HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! This week we have the book A Life in Frocks: A Memoir, by Kelly Doust!
This must be among the most beautiful books in my library. The edition is amazingly pretty! A jacket of marbled pink paper with dress sketches is wrapped around a cover decorated with lovely underwear sketches! The paper inside is thick, in cream color, and the illustrations by Zoe Sadokierski are a dream!
I bought this book in Sheffield two years ago, where I went to participate in the annual BAVS conference. BAVS stands for British Association for Victorian Studies, and the conference each year is THE event for Victorianists from all over the world. I had saved painfully in order to go, and have not been able to find the money to go since. So the 2012 visit was special, and I save all that happened in my memory treasure-box. I remember buying this pretty pink book from Waterstones in Orchard Square, a most beautiful bookshop in a most beautiful place!
I think that A Life in Frocks is a must-read for anyone interested to write a fashion memoir, because Kelly Doust deftly shows how you can write about your life and experiences in relation to clothes. Events in Doust's life are highlighted by clothes and vice versa. I would love to buy any fashion memoir she writes!
(Kelly Doust also writes about sewing, crafts and upcycling, in books and in her website, kellydoust.wordpress.com).
One annoying thing with A Life in Frocks is the writer's insistence on telling us about her boyfriend all the time. Wherever she goes, whatever she does, we must be told that she was with a boyfriend, and the boyfriend was doing this and that. Beauty writers will speak about their boyfriends, of course, and there is nothing wrong with that; I very much enjoyed reading the occasional comment about the boyfriend in, say, The Goddess Guide and The Goddess Experience. I am not a hundred per cent sure why it annoyed me so much in this book. I think it is the tone in which it was all written; if we weren't told that there was a boyfriend around, the experience would lose something of its value.
Other than this, the book is perfect!
Have a great start to the week and be well! xxx
WE ARE currently into the season I hate, i.e. winter. 80% of the people I know here in Cyprus, love winter and live for the three months where it will be darkness, rain and cold. (Note: I am talking about the people I know personally, I cannot generalize or speak for anybody else). I am exactly the opposite. For me, winter is torture.
There is nothing good about winter. I live for the long days of spring and summer, and prefer even the extreme heat to the rain!
In literature, Winter is the name of a heroine in a nice romance novel, called Shadow of the Moon by British novelist M.M. Kaye. There are some problematic things with that novel, such as the benign approach to imperialism, but as a romance novel it is good! There is thrill, adventure, a happy ending, and an energetic and passionate heroine!
Winter de Ballesteros is named that way because she has snow-white skin. Combined with night-black hair and eyes, these colors make Winter striking and unusual.
For me, the best thing about the novel is that the protagonist, Alex Randall, is very good looking too! He has dark hair, blue-grey eyes, a lovely mouth, and a slender body. As you know, I can't stand it when a novel pays attention to the beauty of the woman while making the man plain. This gives men unreasonable expectations and tries to keep women in their place. What is behind such beauty politics is an idea like this: "Guys, you should look for a beautiful woman no matter how you look yourselves. The plainest guy can ask tremendous beauty in a woman. But YOU girls, no, don't look at appearance! It's personality which counts. Don't expect too much from the man in appearance. Look beyond this, look at personality, beauty is bad in a man, don't expect too much".
Double standard, anyone????
If men are allowed to look for beauty, then the same must go for women.
Anyway, back to the winter season. For me, it is something that needs to be over and done with, and nothing else. Counting the days for spring and summer! xxx
LAST NIGHT I gave a public lecture on Fashion and it went fantastic!
The lecture was titled Fashion, Beauty and Female Creativity from the 19th Century to the Present Day, and was part of the annual series of municipal lectures in my hometown. Each municipality in Cyprus has its own "free" University, and brings in lecturers for a series of annual lectures. This is the second year I have participated, and you can see me in the picture while I am answering audience's questions.
I very much enjoyed presenting my favorite subjects, i.e. fashion and beauty, to a wider audience! It was tremendous fun!
The lecture covered the themes of history of fashion, the history of women through fashion, fashion in literature, and women entrepreneurs and fashion today. These are all also subjects for The Lipstick Papers!
Two of my best friends also participated, one (who is an academic) as presenter/ co-ordinator and the other as contributor, reading (in an amazing way because she is an actress) an extract from a novel!
The audience was warm and very much interested in what we had to say! The subjects which they wanted to know about included:
- Who takes the decisions about fashion what to wear.
- The definition of femininity.
- Women and fashion in Cyprus.
- Fourth Wave Feminism.
- Research in Victorian periodicals.
- Fashion and the financial melt-down.
- Fashion and consumerism.
- Eco fashion and fast fashion,
and so on and so forth into fashion eternity! Of course I also talked about The Lipstick Papers, and of course you can expect more amazing posts about fashion in the future!
Have a great mid-week and see you all again soon! xxx
HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! This weekend (which is sadly nearly over) we have the book The Shops: How, Why and Where to Shop, by India Knight.
This is a lovely little book, published by Penguin in 2004. The title says it all -- it is a book about shopping!
At the same time, The Shops is a lively memoir, filled with interesting details from the author's life, and how she came to know various shops. The chapters are divided by kind ("Big Fat Dinners", "Home", "Mothers and Children" and so on). The illustrations are pretty and it also has recommendations and a whole chapter on "Presents", with gift ideas.
The book is full of India Knight's exuberant personality: "I don't want to sound like a fanatical obsessive or loon, but I love my house nearly as much as I love my family". As for home, we may "suffer from a desire to run back towards it or to run away from it". And my personal favorite: "I love paper and [in this stationery] is where the love began. This hushed, sober shop had, obviously, paper by the quire: thin paper, thick paper, hand-made paper, marbled paper in six shades of pink [...]". Being paper-mad myself, I feel my mouth water when I read these lines!
I love India Knight and I try to have all her books, though I don't like them all equally. The Shops is amazing and I fully recommend it! The one negative thing is that it is now slightly outdated, so we don't know which of the shops mentioned still exist.
Write an updated version, please, India Knight!
:-)
I MUST confess that I first I wasn't too happy with that lipstick -- I refer to the MLS13 ANGEL matte lipstick from Nyx cosmetics -- but now I really love it!!!!! Here I am wearing it:
I had bought the MLS 13 ANGEL with the pencil lipstick from Nyx which, if you have been reading this blog for a while, you will know I loved from the start.I n this (summer) picture I am wearing the Nyx pencil lipstick.
With the tube lipstick it was not the same. I found I didn't like it too much, and didn't use it. Here is how I come to love it so much now!
Lately, I started wearing lipstick during jogging. I used to simply wear sun protection balm but, as you know, the best sun protection for the lips is lipstick! So I thought, since the MLS 13 ANGEL is not the best lipstick tube I have, I will wear it in jogging and nowhere else.
This was the start of one great relationship! The lipstick grew on me, and now I find it simply irresistible! It is good on the lips, very easy to apply (you can make a lovely shape on your lips in a few seconds) and the color is pretty too!
Now I will buy a second tube, to have in reserve. The good thing, the price is really cheap, so it's highly affordable too!
Have a good evening and see you again soon :-)
I AM currently reading a book about self-portraiture, where I found this lovely image!
It's by anonymous in 1402, ink and color on parchment, and titled Marcia Painting Her Self-Portrait! I love the image for many reasons, most importantly because it shows a woman artist in the act of creating a self-portrait; women were, until very recently, considered lesser artists, allowed in the male fields of art and creation only on tolerance.
Also, this image comes from the end of the Middle-Ages, a period when religious fanaticism was at its heyday, and viewed women as the gates of hell, responsible for man's fall from heaven (religious fanatics forget the minor detail that without women the so-called "mankind" would die out in 100 years maximum).
Women artists existed even during those tough times. Also, he female knowledge of herbs and healing survived, though millions of women were burnt at the stake as witches. Christine de Pisani, the Medieval author, even composed works to answer condemnation of the female nature and sexual identity contained in the Roman de la Rose, mankind's great epic misogynistic poem about courtly love.
Art, love and power belong to both men and women, not only to one of them. Humankind, like beauty, is multiple and diverse. Enjoy a beautiful evening tonight! xxx
HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! This week we have The Victorian House by Judith Flanders!
Judith Flanders is an author and journalist, who has written amazing books on history and culture, especially concerning the Victorian period. Reading her books, you think that Flanders may have actually lived in the Victorian era -- her knowledge is so in-depth and complete.
The Victorian House is about the 19th century home, the rooms, decoration, habits and technology of home, as well as the underlying ideologies. For the Victorians, the home was a refuge from the evils of the outside world, and the woman's proper domain. Confined to the home as they were, middle-class Victorian women spent an enormous amount of time decorating and embellishing the rooms.
The book is invaluable to any historian or cultural theorist who researches the 19th century. I used it for my PhD, and can recommend it with all my heart!
At the same time, I think that the book is quite accessible to anyone who is interested to know more about Victorian life, or about the history of the home in general.
It is full of illustrations and pictures, which I am sure you will love!
Have a great Sunday evening, always with beauty and a book! xxx
IN the ancient Greek religion, Melissa (Μέλισσα, honey-bee) was a nymph, who helped to nurse the baby Zeus in his infancy!
Zeus had been hidden in a cave in Crete by his mother, the Goddess Rea. Rea had resorted to this desperate measure to save the baby from its own father, Cronos. Cronos was a powerful God, but had the ugly habit of eating his own children. Zeus, however, survived, and eventually dethroned his father to become king of all Gods.
Back to the cave in Crete, though. As a baby, Zeus was nursed by the nymphs Melissa and Amalthea, who fed him with honey. The nymphs (Νύμφες) are beautiful, semi-divine women in the Greek religion, who often reside in forests, mountains, rivers and brooks.
In another version of the myth, Melissa was a real swarm of bees, that brought honey for the divine child, and Amalthea was a goat with supernatural powers, who gave the baby her milk. "Amalthea's horn" (το κέρας της Αμάλθειας) is a synonym for plenitude in the Greek language.
Honey is truly a magical ingredient. It is antiseptic, probiotic and anti almost everything which is bad. You can apply honey to a wound. It doesn't even have an expiry date, for honey found in ancient Egyptian tombs was perfectly edible!
Beauty and honey are inextricably intertwined: we literally use honey in cosmetics, and metaphorically to denote someone we love, or someone with a pretty face.
Have a good Friday afternoon and be well! xxx
HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! This week we got The Body Shop Book: Skin, Hair and Body Care, published in 1994 by Little, Brown and Company.
The book is a collection of advice, know-how, how-to and tips from the Body Shop, with an Introduction by the late Anita Roddick.
It is a lovely volume, with practical information and advice, as well as historical and useful material on beauty, aromatherapy, fragrances, and health. Interestingly, the book devotes space for men's beauty as well. There is a section for massage too, a step-by-step guide to make up, a section on Sun (tanning safely, keeping your living space cool, keeping your skin healthy in the sun) and finally a section on aging -- which becomes more and more valuable to me as the years go by!
I bought this volume when it came out in 1994, and I believe that it is now a collectors item. It was a bit expensive, and my means were as limited as always but, at the same time, I always have a tiny budget for books!
Now I am happy I bought this book rather than saving the money it cost. Anita Roddick has died and the Body Shop has been sold.
Inside the volume I have kept some clippings from magazines on skin care, equally valuable today! One day's ephemera is the next day's memento.
I hope you are all enjoying a great Sunday, always with beauty and a book! xxx
THIS weekend I watched Mockingjay part one, which is the third film to come out of the Hunger Games saga! I liked the film, especially the haunting tune sang by Jennifer Lawrence in a scene on the river bank. I normally don't love it when film characters break into song, but this scene is a marvelous exception to the rule!
As a fashion addict, I particularly love the character Effie, brilliantly played by Elizabeth Banks. Though Katniss is not an enthusiast for fashion and beauty practices, generally these are presented positively, and as a glamorous addition to life.
Also, I sometimes use Hunger Games for my lectures on gender and eating habits, as a good example of a book with a healthy attitude to food. Food is shown as something life-giving, valuable and essential; while most book heroines shun food, Katniss absolutely loves it, thus setting a good example.
What I found to criticize in the Hunger Games books is something which the film has not shown. This is the insistence that Katniss is so much like her father, and nothing like her mother. Katniss got her rebellion and spirit from her dad. It often happens in real life, of course, to get your free spirit directly and exclusively from one parent; however, fiction is not real life. The implication is that Katniss is so powerful because she took this from a man.
Personally, I prefer Prim, Katniss's more feminine sister, and their mother. I prefer the mother/Prim dyad, because they embody female knowledge and energy.
Other than this, I find that the Hunger Games saga depicts women and gender quite well, and certainly much better than other popular franchises!
Have a good evening and see you again soon! xxx
