A sweet, small book that teeters on the edge of Hallmark-movie territory but thankfully doesn't quite fall in. It's soothing and optimistic, with all the plot lines neatly tied up at the end.
Arthur Pepper is a sixty-nine year old retired widower living in the suburbs of York, England. Miriam, his wife of over forty years, passed away unexpectedly and he is facing both the one-year anniversary of her death and his upcoming seventieth birthday. Since Miriam's death Arthur has been cloistering himself in his house, following a very set routine and has more or less removed himself from the world. His daughter lives nearby but is occupied with her own problems and his son has made a life in Australia for himself, his wife and children. A few neighbors look in on him but he essentially keeps to himself.
Everything changes when Arthur decides it is time to pack up and give away Miriam's clothing. He discovers an unfamiliar gold charm bracelet tucked away into the toe of a boot, and he starts to wonder where this item came from and what the charms may have meant to her.
Arthur and Miriam had lived a very quiet life together, watching their TV programs, taking modest trips to the seaside, and treating themselves to the occasional dessert or fish and chips. All he knew of Miriam was the always-correct organized wife and mother who wore tonally-shaded clothes and comfortable shoes. None of that fit with the elaborate bracelet he has found and his curiosity motivates him. As a result, he sets off on an unexpected odyssey where he must confront new and at times, alarming, developments that make it clear that Miriam had a very different life before they met.
Some of Arthur's encounters are quite improbable but they are imaginative. Others seem somewhat formulaic and a touch clichéd. In the context of this story, those particular developments are forgivable and don't really take away too much from the gentleness of Arthur's story.
At the end of it all, Arthur and his fellow characters find satisfaction and resolution in positive ways. There are no unexpected great revelations here, and nothing of the subtlety and wit of masters of the human condition like Alexander McCall Smith, but this is a charming, if rather slight book with which to while away some downtime. It provides all the comfort and familiarity of a favorite childhood food, or as the British would say, a nursery pudding, without asking a lot of the reader.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Fifty Years of Fashion, New Look to Now – by Valerie Steele
It would be wonderful to find a sequel to this book that would pick up from 1998-on, or where this volume left off. Perhaps author Valerie Steele will bring out a revised version a few years from now and call it Seventy-Five Years of Fashion. I can only hope so.
Steele's book includes well-researched commentary and excellent photography of illustrative styles from the collection of The Museum at F.I.T. (The Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York. The book not only explores the fashion industry starting with The New Look that immediately followed World War II, but it also opens a window into the changes in culture and society that spawned the fashions of the times.
All the major designers are covered: Christian Dior, the creator of The New Look, Cristóbal Balenciaga (generally known just by his last name), Jacques Fath, Yves St. Laurent, Missoni (the Italian family known for their knitwear), Jean-Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood and others.
The trends of each decade are thoroughly addressed but the writing is never ponderous nor at the opposite extreme, breathy. This is a scholarly book but it is very accessible and readable for anyone with an interest in style and culture.
There is no doubt that the twentieth century and the nearly two decades that have followed were strongly impacted by the events and hardships of World War II. The world order and political scene were vastly different before and after the war. The fashion industry and its subsidiary fields were greatly affected and a system that once thrived in Paris was decimated. Attitudes were upended and with the advent of less formal codes of dress (the reactionary modes and ideas of the 50s notwithstanding), and expansions in consumerism, the world became a very different place.
Steele explores it all, from changes in business structures. Where there were once individual designers working in their ateliers with their staffs of highly-skilled workers and showing their couture collections in their salons to a small group rich clients and the fashion press, we learn about what became a huge business of conglomerates selling ready-to-wear less costly lines and licensed designer names on everything from perfumes and cosmetics to costume jewelry, shoes and products for the home.
Steele also covers phenomena like the advent of Swinging London and the music business, as British fashion designers took over in the early 60s, the Hippie Movement of the late 60s, on to the excesses of the 70s (probably not the best decade for fashion), the power looks of the 80s, and in the 90s, the neutrals of American designers like Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis. One can only wonder what she'd think about the ongoing 70s revival that's popular with young people in their teens and twenties and is a breath of nostalgia for the rest of us.
Steele's book includes well-researched commentary and excellent photography of illustrative styles from the collection of The Museum at F.I.T. (The Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York. The book not only explores the fashion industry starting with The New Look that immediately followed World War II, but it also opens a window into the changes in culture and society that spawned the fashions of the times.
All the major designers are covered: Christian Dior, the creator of The New Look, Cristóbal Balenciaga (generally known just by his last name), Jacques Fath, Yves St. Laurent, Missoni (the Italian family known for their knitwear), Jean-Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood and others.
The trends of each decade are thoroughly addressed but the writing is never ponderous nor at the opposite extreme, breathy. This is a scholarly book but it is very accessible and readable for anyone with an interest in style and culture.
There is no doubt that the twentieth century and the nearly two decades that have followed were strongly impacted by the events and hardships of World War II. The world order and political scene were vastly different before and after the war. The fashion industry and its subsidiary fields were greatly affected and a system that once thrived in Paris was decimated. Attitudes were upended and with the advent of less formal codes of dress (the reactionary modes and ideas of the 50s notwithstanding), and expansions in consumerism, the world became a very different place.
Steele explores it all, from changes in business structures. Where there were once individual designers working in their ateliers with their staffs of highly-skilled workers and showing their couture collections in their salons to a small group rich clients and the fashion press, we learn about what became a huge business of conglomerates selling ready-to-wear less costly lines and licensed designer names on everything from perfumes and cosmetics to costume jewelry, shoes and products for the home.
Steele also covers phenomena like the advent of Swinging London and the music business, as British fashion designers took over in the early 60s, the Hippie Movement of the late 60s, on to the excesses of the 70s (probably not the best decade for fashion), the power looks of the 80s, and in the 90s, the neutrals of American designers like Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis. One can only wonder what she'd think about the ongoing 70s revival that's popular with young people in their teens and twenties and is a breath of nostalgia for the rest of us.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
The Language of Clothes by Alison Lurie – a 1981 take on fashion
I came across this 1981 book in a bibliography listing in another book about fashion. I was familiar with the writer's fiction, and thought it would be interesting to get her take, so I requested it through an inter-library loan.
I'm sorry to report that the material feels quite dated, and that the book was not written very objectively. Lurie is very judgmental and her style is preachy: in a chapter labeled "Male and Female" she wrote that "toreador" and "Capri" pants (her quotes) came "in odd, glaring colors and ended a tight, awkward six inches above the ankle as if they had shrunk in the wash." She also wrote that "Although women in male clothes usually look like gentlemen, men who wear women's clothes, unless they are genuine transsexuals, seem to imitate the most vulgar and unattractive form of female dress, as if in a spirit of deliberate and hostile parody."
It seems as though we've come a long way since 1981...
I'm sorry to report that the material feels quite dated, and that the book was not written very objectively. Lurie is very judgmental and her style is preachy: in a chapter labeled "Male and Female" she wrote that "toreador" and "Capri" pants (her quotes) came "in odd, glaring colors and ended a tight, awkward six inches above the ankle as if they had shrunk in the wash." She also wrote that "Although women in male clothes usually look like gentlemen, men who wear women's clothes, unless they are genuine transsexuals, seem to imitate the most vulgar and unattractive form of female dress, as if in a spirit of deliberate and hostile parody."
It seems as though we've come a long way since 1981...
War Paint by Lindy Woodhead – a biography of two formidable women and their rivalry
A fascinating read for anyone with interests in fashion and beauty, the lives of leading businesswomen, history, advertising, art and publishing. Lindy Woodhead's dual biography of Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden was clearly exhaustively researched and is thoroughly documented. It presents the facts of their lives, insights into their personalities, but most importantly, in my opinion, a remarkable look into consumer culture and the changing scene in the United States and throughout the world, from the very last of the 19th century, into the Edwardian Age, through World I, the Great Depression, World War II and onward into the 60s, when the book wraps up with the deaths of its subjects and their legacies.
Rubinstein and Arden were intense rivals, each attempting to capture the luxury cosmetic market for her own. They spent decades one-upping each other with their spas, new products, their personal acquisitions and, at times, the poaching of their staff members. I have to say I found myself rooting for Madame Rubinstein more often than not, but oddly enough, I don't recall ever using any of her products or seeing them among my mother's things. Long after Ms. Arden's death, I purchased some hand and body lotions from one of the successor companies that had control of her label and I became something of a devotee. I still have just a little of one of those lotions, and looking at the bottle, and knowing what I know now about her and her much earlier cosmetic and beauty lines, the item is very far from what Arden once represented. She would have been quite shocked at the plastic bottle, and what I recall as its moderate price, but I think she might have liked the scent...
Like many successful businesspeople, both Rubinstein and Arden came from humble backgrounds and embroidered some details of their pasts to their advantage – to further their success, and to bring them the lives they desired. Rubinstein became a renowned art collector, and Arden purchased racing horses and stables.
Their styles and personalities were completely different, and they moved in different circles. They both survived the devastation of two world wars and a worldwide depression, and thrived. They shared one trait – ambition, and the desire to be the best in their area of commerce.
They also had a common enemy – Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, or as Madame Rubinstein referred to him, the "nail man". Revson emerged as a formidable competitor, though his fortune was made in a different setting, the mass-market world of drugstores and and mid-market retailers. Their next biggest competition followed in the person of Esteé Lauder, who achieved her own success in the luxury markets Rubinstein and Arden had once led.
The Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden brands survive today as subsidiaries of large multinational corporations, but their namesakes are legends only, and not top of mind to today's consumers. War Paint, however, will inform readers of the influence their founders once had, and provide insights into the relatively recent history of their heyday.
Rubinstein and Arden were intense rivals, each attempting to capture the luxury cosmetic market for her own. They spent decades one-upping each other with their spas, new products, their personal acquisitions and, at times, the poaching of their staff members. I have to say I found myself rooting for Madame Rubinstein more often than not, but oddly enough, I don't recall ever using any of her products or seeing them among my mother's things. Long after Ms. Arden's death, I purchased some hand and body lotions from one of the successor companies that had control of her label and I became something of a devotee. I still have just a little of one of those lotions, and looking at the bottle, and knowing what I know now about her and her much earlier cosmetic and beauty lines, the item is very far from what Arden once represented. She would have been quite shocked at the plastic bottle, and what I recall as its moderate price, but I think she might have liked the scent...
Like many successful businesspeople, both Rubinstein and Arden came from humble backgrounds and embroidered some details of their pasts to their advantage – to further their success, and to bring them the lives they desired. Rubinstein became a renowned art collector, and Arden purchased racing horses and stables.
Their styles and personalities were completely different, and they moved in different circles. They both survived the devastation of two world wars and a worldwide depression, and thrived. They shared one trait – ambition, and the desire to be the best in their area of commerce.
They also had a common enemy – Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, or as Madame Rubinstein referred to him, the "nail man". Revson emerged as a formidable competitor, though his fortune was made in a different setting, the mass-market world of drugstores and and mid-market retailers. Their next biggest competition followed in the person of Esteé Lauder, who achieved her own success in the luxury markets Rubinstein and Arden had once led.
The Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden brands survive today as subsidiaries of large multinational corporations, but their namesakes are legends only, and not top of mind to today's consumers. War Paint, however, will inform readers of the influence their founders once had, and provide insights into the relatively recent history of their heyday.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
The Good and the Evil – The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
"Where there is life, there is hope." This quote, attributed to the playwright Publius Terentius Afer, known as Terence, was an African slave who was brought to Rome in the second century BCE by the Senator Terentius Lucanus. It is so fitting a summary of this remarkable novel.
The lyrical Alice Hoffman evokes the darkest days of the Holocaust, in her novel about Ava, a golem (in Jewish folklore, a clay creature brought to life through sacred magic) created in secret by Ettie, a rabbi's teenaged daughter, for the responsibility of protecting a young girl in her escape from Berlin to Paris. With payment from the mother Hanni to watch over her daughter Lea, Ettie and her sister Marta join the two on a dangerous train ride out of Germany.
Hoffman is a master of both magical realism and the historical novel, and they have never come together more convincingly or beautifully than they do here. Hoffman does not spare the reader from the horrors of the roundups, murders, rapes and tortures that are committed by the Nazis and their French collaborators, but she also evokes the humanity of love, compassion, kindness and generosity that were the hallmarks of the Resistance fighters, both French and Jewish, and those that assisted them.
Ava is the most extraordinary character, a quasi woman of clay, who has superhuman strength, understands the speech of birds and forest animals, and learns complex tasks almost instantaneously. Her evolution is the center of the novel, but there are other very interesting characters.
Lea grows from a petulant, sullen and frightened girl of twelve, who exposed to the enormous trials of the war, then becomes a sensitive young woman who is adult before her time. Julien, the spoiled, immature teenaged son of the distant cousins who take her and Ava in when they reach Paris, evolves into a resourceful young man who follows his older brother into a Jewish Resistance group. And then there is Marianne, a young woman from the distant countryside, the maid in Julien's parents' household, who returns home and becomes a leader in spiriting Jews and others in hiding over the border into Switzerland. Marianne is, of course, the name for the symbol of the common people of France, evoking the principles of liberty, egality and fraternity. Hoffman picked a most appropriate name for her.
There is an amazing amount to absorb in The World That We Knew, and being openminded to the idea that good can conquer evil, and that there are things in this world that may be beyond what we normally comprehend, are vital for a full appreciation. On the other hand, reading, or listening to this work, will hopefully allow some minds to suspend their cynicism and disbelief.
I was delighted to see that the reader of the audio book version is the acclaimed actress Judith Light, who has given a remarkable reading, voicing not just the characters, but delivering the French and German place and personal names with care, and occasional snippets of Hebrew prayers with gravity.
The lyrical Alice Hoffman evokes the darkest days of the Holocaust, in her novel about Ava, a golem (in Jewish folklore, a clay creature brought to life through sacred magic) created in secret by Ettie, a rabbi's teenaged daughter, for the responsibility of protecting a young girl in her escape from Berlin to Paris. With payment from the mother Hanni to watch over her daughter Lea, Ettie and her sister Marta join the two on a dangerous train ride out of Germany.
Hoffman is a master of both magical realism and the historical novel, and they have never come together more convincingly or beautifully than they do here. Hoffman does not spare the reader from the horrors of the roundups, murders, rapes and tortures that are committed by the Nazis and their French collaborators, but she also evokes the humanity of love, compassion, kindness and generosity that were the hallmarks of the Resistance fighters, both French and Jewish, and those that assisted them.
Ava is the most extraordinary character, a quasi woman of clay, who has superhuman strength, understands the speech of birds and forest animals, and learns complex tasks almost instantaneously. Her evolution is the center of the novel, but there are other very interesting characters.
Lea grows from a petulant, sullen and frightened girl of twelve, who exposed to the enormous trials of the war, then becomes a sensitive young woman who is adult before her time. Julien, the spoiled, immature teenaged son of the distant cousins who take her and Ava in when they reach Paris, evolves into a resourceful young man who follows his older brother into a Jewish Resistance group. And then there is Marianne, a young woman from the distant countryside, the maid in Julien's parents' household, who returns home and becomes a leader in spiriting Jews and others in hiding over the border into Switzerland. Marianne is, of course, the name for the symbol of the common people of France, evoking the principles of liberty, egality and fraternity. Hoffman picked a most appropriate name for her.
There is an amazing amount to absorb in The World That We Knew, and being openminded to the idea that good can conquer evil, and that there are things in this world that may be beyond what we normally comprehend, are vital for a full appreciation. On the other hand, reading, or listening to this work, will hopefully allow some minds to suspend their cynicism and disbelief.
I was delighted to see that the reader of the audio book version is the acclaimed actress Judith Light, who has given a remarkable reading, voicing not just the characters, but delivering the French and German place and personal names with care, and occasional snippets of Hebrew prayers with gravity.
Sunday, November 3, 2019
A Search for Life's Truths – The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
I read this book in hardcover form, but came across the audio book version at the library and just finished listening. I enjoyed my original read but this version was just great. The characters truly came alive with Juliet Stevenson's narration.
Such a fascinating tale: Alma Whittaker is the central character. We meet her as a girl of eight, born in 1800, and follow her thereafter until she dies eight decades later. She is a brilliant young girl with an analytical mind, raised by her formidable Dutch mother, a brilliant and capable woman, and her father, an Englishman of modest background who has made an enormous fortune through his ingenuity, shrewdness and native intelligence. They live in a vast estate on the banks of the Schuylkill in Philadelphia, where Alma is exposed to the worlds of business, philosophy and the intelligentsia at her parents' dinner table. Her father is so rich and powerful that everyone comes there in hope of sponsorship for their project or scheme.
In time, Alma finds her calling as a botanist, and chooses mosses as her specialty. As she is no beauty, she comes to feel no one will love her, and she throws herself into her work.
Things change when she meets Ambrose Pike, a botanical artist, and falls in love with him, though he is much younger. Despite that, they marry.
Her relationship with Ambrose becomes the pivot point for the rest of her life. Every choice she makes thereafter is based on it.
This novel is not a romance, however, it is a story of self-discovery and of discovery of much larger concerns, including the quest to understand the origins of life itself – hence the title, The Signature of All Things.
The action shifts locations – the London of Henry Whittaker, Alma's father – and on through Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Tahiti and more during Alma's life. And, the people she meets are extraordinary... and her life equally so, though she does not see this for a very long time.
The descriptions are vivid, the dialog is superb, and the historical and social contexts of Alma's 19th century are brought to life. And in the end, the conclusion is most satisfying.
Highly recommend!
Such a fascinating tale: Alma Whittaker is the central character. We meet her as a girl of eight, born in 1800, and follow her thereafter until she dies eight decades later. She is a brilliant young girl with an analytical mind, raised by her formidable Dutch mother, a brilliant and capable woman, and her father, an Englishman of modest background who has made an enormous fortune through his ingenuity, shrewdness and native intelligence. They live in a vast estate on the banks of the Schuylkill in Philadelphia, where Alma is exposed to the worlds of business, philosophy and the intelligentsia at her parents' dinner table. Her father is so rich and powerful that everyone comes there in hope of sponsorship for their project or scheme.
In time, Alma finds her calling as a botanist, and chooses mosses as her specialty. As she is no beauty, she comes to feel no one will love her, and she throws herself into her work.
Things change when she meets Ambrose Pike, a botanical artist, and falls in love with him, though he is much younger. Despite that, they marry.
Her relationship with Ambrose becomes the pivot point for the rest of her life. Every choice she makes thereafter is based on it.
This novel is not a romance, however, it is a story of self-discovery and of discovery of much larger concerns, including the quest to understand the origins of life itself – hence the title, The Signature of All Things.
The action shifts locations – the London of Henry Whittaker, Alma's father – and on through Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Tahiti and more during Alma's life. And, the people she meets are extraordinary... and her life equally so, though she does not see this for a very long time.
The descriptions are vivid, the dialog is superb, and the historical and social contexts of Alma's 19th century are brought to life. And in the end, the conclusion is most satisfying.
Highly recommend!
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