I have been a little slack in my blogging here of late. Sorry. It's because I have started another blog (yes, crazy I know) and my energy has been going in to that this past week. I will still keep up with this blog, for all my history, vintage mags, fashion and movies, but my other blog is about interior design and decoration, past, present and future. It's what I trained in, and hope one day to go back to, so I though it was time I caught up with the latest trends, had another look at design history, and kept a record of great ideas. If you want to check it out, please head to HOME LUST.
Anyway, today a look at some more 30s vintage fashion in art - in a portrait by one of my favourite 1930's artists - Tamara de Lempicka.
This painting was done in 1932, and the shape, colour and sheen of the dress really reminds me of this dress by Bruyère from 1931/32 - with the tie tied at the front rather than the back.
You may have noticed my fascination with zebras this week. I have looked at real life zebras and zebra print in furniture, zebra print in fashion and now continuing with zebra print accessories. How wonderful would these be with a little black dress?
Zebra print seems to have been popular in the 1960s. Here is model Wilhelmina Cooper photographed by David Bailey for the cover of Vogue, September 1964, wearing a black and white zebra-skin scarf by Adolfo as a hat or 'burban.'
Continuing with my zebra theme, this week a look at zebra's in design, and in particular on walls.
The Town House Hotel in Los Angeles was built in 1929 and was designed by Norman W.
Alpaugh. It was once among the most luxurious hotels in Southern
California. It's "Zebra Room", featuring zebra murals and zebra patterned crockery, opened 1937 or 38.
A couple of years later, in New York, new arrival Gino Circiello opened his restaurant, Gino's. He was helped with his business by Franco Scalamandre, who was
known to help Italian Americans get their financial footing. Circiello chose a zebra design wallpaper for his restaurant walls, a creation of Scalamandre's wife, Flora. "I chose it because I love to hunt," Circiello says, "and it is something that people will remember."
Fifty years later, zebra stripes are again hitting the catwalk, with Robert Cavelli's 60s inspired African and animal print fall collection in 2012. Here's one of the evening dresses from the collection, a zebra-printed jersey dress. Jennifer Hudson wore one at a 4th of July concert last year.
This year Giambattista Valli's Spring 2013 Couture collection featured a zebra print dress with a tulle black skirt draping from the peplum-like detail. That's actress Zhang Ziyi onthe red carpet on the right.
Because of their resemblance to horses there has always been great interest in taming and training zebras as riding and harness animals.
A zebra-driven taxi cab leaving Brixton and heading for Stockwell in 1915
Given their nature Zebra's seem to be a odd choice for a pulling animal. The
few photos available of Zebra hitches all seem to be from around the same time
period. It is as if it was one of those things that "seemed like a good
idea at the time," and after everyone had tried their hand at it the
practice was abandoned.
In 1866 Zebra's were introduced to Central Park Zoo in New York City.
There are three species of zebras: the plains zebra, the Grévy's zebra and the mountain zebra. In 1899 a pair of rare Cape Mountain Zebras were photographed at the London Zoo. The female (feeding) had been
bred in Amsterdam, which was an achievement as these animals were often very
aggressive with one another. Indeed, the male in this photograph died in 1909
as a result of injuries inflicted by another female.
This photograph taken outside the London Zoological Society
offices in 1914 shows one of the zoo's earliest forays into marketing.Four zebras pull a cart advertising a brand of tea. Paying passengers were able to sit alongside the driver.
Like mules, donkey/horse crosses, these animals would seem better suited to pulling carts than purebred zebras. “Zebroid, zedonk, zorse, zebra mule, zonkey, and zebrule” - these are the names of the offspring of any cross between a zebra, usually the stallion, and any other equine; however, the offspring of a donkey sire and zebra dam is called a “zebra hinny” or “donkra”, but are rare.
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Two zebroids (zebra/ass hybrids) drawing a cart in 1915, source
Grevy's zebra of East Africa is immune to tsetse fly and colonists once viewed it as a substitute for the mule. The zebra's stripes are thought to change the polarization of the light around them, making them less attractive to biting insects.
A zebra pair harnessed between mules in Kenya, 1929 source.
Famous
African explorer, Osa Johnson, on her trained zebra, circa 1930source
Viola Townsend Winmill, imported her zebra, Nderu, in June 1930 from Kenya and trained it to pull a cart. I love the matching outfits!
Mrs. Winmill even added a sunroom on the back of a tenant house known as Whiffletree Manor at her 350-acre farm, Clovelly. The “Zebra Room” paid homage to Nderu’s distinctive black and white stripes with lamps and rugs.
I am off to Melbourne next month, so I might get to see the zebras at the zoo again.
Zebras at the Melbourne Zoo
Zoo's have there place for breeding endangered animals I think. Hunting for skins and habitat destruction have endangered both Grévy's zebra and the mountain zebra, and one supspecies, the Quagga, is already extinct. Plain zebras, or Burchell’s zebras, are the most abundant of the three zebra species, but even their habitat of the savannahs of Eastern Africa are under threat. You can help the world wildlife fund protect zebras by adopting one here.
And by the way, according to wikipedia, the zebra's background colour is black and the white stripes and bellies are additions. And despite being black and white, it is thought that zebras actually see in colour. Who knew?! Deb xx
Today a look at another one of my favourite movies. If you have seen 'High Society' (1956) with Grace Kelly, you know the story - both are based on Phillip Barry's Broadway play 'The Philadelphia Story.' Barry wrote the play specifically for Katharine Hepburn, whose lead female character Tracy Lord was inspired by real-life Philadelphian WASP heiress Hope Montgomery Scott (1905-1995), who had married a friend of Barry's.
After several commercial failures and being labelled "box office poison" by Photoplay Magazine in 1938, Hepburn returned to Broadway. She ended up backing Barry's play, foregoing a salary in return for an estimated 45% of the play's profits. The play opened in late March 1939 and ran for a full year with more than 400 performances and a nationwide tour. Hepburn was back! She then bought the rights to the play, and brought the story to MGM, picking her own co-stars (James Stewart and Cary Grant), screenwriter (Donald Ogden Stewart), and director (George Cukor). Cukor had already made four successful films with Hepburn in the 30s, including Holiday(1938) and Little Women (1933).
Director Cukor and cast
Hepburn's role as a rich, snooty, care-free socialite who is humbled and becomes a real-life, compassionate person when she really falls in love, struck home with viewers, and as well as lifting the public's perception of her, the film became a major box-office success, breaking all records during it's run at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
The film also earned six major Academy Award nominations including Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Donald Stewart won the award for best screenplay and Jimmy Stewart won the Academy Award for Best Actor (his sole career Best Actor Oscar, and over Henry Fonda in Grapes of Wrath), but Hepburn lost the Best Actress Award to Ginger Rogers for her work in Kitty Foyle and Hussey to Jane Darwell for the Grapes of Wrath. Hepburn did win a 1940 New York Film Critics Circle Award for her performance however, and the film was named one of the ten best of the year by Film Daily.
The chemistry between Grant and Hepburn is wonderful as it was in 'Bringing Up Baby' (1938), and watching Tracy Lord finally grow up and become capable of loving someone other than her self is reminiscent of the coming of age of Jane Austin's 'Emma.' Stewart is wonderful too, but he does seem so much better suited to his witty and beautiful photographer colleague that I spent most of the movie wanting to kick him and ask him what he was doing mooning after Tracy - his 'golden girl.'
Ruth Hussey as Elizabeth Imbrie is definitely my favourite character - calm, cool, well-dressed and witty, her one liners are so quick you almost miss them. When they are first shown into the mansion's 'south parlor,' she says to Stewart's Mike, 'What's this room? I forgot my compass.' And when Grant's CK Dexter-Haven asks "Can you use a typewriter?", her reply is "no thanks I have one at home." Love her!
I thought Mary Nash's portrayal of Tracy's mother Margaret was also outstanding - she has some of my favourite lines. When Tracy congratulates her for standing up to her errant father, she replies, "Yes, now I have my self respect and no husband." Tracy and Margaret both agree that their first choice of husbands was unfortunate, and Margaret says, " We both might face the fact that neither of us have proved to be a very great success as a wife." Tracy replies, " We just picked the wrong first husbands, that's all."
John Halliday as Tracy's father also grew on me during the film, especially when he showed his human side and told Tracy some home truths. Virginia Weilder as little sister Dinah is also very good, if slightly precocious, and Roland Young as Uncle Willie is also wonderful. Weidler retried from film at age 17, after 40 movies, and Young was the original movie Watson to John Barrymore's Homes in 1922.
In 1995, The Philadelphia Story film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It was also recently selected as one of the top 100 American films of all time by the prestigious American Film Institute.
I found a 2010 version of the DVD at the op shop (Warner Brothers), and the quality of the picture is outstanding. If you can get a copy , watch it - it's even better than 'High Society,' - there's no singing, just great acting. Well except for Stewart's drunken 'Somewhere over the rainbow." Here's a trailer to get started.
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