Tete a Tete Questions or Comments Should Be Posted Here

[shredder]

NJS,
Ah, the je ne sais quoi element... Back to square one, are we?
cheers,
c

[storeynicholas]

NJS,
Ah, the je ne sais quoi element... Back to square one, are we?
cheers,
c

It all reminds me of stanza 27 from FitzGerald's translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubai'yat:

[/i]Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

We all seem to be drawn to ponder and debate the essentially imponderable.
NJS

[shredder]

How true, NJS. We humans have been, for a few millennia, seeking absolute truth, absolute beauty and to attempt to construct a system of logic to end all quibbles. I think that pondering the imponderable is a noble pusuit. At some level, I hope that we never succeed lest we enter the Age of Boredom through enlightenment.

Some clever person once said that ignorance is bliss. I wonder whether it was just a sarky comment...
s

[storeynicholas]

Shredder - Exactly: we would die of boredom and generations yet unborn would curse our memory! However, even though we may not find the stone cast into the water, it is given to us to trace the ripples and even though we struggle (and always fail) to define elegance and beauty, examples of them are all about us. Here, for an example, is a photograph of Hedy Lamarr - not just a lovely face either as she was also an inventor and she sold millions of dollars' worth of kisses for the war effort in a singtle evening. It is not just her physicality either - one can just sense that there was an unusual degree of power present.









I had hoped to find a copy of a particular photograph of Jack Buchanan and Maurice Chevalier together as it illustrates my point of the difference between them as I see it. It used to hang in the Odeon West End on the south side of Leicester Square - which JB built as a theatre. This interesting building has been scheduled for demolition (to enable more profitable use of the site, of course) for some time and I could just see this photograph (along with several others) finding its way to the local rubbish dump. I have been able to e-mail the cinema and they will get back to me. I hope that I can get a copy of it and then I can try to show what I mean about the subtle difference between their individual qualities.
NJS[/img]

[shredder]

NJS, I hope you find the photo as I, and no doubt others on LL, would love to see it. Judging female beauty is a very tricky business because, speaking from experience, there are too many things that could cloud one's judgement...

On the matter of chic, I suppose that the part that we cannot define is the bit we call mystique. And, without mystique it will face a real risk of becoming rather, well, common.

By the way, it seems reasonable to make this thread a "sticky" so long as the referenced thread remains a "sticky" too?
cheers,
s

[storeynicholas]

I have just heard from the manager of the cinema where various pictures (including this one), are. Needless to say, they are no longer on display but, at least, they are safe - and he tells me will go to the Odeon Leicester Square across the way - I suggested that the Theatre Museum might display them. I have asked him whether he knows the source of this photograph and, if not, whether I might have a scan of their copy. In any event, somehow we will see it!!
NJS

[shredder]

there is some element of the notion of 'chic' that, for me, is exclusively French.

I submit Sir Noël Coward as evidence.

[storeynicholas]

there is some element of the notion of 'chic' that, for me, is exclusively French.

I submit Sir Noël Coward as evidence.

Hee hee! Indeed - there is even a photo of him called ´the wink´!!
NJS

[shredder]

We, including yours truly, seem to refer more frequently to dead people as style icons of one sort or another. Sign of the times? Are we closet, or outed , retros? Or just inevitable when examining past, present and future as an integrated whole?

[storeynicholas]

We, including yours truly, seem to refer more frequently to dead people as style icons of one sort or another. Sign of the times? Are we closet, or outed , retros? Or just inevitable when examining past, present and future as an integrated whole?

I suppose that there is an inevitability in our looking to the past because it is so rich in example - and many of them have been known to us all our lives. It is probably also a sign of the times in that there are possibly fewer style icons in proportion to the rest of us now than ever before!!
NJS

[Frog in Suit]

We, including yours truly, seem to refer more frequently to dead people as style icons of one sort or another. Sign of the times? Are we closet, or outed , retros? Or just inevitable when examining past, present and future as an integrated whole?

I suppose that there is an inevitability in our looking to the past because it is so rich in example - and many of them have been known to us all our lives. It is probably also a sign of the times in that there are possibly fewer style icons in proportion to the rest of us now than ever before!!
NJS

I wonder if we may not be losing a sense of historical perspective here.

It seems to me (and I am much too lazy to build up a statistical body of argument to back up this notion of mine) that most of those "dead people" with the notable exceptions of Churchill, the late Princes of Wales, Anthony Eden, Gianni Agnelli, who else? were really, for lack of a more neutral term, "Hollywood types".

It so happens that, in those halcyon days of sartorial perfection, Fred Astaire was turned down by Hawes & Curtis when he tried to have them make a copy of the POW's evening waistcoat and had to go to A & S who took him (So much for their exclusiveness at that time!). Bing Crosby writes that Lesley & Roberts whisked him into an inner room, because, he thought, "they did not want the clients to see such an apparition in their shop." We also know that King George V was dismayed by his son's absorption in clothes and his sartorial heterodoxy. They may have had enormous appeal to the (young) man in the street and his girl, on their way to the local "picture palace" but they were far from being style icons to the correct dressers (the LL crowd contemporary equivalent if you will) of their time. Au contraire!

I suspect therefore that those men (the then POW, Astaire et al) were then like today's "Hollywood types": black suits, no ties, blue jeans with everything, brand logos everywhere etc... (Not having a television set, we bask in our blissful ignorance of their innumerable solecisms.) Those types are thought by most or all participants in this forum to be beyond the pale, a sartorial equivalent of the Barbarians at the gates. Fine. But is it not only in hindsight that the earlier Hollywood type turns into the “style icon”? He was probably considered sloppy and vulgar by all right-thinking people of his time.

It does not follow that we should give in to the modern trends. Be damned with your logos and black suits, I say! I only fear that the football and television stars of today may turn into the style icons of tomorrow. It is satisfying to know that we will no longer be around to witness this abomination.

Frog in Suit

[storeynicholas]

Dear FiS:
I feel that this man got there in the 17th century:

http://www.bartleby.com/40/246.html
best,
NJS

[pvpatty]

It is satisfying to know that we will no longer be around to witness this abomination.

Frog in Suit

Spare a thought for those of us who are still (hopefully) in the first half of our lives!

[kilted2000]

Spare a thought for those of us who are still (hopefully) in the first half of our lives![/quote]

Seconded

[shredder]

Interesting point, FiS. Beau Brummel also went à rebours with respect to his attire but gained broad acceptance and respectability like the actors and sportsmen of today.

Is it the case that notions like "traditional," "stylish," "chic," "good taste," "classic" and "authentic" are actually moving targets? If we step away from garments just for a moment, I am reminded of how we view, for example, Belle Epoque, Art Nouveau / Jugendstil and Art Deco as being classic, stylish and authentic in its original form and quite respectable today as reference points for contemporary design. Yet, when Art Deco came into vogue, Art Nouveau and Belle Epoque styles were dropped like a piece of lead. A few years later, Deco suffered a similar fate.

I do not wish to subscribe to a relativist view but do wonder about it...