George Bernard Shaw wore suits almost as well as he wrote plays. Case in point:
George Bernard Shaw, 1909.
The hat is a nice touch.
George Bernard Shaw, 1914.
Hmm. This looks familiar.
George Bernard Shaw, 1946.
Jaunty at 90.
Hemingway in Paris, circa 1924.
Ernest Hemingway
“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
This week has been a busy one. In addition to the Fourth of July holiday, The Chef and I hosted our first out-of-town guests. My studio is still a work-in-progress. I never thought it would take a month and counting to get organized. I will keep pushing through until it is precisely what I need it to be. Regular posting will resume on Monday, with more in-depth content following a week later. I would promise the return of book reviews, [R]evolving Incarnations, etc. sooner but, alas, dear readers, this is my birthday week. I made a pact with myself to step back and fully enjoy the turning of a new decade. Until then, here is a look at my not-very-literary or productive week. Enjoy!
This gallery contains 12 photos.
Ain’t no party like a Gatsby party T-shirt [courtesy Skreened]
Ain’t no party like a Gatsby party T-shirt. $24.99. Image courtesy Skreened.
“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:
“Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.”–Daphne du Maurier
“May your blessings outnumber/The shamrocks that grow,/And may trouble avoid you/Wherever you go.” Irish Blessing
My husband is a Scotsman and I am an English-German lass, but today we donned the green and got our Irish on.
My kilted hottie honey.
Getting my green on.
St. Patrick’s Day
I went to the 20th Century Cincinnati show last weekend and all I got was… this pretty amazing postcard.
Water Nymphs at a Tropical Beach in Florida
It’s old and the strange hatched postcard finish photographs a bit fuzzy, but isn’t their good time infectious? I want every single bright two-piece swimsuit they are wearing. Come on May!
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow fast in movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again this summer.”-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Henry James died on 28 February 1916. He wasn’t always a humourless looking middle-aged man. Briefly, a long time ago, he was a humourless looking yet dapper young man.
Young Henry James
QUOTE: “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”
SOME WORKS: Roderick Hudson; Washington Square; The Portrait of a Lady; The Bostonians; What Maisie Knew; The Wings of the Dove; The Golden Bowl; Daisy Miller; The Aspern Papers; The Turn of the Screw.
A KEEPSAKE:
Daisy Miller by Henry James at Free Parking. $10.00
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 