A night of friends, amazing performances and glorious costume.
Mama Hep compered the Cabaret au Chocolat for International Women’s Day at The Art House in Southampton.
Acts included my darling friend Angela performing her poetry, the drumming Djembabes featuring Jani Franck and Belly Dancer Ashanka.
Thanks for the invitation to be part of this great event, Art House. See you next year?
Further to my ongoing niggling about a new word for Vintage, I just learned that in Aus/NZ, charity shops are called Op Shops – meaning Opportunity Shop.
From Wikipedia: “In Australia, major national opportunity shop chains include the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store (trading as Vinnies), the Salvation Army (trading as Salvos), the Red Cross, MS Australia, and the Brotherhood of St. Laurence. Many local charitable organisations, both religious and secular, run opportunity shops. Common among these are missions and animal shelters.”
So there you go
You can tell I’m not a proper knitter as I call it wool and not “yarn”. But I am still enough of a textile geek to be able to appreciate a specialist maker/supplier fair, especially when there is tea & cake on offer.
Unravel takes place at The Maltings in Farnham, about a 40 minutes drive from Southampton and I went with my Proper Knitter friend, Jilly Evans and dear daughter.
The Maltings is the arts centre that Southampton could have had by now if it had not let The Gantry go all those years ago; a multi purpose arts space, white walls, sanded wood furniture, small craft gallery. Heaven.
A little self awareness
There is something to be learned by observing the crowd when you go somewhere new. These are – in some way – your flock. This afternoon I revealed myself to be a middle aged, Caucasian middle class women with a large arse; the characteristics that connected the majority of the Unraveled audience. I don’t, however, put myself in the “amazing technical skill but no colour sense at all” subgroup which is surprisingly large for such an arty event. There were some truly revolting knitted/crocheted confections on display both on the stalls and – I am afraid to say – on my fellow guests. Felters are particular crims when it comes to ghastliness. I offer just one example.
==shudder==
I could understand if this were a waistcoat intended to illustrate the dangers of infection in burns victims – but I think it’s supposed to be nice.
But on a lighter note
There were knitted “things” everywhere you looked: see the knitted picture frame around the event poster at the top of this page. There were knitted balloons on the bridge outside, knitting on every pole, column & bollard, knitted lampshades, knitted loo roll dollies in the loo & naughty knitted moles on the lawn.
So here’s a few things I particularly enjoyed
Knitted wire knickers
Giant's knitting
Machine knit Mondrian sweater
STONEHENGE!!!
Please don’t miss the camper van in the background. Would you believe this did NOT win 1st prize in the machine knitting vote. How WRONG can those judges be?
I don’t seem to have taken many pictures of garments, mainly I guess because this was an event of needles and skeins of wool rather than finished pieces. A notable example is this pretty thing (no knitter name – so sorry). The maker had dyed the wool as well as knit the garment and with the naked eye the colour blends beautifully.
An unexpected pleasure
I missed the talk on legendary knitter Elizabeth Zimmerman (please read her books for enjoyment even if you are not interested in the knitting) but had a huge an unexpected surprise when I dropped into a talk called Knitting in Fashion. I will write a separate post about it as it was totally worth it, but in summary, Bethan Holt, assistant to Melanie Rickey (Fashion Editor at Large for Grazia & Mrs Mary Portas) did a fantastic short lecture on where knitting sits in current fashion.
Bethan Holt: Knitting in Fashion
As well as talking about the recent London Fashion Week, Christopher Kane, Preen, Jonathan Saunders etc. she introduced me to Leutton Postle and Craig Lawrence, both of whom are being mentored by Rickey under a scheme at St Martins.
I tweeted a pic of Bethan talking to Melanie Rickey and was chuffed to get a retweet. It’s not what you know, darling….
Pictures of Bethan’s talk in a separate post here.
So after a happy day, a decent sausage sandwich, a swift trip to Farnham’s Maison Blanc for a tasty pud for later we wended our way home.
A lovely day.
Goodbye Unravel. See you next year.
This great website went on hiatus for a while – not sure why – but I am pleased to see it back. I think there is space for a Big Beast alongside the plethora of blogs that make the vintage/fashion sector so vibrant.
This is a piece they wrote about Hep when we were still Spybaby back in the day! Maybe its time they updated it?
A Twitter buddy flagged up this article titled “Is Vintage Clothing Passé?” in today’s Guardian.
Here’s my response:
“Fascinating to me that this debate has now reached this forum, as i have been talking & writing about this in my corner of the vintage world for a couple of years now.
What we are seeing I think is the cresting of the “Vintage” wave (as we have no other word I’ll just have to capitalise it) driven by mainstream fashion marketing for about five-ish years. Vintage clothing originated as the preserve of the chronically groovy – Hendrix in his military jacket, Courteney Love in her satin nighties, Kate Moss in a 1920′s beaded thing. Trawling the old school vintage shops was a luxury reserved for arty farties/the fashion confident/people who had the time.
It is no coincidence that the Vintage trend has risen alongside the growing cult of the Stylist, which in itself comes from the shift towards exposing the workings of pop culture. Pop stars used to dress themselves. Then it got slick & they had help. Then the help became stars themselves – Exhibit A: Gok. Then there’s the “Street Style/What i Wore Today” blogs: Sartorialist, Susie Bubble etc, who have made fashion inspiration accessible. And the professionalising (word?) of the charity retail sector, which has made second hand shopping desirable to people who would not have entertained the musty rummage fests of my teens, has also had its influence imho.
I could go on. Old/vintage garments/accessories have always been used in fashion. They just got commoditised.
Enter the High Street Retailers.
Under the guiding hand of brilliant marketeers – Top Shop et al I’m looking at you – the idea “Vintage” became a high street trend; a mix of the “bunting & cupcakes” aesthetic (yawn) and a look festishising Festival wear. The zenith of the madness for me came when West Quay shopping centre here in Southampton held a Vintage Weekend promotion I wrote about it here. John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, H&M, East; not a second hand garment to be seen.
The nature of the fashion business – every business – is change or die. So “Vintage” as an idea was bound to get boring. It is a necessary moment if consumers are going to be tempted into rejecting one trend in order to adopt the next. To spend.
But here in my world – where vintage is simply a definition of age & not any particular style, we will continue to use our nouse & flair to identify beauty in old garments and offer them back to a new generation to wear in new ways. And we will be fine. We may need to find a new word for it though – any ideas?
Oh, and Is it only me that sees the influence of 1960s “Confessions of a Window Cleaner” pastel nylon nightwear in this season’s couture collections?”
Looking forward to seeing the fruits of Brockenhurst College’s collaboration with Beaulieu Motor Museum as part of Heritage 100 this Saturday.
We hosted a visit by the students to the shop some weeks ago* and have loaned vintage garments & accessories from our collection for them to create Looks inspired by vehicles through the decades. There is an event to show the photographs that have resulted at Beaulieu on Saturday which – if I can get cover for the shop (Soph is booked on a shoot in Birmingham) – I really want to get to.
*being under 18, I wasn’t allowed to take photos for publication as I didn’t have parental permission. You’ll just have to believe me!
What wouldn't I give to hop on a plane to NY and join The Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Fashion in Art" tour tomorrow?
I was reminded of their beast of a collection when I revisited this capsule on the ever wonderful Retronaut website. The prototype shoes and accompanying sketches are the only record of the designs of Stephen Arpad which is preserved at The Met.
They make me want to think hard on the following question:
What might Fashion look like today if World War 2 had not happened?
Shoe design has taken decades to get back to the place Stephen was investigating 70 years ago. Yes, I know war gives rise to technologies which show themselves in fashion design as much as anywhere else. But there is a futuristic freshness to these shapes that feels like it got stifled at birth.
Start at The Retronaut, but if you have time, do go and look at the full collection of Arpad's work known to exist - beautifully presented in fab detail - on the Met's site.
BTW the perspex supports are an addition by the Met to present the shoes. Many of the Arpad designs do have heels if you check it out - and humdingers they are too.
New Season Trend Watching: The Peplum
Very much enjoying trying to imagine 2012 “New Season’s Trends” on non catwalk shaped persons.
The Catwalk Vision
How I Will Look When I Try It
Posted in: Comment, Fashion history, Inspiration.