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Category / Fashion for Dummies

Wig Holes and Other Mysteries of Powdered Hair History Explained

There was a time when a visit to the powder room involved more than a quick tinkle and a dab of powder on the nose. Taking its name from the noble courts of Europe, the powder room was a designated space, in aristocratic houses, for the powdering of wigs that were a little worse for…

Drawing Boards for the Ballets Russes

Nineteenth century Russia was restless, and so was Léon Bakst. The young man belonged to a new generation of creatives, one ready to turn Realism on its head with one flick of a bejewelled, utterly fabulous wrist. Today, his name is “a byword for excitement, for colour and glamour” and a radical new approach to…

Before the Flapper, There Was the Gibson Girl

Before the flapper came about as the embodiment of 1920s femininity, women in the late 1800s and early 1900s had a different role model from which to take cues – the Gibson Girl. She was the feminine ideal of this era and socially, the Gibson Girl had a very defined role. She was upper class, educated, athletic,…

Forget the Met Ball, Discover New York’s Secret Fashion Paradise

Nestled into a hilltop of northern Manhattan hides a veritable medieval oasis, older than the United States itself. A labyrinth of ancient French archways, turrets, and Gothic chapels that travelled across the Atlantic to find a new home here, it is known simply as “the Cloisters” to locals. The cavernous site could pass as a…

London’s Lost Department Store of the Swinging Sixties

If you thought that Harvey Nichols or Harrods were the epitome of a London fashion department store, it’s time to re-introduce you to Big Biba, a fallen icon of the Swinging Sixties that redefined the High Street shopping experience… It all started in 1964, when a small-time mail order business called Biba’s Postal Boutique advertised…

Is this History’s Most Underrated Dress?

A couturier-friend of mine once wryly remarked (as she meticulously contemplated the exact landing spot of another rose-gold sequin destined for the bust of a ballgown) that her life effectively was a fashionable road-map signposted by all the memorable gowns she’s made for brides, debutantes and society ladies over the decades. Similarly we fashionistas and…

She Dressed Kate Bush, Need We Say More?

There is a grande dame of Dutch fashion you’ve probably never heard of (if you live outside of The Netherlands). We hadn’t. But then when found a series of photos taken in the 1970s of legendary musician Kate Bush, dressed more exquisitely that we’d ever seen her. Who was she wearing and where can we…

The Woman who Documented New York’s Super Funky Street Style of the 1980s

Forty-five years have gone by since it was published in 1978, but Amy Arbus’ style book “On the Street” is still probably one of the most interesting things you could put on your coffee table. We’re not sure why it took us over a decade of blogging to share her work, but better late than…

This Forgotten 1980s Style Movement Explains A Lot About Fashion Today

When we think of the fashion industry’s most influential movers & shakers and icon-makers of the last 50 years, familiar names like Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld, Grace Coddington or Patricia Field (Sex & the City) come to mind. But there’s another name that got left down the back of fashion history’s sofa – Buffalo –…

In Japan, “Biker Chick” Fashion Breaks All the Rules

The many style subcultures of post-war and modern Japan are rooted in rejection; a succession of generations refusing to traditional parental values. Each one has formed its own unique uniform of rebellion, but some have taken it to further extremes than others, riding dangerously on the fringes of society… Anarchic, angry and restless, Japanese rebel…

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