…would be a shame!
Audrey Totter: December 20, 1917-December 12, 2013
Lady in the Lake (1947)
Off Topic Post: Forgetting Audrey…
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Category Archives: Alternative Muses
[Alternative Muses] Happy Birthday, Georgia O’Keeffe!
Georgia O’Keeffe was born on 15 November 1887.
Georgia O’Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz, 1918
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.” *
Georgia O’Keeffe, taken July 19, 1915
“To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” Continue reading
[Alternative Muses] Writerly Style: Dressing for the Four Seasons with Sylvia Plath
“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”-Orson Welles
Sylvia Plath is best remembered for the sharp-edged precision of her poetry: word-vessels that are hard, clear, and passionate examples of literature’s trickiest form. Her style, although of minor importance to both literary historians and laypersons, remains fresh and appealing fifty years after her death. The timeless quality of Sylvia’s wardrobe is easy to emulate, and personalize.
Four Seasons, Five Photographs, Forever Stylish:
Sylvia Plath: Spring
A crisp white tee, corset belt, and floaty high-waisted skirt is the perfect outfit for the windy days of spring. She finishes it off simply with lipstick and a hairpin. Typewriter: optional. [This is my favourite photograph of a writer caught in the act of writing. I’ve always envied the imagined comforts of working in a garden setting. Sun-on-skin; light, earth-tainted breeze; a lounge chair to sink wearily into for moments of reflection; a glass of lemonade nearby–just out of frame; birds in trees. Sylvia kicks that fantasy up a few rungs by being so perfectly attired, and so full of creative concentration.]
Sylvia Plath: Summer
The architectural details at the top make this bathing suit a gem. Clean lines and a good fit can turn a basic, sporty garment into something unforgettably elegant. If I had one of these in every colour, I would live at the beach. Wouldn’t you? [It’s funny how certain summer days are inexpressibly golden, when words fall off of tongues unspoken and melt on the air like dissolving grains of sand. The whole of the world, for a split second, seems beautiful and warm. Contentment emerges, as fleeting as a skittering crab. Sylvia’s expression here is surely one of those moments captured and entombed by a photograph. Serenity is the best adornment.] Continue reading
Ubiquitous Sylvia Plath Birthday Post!
Sylvia Plath was born on 27 October 1932.
Sylvia Plath.
It is cold and blustery, today, but the sun shines with extra force. How appropriate.
“Eternity bores me, I never wanted it.”-Sylvia Plath, Ariel: The Restored Edition
[Alternative Muses] Coming and Going: T.S. Eliot/Edgar Degas Mashup
“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.”-T.S. Eliot (born on 9/26/1888)
Edgar Degas (died on 9/27/1917): The Millinery Shop, 1879/86. Art Institute of Chicago.
My Anti-Heroine is Bossy!
The anti-heroine of my work in progress is bossy!
Jean Acker
She insists on looking like Jean Acker. I can’t say I blame her.
[Alternative Muses] Writerly Style: Françoise Sagan
“Fashions fade, style is eternal.”-Yves Saint Laurent
Françoise Sagan was the ultimate cool girl writer. If you believe that style should be effortless and detached, then she is your muse. Even today, a wardrobe like hers can take you almost anywhere, and anywhere it can’t you probably don’t want to go.
The writer looking brilliantly modern. Oh, that skirt! That shirt! That hair!
Her uncomplicated look remains fresh more than five decades later. Who needs nail varnish and lipstick when you can look like this? She is proof that decadent lives do not need visible gilding. Continue reading
[Alternative Muses] Birthday Mashup: Gustav Klimt/Woody Guthrie
Nixen (Silberfische), c. 1899, by Gustav Klimt (born 14 July 1862)
“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that.”-Woody Guthrie (born 14 July 1912)
[Book Nerd Links] Portraits from Brooklyn’s DIY Music and Art Space, the Market Hotel
This is not really a bookish link, but creativity is creativity: this space is truly awe-inspiring.
Portraits from Brooklyn’s DIY Music and Art Space, the Marker Hotel [courtesy Flavorwire]
[Alternative Muses] Writerly Style: Daphne du Maurier
“Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, as they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.”-Virginia Woolf, Orlando
It is difficult to avoid peddling clichés when discussing Daphne du Maurier’s personal style: there’s just something so vigorously English about her look.
Daphne du Maurier
See what I mean? Her fresh-scrubbed bluntness still bewitches. Whatever the truth of her routine, she looks like a woman whose morning ablutions consisted of plunging her face into a cold stream, followed by a haphazard spritz of rose-water, mirror-less application of the perfect red lipstick, and a few deep breaths. Whether she spent the day at her typewriter or traipsing through fragrant fields with clever dogs gamboling at her heels, it’s obvious that she was sartorially prepared.
Daphne du Maurier and family
Check out that tweedy magnificence! Doesn’t it make you want to throw out all fussiness from your wardrobe, peel away the unnecessary layers of routine, to streamline, distill, simplify? That is one powerfully chic, easy, wearable silhouette. A put-it-on-and-forget-about-it-yet-look-better-than-everyone-else type of ensemble.
Daphne du Maurier at work
I don’t know many writers who look this crisply put together on the job, myself included. Yet, typewriter or no, she looks like a writer should look, doesn’t she? Serious, simply adorned, polished, comfortable. Ready to work, to create, to sweat it out, to answer an unexpected knock at the door without shame or a mad scramble for something suitable to wear. Every image of du Maurier seems to scream, “That, that was a woman who knew how to live.”
DAPHNE DU MAURIER (1907-1989)
SOME WORKS:
- The Loving Spirit (1931)
- Jamaica Inn (1936)
- Rebecca (1938)
- Frenchman’s Creek (1941)
- Hungry Hill (1943)
- My Cousin Rachel (1951)
- Mary Anne (1954)
- The Birds and Other Stories (1963)
- Not After Midnight (1971)
“Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.”–Daphne du Maurier
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