I just posted this video up on my personal blog, where I was geeking out about the 1939 New York World’s Fair. But I thought the Swing Fashionistas might be interested in it also, because it’s color footage of everyday girls dancing in 1939. Enjoy!
Source: Prelinger Archives, archive.org
This beautiful shoot entitled Paris Je T’aime from the 2007 Vogue September issue was photographed by Steven Meisel, and styled by Grace Coddington. The models are Coco Rocha, Guinevere Van Seenus, Caroline Trentini, Sasha Pivovarova, Gemma Ward and Agyness Deyn.
Grace Coddington is in fact Vogue’s Creative Director, and is in charge of most of the fashion shoots. If you’re interested in her (and the almighty Anna Wintour) and Vogue in general, then you might want to check out the new documentary, The September Issue:
I haven’t seen it yet, but reviews are good, and it sounds like Grace Coddington is as much the star as Anna Wintour herself. In the New York Times, the director R.J. Cutler said, “[Anna] is cool, [Grace] is warm and languid,” he said. “Anna is all about ‘next,’ and Grace is most interested in a historical perspective on art and fashion.” Sounds like our kind of lady!
Here’s a fun article on the subject over at Gawker: How Grace Coddington Stole The September Issue From Anna Wintour
Drop a comment if you’ve seen the documentary!
We’ve been enjoying a fashion comeback of tuxedo styles for women over the past few seasons, bolstered by the passing in June 2008 of famed designer Yves Saint Laurent. It’s true, in the 1960s and 70s, YSL was responsible for re-popularizing suit and tuxedo styles for women, in particular his 1966 creation, “Le Smoking”, a tailored tuxedo suit with a long, slender 1960s silhouette. But, with all respect, it’s ridiculous to say he was the style’s inventor!
I caught Elle Magazine with this little diddy from last year: “It’s no coincidence that in the week when fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, the man who designed Le Smoking (the first tuxedo for women) passed away, the A-list are paying their respects in a way he would have loved- by wearing tuxedo jackets at every opportunity.” And even my beloved Wikipedia has this to say: “the Le Smoking tuxedo suit for women was the first of its kind to earn attention in the fashion world and in popular culture.“ What’s going on here? Yves Saint Laurent did NOT invent the tuxedo for women, and the 1960s was not the first time women fashionably wore suits and tuxedos. Every swing girl knows this!
Above and below, we have Marlene Dietrich, who wore this tuxedo in the film Morocco in 1928. In the scene she sings and even kisses a girl…
And here we have Josephine Baker, Gloria Swanson, Anna May Wong and Katharine Hepburn in the 1920s, 30s and 40s…
Rant aside, it’s brilliant that the look has been having a fashion comeback (even with mistaken origins). Here are a few celebrities, mostly care of Fashionising.com, who have been toying with the trend. We have Ashley Olsen, Diane Kruger, Naomi Watts, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Blake Liveley and Dita Von Teese.
If the Fall 2009 and Resort 2010 collections are anything to go by, it seems as if the trend will be with us for a while longer. Viva Le Tuxedo!
We’ve been getting a lot of hits from our post about Kate Beckinsale playing Ava Gardner in The Aviator. So here’s a few photos of the real thing: Ava Gardner herself.
Ava Lavinia Gardner (24 December 1922 – 25 January 1990) was an American actress with MGM in the 1940s and 50s. Her notable films include The Killers (1946), Mogambo (1953), Bhowani Junction (1956), On the Beach (1959) and The Night of the Iguana (1964). She was married to (in order) Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra (yes, he left Nancy for Ava!). After Sinatra, she had a long relationship with Howard Hughes (as depicted in The Aviator), and later with famed 1950s Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin. A lifelong smoker, she died in 1990 of pneumonia (a complication of her emphysema) at the age of 67. She was buried in her hometown of Smithfield, North Carolina, where there is an Ava Gardner Museum.
