My parents are definitely to blame when it comes to my interest in photography. They taught me almost everything that I now know, and they still continue to impress me on a constant basis with the images they post on Facebook of my little brother and our family cat. I should actually add personal style to that list—my dad recently popped on a slideshow consisting of family photos from the early ’80s up until the mid ’90s and I could not believe how amazingly cool my mom, dad, and aunt all dressed. I think I gave them a hard time afterwards for not keeping every sweatshirt and pair of jeans carefully preserved for me to someday wear.
current inspirations
22 Tracks
22 Tracks is a really great music site consisting of 22 playlists of different genres, each regularly being curated and updated by different DJs from Amsterdam, Brussels, London, and Paris. Great to pop on during a house party, or more often in my case, drinking lots of wine at home in front of my computer.
Hyers & Mebane
New York-based photographers Martin Hyers and William Mebane take amazingly gorgeous, rich photographs of mostly non-human things. They went on a series of trips throughout the US and took photos of the insides and objects of peoples’ houses—incredible project I cannot stop staring at.
Everything Is Terrible
A website dedicated to found videos covering a wide range of topics & themes such as: ‘animals’, ‘cats’, ‘exercise’, ‘Jesus Christ’, ‘instructional videos’ and more. Literally thousands of hours of wild, hilarious and scary entertainment.
Dazed Digital Photography
A fun magazine in and of itself, I mainly visit their website for their photography section, which profiles new and emerging photographers with little interviews, galleries, and links to their personal websites and portfolios.
When WORN held its redesign Indiegogo fundraiser last fall, the top perk for support was a film supercut of the bidder’s choosing. One of the supercuts was snapped up by Nathalie Atkinson, Style editor and culture columnist at the National Post. Atkinson’s choice was a supercut of every single outfit Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers wore when they appeared together on-screen in their ten musical pairings. Here, she explains why.
My taste—and to a degree, what I do for a living—was shaped in my teens, by whatever TVO’s Saturday Night at the Movies host Elwy Yost felt like watching every weekend.
Elwy loved old movies and particularly the RKO musicals of the ’30s, and as a consequence so do I. I love the costumes in many of his favourite Silver Screen classics—Rosalind Russell’s striped topcoat and hat from His Girl Friday, everything Myrna Loy wears in The Thin Man, by costumer Dolly Tree, the pre-Code bias satins and boas of Dinner at Eight. But the grace, elegance, and wit of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ costumes in their musical comedy pairings remain my favourite. Their panache not only affected dance: it popularized the American songbook (Berlin, the Gershwin) not to mention a fantasy world of stark black and white Art Deco interiors and beautiful evening attire. “The Continental” from The Gay Divorcée won the very first Academy Award for best original song.
The legendary dance duo spent eight hours a day for six weeks rehearsing and perfecting choreography with Hermes Pan prior to shooting a film (which they did, in long takes, on perilously glossy floors). Note that as a 1982 “Frank & Ernest” newspaper comic strip by Bob Thaves later coined, Ginger did everything Fred did, only backwards. And in high heels.
They were the perfect complement for both banter and ballroom: Fred’s dancing is debonair and classy; Ginger’s is graceful but sassy (or as Katharine Hepburn put it: he gave her class; she gave him sex appeal.) Did they or didn’t they? Reading Rogers’ 1991 autobiography, Ginger: My Story, you’ll learn that while both were performing in separate Broadway shows before she was lured to Hollywood (when they made their first picture together, it was her 21st and only his 2nd), she and Fred had been more than a little warmly acquainted. They’d been on a few dates and even shared a real clinch or two (which is more than they ever did on film, given the newly cordial and reserved relationship with Astaire, by then married and, according to Ginger at least, his wife Adele was jealous and possessive).
Fred is known for the white tie, black tie, and tails, and Ginger’s loveliest bias-cut ballgown costumes are those made in collaboration with Howard Greer, a fashion and costume designer who stayed on in France after the Great War to work at Molyneux, Lucile, and Poiret before returning to Hollywood. (Fun fashion fact: Rogers didn’t make her first trip to France until 1952, but she made up for lost time. In Paris she stayed at Le Meurice, where Earl Blackwell squired her to a fashion show and later, numerous private fittings with designer Elsa Schiaparelli. And in the 1970s, Ginger collaborated on a capsule collection for J.C. Penney!)
Carefree’s “The Yam” dress by Howard Greer is one Rogers describes as “chiffon panels of red flame and steel gray.” In this film she also wears a bold original dress design of appliquéd arrows piercing a heart by costume designer Howard Greer and Edward Stevenson (you may recognize it from its recent contemporary copycat: a few years ago New Zealand designer Karen Walker did a very, very similar frock she called “Cupid”). There’s “Change Partners,” also by Greer: “a beautiful black marquisette gown, with a picoted bodice with silver threads, which caused a slight glimmer of reflected light as I danced around the floor.” The dress for “Color Blind” made her feel “like the fairy godmother in Cinderella.” For The Barkleys of Broadway, the first number in the film was the “Swing Trot” and costumer Irene made her a gold lamé dress to contrast with the purple chorus gowns. “My dress had a very full skirt and when I whirled, it filled with air because of the way it was sewn—balloon-style at the hem.”
It’s in 1949′s The Barkleys of Broadway, their final film together—in Technicolour—that you see the beginnings of Astaire’s more casual personal style, later recognizable in films such as The Band Wagon and Funny Face: the necktie as belt, the kerchief, the brightly coloured shirts paired with shortened trousers that showed off his intricate footwork (which inspired Michael Jackson to crop his trousers the same way). Here, the menswear is by MGM costumer J. Arlington Valles.
The Fred and Ginger movies follow a loose formula—a meet-cute dance number, a solo, a casual one, a romantic seduction dance (such as “Cheek to Cheek”), and one grand production number to close. And while they’re elegant, my favourites of their 1930′s costumes aren’t the formal suits and gowns but their more playful, casual attire. Fred was daring, for his day and American audience, because he emulated the English tweed sport jackets and Savile Row suiting style of the Prince of Wales (he traveled to London himself to be fitted by purveyors Hawes & Curtis or Anderson & Sheppard). Ginger wore witty, sometimes goofy costumes like satin sailor suits (Follow the Fleet), like jodhpurs and roller-skating skirts, in the looser numbers. There is also, of course, some dish about the infamous costume at the heart of the legendary fight she had on Top Hat with Astaire and their longtime director Mark Sandrich, the director on five of their nine RKO musicals together (their 10th was in colour, at MGM). Rogers had specifically asked for a pale blue dress with front and back neckline trimmed in long ostrich feathers. Fred didn’t care for it, especially since with every movement and quiver, it shed feathers—all over his tuxedo, for example.
She got her way and the dress—and all its feathers—floats languidly and sensually through the number; it now resides in the Smithsonian, along with her glittering dress from The Piccolino. The dance partners reconciled and from then on, his nickname for her was ‘Feathers.’
And if you look closely, around the 50-second mark you’ll see the high-gloss dance floor littered with the ostrich feathers that have slowly drifted over the course of their dance.
text // Nathalie Atkinson video // Daniel Reis
Every one of the costumes they wore on-camera together during their partnership, in chronological order: Flying Down to Rio
The Gay Divorcee
Roberta
Top Hat
Follow the Fleet
Swing Time
Shall We Dance
Carefree
The Story of Vernon & Irene Castle
The Barkleys of Broadway
further reading > Astaire & Rogers by Edward Gallafent Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein Puttin’ On the Ritz: Fred Astaire & the Fine Art of Panache by Peter J. Levinson Ginger: My Story by Ginger Rogers Fred Astaire: His Friends Talk by Sarah Giles The Astaires by Kathleen Riley
Was it the son of a preacher man? A devil in a blue dress? You obviously didn’t listen—but now everyone else will.
On Thursday, February 14th, 2013, WORN Fashion Journal will get your achey-breakey heart in front of a karaoke machine at Jun Jun (374 College Street).
Don’t just feel the pain, spread it around.
We’ve got a karaoke machine, a microphone, sad, sad, sad songs, and enough bitter tears and sweet liquor to fill a swimming pool. What else could you possibly need to mourn your latest romantic folly?
All proceeds will go to the production of WORN Fashion Journal. This year, we’re trying to raise enough money for our very own lighting equipment. Support independent publishing, and sing us a sad song!
THE RULES
$7 Admission
$5 Admission if you’re wearing red or pink
Each song is $1
Jump the line for $10
Celine Dion songs are $5
THE DETAILS
Jun Jun
374 College Street
Bring on the heartbreak: 9:00 p.m.
You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here: 2:00 a.m.
DRESS CODE
Red and pink preferred
Your heart on your sleeve: mandatory
There was no dramatic moment in which I started wearing the hijab. In fact, it happened so suddenly my mom assumed that I started wearing it to avoid brushing my hair every morning. Just to make sure that laziness wasn’t a factor in my decision, for the first year or so she would check my hair every morning before school to make sure it was still getting brushed.
Now I’m 21, and it’s been almost a decade since I started covering my hair and neck with a hijab (hijab refers to the Muslim practice of modest dressing, but it can also refer specifically to the headscarf). Having lived my whole life in a diverse Canadian city, it doesn’t get that much attention. Still, the ignorance I do sometimes encounter tends to come more in the form of condescending than hostile.
There was the time an old co-worker empathetically told me how bad she felt that I had no choice but to wear the hijab and how sad it was that I couldn’t be “free” like other girls my age. Even though I kindly explained to her that I wanted to wear the hijab and that it was a choice I made for myself without any outside pressure, she remained unconvinced. The poor woman was putting herself through mental gymnastics trying to liberate a free woman, while I was just trying to find a polite way to excuse myself from the conversation so I could go home and watch Arrested Development.
Every fellow hijabi that I know just wishes that people would ask us questions about the hijab, rather than make offensive assumptions. It’s a question that makes people uneasy. After about thirty seconds of them telling me how much they don’t want to offend me and how I don’t have to answer their questions unless I am comfortable, I give them a simple answer: because I want to and I love it. At this point, they look at me as if I’m cheating them out of the real answer, but really that’s what it comes down to. I wear the hijab because I am a Muslim woman and I believe my hair and body are my business, and mine only. It’s more than just a religious symbol (though that is a part of it); it acts as a sort of security blanket. I choose who sees what’s under there and that gives me a sense of power and reassurance I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Likewise, it bothers me when girls tell me how lucky I am that I can be ugly and nobody would know. I still know what I look like underneath and let’s be real: my opinion is the most important. It makes me recall my mom checking my hair every morning before school; at the time, I found that to be pointless, but it taught me something valuable about what it means to wear the hijab. Although nobody on the outside could see my hair, my appearance underneath can still hold as much significance as I want to give it.
Not unlike hair, my hijab has evolved with me over time and I have tried many different styles. I went from trying my hardest to not stick out and only wear muted colours, to wearing fuchsia pashminas in order to match my shoes. I still look back on my tent style hijab of 2005—a square silk scarf pinned together at the throat—and shudder. I think I’ve found the best way to wrap it around my long head to compliment my Somali forehead, but I can only wonder if in a few years I’ll look back and be embarrassed the same way we all collectively cringe when we remember the ’80s. And hey, who knows—maybe next year my tent hijab will come back in style.
