Pin Board October '16 - the month in mood board

Oh my, November’s almost halfway through and I’ve just gotten October wound up. So, how was it? 

This month I was enchanted by a horological tale told by Nicholas Parsons, leading to a documentary Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams - the silver swan created by a roller-skating, cross-dressing Belgian émigré has to be seen to be believed. 

Speaking of which, how sight and colour has evolved was explored by the Natural History Museum - although they didn't explain why Elizabeth Taylor’s violet eyes are so enduringly mesmerising.

We peered into the grimness of the BBC's Victorian slum and thanked our lucky stars so much has changed. And, I saw The Entertainer, a 1957 play, which proved some things never change that much at all…

“Why don’t you cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt, banded with bamboo, and pin with coloured thumb-tacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week?”

— Diana Vreeland

Nicholas Parsons, a Poem in Clockwork + a Priceless Creative Lesson…

The Just a Minute host followed his passion to Paris, to see the legendary ‘Breguet No. 160 grand complication - a watch commissioned for Marie-Antoinette. The brief was deadline-less so both queen and watchmaker were dead by the time this ‘poem in clockwork’ was completed. The lesson? Set boundaries.

Colour + Vision at the Natural History Museum

“[Colour ] can be used as a warning, a disguise or even an irresistible invitation”.  From the opalescent hummingbird to the striated zebra no creature sees colour quite the same. A dragonfly’s kaleidoscopic experience far outweighs our human vision, for example, but our developed brain constructs meaning from what we see. Brilliant.

The Entertainer - A Britain lost + divided (in 1957)

Kenneth Branagh played Archie Rice a washed up comic tap dancing and pattering his way through music hall’s last days. The British empire is crumbling, the Americans are coming with their rock 'n' roll. From ‘the Poles’ to the Middle East (Suez) the relevance of John Osborne’s play was a bit … eerie.

Neon Demon - a meditation on narcissism by Nicolas Winding Refn

NWR wanted to see the world through the eye of a 16 year old beauty: “Nobody likes the way they look.” “I do,” says Elle Fanning’s model, Jessie, with the kind of disarming self acceptance which incites social media trolls or, here, ravenous models - unwittingly becoming the eye of an occult cannibalistic storm. Oops! [See Henri de Corinth for an in-depth critique] 

Slum Life - down + out in the BBC’s Victorian London

Dirt, disease, debt, the doss house. Communal toilets shared by hundreds - oh and smoking kippers. Hard labour for men - if you could get it. Women staving off prostitution with home-based piece-work. Perpetually hungry kids. The prospect of eviction. The tuppenny hangover. The coffin bed. The good old days.

I Spy Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra Topshop Top on eBay

Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra marked the end of the old Hollywood studio system and ushered in the 60s-take on ancient Egyptian style. Taylor’s legendary violet eyes lined in calligraphic kohl and tanzanite blue shadow and the 65 costume changes are, to me, the stars of film - never mind Liz ’n’ Dick.

Pin Board September '16 - the month in mood board

September, with it's back to school mood, came and went in a flash of misty-ness. Turns out Misty the comic for girls is returning from the publication grave; while the Grain Chimney disappeared from the Estuary skyline on a frustratingly misty morning in a 'puff of smoke'.

The Estuary itself became the inspiration for an arts festival and the Vogue centenary celebrations marked by the NPG at the beginning of the year were revisited in a revealing documentary. I rewatched The 39 Steps and wondered what happened to Margaret in my own Wide Sargasso Sea moment. Plus, I attended the first in a series of talks held at Tracey Neuls’s shoe store-meets-schoolroom.

“Why don’t you cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt, banded with bamboo, and pin with coloured thumb-tacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week?”

— Diana Vreeland

Misty Lives! - '80s horror comic for girls returns

My mum used to buy me Misty annuals from the market. I loved the covers and their promise of gothic glamour, ghosts and age-appropriate gore. Pat Mills (of 2000AD fame) took the title from the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty For Me; while his other inspirations were Carrie and Audrey Rose.

Last Moments -  an Estuary landmark is blown up 

Misty was also the outlook the day the tallest concrete structure to be demolished in Britain came tumbling down. One moment the 801 foot tall (244 metres) Grain Chimney was veiled in mist the next it was a languorous trail of dust. An eerie silence. Boom. Bewildered birds rose from the grey sea.

Estuary 2016 - a 16 day event inspired by the Essex / Kent coastline

Points of Departure featured 28 contemporary artists at the paint-peeling, pleather-furnished Tilbury Cruise Terminal. We watched John Akomfrah’s Mnemosyne a film fusing: Greek myth, Windrush newsreels and the bleak midwinter; and listened to a beautifully compelling audio, Waterborne, describing the decomposition of our drowned bodies while we contemplated the water; and men piloting boats waved at us...

Rebelliousness & Conformity - a lesson in standing up & out

London Design Festival heralded a series of talks held at the Marylebone Tracey Neuls store. Attendees sat at school desks, between suspended shoes, to hear Caroline McHugh, self-described “Glaswegian, Buddhist cult leader” (in style), TED speaker and Chief Emeritus of Idology, talk to Tracey about individuality and what a well designed shoe can really do for you.

The 39 Steps - rewatching Hitchcock’s classic

Richard Hannay, the 'Hitchcockian hero' caught in a web of intrigue and handcuffed to a furious blonde, has a brief interlude with a Scottish crofter’s young wife with a poignant yearning for ‘adventure’ she’ll never have: “Well, is it true that all the ladies paint their toenails?” she asks of London life.

Vogue Doc - celebrating 100 years of the British style bible

Brogue, as it was known, was established due WWI shipping restrictions and paper shortages. Documenting the lead up to the centenary celebrations / issues we got a sneak peek into UK Vogue life. The best bit? When Fashion Editor Lucinda Chambers compared her ‘Tigger’ working style to that of editor Alexandra Shulman’s ‘Eeyore’ - excellent.

Pin Board August '16 - the month as mood board

August’s Rio Olympics threw London 2012’s legacy into stark relief, hot days were cooled by gothic wonderings and wanderings eased by new Arche red shoes. Yet more reasons to cheerful were found in the story of Ian Dury, the mystical art of Georgiana Houghton, a photo a day for #AugustBreak2016, notebooks, and the female empowerment film Now Voyager - can we have it all? "Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars…"

“Why don’t you cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt, banded with bamboo, and pin with coloured thumb-tacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week?”

— Diana Vreeland

The Gothic - on attempting to write a short story:

August and Stylist’s short story competition is ‘Gothic’. Yet Gothic is so full of marginal places, transitional time periods and uncertainty - is it, isn’t it a ghost? etc - that it’s hard to pin down. Professor John Bowen says Gothic shocks us out of the everyday into the seemingly inexplicable - consider me baffled.

Georgiana Houghton - an abstract pioneer re-evaluated at The Courtauld:

Victorian artist Georgiana Houghton produced water colour images under the guidance of a spirit called Henry Lenny and 70 Archangels. The result? Abstract pieces in kaleidoscopic swirls and lace-like tracery that one critic, back then, termed Turner meets fairies; another: “The most astonishing exhibition in London at the present moment.”

Why 21st Techies Love a Moleskine Notebook - The New Yorker

Technology and environmental concerns mean paper has been seen as passe. But the cloud, online or even on screen are intangible spaces thoughts slip in between. The only way to hold onto ideas, I find, is to write them by hand on paper. Even Silicon Valley is turning back the page…

Ian Dury -  Sex & Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll biopic:

There was more to Ian Dury than Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. Physically disabled he wrote Spasticus Autisticus, a protest song against the International Year of Disabled Persons - the BBC banned it, before it was ‘reclaimed’ at the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony: "I wibble when I piddle / Cos my middle is a riddle".

Olympic Legacies - opening ceremony co-creator Frank Cottrell Boyce asks what London 2012 did for us?:

It aimed to “put culture right at the heart of our national narrative” - an industry to go forth and flourish with. But post Brexit: “What. The. Hell. Happened?” Citing Humphrey Jennings’s Pandaemonium as inspiration FCB tells of a book bought and gifted: “giving - giving of time, of books, of ideas - is the metabolism that drives culture.”

August Break - a photographic journey guided by Susannah Conway:

Not a far flung journey but a route back to discovering the creativity, the beauty, the unexpected in the everyday #AugustBreak2016 saw an online group given daily prompts - ‘three’, ‘yellow’ or ‘my favourite taste’, say - and the results shared. Rediscovered: my love of window reflections and the resulting surreal feel.

Arche Shoes - my magical Traid red shoe discovery:

Roger Vivier said: “To wear dreams on one's feet is to begin to give a reality to one's dreams.” but finding a pair of cute shoes which facilitate a half decent walking experience is a bit of a nightmare methinks. Enter Arche: an elegant French brand with pure lactae hevea soles!?

Now, Voyager - a lesson in less is more?:

Bette Davis is transformed, Cinderella-style, from dowdy spinster to elegant sophisticate; navigating her new-found freedom aided by her psychiatrist and style notes pinned to her clothes. Empowered: she stands up to her mother, inherits a fortune, but accepts her ‘prince’ must remain unobtainable. Are we always asking for the moon?