Homage to Orla Kiely

A plain door and flashed ticket lead to

ladder-steep stairs.

On the upper floor, desks;

where pastel secretaries tap and file.

Light brims over the clatter of keys,

a corridor of motion.

Boucle suits and t-bar shoes with polished heels and toes,

Mohair jumpers pink and soft as typists sit in rows.

Filing cabinets stacked

in blocks – a backdrop to

phones and teacups,

lamps, moneyboxes, beehives

shifting as they stoop and turn.

Cabled dresses, squirrel jumpers, jaunty circle skirts

All revealed as coats are peeled and sleeves rolled up on shirts.

We watch,

weight balanced on one metallic heel

or placed equally in two patent boots,

clustering at the edge.

They gather in a throng of knits as klaxons mark the close,

The working day has faded to a final, knock-kneed pose. 

Easy to imagine them still

typing, talking, working, walking

in a pocket of time,

suspended above Flitcroft Street:

hanging on the hem

of the past.

Rosalind Jana, 2013 

Photos of the Orla Kiely presentation very kindly provided by the beautiful Dina of She Loves Mixtapes

London Fashion Week is often described as a circus, but the more appropriate location might be the fairground. Colourfully dressed crowds; catwalk spaces strung out across the city like stalls displaying their wares; the spectacle of the shows and presentations. At LFW the Ferris wheel is not a physical presence, but an apt metaphor for the tumbling, ever-turning motion of each day as buyers and press make their way from place to place. Others are less concerned with the designers’ attractions than with the attendees – streets taking precedence over the catwalk as outfits are observed, aligned in the frame of a lens, quickly shot.

The increasingly theatrical aspect of London Fashion Week was most clearly encapsulated in Orla Kiely’s presentation in the Elms Lester gallery on Flitcroft Street. A mise-en-scene of desks, typewriters and beehived models greeted viewers who climbed the stairs with invites in hand. The whole experience was a multisensory immersion into another age - the taste of champagne and the sound of phones ringing balanced against sights of mustard cardigans and peter pan collars. It was an irrepressibly charming performance in situ. The line between stage and the audience blurred as we watched the 60s style typing pool from the sidelines – many with cameras in hand, or in my case a welsh-wool covered notebook and pen.

There is something incredibly desirable about the clothes that Kiely produces each season. They represent a full-skirted, pastel-sweetened vision of youthful elegance. Ankle socks abound in the lookbook, while during the presentation, white tights flashed past as models walked, sat and giggled behind carefully manicured nails. As with all collections, the overall theme can be broken down into individual designs – Mondrian-esque block print shift dresses, velvet jacquard jackets, pink dvore pencil skirts. The floral sprigged shirts and grey, faux fur coats will no doubt be desirable to a wide audience. A few consumers might emulate the playful office feel of the presentation, but these are all items with individual versatility and longevity. The presentation was a beautifully staged chance to set the clothes in motion and to assemble a story around the designs. 

And yet there’s something interesting about the role of women in these narratives. The crisp chic of a 50s secretary does have its allure – not only in the tailoring, but also in the whiff of stationary and thorough organisation. Add in the evocative clack of typewriter keys, the colour co-ordinated office space, the industriously stacked filing cabinets and you have a space that harks back to the world of Mad Men or The Hour. But despite the perceived glamour and style of such settings, the reality is that few would now aspire to being an ‘office girl’ - as they once did - or to working in such a retro environment. After all, the corsets and girdles worn under nipped-in dresses in the 50s and 60s were symbolic of the restraints placed on women at the time.

We are fortunate enough today (in the West) to live in a society where all jobs and roles are technically open to us – much higher rungs on the ladder to reach for if so wished (if not always achievable due to other factors.)

Perhaps it’s a process of drawing out the differences between inspiration and idealising of a past reality. Taking an era or look as stimulus for the creative process does not necessarily translate into a desire to live in that time period. We can acknowledge the allure of pencil skirts and sweaters as Orla Kiely does so gloriously, whilst also noting that we’re lucky now to be able to make an active decision to dress like this – treating the aesthetic as one of a myriad number of options, rather than a narrow given.

My slight homage to Kiely's AW '13 collection was composed of a second hand vintage blazer and cashmere jumper (both charity shopped), blue shirt from my mum, a second hand Valentino skirt (present), shoes from a charity shop and vintage accessories. 

If you want to see more of my writing, head over the the brilliant All Walks on the Catwalk website where I wrote an article about my experiences of modelling and body image. 

"All persons more than a mile high to leave the court."

She is recognizable through the details – the blue skirts, the insatiable curiosity, the endless questions. She doesn’t even need a second name. ‘Alice’ is enough. She can be found wandering around Wonderland, checking how porous mirrors are or finding that it was all a dream.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a richly symbolic and complex book. It’s also a deliriously lovely children’s tale. Part of its strength lies in its multiple layers. On one level it can be read for pure enjoyment; for tales of the mock turtle; the cries of “Off with her head!”; the constant shape-shifting from tiny to tall and back again.  But if one wishes to dip beneath the surface then there are plenty of linguistic games, joyous explorations of words and ideas, a fair few puns and a whole lot of intriguing nonsense to unpick and analyse. Many children’s books work like this (authors such as Maurice Sendak, Joan Aiken and Margaret Mahy come to mind) – a revisiting in adolescence or beyond revealing an entirely different perspective, or at least more to think about.

But unfortunately, at times it’s easy to think that Alice has been reduced down to an icon who, like Audrey Hepburn, has been a little bleached by overexposure. The powder blue dress, the starchy white apron and yellow block of bouncing hair. It’s a bit 2D. But this is just the Disney incarnation of Alice, all primary colours and animated sunshine. It’s a version that may be charming, but her legacy is a commercial one – filtering all the way down to the supermarket own brand, highly flammable children’s fancy dress costume. Imagination is subsumed by the desire to make money out of a culturally significant creation.

Luckily this isn’t the only reflection of Alice. Others include John Tenniel’s black and white illustrations that accompanied the original 1865 edition, the psychedelic adaptation directed by Tim Burton, the numerous actresses who have embodied Alice in various film, television and theatre productions. But it is not just the main character - so many of the images and objects featured in the book link themselves back to Wonderland quicker than you can say “curiouser and curiouser”: dainty tea cups, pink flamingoes, croquet hoops and hedgehogs, top hats, mad tea parties, Cheshire Cat grins, decks of playing cards, ‘eat me’ cakes and ‘drink me’ bottles, rabbit holes, pocket watches, caterpillars, hookahs and jam tarts. And that’s before we meet the mirrors, chess pieces and white queens that lie beyond the looking glass.  There is a resonance in many of the characters and items featured in Lewis Carroll’s two books.

There's also a visual richness. Perhaps one of the reasons for this story (and its sequel’s) endurance is the enormous scope for continual reinterpretation. From illustration to photography to cinematography, the concepts and characters formed by Carroll lend themselves well to imagery.

It also provides the inspiration behind the rather magnificent Richmond Tea Rooms - a miniature Wonderland in the midst of Manchester. The décor of this café-cum-cocktail-bar captures the sense of whimsy present in Carroll’s tales, with mirrors, velvet, teacups and bird-cages a plenty. The fabulous Florence Fox and I arrived at 7.30am in order to spend two hours modeling and snapping among the tables and chairs before it opened for business. The theme was a riff on ‘Alice meets Absolutely Fabulous’ by way of blue satin, glittering heels and plenty of floral dresses. The aim was a collaborative set of images for our photography blog ‘Renard et Rose’. In fact, these images are only a sneak preview – the full set can be found spread across three posts here, here and here. You can read a detailed description of the process on the blog.

I have now seen Richmond Tea Rooms from two angles – firstly from that of a customer enjoying the magical, early evening atmosphere; and secondly from an insider witnessing the space when empty in the early morning. But although these visits may have been on different sides of the mirror, both had something in common. Each allowed me (and Flo) to become Alice for an hour or two, quietly treading through a strange and wonderful world. 

We mainly styled ourselves in an assortment of vintage garments sourced from the depths of my wardrobe, with a few additions from Flo's. However, the dresses worn by me in the two top shots are from a brand that Flo has been working with recently called So in Fashion. The blue and white fifties floral dress pictured on Flo below was on loan from Bertie's Vintage. Thanks to all who lent clothes, to Richmond Tea Rooms for letting us dash around their rooms like two white rabbits with a limited amount of time, and to Florence for being a brilliant friend, photographer and model.  

Tradition

Photos by the incredibly talented Jason of Citizen Couture

I’m a quarter Czech – East/Central European blood inherited from my father’s side of the family. At this time of year the roots become, if not stronger, then just a little more apparent. In a synthesis between English and Czech tradition, my family hold celebrations on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Preparations for the former include the making of Czech cookies (crumbly chocolate hazelnut biscuits with orange zest for one set, and vanilla moons for another), cooking fish soup, making potato salad and frying schnitzel. These dishes are our modified version of Czech cuisine. There are stories of previous generations with carp swimming in their baths in the lead up to the event – but we just make do with shop-bought haddock. Similarly, the schnitzel is technically Austrian, but feels just European (and delicious) enough to suffice.

All four of us dress up. This year I wore a vintage black dress with a velvet bodice and taffeta skirt that my mum had bought at a jumble sale when she was my age, offset with a vintage red belt from my Babi (you can see it on my Facebook page here). We set the table with candles, enjoy the meal and then head upstairs to peer from darkened windows to ‘spot’ the brightest star in the sky – even if it’s cloudy. Although my brother is now old enough to have unraveled the make-believe, we continue with the habit of one person staying downstairs to ‘clear the table’. A mysterious small bell is heard below and we descend for presents and further festivities.

This ritual has taken place for seventeen years, beginning before I could walk. It has shifted now from something excitedly anticipated for days to a more practical occasion – one in which I can help with the cooking, but also the clearing up. Christmas in general has lost that month-long aura of glitter that it used to have; replaced with a deeper appreciation for several days of family, friendship and very good food.

The sense of heritage is particularly strong on Christmas Eve though. It is a night when we share some of the actions played out by ancestors. During the rest of the year, my Czech encounters are limited mainly to my Babi’s (Grandma's) stories, and my own reading of Eastern European literature. Knowledge of the language extends only to greetings, cheering another’s health, or insulting them with some raucous swearing. We haven't yet visited the Czech Republic, despite my desire to explore Prague.

Of course, the other form of access to my Czech heritage is found in my wardrobe. My Babi - whose clothes are so often scattered across this blog - has been a rich source of dresses, coats, bags, belts and hats in the past few years.

Her life has been equally measured out in tragedy and joy. In 1948 her family fled persecution in Czechoslovakia – my great-grandfather’s life in danger. They skied over the border disguised as tourists.  As glamorous or dashing as that sounds, the reality was one of hardship and subsequent suffering. Her mother, father and sister escaped with only the clothes on their backs and possessions in their pockets. My grandmother, who was at boarding school in Switzerland at the time, suddenly had to share the contents of her term-time clothes trunk with mother and sister. This meant only several pairs of knickers, one chemise and a limited number of garments between them. It wasn’t so much starting again from scratch, but starting again from stitch. To go from that state of loss through to amassing thrift-store-found couture and tailored coats with real Chanel buttons is the classic tale of rags to riches. But those relative riches were still hard won, never easily gained.

One of the riches recently given to me is this coat – a blue sheepskin beauty with Hungarian hand embroidery. My Babi’s husband (my late grandfather) bought it for his adored wife on impulse when they went to Innsbruck, Austria for the Winter Olympic Games in 1964. Little did she know then that within four years she would face the untimely death of her husband. But neither did she know that also in Innsbruck at the same time for the Olympics was her future partner – a man that she would not meet for another near three decades. This stroke of serendipity, noticed only in hindsight, was enhanced when they later realized that a relative of this then young man was working at the shop where this coat was purchased. So it represents a bridge between old and new, past and present, taking on a new layer of resonance in being passed on to me.

It felt a suitably warm and bright piece to wear for meeting Jason of Citizen Couture. I was forty-five minutes late for the visit to Somerset House to see both him and the delightful Vanessa, but the time- lag proved fortuitous. I arrived just as the golden curls of late afternoon sun had reached the sandstone. We moved around to the back, escaping the crowds at the ice rink, before heading down to the embankment beneath. The red door - perfectly matching the details of the coat - was discovered under the bridge. It was a very enjoyable afternoon of camera snapping and socialising. I paired the coat with a blue vintage dress, grey heeled vintage boots from eBay and a saddle bag also passed on to me by my Babi.  This outing, the first time of wearing it, signaled a new beginning for this special coat – continuing the pattern of renewal and refreshment that my grandma has practised for her whole life.

It seems an appropriate point to add that I hope everyone has a very happy new year full of festivities and cheer. I’m dizzily excited about what 2013 holds and am hugely grateful to all who have read, commented, emailed or otherwise interacted with this blog and with me in the past year. And finally on the theme of ‘renewal’, I wrote an article recently for Young Minds, about watching my dad go through extremely debilitating clinical depression.