Doodling With Colour

Honey Magazine, Illustrations, Make-up, maudie james, patrick hunt

Hmmm. What shall I try first? A rainbow across my tilt-up nose, or should I wait a few weeks and do the ‘April Fool!’ one? Some good make-up tips here, I particularly love the rainbow lashes, and I would now dearly love to get myself a Doodle Kit.

How to Have Fairy-Tale Hair: Gerry-Jaye Hall

1970s, cosmopolitan, hair, Inspirational Images, jerry hall

How to Have Fairy-Tale Hair

Ever since Rapunzel let down her hair to give the prince a lift up to her bedroom- you remember the fairy tale ? — long curly hair has been the ambition of most little girls. Lillian and Dorothy Gish, stars of the ‘Twenties, then Brigitte Bardot and Elizabeth Taylor and more currently Marisa Berenson and Petula Clark have kept curly hair in the limelight. What other style is so flattering? Gerry-Jaye Hall right, is the latest in a long line of princesses with fairy-tale hair For how she keeps it that way—and how you can make the most of your hair—read on…

Once upon a time there was a princess from a far-away country who took Paris by storm. And all on account of her waist—length hair the colour of molten gold. And when the young men of Paris stood under the windows of her Left Bank hotel and cried: “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair”, the princess just laughed and reached for another bottle of mayonnaise which is the magic potion she uses to keep her hair in condition. Yes, it’s a true life story … the princess is Gerry-Jaye Hall, a seventeen year old from Mesquite, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, who measures 36, 24, 36 and, at just under six feet tall, towers over most of the girls and a lot of the men in the bizarre world of Paris fashion.

One of five sisters (she’s a twin), Gerry-Jaye is the only girl who has not inherited the dark hair and brown eyes of her Choctaw Indian princess grandmother. Straight as an arrow she has gone to the top of the modelling tree in Paris where she’s the designers’ favourite, because on Gerry-Jaye a potato sack would look sexy. By day that hair and that body are raking in £100 per day in front of the camera . . . by night Gerry-Jaye is seen around town on the arm of Antonio, the illustrator who makes a speciality of discovering —and drawing—the most beautiful girls who live and work in Paris.

“Antonio helped me discover Paris,” she says in her breathless Texas drawl. “l’d been breaking in wild horses in a Texas rodeo and, well, Paris was a different scene … but now I’m making so much money I can’t wait to take Antonio back to Texas on vacation. My mother wants to fatten us both up. She thinks I’m too skinny. She thinks everybody is too skinny, except my sister who has her boobs fixed—enlarged you know?—she is 36C now and she’s so proud she can hardly bear to put any clothes on.”

Gerry-Jaye adopts some of that Texas pioneering spirit in keeping her mane of hair in good shape. She washes her hair twice a week with egg shampoo, then conditions it with herbal balsam. When her hair feels dry she dollops on a whole bottle of mayonnaise, followed by ten rinses. Beer is a substitute when the corner shop runs out of bottled mayonnaise. She swallows liver pills every day, a habit set by her mother who also has splendid hair. Does that wild head ever tangle? Apparently not. Gerry-Jaye brushes her hair night and morning with a natural bristle brush, starting at the bottom and taking in more length as she goes. Eschewing hair-dressers, she trims the ends every month by a quarter of an inch. Can she go swimming without making her hair into seaweed? She claims that sea water is beneficial and she never wears a cap. To keep her hair shining she squeezes in lemon juice while it’s drying. And the trendy, tendrilly curls? No rags, no curlers, Gerry-Jaye twists up the hair into a mop, shoves in two pins and shakes it out each morning. Just like the princess in the fairy story…

Vintage Adverts: Smoochers

Make-up, petticoat magazine, seventies fashion, Vintage Adverts

Smoochers from Boots Seventeen. Scanned from Petticoat, November 1974.

Mad orange lipstick packaging, names like Smoochers and Sugar Daddy, men in puffy sleeved shirts….make-up advertising just ain’t what it used to be!

A glint in the eye and in her garb

biba, bill klein, flair magazine, frank usher, gillian richard, miss mouse, seventies fashion, vidal sassoon

Left: Striped lurex top and pants by Frank Usher, £28.25. Right: Lurex blouse, £11.50 and brocade Oxford bags, £13.50 by Miss Mouse

Scanned from Flair Magazine, October 1972.

Photographed by Bill Klein. Hair by Howard of Vidal Sassoon.

“We photographed at The Club, the latest offering from those well-known restauranteurs Mario and Franco, who have branched out with this exclusive membership club in Belgravia.”

Left: Sequin wrap jacket by Biba, £20. Right: Wrapover jacket by Biba, £18. Satin Oxford bags by Gillian Richard, £5.60.

Vintage Adverts: Hairsprays and Dressing Tables

blakes 7, hair, haute naffness, interior design, servalan, seventies fashion, Vintage Adverts

Advert for Wella. Scanned from Flair, October 1972.

This advert pleases me on so many levels. Her hair, her décor, her artfully jumbled dressing table, the Russian doll, the giant die, the solitary stick of chewing gum….

Best of all, I have that mirror! I occasionally see it in vintage/antique/charity shops for anything between £20 and £50. Mine was a charity shop score many, many years ago for a mere fiver. It currently resides elsewhere on semi-permanent loan (due to my having a beloved Thirties walnut dressing table with integral mirror) but it is still a treasured piece of Seventies haute naffness.

It’s not the first time I’ve spotted it though; a near identical one appears in Blakes 7 as a mirror-come-communicator and is used suitably flamboyantly by the great Jacqueline Pearce. I must admit that I have never managed to contact anyone through it, so I cannot guarantee its efficiency. Ha!

The most nostalgic clothes of all…

1930s, barbara daly, barbara trentham, gala, ginger rogers, harpers and queen, hollywood icons, maureen o'hara, mr fish, ossie clark, patrick procktor, rosalind russell

Rosalind Russell wore this soft grey georgette evening dress with cross-draped bodice, for The Velvet Touch.

[Proving that nostalgia is nothing new…]

You are forgiven if you think the pictures on these pages are fashion circa 1971. In a sense, they are; but in fact, these are original Hollywood – the clothes of the stars, people like Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland, Jean Seberg, Shirley Temple — worn in their films, coming up for a gala auction at Sotheby’s Pantechnicon in Motcomb Street at 7pm on December 1.

The man who made it possible is Michael Fish — Mr Fish, no less — who bought the whole collection of 30s, 40s and 50s creations from Max Berman & Son of Hollywood, and is putting them to auction in aid of Immigrant Community Services. So you could help to provide a new children’s playground in Brixton, say, while treating yourself to a great fashion original . . . like Jane Russell’s navy pleated chiffon coat over crepe culottes ; Bonita Granville’s pink chiffon dress with Alencon lace and fine pleating; not to mention the original mini worn by Betty Hutton in Annie Get Your Gun.

Patrick Procktor is contributing to the programme for Mr Fish’s ‘frock fantasy’. Ossie Clark’s sensational model, Gala, will wear some of the clothes, as she did for us in company with Barbara Trentham. Make-up here by Barbara Daly; hair by Smile; location, Mr Paul Hamlyn’s house.

Harpers and Queen, December 1971. Photographs by Tim Street-Porter

Square-shouldered 40s suits, as worn by Maureen O’Hara and Ginger Rogers.

Agnes Moorehead starred in this vampy black crepe dress with sequins and a matching shoulder cape fastened with jet.

Vintage Adverts: Strictly for lids

19 magazine, glam rock, Make-up, mary quant, seventies fashion, Vintage Adverts

Aha!! So who really invented eye crayons, eh? Was it Boots or Mary Quant? Mary Quant or Boots? We’ll probably never know, but I’m willing to place a bet that the Boots ones worked better*…

Scanned from 19 Magazine. September 1974

*I speak from experience. My nan worked in the factory where the Quant ones were made and I attempted to use them in my teens. They were, frankly, useless.

The Colour Craze

barbara hulanicki, Barbara Hulanicki, biba, caroline arber, didier duval, hair, Make-up, mary quant, seventies fashion, steven hiett, vanity fair

Green says Biba. Photo by Caroline Arber.

All the top beauty talent is currently colour-crazy – and we’re very much for it; it’s a fabulous enlivener of the grey winter scene. Your party look could be a variant of any of the gloriously off-beat ideas you see here – and anyone who considers green lips unnatural might dwell, briefly, on the knock-you-down naturalness of bright plum or orange ones.

Vanity Fair, December 1971

Violet says Pablo – Elizabeth Arden’s ebullient young creative director.

Rainbow hair says Michael at Crimpers. Photo by Steve Hiett.

Any colours you like says Vanity Fair, using Mary Quant’s crayons. Photo by Didier Duval.

Duffy (finally)

1960s, amanda lear, book reviews, brian duffy, jean shrimpton, michael sarne, mild sauce, pierre la roche, seventies fashion, the sweet

Queen magazine, 1963

Although you’ll all have long since forgotten that I promised to review the fantastic Duffy book (published by ACC. RRP £45 but currently £31.98 on Amazon.co.uk), I certainly haven’t and it’s been rather weighing on my mind. In fact, I’m troubled by the fact that I rarely seem to have the energy to type long, rambling blog posts at all these days.

So, as I often do, I will largely leave the photographs to do the communicating. Which is rather the point of the book itself. It is not a weighty tome about the life of the man, rather it is a weighty tome about the talent of the man. The talent which made him world-famous, but eventually left him feeling so trapped he had to [pretty much literally] destroy it in order to escape it. Page after page of gorgeous women, swinging dudes of the highest and lowest order and generally Interesting People. But it also covers the later period, the advertising and the selling-out, or ‘prostitution’ as he honestly described it.

I have to admit, I’m always on the look out for new Duffy shoots in my magazines because I’m almost rather bored of seeing the same ones shown again and again. And to be fair, of course, in Duffy’s case there is the genuine problem with the complete lack of original source material. His son Chris has spent years reassembling the archive, and I have to respect the labour of love that this project has become. Thankfully, the book is more varied than the exhibition I attended earlier this year would lead you to believe. I have scanned a few of my personal favourites, which I hope will communicate the beauty of his work.

A pet hate must be noted at this point, which is that these books rarely identify the designer of the clothes worn in the pictures. I know it doesn’t seem like much to a non-clothes obsessive, but I want to know if that dress really was by so-and-so and I find it infuriating for such information to be left out when surely it must be known?

Obviously, luxuriously printed and sized books such as this require the highest calibre of image quality for reproduction purposes, but it would be nice, in a few years time, to see a book which features more obscurities, more magazine tear-sheets and clippings; covering the lesser-known styles and techniques he used. For there are many. I mean, David Bailey has had enough books about him to last a lifetime; Brian Duffy certainly deserves another one.

Definitely one for the Christmas list. And watch out, because I’m going to be reviewing more books to put on your Christmas list over the next few weeks. Yes indeed.