Coming soon | On The Road and The Great Gatsby

I’ve got got goosebumps from watching this magnificent trailer for On The Road, Walter Salles’ adaptation of Kerouac’s classic novel, and I can’t wait to see the trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby, set to be released in cinemas in December.

I recently wrote a piece about literature and fashion for the Alliance of Literary Societies‘ annual members’ journal. You can read the full piece here, but here’s an extract:

The fact that the 20s and 50s were post-war eras of economic boom in the US (in salient contrast with our own time), where decadence, along with a certain frenetic energy and nostalgia for the past marked the fashion trends of the day, makes the two heroes of these classic novels doubly attractive to the fashion world today. Imitating the style of those decades is a kind of wish fulfillment, escapism, precisely because of the financial depression we now find ourselves in. Luhrmann’s new film of The Great Gatsby will be in 3-D. However you feel about 3-D cinema, it just goes to show the extent to which the director wants to push the aesthetic world of Fitzgerald, bringing the textures and colours alive. The visual element of Fitzgerald’s work has always been important, and this year sees his aesthetic influence reaching from the page to the screen and onto the catwalks and viewers – or readers – themselves. Fashion is, in many ways, the physical embodiment of ideas, of an ethos.

Fitzgerald’s descriptions of Gatsby’s parties evoke images that are incredibly familiar to the fashion world: ‘the air is alive with the chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.’ It could, after all, be a scene from any London Fashion Week party. The Jazz Age and the Beat Generation portrayed in The Great Gatsby and On The Road may be solid enough visual cues to draw the fashion industry into imitation, but their philosophy and their heroes remain tantalisingly out of reach; the ultimate fashion icons, in fact. They are awful in their moments of degradation: when John Galliano was exposed for making anti-Semitic remarks last year, no one in the fashion world knew how to react. We never actually want to see through our heroes, because in them we see what we might wish to be – they represent precious ideals.

High fashion, then, is the communal stamp of approval upon something that must go on to become a very personal quest. Fashion is simultaneously something that is, and is not, learnt. Gatsby’s gypsy butterfly girls flitting from group to group in their ‘gas blue’ silks and pearls are on this personal quest, chasing something elusive on the spray of champagne. Sal and Dean are on this quest, catching a glimpse of America as they wind down the windows and make love to the night as it pours in over the dashboard, lifting their sweaty palms in an ecstasy of rhythm as the trumpet player blows his heart out in a grimy club. It is something you can’t ever quite put your finger on, but you know it when you see it. The worlds of fashion and literature have this great Aesthetic Mystery in common.

TREND | Lace

It’s everywhere I look. Pretty, blossom coloured lace, Zara copies of Valentino girlish Audrey Hepburn-ish dresses, modest high necklines and glimpses of sylph-like legs. Maybe it’s the association with Victoriana and fluttering fans, but there’s something irresistibly flirtatious about lace; the way it simultaneously conceals and reveals.

While Valentino and Louis Vuitton gave us pastels and sugar bright colours for a Summer replete with broderie anglaise, waists cinched in with skinny belts and feet wearing barely-there sandals, this pretty sweetness gives away to a more solemn look for the Autumn. It just shows the versatility of lace that two seasons in the same year could use it in such different ways. Collette Dinnigan’s Autumn/Winter show was decidedly more tough than Valentino’s collection: this may have had something to do with her knee-length embellished lace socks, which had an air of the gladiator sandal about them. Erdem’s latex lace gives a twist on the traditional, too. Francesca Marotta’s Baroque-inspired Autumn/Winter collection is full of drama, with a red lace cape and high collared black lace shirts. And then there is Marchesa, with sumptuous gold embellishment and regal lace making dresses more appropriate for hem-kissing than anything else.

But for now, it’s Spring and the colours are soft and giddily sweet. I found this beautiful late 1950s lace shift dress for £25 in Portobello Market last year, and I can tell it’s going to stand me in good stead not just for this year, but for many to come. I like to wear it with a black satin bow belt from H&M. Lace making has been a treasured skill in Europe for centuries, and really, when you think about it, it never really goes out of fashion.

1950s cover girl // TREND

Cinched in waists, A-line skirts, and generally all-round beautiful tailoring. I’ve had these things on the brain not just because Vogue ran a 1950s inspired photo shoot last month, but also because I recently discovered a suitcase full of photos from my granny’s modelling days.

Fashionising recently talked about how the 1950s look is emerging and evolving this year, and the A-line skirt features in Vogue’s A-Z of Autumn/Winter 2012 trends. As is often the case, however, I think it’s really the link between Hollywood and the catwalk that is behind the decade’s current appeal. My Week With Marilyn has undoubtedly had a role to play, and the lady herself was one of the greatest fashion icons of all time.

Looking through the photos of my granny made me wish she had left us more of her fabulous wardrobe. I wore her black chiffon dress embroidered with hundreds of tiny beads clustered into constellations to a ball last year, a dress which she told my mother was a Balenciaga. Hard to know for sure, though, because it was a sample and therefore didn’t have a label. It will just have to remain a mystery. Unless taking it to a vintage designer specialist would shed some light on the origin. I might try it and see; playing the fashion detective? Sounds like fun!

Wearing my Grandmother's dress