HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! This week we have The Berg Companion to Fashion, edited by Valerie Steele!
Berg is a publishing house which often publishes on beauty and fashion! The Berg journals are also a great series, covering amazing subjects from fashion and art to eating habits and the cultural presence of food.
As for Valerie Steele, she is one of the best fashion historians in the world, and I have many of her books! She is a prolific writer and Director of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Anything by Valerie Steele is OK with me.
The Berg Companion to Fashion is an one-volume fashion encyclopedia with entries on just about everything, from theories of fashion to specific fashion houses and brands (Prada, Dior, Ungaro, Levis), types of clothes (e.g. swimwear, sports wear, boots, the bikini, the ball dress), history of fashion entries, entries about individual shops, individual designers and items of clothing (the bridle, the corset).
I highly recommend this book to fashion writers, fashion scholars and also anyone who is interested to learn about the amazing and magical world of fashion!
THE AMAZING thing about beauty is that it is never too far away: in a song, a book, a drawing, a garden, or in a tube of lipstick! Or in a thousand different things. Beauty is one great survival kit! I hope you all have a beautiful Friday. The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review coming soon! xxx
SUMMER has come and gone -- it's a memory now; hopefully a beautiful memory! Thank you to all who read this blog. New posts coming for the new season! :-)
IN THE beautiful movie Tristan and Isolde (2006), Isolde, played excellently by Sophia Myles, participates in the long tradition of women healers and purveyors of the medicinal tradition of herbs!
Across history, women were linked with healing. Healing with herbs and medicines extracted from plants was special female knowledge which survived for centuries.
In the Middle Ages, many hospital gardens were run by women, "who were expert herbalists. They dried and pounded the herbs, seeds and roots into pastes to make potions, and gathered leaves and flowers to make perfumes and to infuse in baths for the sick." Women also made ointments for skin and eyes, cordials, medicines for cough and sedatives.
Women healers were found across the social spectrum, from peasants to ladies of the manor and noble houses (this information comes from Jenny Uglow's A Little History of British Gardening).
Scientific medicine (androcentric as it is) tried to quench this female knowledge and tradition, dabbing it as "old wives tales". The tradition and knowledge survived, of course! It is now back with a vengeance, as women work once more as healers and makers of herbal medicines.
Also, Estee Lauder and Helena Rubinstein famously concocted their creams and lotions themselves, becoming millionaires to boot.
As for Tristan and Isolde, it is one of the most enchanting films I have ever seen. Isolde is an expert healer, almost a witch with her potions and concoctions. She saves Tristan's life, birthing him again in her cave of life!
Have a lovely Tuesday afternoon. More on make up and female tradition in later posts! xxx
P.S. That James Franco who played Tristan is so beautiful also helped me like the film ;-)
I STARTED the week in one of the best ways imaginable -- reading an interview in the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times! The interview was with designer Diane von Furstenberg, who talked about her special office space and how personal is everything on her desk.
Also, I continued my book on the Goddess Aphrodite, reading about her jewels, as mentioned in the Homeric hymns: a tiara, earrings and intricate necklaces, all made of pure gold! Aphrodite's handmaidens are the Graces and the Hours.
Fashion, beauty, inspiration -- all necessary for a good start to the week! xxx
HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! This week our book is A Little History of British Gardening, by Jenny Uglow, published by Pimlico in 2005.
This is a lovely book, which sets out the phases of British history through gardening. It begins with the Romans and the original British tribes, to the monks and monasteries, the knights, the Victorians, the World Wars and ends in our age.
Each chapter gives not only the history of gardens and plants, but also the cultural framework and lifestyle for the period. It's a history of plants, flowers, gardens, and a history of the people!
Jenny Uglow is an amazing writer. To me, she is a historian extraordinaire. It is unbelievable how much she knows about the past, and how well she can put that into writing. I have her book The Lunar Men, about a group of scientists in the 18th century (including James Watt and Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles). Though the book is too androcentric for my taste, I am astonished by the incredible historical information inside! Also, Uglow has written an excellent book on beloved writer Jane Austen.
I would easily recommend any book by Jenny Uglow. But I think A Little History is my favorite by far. It's easy and pleasant to read, clever, and informative. The edition is lovely too, and there are some very nice color plates as well. It's a book which will be loved by anyone interested in plants, gardens and history!
Enjoy your weekend, and have beauty always with you! :-)
NEW month and season, which means new colors, fashions and a new mood! Beauty has something for everyone. Have a lovely Friday -- the Lipstick Papers Weekend Review coming soon! xxx
EXETER University, where I did my PhD, had a massive archive of Victorian periodicals, including women's magazines, with a wealth of information about fashion and beauty!
During my study and research, I collected material from the archives, but obviously I need to find more if I am going to continue writing on the broader Victorian discourse on beauty and fashion.
With advice from the group on Research on Victorian Periodicals, I searched the Hathi Trust and Dickens Journals Online and --hallelujah!-- there is lots of archived digital material! You can see my notebook in the pic, and the amazing lipstick pen!
So I can continue investigating the wonderful nineteenth century periodicals, learning their ideas about beauty and fashion, and smiling or frowning with their prejudices. I also wonder what another researcher will say, two hundred years from now, when she or he will be reading our periodicals, magazines, social media, blogs, even this blog.
Hmmm... I can't speak for every other magazine or medium, but I am sure for one thing. This future researcher will find The Lipstick Papers fascinating!
Have a good Thursday night -- xxx
I HAVE recently stopped reading Margaret Oliphant's Phoebe Junior (I will tell you why below). The one good thing about the book, however, is the attitude to fashion! Victorians had an ambivalent attitude to fashion, but in Phoebe Junior fashion is positive, exciting, and important!
Fashion is important in the book because it can help us to look good and gives us confidence.
Early in the book, for example, protagonist Phoebe goes to an important ball. Phoebe is very young (I think she is about eighteen) and blonde, with a white and pink complexion. Her mother, also called Phoebe, advises her to wear a pastel gown, but Phoebe refuses. She chooses a gown of black silk, which makes her golden beauty shine. Phoebe is striking and so confident at the ball, that young men fall in love with her; young women can only admire her fashion sense.
What is wonderful in this episode is, for me, the correct stance towards fashion. The other girls are not presented as competition, and they do not "dislike" Phoebe for outshining them: they admit that she chose the best piece for herself. Also, Phoebe does not choose the dress because she wants to "beat" competition, but because she wants to feel confident and look her best.
Fashion gives us confidence and makes us look our best. Many speak against fashion, saying that it promotes impossible ideals. I disagree with this. Fashion promotes impossible ideals only if we listen to those who say that everyone else is competition and more beautiful than us. Personally, I never compare myself to others and don't see them as "competition". I love fashion, and I do the best with what my minimal budget will allow. Fashion has something good for everyone!
Now, the reason why I stopped reading Phoebe Junior is the class snobbery. Not only important characters, but also Phoebe herself, look down upon lower middle-class and working class people. Maybe the book improves later, but I am not interested to find out.
In the19th century, most writers and critics came from the middle and upper classes. Critics derided any writer or poet who was lower class. My darling John Keats <3 met a lot of prejudice because he was poor and working class!
I still have Phoebe Junior on the bookshelf, but again only because of the scenes about fashion! :-)
PERFUME and a swimsuit can go very well together, as this picture clearly proves! According to the website Top For, the most popular women's perfume for 2014 is Chloe eau de perfume by Chloe! Guilty by Gucci is second, while Romance by Ralph Lauren is at number three.
Perfumes are as old as history: Egyptian perfume recipes from as long ago as 1600 BC have been found!
The Greeks also loved scents and perfumes, something which is obvious in The Iliad and The Odyssey. Perfume is for mortals and immortals alike. In Homeric epic, scent is a must after a bath (and we know how much epic heroes love to bathe). Aphrodite, who often goes to bathe in the sea caves of Paphos, Cyprus, is also a famous user of scent.
The first known perfume based on alcohol was created by a Hungarian man for Queen Elizabeth the first, who was then in her seventies. Later, an Italian from Milan called Jean Paul Feminis, created an improved formula; his nephew, Jean Antoine Farina continued the work, after moving to Cologne in Germany. He called his scent --yes-- "eau de cologne"!
Perfume often appears in paintings, illustrations and artworks as well. Emmakisstina, an amazing Swedish artist, has created an iconic image of Chanel no 5, as well as lovely illustrations of other perfumes, such as Miss Dior and Chance by Chanel!
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