Re: Channeling Your Inner Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich and Susan Calman. Photograph: Phil Fisk/The Observer and Getty. Printed in the Guardian 4/24/16.

Recovering lawyer-turned-comedian Susan Calman penned this great article in the Guardian on how Marlene Dietrich inspired her to start dressing in menswear. It’s a story about how fashion reflects our inner selves and how we have to embrace who we are in order to find our style.

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Re: Need a Plus Size Halloween Costume?

Here’s some place I bet you didn’t think to look: Torrid on-line. Click here to be taken to the site. Yes, the provider of all things Goth and trendy has aged up a bit and expanded (no pun intended) its line of plus size items. Tops go up to a 5 or 6 (4x and 5x) and pants go up to a 6 (5x).

• Need Day of the Dead wear? Not a problem. Torrid has an entire line of skull print clothing (leggings, dresses, tops). Just put in “skull” as a search term.
• Want to dress up like a Disney character? Torrid has a whole line of Disney-themed merchandise. Click on their Pop Culture tab.
• Want a superhero dress? Check under Torrid’s Halloween and Cosplay sections. Halloween has its own tab and Cosplay is under the Pop Culture tab.
• Need some retro items that you can wear to work? Torrid has a nice line of dresses with a 1940s/50s feel, but it also has other retro items from time to time. Put in “retro” as a search term.
• Looking for a bustier or corselet? Torrid has them. For bustiers, look under Intimates. For corsets, use “corset top” as a search term.

As a side note, if, like me, you are in constant need of fun leggings for your workout and casual wear, check Torrid’s Clothing tab under Bottoms and then under Leggings.  The Activewear tab looks promising, but the sizes only go up to 5 while the leggings go up to 6.

Standard disclaimers: I’ve recently started ordering from Torrid, but receive no compensation from the company for recommending their site.

Re: Halloween Costume Prediction 2016

There are times when Halloween costume inspiration is low on the ground and hard to find. And then we have years like this when the Costume Gods are simply showering mana down upon us.

• Political costumes are sometimes hard to predict, but this year I feel very safe in saying that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump costumes will be flying off the shelf. Look for some pop culture cross-over–Trump as the Joker, Hillary as Hillary Quinn.
• Interest in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland series has remained strong, perhaps because of its Goth overtones. Expect an uptick in Alice costumes now that the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, has come out.
• Superhero and anti-superhero movies have been big this year. I predict Avengers, Deadpool, and Suicide Squad costumes to be very popular.
• In the kids’ aisle, Zootopia has provided Judy Hop and Nick Wilde costumes. The release of Finding Dory will see an increase in Dory and Nemo costumes.
• The Ghostbusters reboot will see a resurge of interest in Ghostbusters costumes, both old and new.
• Perennial favorites: Day of the Dead and zombie costumes.

Re: Getting Phryne’s Style

Inspired by Miss Fisher’s Mysteries? Want to dress more like Phryne? Luckily, adding a 1920s flare to your modern wardrobe has never been easier.

Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) and Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) in a black and white coat with an Oriental design.

Add a jacket or cardigan. One of the things that immediately strikes the viewer is Phryne’s wardrobe of eye-catching jackets. The jacket, duster, or cardigan frequently functions as the statement piece with the rest of the outfit solid-colored and simple. Jackets are very in fashion nowadays, but you’ll have to use a number of different search terms to find them. Use “kimono”, “jacket”, “shrug”, “cardigan”, and “duster” and see what you can pull up.

Another option is to create your own shrug or jacket from a long, rectangular scarf, shawl, or stole. Fold the stole in half length-ways and knot the short ends together to form sleeves. If the shrug is falling off your shoulders, tie another knot about 6-12 inches away from the first one, further down the arm of the jacket. Slip your arms through the sleeves and voila! instant shrug. When I was a young dancer, we would use small veils (about 72″ long and 36″ wide) to make shrugs for our bellydance costumes. You can also sew the sleeves partway closed in order to form a more permanent jacket.

Phryne (Essie Davis) sports a scarf made of assuit, a vintage Egyptian textile very popular in the 1920s, over her cardigan.

Add a scarf. Indoors or out, Phryne is often seen wearing scarves, usually long rectangular ones. If your local department store isn’t carrying anything you like, try the on-line shops of major museums (e.g. the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Museums often sell smart scarves as part of their revenue-generating efforts.

Use your costume jewelry in innovative ways.  One of Phryne’s brooches, for example, will appear variously as a hat decoration, scarf pin, and robe closure.

Phryne in another one of her fabulous coats, this time a long black duster with embroidered trim.

Experiment with ethnic designs and textiles. In the 1920s, there was a lot of fascination with the Far and Near East on the part of the general public and the fashions and accessories of the time reflect that. This was the era in which King Tut’s tomb was discovered among other things. Today, there is a similar vogue for ethnic designs so take the opportunity to add a print blouse (or scarf) to your wardrobe.

Go for a clean, streamlined look with strong, intense colors. Although Phryne can and does wear pastels, more often than not, she favors deep colors such as navy blue, black, and winter winter. Black and white together is a favorite color combination for her. When she wears prints, they tend to be simple geometric designs such as circles. And while we see her wearing fancy ballgowns from time to time, mostly she wears very non-fussy pieces–wide leg pants, sleeveless blouses, short jackets, tear drop earrings.

 

Re: Miss Fisher’s Mysteries

“Dot, a woman should dress first and foremost for her own pleasure. Having grown up in second flannels, there is nothing quite so divine as the feel of silk underwear, the touch of soft fox, the slither of a satin skirt. If these things happen to appeal to men, well… really that’s a side issue.” Miss Phryne Fisher, Murder a la Mode

I have only recently discovered the wonderfulness that is Miss Fisher’s Mysteries, an Aussie detective series set in 1920s Melbourne, following the adventures of “lady detective”, the Honorable Phryne (fry-nee, rhymes with briny) Fisher and am totally captivated. Phryne is the woman that we all want to be–witty, resourceful, and fighting for the rights of the underdog–whilst still looking fabulous in a dazzling array of 1920s outfits.

I love the fashions of the 1920s and Miss Fisher’s Mysteries is a buffet of delights. Naturally, the person with the best clothes is Phryne herself played by the divine Essie Davis (The Babadook, Lady Crane on Game of Thrones Season 6).  Phryne’s family, headed by her drunken gambler father, lived in poverty until her father inherited money and a title (the other heirs having died during the Great War). Fine clothes are, in part, Phryne’s way of making up for the deprivation of her childhood. Phryne is a liberal minded woman with an interest in the arts so her clothes reflect her modern, non-traditional, fashion-forward perspective.

Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) in her linen hat and car coat.

One of the things that I like about Miss Fisher’s Mysteries is that Phryne is shown wearing the same costume items (in several different ways) throughout the episodes just as a real person would. The linen hat and car coat (above) make a number of appearances throughout the series. While Phryne wears a number of different hat styles, the curved brim hat tends to be her signature look. The brim echoes the curve of Phryne’s bob and draws the viewer’s eye to the actor’s face.

Dot Williams (Ashleigh Cummings) and Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) in Miss Fisher’s awesome Hispano-Suiza motorcar.

When Phryne first met Dottie Williams, the latter was a mousy maid in an undesirable employment situation. Over the course of three seasons, Dot gradually evolves into a self-confident detective’s assistant. As she does so, her fashions gradually become more modern–although never as modern as Miss Fisher’s–and her colors become stronger.

Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) in his working day detective garb.

Phryne’s ally on the police force–and her partner in a slow burning and elegantly underplayed tango of attraction–is Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page). Jack is almost always dressed noirishly, a good man walking the mean streets, so those occasions when he appears in civvies are always worthy of note.

 

 

Fresh off the boat. Phryne Fisher, looking smart in her nautical ensemble, walking arm-in-arm with Dr. Elizabeth “Mac” Macmillan (Tammy Macintosh).

Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) rockin’ it as Cleopatra a la Claudette Colbert at her cousin’s fancy dress party.

Next to a gold-plated, pearl-handled revolver, a stiletto in the garter is the ultimate must-have accessory for the fashionable sleuth.

 

Re: Hecate

Lori Russell as Hecate (October 2015)

Lori Russell as Hecate. Jasmine, the pensive Golden Retriever mix, as the messenger to the Underworld (Oct. 2015).

Alas, life and work, those two time-consuming things that get in the way of costume blogging, kept me from posting these photos last Halloween, but I figure better late than never. This is my 85-year-old mother, Lori Russell, costumed as Hecate, goddess of the crossroads and the dead. Dogs were animals sacred to Hecate hence my dog, Jasmine, making her costuming debut. No matter what photo I took, Jasmine always seemed to be mirroring Mom’s expression.

The Take Back Halloween site has a more modern take on Hecate, but I decided to take the goddess back to her ancient Turkish roots. The hat was a happy accident–a pillbox leftover from a hat-making project. Mom is also wearing an Egyptian baladi necklace, a short Indian veil over the hat, a beaded Egyptian dance shawl, and a silver-striped baladi dress (made from two large veils) over a long-sleeved black dress.

Re: Minimalist Halloween Costumes

Kelly Mindell modeling her pineapple costume. Photo by Jeff Mindell.

One of things I became fascinated with this past year was minimalist Halloween costumes. I was turned on to the idea by Kelly Mindell of Studio DIY in Los Angeles. Above is a great picture of her pineapple costume. Check out her other costume designs on her blog. Kelly helpfully adds links to basic dresses you can customize.

For the purposes of this post, I’m defining a minimalist costume as one that creates, as simply as possible, a striking and unmistakeable graphic image. Which set me to thinking: what kind of Halloween costumes lend themselves to these stripped down, but powerful designs?

The classic bedsheet ghost costume is probably the most basic minimalist Halloween costume of all time. Unfortunately, the old bedsheet-over-the-head costume has lost ground in recent years to the more realistic specter costume.

Skeletons are very bare bones (pun intended) and have been gaining ground in recent years, thanks to the popularity of Day of the Dead celebrations.

Pumpkin costumes are readily recognizable as a Halloween staple

Love the vintage vibe of this fantastic child’s costume.

A more standard take on the traditional pumpkin motif.

Moving away toward more modernist designs, I really like the streetlight costume. It’s bold, graphic, and colorful. If you’re able to find some battery-operated lights, that just adds to the fun. Do a search for “traffic light costume” to see some of the great variations out there.

Janelle from Canada submitted this traffic light and traffic cone couples costume to Coolest Homemade Costumes.com.

Anything that creates a strong visual image is a potential costume generator including Surrealist paintings.

Son of Man painting by Rene Magritte.

Son of Man group costume.