The Little Black Dress: Still Relevant

More research discovering something most of us already knew: Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s is still a favorite. In a poll conducted by Lovefilm, a UK-based DVD rental group, the iconic Holly Golightly ensemble was voted the greatest female screen outfit. Also unsurprising: Marilyn Monroe’s infamous white accordion-pleat dress from the Seven Year Itch was one of the top three.* 
*What, with fashion magazines positioning the Little White Dress as an alternative to the LBD and the 1939 Irwin Shaw story, The Girls in Their Summer Dresses, surreptitiously haunting collective fashion memory, we’ve hopped on the LWD trend at MyShape.

North By Northwest By Way of Savile Row

North By Northwest

Saturday, May 29

Gates open at 7 pm

Movie screens at 8:30 pm

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

1600 Santa Monica Boulevard 

Los Angeles, CA 90038

cinespia.org

Wardrobe trivia: Cary Grant’s suit was provided by the Savile Row tailor Kilgour. Clothes On Film suggests that Hitchcock probably let Grant select his own wardrobe, but didn’t trust co-star Eva Marie Saint with her own sartorial choices; Hitchcock took his blonde leading lady to Bergdorf Goodman and picked out her on-screen attire himself. She likened the experience to shopping with a sugar-daddy.

I Will Survive

  

Long kept from public view, a palm-sized painting by Frida Kahlo sold Wednesday night at Christie’s for $1.1 million (or $1.2 million, depending on your source), against pre-sale estimates ranging from $100,000 to $150,000. The 1938 painting features a pre-Hispanic warrior under a troubled sky; it measures 6" x 4" and was framed in Oaxacan tin as a votive offering.
More interesting than the unanticipated selling price is the story behind the painting itself. Kahlo created the work in gratitude for her own survival; she had attempted suicide after discovering Diego Rivera’s affair with her sister.

The buyer was an unnamed private collector from Mexico who purchased several works during the auction. Will this collector hide Survivor away again?

For more info, click here or here.

Above: Survivor, Frida Kahlo, 1938.

MyShape.com Fits and Flatters on NBC

This was filmed by the local NBC affiliate last week, and has been 
picked up by news stations across the country.

Uh-Oh

N * O * R * M * S

The Evolution of Emily

I confess that I haven’t read much Emily Dickinson, but a couple of new books and a garden show that I’m too far away to attend, is more than enough inspiration to fill that gap.
The title of Holland Cotter’s recent New York Times article, My Hero, the Outlaw of Amherst, considers one of the imagined Emilys from passive, love-lorn recluse to feminist and queer studies icon. Cotter’s story reminds us that, if written works are any kind of window into a true self, Dickinson was equally capable of being the village eccentric as she was of being a terrorist: 
     Had I a mighty gun
     I think I’d shoot the human race.




My Hero, the Outlaw of Amherst, Holland Cotter
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, a novel by Jerome Charyn
Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds,  
a biography by Lyndall Gordon
Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers 
is on view at the New York Botanical Garden through June 13.