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TWEED >>> TWEED >
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HAPPY NEW YEAR !
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JEEVES / TWEEDLAND / SUNDAYIMAGES Wish you ALL a HAPPY NEW YEAR ! Jeeves/ António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho |
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The Mystery of Princess Louise: Queen Victoria's Rebellious Daughter by Lucinda Hawksley
“The secrets of Queen Victoria
Louise was a sculptor and painter, friend to the Pre-Raphaelites and a keen member of the Aesthetic movement. The most feisty of the Victorian princesses, she kicked against her mother’s controlling nature and remained fiercely loyal to her brothers – especially the sickly Leopold and the much-maligned Bertie. She sought out other unconventional women, including Josephine Butler, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and George Eliot, and campaigned for education and health reform and for the rights of women. She battled with her indomitable mother for permission to practice the ‘masculine’ art of sculpture and go to art college – and in doing so became the first British princess to attend a public school.
The rumours of Louise’s colourful love life persist even today, with hints of love affairs dating as far back as her teenage years, and notable scandals included an illegitimate baby with her brother’s tutor and rumoured romantic entanglements with her married sculpting tutor Joseph Edgar Boehm and her sister Princess Beatrice’s handsome husband, Liko. True to rebellious form, she refused all royal suitors and became the first member of the royal family to marry a commoner since the sixteenth century. “Spirited and lively, The Mystery of Princess Louise is richly packed with arguments, intrigues, scandals and secrets, and is a vivid portrait of a princess desperate to escape her inheritance.”
The Mystery of Princess Louise: Queen Victoria
This life of a spirited princess who thrived despite her upbringing is both revealing and enthralling
Rachel Cooke
Sunday 29 December 2013 / http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/29/mystery-of-princess-louise-review
Princess Louise was the sixth child of Queen Victoria, a woman who famously loathed babies, and from her very first wail, Her Majesty was apt to see her as odd and difficult. When she was feeling generous, she would attribute her daughter's determined, sparky personality to the fact that she had come into the world in 1848, the year of revolution: "She was born in the most eventful times & ought to be something peculiar in consequence." When she was not feeling generous, which was most of the time, she would insist that "Loosy" was backward: "God bless the dear child – who is so affectionate and has so many difficulties to contend with," she wrote to Louise's older sister Vicky in 1864. "I hope and trust she will get over them… and still become a most useful member of the human family."
Even by the mendacious, self-deceiving standards of Victoria
It's these whispers that make Lucinda Hawksley's new biography such an intriguing prospect. In old age, Louise was just another of the batty Victorian relatives (copyright: the Duke of Windsor) who rattled around the great royal retirement home that was Kensington Palace London 1871, a homosexual whose night prowls she tried to prevent by bricking up the windows of her apartment?
Hawksley has answers to all these questions. In essence: yes, yes and yes. But her assertions are based on instinct, contemporary gossip and the matching up of dates, times and places rather than revelatory new documents. The princess's files at the royal archives remain closed, while at Inveraray Castle
What she did murder was the idea of what a princess should be. Louise was a practical girl; in the Swiss Cottage built for the children at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight , she learned to cook, a skill she practised, to the amazement of her staff, for the rest of her life. She wove a carpet for her beloved brother, Bertie (later Edward VII). But art was her first love and once she'd persuaded her mother that she might have her own studio – no mean feat, given that the widowed Victoria Victoria she made to mark the golden jubilee, and which still stands outside Kensington Palace
Art and life, for Louise, were intimately connected. Her friends and associates included Rossetti, Millais, Whistler and, more controversially, George Eliot (who was living in sin). Her clothes were fashionable, her jewellery sometimes homemade. A supporter of suffrage for women, she was in touch with both Josephine Butler and Elizabeth Garrett. No wonder, then, that she enjoyed her share of love affairs. No wonder, too, that she refused to be married off by her increasingly panicky mother to a European royal; exile was not for her. Lorne, offered as an alternative, was not precisely a catch. He washed rarely, his clothes were eccentric, he was convinced he had second sight, and he refused to let his wife use his billiard table. But she accepted him as the least bad option and went with him to Canada
Hawksley puts her facts in the service of her hunches with aplomb. I wasn't entirely convinced by her thesis about Louise's illegitimate son. It's hard to believe that the tyrannical, outwardly prudish Victoria knew of her daughter's pregnancy; if she had, would she really have been so happy to holiday with her so soon after the child was supposedly born? But I bought everything else, and the book is satisfyingly replete with eye-popping stories of life at the various palaces, even if they're not all new. Victoria
It's odd that while Hawksley tells us that Louise worried about her niece Alexandra and her obsession with a monk called Rasputin, she fails to mention the murder of the Romanovs. But I noticed the omission only when I'd put the book down. I was, I'm afraid, far too caught up with this improbable princess, a beautiful, charming woman who loved to bicycle and to smoke, who was always happy to share her recipe for oyster paté and who holidayed, at the end of her life, in Sidmouth, where she enjoyed the table d'hote at the exclusive Fortfield hotel.
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JERMYN STREET
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It is widely known as a place where the shops are almost exclusively aimed at the gentlemen's clothing market and it is famous for its resident shirtmakers such as Turnbull & Asser, Thomas Pink, Harvie & Hudson and T. M. Lewin. Gentlemen's outfitters Hackett and DAKS are also located on A number of other businesses occupy premises on the street, such as the men's luxury goods brand Alfred Dunhill, who first took a premises on the corner of Jermyn Street and Duke street in 1907; barbers Geo.F. Trumper, and Taylor of Old Bond Street; cigar shop Davidoff; as well as |
Esta é a rua para as camisarias, e a sua fama para a "Bespokeshirts" também só é comparável àquilo que SavileRowé para a "BespokeTayloring".
No entanto devido à variedade e à acessibilidade dos seus estabelecimentos e montras, esta é uma rua menos obcecada temáticamente e muito menos monótona que SavileRow.
Visitem vários estabelecimentos através dos exemplos que vos ofereço neste "post"
PICADILLY ARCADES
PICADILLYARCADE O verdadeiro Centro Comercial.
FORTNUM & MASON
FORTNUM& MASON, Top General "Gourmet"Store for British FoodMain Entrance inPicadilly. Visitar aqui : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4R028S2ydk
HILDITCH& KEY
HILDITCH& KEY , 37 JermynStreetTraditional Superior Craftmanship for alltheGentleman's apparel
HILDITCH& KEY
Hackett
With a thriving small business in Portobello, Jeremy Hackett and Ashley Lloyd-Jennings make a big step up and open their first shop under the name “Hackett” at the wrong end (as their bank manager observed) of the New Kings Road in Parson’s Green, London. Still selling fine quality second-hand traditional British clothing and accessories, discovered in house clearances and numerous antique markets, Hackett soon gains cult status aided by interest in “Young Fogeydom” and the “Sloane Ranger handbook”.
T. M. Lewin
T. M. Lewin (Thomas Mayes Lewin) is a gentleman's shirt retailer and was formerly a
T. M. Lewin & Sons traded through both World Wars and it was during this period that the company became a provider of Club Colours, becoming a supplier to the RAF, the British Army, the School tie and the sporting community. In 1979 T. M. Lewin & Sons was acquired by the McKenna family and in 1980 Geoff Quinn, the current managing director, joined the company from Turnbull & Asser.
TRICKER'S, 67 JermynStreetBespokeHandMadeandBenchMadeEnglishFootwear\![]()
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TRICKER'S Interior
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TRICKER'S shoesamples
CROCKETT & JONES
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CROCKETT& JONES,69 JermynStreet, famousshoemaker
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CROCKETT& JONESshopfront
FOSTER & SONS
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FOSTER& SONS, 83 JermynStreet, Bespokeshoes, cases andluggagesince 1840
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FOSTER& SONS INTERIOR
FLORIS, 89 JermynStreet, Perfumes, bath, essences,toiletwatersandsoapsince 1730
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Floris shopfrontinthe XIX century
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FLORIS shopfront
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Taylor of Old Bond Street
Jeremiah Taylor first founded Taylor of Old Bond Street on September the 1st, 1854. Jeremiah opened his salon inLondon Bond Street Taylor Jermyn Street , London
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TURNBULL & ASSER
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TURNBULL& ASSER 71-72 Jermynstreet Visitar emhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZZ9H8hTF1E
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TURNBULL& ASSER interior
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TURNBULL & ASSER
HARVIE & HUDSON
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HARVIE & HUDSON
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HARVIE AND HUDSON,77 Jermyn street British Shirtmakers and ties specialists
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HARVIE & HUDSON
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CAVENDISH HOTEL 81 Jermyn Street http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYzHoPkfrY
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22 JERMYN STREET HOTEL
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22 Jermyn Street Hotel de Charme
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22 Jermyn Street HOTEL DE CHARME under the same family ownership since 1915 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93vSaqINvJw
BATES
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BATES 21a Jermyn Street , Makers of stylish Hats
GEO F TRUMPER
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GEO F TRUMPER 20 Jermyn Street Barber to Crown Heads and the Aristocracy since1875
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ROWLEY'S Restaurant 113 Jremyn Sstreet
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ROWLEY'S
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ROWLEY'S
WILTON'S Restaurant
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TRICKER'S Interior
TRICKER'S shoesamplesCROCKETT & JONES
CROCKETT& JONES,69 JermynStreet, famousshoemaker
CROCKETT& JONESshopfrontFOSTER & SONS
FOSTER& SONS, 83 JermynStreet, Bespokeshoes, cases andluggagesince 1840
FOSTER& SONS INTERIORFLORIS, 89 JermynStreet, Perfumes, bath, essences,toiletwatersandsoapsince 1730
Floris shopfrontinthe XIX century
FLORIS shopfront
Taylor of Old Bond Street
Jeremiah Taylor first founded Taylor of Old Bond Street on September the 1st, 1854. Jeremiah opened his salon in
The 'Taylor
TURNBULL & ASSER
TURNBULL& ASSER 71-72 Jermynstreet Visitar emhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZZ9H8hTF1E
TURNBULL& ASSER interior
TURNBULL & ASSERHARVIE & HUDSON
HARVIE & HUDSON
HARVIE AND HUDSON,77 Jermyn street British Shirtmakers and ties specialists
HARVIE & HUDSON
CAVENDISH HOTEL 81 Jermyn Street http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYzHoPkfrY
22 JERMYN STREET HOTEL
22 Jermyn Street Hotel de Charme
22 Jermyn Street HOTEL DE CHARME under the same family ownership since 1915 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93vSaqINvJwBATES
BATES 21a Jermyn Street , Makers of stylish HatsGEO F TRUMPER
GEO F TRUMPER 20 Jermyn Street Barber to Crown Heads and the Aristocracy since1875
Paxton & Whitfield
Paxton & Whitfield were founded in 1797 but have roots going back to a market store in Aldwych in 1742. Originally located at 19 Jermyn Street
Paxton & Whitfield hold two royal warrants, one from the Prince of Wales in 1997 and one from Queen Elizabeth II in 2001. The relationship with the Royal Warrant Holders Association goes back to Queen Victoria
ROWLEY'S
ROWLEY'S Restaurant 113 Jremyn Sstreet
ROWLEY'S
ROWLEY'SWILTON'S Restaurant
WILTONS RESTAURANT, 55 Jermyn Street, noted since 1742 for the finest oysters, fish and game
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The Best of Luxury Shopping on Jermyn Street, Old Bond St.../ SEE "POST" BELLOW .
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MAPP AND LUCIA / BBC / 2014 . SEE VÍDEO BELLOW.
Mapp and Lucia is a British drama television series that was first broadcast on BBC One from 29th to 31st December 2014. The three-part series, adapted by Steve Pemberton and directed by Diarmuid Lawrence, is based on E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia collection of novels.
Anna Chancellor as Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas
Steve Pemberton as Georgie Pillson
Miranda Richardson
Mark Gatiss as Major Benjy
Felicity Montagu as Godiva 'Diva' Plaistow
Gemma Whelan as Quaint Irene Coles
Paul Ritter as Reverend Kenneth Bartlett
Poppy Miller as Evie Bartlett
Nick Woodeson as Mr Wyse
Pippa Haywood as Mrs Wyse
Katy Brand as Hermione 'Hermy' Pillson
Joanna Scanlan as Ursula 'Ursy' Pillson
Frances Barber as Amelia, Contessa di Faraglione
Jenny Platt as Foljambe
Gavin Brocker as Cadman
Soo Drouet as Grosvenor
Susan Porrett as Withers
E.F. BENSON (1867 – 1940)
Mapp and Lucia is a collective name for a series of novels by E. F. Benson, and also the name for two British television adaptations based on those novels.
The novels feature humorous incidents in the lives of (mainly) upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige and "one-upmanship" in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery. Several of them are set in the small seaside town of Tilling , closely based on Rye , East Sussex , where Benson lived for a number of years and (like Lucia) served as mayor. Lucia previously lived at Riseholme, based on Broadway, Worcestershire, from where she brought to Tilling her celebrated recipe for Lobster à la Riseholme.
"Mallards", the home of Miss Mapp—and subsequently Lucia—was based on Lamb House in Rye
The novels, in chronological order, are:
Queen Lucia (1920)
Miss Mapp (1922)
Lucia in London
Mapp and Lucia (1931)
Lucia's Progress (1935) (published in the U.S.
Trouble for Lucia (1939)
The first three books concern only the protagonist named in the title; the last three feature both Mapp and Lucia.
In 1977 Thomas Y. Cromwell Company reprinted all six novels in a compendium called Make Way London
"Desirable Residences", one further short story featuring Miss Mapp, and previously having seen only one magazine printing in Benson's own time, was discovered by Jack Adrian in the 1990s and included in his collection of Benson stories, Desirable Residences.[1] A slight oddity about this very short piece, is that the town of Tilling was called Tillingham in the original printing, according to Jack Adrian's introduction to his collection. The characters of Miss Mapp and Diva Plaistow are clearly recognizable, however, as are their desirable residences. Miss Mapp, for example here lives in "Mallards", the fictional Lamb House that was always the Queen Castle
The character Susan Leg, appearing briefly in Trouble for Lucia, first appeared as a major character in Benson's novel Secret Lives (1932), which is similar in style to the Mapp and Lucia books.
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Richardson Richardson
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In 1950 the widow of Henry James's nephew gave Lamb House to the National Trust. Today the house is administered and maintained on the Trust's behalf by its current tenant. Some of James's personal possessions are on display, and there is an extensive walled garden, designed by Alfred Parsons at the request of Henry James, which is open to the public along with the house.
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In the summer of 2014 Lamb House was transformed to become part of the set for the BBC's new adaptation of E F Benson's novel Mapp and Lucia. Having written the series at Lamb House and based it inRye
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Mapp & Lucia (1985–1986)
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Mapp and Lucia review – beautifully tart one-upwomanship
As two 1930s society mavens engaged in increasingly deranged warfare, Anna Chancellor and Miranda Richardson led us gloriously into a world of ludicrous standoffs and Italian hogwashery
Julia Raeside
Thursday 1 January 2015 / http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/jan/01/mapp-and-lucia-review-richardson-chancellor
A seemingly impossible task lay ahead of The League of Gentlemen’s Steve Pemberton, judging by the number of people I’d seen expressing their terror at the thought of his new adaptation of EF Benson’s comic novels about Mapp and Lucia (BBC1), two 1930s society mavens engaged in all-out war for dominance of a picturesque Sussex
They couldn’t possibly like it if it wasn’t Channel 4’s 1980s version starring Geraldine McEwan and Prunella Scales, they declared. Although McEwan and Scales were brilliant, that’s no reason to place the books under glass, never to be touched again. It’s a self-sabotaging approach to believe only one actor can play a particular part. Can’t both Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone (not to mention Benedict Cumberbatch) be great Sherlock Holmeses? Well, if you did stay away, you missed a truly delightful piece of television and two splendid performances from Anna Chancellor, as melodramatic widow Emmeline “Lucia” Lucas, and Miranda Richardson, who gloriously inhabited the hoisted bosom and toothy fizzog of Elizabeth Mapp. More on those teeth later.
Pemberton’s nicely carbonated three-parter drew to a close, leaving me champing at the bit for more. More of Chancellor and Richardson’s beautifully tart one-upwomanship. More of the distractingly pretty Rye, its cobbles so perfectly suited to thwarting Mapp’s ungainly progress in low heels when trying to spy on her rival. More of the game supporting cast, including Felicity Montagu’s increasingly furious Diva, Mapp’s conscience and grudging ally. “One of us is going to have to dye,” barked Mapp at her friend when they turned up to a function in similar salmon pink frocks.
And definitely more of Pemberton’s clearly affectionate dialogue, with its acute ear for Benson’s subtly devastating zingers. The subtle chill of the Channel 4 adaptation is replaced with something warmer, perhaps in the palette of the production design or the performances of the supporting cast, but it by no means dilutes the acid that pours forth whenever the two women are in a room together.
Last night’s final visit to Tilling (Rye
As if we hadn’t been spoiled enough for stunning female performances by the two leads, plus Montagu and Tuesday night’s excellent cameos by Joanna Scanlan and Katy Brand, the final episode was almost stolen by Frances Barber, who roared into town as Amelia, Contessa di Faraglione, to a suitably operatic change in the score. For a plot device brought in to merely disprove Lucia’s Italian hogwashery, Barber didn’t half make her mark.
Meanwhile, as the briefly banished Georgie Pillson, Pemberton allowed himself a tiny self-indulgence when his character overheard the staff speculating on his homosexuality and hairpiece; a small glimpse of an emotional inner life in an otherwise comically focused performance. His adaptation paced the plot neatly over three hours, inserting a new character at just the right point in the story.
As the episode reached its climax, a horde of extras took part in a behatted stampede, underscored by Zadok the Priest, when word got out that the Prince of Wales’s car was driving towards Tilling town centre. This flag-waving glee summed up the spirit behind the whole series. Everyone seemed genuinely, infectiously pleased to be there.
With Lucia’s decision to settle permanently in the town, Mapp was left to grimace as she dug in for the battles yet to come. I very much hope to see these future rumbles on screen, as I’d sit through another dozen rounds at least. Not goodbye then, but au reservoir, as they say in Tilling.
Christmas 2014: Can a new TV take on E F Benson’s cult Mapp and Lucia novels compare with the sublime 1985 series?
GERARD GILBERT / Saturday 06 December 2014 / http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/christmas-2014-can-a-new-tv-take-on-e-f-bensons-cult-mapp-and-lucia-novels-compare-with-the-sublime-1985-series-9905930.html
Students in the mid-1980s may have bonded over many things – their opposition to the Thatcher government, perhaps, or their collection of albums by The Cure – but comic Edwardian novelist EF Benson?
Such was the unlikely beginning to a beautiful friendship between Mark Gatiss and Steve Pemberton, when they first met at a drama college near Wakefield
The gay son of a Victorian Archbishop of Canterbury , Benson remains best known for his Mapp and Lucia novels, a series of social comedies about warring upper-middle-class ladies in interwar Sussex
“Here” is up a cul-de-sac in the picturesque Old Town of Hastings in East Sussex , on the set of Pemberton’s new three-part adaptation of the novels, co-starring his old League of Gentlemen mucker, which is a centrepiece of the BBC’s Christmas schedule. The series has been filmed around the county, though the chief location is nearby Rye
As Pemberton knows, his version has a lot to live up to – namely the sublime 1985 Channel 4 series starring Prunella Scales as Mapp, Geraldine McEwan as Lucia, and Nigel Hawthorne as McEwan’s consort Georgie Pillson, a role now taken by Pemberton. “Anyone who has fallen in love with the books by way of that adaptation will possibly find it hard to accept different people playing those roles”, says Pemberton, and – as one of those people – I can only concur.
Scales’s Mapp was terrific, bustling Sybil Fawlty-like around Tilling with her shopping basket, in a constant fury at once again being out-manoeuvred by Lucia. And McEwan, with her cod-Italian phrases and eyes swivelling mischievously, has never been funnier. But it was Hawthorne Hastings
Pemberton has also been wise in his choice of leading ladies, Anna Chancellor, as Lucia, and an eerily Scales-like Miranda Richardson as Mapp. “There are not that many actresses who can do the drama and the comedy… it really isn’t easy to get that lightness of touch”, he says. “And physically they complete each other so well. It should feel like a boxing match where you don’t know which one is going to win.” “Anna looks like she comes from this period and she just slid so perfectly into this role”, says Gatiss. “I met her just before we started and she said ‘The terrible thing is that I think I am Lucia.”
Gatiss himself plays Major Benji, “ex-Indian Army major who drinks too much and talks about bagging tigers” and is given to yelling the aforementioned catch phrase of “Kway-hi!” (to be said when downing a dram), while of the supporting cast, Game of Thrones actress Gemma Whelan stands out as “Quaint Irene”, a pipe-smoking painter whose art outrages Tilling society more than her sexuality (Benson apparently based her on the Well of Loneliness author Radclyffe Hall, who also lived in Rye).
In fact the Mapp and Lucia novels were remarkable for their time in having two rather obviously gay characters – Georgie and Irene. “Benson’s entire family were gay [at least two of his five siblings were believed to have been]… that’s a sitcom waiting to happen”, says Gatiss. “It’s always had a massive gay following… quite rightly because it is very ahead of time… and Quaint Irene is absolutely in love with Lucia, and it’s just out there, while Lucia and Georgie that’s definitely a fag-hag relationship. But the weird thing about Tilling as a society is that they’re actually very accepting of their strange little foibles. And for the time that’s quite a foible.”
Other “foibles” include a flirtation with fascism. “They’re all in love with Germany and Italy
As filming wraps in Hastings , we’re driven the 12 or so miles back to Rye
Benson served as mayor of Rye Rye
“We’ve been filming in the church square and it’s so confined and tiny, everyone’s in and out of each other’s lives”, continues Gatiss. “Philip Roth was talking about why the life of academics is so riven with pettiness and nastiness and he says it’s precisely because the stakes are so low; that’s kind of what this is about.” “My kids are at primary school and it made me think of how that politics of the playground worked,” adds Pemberton, “which parents wanted to be the class reps and so on. I think it’s a universal situation. You had it in shows like Desperate Housewives.”
The triumph of EF Benson’s novels, as well as the 1980s adaptation, is that while we’re invited to laugh at these characters, we also feel for them, and it’s an attribute Pemberton hopes his version achieves as well. “Something we used to pride ourselves on in The League of Gentlemen was to bring pathos into it”, says Pemberton. Is Tilling another variation on Royston Vasey? “I suppose Tilling is the genteel version of Royston Vasey”, he says. “Vasey-by-the-Sea.”
‘Mapp and Lucia’ will be screening over Christmas on BBC1
In 1950 the widow of Henry James's nephew gave Lamb House to the National Trust. Today the house is administered and maintained on the Trust's behalf by its current tenant. Some of James's personal possessions are on display, and there is an extensive walled garden, designed by Alfred Parsons at the request of Henry James, which is open to the public along with the house.
During summer 2014, Lamb House was used as the fictional "Mallards" for a new BBC TV adaptation of E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia. A temporary replica of the Garden Room was constructed for filming.
Lamb House was built in 1722 by James Lamb, a wealthy wine merchant and local politician. In the winter of 1726 King George I took refuge at the house after his ship was washed ashore at nearby Camber Sands. James Lamb gave up his bedroom for the King, while Mrs Lamb gave birth to a baby boy during the night. The child was named George and the king consented to be the boy's godfather.
A detached Garden Room, with a large bay window overlooking the street, was built at right angles to the house in 1743, and originally served as a banqueting room.[2] Both Henry James and E. F. Benson later used the Garden Room as a base for their writing during the summer months. The Garden Room was destroyed by a German bomb in 1940.
Benson wrote lovingly of both the garden and house, which he renamed "Mallards", in his popular Mapp and Lucia novels. Lamb House is the subject of Joan Aiken's supernatural book The Haunting of Lamb House (1993), comprising three novellas about residents of the house at different times, including James and Benson (both of whom also wrote ghost stories).
Other tenants have included, the novelist Rumer Godden, the author and academic A. C. Benson, the author and politician H. Montgomery Hyde, the publisher Sir Brian Batsford, politician William Mabane, 1st Baron Mabane, the literary agent Graham Watson and the writers John Senior and Sarah Philo.
In the summer of 2014 Lamb House was transformed to become part of the set for the BBC's new adaptation of E F Benson's novel Mapp and Lucia. Having written the series at Lamb House and based it in
The three part drama written by Steve Pemberton, also stars Miranda Richardson, Anna Chancellor and Mark Gattiss, to name but a few, with the help from some locals taking part too.
The production company with the help of conservation teams at the National Trust designed a set fit for Miss Mapp's exacting standards and Rye
Recreating a piece of Lamb House history
Bombed during the Second World War, the garden room at Lamb House was recreated for the filming of Mapp and Lucia. The convincing set gives viewers a window into the history of the house. It's hoped that with the help of fundraising, boosted by the filming, Lamb House might one day be reunited with a garden room once more.
Visitors to Lamb House in the spring of 2015 will be able to find out more about the making of Mapp and Lucia thanks to a small display made possible as the result of location fees for the filming. The house also has personal possession belonging to Henry James on show.
Mapp & Lucia (1985–1986)
The television series based on the three 1930s books, produced by London Weekend Television, was filmed in Rye 4 in 1985 and 1986.
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| Mapp & Lucia (1985–1986) |
MAPP AND LUCIA / BBC / 2014
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The Museum of London's Sherlock Holmes Tweed
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The Museum of London Tweed / Sherlock Holmes inspired tweed / Norton and Son's, Tinie Tempah models bespoke London Tweed suit
Tinie Tempah has a final fitting with head cutter Stephen Allen at Savile Row tailors, Norton and Sons
“This month, to coincide with London Collections: Men AW15, we’ve been lucky enough to work with iconic Londoner and musician Tinie Tempah to bring both the three piece suit and tweed bang up to date in a special collaboration.
The museum’s London Tweed design takes its inspiration from Sherlock Holmes, a character famous for wearing a tweed deerstalker and cape, and subject of our latest exhibition. The fabric’s colour palette was chosen following a close analysis of three sources:
The use of colours in the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (blue and yellow accents, against an urban grey)
Late Victorian tweed and hat fashions found within the Museum of London
The latest menswear trend forecasting data”
http://blog.museumoflondon.org.uk/london-collections-men-tweed-tinie-tempah/Sherlock Holmes inspired tweed to launch in October
8 August 2014 / http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/corporate/press-media/press-releases/sherlock-holmes-inspired-tweed-to-launch-in-october/
This October the Museum of London
The fabric design takes its inspiration from Sherlock Holmes, a character famous for wearing a tweed deerstalker and cape, and will be revealed in October. The colour palette was chosen following a close analysis of three sources: the use of colours in the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; late Victorian tweed and hat fashions established by cross-referencing the Museum of London’s fashion and textile collection with Christys' historic catalogues held in the Stockport Local Heritage Library; finally the latest menswear trend forecasting data, along with Lovat Mills’ modern dyeing and finishing techniques.
The tweed will go on sale, initially as a Christys’ deerstalker and other hats, in October 2014 to coincide with the opening of the major Sherlock Holmes exhibition at the Museum of London Liberty , Christys’ and the Museum of London London
Sean O’Sullivan, Interim Director of Enterprise at the Museum of London
“Partnerships such as this give us a fantastic opportunity to create products which inspire a passion for London ’s history, a story that the Museum of London London
Steve Clarke, MD of Christys’ Hats, said:
“Christys Hats was established in London in 1773, not far from the current site of the Museum of London, and has been connected to the capital ever since. The Museum of London
Sherlock Holmes opens at the Museum of London
-ENDS-
Notes for editors
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The Chesterfield Overcoat .
Phineas Cole Fall 2013
The
It was named after the Earl of Chesterfield.
No waist seams or front darts (up until then, those were the standard)
Single-breasted fly front
Short, notched lapel
Velvet collar (optional)
Straight side pockets – it looks like a flap pocket but it could be a jetted pocket
No cuffs
Single back vent and an otherwise plain back
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Inside 4 Princelet Street, Spitalfields, VÍDEO SEE BELOW / London, 27th January 2010
Formerly Nos. 1 and 2 Princes Street
These two houses, on the south side of the street, were the last of the original houses to be built in Princelet Street No. 6 Wilkes Street
In June 1724 Worrall assigned his leases of No. 2 and of No. 6 Wilkes Street
No. 2, the south-west corner house,contains three storeys and a roof loft. The building is one room deep and has a frontage four windows wide, with the doorway in the second opening from the left. Although the original fenestration pattern remains, the front has been refaced, or altered, and covered with stucco, probably around 1860. The ground storey is channel-jointed and the upper part coursed in imitation of stonework. The door way, and the one opening on to Wilkes Street
As originally built, No. 2 was uniform with No. 4 which survives in a much less altered state. Each of the upper two storeys of No. 4 has four evenly spaced windows, with a blind window against the party wall to complete the even rhythm across the two fronts. The ground storey has a stucco facing of about 1820, with Doric pilasters supporting a plain entablature. The rest of the front is of yellow brick, with red brick jambs and high segmental arches to the windows, which now contain wooden casements with hoppers. A brick bandcourse underlines the parapet which is finished with a stone coping. One small hipped-roofed dormer lights the loft. The interior finishings are similar to those in No. 2, but in far better order.
Spitalfields' historic association with the silk industry was established by French Protestant (Huguenots) refugees who settled in this area after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. By settling here, outside the bounds of the City of London
The late 17th and 18th centuries saw an estate of well-appointed terraced houses, built to accommodate the master weavers controlling the silk industry, and grand urban mansions built around the newly created Spital Square Christ Church Fournier Street
There has been a market on the site since 1638 when Charles I gave a licence for flesh, fowl and roots to be sold in what was then known as Spittle Fields. The Market currently receives around 25,000 visitors every week.
From the 1730s Irish weavers came here, after a decline in the Irish linen industry to take up work in the silk trade. The 18th century saw periodic crises in the silk industry, bought on by imports of French silk – in a lull between the wars between the two rivals; and imports of printed calicos. The depression in the trade, and thence the prices paid to weavers, led to protests. In 1769, the Spitalfield Riots occurred, where attempts were made to break up meetings of weavers, called to discuss the threat to wages, caused by another downturn in the market for silk. This ended with an Irish and a Huguenot weaver being hanged in front of the Salmon and Ball public house at Bethnal Green.
Price controls on amounts master weavers could pay journeymen for each piece were established. This removed all incentive to pay higher wages during good times. During bad times workers had no work. As the price was per piece, there was incentive for using machinery, as master would have to pay for the machine and still pay the same price per piece to journeymen. By 1822 labour rates were so above market labour rates, that much of the employment in silk manufacture had moved to the country. Remaining manufacture tended to focus on expensive fashion items, which required proximity to court and had higher margins.
By the Victorian era, the silk industry had entered a long decline and the old merchant dwellings had degenerated into multi-occupied slums. Spitalfields became a by-word for urban deprivation, and, by 1832, concern at a London
The low houses are all huddled together in close and dark lanes and alleys, presenting at first sight an appearance of non-habitation, so dilapidated are the doors and windows:- in every room of the houses, whole families, parents, children and aged grandfathers swarm together.
In 1860, a treaty was established with France
By the later 19th century inner Spitalfields had eclipsed rival claimants to the dubious distinction of being the worst criminal rookery of London Dean Street Itchy Park ', next to Christ Church
In the late 20th century the Jewish presence diminished, to be replaced by an influx of Bangladeshi immigrants, who also worked in the local textile industry and made Brick Lane London
Another development, from the 1960s onwards, has been a campaign to save the housing stock of old merchant terraces to the west of Brick Lane
Current 'urban regeneration' has also seen the erection of large modern office blocks, between Bishopsgate and Spitalfields Market. These represent, in effect, an expansion of the City of London
Since 1998 the area has formed part of the larger Spitalfields and Banglatown local government ward. This decision was considered controversial at the time and still rouses strong opinions on both sides.
Dennis Severs' House in Folgate Street 56 Artillery Lane Whitechapel Art Gallery Brick Lane
Amongst the many well known artists living in Spitalfields are Gilbert and George, Ricardo Cinalli, Tracey Emin and Stuart Brisley. TV presenter, architecture expert and Georgian fanatic Dan Cruickshank was an active campaigner for Spitalfields, and continues to live in the area. Writer Jeanette Winterson turned a derelict Georgian house into an organic food shop, Verde's, as part of the Slow Food movement.
Spitalfields figures in a number of works of literature, including A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vexed (performed 1610-14; printed 1632) by William Rowley, a dramatisation of the foundation of St Mary Spital; The People of the Abyss (1903), the journalistic memoir by Jack London; Hawksmoor (1985) by Peter Ackroyd; Rodinsky's Room (1999) by Iain Sinclair and Rachel Lichtenstein; Brick Lane (2003) by Monica Ali; and The Quincunx (1991) by Charles Palliser.
19th century Spitalfields was recreated as the setting for the film From Hell about Jack the Ripper. This included a reconstruction (in Prague Commercial Street
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Luciano Barbera The true “gentiluomo”.
Carlo Barbera is a family-owned high-end textile manufacturer and clothing designer in Callabiana Italy , about 50 miles west of Milan 5th Ave New York 99 in 2010. In 2010 the reported average price of fabric from the Carlo Barbara factory was 41 euros a meter ($48.75 a yard), about twice that of their Italian competitors.
The fabric and clothing manufactured by the firm are generally considered to be of the finest quality; the yarn after dying is rested six months while it regains humidity before weaving. However, in 2010 sales were only about half of their peak in the 1990s and the company had a large debt. Sales have been impacted by both domestic competitors which copy Barbera's methods and manufacturers who import from China
Luciano Barbera HOME PAGE
Is Italy
By DAVID SEGAL
Published: July 31, 2010 / http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/business/global/01italy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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Dave Yoder for The New York Times
The clothier Luciano Barbera in his family’s “spa for yarn,” where crates of thread rest for months. Economists fear that such small-scale artisanship cannot sustain |
“THIS tradition is finita,” says Luciano Barbera, as he opens the door to an underground warehouse. Dozens of large wooden boxes are stacked to the ceiling, containing nearly 80 tons of colorful thread, wound in spools and idling like sunbathers at a beach, absorbing moisture in a cavernous room kept naturally cool and humid by a creek that burbles under the floor.
“I call it a spa for yarn,” explains Mr. Barbera, a lean and regal 72-year-old, who is dressed in a style that could be described as aristo-casual: white linen button-down shirt, brown herringbone pants and brown leather shoes. He is giving a quick tour of the Carlo Barbera mill, named for his 99-year-old father, and destined to be run by two or three of Luciano’s sons.
Mr. Barbera calls wool a living fiber, and he does not mean this metaphorically. After yarn is dyed here, it rests in the spa for as long as six months, recuperating until 20 percent of its weight is water. Then the material undergoes a 15-step process, which Mr. Barbera will not detail, other than to magisterially summarize it as “the nobilization of the fabric.”
Any shortcuts, he says, would harm the fabric’s “performance.”
Wait, performance?
“Yes, performance,” he says in an accent both purring and professorial. “If your suit is not performing well, it’s like being in a car where you can feel every little bump in the road. If a suit is performing well, it’s as though you drive right over the bumps and you feel nothing.”
And thus the paradox.
As insiders of the fashion world will confirm, the bolts of wool and cashmere produced at this mill can indeed be described as high performance, among the finest in the world, sold to dozens of luxury brands like Armani, Zegna and Ralph Lauren.
The financial performance of the mill that creates this fabric, on the other hand, is far from stellar.
Like much of the Italian economy, the Carlo Barbera factory is struggling and for reasons, according to academics, that say just about everything you need to know about what ails Italy
Since the economic crisis began, this country has regularly turned up on the informal list of Nations That Worry Europe. While its finances are not as precarious as those of Greece , Portugal or Ireland Italy
Study the numbers and you will find symptoms of distress that look a lot like those of Greece Greece Greece , Italy
But dig a little deeper and the similarities end. The Italians, unlike the Greeks, are born savers, and much of the Italian debt is owned by the Italians. That means that unlike Greece , which will be sending a sizable percentage of its G.D.P. to foreign creditors for a generation to come, Italy
“I know that in the States, all Mediterranean countries get lumped together,” says Carlo Altomonte, an economist with Bocconi University in Milan Italy
Like Italy
Instead, orders are drying up. The Barberas have long been small, niche players, the family that high-end designers turn to when assembling their most fabulous collections. And since 1971, Luciano Barbera has also sold clothing under his own name, made with his own fabric. Today the line is sold in stores like Barney’s and Neiman Marcus, handmade suits that sell for $4,000 and a line of upmarket women’s wear, some of which you can see on Angelina Jolie in the recent film “Salt.”
But sales for Luciano Barbera clothing and Carlo Barbera fabric have drastically slowed in recent years. In the late ’90s, the mill enjoyed record annual sales of what amounts to about $15.5 million, Mr. Barbera says. Last year, the figure was half that sum.
WHEN describing the ills of his businesses, Mr. Barbera tends to focus on one issue: the “Made in Italy China , Bulgaria and elsewhere and slapping “Made in Italy
Until recently, there weren’t any rules about what “Made in Italy Italy , a garment is made in Italy
To Mr. Barbera, this is an outrage, though somehow the word “outrage” doesn’t quite capture the depth of his feelings. He says the law will wreck the national brand, which has long been built on the skill of its craftspeople.
In op-ed articles and an assortment of meetings, he has crusaded against the law, clashing with a nemesis with a familiar last name: Santo Versace, the chairman of the Versace house of fashion. Mr. Versace is also a member of Italy
“It’s a truffa,” says Mr. Barbera one recent afternoon, using the Italian word for scam. “And I am fighting with all my strength to make people understand that this country is destroying itself in order to advance the interests of just a few people who are unfortunately members of the most powerful caste of this country.”
But labeling is just one of many obstacles standing between Mr. Barbera and profitability. To understand why his factory, and so much of Italy
It has economists here worried not about a looming fiasco so much as a gradual, grinding decline.
“There is no sense of what a market economy is in this country,” says Professor Altomonte. “What you see here is an incredible fear of competition.”
THE Carlo Barbera factory is a series of glass and brick buildings beside a stream about 55 miles west of Milan University of Leeds in England
He brought home know-how in textile engineering as well as admiration for British finery, to which he added a flair for color and pattern and which he has turned into a personal trademark. A fashion director at Neiman Marcus once called Mr. Barbera “the most elegant man in the world.” It is not uncommon for strangers to introduce themselves and ask, “How can I look like you?”
“I don’t want to generate people who all look the same,” he says, sitting in his office one recent afternoon. “I am a soloist. You can be a soloist and play in an orchestra.”
His career as a designer began, he says, almost by accident. In 1962, a photographer from Vogue snapped a photo of him in a suit made of fabric he had designed. (In the image, he is leaning against a fence, a cigar in hand, gazing at his horse, Edwan.) Several years later, a man named Murray Pearlstein, who owned LouisBoston, a menswear store, knocked at the Carlo Barbera factory, introduced himself to Luciano and told him that he wanted to sell his line of clothing to the American market.
“I said: ‘Mr. Pearlstein, I have no collection. I have only my own suits.’ He said: ‘You have talent. You should design your own collection.’ ”
At roughly 41 euros a meter ($48.75 a yard), the average price of the fabric that the Carlo Barbera factory produces today is almost double that of competitors in Biella, a town in the foothills of the Alps that has been renowned for centuries as a textiles hub. The problem is that fewer designers have been willing to pay this premium, and factories in other countries have been copying the Barberas’ methods, with results that may not be as good but that cost a small fraction of the price.
There’s a demand-side problem, too: the number of men buying bespoke suits has plunged in recent years, as the workplace becomes more casual. LouisBoston doesn’t carry Luciano Barbera any longer.
“At a certain point, he could have gone to China
Mr. Barbera says he has no qualms about globalization. In his opinion, Italy
“But I say that Italy Italy and tag it “Made in Italy
While his vehemence on this subject is easy to understand, economists here say that Mr. Barbera’s small empire would be teetering even if he could rewrite the “Made in Italy
In a list of what is crushing Mr. Barbera’s balance sheet, they say, the provenance of labels is not at the top.
FIVE years ago, Francesco Giavazzi needed a taxi. Cabs are relatively scarce in Milan 5 a .m., when he wanted to head to the airport, so he called a company at 4:30 to schedule a pickup. But when he climbed into the cab half an hour later, he discovered that the meter had been running for more than 20 minutes, because the taxi driver had arrived soon after the call and started charging for his time. Allowed by the rules, but to Mr. Giavazzi, utterly unfair.
“So it was 20 euros before we started the trip to the airport,” recalls Mr. Giavazzi, who is an economics professor at Bocconi University
Professor Giavazzi later wrote an op-ed article denouncing this episode as another example of the toll exacted by Italy Italy
The op-ed did not endear Professor Giavazzi to the city’s cab drivers. They pinned leaflets with his name and address at taxi stands around Milan
“This is a country with a lot of rents,” says Professor Giavazzi, sitting in his office one recent afternoon, using the economists’ term for excess profits that flow to a business because of a lack of competition. “You need a notary public, it’s like 1,000 euros before you even open your mouth. If you’re a notary public in this country, you live like a king.”
For Mr. Barbera, as is true with every entrepreneur here, the prevalence and power of Italy
THE protectionist impulses of the guilds are mimicked throughout the Italian labor market. The rules are different for small companies, but in effect, people with a full-time job in a company with more than 18 workers have what amounts to tenure, even if they don’t belong to a union. This makes managers reluctant to hire, especially in a downturn. You are stuck with new employees in perpetuity, whether they’re good or not.
A sclerotic job market is a major reason that the Italian economy has been all but dormant for the past decade, growing far more slowly than its European peers. And this is a country that never had a housing bust or a major bank crisis.
So how does Italy Biella
One answer is the black economy, say economists. Roughly one-quarter of Italy
Italians, notes Professor Altomonte, are among the world’s heaviest consumers of bottled water. “Do you know why? Because the water in the tap comes from the government.”
The suspicion of Italians when it comes to extra-familial institutions explains why many here care more about protecting what they have than enhancing their wealth. Most Italians live less than a mile or two from their parents and stay there, often for financial benefits like cash and in-kind services like day care. It’s an insularity that runs all the way up to the corporate suites. The first goal of many entrepreneurs here isn’t growth, so much as keeping the business in the family. For a company to really expand, it needs capital, but that means giving up at least some control. So thousands of companies here remain stubbornly small — all of which means Italy
“The prevailing management style in this country is built around loyalty, not performance,” says Tito Boeri, scientific director at Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti, who has written about Italy
In the eternal contest between the meticulously honed and the nationally franchised, Italy
And of course, the worship of growth has its limitations. The American economy is vastly more robust, but instead of family-owned bakeries, which seem to dot every hectare of Italy Germany , no character in a movie has ever welled up and sighed, “We’ll always have Stuttgart
Despite his cash flow woes, Mr. Barbera is sticking to his plan, even the plan to hand his business to his sons, which according to a national maxim is likely to end in tears.
“We say in this country that the first generation builds, the second generation maintains and the third generation destroys,” Mr. Barbera says. “But my father and I worked together, so I think we were the first generation. My sons are the second generation. So at least they will maintain.”
MR. Barbera can discuss all the quirks and pathologies of the Italian economy, but there is rarely more than five minutes between his monologues about “Made in Italy
“I’m criticizing the law,” he says. “I am not criticizing the people who buy my fabric.”
One name he is happy to mention is Santo Versace, whose purchases — his brand buys a “very small” amount of fabric, says Mr. Barbera — are eclipsed by his role in pushing the new law.
In a phone interview, Mr. Versace noted that there was no “Made in Italy Croatia and Turkey
“Never our top stuff,” he said, through an interpreter. “All of that is made in Italy
He sounded skeptical about one of Mr. Barbera’s ideas: a label that simply lays out the origins of a garment, stating where its fabric was made, where it was constructed, and so on.
“You can’t make a label too complicated,” said Mr. Versace. “You need a simplified label. Otherwise you can’t sell things.”
For now, Mr. Barbera is hoping that the European Commission will overturn the law, which it can do. Meanwhile, garments in the collection that bears his name are labeled “Entirely manufactured in Italy
Economists said that Mr. Barbera had a point, but they also said that worrying about this issue was like fretting about the head cold of a patient with Stage 3 cancer. They see a country with a service sector dominated by guilds, which don’t just overcharge but also raise the barriers to entry for the millions in ill-fated manufacturing jobs who might otherwise find work as, for instance, taxi drivers. They see a timid entrepreneur class. They see a political system in the thrall of the older voters who want to keep what they have, even if it dooms the nation to years of stasis.
They see a society whose best and brightest are leaving and not being replaced by immigrants, because Italy
To Professor Giavazzi, the future here doesn’t look like Greece Argentina
“Before World War II , Argentina Italy Argentina to that of Romania Italy
Mr. Barbera is optimistic. He is working with a bank to allow him to pay off creditors. After lengthy negotiations with the government and workers’ representatives, he has reduced his payroll to 90 employees from 120.
Best of all, he says he thinks he has found a large group of new customers in an improbable place: China
“Water from the creek,” he says, as we leave the yarn spa. “Listen. It is the sound of music.”
The sentiment seems so sincere and romantic that it sounds as if he could be kidding. But when the line elicits a laugh, Mr. Barbera’s gentle rebuke makes it plain that he is not.
“You know,” he says, with a resilient smile, “it is a hard world for poets.”
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KINGSMAN / THE SECRET SERVICE by Mr Porter.
Curated British luxury
MR PORTER and director Mr Matthew Vaughn have created a bespoke collection from Ms Arianne Phillips’ costume design for Kingsman: The Secret Service, to be released in early 2015. Each piece is crafted in Britain
Hand-picked collaborations
Ranging from tailoring to eyewear
Exclusive to MR PORTER
How to dress like Colin Firth (by Mr Porter)
Online retailer Mr Porter releases a line of suits based on those from new film, Kingsman: The Secret Service
Posted by
Morwenna Ferrier
Monday 12 January 2015 / http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2015/jan/12/how-to-dress-like-colin-firth-mr-porter-kingsman
Sunday evening on the third day of London Collections: Men. From Christopher Shannon to Alexander McQueen, most of the four-day event has been geared towards wit, innovation and bold new directions in menswear, but this evening saw a return to trad tailoring as Mr Porter, the menswear arm of online retailer Net-a-porter, unveiled an entire collection inspired by a film.
Kingsman: The Secret Service, starring Colin Firth as a sort of Bond-esque spy trying to recruit a new team, opens in a few weeks. Based on a cult comic book and directed by Matthew Vaughn of Kick-Ass fame, the film’s premise is a group of spies masquerading as Savile Row tailors; the whole thing is set largely in the back room of a tailor’s shop. As Vaughn told The Hollywood Reporter: “It’s not like the clothes are an added benefit or not utterly functional to the story. They are a big part of the story.” So Mr Porter’s decision to launch a line of Savile Row-style suits makes more than just commercial sense.
The collection includes double-breasted, pinstripe 1980s-style suits, designed by Arianne Phillips, Madonna’s stylist who also worked with Firth on A Single Man, along with sunglasses from Cutler and Gross, cotton poplin shirts by Turnbull & Asser, a rose-gold watch by Bremont and George Cleverley brogues. The entire 60-piece Kingsman collection is British-made.
While product placement in films has been Hollywood’s bread and butter for the past few years – the first Sex And The City movie referenced more than 60 different brands – this is the first time customers have been able to buy all the costumes from a film. It is thought that Phillips designed the costumes with commerciality in mind. Vaughn said: “To be blunt, there aren’t many clothing options for men like me, in their 40s. Suits are cut super-skinny and tight, or they’re very traditional. I realised there’s no men’s line smack dab in the middle.” The collection is relatively limited-edition, but the Kingsman label is already expected to come back for a second season in spring 2015.
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“Polar White” duffle coat discovered in a second hand shop
Jean Cocteau wearing the short version of the Polar White duffle coat with Coco Chanel and Miss Weiseveiller in Veneto Street , Rome
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On the Wilder Shores of Love: a Bohemian Life by Lesley Blanch
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Lesley Blanch Edited by Georgia de Chamberet Published by Virago, 15 January 2015, hardback, £20.00 There are two sorts of romantic: those who love, and those who love the adventure of loving – Lesley Blanch 'Lesley Blanch was not a school, a trend, or a fashion, but a true original' - Philip Mansel Born in 1904, she died aged 103, having gone from being a household name to a mysterious and neglected living legend. She was writing her memoirs at her death, beginning with her very odd Edwardian childhood. Her goddaughter, who was working with her at the time, has now collected that piece and many others, some never published, some published only in French; some letters, some Vogue articles to create On the Wilder Shores of Love: Sketches from a Bohemian Life which captures the essence of a rich and rewarding life spanning the twentieth century. Lesley Blanch chose to 'escape the boredom of convention' and having first worked as a theatre designer, she became Vogue's features editor during World War II. In 1946 she left Lesley Blanch is renowned for her bestselling book The Wilder Shores of Love, which has been translated into over a dozen languages. Her other works include Round the World in Eighty Dishes, The Sabres of Paradise, Under a Lilac Bleeding Star, The Nine Tiger Man, Journey into the Mind's Eye, Pavilions of the Heart and Pierre Loti: Portrait of an Escapist. She was the editor of Harriette Wilson's Memoirs. She died in 2007. Georgia de Chamberet was an editor at Quartet Books before founding her own London-based literary agency, BookBlast Ltd. Georgia is a committee member of English PEN's Writers in Translation programme. She is Literary Executor for the Estate of Lesley Blanch and is Lesley’s goddaughter. @lesleyblanch For further information please contact Emily Burns, Publicity Manager, Virago, 020 7911 8086, emily.burns@littlebrown.co.uk |
On the Wilder Shores
Lesley Blanch’s writings reveal a woman who never ceased to be the star of her own life
By Jane Shilling9:00AM GMT 19 Jan 2015 / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11347881/On-the-Wilder-Shores-of-Love-a-Bohemian-Life-by-Lesley-Blanch-review.html
A common complaint among modern women is that in our early 30s we stop being the stars of our own lives, relegated from the spotlight to the chorus-line by the daily slog of grown-up responsibilities. Anyone bemusedly wondering how that unglamorous demotion came about will find a compelling role model in the author, journalist, artist and traveller Lesley Blanch, who died in 2007, aged 103, having never for an instant ceased to be the star of her own life.
If Blanch led a charmed life, it was one of her own determined making. She was born in Chiswick to parents who were vaguely perturbed by her arrival. “I don’t think we are quite used to you yet,” they would sometimes remark. But from earliest childhood, she was captivated by the notion of an exotic beyond: “I never remember a time when I was not obsessed by a longing to travel, to reach some remote horizon,” she wrote.
Blanch trained as an artist at the Slade, and worked as an illustrator and theatre designer. But it is for her writing, especially The Wilder Shores of Love (1954), an impressionistic account of four glamorous female travellers, that she is best remembered.
Blanch published 12 books on subjects as various as the courtesan Harriette Wilson and imperialist Russian rule in early-19th-century Georgia
In her last years, Blanch began to write about her Edwardian childhood, and also produced an account of her marriage to the novelist Romain Gary, who left her for the actress Jean Seberg. These substantial fragments of memoir, together with a selection of her travel writing and journalism for Vogue magazine, have been assembled into an account of her life by her god-daughter and friend Georgia de Chamberet.
Blanch’s great passions were travel, exotic objects (preferably in combination – “travel heavy” was her motto), and a mysterious figure, identified only as “The Traveller”. His real identity – he was the Russian theatre director and designer Theodore Komisarjevsky – is hidden in plain sight in Journey into the Mind’s Eye, and de Chamberet confirms it: “I asked Lesley about Komisarjevsky the last time I saw her in 2007. She answered: 'Peggy Ashcroft took him off me.’ ”
Komisarjevsky was a friend of Blanch’s parents and a beloved visitor from her earliest childhood. His unpredictable appearances brought a whiff of the steppes to suburban Chiswick, and his extraordinary gifts, including a Fabergé egg, fuelled Blanch’s lifelong passion for singular possessions.
When she was 17 and “The Traveller” was 39, he invited her to Paris Chantilly narrative of Journey into the Mind’s Eye.
Observing that “like all good storytellers, Lesley plundered her life and her passions and turned tragedy into beauty”, de Chamberet compresses into a lengthy footnote the melancholy episode of Blanch’s teenage pregnancy and the daughter given up for adoption to family friends: “ 'I don’t want to dwell on it,’ she said with a closed, distant expression.”
For a generation raised on therapy and the assiduous pursuit of emotional “truth”, there is something disconcerting about the contrast between Blanch’s intensely sexy femininity and her quasi-masculine ability to compartmentalise emotion. Sooner or later, no doubt, a formal biography will dismantle the rococo stage set on which she chose to present herself, to reveal a reality that is bleaker, but not necessarily closer to the truth.
Blanch wrote that “learning how to deal with pain is the most important thing in life”, and this volume, edited with affection and grace by de Chamberet, is a deliciously readable monument to a writer who combined a steely resilience and capacity for hard work with an elegant frivolity and a voracious appetite for love, beauty and adventure.
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The LODEN Overcoat.
To produce Loden fabric, strong yarns are woven loosely into cloth which then undergoes a lengthy process of shrinking, eventually acquiring the texture of felt and becoming quite dense. It is then brushed with a fuller's teasel and the nap is clipped, a process which is repeated a number of times until the fabric provides good warmth for the weight, and is relatively supple, windproof and extremely durable.
Johann Georg Frey started his Munich
Maffeistrasse 7
80333 Munich
http://www.lodenfrey.eu/men/history.html
Lodenfrey was founded in 1842 by Johann Georg Frey, a young skilled weaver. Frey, at the age of 21, moved to Munich
Frey was awarded the first prize at the Vienna
In 1855 Frey received a gold medal for the world's first water-repellent loden cloth from the World Exhibition in Paris
In 1862 plans were made for a mechanical spinning mill for sheep wool in a cloth and woolen factory at "Dianabad," in the English Garden of Munich
In 1870 the war against France
Details were arranged for a new factory in Munich Germany and Austria
In 1872, the founder's son, Johann Baptist Frey, develops the first truly water-repellent loden cloth called the "napped loden," a cloth that is raised to form a nap and is impregnated. This marks the birth of the loden coat that will ultimately become a classic as it is still to this day.
In 1928 Georg Frey member of the third generation, joins the family enterprise. This same year marks the beginning construction of the "Zugspitzbahn," a rack-railroad leading to Germany 's highest mountain, the "Zugspitze ." The rack-railroad workers wear the loden coats of Lodenfrey to protect themselves against the rough climate. The construction of Lodenfrey's own clothing factory enables the mass production of ready-to-wear loden coats that are later supplied to retailers. Due to an expansive business policy, the Lodenfrey's turnover increases despite an economic crisis on the rise in the early thirties.
The Lodenfrey history during the Nazi years 1933 till 1945 was researched by a professional team of historians.
Lodenfrey conquers the market across the world from 1948 onwards. Lodenfrey opens a branch in the United States and shortly afterwards opens another branch in France
In 1950 Herbert Frey and in 1959 Bernhard Frey enter in the fourth generation into the company. In 1956, a Lodenfrey branch is opened in Bad Ischl in Austria
In 1964 the construction work begins for a large-scale factory in Bad Ischl. Shortly afterwards, the Austrian branch is one of the most advanced operations of its kind in the world.
Lodenfrey receives the "Comitè du Bon Goût Français" cup, the coveted Oscar of the fashion world in 1968.
In 1977 Lodenfrey opens a factory in Malta
The company is awarded the City of Munich Fashion Prize
Lodenfrey makes a fashion statement in 1983 with its new idea of casual clothes and transforms a tradition into a fashion.
The years between 1991 and 1995 mark a change of generations for the Lodenfrey Company. Dr. Sabine Frey (1991) and Dr. Peter Frey (1995), the fifth generation, take over management and ownership of the company.
In 1995 the new management introduces "Country Frey," a trendy lifestyles collection. Lodenfrey is ready at the turn of the century with the combination of classic functionality and tradition with modern trends.
In 1996 Lodenfrey takes over the traditional Bavarian company "Jakob Zeiler" in Geisenhausen. Zeiler is the ideal supplement to Lodenfrey's traditional loden collection with specialization in the production of high quality leather clothing in a casual, yet traditional dress style.
Lodenfrey built a new developing and logistics centre in Garching near Munich
2003 marks the creation of "Poldi," an exclusive collection created jointly with H.R.H. Prince Leopold of Bavaria
2005 Lodenfrey is getting into the area of wearable electronics. They also designed "Multimedia Tracht". Now it becomes possible to hear music and to telephone with a Lederhose.
Lodenfrey receives an innovation voucher for the development of a heated loden coat from the Free State of Bavaria in 2010.
In 2011 the sledge legend and Olympic champion "Schorsch Hackl" was the inspiration for a new collection, consisting of loden cloth and knitted jackets.
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Do Homem / Diniz&Cruz
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Tim Collins Photography and Do Homem / Diniz & Cruz present "The Lisbon Connection."
The Lisbon Connection - Making Of (Short Version) from ZOF on Vimeo.
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“JEEVES” was born in Lisbon
It is with extra enthusiasm that I present also in “Tweedland”, The Lisbon Connection.
Votos às Produções Do Homem / Diniz & Cruz, do Maior Sucesso e Felicidades !
António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho / JEEVES .
Architectural Historian.
Tim Collins Photography :
“At over 100 years old, DoHomem - Diniz&Cruz is one of the oldest tailors in Lisbon London
One thing that makes this place so special is that one of the tailors working there is currently 87 years old, and he's been working there for 40 years. It was a pleasure to watch Mr Horácio, and the other tailors at work dressing our Lisbon 3, in the finest attire.
Models:
Marco Neto, Nuno Silvailva, Francisco C.
Project Development/Stylist: Sven Signe den Hartogh The Stranded Sailors
Location:
@DoHomem - Diniz&Cruz - Dalmata Lisboa
Clothes and shoes:
DoHomem - Diniz&Cruz - Dalmata Lisboa
Botas D'Ornellas
Stylist: Patrícia Oliveira
Make-up & Hair: Miguel Molena
Make-up assistent: Daniela Homero
Video: ZOF, Creative Film Production (Miguel Marques e Ricardo Figueiredo)”
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Pope Francis says families should put aside their iPhones and Twitter feeds and talk to each other / VÍDEO : Stop Looking At Your Phones ('The Britishes')
"Pope Francis says families should put aside their iPhones and Twitter feeds and talk to each other."
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Maggie Smith at 80: 'a walking, talking flame' / VÍDEO Gosford Park (2001) - Maggie Smith : "It must be hard to know when it's ...
Maggie Smith at 80: 'a walking, talking flame'
Jean Brodie, Hedda Gabler, Downton’s Dowager … Maggie Smith has been a luminous and witty presence in film and theatre for six decades. Tessa Hadley writes about her astonishing career
Tessa Hadley
Friday 23 January 2015 / http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jan/23/maggie-smith-six-decades-actor-stage-screen
If you’re an actor then the physical creature you are – your given physique and face and voice and range of gesture – is your fate, with which your talent must negotiate. No, it’s probably closer even than a negotiation: I suspect your talent arises, as with a dancer, from out of the body you have, and is inseparable from it (so different from the relatively bodiless act of writing). You may have the gift of transforming yourself, but that transformation too can only come out of your bodily repertoire; you have to have it in you. Maggie Smith the actor is all in those dragged-down enormous eyes with their Watteau irony and melancholy, and in the fine-boned long face with its visible play of nerves, so that it seems to change and move even when she’s striking a pose, putting on a look. Her nostrils actually do flare. And when she was younger it was in the lean long body and the angular, clowning wrists and elbows and knees (Watteau again). The whole story of Jean Brodie (1969) is expressed in her nervous long ankles as she kicks away from the pavement on her bicycle in the opening title sequence. Once launched, she sits ludicrously upright on her bike, signalling with a so-straight arm. Smith’s body is wittily intelligent in itself, and all the absurdity and appeal and vulnerability of Jean’s character is expressed before she’s even opened her mouth to speak.
Although, when she did speak, how much she enjoyed the crisp delivery, facial tension and rhetorical flourish of Jean Brodie’s Edinburgh London and might be Oxford
Just as Gosford Park (2001) worked so well because Robert Altman saw that upper-class universe from outside, through American eyes, making it strange, so Smith’s toffs (in Gosford Park 1972, a BBC Play of the Month). There’s always a little hysterical distance – of comedy, of desperation – between the actor and the role. When she plays working-class women I don’t think she’s ever quite as good, her scrutiny doesn’t have the same ruthlessness. Laurence Olivier apparently thought Smith was “common” as Desdemona in his more or less unwatchable Othello (1965). But what makes us wince now (along with the makeup, needless to say) is that he is absurdly grand, lost inside his idea of himself in a noble role. Smith’s Desdemona, by comparison, seems luminously truthful.
Smith’s whole life has been her career. Her 80th birthday – and the completion of her sixth decade working as an actor – is celebrated this month by a retrospective at the BFI. She went straight from Oxford
As a little girl, Smith was entranced by a series of children’s books about the theatre, The Swish of the Curtain. The idea of acting fused, at some crucial point in her development, with intimations of possibilities beyond the limited life she knew. She entered into a larger self through acting it out, and then her work became the whole world for her. “A much better world,” she said once to Nancy Banks-Smith. “I’m never shy on stage. Always shy off it … It’s the real world that’s the illusion.
It is notable how many talents in theatre, film and literature, at that moment of exceptional social mobility in the mid-20th-century, came out of the same pinched lower middle-class. A generation reacted against everything meagre, respectable and inhibited in their Victorian- or Edwardian-born parents’ lives, in an explosion of free possibility, opportunity and new politics. And sex, of course. Smith’s private life has had the requisite tormented love story at the heart of it, in the shape of Robert Stephens, who played Teddy Lloyd to her Jean Brodie, Vershinin to her Masha, and Benedick to her Beatrice, and was father to her two sons – Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, both actors. Stephens was charismatic, irresistible and impossible. It may have been a problem that, although he was a seriously good actor, his success was never quite on the scale of hers. In a happy ending that belongs in a film script, Smith got together then with screenwriter Beverley Cross, who had always been devoted and was still waiting in hope. They were married until his death in 1998.
From the beginning, Smith has worked in both theatre and film, and seems to transfer easily between them. The tension in the sexy, witty physicality of her stage performance carries over into closeups of the expressivity in her face. These two aspects of an acting career are carried forward lopsidedly into posterity: only the film performances are captured and kept, and for the live theatre we have to rely on hearsay and description.
“I like the ephemeral thing about theatre,” she has said, “every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone.” (There are some films of her in theatre, such as the Othello, or TV films-of-a-play such as Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer, where she’s a not unpredictably neurotic and smothering mother.) Although they famously didn’t get on, Olivier invited Smith to become part of his new National Theatre soon after he formed it in 1962, where she appeared, among other things, in Chekhov, Strindberg and Much Ado. She is supposed to have been wonderful as Rosalind and Beatrice, Shakespeare’s boyish-girls, which isn’t surprising, considering her leggy androgyny. Peter Hall said she resided “on the cusp of camp”, and she is fairly often tipped the whole way over into it. Kenneth Williams was a lifelong close friend, and he and Smith have the same stiff shoulders, the same yawing slippage up and down the vocal range. She seems to camp up Coward sometimes – it’s difficult perhaps to do much else. And there’s certainly nothing much else to do with Downton.
But at her best Smith is a sharp, smart comedian – it’s not hard to imagine how good she was in the Restoration comedies that were so fashionable in the 60s and 70s, and in Wilde and Shaw. No doubt she brought the cool of a comedian, too, to roles not always imagined as comedy – apparently she made a wonderfully disenchanted Masha in Chekhov’s Three Sisters. And what wouldn’t one give to have seen her in the 1970 London
When British cinema tries for angst it ends up all too often with empathetic and mawkish – like The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. And empathy isn’t really how Smith’s acting works: it’s cooler and crisper than, say, the more heartfelt warmth of her contemporary and friend Judi Dench. Dench can usually find something to feel with in the least promising part, whereas Smith is always at her best when the words are good. She was wasted as Lady Naylor in The Last September because the adaptation wasn’t true to the great talk in Elizabeth Bowen’s original novel. She’s good as Lady Trentham because the writing is funny and clever (the script is by Julian Fellowes who writes Downton, but he’s delivering something different for Altman’s film). She’s good with Shaw’s words and Muriel Spark’s, and in A Room With a View, because Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s rendering of Edwardian oddity and otherness is so note-perfect. Her best performances don’t ask us to identify with what’s most familiar in people, they show us what’s most strange.
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INTERMEZZO / "Remains of the Day" with Hardy Amies .
№ 14 Savile Row
On 12 November 1945; Virginia, the Countess of Jersey (erstwhile Hollywood film star and the first Mrs. Cary Grant), who had been a former client during Hardy’s days at Laschasse, financed Hardy Amies move to Savile Row. The following January, Amies established his own couture fashion house business: Hardy Amies Ltd. Although Savile Row is the home of English bespoke tailoring, the Hardy Amies brand developed to become known for its classic and beautifully tailored clothes for both men and women. Hardy’s business quickly took off in the postwar years when customers, who had been deprived of couture for the preceding years, snapped up his elegant, traditional designs. Hardy was quoted at the times as saying, “A woman's day clothes must look equally good at Salisbury Station as the Ritz bar”. Amies was vice-chairman of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers from 1954 to 56, and chairman from 1959 to 60.
Hardy Amies is located at 14 Savile Row besides Cad & the Dandy.
Amies was successful in business by being able to commercially extract value from his designs, while not replicating his brand to the point of exploitation. Amies was one of the first European designers to venture into the ready-to-wear market when he teamed up with Hepworths in 1959 to design a range of menswear. In 1961, Amies made fashion history by staging the first men's ready-to-wear catwalk shows, at the Savoy Hotel in London
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