As promised in my article about the most fabulously dressed ladies at Goodwood Revival this year, here are the best dressed gents. Which outfit is your favourite? I particuarly like the guy with the yellow shirt and pencil thin moustache, and the sailor… Photos used with kind permission from Matt Hind at Men’s File who(…)
We were at Goodwood Revival yesterday, and oh what a glorious day! Beautiful sunshine, fabulous fashions and some great classic car racing too. The day was only marred by my bad outfit choice: my feet really hurt due to impractical and untested shoes and I was wearing a dress which turned out to be far(…)
The 1930s are a decade which haven’t really had a popular revival in the same way that the other decades of the 20th Century have. Pretty much anyone can tell you what a 1920s flapper looked like, or a 1950s circle skirt or a 1960s Mary Quant mini dress but quite often if you mention(…)
It’s easy to get carried away and think that swimwear styles in the past was more beautiful, more elegant and more chic than those available today, but as these photos prove that wasn’t necessarily the case! The photo above, for example, is a gorgeous photo full of joy and laughter, but unfortunately those flimsy woolen(…)
You might be surprised to know that during the 1910s and 20s the biggest name in American cinema was that of Lillian Gish. I’m sure you’ve heard of her more notorious contemporaries (good time girl Clara Bow springs to mind) but Miss Gish was the star known as The First Lady of The Silent Screen.
Following on from talking about Toni Frissell’s photos of children during WW2 I wanted to share some of her breathtaking fashion photos with you. She started photographing for Vogue in 1931 and was best known for her fashion photos showing active and independent women in outdoor settings, which contrasted starkly with other male photographers of(…)
10 wierd, wonderful (and sometimes terrifying) vintage inventions which have been lost in the mists of time… My favourite is the collapsable bridge invented by Mr Deth.
Did you think clowns couldn’t get more disturbing than ‘Cho-Cho the health clown‘ who terrified young children into good dental hygiene habits in the 1920s? Well it turns out they can be a darn site scarier. I don’t think any of these clowns were intended to terrify but they’ll certainly haunt my dreams. Wish I’d(…)
Another day another bevy of vintage bathing beauties – this time I’ve found some amazingly clad 1920s contestants from the Galveston Texas Bathing Girl Review. I think most of the costumes must have been homemade – quite a few of them are more like fancy dress costumes than swimsuits – especially that amazing Ancient Egyptian-style(…)
Now there’s a title which just rolls off the tongue! Apparently ‘Pulchritude‘ is a really ungainly way of saying ‘beauty’ which (unsurprisingly) has fallen out of fashion. These photos were all taken at the International Pageant of Pulchritude & Annual Bathing Girl Review between 1926 and 1928. I adore these long old-fashioned photos. They remind(…)
Whatever your personal feelings about beauty pageants, they serve as a great reminder that fashion dictates what each generation considers to be beautiful. These 1920s title-holders, many of whom won the coveted Miss America crown probably wouldn’t have thought to even enter the competition today. I’m guessing unless you have pneumatic breasts, perfect teeth and(…)
Today is the 100th anniversary of the day Britain declared war on Germany at the start of World War 1. As it is mostly out of living memory now, the First World War has a tendency to seem a very distant conflict, but when you look at some of the photographs taken at the time(…)
Flappers were rather different in the 1920s than they are portrayed in fancy dress shops and I much prefer the original versions. As Billie Dove shows us on the cover of ‘The Flapper’ magazine (“Not for Old Fogies”) it wasn’t all about shimmying around in beaded dresses, being a ‘bright young thing’ was about bucking(…)
The 1930s was such an elegant decade, and nothing shows this more than the beautiful wedding dresses people wore. Here’s a gallery of a few of my favourites. I particularly love that little flowergirl’s striped dress, which is your favourite? Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and copyright:
Historical stage costumes are by their very nature fabulous. Rarely understated they needed to communicate the nature of a character as soon as they step onto the stage. Some are ridiculous intentionally, some not (I fear poor Andreas Dippel was supposed to look heroic but fell rather short of that), and some are simply wonderful(…)
It was fascinating to come across these family photos which make Tzar Nicholas II of Russia look like just a normal family, despite the Tzar constantly wearing a stiff impressive uniform and military hat regardless of whether he’s on a cruise, or playing tennis! On the subject of outfits, his daughters Anastasia, Tatiana, Olga and(…)
I thought I’d indulge in a little wedding nostalgia from the 1920s today, partly because I was wondering when the next series of Downton Abbey is due to start. (I’m guessing in the Autumn once the weather has turned and the summer of sport is over!) I love the styles of the 1920, these wedding(…)
French Impressionist painter Monet, photographed in his gardens in Giverny, the inspiration for his famous Water Lilies series of paintings. Monet painted more than 200 paintings of water lilies during the last 30 years of his life, many of which were painted whilst he had cataracts. I’ve seen the paintings so many times, and it’s(…)