Vive le T!

My partner’s off on a lengthy business trip to France in the very near future.  Since he relies on me to buy his ties I thought I would do something slightly different. This time his neckwear will allow him to make a discreet political statement, rich in colour and a flash of panache.  I bought two, one a fleur de lis design, gorgeous in gold and black, the other the royal standard of the kingdom of France, also rich in fleur de lis imagery.  He will go to Paris, bringing a personal Bourbon restoration.

I ordered these from Zazzle, an American-based online retailer of whom I had never previously heard.  They also do a nice line in Russian Tsarist designs, as well as communist-based themes, which I must order if he goes to Russia, the former, of course, not the latter!

Their Imperial collection is a joy to behold, and I don’t just mean ties.  The catalogue has a range of Tsarist portraits, from Ivan the Terrible onwards.  They even have Peter II, Alexander II and Alexander III, though I doubt these particular rulers have much of a recognition factor, outside Russia anyway, or, in the case of the first, even inside Russia.  

The last Imperial family are well-represented, particularly Nicholas II as ruler, martyr and saint.  And, yes, there is a Grand Duchess Anastasia!  I was looking to buy Nicholas mementos and artefacts when I was in Moscow, only to discover that the market for these is mostly confined to Saint Petersburg, where the royal family are now interred in a special crypt in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. 

I was disappointed at the time but now I have a chance to make good.  I shall ask for the last Russian autocrat to come west from republican America to royalist England.  There is surely some subtle symbolic and historical irony here.  I shall wear Nicholas with pride.  His Imperial Majesty, along with Anastasia, shall come with me on my next big foreign adventure, which is Tunisia this coming October. 

Will Nicholas have much in the way of recognition factor there?  I seriously doubt it.  If asked I will simply say it’s a portrait of my father.  There he will be, on my chest, looking more than usually regal. 

My partner will be coming too, with or without his French royal ties, that is if he manages to avoid an encounter with Madame la Guillotine.  Ah, well, Vive le T!  

Bad Hair Day

How much do you think was spent in ‘liberating’ Iraq? Personally I have no idea but I guess it was an astronomical figure. Then there are the lives, the people that cannot be replaced. I remember a few years ago the parents of a British officer killed in one of the many terrorist incidents that followed the ‘liberation’ of 2003 comforting themselves that his death was not in vain, that he had died, as they put it, ‘helping the people of Iraq’. We helped the people of Iraq alright, Britain and America; we helped to take them from the first to the ninth circle of hell.

This brave new ‘democracy’ isn’t often in the news at the moment. We hear of the occasional terrorist outrage but not much more. But the outrages are not just perpetrated by Al-Qaeda operatives; they are also perpetrated at the behest of the state in acts of medieval barbarism.

Last month Iraq’s interior ministry decided that a haircut was worthy of death. Well, that’s been the practical result of the announcement that the ‘emo’ style was a sign of devil worship, one that the country’s ‘Moral Police’ (yes, they do have a ‘Moral’ police force) has pledged to eliminate. In the wake of this some ninety students have been stoned to death by religious extremists. It’s all part of a wider campaign against people who have adopted what officials call ‘strange’ or Western appearances.

Recently armed men in civilian clothing kidnapped dozens of teenagers judged abnormal in appearance. Taken to secluded spots, they were then stoned to death, their bodies disposed of in garbage dumpsters across Baghdad, according to information given by activists to the Cairo-based al-Akhbar website. The details are grim. One individual who managed to escape says that concrete blocks were first thrown at the victim’s arms, then his legs and finally his head. If death does not ensue the whole process is repeated.

I read an article in the Sunday press, saying that the ‘Moral Police’ have been granted permission by the Ministry of Education to enter schools in the capital to pinpoint students bold or foolhardy enough to adopt an emo look. The suspicion is that the authorities and the extremists are working in harmony in acts of fashion genocide. The victims are young, teenagers mostly. People have been arrested not just because of their haircuts but for something as trivial as wearing jeans.

Yes, that’s the brave new Iraq, a country with forms of murderous intolerance that would have shocked the Spanish Inquisition. Saddam Hussein was bad but what has followed seems to me to be so much worse. My, how we have ‘helped’ the people of Iraq; how well-spent or money was; how well-sacrificed the lives of our soldiers.

Material Girl

Do I have a ‘fashion ethos’, a philosophy of fashion, perhaps better said? No, I don’t think I do. I’ve decided to write about my absence of ethos, prompted by my good friend Adam Garrie, whom I know does have such an ethos, developed to a high stage of aesthetic sensibility. I confess I was slightly reluctant to commit myself here because my disorganised and unsystematic thinking is bound to clash sharply with the clarity of his vision. Anyway, here we go in my one-sided dialectic!

Adam, let me begin by saying that I’ve had a look at that article by Dominic Sandbrook in The Daily Mail, the one you took such exception to (The Seventies: the decade when men stopped being men). I recognised at once the reference he made to huge collars, garish shirts and patterned ties because it immediately conjured up Arthur Marwick, that recording of him from the decade which caused my history tutorial group to be overtaken by seismic laughter!

I’m sure you will recall the picture in the article of one Peter Wyngarde - big collar, big tie, fussy suit, all set off by the aged face replete with long hair and moustache. He looks terrible, a dandy, camp in the worst possible sense of the word. In looking at this picture it occurred to me that everything in fashion occurs twice, the first time as elegance, the second time as parody: the Teddy Boy for the Edwardian Gentleman, Peter Wyngarde for Beau Brummell! And then there is a passage I came across in William Hazlitt’s essay on Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode, where he offers comment on the central figure in the first of the series;

The Beau sits smiling at the looking-glass, with a reflected simper of self-admiration, and a languishing inclination of the head, while the rest of his body is perked up on his high heels with a certain air of tip-toe elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign of George II, whose powdered peruke, ruffles, gold lace, and patches, divide his self-love unequally with his own person –the true Sir Plume of his day…

For me things are quite simple. I like elegant designs and well-cut clothes, clothes that complement the line of the body. I dislike fussiness, frills and fluffs. My favourite clothes are those designed by Jasper Conran and Elizabeth Grachvogel. I simply adore Jimmy Choo’s footwear and handbags. I like to dress for the occasion. Mostly I dress in a smart casual manner, with jeans and top, as well as a range of skirts, and I’m particularly keen on magic pants. But I always rise for the occasion: a cocktail dress for semi-formal engagements and a full evening dress when I really want to make an impression.


My ideas of good male dress are even simpler: nice lines, smart casual and well-tailored suits. I like men to take pride in their appearance, to make an effort with their clothes without being fussy or ostentatious; to wear clothes in such a way that displays a kind of feigned indifference, if that makes any sense at all. I’m sorry I know this may sound sexist but I like male fashions that emphasise maleness, fashions that are not an end in themselves, so to speak. And as for untidy shoulder-length hair, beards and moustaches, well, just forget it!

Is this a fashion ethos? No, I don’t really think so. It’s just a matter of personal taste and preference. I can admire past designs, I can admire the Regency line, to give but one example, but I would not choose to dress in a Regency line, in a retrospective manner. I live and dress for today. Here I am: this is me; I can be no other. I’m just a material girl living in a material world, perhaps even a bit of a Barbie Girl when it comes to dress. :-)

Yes, Fur is Back

In a previous blog (The Devil Wears Fur) I noted that fur was beginning to make a comeback despite the hysterical campaigning of PETA and other ‘animal rights’ fanatics. The recent cold weather has confirmed the trend. Fur coats are even to be seen in Crouch End, the politically correct North London suburb, so says Justine Picardine in The Sunday Telegraph. Now that really is something!

Apparently some veggies are even wearing fur stoles, wraps and jackets, just so long as it’s ‘vintage,’ another word for hand-me-down. The Crouch trend marches across London. The street markets of Camden, Brick Lane and Portobello all report brisk sales of old fur for young women, though it was virtually unseen at this time last year.

But its not just the old stuff; the British Fur Trade Association says that there has been a significant upsurge in sales in the UK market, bringing us into line with trends on the Continent, where people never shared our, ahem, hair shirt attitudes. World trade in fur accounted for some $13 billion in 2008, an increase of 60% over the 1990s.

PETA, of course, continues its naming and shaming campaign, adding Burberry, Madonna, the Olsen Twins and Liz Hurley to their hate list. But who cares about those joyless fanatics and harridans; certainly not I.

I said in my previous blog that I already have a leather jacket trimmed with rabbit fur and a Russian ushanka in the same material. Now, if our present weather trend continues mother has said that she will buy me a mink jacket, new, of course, not vintage.

Horrible Hoodie

It really is time to hug a hoodie, for the uniform of disengaged urban youth, of chavs and oiks, has made it into mainstream fashion! Gareth Pugh, Stella McCartney and Marc Jacobs have all made the hooded sweatshirt part of their range. And it’s not just at the low end. John Lewis reports that the sale of cashmere hoodies is currently up 650%, year on year.

Jess Carter-Morley says in her style page in the Guardian that an attempt has been made to re-appropriate the brand, removing it’s more menacing image. But hoods, as she quite rightly continues, cannot be separated from drama and fear, an association that long predates the ASBO-Anti Social Behaviour Order-generation. There is the black-hooded witch, the wicked queen in disguise, in Disney’s Snow White. There is the red-hooded and murderous dwarf in the movie Don’t Look Now and there are the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan.

There are other associations of the hood and menace that she does not mention. There is La Cagoule, or the Cowl, a violent right-wing fascist movement in France before the Second World War, dedicated to overthrowing the Third Republic and much given to political assassination and terrorism. And there are the sinister hooded monks of the Inquisition.

But surely the greatest hoodie in history has to be the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus, the eldest son of Septimius Severus. Marcus, who reigned from 211 to 217, when he was assassinated, is better known to history as Caracalla, derived from the Gallic hooded tunic that he liked to wear, a fashion that spread through the army and the court.

Caracalla has the reputation of being one the worst of the emperors, a man in the same league as Domitian and Commodus. Edward Gibbon says of him that he was ‘the common enemy of all mankind’, a man who spent his reign travelling from province to province so each could experience his ‘rapine and cruelty.’ He had Gaeta, his brother and co-emperor, murdered, ordering the Senate to proclaim a damnatio memoriae-a damnation of memory-proclaimed against him, wiping out all trace of his existence, even forbidding his mother to mourn the loss of her son. When the citizens of Alexandria produced a satire mocking Caracalla’s claim that he had Gaeta killed in self-defence he unleashed his army on the city. The city was sacked as if after a siege, during which time some 20,000 people were killed according to the historian Dio Cassius.

Even his official portraits marked a change from the past. Gone is the philosopher-emperor, the ideal image marked in the busts of the past, no matter if the reality was far different. A new realism is present with Caracalla, that of the close-cropped and gruff-looking soldier-emperor, a scowling, threatening presence, a man dangerous to cross. It was an image adopted by his successors who dropped all pretence of allegiance to the Senate and the old Roman ideals, drawing their power and authority instead from the legions, a major source of political and constitutional trouble for the remainder of the third century.

Today the hoodie-emperor is best remembered by the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, a monument to the original feral youth of history. Try giving him an ASBO!

Making a Statement: Fashion in the Ancient World

There is a lovely passage from Plutarch about Alcibiades, the Athenian politician, worth quoting at length;

All his statecraft and eloquence and lofty purpose and cleverness was attended with great luxuriousness of life, with wanton drunkenness and lewdness, and with effeminacy in dress-he would trail long purple robes through the agora...He also had a golden shield made for himself and decorated not with ancestral insignia but with the likeness of Eros wielding a thunderbolt. The reputable men of the city looked on all these things with loathing and indignation, and they feared his contemptuous and lawless spirit.

Now, there's a guy who really wanted to stand out!

Obviously Alcibiades is making an extravagant personal statement, the mirror, perhaps, of his extravagant political style. But there were also group trends that excited comment among the more conservative Athenians. Here the most prominent were the young men who copied the styles of Sparta, with long beards and short cloaks, taken as a sign of their estrangement from the city's democratic culture. It was Aristophanes who coined the term 'Laconomania' for this phenomenon, describing its adherents in The Birds as 'long-haired, hungry, dirty and acting like Socrates by carrying the Spartan cane.'

Changing trends in fashion, political or otherwise, were really nothing new in Athens. Before the outbreak of the Persian Wars men who started to adopt more elaborate hairstyles. Thucydides describes one of these, in which the hair was tied behind the head in a knot called a chignon, and then fastened with a clasp of golden grasshoppers. This and other stylistic changes were influenced by the fashions of the Persian east. Not surprisingly all such affectations were abandoned as 'effeminate' in the wake of the ensuing wars.

The Greeks were no different from other cultures in following the trends set by political icons. Just as the toothbrush moustache became commonplace in the Third Reich, so the fashion-conscious Greek male followed the clean-shaven look of Alexander the Great. Indeed, Alexander was so significant here that he set the trend in the whole of the Greek world for at least half a millennium after his death. I think this was probably due to the fact that he was the first ruler to recognise the link between personal image and propaganda, restricting and controlling artistic representations of himself with great care, in sculpture, in paintings and on coins.

The Roman sense of fashion was even more refined than that of the Greeks. While the Greek made distinctions in dress primarily on the basis of gender, the Romans introduced a dress code which allowed determination's to be made of an individuals status and function. Concepts of 'correct dress', and proper grooming, lay at the very centre of Roman culture. Both dress and manner of speech were thought to reflect a person's moral character. Seneca, tutor to the Emperor Nero, writes:

The truly great man speaks informally and easily; whatever he says, he speaks with more assurance than pains. You are familiar with the carefully coiffed young men, with their gleaming beards and hair-everything from a box; you can never hope for anything strong or solid from them.

When Cicero wanted to be particularly cutting about public figures he held in distaste he focused on perceived idiosyncrasies of style. He was at his most acidy in his descriptions of Gabinus and Piso, the Consuls for the year 58BC. He describes Gabinus 'dripping with unguents', with his hair artificially waved. And as for Piso;

Great Gods! How repulsively he walked, how fierce, how terrible to look at! You would say that you saw one of those bearded men of old, a very exemplum of the ancient regime, an image of antiquity, a pillar of the state. He was clothed harshly in our common purple, which was nearly black, with his hair so shaggy that at Capua, where he held the office of a duumvir in order to add another title to the wax portrait image he would leave for posterity, he looked as if he were ready to carry off the street of perfumers and hairdressers on his locks.

It was always dangerous for a Roman in public life to depart from the strict standards of 'Republican virtue', for this was invariably taken as a sign of frivolity or effeminacy. But the fact that such criticism appears regularly over prolonged periods of time shows that there were many prepared to challenge convention by making small personal fashion statements. Designs themselves were fairly consistent, so innovations in material and colouring were the most obvious ways of individualising dress or capturing a popular trend. Pliny noted this, criticising such innovations as 'sheer vanity.'

Women, too, were as fashion conscious as the men, with hairstyle being the main way of expressing personal preferences. Ovid noted "It is impossible to enumerate all the different styles: each day adds more adornments." This was another trend that unsettled the censorious Seneca, as he makes clear in his tribute to his mother, Helvia;

You-unlike so many others-never succumbed to immorality, the worst evil of the century; jewels and pearls did not bend you...The bad example of lesser women-dangerous even for the virtuous-did not lead you to stray from the old-fashioned, strict upbringing you received at home...You never polluted yourself with makeup, and never wore a dress that covered about as much on as it did off. Your only ornament, the kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is the great honour of modesty.

So, yes, there was fashion, even if Seneca disapproved!