How interesting to see the difference between reality and the final product in Elvgren’s pinups. I’d never seen these before…
Gil Elvgren Pinups: Reality to Fantasy
Tag: girl
Makeup for Lindy Hopping
Being a vintage gal is a pretty demanding kind of thing. Curling and styling your hair, the anything-but-natural makeup, hunting out rare vintage styles and sometimes wearing clothes that are 80 years old, not to mention the ordeals of garters, stockings, high heels, corsets, jewelery, hats – there’s a lot involved!
Now imagine, that on top of all that, you weren’t only going to style your hair, do your makeup, and wear uber-feminine vintage style clothing, but you were going to do all that whilst swing dancing… for four hours straight… sweating and spinning and twisting and getting tossed around, sometimes upside down, by your partners – it’s a whole different affair!
When it comes to makeup, it can be really hard to find anything that stays, but here are two products I use. I guess, even if you’re not a Lindy Hopper, then at least you know these products have passed the ultimate durability test!
Firstly, my dance partner Juan would kill me if I got lipstick on his shirt, and I’m not a fan of re-applying lipstick every ten minutes (or lipstick on my teeth, for that matter), so I use Cover Girl Outlast All Day Lipcolor, in “Ever Red-dy” (#507). It seriously doesn’t come off – you need a special remover to get it off at the end of the night. I like this one because the color is a real fire-engine red, and it doesn’t flake off like some other so-called “everlast” brands. I’ve stopped trying to find it in stores (it’s usually the first color to go), so now I just buy it online on Amazon:
Cover Girl Outlast All Day Lipcolor on Amazon.com
I kiss my boyfriend, eat a meal, drink and dance all night long, and it stays on. I just pray they don’t discontinue it!!
Secondly, we have MAC Liquidlast Liner – yep, waterproof black liquid liner. Again, this stuff SERIOUSLY stays, you’ll need a special remover to get it off, although I find my moisturizer on a cottonbud works too. I think anything oil-based would get it off. But sweat doesn’t budge it, and you don’t have to worry about rubbing your eyes either. You can get it anywhere they sell MAC, I got mine at Sephora.
Lilyan Tashman
Look at these perfect water waves and tiny, tiny pincurls!
Lilyan Tashman was a Ziegfeld girl, silent film actress and a model, from the late 1910s until the early 1930s. She appeared onstage in the Ziegfeld Follies, and in films including Head Over Heels, The Garden of Weeds, Ports of Call, Pretty Ladies, Seven Days, Texas Steer, Camille, So This is Paris, Craig’s Wife, The Trial of Mary Dugan, The Marriage Playground, and The Gold Diggers of Broadway. She died in 1931 of cancer, at the age of 38.
Via Art Deco Blog
Top Picks: Anna Sui Spring 2008 RTW
A brief flashback to Anna Sui’s Spring 2008 ready-to-wear collection, since it was such a great moment. A 1940s silhouette with cinched waists and boxy shoulders, brought to short flirty skirts and dresses, pinafores and playsuits in bright colors and bold prints. And I love the strappy platform heels, worn with brightly colored socks – cute!
I normally hate it when designers sent cute retro designs down the runway, paired with mismatching hairstyles and makeup, but in this case the punky ‘dos were adorable and played up the fun attitude of the collection. Bobby soxers meet Harajuku girls…
Yves Saint Laurent did not invent the tuxedo for women!
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!