Book Review: The Flight Attendant’s Shoe

By: Mai Nguyen

It’s hard to picture a time when people would put on their mink coats and white gloves just to go flying. I don’t know about you, but for me, airplane attire is a ratty hoodie and slouchy sweats. But Prudence Black’s The Flight Attendant’s Shoe takes me back to a time when flying was a spectacular occasion that was nothing short of glamorous. Black chronicles the uniforms worn by flight hostesses of Australia’s international airline, Qantas, from 1948 to 2003.

Uniforms could seem like the antithesis of fashion—wearers are bound by restrictions, stripped of individuality, and awash in homogeny. But after the Second World War, becoming a stewardess was a dream career due to its chic allure, and The Flight Attendant’s Shoe quickly reveals that a relationship between utilitarian uniforms and high fashion does exist. Black contextualizes the subject within crucial events—changes to the flight attendant’s uniform echoed changes to the broader landscape of Australia’s social, industrial, and economic history.
Continue reading →

Book Review: Preppy

By: wornette

I like cardigans—a lot. And I have a particular weakness for the camel-coloured wool variety. My penny loafer collection is gaining ground. I find argyle bowties to be the perfect accessory. It’s time to come clean: My name is Jenny and my wardrobe is heavily under the influence of prep. And while pearls may not win any attention in a crowded bar, Jeffrey Banks and Doria de la Chapelle’s Preppy: Cultivating Ivy Style helped me feel more loving towards the boring (I mean classic) garments that have overrun my closet. Their book explores the roots and history of the classic collegiate look and its evolution into a clean-cut staple that’s, well, kind of everywhere.

The book has the basics to share: prep was born and bred in the early 1900s by Ivy League boys on the East Coast who paired athletic clothes with refined classics and emblems of their school pride (pins, ribbons, badges). To be a true prep, conformity was key, and often membership to the exclusive clubs came down to getting the details just so, like the roll of a cuff or the colour and print of your necktie. By the 1930s, the style was adopted by women and quickly spread to the leisure loving upper class who wore kooky, clean-cut frocks to Palm Beach and the golf course. In the book Thrift Score, Al Hoff perfectly describes some of prep’s most iconic looks, when she suggests throwing a preppy themed party where attendees should don “blazers, madras shorts, polo shirts (Lacoste only please, Ralph Lauren is an interloper), green belts with whales, monogrammed crewneck sweaters with a pattern of little ducks,” and anything nautical.

Continue reading →

Book Report: Zeitgeist and Glamour – Photography of the ’60s and ’70s

By: Alyssa Garrison

The thick, heavy pages of Zietgeist and Glamour consist almost entirely of photos: some with one larger image and others littered with smaller, less artistic shots. The front portion offers a few words from the collector, Nicola Erni, and a short essay on the era written by the curator, Petra Giloy-Hirtz (which, if you’re interested, are also printed in German). As Erni and Hirtz explain, the images published in the book show a very specific slice of the sixties, focusing on glamour, wealth, and art, and purposely leaving out important historical events like the hippie movement and Vietnam War. The faces scattered throughout this massive book are those of socialites and filmmakers, models, and royalty—from Bardot to Warhol and everyone in between. The photography documents the mingling of classes and cliques that took place during the ’60s, when the rich fueled the creative and vice versa. The word “zeitgeist” can be defined as “the spirit of a time,” and the spirit conveyed in Zeitgeist and Glamour is the attitude that suddenly anything was possible (if you had the money).

The photos chosen for this particular collection are a mirror of Erni’s interest in the “Jet Set” society, a group of wealthy nomads who used air travel innovation to get the best the world had to offer at the time. A single day could include shopping in Paris, hair appointments in London, and partying on the Côte d’Azur. This was an unmatched show of excess and eccentricity, and it’s no wonder this over-the-top lifestyle led to the birth of paparrazi photography, as everyone wanted a piece of the grandeur. The high-society life of the ’60s was so craved by the public that many of the most famed photographers of the time came from within the circles they are known for capturing on film, such as Robert Mapplethorpe and his work with Patti Smith and the inhabitants of the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.

The concept of paparazzi photography has always confused me: why would I want to admire poorly shot, quickly snapped photos of someone else doing everyday things in ridiculously expensive clothing? Where is the beauty and glamour in that? I finally discovered the art in paparazzi photos when flipping through Zeitgeist and Glamour, where one can find a collection of celebrity snapshots from the era of hope and change. Although the book contains formal fashion photography from the likes of Avedon and Mapplethorpe, most pages consist of tiny snapshots of a different world, where the rich and famous are always photo-ready and flawless. There are no grotesque shots of celebrities eating cheeseburgers or accidentally flashing a camera while exiting a vehicle—the photos here provide a gaze into a time when paparazzi photos were art, catching the glamour and beauty of an unattainable world as their subjects jet-set by at new speeds, although I’m still unsure about their deeper meaning.

Zietgeist and Glamour has useful information, like mini-biographies of each featured photographer, and a short description of what the metropolitan hotspots were like at the time (New York, Côte d’Azur, London, Paris, and Rome). But I found myself confused and frustrated by the “rich and glamorous” theme of the series. Excluding crucial pieces of the era—such as the civil rights movement, feminism, and the Vietnam War—in order to focus on jet-setting and wealth didn’t sit very well with me in the end.

Zeitgeist and Glamour, Photography of the 60’s and 70’s, by Petra Giloy-Hirtz, Ira Stehmann, Nicola Erni, Prestel 2011.
book report by Alyssa Garrison
photography by Brittany Lucas

Book Review: Harris Tweed

By: wornette

Harris Tweed is more then just a fabric in the UK. It is an institution. The material is so revered that it has its own legislation—an official Harris Tweed is: “a tweed that has been hand-woven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the Outer Hebrides, and made from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides.”

Lara Platman’s gorgeous ode to the anglophile textile, Harris Tweed: From Land to Street, is an immersive introduction to the fabric. Through lush photography, informative behind-the-scenes text, and first person accounts from the people who make tweed their livelihood, Platman introduces the reader to an industry that’s as concerned with community and tradition as it is with producing quality tweed.

Harris Tweed follows Platman’s year spent in the world of the farmers, millers, and weavers of the rocky islands off the west coast of Scotland. The book explains in detail how the fabric is manufactured. Each chapter is devoted to a step in its production journey, including the wool and those who shear it, the mill, weavers, and other aspects of production, until Platman explores how the tweed is used as a final product in contemporary interior design and fashion.
Continue reading →