Well I had no idea that the awesome Sally Tuffin did a range for Charnos. I know Ossie did, and I know Janice Wainwright did a range for Golden Charm, but this is a new one on me. I wantwantwant this dress.
Oh how I do love Seventies loungewear. It fits in beautifully with my dream world where I have the Hulanicki wallpaper, my Biba lightshade in use and a shagpile carpet…
Vogue. March 1973
(Initially inspired by this post by the fabulous Everybody Says Don’t)
Like the fabulous WendyB, I’m a big fan of the butt bow. Frankly I’m a fan of any decoration on the butt. When you’re a petite lady up top, and you quite like your butt, you know it makes sense to draw attention down there. This is why I love Sarah Whitworth (Queen of the Buffle) so much.
Anyway, a few weeks back I was stopped in my tracks by this incredible dress in the window of the Maria Grachvogel shop. I’m quite a fan of MG which, considering my usual antipathy towards modern designers, is quite an achievement for her*.
*I’m sure she’d be delighted to know that!
One day. One day I shall have lots of money to spend on sparkly Terry De Havilland platform shoes wot fit my feet. Til then, I can but drool at other people’s goodies… Click the images for the eBay auctions and bid away dear readers, let me live vicariously through your feet….
Scanned in a while ago, never got around to posting. I’m now posting them because I’m strangely uninspired for blog posts this week and need to catch up reading everyone else’s. I’m hoping that will change soon….til then, there’s always Ossies. And Pollocks. The floral frock is a Pollock.
Petticoat Magazine, September 1969, Clothes for Clothes’ Sake!
Where’s all my one-shoulder-loving-ladies? I’m afraid I couldn’t resist the temptation to give Roxy a bit of a Farrah-flick, in memoriam, when I put this super groovy striped Lee Bender top on her.
It’s quite a transitional period piece really. It can move quite happily from glam rock to disco with a mere change of trousers and shoes, and music of course. Now available over at Vintage-a-Peel for a foot-stompingly reasonable £38. Just click the image to view.
The lovely Smashingbird commented on my Diana Rigg birthday post that she’d love to see more pictures of the amazing chain strap black dress. Well, I probably have far too many shots of that dress, and it’s certainly one of my favourites, so I figured a blog post about one dress wasn’t too ridiculous. Not that I’m concerned about ridicule of course, I have done several posts about Doctor Who companions after all.
It also helps that the dress was worn for the Assassination Bureau press junket, and therefore there are a few shots of the dress with Olly Reed wrapped around it. I think all good dresses should come with a complimentary Oliver Reed.
If anyone ever finds out who made this dress, I would be eternally grateful. You’d think I would know, wouldn’t you? Sigh…
Yeah, yeah, I know you can’t see the dress here. But it’s there. It’s just behind Olly.
In summary:-
Duran Duran have still got ‘it’.
I do not like N.E.R.D. Or their fans.
Duran Duran can control the weather with their music. Hold Back The Rain actually did the trick both times. They are Gods.
When you are being nearly crushed to death, keeping your shoes on becomes disproportionately important.
If you stand in the middle of a swelling crowd of festival-type people whilst wearing a Sixties dress and shout at them, in a posh accent, for being stupid then people will look at you a bit funny. It’s inevitable.
Nick Rhodes owes me the amazing vintage Adam Ant badge I lost in the mêlée. It’s his fault we were in a crowd of idiots. He said this was a festival which ladies could wear nice shoes to, because it was in a park. Real world, meet Nick. Nick, meet the real world.
"Oh, so THAT'S the real world over yonder is it? Oh dear..."
Contrary to some reviews, a 50-year-old man shouting ‘freebase’ and gyrating on stage is not sad…it’s delightful and endearing. Well, when it’s Simon Le Bon anyway.
My girls may have been getting more excited about Simon’s top hat [and, later on, tuxedo] and Nick’s cravat and cane, but John Taylor is an expert at doing a Miss Peelpants-orientated strip tease. Sharp suit. Jacket off, leaving white shirt and waistcoat. Then waistcoat off, leaving slightly crumpled white shirt and braces. Top marks!
Well, I’m now back from my Duran ‘Odyssey’ and I’m almost at a loss to process the weird old week I’ve had. I’ve been all the way up to Edinburgh and back, have seen the boys twice in one week (both times from very near the front by sheer luck and steely determination respectively), have walked into a service station with rollers in my hair, have sat eating pineapple wedges and glace cherries from behind the bar of the Hard Rock Cafe because they were no longer serving food (many thanks to the kindly bar staff), have cursed Nick Rhodes quite a lot (a man like that should understand that open air gigs and nice hair, make-up and clothes DO NOT MIX), nearly drowned attempting to get to Edinburgh Castle in torrential rain, nearly died in an N.E.R.D crowd whilst waiting for the Duran set, have laughed so hard I started bawling (still can’t work out if it was because it was all so funny or utterly horrifying)…oh and I even ate a Pot Noodle. Which is possibly the most alarming aspect to the entire week.
So now I can get back to work, I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to hear!
…could you have had a job agency who will find a job appropriate to your star sign. I wondered if it was a joke. Perhaps it was? I like to think I’d fit seamlessly into society if I ever fell through a wormhole in time and found myself in 1969, so I almost get annoyed with myself for finding such things so very amusing and bizarre. Perhaps I would have found them entertaining back then? I hope so…like the idea of sanitary towels aiding my search for a millionaire husband*?
*I was once accused of being a ‘gold digger’ by a former aquaintance of mine. It still perplexes me to this day. She can’t have been basing it on reality, if she’d ever met any of my boyfriends she’d know that. Perhaps she saw a packet of Dr Whites in my handbag?
Well I never. All these years I’ve been moaning that I knew so very little about the Pussy Galore boutique, aside from the brief paragraph the V&A managed to unearth when they displayed my frock. Yet right under my nose, in a clearly somewhat under read copy of Petticoat magazine, was this little gem. Well, now I know why they didn’t last very long. I’m not sure I’d want to buy frocks from a girl in her underwear. I don’t care what they may say about rocketing lingerie sales, pah!
Pussy Galore was opened by Carnaby Street entrepreneur Henry Moss in 1969, when this clipping dates from.
I realise this may not be terribly exciting for anyone else, but at least if I blog about it I’m unlikely to forget I have it. Which is something I often manage to do.
My solitary[ish] Pussy Galore piece is the tablecloth mini, but I also have a pair of purple suede hotpants (Made, apparently, for someone with a child-size bottom. Size 38 my….errr….arse!) which had this hang tag on them. I’m sure they must be Pussy Galore, but there isn’t a fabulous huge satin label inside. Just the hang tag. Dyed by the purple suede over the years. Isn’t it groovy?
It was so delightful to spend the afternoon with the gorgeous bloggers (all four of them) WendyB, Sharon Rose, Samantha and Kate at Harvey Nichols today. Grumpy waiters aside. Five hours and two pitchers of Pimm’s definitely wasn’t enough, especially when I returned home to find Wendy had forgotten to tell me she likes Foale and Tuffin. Well, I could have bored for England on that subject….next time, next time.
Thank you ladies, especially to Wendy for coming over in the first place and organising it – and to Sharon Rose for the gorgeous Bus Stop blouse (which fits perfectly) and Mary Quant scarf. The former may get a debut while I’m on my Duran Duran odyssey next week. More of that in due course…
Liz Eggleston 