Puttin' on the Glitz!

Rhinestones.  Bugle beads.  Sequins.  Fringe.

These are the elements of glitzy dressing, our topic for today!

You can't really talk about glitz without mentioning Hollywood, where the glitziest fantasies were made reality, or rather unreality.







Garish and guilt-free, glitz has its critics.  My mother was/is the least glitzy person you can imagine.  She used to criticize her friends (to me, me) whom she thought dressed too flashily.   My next door neighbor, a boy named Maury, was also my best friend in elementary school, and his mother, Francine, a sexy divorcee, was the polar opposite of my mother.  Francine had a clothes closet worthy of Ann-Margret. 

 

I know this because after school, Maury and I used to go through it and try on anything trimmed with marabou or sequins, which was just about everything.  (The die was cast early, folks.)  She had enough costume jewelry to rival Jolie Gabor and I still remember her collection of chunky psychedelic Lucite rings that were so popular in the early Seventies.

Parenthetically, is anyone named Francine anymore?

Strange as it may seem, I am not a very glitzy person today and neither is my cousin Cathy, who's more Greer Garson than Mitzi Gaynor. 



No conversation about glitzy dressing (or Mitzi Gaynor) would be complete without mentioning designer Bob Mackie.  I've always loved Bob Mackie, who is probably best known for the wacky, flamboyant costumes he created for Carol Burnett and Cher on their respective television variety shows in the Seventies.



Mackie has continued to costume Cher, seen here on her way to the Piggly Wiggly.



I recently picked up a copy of Mackie's Dressing for Glamour on Amazon, signed by M. Mackie himself!







To be honest, this book doesn't quite live up to its title, being more of a What not to wear when you're short, fat, busty, or some combination thereof guide.  Lots of photos but very few color plates.  Mackie also talks about what it was like to work for various people in the business, but since this was at the height of his busy career, he's diplomatic to a fault, though he does get a dig in at perfectionist Barbra Streisand, who insisted on dyeing her own shoes when she appeared on The Judy Garland Show.  Perhaps she feared Judy might be dyeing them...



And speaking of Judy -- no shrinking violet in the rhinestone department herself -- one of our foremost glitz icons is Liza Minnelli,  most closely associated with the late designer Halston.





Was a Halston design the inspiration behind Simplicity 7295, a vintage pattern from 1975 I've just started making, and part of Simplicity's "Designer Fashion" line?
 

Patterns from this fabulous line can still be found cheap today and many look just like the more costly and collectible Vogue Paris Originals and other designer pattern lines of the period.  Perhaps it's inspired by Diane Von Furstenberg (?).  Anyway, I picked up this pattern recently for just a few dollars on Etsy, and I'm making it with the glitziest fabric in my stash.



I don't know how I ended up with this fabric, a sturdy knit (most likely Poly-Spandex) with little plastic "sequins" heat-transferred onto the surface.  This is both good and bad.  The sequins are strongly adhered to the fabric, but seams must be pressed with great care (not too hot an iron; a press cloth is a must), but they will not crease on the bias.

If you try to press a crease with an iron, you melt the glue and the sequins want to peel off.



What this means is that rather than attach a traditional facing to the front, I'm going to cut my facing (made of my fashion fabric for draping purposes) serge off the seam allowance while attaching both layers (right side of facing to wrong side of garment, with the facing under the garment), and then bind the seam edge with either bias strips of polished cotton (which I've tried) or some silk knit I have in my stash (which I haven't tried).

Either way, this will help to stabilize the edge and provide a smooth, professional look.  I'll likely do this on the cuffs and hems as well.  Again, the fabric won't crease sharply with those plastic do-dads attached.  Can you think of a better way to do this?

Here's a sample (done with white thread) of my binding.  I attach it, right sides together, fold it over the edge, and stitch in the ditch.  To avoid too much thickness, I probably won't fold the inside bias edge under, but either serge the edge before I attach the binding, or just leave as-is.  It won't fray.



Vertical seams are less of a problem, as you can see below.



And that's it.  I am happy to be sewing again after my month-long hiatus.  Despite the cold, the dogs are getting plenty of exercise on their treadmill.



In closing, friends, how do you feel about glitz and glitzy fashion?

I know some of you make costumes for figure skating, ballroom dance competitions, and theater, but outside of those venues, do you ever "glam it up" with sequins, Swarovski crystals, or bugle beads?

Any glitzy gown you remember from your youth, perhaps seen on TV, that made an indelible impression on you?

Who's ready to channel their inner Carol Channing?

Happy Friday, everybody!

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Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever?

Friends, I am back from a very intense, thankfully short, bout with something I'm guessing was Influenza.  It came on rapidly Saturday evening and within 3-4 hours I could hardly lift my head off the pillow.  I'm a big believer in letting fever do its thing (unless you have other medical problems or are a small child or elder) and now, roughly 36 hours later, I'm 85% of the way back.  Was this a cold, a flu, something else entirely?  Who knows.  Suffice it to say I'm glad to be vertical once again and not shivering under three blankets, a ski cap, and a heavy fleece.

How did I entertain myself during this brief illness?  Fortunately, I had a few DVDs from the library I could watch on my laptop while lying down.

Readers, has there ever been a truly entertaining film about West Point?  Perhaps, but I'm afraid 1934's Flirtation Walk, starring Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, ain't it.



You may think, given the leads, that this is one of those big Busby Berkeley spectaculars, but you'd be wrong.  There's a lot of precision marching, sure, but it's all West Point cadets.  I am almost certain none of you have seen Flirtation Walk -- which unbelievably was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture  -- and if you never get a chance, don't worry about it.  That said, I think Dick Powell had an amazingly charismatic screen presence.

Have you ever heard of The Bell Telephone Hour?  These were musical shows made primarily in the Sixties featuring musical theater stars of the day, and this is a fantastic series if you find it at your local library.  Yesterday I watched one featuring two beloved TV moms, Shirley Jones and Florence Henderson.  

You may not know that Florence Henderson was a Broadway ingenue in the Fifties and Sixties and starred in the first national tour of The Sound of Music long before The Brady Bunch.  She's delightful on this DVD, and if you have roughly four hours to spare, listen to her multi-part interview for The Archive of American Television that starts here. 

This woman has had a sixty-year career (so far) and has never stopped working.  Poor Shirley fares much less well on her portion of the video, I'm afraid, sounding somewhat off key and ragged throughout -- these were recorded live so maybe she had what I have now -- but looking beautiful in a series of Grecian chiffon gowns.

The Daily Ditches continue!  I sold this Joe Colombo plastic cart (I had three) on Craiglist on Thursday, so even though I haven't sold any sewing machines, I now have space for all of them, sort of.



And now a very specific question one of you Blogspot bloggers might be able to answer.  Since I started MPB, whenever I imported an image into the blog through the "insert image" icon, the image would automatically end up in a Male Pattern Boldness file in Picasa.  Since last week, unfortunately, this no longer happens.  Each imported image ends up in its own Picasa file, which is extremely inconvenient.  Any idea how I can fix this, or if it's something that's changed in Picasa and/or Blogspot?

As you can see, the colder weather means the dogs are exercising on their treadmill again, which they can do for 45 minutes at a time.  They seem to like it; I mean, if they didn't they could always jump off.  In the background you can see that my Featherweight table sits in the far corner; I've placed a big teak tray over the hole -- there's something about the look of a gap in the middle of a table I don't love.



Readers, that's it!  I am drinking lots of tea and eating lots of citrus, and just taking it easy.  Sewing will have to wait but it's certainly on my radar.  I hope everybody's well -- fortunately flu viruses can't be transmitted over the Internet.

Have a great -- and healthy -- day, everybody!

Sing out, Florence...

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Whither the Chorus Girl? + ASSIGNMENT

Friends, to say that the chorus girl was a popular stock character in old Hollywood movies (by which I mean the pre-Sixties studio days) is to state the obvious.  But have you ever wondered whatever happened to her?  Look around: she's nowhere to be found.

Showgirls, chorus girls, burlesque queens -- how many thousands of them danced across the screen in the golden days of Hollywood?  They all had one thing in common: curves.  The chorus girl represented sex, pure and simple, in the days when graphic sexuality wasn't just a mouse click away.

While there were chorus girls even back in the silent era, it really took sound to put the movie chorus girl front and center. With sound came the movie musical, and musicals started out as little more than an excuse to display beautiful, leggy young women in skimpy costumes.  Later, when "book" musicals became popular (whose songs were integral to the plot) movies that took place in a show business milieu grew scarcer, and we didn't really need quite so many chorus girls.  There weren't any in Gigi but there were plenty in backstagers like Forty-Second Street or Ziegfeld Girl.

Nearly every actress with the exception of Marjorie Main ended up cast as a showgirl at one time or other, even actresses better known for dramatic roles, like Barbara Stanwyck (in Ball of Fire) or Joan Crawford (in Dancing Lady or Flamingo Road).

The showgirl story usually told the tale of a poor girl getting plucked from obscurity (Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl), or rubbing up against social class distinctions (Ginger Rogers in Vivacious Lady), or both. Naturally, there were plenty of musical numbers thrown in just to keep it real.

Showgirls and chorus girls were beloved, not only because they were glamorous and sexy, but also because, like most movie audiences, they were working class -- invariably from Brooklyn or the Barbary Coast or Tenth Avenue or some other location associated with "low-down" living.  Showgirls were "good" and showgirls were "bad" but there's no question they were everywhere, especially during World War II, when leggy stars like Grable and Hayworth were at their peak of popularity.

Movies that revolved around chorus girls allowed Hollywood costume designers like William Travilla, Jean Louis, Orry Kelly, Irene Sharaff, Adrian and so many others, to indulge their wildest showbiz fantasies in sequins, feathers, fur, lace -- the works -- though sometimes there was dangerously little of these on display!

After the major studios broke up in the Nineteen-Fifties, there was television, and well into the Eighties designers like Bob Mackie were still creating spectacular showgirl creations for musical variety shows starring Mitzi Gaynor, Cher, or Ann-Margret -- the last of the true "showgirl" types.

Today we still have shows (on Broadway, in Vegas) and occasionally there's still a chorus of "girls," but the chorus girl as pop culture icon is as dated a type as the screwball heiress, the shopgirl Cinderella, and the teenage soprano.

Sadly, for the home sewer, there never were any commerical chorus girl or showgirl-type patterns, even back in the Nineteen-Forties.  A few costume patterns can be found for the occasional community theater production of Annie Get Your Gun or Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but that's about it.  It's a little sad, really.

What or who killed the chorus girl?  So many things, readers!  Before she died as a film icon, the chorus girl had faded away in real life.  The popularity of television meant that more people were staying home rather than seeking out the nightclubs, stage shows, and burlesque venues that gave work to so many showgirls.  (This echoes what happened to theater when motion pictures became popular decades earlier, and it's not a coincidence that so many movie musicals took place in the Gay Nineties or early decades of the Twentieth Century when most forms of entertainment were live.)

A slow loosening of censorship after WWII and more openness about sexuality in American culture meant that men could get their share of scantily clad ladies on the pages of Playboy or in porno theaters -- they didn't have to sit through The Dolly Sisters, waiting for Betty Grable to show a little leg.  Today, when images of graphic sexuality are a keyboard click away, a low-cut bodice or tightly fitted dance costume may be alluring, but it's not the stuff of most contemporary straight male fantasies.  A "burlesque" performer like Dita Von Teese is a sentimental throwback to an earlier era, but it's more homage than a true resurrection, even if it's meant to elicit a frisson.  Judging by what I read on the vintage sewing blogs, performers like Dita Von Teese are more of interest to straight women of an intellectual bent than to men.

Dita Von Teese

Finally, the Pill meant that there were flesh-and-blood women to engage with, rather than just a celluloid or print fantasy.

Meanwhile, in the movies, films like the much-hyped Christina Aguilera vehicle Burlesque or the infamous cult classic Showgirls have ended up feeling dated, exploitative, or just plain embarrassing. 

We're about as far from the risque charms of Gold Diggers of 1933 as we could be.  Joan Blondell never gave a lap dance and Marilyn Monroe never licked a pole.

Finally, the demise of the showgirl reflects a culture in which it is no longer officially acceptable to objectify women.  Most women don't want to be considered objects and would probably judge the role of the showgirl as she was depicted in movies of the past to be demeaning.  We don't "glorify the American girl" anymore, even if we still have beauty pageants and the leggy-but-wholesome Rockettes.

 

Lindsay Lohan may be in this month's Playboy, in an homage to Marilyn, but the whole thing feels forced and joyless.

I had the privilege of watching a most fascinating film about chorus girls last night, Ladies of the Chorus from 1948.  Cheaply made and just one hour long, it's nevertheless fascinating, hilarious, and highly entertaining, not the least because it's Marilyn Monroe's first starring role and we get to see her before she'd developed her dumb blonde persona.  Here she seems like a normal young woman, or as normal as a woman can be playing a character who's the "Queen of Burlesque."

The entire film can be viewed on YouTube, and if you have an hour to spare today, please do take a look, if only to hear such hilarious showgirl pearls as "Why you gray-haired old hag, shut your mouth or I'll slap it shut!" and "I'm quittin' -- this turkey can fold for all I care!"  

Your assignment, friends, is to watch Ladies of the Chorus (it's in roughly seven parts) and report back.  Anything seem strange about this film, which occasionally has the feel of a high school health film and the production values to match?  

What do you think of Marilyn, or "old hag" Adele Jergens, the woman who plays her mother (Jergens was just nine years older than Marilyn)?

In closing, do you have a favorite film featuring or focused on chorus girls?  Do you find the chorus girl/showgirl of yore entertaining, demeaning, or a little of both!

Ever sewn a chorus girl outfit -- or wanted to?

Jump in!

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Mae West Style + GIVEAWAY!

She wasn't thin, she wasn't young (not at the height of her fame anyway), and she wasn't particularly beautiful, yet there's no denying that Mae West was a true sex symbol in her day.

What do you make of Brooklyn-born Mae West -- actress, playwright, singer, comedian, sexual trailblazer?

Many excellent biographies of Mae West have been written in the last decade and she wrote her own autobiography in the late Fifties, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It.   Outspoken about female sexuality (and sexuality in general), she was a feminist before feminism had a name.  And yet, especially toward the end of her life, she seemed trapped in the campy caricature she herself had created -- the raunchy, ever-sexually-available woman.

Apart from her movies, the best of which were made in the Thirties for Paramount, she's best known for her endless witticisms, among them,  “Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere,"  “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted,""It's not the men in your life, it's the life in your men," and  “When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better. ”

Mae started performing around 1900 and was still performing in the Nineteen-Seventies!  To see Mae West in her last film, Sextette, however, wig piled atop wig, is to watch someone who seems to have lost perspective on how they come across.   In her mind, she never changed -- which in one way (her taste) was true, but in another (her allure) was terribly false.  I guess you can argue that it's heroic that she never dropped the mask in public; I'm not so sure.

I love Mae West, and in her early films she seems more like a real person than the lip-smacking, hip-rolling stereotype she became.  Before the so-called Hays Code in 1934 forced her to censor her more explicit material (which she wrote herself) she was one-of-a-kind bawdy.  She was still one-of-a-kind after 1934, but tamed, she was much less fun.  She eventually stopped working in films to perform on stage in successes like Catherine Was Great (she played Catherine).  She also had a touring stage show with loincloth-clad musclemen and was an occasional guest star on TV (Mr. Ed), usually playing herself.  Her return to films in Myra Breckinridge in 1970 was a big comeback for her, and she was back in the limelight till the end, recording albums of rock music (The Doors!), giving interviews, and promoting new projects.

Mae nearly always appeared in spangly Gay Nineties-inspired gowns or variations thereof -- many designed by Paramount costume designer Edith Head -- that showed off her hourglass figure.  Ostrich plumes, sequins, and huge hats were all part of the look that she stuck with throughout her career.   She wasn't a tall woman, and she wore shoes like these for extra height, hidden under her gown.  Can you imagine?

I have a wonderful Mae West giveaway today for all you Mae West fans out there, the Mae West Paper Doll book by Tom Tierney.  It's full of beautiful color illustrations (and detailed information) of many of her most famous costumes from stage and screen, as well as biographical information about Mae herself.









If you'd like to be considered for the Mae West giveaway, just leave a comment below before Wednesday at midnight, EST.  I'll announce the winner on Thursday, December 15, and will try to ship it out to you in time for Christmas.  (If you want to comment but don't want to be entered in the giveaway, just let me know.)

What are your thoughts about Mae West?  Do you find her inspirational and empowering, or embarrassing?  Role model or relic?

Do tell!

Here's Mae still going (semi) strong, somewhere in her mid Eighties, speak-singing Captain and Tennille as only she could.

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