FEAST OR FAMINE

The France  Harper’s Bazaar  fashion magazine cover of February 2024 harks back to the 1960s in the age of the model known as Twiggy.    The cover announces “ ALLO … TWIGGY coup de fil au premier top model”  – “ALLO … TWIGGY phone call to the first top model” which alludes to a four-page interview with Twiggy, now 74 years old.   British model Lesley Hornby, born in 1949, is now Dame Lesley Lawson, still known by her modeling name Twiggy. She was the face of the androgynous, wide-eyed model with the short hair – the opposite of the on-trend feminine models with long, flowing hair.    She was 16 years old in January 1966 when she had her hair cut and coloured by Leonard Lewis, owner of Leonard of Mayfair. This hairstyle, and the photography of Barry Lategan, swiftly launched her onto the cover of almost every fashion and young girls’ magazine into the 70s and 80s.    The current 2024 France  Harper’s Bazaar  attempts to replicat...

  From March 2 to July 10, 2022, the Museum of Luxembourg in Paris is presenting paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, textiles, and literary works that highlight the role of women in the development of modern artistic movements in the 1920s. The pioneers include artists such as Tamara de Lempicka, Sonia Delaunay, Tarsila do Amaral, and Chana Orloff, born at the end of the 19 th  century and the beginning of the 20 th  century. This is the time that women gained access to the great schools of art. During the 1920s, the roaring twenties, many of the artistic women stayed in Paris for a few weeks or a few years to “be seen” in the art sphere. The new pioneering women were the first to be recognized as artists, and have their own studio, gallery, or publishing house. They led art workshops that drew and painted naked bodies, male and female. They dressed as they wished, expressed whatever sexuality they wanted to, and chose to marry or not. They had ownership of their s...

  Today, I am celebrating the annual International Women’s Day on 8 March 2022 with the book  My Life, My Look (2015), the memoir of Australian fashion designer Carla Zampatti. Italian-born Carla Zampatti (1942-2021) moved to Australia in 1950 as an eight-year-old, had her first clothing collection in 1965, and celebrated 55 years in the fashion industry in 2020.   She begins with her mother Anna and father Domenico, who migrated to Australia with Carla and her two older brothers, Dino and Pasquale.     Carla Zampatti knew from the age of five that fashion was her destiny. Her first creation was a cream linen suit. She left home with her sewing machine at the age of 20 in 1963  to live in Sydney. Her green velvet pantsuit made it to the display window of a large department store in 1965 – it was an instant success for its smart tailoring and versatility at a time when women wearing pants was not socially acceptable. The same year, she held the fi...