Both of these photos were taken by American photographer Toni Frissell who was best known for her fashion photography for Harpers Bazaar and Vogue. During WW2 she travelled with the American Red Cross where she photographed nurses, front-line soldiers, American airmen and civilians. Her photos are very evocative and powerful, especially those of children caught(…)
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.
As strange as this photo might seem I couldn’t resist sharing it. Not only does it prove my theory that all dummies are creepy (whether ventriloquist’s dummys or otherwise), it also would appear to show that people in 1940s America believed women gave birth through a convenient doorway in their abdomen*. Thankfully medicine has advanced(…)
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(…)
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(…)
Amelia Earhart was a pioneering aviatrix who was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic. She mysteriously disappeared in her plane whilst attempting to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, the wreckage of which has never been found. Here are 10 surprising facts you may not know about Amelia Earhart: She was nicknamed “Lady(…)
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(…)
I never stopped to wonder how Adolf Hitler spent the First World War, I certainly never imagined he was a soldier with a creased uniform and a flamboyantly-curled moustache.
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(…)
My blog seems to have taken a decidedly Russian turn this week, what with clearing up the rumours about Rasputin and the last Tzar’s family photos! I’m continuing the trend today with the beautiful Vera Karalli, who was a successful ballerina at the Bolshoi in the 1910s as well as being a popular Russian silent(…)
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(…)
I’m embarrassed to say that a great deal of what I knew about Rasputin came courtesy of Boney M (Lover of the Russian Queen, Russia’s greatest love machine etc.) and urban myth. After looking through the last Tzar’s family photos yesterday I was intrigued enough about Rasputin to try to find out more about him.(…)
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 learnt one thing on my honeymoon – to take drugs’. Tiger Woman is the autobiography of Betty May, a bohemian wild-child and the unlikely heroine of this truly astonishing story. Born in a poverty-stricken area of London, we hear Betty’s shocking journey which culminates in her becoming a notorious 1920s flapper and artists muse,(…)
After watching Triple Cross earlier in the week, I couldn’t resist looking into the story behind the movie and finding out more about notorious double agent Eddie Chapman. It sounds like he was every bit as charming in real-life as portrayed by Christopher Plummer, only with perhaps even fewer scruples. After reading up on his(…)
This series of photos were released by the War Office in 1941 and show some of the grim realities of living in wartime Britain. The lovely Mrs Day admittedly lives in a 4 storey town-house in South Kensington, so her life is probably a lot smarter than most people actually experienced in wartime London. However,(…)
After discovering the stories of the Nazi female concentration camp guards last week, I wanted to share the stories of their male counterparts. It’s interesting to see how all of them tried to worm their way out of any responsibility in the war crimes trial. All the guards who herded the unfortunate people into the(…)