However, there is a strange and fanciful other-world which I’ve been visiting lately, just sometimes when I get chance to briefly press pause on the repetitive cycle of mundane reality. We must each have our own other-world, I’m sure - or many. They may be trips back in time, or forwards perhaps. Dreams, daydreams, places where regrets are addressed or fantasies fulfilled… Nothing is out of bounds.
In this one, I’m of non-specific age in an indefinable location, but it's a weird and wonderful artistic illusion where the me who lives inside my head slips comfortably into her groove. Here in this safe space, feeling uncharacteristically confident, vibrant and eternally youthful of course (it is a figment, after all), I will pour myself elegantly into a Lobster dress...
(1937)
and go to a party where maybe I’ll be introduced to Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo. Perhaps it will be in Paris?
In my version of events, of course, I won't be pathetically dumbstruck (I mean, I can't even think now what on earth I'd say!) - and there will be none of the dark, nightmarish backdrop of war or insanity... or pandemics. I'm doing 1930s Lite. But it's the fashions of designer Elsa Schiaparelli which are drawing me in. A slight obsession with her led me here. I bought a little book a while back; fell in love with her cutting edge ideas and was intrigued by her extraordinary life (definitely worth reading about. Her personality was so adventurous that even as a child she had quirky ideas - she once threw herself out of a window with an umbrella in the belief that it would act as a parachute, only to land unceremoniously but uninjured in a heap of manure... )
Her imaginative, playful collaborations and creations (although she objected to the word 'creation', thinking it pretentious) and her eccentric style are just the escapism I crave, even if it is only to be in my head. Maybe it's spurred on by the simple desire to dress up and venture out somewhere special, something I suspect none of us have done in a verylong while....
So, just for now, when I could really do with a little taste of alternative reality (or should that be surreality) far, far away from 2020 for obvious reasons, it may be one in which I would happily get away with wearing these gloves:
(1936)
this hat
(not sure of the date - 1950s?)
these shoes
(1938)
these glasses
(1952)
this brooch
(1952)
this coat
(1937)
this bra!
(1930s)
and carrying this bag
(1938)
All thanks to Elsa.
Where would you go right now if you could?
Talk about being ahead of her time. These creations must have been shocking in their day. Some of these might even be considered forward thinking today. Really interesting, C. This very minute I would love to go to Glasgow in 1981... for the music scene, obviously.
ReplyDeleteThey're great, aren't they and wonderfully unconventional - as you say, forward-thinking too. She was the first designer to make a feature of zips (long before Vivienne Westwood...)
DeleteOh yes, I can see how you would be in your element in 1981 Glasgow, Brian!
What a fantastic collection.
ReplyDeleteI regularly lose myself in the short stories of Jack Finney; they invariably incorporate time travel, so it's not just a case of where I'd go but when.
And just the tip of the iceberg - once you start looking at all her designs there are just so many that make you smile.
DeleteTime travel is definitely on the agenda for these reveries. I'll have to investigate Jack Finney too.
Here's a good good jumping off point.
DeleteThank you - looks good!
DeleteAmazing stuff. I know what you mean about visiting the 30s- lite version of that world. Paris or Berlin (pre- 33 obvs) must have bene fascinating but somehow I think the pre- war dread/ fear of fascism/ living at the edge of world stuff was what fuelled a lot of the culture, knowingly or unknowingly.
ReplyDeleteHanging out with Man Ray and Lee Miller always looks glamourous and artistic but maybe that's just the power of the photographs
DeleteYou're so right - in my heart I'm not sure I'd want to mingle with the likes of Man Ray et al, it could all be rather disturbing and then, as you say, the whole political undercurrent of the time too would have affected so much, but indeed probably fuelled the arts a great deal.
DeleteI'll just keep to the best bits for my fantasies; I don't feel as if I fit in to the current era so they have a lot of appeal...
Love the fashions. I have seen that Lobster dress before - Not sure if you use them but Mr WIAA has quite a collection of Dover Publications for drawing reference but they also do/did (not sure if they still exist) books of cut out dolls and I have them all. I laboriously cut out many, many fashions of the 20s/30s/40s/50s/60s and 70s but as you are finding, the 30s threw up some wonderful designs.
ReplyDeleteFrom the fashion point of view I also really like the '50s what with the really wide skirts and glamourous gowns. If I could go back in time at the moment, I always think being a teenager in 1950s America must have been really exiting. Elvis and Rock and Roll had begun and you could hang out with your friends at the 'drugstore' (ooh er..). Life looked sweet, until it wasn't.
Lovely writing from you as ever and great images (that bra is quite racy even for today).
thought you'd like them too! I don't have any Dover Publications but absolutely love the sound of your cut out doll fashions from them (any potential to include them in a post at your place, I wonder?!) The Fashion sections at the V&A are a favourite too, and there's something about seeing the clothes in the flesh so-to-speak which really sets off the imagination.
DeleteYes, 1950s America must've been amazing. So much going on, so much newness, and sense of freedom. I'm reminded of 'The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid' by Bill Bryson too, have you read it?
Glad you enjoyed the post, I'm trying to get back in the saddle!
PS - I need that bra!
DeleteJust sent you a pic of my cut out doll lobster dress. I knew it looked familiar.
DeleteYes, I've read The Thunderbolt Kid and loved it. It's probably why I came up with that as a place to go back to. Bill's memoir made me realise just how great it must have been growing up in '50s America as opposed to over here. They had Iceboxes the size of small houses and telly long before we did. That and watching Marty McFly go back to Hill Valley in 1955 - Those dresses.
Fab cut out doll pics - thank you!
DeleteBill's memoir is so evocative, isn't it, and I guess we can imagine it so vividly due to all the films and photos we've grown up with too. 1960s America must've been something too - especially once it had moved away from the conservatism of the '50s and become a lot more free. Likewise mid to late '60s Britain - another place I'd like to revisit but this time not as a child! Particularly for the fashion, music, art, etc.
Yes, late 60s Britain would have been great for the fashion, art, music - My favourite year to revisit on my blog has long been 1967.
DeleteYes, I'm definitely up for a trip to '67 too!
DeleteWhat an amazing collection, although I do feel the urge to yell '...get your bleedin' hair cut...' at those shoes!
ReplyDeleteWhere would I travel to in time? I guess like most people, it changes with whatever I'm reading, watching or listening to at any given moment. I know that I'd quite like to revisit periods in cultural history that I actually lived a parallel life through as a child and teenager, albeit to experience them as a 'grown-up'. For example, a small venue about a mile from where I was growing up between the years of 1963 and 1972 put on such acts as The Beatles (twice), The Rolling Stones (twice), The Ronettes, The Yardbirds, James Brown, The Small Faces, The Who (twice), The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Kinks (twice), Pink Floyd, Brian Auger, Terry Reid, Sandy Denny, Mighty Baby, The Groundhogs, Mott the Hoople....the list goes on and on, you get the gist. Honestly, the very thought of all that going on just up the road from the family home gets me all dewy eyed!
Haha, brilliant - yes those shoes are a little hairy! Not be worn in mud or puddles, although you could always try incorporate a top-knot!
DeleteOh, wow, I'd definitely want to make a trip (well, several) as a young adult to the venue up the road from your childhood home too. What a place that must have been; perhaps its presence (and, I like to think, some power chords wafting in through your bedroom window) influenced your love of music without you even realsing it.
...Actually you just reminded me, while I was growing up in a Hertfordshire market town, the local arts centre at the other end of town also hosted a number of significant bands too incl. Pink Floyd, PP Arnold, The Move, Cream, the Animals (also Small Faces and the Who like yours), Yardbirds and David Bowie & The Buzz! Quite big for a small town, but it always did have a bit of a groovy vibe to it - my childhood memories of seeing hippies, freaks and Teds in the street then melded into the real experience of it becoming the epicentre of a burgeoning punk scene. Ah, for a time machine...
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