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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

Omg...there's only TWO more episodes before the finale???
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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

@MarnieRez3   @Yahooey  

 

That's my favorite picture of Lady Lucile.  Beautiful and what she's holding brings it to a whole other level.

 

Yes, she is responsible for models and cool runway shows.  And more.  And those gorgeous diaphonous dresses, wedding dresses:  chic dresses and beautiful lingerie too.  . 

 

I was going to post a few but it will get out of hand as I love the old photos and the beautiful, feminine looks so much I feel like I'm floating on a cloud now LOL. 

 

I recommend a Google Image when you have a few minutes. 

 

 

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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

Back to the Titanic again, and again a fashion connection:

 

After the Titanic Lady Lucile's husband was treated with scorn , even shunned --  for surviving.  That was before the hearings, which run thousands of pages and explained it.   it wasn't his fault -- most of the 12 in the boat were cowardly crew members saving themselves rather than women and children as did the other boats, where many sobbing women were saying farewell to their husbands amid the chaos knowing they would likely never see them again. 

 

One older couple didn't try for the life boats.  The wife made sure her maid was put in a lifeboat and then returned to her husband, Isador Strauss.  They sat on deck chairs and various quotes were attributed to the wife the gist of which is that they lived a lovely life together and she wanted them to die together, which they did..  

 

Isador Strauss was the owner (with his brother) and the CEO of Macy's.  There's a plaque commemorating them in an entrance to Macy's Herald Square.

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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

@LoriLori
You MUST write a book! Such interesting connections between fashion and a doomed luxury ocean liner.
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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS


@MarnieRez3 wrote:
@LoriLori
You MUST write a book! Such interesting connections between fashion and a doomed luxury ocean liner.

And @Yahooey  and @momtochloe ?  Anyone interested:

 

Cali, those are the only connections between fashion and the Titanic other than the beautiful wardrobes of the first-class passengers.  And far more knowledgeable, better writers than I am have written great books about The Titanic.

 

Two excellent books I recommend as often as possible are Hugh Brewster's "Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage"  and "Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Story of Those Who Survived" by Andrew Gibson.

 

Now back to capial F and Lady Lucile

 

( I love Lucile. Can ya tell?  Her brilliance, lovely designs, innovation.  The mannequins.  The runway show. . The artfulness of that photo where she poses in that beautiful dress in a lovely natural setting holding a caged bird. 

 

And her story!  In the lifeboat for 40 that held 12 she angered the seven  crew members when she turned to her maid and said wistfully, "There is your beautiful nightdress gone.".

 

And this -- the end, but not:   Later she would book passage on the Lusitania, but got sick and canceled at the last minute.  It was the voyage in which the Lusitania sank.

 

Her designs along with some sketches and photos are part of permanent collections including the V&A and the Met Costume Exhibit.   I was lucky to see one (but only on line) while it was displayed at England's Bowes Museum.  .

 

When you have time, dahlings, you simply must go to Google Images or Pinterest and enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

[ Edited ]

@LoriLori 

 

have you read her book

 

Discretions and Indiscretions

 

saw the whole book archived

 

https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.208501/2015.208501.Discretions-And_djvu.txt

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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

"There is your beautiful nightdress gone."
It should be a line from a screenplay, dahling...OR I can hear Tallulah Bankhead saying it, while smoking a cigarette in a long platinum cigarette holder, looking out on the vast sea, crushed in a lifeboat.
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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

@LoriLori

"And this -- the end, but not:" (Gorgeous sentence, btw...) She was booked on THE LUSITANIA voyage, but got sick and cancelled!!!!!

I thank you...I am reading all about her now on Google.
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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

@Yahooey wrote:

@LoriLori 

 

have you read her book

 

Discretions and Indiscretions

 

saw the whole book archived

 

https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.208501/2015.208501.Discretions-And_djvu.txt


 


@MarnieRez3 

 

Yahooey, thank you soooooooooo much!  What a gift!!!!

 

I've heard about her memoir and from time to time looked for it but never found it.  I'm sooooooo glad you did.  I read it, I loved it.  

 

Lady Lucile was known to lie and exaggerate and at times take credit for things she didn't do...

 

...though what she did do, including the "creation' of mannequins and the mannequin parade, with beautiful women walking in a line to music and decorations and everything know as the modern runway show, and her exquisite fashions, are real and speak for themselves.

 

Her account of the Titanic is a mixture of exaggeration, important omission and lying (some, maybe lying to herself).  I was floored she passed the remark about her maid's ruined nightdress off as a joke. It definitely wasn't a joke.  Mostly she makes the Titanic tragedy sound like a lark.

 

And her description of Macy's co-owner and CEO Isador Strauss and his wife, who chose to die with him...No, their bodies were not found wrapped in one another's arms.  It's not just that that's physically impossible, which it is.  It's also that her body was never found.  (His was.)

 

It's not funny but I'm smiling and laughing at Lucile's...creativity.  To read someone who was so creative and innovative, and also creative with facts, looking back through the lens of old age was fascinating (I'll read it again sometimes.  Thanks!!!).

 

The capital F Fashion stuff, her record survives and we know what's real, that she truly "invented" the model (mannequin) and the runway show as we know it now.  I squee'd when she said "mannequin parade," which is the term she invented,  which caught on at the time:  

 

We know she did this stuff and yet she's often overlooked.  In many accounts it's as if it all began with Coco Chanel.

 

I loved it:  the talk of fabrics and the mannequins and her clientele.  And the anecdotes! The humblebrags!   How much she loved her creations, her life, her art.  

 

I can't imagine anyone else talking about inventing the best mourning dress ever for a courtier of Queen Victoria, which became the mourning dress that everyone in mourning simply had to wear.  

 

And all the named-dropping!  I love her recollections. All the royalty but especially Princess (later Queen) Mary fawning over her collections and The Queen of Spain showering her with compliments.  Lots of titled British and wives of the richest men in New York.  Artists of all types, like Isadora Duncan, who became her friend.

 

And true or not, the anecdote about the maharajah, the actress, the other woman and the fur coat is one of the best fashion anecdotes I've read!

 

(And there's so much more...It's quite long, I don't want my long recap to discourage anyone from reading it all,)

 

Yahooey, Heart

 

One last thing.  This one's for you, Cali, because I do love to come full circle.  This is not in the memoir: 

 

Isadora Duncan was also planning to be on the fatal voyage of the Lusitania -- but she was short on money and booked a less expensive ship.

 

 

 

 

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Re: Project Runway 5/16 - Back to Bravo! - SPOILERS

@LoriLori 

@Yahooey 

 

HeartHeartHeart

 

Fabulous LORIX2!! Thank you for that FULL CIRCLE return to Fashion With an "F." Just in time for tomorrow night's PR. 

 

Oh lovely bohemian genius, Isadora -- if only you hadn't bought that enormous red scarf and riden in that fancy convertible!

 

 

"Affectations can be dangerous..."

 

-----Gertrude Stein when she heard that Isadora Duncan had been strangled to death in Nice, France on September 14, 1927.