Lanvin Headdress: I love anything 20's inspired. I already own two of the headdresses on the left; one in black and red, for evening, and one in whites and very pale pink, for my wedding.
The headdress, called a Lanvin, after French milliner and couturier Jeanne Lanvin, is available from boringsidney (all one word), a seller on etsy.com. Boringsidney will customise the headdress to whatever colours you'd like, just drop her an email through the site http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30561048
The headdress, called a Lanvin, after French milliner and couturier Jeanne Lanvin, is available from boringsidney (all one word), a seller on etsy.com. Boringsidney will customise the headdress to whatever colours you'd like, just drop her an email through the site http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30561048
The model shown wearing the Lanvin in this picture is actually a bride. I first saw her wedding on Offbeat Bride (http://www.offbeatbride.com/com/), an excellent resource for anyone trying to plan an unconventional wedding day.
The whole event struck envy into my heart and can be viewed here http://offbeatbride.com/?s=magician+and+his+assistant
Feathered hairband: A feathered hairband such as this can be a good entry point for girls who wouldn't usually wear hats, or large hair accessories. If you're going to a wedding and don't like hats (?!) or competing for attention (?!?!), it can be worn as an alternative to a fascinator.
Recently I've seen a few hipster girls wearing them around London with vintage looking dresses, or even jeans and a cute little cardi. It's a look that travels.
This hairband is called Blake and can be ordered from FeatherBrain in a range of colours, not just the bright shade I've shown here.
The Shien hat:
I don't know why it's called The Shien.
Its milliner, topsyturvy designs, named it so and, considering its brilliance, I'm not going to argue.
At the best of times a hat can be a brave statement and one like this is not for the faint-hearted but it is amazing.
I want it for my friends' Jack and Chris' gay wedding. Can't be being outdone by any passing drag queens.
Here's a close-up of the galleon that sits atop it. Fabulous, no?
You can buy it from http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=29731826 but be warned, they get busy so order well ahead of any event you may want it for.
Velvet Tricorn hat: 
This is my second choice for the 'civil union' (boring bloody term) I mentioned above, and is also by topsyturvy designs.
It appeals to my long-running interior need to be a pirate, or Mrs. Blackbeard, or Mrs. Hook, or someone else who'd get to borrow equally fabulous historical costumery from their fictional husband. Also, I already have the hair for this look.
It appeals to my long-running interior need to be a pirate, or Mrs. Blackbeard, or Mrs. Hook, or someone else who'd get to borrow equally fabulous historical costumery from their fictional husband. Also, I already have the hair for this look.
Click. click, click... http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30417797
Seafaring Pirate Hat:
Yet another one from topsyturvy designs, but I swear it's the last.
This one is possibly my favourite, as it would make me look like a very girly pirate's wife, or maybe the wealthy mermaid daughter of a passing sea-based merchant.
Alphonse Mucha Inspired Headdress:
There is very little say about this headdress by Liaison, which is in fact even bigger than it looks; it actually goes all the way around the model's head. Your reaction to it will be determined as soon as you look at the photo. I love anything Mucha-inspired- it's part of my 1920's fetish- but even I have to admit it would be hard to wear.Websites such as Offbeat Bride have featured sexy, alternative women such as the model above looking amazing in them.
For a closer look, at a wide range of colours, click on http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=27542903
All products and photos courtesy of etsy.com
Included at the suggestion of my mother, Black Alice (we love us some Victoriana in this family), My Fair Lady is easily one of the most gorgeous films of the last century. The monochromatic racecourse scene and particularly the black and white dress Hepburn wears in it, are particular favourites but what girl doesn’t love a rags to riches make-over movie?
I lived in the Canary Islands for three years as child and have never gotten over the Spanish use of colour. The hotter the country, the more orange (and other brights) a girl can justify. This, to my mind, is an excellent thing.
Any girl who does not at some point wish to be Scarlet O’Hara, or any other kind of Southern Belle, is either not a real girl, or has not seen Gone with the Wind. It is that simple.
Yet another film about killers; I’d worry, but I just cannot bring myself to love the look of romantic comedies so let’s move on. Throughout Badlands Martin Sheen channels James Dean, looking young and (surprisingly) hot in double denim; tight, dark jeans and a jean jacket with a tight white tee but it’s Sissy Spacek I’d direct you towards.
A costume drama set in eighteenth century France, this film, though lacking the cartoon appeal of Marie-Antoinette (see Some Stylish Films, Part 1, from August 2009), still demonstrates a fashion truism: trying to look French is always a good thing.
Another Patricia Fields job, also set in New York City. In this film, which must be one of the least feminist produced in recent years, Andie Sachs, an uppity, ungrateful no-style, Ivy League graduate, whose friends and partner are hugely unsupportive, lands a drop at style bible Runway magazine. Sachs, feeling that she is above the ignoble pass times of looking nice, and making an effort for work, looks like absolute toss and is picked on by her fashion bitch co-worker (the fabulous and very heavily made-up Emily Blunt) until she has a Damascene revelation and she realises that dressing the part will enhance her career.
When I was at prep school I was honestly completely obsessed with the 1950’s- the music, the clothes, the films, the lot. Even my eleventh birthday party, which rocked, was ’50’s themed; I wore a poodle skirt and had a cake designed to look like a vinyl record. For this I blame Grease.
Faye Dunaway was a gorgeous young thing, it has to be said, and the pairing of her with Warren Beatty to play one of the most famously murderous couples in American history was incredibly glamorous, so glamorous that the film studio was highly criticised for casting two such stunners as the young serial killers.
Adapted from Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies, Bright Young Things depicts the debauched lifestyles of a group of British socialites in the era between the two World Wars, an era marked out in high society for its decadence. The characters mostly go to parties and the races, taking cocaine and drinking too much, then denying the whole thing when confronted about it by their seething families; much like socialites now, were Ascot a dive bar in Camden, not the stomping ground of Wags.
In Picnic at Hanging Rock three Victorian school girls mysteriously vanish after being taken on a class trip to the Australian outback. The film, which was internationally acclaimed upon its release in 1975, makes use not only of the starkly beautiful scenery but also clothes its young actors in one of the most gorgeous school uniforms ever: pristine high-necked white dresses with full sleeves, straw boaters, chunky black boots and long, free flowing hair, all worn against the backdrop of Australian summertime.
Belle de Jour is similar to Breakfast at Tiffany's in two ways; the protagonists of both films are prostitutes, although this one, being French, feautures a housewife who slips into the world's oldest profession because she's unfulfilled at home, and because like Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve is one of the actors whose beauty and sense of style marks them out.
Another Catherine Deneuve film, but one of a slightly different stylistic bent. While Belle de Jour is all stark city girl sophistication, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, a beautiful and gentle musical in which Deneuve plays a young pregnant woman, missing her lover who has gone to war, is all bright colours to contrast its sad themes.
Sophia Coppola's heavily stylised depiction of the last Queen of France as a troubled teenager is, in non-fashionable speak, absolutely bloody gorgeous.