He needed something to renew his energies and a means of making his alimony and child-support payments.

Flowers

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A crucial change happened in 1923, when Condé Nast offered him a job as chief photographer for Vanity Fair, which meant essentially house portraitist, but regular fashion work for Vogue was also part of the deal, following Baron Adolphe de Meyer, who was fashion photography’s first star. Some of his pears felt like Steichen was selling out to commercialism.

Steichen’s portraits for Vanity Fair brought him new fame. In part because of the status of celebrity subjects as Gloria Swanson and an incredibly handsome Gary Cooper. But on his Vogue assignments Steichen produced pictures as extremely careful and precise  as any painting by Gainsborough or Sargent—even though he needed to fill page after page, month after month.

Gloria SwansonGary Cooper

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Steichen’s corner-to-corner attentiveness, coupled with his painterly training, allowed him to make fashion pictures that ranged in style from classic 19th-century illustrations to Art Nouveau and Art Deco. “He was designing with his camera and after starting out as a [soft-focus] pictorialist, he brought sharp focus to bear and had a tremendous effect on the field.”

Typical of his work is a 1933 picture of a model wearing a patterned dress by a designer named Cheney. Steichen poses her in front of a two-tone background covered with calligraphic curves that echo the dress, then adds a white hat, scarf and gloves, a bentwood chair and tulips—all of which make a composition reminiscent of a Matisse painting. But he also used movie conventions to make even studio photographs—which are by definition artificial—appear to be life at its most enviable. If two women and a man sat at a well-appointed dinner table, Steichen made sure that part of another table, set with equal lavishness, appeared behind them, turning the studio into a fine restaurant in which the black dresses and tuxedo found their proper context.  Matchsticks and matchboxes study for fabric Piano of Steichen’s own design, one of his favorite props .

Astonishing is a pattern of matchsticks and matchboxes he photographed as a study for a fabric (silk) design. And his work as a designer appears in his Condé Nast work in the form of a piano of his own design he favored as a prop.

In 1937 he ended his contract with Condé Nast and devoted his time to raising Delphiniums (common name “larkspur“). He  became an accomplished gardener in France. During WWII he put on the uniform of a Navy officer and never returned to photographing clothes, though he kept taking pictures untill his death in 1973 at the age of 93.

Portraits

Marlene Dietrich Louise BrooksMary HeberdenCarlotta MontereyAnna May WongAnna May WongGreta Garbo

Pola Negri

Katharine Hepburn

Lillian Gish

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Edward Steichen was recognized in his lifetime as one of the great photographers of the 20th century. 

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Fashion

Steichen had the instinct of a communicator who was supremely confident in his eye as an artist. And if he was criticized for using art to sell clothes and magazines, he saw no reason to apologize. ”I don’t know any form of art that isn’t or hasn’t been commercial,” Steichen said in old age. After all, he added with no small immodesty, Michelangelo also liked to be paid well for his work.

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(information for this post comes from the Smithsonian magazine, article by Owen Edwards)

I found this beautiful Christian Dior dress suit about 15 years ago in a second-hand shop (that’s how vintage shops were called at the time). The place belonged to an ex-girlfriend of my neighbour and he advised me to walk in there once in a while, because between all the regular second-hand stock, sometimes real treasures could be found. That’s how I came to know of the shop, which was situated in a neighbourhood you would normally never look for extraordinary second-hand finds.

I got to now the owner, who one day tipped me, a wardrobe of an old lady would arrive and probably it contained some great finds. Being a collector of vintage clothes, shoes and handbags,  I got really excited with the prospect.

That day I walked in and immediately spotted the Christian Dior dress suit, which was hanging behind the counter. I didn’t want to seem to eager, so I walked around the shop, looking for other beautiful things, but nothing could beat the Dior suit. I went to the owner and informed about the price of the suit, but of course she already had noticed I my excitement ( I am the worst actor in the world) about the suit and had upgraded the price to a number she had never asked for a garment in her shop before. But I had fallen in love with the suit, which was made out from  black bouclé fabric and didn’t even try to negotiate about the price.

That is how I got to own the suit and for all these years I have taken good care of it. Because Christian Dior was the first one to number his garments, I knew I could find out more about the sui;, the year it was made (somewhere in the 1940ties?) and maybe even if it was made to order for a certain person. I didn’t do anything about this, till about a month ago. I emailed to Dior Paris about the suit and I was advised to photograph it from every side and send these pictures, together with a letter with all possible information about it, to Dior Heritage.

This week I got an email from Dior Heritage, to thank me for the photographs  and if I was willing to consider selling the suit to Dior. I haven’t thought about selling it before, but the idea of the suit returning to Dior after all these years seems very appealing to me, even romantic……

I have been able to study the suit and I want to share the pictures, so others can also see how it was made.

The label in the back of the jacket. The number in the label is quiet faded:  30442

Top front of the jacket with close look on the finishing work of the collar.

The jacket has a ’fake’ bow belt, which closes with a hook-and-eye underneath the bow

The jacket open showing the full front of the dress, with beads and sequences on the top

Close-up beads and sequences work

Top front of the dress

 Back of the dress, which shows the dress looks like a two-piece, but it is one piece!

The dress inside-out. the lining of the top is made from silk fabric

The dress has two zippers in the back; one trough the silk lining+skirt and one in the beaded top which can open completely from top to bottom and has an extra hook-and-eye to keep it perfectly closed.

The bottom of the inside out dress, with extra wide seams (in case it has be be made bigger)

The label inside the dress

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Short Biography

Among the 80s and 90s top models, the Dutch model Marpessa plays a particular role, thanks to her extrovert personality and her unusual beauty If it is true that the name of a person holds part of his destiny, then to be called Marpessa, like the nymph disputed between the god Apollo and the warrior Idas, or like the Afro-American actress turned by Marcel Camus into the carioca Eurydice of the Black Orpheus, means having an aura of beauty that is almost mythic. This is the case of Marpessa Hennink, which entered the Olympus of the top models between the middle 80s and the early 90s. She was born in Amsterdam from Dutch parents, and her father had origins from Suriname; at 16 years old she decided to begin her career as a model. Her strong will and her daredevil personality, that mirrored her unique way of walking, don’t let her give up when Eileen Ford, pioneer of the model management that passed by the Dutch city for some castings, rejects her.

Before there was Cindy and Christy and Naomi – and for a while, during – there was Marpessa. An olive-eyed, gravel-voiced Amsterdammer whose mixed-race lineage left her feeling an outsider among her strapping, fair classmates but also made her endlessly versatile for fashion shoots, and one of the great catwalk prowlers. “Modelling made me so much happier about myself. Before that, I was like a black sheep and then all of a sudden in Milan it was ‘Ooh bella’.” For a time, she was ubiquitous.

Then, in 1993, she bowed out. “Grunge killed it for me,” she says, waving her cigarette as if to brush away a pesky fly. “I wanted to be in fashion to be beautiful and elegant, not to walk around looking like a junkie.

“ You can feel her agent’s anguish even now – walking away just as the big money began to cascade down the model chain. “Don’t worry, I made plenty,” she cackles.

I get the impression she made plenty more “in retirement” in Ibiza, where she had her daughter Ariel, now 10, and established an idyllic-sounding life of haute hippiedom and lucrative property development.

Doing up homes for affluent would-be bohos is sweet revenge for a model who for 12 years never had time to unpack, let alone hang a picture. Her life seems to have been a constant process of balancing and amendments. “My mum was quite a hippie and into sewing things and studying homoeopathy – and this was Holland in the Seventies, we weren’t exactly at the vanguard of fashion. So when I got to Paris I really went for it, clothes-wise.

“ She reckons she was the first model to dress the part off duty. Not that they were ever really off. By the late Eighties the supermodel culture was fomenting nicely; theirs was the fame that only requires a first name. She and Linda (Evangelista) were fashion-obsessed, trotting around in their Alaïa leggings and Chanel jackets. “We wanted to look as good off the catwalk as we did on. Before us models didn’t dress nicely at all,” she reports disapprovingly. “It’s not supporting the business is it? I won’t mention names but some, especially the American girls, wore the ugliest cotton knickers even to their fittings.

“ Marpessa, for the record, wore La Perla and Hermès. “I invented the It bag,” she laughs. She almost had an Hermès bag named after her – there was a collaboration in the offing but Ibiza got in the way.

She is an intriguing contradiction of laid-back and fastidious. But so is her parentage: her mother, the world’s “strictest hippie”, her father, a tailor “who used to go mad if he saw me up a ladder paint-stripping a wall in a Chanel jacket”.

Which would have been quite likely. She has around 17, at least two couture. She had “a particular relationship with Karl” when she was modelling. She doesn’t mean anything romantic, unless you count the creative connection that flourished between the big models of the Eighties and Nineties and the designers. She was in at the beginning, when Versace escalated the fee wars by paying models $50,000 to do one show and Dolce & Gabbana paid the models in clothes. “Models had much more input then than now,” she says. “The designers would listen to what we had to say during the fittings and sometimes they’d change the clothes because of it.” And sometimes they wouldn’t. “Then you’d have to wear something hideous on the catwalk and just pretend it was fabulous.

“ Apart from her hair, which she says she can never get right herself, she’s abnormally low-maintenance – no exercise, no special beauty tips, apart from total sunblock 364 days a year and one intriguing exercise she shows me to lift your boobs (smile downwards, flex your cheeks upwards, ladies, and feel the burn). She’s a compelling argument for not messing around with injectibles. In Ibiza she floated around in sun dresses (by her friend Yvonne Sporre who also decamped to the island) and lots of antique gold jewellery.

She’s wonderful at making things look effortless and as if they don’t matter very much – it’s the Chanel jacket-up-a-ladder philosophy. Secretly I think she worked quite hard in Ibiza, buying and selling real estate, as she calls it, engaging in the odd spot of modelling (she’s been in Vogue more this year than at any other time in her career) and ensuring friends like Valentino and Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana had a good time whenever they came to visit.

And then, last year, when Dolce & Gabbana launched its Alta Moda (haute couture) line, it offered her a job in Milan. When I ask her title she looks at me pityingly. “We don’t have titles.” If they did, hers would be something like “Person Who Takes Care Of Clients And Makes Wearing Alta Moda Look Easy”. Because amazingly, wearing lace dresses worth tens of thousands of pounds without looking like a museum piece can be quite tricky. So can those clients, even though she diplomatically insists they’re a breeze. Perhaps they’re simply in awe.

(By Lisa Armstrong | 06 August 2013)

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG10224775/Lessons-from-the-Stylish-Marpessa-Hennink.html

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Collaboration with Ferdinando Scianna and Dolce & Gabbana

The long collaboration with Magnum photographer Ferdinando Scianna, with whom she shot the first D&G catalogues and campaigns and various editorial spreads, resulted in the publication of the book Marpessa, in 1993.

The first time Ferdinando Scianna has seen the top-model Marpessa, it was in photography, a small photography issued from the collection fall-winter 87, showed by the two italian designers Dolce & Gabbana. They asked him to work for them. Scianna knew nothing about fashion. It was his first experience. Like Scianna, Domenico Dolce was born in Sicilia. And for this collection, the clothes were inspired by Sicilia. As a photographer, Scianna was looking for the virtue of his earlier books on Sicilia to shoot Marpessa. The book surpasses the classic definition of fashion photographs. It’s simply like an sensual italian movie in black & white, as a long time ago…

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Young Dolce & Gabbana waiting in a car during the photo shoot on Sicilia

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Marpessa-R%C3%A9cit-Ferdinando-Scianna/dp/2859491503

(all pictures above by Ferdinando Scianna)

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DOLCE AND GABBANA ALTA MODA

April 27, 2013

Who was Oleg Cassini?

Oleg Cassini (April 11, 1913 – March 17, 2006) was a French-born American fashion designer. Cassini dressed numerous stars creating some of the most memorable moments in international fashion and film. He garnered admiration and fame for his designs for First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

His designs for the First Lady, ‘The Jackie Look’ are recognized as being the “single biggest fashion influence in history” by film costume designer, Edith Head. Cassini’s contemporary designs such as the A-line, Sheath and the Empire Strapless continue to remain influential and predominant today. His passions including sports and Native American culture fueled his work with freshness and imagination, creating innovative looks fueled by his very personal feeling that: “To be well dressed is a little like being in love.”

Jackie Kennedy & Oleg Cassini
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More about Oleg Cassini for Jackie Kennedy:   http://agnautacouture.com/2013/10/27/jackie-kennedy-the-presidential-wardrobe/

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Grace Kelly in her Oscar gown by Oleg Cassini

The Love Affair

Grace Kelly was with Jean-Pierre Aumont, trying to get over the loss of Ray Milland when she met Oleg Cassini. Cassini had recently seen Grace Kelly in the film Mogambo and was already besotted when he spied her in a restaurant in New York. She was with Aumont whom Oleg Cassini already knew (they had competed for the love of Gene Tierney in the past). According to Oleg, when they met, Grace dressed ‘like a school teacher’. He encouraged her to ‘put a little sex in her clothes’. Cassini was something of a Casanova, an ‘accomplished seducer’ he set his sights on winning Grace’s heart and did so in typical fashion. ‘It was to be the greatest, most exhilarating campaign of my life.‘ He remarked later.

Cassini set about developing a plan of seduction which involved sending a dozen red roses to Grace’s home for ten days, he did not sign the card, instead he wrote ‘from the friendly florist’ on the tenth day he called her saying he was the friendly florist. He got her laughing and got her to join him on a date (she was chaperoned by her sister on this occasion).

Grace Kelly & Oleg Cassini

Grace told Oleg she was in love with Ray Milland. The silver-tongued and confident Aries told her it was not a problem and that she would be engaged to him within a year. Grace left for LA the next day, but Oleg made sure he was seen by gossip columnists in the company of beauties such as Pier Angeli and Anita Ekberg in order that he would be seen and read about by Grace in their columns.

They eventually met up again on the French Riviera where they spent an evening together in what Oleg describes as a ‘distressingly platonic’ situation. He poured out his heart to Grace, declared the essence of his inner desires and that was it, his persistence paid off.

Oleg Cassini & Grace Kelly

Oleg Cassini’s biggest obstacle to life-long happiness with Grace Kelly was his past (he had been married before and linked with many beautiful women) which caused a problem for Grace’s mother who considered Oleg a bad risk for a husband. Her father, who was an old-fashioned racist, considered Cassini to be too much of a foreigner (Oleg was a son of a Russian and born in Paris).

Grace was persuaded not to marry designer Oleg by her mother and father. “Do you realise if my mother hadn’t been so difficult about Oleg Cassini, I probably would have married him?” the screen goddess is quoted as saying. Marrying into the Monaco royal family in 1956 was an apparent attempt to gain the approval of her father, who had failed to congratulate her on any of her past accomplishments, including the Oscar she was awarded for The Country Girl.

Once married, Grace realised that there was no way of continuing the Hollywood career that she had so loved and began to regret not choosing a marriage that would have allowed her to work. “How many wonderful roles I might have played by now?” she apparently lamented. “How might my life have turned out? That one decision (to marry Prince Rainier) changed my entire future.”

Grace Kelly 

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What Oleg Cassini had to say

Oleg, who never remarried, did let the regret tinge his voice when he talked about what might have been: “I fell in love with Grace after I saw her in Mogambo. When she broke up with Milland she sent me a postcard asking me to come to the south of France while she filmed To Catch a Thief. ‘Those who love me follow me,’ she wrote.

“Well, I let my dress collections go to hell, and I flew to Cannes. She was warm and funny and caring, also very disciplined about her work. She never stayed out past 11 p.m. Up till now our relationship had been platonic, but we had such a wonderful time that she asked me what my intentions were. I told her I wanted to marry her. We became secretly engaged.

Oleg Cassini with his wife actress Gene Tierney, 1941. 

“Later I saw sharks in the water. It was 1955, and Paris Match introduced Grace to Prince Rainier as a photo publicity stunt for a magazine article. I thought nothing of it. She said Rainier was nice, but that was it.

“We came back to New York and Grace was becoming a superstar. Neither of her parents liked me. The weekend I spent in Ocean City was the worst of my life. I had my own room, but I had to walk through her parents’ bedroom to get there.

Grace Kelly & Oleg Cassini

“She kept seeing me despite her family’s opposition, even suggesting we get married right away. She told me to find a priest who would marry us. I agreed, but then she got sick and rundown. Once she recovered, she had changed her mind. Her parents had talked her out of it. I didn’t see her again until she called to tell me she was engaged to Prince Rainier.”

 

Grace Kelly on her wedding day with Prince Rainier. 

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Books by Oleg Cassini

The Wedding Dress

The quintessential book on the wedding dress, newly revised and updated in a collector’s edition, is an exciting look at the variety of luxurious wedding dresses, which both celebrates and reveals their beauty, sophistication, and romance.   From Jacqueline Kennedy to Grace Kelly, Oleg Cassini’s designs are synonymous with the world’s most glamorous women. The same electrifying elegance resonates with his magnificently crafted bridal gowns. This informative presentation discusses every aspect of the wedding dress—the ultimate expression of a bride’s personality and the focal point of her day. This book showcases a wide range of styles by such fashion luminaries as Cassini, Chanel, Dior, Armani, and McQueen, among others. The beautiful fashions, photographed by such notable photographers as Patrick Demarchelier, Benno Graziani, Horst, Arthur Elgort, Milton Greene, David LaChapelle, and Irving Penn capture the effervescent spirit that is associated with the wedding dress. The Wedding Dress begins with an overview of the sumptuous wedding gown, chronicling its history  from royal weddings to today’s celebrities. The book presents a variety of silhouettes—from elegant Empire-style floor-length gowns to flirty short dresses and sophisticated suits. The same electrifying elegance resonates, whether an informal ceremony, a formal evening affair or a spontaneous trip to City Hall. Also featured are some of the best weddings in the world, including celebrity, society, and high fashion weddings. This stylish look at the wedding dress is not only an essential resource for the bride-to-be but for everyone interested in fashion.

http://www.amazon.com/Wedding-Dress-Revised-Updated-Collectors/dp/0847841820/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387464881&sr=1-2&keywords=the+wedding+dress+by+oleg+cassini

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A Thousand Days of Magic: Dressing Jacqueline Kennedy for the White House    

A gorgeously revised edition of this fashion favorite book, which combines Cassini’s memoirs of working closely with Jacqueline Kennedy during her brief White House years, his fashion philosophies and ideas, and the iconography of the early 1960s style and energy of the Kennedy years.  Jacqueline Kennedy’s selection of Oleg Cassini to design her personal wardrobe as First Lady was not only fashion history, but political history as well. As the creator of the “Jackie look,” Cassini made the First Lady one of the best-dressed women in the world and a glamorous icon of the Kennedy era.

During the 1000 days of the Kennedy administration, Cassini designed over 300 outfits for Jackie Kennedy—coats, dresses, evening gowns, suits, and day wear—and coordinated every aspect of her wardrobe, from shoes and hats to gloves and handbags. In this book, Cassini offers a fascinating and comprehensive view of his role as Jackie’s personal couturier, a position that allowed him unprecedented access to both Jackie and John Kennedy as a designer and a trusted friend. From the details of his first meetings with the First Lady to his thoughts on Jackie’s clothes and their legacy, Cassini’s recollections are far-ranging and informative. Also included are Cassini’s original sketches accompanied by 200 color and black-and-white photographs of the First Lady as she tours India, France, England, and Italy, shows off the White House, and hosts state dinners and family gatherings. Public moments as well as private ones capture the great elegance and charm of one of the most admired and emulated women in the world.

http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Days-Magic-Dressing-Jacqueline/dp/0847819000

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Grace Kelly

Yves Saint Laurent, July 1960
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It looks like 2014 is going to be Yves Saint Laurent‘s turn to be immortalized on the big screen. There will be two films coming out about the life of this iconic French designer who died in 2008, despite one facing criticism from the late designer’s close companion and business partner, Pierre Bergé. The businessman – who was co-founder of the iconic house – has said that he wants to try to “ban” production of the second movie.

Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé
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However, the second film has been backed by head of Kering (formerly known as PPR) – the conglomerate that owns Saint Laurent - Francois-Henri Pinault, who has given consent for the fashion house’s logo and designs to be used. Bergé took to Twitter to share his frustration, saying: “Two films on YSL? I hold the moral rights in the work of YSL’s image and mine have authorised that of Jalil Lespert” - in reference to his favoured film’s director. He then hinted that a trial may be in the near future. Bergé is the head of the Pierre Bergé-Saint Laurent Foundation – created to “prolong the history of the House of Saint Laurent”, while conserving a collection of 20,000 haute couture designs, accessories and sketches “that bear witness to 40 years of Yves Saint Laurent’s creativity”.

Both rival biopics currently have the working title of Yves Saint Laurent.

The first  film

Movie poster
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The first film- which has the backing of Bergé - is to be  directed by Jalil Lespert and will star French actor Pierre Niney as the late designer. Bergé has previously commented on the strong resemblance Niney has to his former companion, revealing that he almost greeted him: “Welcome Yves”.

Pictures of this movie

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Yves Saint Laurent opens January 8th.

It looks every dramatic, a bit over the top and every bit as glamorous as you’d expect.

Director Jalil Lespert, starts the film in 1957 as 21 year-old Saint Laurent (played by Pierre Niney, Nikolai Kinski as Karl Lagerfeld and Guillaume Gallienne as Pierre Berge. ) takes over the couture house of Dior. He is bombarded with questions from reporters but appears calm and collected. Alas, this does not last. Young Saint Laurent tears a white table-cloth dramatically, to make a sash with a bow for a glamorous client. He is temperamental: “I don’t fear critics” he proclaims. He is a diva who just wants to be alone:  “Let me sketch in peace!” he yells.

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The second film 

The second film- supported by Pinault - will be directed by Bertrand Bonello, with  Chanel model Gaspard Ulliel cast as the leading role opposite actress Lea Seydoux. According to The Telegraph, Bonello’s team wrote to Bergé explaining that they had not sought his blessing because they wanted true “freedom of expression”. It’s believed that the businessman’s lawyers responded immediately denying any use of his image or Saint Laurent possessions.

Movie poster of Saint Laurent film which Pierre Bergé is trying to "ban"
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Gaspar Ulliel who plays Yves Saint Laurent in the second film
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“Bergé’s role, even when Saint Laurent was alive, has been: ‘I tell the story,’” said scriptwriter Thomas Bidegain, who is working on the Bonello film. ”Saint Laurent had a very complicated life and Bergé always managed the legend. That’s why he couldn’t take being dispossessed of that story.”

The French release of this movie is set for May 2014.

Both productions are expected to focus on the early life of the designer and his relationship with Bergé.

Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé
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The Iconic nude photograph 

In 1971, the same year that his radical ” 1940s” collection shocked animal activists and fashion critics, Yves Saint Laurent released his first perfume for men, Pour Homme. For its advertisements, Yves Saint Laurent posed in nude in front of the camera of a close friend, Jean Loup Sieff. Sieff who worked for Magnum and was at the apex of his fashion photography career when he took fourteen photos for Yves Saint Laurent. The photo brashly challenged conventional taboos of male nudity in mainstream advertising of the era.

YSL and Sieff rejected the conventional machismo virility that was usually used in the ads on that time, such as Old Spice (introduced in 1937) and Aramis (introduced in 1964). It was a ‘natural’ appearance after the excesses of 1960s youthquake ostentation and fantasy. Although YSL personally wished the photo become an icon of gay liberation, he looked almost a Christ-like figure, a wavy-haired and gaunt and stark naked but for his large-rimmed glasses. The photos desexualized nudity, and presented a more vulnerable, and androgynous side of humanity.

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Info for this post: 
http://www.vogue.co.uk/  
http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/yves-saint-laurent/

vintage Rootstein mannequin couple
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Rewind to the early 1950’s, when a young Adel Rootstein immigrated to London from South Africa (born in Warmbaths, 1930) to discover the city’s fashion scene in the midst of a glamorous post-WWII revival – a creative wave that would later make way for the likes of Mary Quant, Jean Muir, Ossie Clarke and Barbara Hulanicki’s BIBA. As a window dresser at Aquascutum, Adel grew tired of the faceless forms that stared back at her from under the label’s elegant trench coats. What use were beautiful garments, she thought, if you have only bland and featureless dummies upon which to admire them? Unbeknownst to Adel this question, born of boredom, would dictate her life’s work.

“Adel lived and died in Jean Muir and Mary Quant,” exclaims Kevin Arpino of his late employer, who he describes as a glamorous fixture of the London fashion set, a woman whose personal sense of style and panache remains embedded in the lifeblood of the company. As Adel’s successor after her death in 1992, Kevin has seen over three decades at Rootstein’s London and New York offices, and even turned down Stephen Jones for a position in the makeup department in 1979! Just as well, perhaps?

Twiggy and her mannequin by Rootstein
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“Adel started her company making wigs for windows in her Earl’s Court apartment,” explains Kevin, ushering me through a hallway of partially painted faces above the company’s sleek salon showroom. “She was really breaking boundaries in those days. Her idea was to bring to life the models that were selling clothes in the magazines”. The first model to be sculpted live by her lifelong employee John Taylor in 1968 was a girl called ‘Imogen’ – a slender, exotic figure whose significance has become somewhat lost amongst the bevy of top models Rootstein has since immortalized in fiberglass, plaster and oils. It was Twiggy who put Rootstein truly on the fashion map. “Having a mannequin made is good luck for a model,” says Kevin, “It’s slightly Dorian Gray I think. For us it is more about choosing people who epitomize the time”

Since Twiggy, countless beauties have stood before Rootstein’s sculptors (for hours and days at a time), their sizes and body shapes fluctuating with the trends – from Pat Cleveland, Violetta Sanchez and Joan Collins in the early days through to a young Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss and more recently the flame-haired Canadian beauty Coco Rocha. Their replicas form series comprised of various figures and poses, which are then dressed and displayed for sale in the New York and London showrooms twice a year.

Pat Cleveland mannequin Joan Collins mannequin Jerry Hall mannequin Linda Evangelista mannequin  (comment from JP:  the Linda Evangelista head is not by Rootstein. Linda was made by an artist/fant and placed on a Rootstein body)

Aside from their famous faces, like any savvy fashion designer Rootstein have a commercial collection too – from mannequins with various heel heights to those in reclining or seated poses, glamorous gestural mannequins and more somber styles. All must be considered when working with a solid, fixed form upon which to showcase the dynamic trends of any given era. “I think that the mannequin, when used properly, can give off a very strong image but unfortunately the people who know how to do that are a dying breed,” says Kevin, who labels the mannequin business as a ‘cottage industry’.

Even so, today Rootstein’s regular clients include designers from Tom Ford, Lanvin and Ralph Lauren to high street giants like Zara and department stores from Harvey Nichols to Bergdorf Goodman and the Galeries Lafayette. They’ve worked on exhibitions with the Costume Institute of the Met since the 70’s, including none other than Diana Vreeland’s iconic Yves Saint Laurent retrospective and her Ballets Russes show. Photographers too have entertained a veritable love affair with Rootstein’s static beauties, a fact Kevin is quick to demonstrate with a wall of black and white photographs signed by the two legends. “Helmut Newton loved mannequins, and photographed many of ours. He was obsessed with them and used to collect them. Also David Bailey. We have made mannequins of all his wives!”

Catherine Dyer, fourth and recent wife of David Bailey, with mannequin. ph. David Bailey

All well and good, you may be thinking, but where does one find Stephen Jones amidst Rootstein’s particular cave of wonders? Firstly, Kevin explains, Stephen often makes hats for Rootstein’s showrooms. “When I phone and say ‘I need four hats in two weeks’ he’ll say ‘Oh that’s nothing dear, John (Galliano) used to give me a day!’” Secondly, and despite Stephen’s failed interview back in ‘79, the answer still lies in the makeup room, just upstairs past the wigs.

“The people who work here are artists, not makeup artists,” explains Kevin, of the team of six artisans in their makeup division who, under the watchful guise of head artists John Davis & Judith Fain, apply delicate oil paints to the finished mannequins in a four-day process which includes painting, drying, over-painting and eyelash application. “You may get an order of fifty mannequins and have five artists doing the same makeup. John’s job is to make them all uniform, he’s what you call an overpainter.”

Rootstein mannequin for Biba

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In terms of styles and limitations, “We can do anything,” Kevin regales, “We’ve been inspired by Biba for decades – in fact the next season we’re doing very Biba petrol blue eyes. Actually Barbara (Hulanicki) came in here when she was working on her book recently. Adel originally did all the 1930’s heads for her shops. Barbara was fascinated, and so chuffed”.

Despite recent trends for faceless mannequins somewhat detracting from Rootstein’s demand for made-up faces, new commissions have had the division working overtime – including last year’s worldwide takeover of Louis Vuitton by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, a project that saw the luxury house’s window displays overrun with white tentacles and mannequins (including one of the artist herself) covered in red polka dots. “Every dot had to be in the right position. That was art, you know,” muses Kevin.

Yayoi Kusama mannequin for Louis Vuitton
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Stephen Jones himself commissioned a bevy of busts and heads for an installation last November, when Mrs. Prada took over the Café Royal on London’s Regent Street for her 3-day women’s club called “The Miu Miu”. Charged with decorating the halls of the 3-level interior and one window (the second was offered to another British icon, Dame Vivienne Westwood), Stephen crafted three swirling vortex headpieces that grew out of glossy pink busts, each adorned with an assortment of Miu Miu’s sunglasses, bags and shoes. For the window he turned Mrs. Prada’s skirts upside down as headdresses on the floating heads of Rootstein models like Erin O’Connor, Jade Parfitt and Yasmin Le Bon. “Three weeks before Stephen came in and said ‘You’re going to hate this dear, but what can you do?’” recalls Kevin.

 Stephen Jones for Café Royal, commissioned by Murcia Prada

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“I just love the fact that Stephen is so hands-on,” he enthuses, winding up my tour by bestowing upon Mr. Jones a compliment that clearly reflects his own ardent dedication – not to mannequins or hats, or even fashion itself – but to the weird and wonderful labyrinth and the artisans over which he presides.

 Agyness Deyn mannequin

Jade Parfitt and her mannequin

Coco Rocha and her mannequin
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“Mannequins have been around an awfully long time. They date back to the 1850s if not before. When Adel Rootstein came along in the 60’s she brought youth culture into mannequins, because before – they looked like your mum.”

Kevin Arpino
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Steve Strange was born in 1959 in New Bridge, South Wales as Steven Harrington. He moved to London as a teenager and became active in the punk movement. He hung out in the scene known as The Bromley Contingent, which included acts such as the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie Sioux, and Billy Idol. He worked with Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls. The Punk movement helped free creativity and allowed people to express their look through fashion and music.

But eventually, Steve Strange found that Punk was starting to be perceived as unoriginal and that Nazi Punk created a negative political statement. Looking for a way out in 1978, he originally created The Photons.  But he knew The Photons were not going to be a successful band and hated the bright multi-colored suits they wore. When the band The Rich Kids were splitting up and weren’t intending to use the rest of their studio time at EMI, Strange jumped at the chance to get in there and record, which is how Visage started.

The sound was new, and pioneered electronic music. “Fade to Grey” was the band’s first release and most acknowledged song.  The video was extremely low budget.  Trying to come up with a creative idea that would have lots of impact, Strange shaved his body hair and painted himself silver.  A hand-painted snake with glittering scales had the effect of coming to life and turning into Strange.  The crew worked for 36 hours straight on the video to get all the looks and changes.  When it was time to remove the make up and paint, painful Brillo pads were used.

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The first club night that Steve Strange started was a Tuesday night at Billy’s in Soho, London.  This is where the first of the New Romantics hung out, a branch of the New Wave movement.  Strange created an environment of creativity with hairdressers, art students, budding designers and eclectic club kids.

In 1979, he moved his “private party” to the shabby Blitz wine bar off Covent Garden. Outrage secured entry. Inside, precocious 19-year-olds presented an eye-stopping collage, posing away in wondrous ensembles, emphatic make-up and in-flight haircuts that made you feel normality was a sin. Hammer Horror met Rank starlet. Here was Lady Ample Eyefull, there Sir Gesting Sharpfellow, lads in breeches and frilly shirts, white stockings and ballet pumps, girls as Left Bank whores or stiletto-heeled vamps dressed for cocktails in a Berlin cabaret, wicked witches, kohl-eyed ghouls, futuristic man machines.

.“The Blitz ruled people’s lives. Exactly that,” says Stephen Jones, then making hats at St Martin’s School of Art. “A nightclub inspired absolute devotion of the kind previously reserved for a pop idol. I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real.”

Shrouding any pleasure in ritual magnifies its intensity and the Blitz was all ritual. Everyone supped and danced on the same spot every week according to some invisible floorplan: downstairs near the bar stood the boys in the band (no make-up), their media and management by the stairs, credible punk legends such as Siouxsie Sioux along the bar, suburban wannabes beside the dancefloor. Deep within the club, around Rusty Egan’s DJ booth, were the dedicated dancing feet, the white-faced shock troops, the fashionista elite – either there or near the cloakroom, ruled first by Julia Fodor (still going strong as DJ Princess Julia) and later by George O’Dowd (less strong today as ex-jailbird Boy George). Downstairs, the women’s loo was hijacked, naturally, by boys who would be girls. Upstairs on the railway banquettes might be respected alumni from an earlier London: film-maker Derek Jarman, artists Brian Clarke and Kevin Whitney, designers Antony Price and Zandra Rhodes.

 George O’Dowd a.k.a. Boy George

Boy George (right) 

No longer a weekly secret society, the Blitz became a publicity machine for the pose age. Attendance became a statement of intent – to lead a life of style seven days a week. When Bowie visited the Blitz he hauled away four of the kids to strut with his pierrot through the video for Ashes to Ashes. It earned each of them £50, helped Bowie to No 1 and launched a fad for Judi Frankland’s ankle-length liturgical robes (inspired, she says, by the nuns in The Sound of Music). Steve Strange helped launch the careers of many artists in the early 80’s through The Blitz Club.  These acts included Depeche Mode, Boy George, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell, Human League and Duran Duran.  Not since the Beatles had British pop music dominated the charts this strongly in America. With the birth of music videos, MTV brought fashion and music together for the first time in history in a 24 hour format.  . . If you recast the 80s as a subcultural timeline, the decade actually spanned six years. They began in June 1978 when David Bowie’s world tour hit the UK and ended with Do They Know It’s Christmas? in December 1984, when Band Aid confirmed rival groups who had risen on the same wave as a new pop establishment. As clubs became workplaces and nightlife the essential engine of cultural evolution, they liberated music, design and, especially, ambition. In 1978, London offered only one hip club a week; by 1984 Time Out magazine was listing 50, while the British Tourist Authority reported that dancing was a serious reason visitors gave for visiting the UK. London Transport rolled out a whole network of night buses. .

Blitz style/ Blitz kids

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John Galliano & Blitz

Fallen Angel suit

‘My fashion has been a constant evolution of ideas… All that experimental cutting led me to understand precisely how a jacket had been put together in the past; how to put it together correctly in the present and then, from that, I was led to dismantle it and reassemble it in a way that would point to the future.’ Galliano’s final year collection at St Martin’s School of Art was influenced by French revolutionary dress. But, like many art school students, Galliano also found inspiration in London’s night life. ‘The club scene fed me… Being with other creative people like Boy George was a crucial experience for me.’ .

Sketch for Levi Strauss & Co.

In 1986, BLITZ magazine commissioned 22 designers to customise denim jackets provided by Levi Strauss & Co. Fashion Editor Iain R. Webb recalled, ‘The magazine gave us a stage on which to present our version of the world, an alternative way of looking at fashion… The pages of BLITZ were intended to inspire readers to experiment with fashion rather than go shopping’.

Joseph Jumper

Joseph Ettedgui founded the chain of Joseph boutiques in London in 1977, stocking innovative designers such as Katharine Hamnett, John Galliano and BodyMap. He also created the Joseph Tricot knitwear label.

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Stay Alive in 85

Katharine Hamnett was one of the most well known designers of the 1980s. She pioneered the vogue for stylish, casual clothing made in crumpled cottons, parachute silks and stonewashed and stretch denim. Her designs were often based on utilitarian boiler suits and army fatigues. In 1984, Hamnett caused a sensation at a fashion reception hosted by Margaret Thatcher by wearing a T-shirt that read, ‘58% Don’t Want Pershing’. Hamnett was protesting against the controversial siting of US Pershing missiles in the UK. Her T-shirts were a platform for her anti-war and Green politics.   .

‘BLITZ’ Denim jackets by Levi Strauss & Co

Leigh Bowery

 Viviënne Westwood

Bodymap: Shaping the 1980s

Amidst the colourful extravagance of 1980s fashion, one label in particular stood out thanks to their pioneering approach to making and showing their creations: BodyMap. 

BLITZ: A History, and the Tale of 22 Jackets

In July 1986, era-defining style magazine BLITZ published an issue featuring images of 22 Levi’s denim jackets that had been customised by some of the world’s most lauded designers – Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano and Katherine Hamnett among them. 

BLITZ founder and publisher Carey Labovitch and the magazine’s fashion editor, Iain R. Webb speak about the thrills of setting the magazine up, its unique editorial approach and give us the full story behind the designer denim jacket project.

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Book

.  “Like the lightning in its name, it struck us in 1980 and kept us spellbound the whole decade. ‘Too fast to live, too young to die’, that is BLITZ for me. Every month we would run to the news stand to be ‘BLITZed’ with irreverent, glamorous, chic and iconic images. BLITZ was Iain R. Webb’s brainchild that corresponded perfectly to the era; it was one of its best expressions. He used emblematic faces that were so inspiring, and that I used for my shows, like Martine Houghton, who later became a photographer. BLITZ, we miss you but we are ready for your attack again!” Jean Paul Gaultier In London at the start of the 1980s, three new style magazines emerged to define an era. It was a time of change: after Punk, before the digital age, and at the dawn of a hedonistic club scene that saw the birth of the New Romantics. On the pages of BLITZ, The Face and i-D, a new breed of young iconoclasts hoped to inspire revolution. As BLITZ magazine’s fashion editor from 1982-87, Iain R. Webb was at the center of this world. His images manipulated fashion to explore ideas of transformation, beauty, glamor and sex. The magazine’s arresting, subversive fashion pages, and its profiles of disparate designers and creative types, let the imagination run free. Lavishly presented here are over 100 BLITZ fashion stories, with previously-unseen archive content, original images and tear-sheets. A separate section features original BLITZ interviews with the key designers, and there is also a vast amount of completely new material: Iain R. Webb has gathered the memories of those involved into a gripping oral history of an under-documented time. Characters and contributors include: Leigh Bowery, Amanda Cazalet, Boy George, Princess Julia, Nick Knight, David LaChapelle, Paul Morley and Anna Piaggi. Featured designers include Bodymap, Judy Blame, Dean Bright, Comme Des Garçons, Jasper Conran, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Katharine Hamnett, Hermès, Pam Hogg, Marc Jacobs, Stephen Jones, Calvin Klein, Andrew Logan, Issey Miyake, Franco Moschino, Vivienne Westwood, and many more. .    

 Steve Strange and Rusty Egan, partners in the Blitz Club, (2009)

. . info: V&A museum site, http://www.theblitzclub.com,  David Johnson for The Observer &  Nancy Black  for http://www.thefashionspot.com  (STEVE STRANGE, STYLE ICON PART 1 and 2)  

Veruschka, Richard Avedon & Polly Mellen
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In 1966 Vogue did something extraordinary: a team was to Japan in the middle of winter to shoot perhaps the most epic fashion story of all time. The editorial was pre- PETA and it was dedicated to the beauty of furs. 

This editorial is often credited to Diana Vreeland, who was the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief at the time, but actually the editor on this story was Polly Mellen. It was one of her first assignments for Vogue and she set about on the five-week trip to Japan with supermodel Veruschka and legendary photographer Richard Avedon.

Fifteen trunks of clothes are hauled into the snow-covered mountains. Hairstylist Ara Gallant creates a wig eight feet long for Veruschka; Vreeland’s response when she sees the wig is, “I want 20 feet!”

“The Great Fur Caravan. A Fashion Adventure Starring the Girl in the Fabulous Furs Photographed for Vogue in the Strange Secret Snow Country of Japan…” took up a whopping 26 pages in the October 1966 issue. The Girl character was first introduced in the January 1963 issue as an idealized version of Diane Vreeland, sort of a dreamer, an adventurer. In Japan, the Girl takes a first class train to the middle of nowhere, where she explores the glorious snow mountains in her “fabulous” furs, and eventually falls in love with a gentle Japanese giant. It’s not like the story needed to make a lot of sense. It was dreamy and fantastical, and the type of travel story that Vreeland liked to entertain Vogue readers with. “The eye has to travel,” she famously said. Years later, Avedon remarked, “it’s without content. It’s without any meaning in it. It’s just this exquisite creature. Diana imagined her walking through the snows of Japan.”

The story is rumoured to have cost $1 million dollars back in the day — that would be equal to $7 million today. But that’s how legends are made.

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 Marianne Faithfull is one of the Sixties’ greatest fashion icons and the original rock chic.

Once every so often along comes a genuine style icon – someone with such originality and flare that they capture the attention of millions. A lot of younger girls (and boys) think Kate Moss invented the boho style, but it’s the wardrobe of Marianne Faithfull that originated this style. Marianne Faithfull’s life and wardrobe have made her a cultural phenomenon.

Short Biography

Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull, daughter of Eva, the Baroness Erisso, and Major Glynn Faithfull, a WWII British spy, was born on 29 December, 1946 in London. She was a bright, fashionable and lively teenager, who plunged in the London social scene. In 1964, barely 16, she began to take on gigs as a folk music performer in coffee houses.

Her career really began when she attended a Rolling Stones launch party and was discovered by Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Her first major release, As Tears Go By, was, in fact, written by Andrew Loog Oldham, Mick Jagger and  Keith Richards. More hit records followed, including Summer Nights and This Little Bird.

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Marianne seemed to have it all, an instant career and she married John Dunbar on 6 May, 1965, with whom she got son Nicholas on 10 November the same year. But turmoil was on its way. Marianne fell in love with Mick Jagger and left her husband. Years later she told journalists:  ‘My first move was to get a Rolling Stone as a boyfriend. I slept with three and decided the lead singer was the best bet.’

The start of her affair with Mick Jagger was also the start of Marianne’s use of drugs. The glamorous couple became a notorious component of the London Swinging scene.

Marianne & Mick Jagger

Scandal

Marianne was found wearing only a fur rug by police executing a drug search at Keith Richards’ house in West Wittering, Sussex. In an interview 27 years later for Details, she discussed her wilder days and admitted that the drug bust fur rug incident was devastating to her personal life: ‘It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother’.

In 1968, now addicted to cocaine, she miscarried a daughter before ending her relationship with Jagger and losing custody of her son in 1970 – an incident which caused her mother to attempt suicide. Together with her personal life her career spiraled into a failure. She only made a few appearances, including a 1973 performance at NBC with David Bowie, singing Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe”.

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 She lived on London’s Soho streets for two years, suffering from heroin addiction and anorexia nervosa. In 1971, producer Mike Leander found her on the streets and made an attempt to revive her career, producing part of her album Rich Kid Blues. The album would take until 1985 for it to be appreciated.

Speaking of this time she’s astonished that she managed to survive: ‘It’s very, very strange to think about it. It was such a degraded moment, to live on a wall and shoot drugs’.

‘It was complete anonymity. I wanted to disappear – and I did. I wanted out. I wanted out of that world. It’s not that I didn’t love Mick, or I didn’t love the people in my life. I did. But I wasn’t cut out for all that. I certainly wasn’t cut out – although it is a great honour – to be a muse. It is a very hard job.’

Marianne the Muse & Fashion Icon

Marianne Faithfull wearing Ossie Clark dress

Marianne wearing famous Ossie Clark snakeskin jacket 

Her career restored in full force in 1979 with the album Broken English, one of her most praised albums. It was partially influenced by the punk explosion and her marriage to Ben Brierly of the punk band the Vibrators. A severe laryngitis, together with constant cocaine abuse, permanently changed Marianne’s voice, leaving it cracked and deeper in tone. While her new sound was praised as “whisky soaked” by some critics, a journalist of the Sunday Times, wrote that she had “permanently vulgarised her voice”.

Since then, Marianne Faithfull produced many records, appeared in movies and collaborated with famous photographers (pictures published in the Part Two)

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Movies

Aside from her successful singing career, she also enjoyed success as an actress. In 1967 she starred in the film I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘is Name, in which she was the first ever to say the F-word in a movie. A year later, she amassed a cult following as the leather-clad motorcyclist in the French film The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968). After minor appearances in film and television in the 1970s, followed by a fourteen year hiatus, she made appearances as “God” in the adored and well received British-comedy series Absolutely Fabulous (1992). And in Sofia Coppola’s, Marie Antoinette (2006). Marianne played the part of Empress Maria Theresa. A year later, she starred in the film Irina Palm (2007), she played the central role of Maggie, a 60-year-old widow who becomes a sex worker to pay for medical treatment for her ill grandson. Her performance in the film was nominated a European Film Award for Best Actress.

Marie Antoinette

Marianne Faithfull as the mother of Marie Antoinette, Empress Maria Theresa 

Sofia Coppola & Marianne Faithful  

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The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968). A must see for all lovers of 1960s cult and retro British cinema.

Absolutely Fabulous

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New Book

 Book description

Official website Marianne Faithfull: http://www.mariannefaithfull.org.uk

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Info: http://www.dailymail.co.uk, http://www.queensofvintage.com/marianne-faithful-vintage-style-muse/, Wikipedia

Lud wearing Cartier jewels, ph. Horst P.Horst

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Lud looked, and was, solidly Russian. She had the cheekbones, the lips at once frankly sensual and playfully amused, the slightly upward slanted eyes that hinted at something distantly, fantastically oriental. Those eyes were her greatest feature, because they were different in every photo, from every angle the blue of ice one moment, the blue of warm bright gemstones the next, powerful proof of the Russian’s proverbial variety of moods..

Lud by Horst P. Horst
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Born Ludmila Feodoseyevna in St Petersburg in 1913 to a vice-governor of Vladimir province, Lud escaped with her family to the Crimea after the Bolshevik revolution, thence to Constantinople, Greece and France. In exile, Lud proved to be more than just a pretty face. While her widowed mother struggled to make ends meet, Lud took high grades at a French lycée and planned to enter university to study philology.

Fate determined a different course for Lud when the famed photographer Horst espied her delivering dresses to Vogue’s Paris studios (she got the wrong ­studio and ended up throwing it at the photographer in a temper, and became one of his favourite models) . Thus at age eighteen, Lud began what was to be a fabulous modeling career, first with the house of Countess Vera Borea, then Patou, then Chanel. She married a French marquis, and knew the delicious experience of having rivals Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel vie graspingly for her services. In 1937, wearing a draped white gown from Alix  (Madame Grès) and posed like some lethally beautiful Medea between fluted columns, Lud was photographed by Horst in what Alexandre Vassiliev  (writer of ‘Beauty in Exile’) describes as “one of the immortal images of twentieth century fashion.”

Lud in Alix (Madame Grès) Dress, by Horst P Horst, 1937
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We all know beauty and wealth do not guarantee happiness, but the gods sought to use Lud to press the point home. First her marriage to the marquis failed; she married again, to a naval engineer, and began to appear in films. She left France for a time, living first in Argentina and later in the United States, and her second marriage broke up. By the time she returned to France in the early 50’s and began working for Balenciaga, she sensed that somehow her sun had set. There were financial woes, brought on by her unflagging addiction to high living. She ended up taking a job at the Slenderella beauty institute, earning some cash on the side by singing in the chorus of the Paris Opéra. In 1959, the once glorious Lud was living in the resort town of Le Touquet, where the only work she could find was as an airport clerk. When that job ended, she found a new position, as head of curriculum at a private school, and when that job ended, Lud was hired as director of a home for aged Russians, where among the charges she oversaw was another faded Russian model, Princess Maria Eristova. Still, there was a little happiness for Lud at the end: in 1982, she married a childhood friend, Pierre de la Grandière, and lived with him in the French Alps until her death from cancer in 1990.

Lud in more photographs by Horst

Modeling a Chanel dress & Ivory cuff bracelet by Verdura, 1937

Moddeling a Schiaparelli hat 

In describing her mother, Lud’s daughter also gives a fair account of most of the other artistic Russian émigrés. Lud feared nothing and no one, remembered her daughter, never hesitating to sail a boat out onto a stormy lake or take a stroll through a crime-ridden Paris purlieu. Lud was in love with living: “She was the daughter of Epicurus”.

Life for Lud, and indeed, for most of the Russian exiles living in Europe or Great Britain, America northern or southern, was far more colorful and probably far more blessed with longevity than it would have been had they or their parents remained in Soviet Russia. Thanks to Alexandre Vassiliev’s  study of just where these many-colored threads began and ended, we can know that there was, after all, a future for them.

1937 Paris Vogue cover ph. by Horst P. Horst
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Lud was once described as “a lethally beautiful Medea”.

It is said that she cut off parts of her breasts and thighs to make her figure the perfect silhouette for Horst photographs! Prove of this cannot be found…..

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Book

Beauty in Exile

The Artists, Models, and Nobility who Fled the Russian Revolution and Influenced the World of Fashion

by Alexander Vassiliev

http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Exile-Nobility-Revolution-Influenced/dp/0810957019

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Lud in 1939, photographer unknown

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Info:

http://www.vassiliev.com/review.htm

http://dianesmakeup.com/horsts-very-modern-muse/

Vogue UK December 1974, ph. David Bailey
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Bianca Jagger (born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias, 2 May 1945) is a Nicaraguan-born socialite turned human rights activist.

She was born in Managua, Nicaragua. Her father was a successful import-export merchant and her mother a housewife. They divorced when Bianca was ten and she stayed with her mother, who had to take care of three children on a small income. She received a scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. 

Bianca & Mick Jagger

Bianca Jagger is known for being both the first wife of Mick Jagger and one of the most impeccably stylish women in the world. Bianca’s exotic beauty caught the Rolling Stones’ frontman’s eye at a party in France after one of their concerts in 1970 and they married ( Bianca wore a YSL Le Smoking jacket on her wedding day) a year later in St Tropez. Bianca has since said that her marriage was over as soon as it began, but black and white photographs of the cooler-than-cool pair dripping with ’70s glamour suggest it was beautiful while it lasted. Their split did little to snuff out Bianca’s jet-setting, party-going reputation, and she was a solid fixture on Manhattan’s Studio 54 scene always decked out in luxurious furs, glittering sequins and exquisitely tailored white YSL trouser suits.

A close friend and photographic favourite of Andy Warhol (her daughter Jade once urinated on a piece of his artwork), Bianca also personified the elegant Halston woman along with Liza Minnelli and Lauren Bacall. It was Halston she wore to her 30^th birthday party at Studio 54 where she famously rode on a white horse lead by a semi-clad man.

Studio 54

Steve Rubel(owner Studio 54), Halston and Bianca Jagger at Studio 54, 1978
Halston, Bianca & Andy WarholWith Angie & David BowieElisabeth Taylor, Halston & Bianca
Halston, Bianca,Liza Minnelli & Micheal Jackson
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The It Girl of the decade, Bianca’s glam look ranged from unbuttoned blouses, wide-lapel suits, bold choker necklaces, one-shoulder dresses, and fierce facial expressions. As she puts it well, “Style is knowing what suits you, who you are, and what your assets are. It is also accepting it all.”

Wearing Zandra Rhodes Wearing Ossie ClarkWith Yves Saint Laurent.

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Studio 54 Fable

Bianca Jagger wants to set the record straight about a certain night at Studio 54, which has haunted the annals of night life lore since 1977. “Mick Jagger and I walked into Studio 54,” she wrote in a letter to the editor in the Financial Times, finally setting to rest the rumors that she rode into the famed nightclub on a white horse.

As with most rumors, the story has some basis in fact. Fashion designer Halston threw a 30th birthday party at Studio 54 for Jagger, who at the time was married to Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger. At the party, a naked giant covered in gold glitter led Bianca, clad in Halston and Manolo Blahniks, around the night club on horseback. The moment was captured by noted fashion photographerRose Hartman and the image went whatever was the 1977 equivalent of viral, slowly becoming emblematic of the excesses (read: fun) of the era and eventually becoming a legend.

However somewhere along the way, the story was twisted to include the detail that Jaggerrode into the nightclub on the horse, which would certainly be a memorable feat. However, Jagger took to the Financial Times today to declare that detail preposterous and, as an animal rights defender, downright offensive. In the letter to the editor, she wrote: “It is one thing to, on the spur of the moment, get on a horse in a night club, but it quite another to ride in on one.”

She explained that the club’s owner, Steve Rubell, had brought the horse into a club as a lark, after seeing a photo of her riding one in her home of Nicaragua. When she saw the horse inside the club, Jagger thought it would be fun to hop on and take it for a quick spin. Contrary to rumor, she did not ride the white horse down 54th street and into the velvet-roped doors of Studio 54. In her letter to the editor, Jagger wrote: “I often ask myself how people visualise this fable . . . Where was Mick during this time? Was he holding the reins and pulling me and the horse through the streets of New York, or following submissively behind me!?”

She closed the note with the hope that her letter would finally “put this Studio 54 fable — out to pasture.”

By Melissa Locker for Vanity Fair

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Wearing her backstage pass on het shoe

info:

WikiPedia

http://www.oystermag.com

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/04/bianca-jagger-studio-54

“Heart of Glass” is a dreamy pop hit that at the very least is pleasing to anyone sane and addictive to those who love to dance. And the video delivered so much more: a beautiful blonde front woman whose delivery matched her persona: Detached, willful, feminine, feminist, bored and flirtatious. And the style! Was she disco, New Wave, rock or punk? Was she an uptown princess or downtown cokehead? Her outfit—a scrap of a dress paired with clear plastic heels—hints at posh but also feels like a one-off. The duality made Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry endlessly alluring and enigmatic. Through “Heart of Glass,” Harry was introducing the world to fashion designer Stephen Sprouse, who styled her rock goddess image from the tips of her bleached roots to the transparent toes of her Cinderella slippers, East Village style.

Debbie Harry before Stephen Sprouse
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Sprouse met Harry in 1975, after he moved into the East Village loft above a liquor store where Harry lived. The two shared a kitchen and bathroom, and Harry would often feed the designer’s cats. Sprouse had some clothes he’d “been dragging around for years,” and started to put a look together, cutting up dance tights and T-shirts into outfits and helping her dress. Rock music was a primary source of inspiration for Sprouse, and in 1978 he took a picture of lines of pixels dancing across the TV, photo-printed the enlarged image onto diaphanous chiffon and designed what became “the Heart of Glass dress” for Harry. When that song shot to number one on the dance charts, even in those pre-MTV days, Sprouse’s reputation quietly crept above ground and uptown.

Watch any Blondie video and it quickly becomes clear that it is next to impossible to draw attention away from stunning Harry—her band mates tried in vain to do so through the lifespan of the group—but Sprouse’s dress does it. In fact, all of the costumes he created for her various videos and appearances hold their own against Harry’s magnetic “It factor,” precisely because they are so perfectly styled for her; they are her. The Heart of Glass dress, for, fits and drapes superbly and, with its hip-high asymmetrical hemline, might have looked Halstonesque were it not for the single, off-kilter strap and DIY print. It hangs from her tiny frame like an oversize kerchief; torn, filmy and strangely unforgettable.

Years later, Harry told People magazine that Sprouse “put a layer of cotton fabric underneath and a layer of chiffon on top, and then the scan-lines would do this op-art thing.” A shadow of a stripe is repeated on the thin scarf Harry bats about and on the coordinated T-shirts the rest of the band wears. In the world’s first glimpse of the band, Sprouse’s styling created the image of Blondie, a group not quite disco and not quite pop, one with punk-rock roots that appeals to the upper-crust set.

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info: written by Ali Basye
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Comment by kafkette   /  http://trashilove.wordpress.com

wait.
i like debbie harry, blondie, stephen sprouse, & yr blog.
but the photo of her with the dark hair is from much earlier, c1969, when she was in a band called wind in the willows. & ‘heart of glass’ was ABSOLUTELY NOT the world’s first glimpse of her. all the punkrocker types knew who she was for YEARS before that, since ’75-’76, maybe? and the only worry over what type of music blondie made showed up maybe at the time of ‘heart of glass’ by people who actually had never heard them before. they are from the same scene as television, the heartbreakers, the ramones, every-new york-one who then mattered. blondie was a fixture on the tiny punk scene—maybe 500 core people WORLDWIDE, not what people think at all.
other than that, do not worry, yr article is very good. and even my friend, who does not follow fashion in the least, loved the one about koos. i sent it to her, as i will send this one to another friend, who will enjoy it. i just wanted to make the abovenoted clear, because so much of our tiny culture’s history is lost, gone with so very many of our dead. i’m still here, not very druggy & one of the youngest so count me still alive. sadly.