Wednesday, 30 December 2015
Tuesday, 29 December 2015
TAKE IVY "Encore" ... English version 2010, by Powerhouse
Take Ivy is a
fashion photography book which documents the attire of Ivy League
students. The New York Times described it as “a treasure of fashion
insiders”. Take Ivy has been the Ivy League bible for Japanese baby
boomers, among whom the Ivy League look is very popular, though
original copies are very rare in the West, garnering auction prices
as high as $2000.
Take Ivy was
authored by four Japanese sartorial style enthusiasts and is a
collection of candid photographs shot on the campuses of America’s
elite Ivy League universities. The series focuses on college-aged men
and their clothes, capturing the unique fashion of the student
population of that time. Whether getting a meal on campus, lounging
in the quad, riding bikes, studying in the library, in class, or at
the boathouse, the subjects of this photographic compendium are
impeccably and distinctively dressed in some of the finest
American-made garments of the time.
Authors
Teruyoshi Hayashida
was born and raised in the fashionable Aoyama District of Tokyo. He
began shooting cover images for Men’s Club magazine right after the
title’s launch. His style was considered to be highly sophisticated
and he was thought of as a connoisseur of gourmet food, known for his
homemade, soy-sauce-marinated Japanese pepper (sansho), and his love
of gunnel tempura and Riesling wine.
Shosuke Ishizu, the
director of Ishizu Office, born in Okayama Prefecture, worked in the
editorial division at Men’s Club until 1960 after graduating from
Kuwasawa Design School. He established Ishizu Office in 1983, and now
produces several clothing brands including Niblick.
Toshiyuki Kurosu
joined VAN Jacket Inc. in 1961, where he was responsible for the
development of merchandise and sales promotion. Leaving the company
in 1970 he started his own business, Cross and Simon. After the brand
stopped doing business, Toshiyuki began appearing on the legendary
variety show Asayan as a regular gaining him high popularity among
the public. Toshiyuki is also an active writer and intellectual.
Hajime (Paul)
Hasegawa is from Hyogo Prefecture. After finishing his studies in the
U.S. in 1963, Hasegawa returned to Japan to join VAN Jacket Inc.
There he was responsible for advertising and public relations.
Hasegawa was the main coordinator and interpreter for the production
of Take Ivy. He has since held various managerial positions in Japan
and abroad and is currently serving as the executive director for
Cosmo Public Relations Corporation.
Take Ivy was
released in the United States on August 31, 2010.
Sunday, 27 December 2015
Saturday, 26 December 2015
Downton Abbey Christmas Special 2015 Reviews / VÍDEO: SERIES FINALE (Christmas Special 2015) (6x09)
Downton
Abbey review: the glorious fantasy of Britain comes to an end
The posh period
drama had great performances and even the odd insight into British
life – and its final episode leaves a gaping hole in ITV’s Sunday
schedule
Richard Vine
Saturday 26 December 2015 00.01 GMT
They managed to
resist covering everything in snow until the very end, but Downton
Abbey’s final ever episode was very much a kitchen sink affair.
Julian Fellowes chucked in a wedding, a birth, new jobs and old
fights, and a spirited version of Auld Lang Syne to wrap it all up.
The big rivalry
between Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary and Laura Carmichael’s Lady
Edith was resolved. Dinner at The Ritz helped. Lady Mary engineered a
sneaky date with Bertie (aka the 7th Marquess of Hexham), and soon
Lady Edith had fought off her destiny as the great spinster of
Downton and was instead making plans for a New Year’s wedding
(saves on decorations, plus it’s one less big party scene to film)
and life as a Marchioness.
“You’re such a
paradox: you make me miserable for years, then you give me my life
back,” said Edith to Mary, a line that no doubt echoes the
sentiments from many of Downton’s unwilling viewers in living rooms
across Britain. Lady Edith even found the courage to knock Bertie’s
mother off her moral high horse with a truth bomb: admitting that
ward Marigold is her illegitimate daughter.
Henry Talbot
(Matthew Goode, adding some last-minute class to proceedings) gazed
into the distance, smoking with all the existential angst of a man
about to enter a new year without much to do. Watching a pal die
while motor racing will do that to a chap. Tom came to the rescue
with a plan, and the ex-chauffeur and the ex-racing car driver teamed
up to become second-hand car salesmen – just what the village
needs!
Bates and Anna got
their happy ending: a New Year’s baby, with Lady Mary for once
helping Anna off with her shoes, and tucking her into bed – see
what they did there? Countess Violet (Maggie Smith) continued to be
the Downton character with the most uptown funk, stepping in to help
Isobel Crawley fend off Dickie Merton’s mean daughter-in-law (“If
reason fails, try force!”), and Lady Rose returned to up the
glamour factor (Lily James in a cameo presumably tucked in before her
starring role in BBC1’s lavish New Year’s Day production of War
And Peace).
Elsewhere, the
arrival of an electric hairdryer (whatever next!) prompted Daisy to
chop off her hair and join the bob squad, Mr Molesley accepted a job
as a teacher (but still squeezed back into his livery for New Year)
and Baxter freed herself from her criminal past by … doing nothing.
After all these
years, it’s still hard to nail down what Downton Abbey actually is.
UK critics might have been surprised to see it nominated again in
this year’s US Emmy awards for best drama – the only British
entry, alongside Game of Thrones, Orange Is the New Black and Mad
Men. But it’s been a proper international blockbuster, up there
with Doctor Who and Top Gear in terms of British TV with cut-through
appeal across the world.
At home, the show
has always played like a posh pantomime – a fantasy vision of a
Britain that never really existed, where everyone from kitchen maid
to second footman is happy with their lot because the people at the
top are such bally decent chaps. It’s also ended up being a place
where both the staff grinding away downstairs and the toffs in ball
gowns upstairs have been gifted with a peculiar sense of foresight, a
tangible sense of their place in history and how “things” will
never be the same again, once they’re off the screen.
It’s certainly the
purest Sunday night soap we’ve had for years; sometimes it’s been
an hour populated by 20-odd characters in search of a plot, and
sometimes it’s filled with great performances and insight into
class and position.
Downton
Abbey Christmas special finale, ITV, review: An unashamedly
sentimental send-off
'With any luck,
they’ll be happy enough, which is the English version of a happy
ending'
Sarah Hughes
After six series, 51
episodes and almost a decade’s worth of drama, misunderstandings
and withering putdowns, Downton Abbey came to an end with a
feature-length Christmas special containing a wedding, a pregnancy, a
birth, the prospect of new horizons and the changing of the old
guard.
As ever with Julian
Fellowes’ long-running tale of life above and below stairs the plot
wasn’t really the thing (although it was a pleasure to see
permanently thwarted valet Barrow finally given a reason to smile
after Lord Grantham named him butler on Carson’s enforced
retirement).
This was the
ultimate piece of Christmas television viewing, an unashamedly
sentimental send-off that saw wrongs righted, love conquer all and
even Lady Mary’s famous Freudian slip down a notch.
“We’re sisters
and sisters keep secrets,” she remarked of her fraught relationship
with Lady Edith, as close as long-term viewers will get to an
acknowledgement that she was in the wrong.
Yet even as we said
farewell to the assorted members of the Crawley clan, thoughts turned
to what ITV will do next. Fellowes’ comforting, conservative
confection became a global phenomenon, watched in 250 territories
worldwide and pulling in over 120 million viewers globally.
It was particularly
big news in America where ratings have continued to rise even as the
most devoted fans acknowledged that the writing had slipped.
It could also be
said to have single-handedly revived ITV’s fortunes – in 2010,
the year the series began, the channel trebled its annual profits
posting a pre-tax total of £312million up from £108 million the
previous year.
In March 2014 ITV
posted full-year pre-tax profits of £712 million. The pressure now
will be on to find a suitable replacement with the smart money on
Daisy Goodwin’s upcoming take on the early life of Queen Victoria
which features former Doctor Who star Jenna Coleman in the lead role.
Even with that
pedigree the new series will have some way to go to rival Downton’s
appeal.
As to why this
series hit the spot above all others pulling in millions of viewers
each week, the answer is simple: beneath the Big House trappings, the
elegant costumes and the tantalising peaks into how the other half
might once have lived, Downton Abbey was a soap opera.
You always knew how
each character would act and react and, like any good soap, the more
plots changed the more they stayed the same.
The 1900s might give
way to the roaring Twenties and the Crawleys strive to adapt with the
times but our enjoyment came from knowing that this was a show where
even the darkest moments came bathed in warm nostalgia for times long
past.
As the episode
finished Fellowes unashamedly made one last bid for our heartstrings
cuing up the familiar strains of Auld Lang Syne as snow fell thick
outside.
In truth Maggie
Smith’s Dowager Duchess of Grantham had delivered the best obituary
earlier when she remarked: “With any luck they’ll be happy
enough, which is the English version of a happy ending.” Few among
us could ask for more.
Friday, 25 December 2015
London's 14 oldest stores
London's
14 oldest stores
One
of the joys of shopping in London today comes from discovering any
number of traditional stores that have remained little changed since
they were founded hundreds of years ago. These are some of the
oldest…
Winston Churchill,
Charles Chaplin, and Admiral Lord Nelson, among other luminaries,
have donned Lock headwear. Let’s not forget Firmin & Sons,
which doesn’t retain an old store but survives as probably the
third oldest business in London after the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
(1570) and the London Gazette (1665). It made belts, buttons,
uniforms, and insignia; the company supplied buttons to every British
monarch, officially, since 1796.
--
Taken from National
Geographic London Book of Lists: The City’s Best, Worst, Oldest,
Greatest, and Quirkiest (National Geographic Books; ISBN
978-1-4262-1382-3; $19.95) by Tim Jepson and Larry Porges.
Picture: GETTY
1689 - Ede &
Ravenscroft (93 Chancery Lane, WC2, tel 020 7405 3906,
edeandravenscroft.co.uk). The oldest tailor, wig-, and robe-maker in
London (and probably the world) began in the Aldwych area of the
city. It was soon supplying robes to William and Mary and has
continued to serve the monarchy, as well as the legal, clerical,
municipal, and academic professions.
Picture: GETTY
1698 - The “Widow
Bourne” established London’s oldest wine business, Berry Brothers
& Rudd (3 St. James’s St., SW1, tel 0800 280 2440, bbr.com),
more than three centuries ago. Eight generations later, it’s still
in the same family, at the same address. During its long history, it
first supplied the royal family in 1830 as well as the wine for the
Titanic.
Picture: GETTY
1706 - In 1706,
Thomas Twining bought Tom’s Coffee House at 216 Strand. The
location, between the City and Westminster, was ideal for picking up
business from wealthy Londoners displaced west by the Great Fire.
Twinings & Co (tel 020 7353 3511, twinings.co.uk) still sells tea
and coffee from the same address.
Picture: GETTY
1707 - William
Fortnum was a footman at the court of Queen Anne and had a sideline
selling partly burned candles from the royal candelabra. Using the
money he amassed, he set up a grocery store with his landlord, Hugh
Mason. The fine food emporium Fortnum & Mason (181 Piccadilly,
London, W1, tel 0845 300 1707, fortnumandmason.com) remains on the
same site to this day.
Picture: GETTY
1730 - Does any
store smell better than Floris (89 Jermyn St., SW1, tel 020 7747
3600, florislondon.com), a perfumer still at the site on which it was
founded in 1730 by Spaniard Juan Famenias Floris? Much of the store’s
beautiful interior dates from 1851, when the counter and wooden
display cases were brought from the Great Exhibition of that year.
Picture: ALAMY
1750 - Swaine Adeney
Brigg (7 Piccadilly Arcade, St. James’s, SW1, tel 020 7409 7277,
swaineadeney.co.uk) still makes the exquisite leather goods for which
it first became famous, along with hats and umbrellas.
Picture: GETTY
1760 - Hamleys
(188-196 Regent St., W1, tel 0871 704 1977, hamleys.com) is the
world’s oldest toy store, but it has moved several times since its
first incarnation — a store known as Noah’s Ark founded in 1760
by William Hamley at 231 High Holborn, WC1, which was destroyed by
fire in 1901.
Picture: GETTY
1787 - James J. Fox,
or Robert Lewis as it then was (19 St. James’s St., SW1, tel 020
7930 3787, jjfox.co.uk), provided possibly the most famous cigars in
the world—those smoked by Sir Winston Churchill—and is the
world’s oldest cigar merchant. It has a museum (closed Sun., free),
with cigar memorabilia dating back to the firm’s foundation.
Picture: ALAMY
1790 - D. R. Harris
& Co. (29 St. James’s St., W1, tel 020 7930 3915,
drharris.co.uk) began as Harris’s Apothecary, established by
surgeon Henry Harris to sell lavender water, cologne, and English
flower perfumes to the fashionable set of St. James’s. It is still
there, a few doors down from the original address, and still sells
shaving products, aftershaves, colognes, and skincare items from
beautiful old premises.
Picture: ALAMY
1797 - Hatchard’s
(187 Piccadilly, W1, tel 020 7439 9921, hatchards.co.uk) is the
United Kingdom’s oldest bookstore and still trades from Piccadilly,
where the company was founded. Most of the great British authors of
the recent and distant past have visited the store, which often has
an extensive collection of signed copies for sale.
Picture: GETTY
1797 - Paxton &
Whitfield (93 Jermyn St., London, SW1, 020 7930 0259,
paxtonandwhitfield.co.uk) smells almost as good as its nearby
neighbor, Floris, but in a different way, for this is a purveyor of
fine cheeses. The company has its roots in the county of Suffolk and
operated a market stall at Aldwych before moving to this site in
1797.
Picture: ALAMY
1806 - Henry Poole &
Co. (15 Savile Row, W1, 020 7734 5985, henrypoole.com) is
acknowledged as both the first tailor shop to set up on Savile Row
(in 1846) and as the place where the dinner jacket, or tuxedo, was
invented.
Picture: GETTY
1830 - There can be
only one place for umbrellas, canes, and walking sticks in London:
the historic premises of James Smith & Sons (53 New Oxford St.,
WC1, tel 020 7836 4731, james-smith.co.uk), which have remained
almost unaltered for more than 140 years—though the business is
older still.
--
Taken from National
Geographic London Book of Lists: The City’s Best, Worst, Oldest,
Greatest, and Quirkiest (National Geographic Books; ISBN
978-1-4262-1382-3; $19.95) by Tim Jepson and Larry Porges.
Picture: ALAMY
Thursday, 24 December 2015
Wednesday, 23 December 2015
"The Price of Salt"/ Carol: the women behind Patricia Highsmith's lesbian novel
Carol: the women behind
Patricia Highsmith's lesbian novel
Todd
Haynes’s film of Highsmith’s only openly lesbian novel, Carol, is
about to premiere in Cannes, starring Cate Blanchett. Novelist Jill
Dawson writes about the women behind the book
Jill Dawson
Wednesday 13 May
2015 10.40 BST
Patricia Highsmith
was in love many times and with many women – “more times than
rats have orgasms”, to use one of her own more disquieting similes.
She plundered these objects of her desire extravagantly in her 22
novels and hundreds of short stories. Not one glance, not one
feminine gesture or foible of any one of her many girlfriends was
ever wasted, but only once – and spectacularly – did she write
openly about lesbianism. This was her second novel, Carol, first
published as The Price of Salt in 1952, with Highsmith using the
pseudonym Claire Morgan, and now adapted into a Todd Haynes film
starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara (star of The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo) and just about to premiere at Cannes.
In 1952 Highsmith,
barely 30, perhaps startled by the wayward success of her first novel
Strangers on a Train (conferring instant stardom when the Hitchcock
movie followed a year later), had good reason to be edgy about the
reception The Price of Salt would receive. “Those were the days
when gay bars were a dark door somewhere in Manhattan, where people
wanting to go to a certain bar got off the subway a station before or
after the convenient one, lest they were suspected of being
homosexual,” she wrote, in a postscript to the novel, many years
later.
She showed some
early extracts to her favourite teacher from Barnard College, Ethel
Sturtevant, whose excited reply – “Now this packs a wallop!” –
probably alarmed and reassured the former student in equal measure.
Highsmith’s own publisher Harper & Brothers rejected it, so it
was published first by a small press, and the solution of the
pseudonym Claire Morgan was decided on.
“It flowed from
the end of my pen as if from nowhere,” Highsmith wrote. She also
admitted a specific inspiration: a “blondish woman in a fur coat”,
who wafted into Macy’s in New York to buy her daughter a doll.
Highsmith was working there as a sales-girl during the Christmas
rush. On her day off she took a bus to New Jersey, found the woman’s
house (from the address on the sales slip) and simply walked by it.
There was another
inspiration for the character of Carol: Highsmith’s former lover
Virginia Kent Catherwood, the elegant and well-heeled socialite from
Philadelphia, whose divorce in the 1940s had kept gossip columnists
in New York in a state of scandalised delirium with its lesbian
intrigue. “Ginnie” and Highsmith were lovers in the mid 1940s and
full vent is given in Highsmith’s diary to her powerful desire for
her lover and also, at times, the feelings of murderous vengefulness
that are expressed in all of Highsmith’s writings. Catherwood had
lost custody of her child after a recording made of her in a hotel
bedroom with another woman was used in court against her, a detail
mined for the plot of The Price of Salt in a way that gave Highsmith
pause. In the end the detail stayed, an essential driver to the
narrative, making the love affair between Carol and the younger,
mute-with-longing Therese (based on Highsmith herself) all the more
perilous and poignant.
The cult success of
The Price of Salt came a year later when the paperback edition was
published as a Bantam 25‑cent edition. A mass-market version
with the catchline “The novel of a love society forbids” swiftly
followed. It soon chalked up a million copies. “Claire Morgan”
received a stream of letters at her publisher from women writing:
“Yours is the first book like this with a happy ending!” and:
“Thank you for writing such a story. It is a little like my own
story.” By the time the writer Marijane Meaker met her in 1960,
Highsmith, “a handsome, dark-haired woman in a trenchcoat” was
fully identified as Morgan and the novel “stood on every lesbian
bookshelf, along with classics like The Well of Loneliness; We, Too,
Are Drifting; Diana and Olivia”.
Yet Highsmith
remained ambivalent about the novel. In particular she was worried
about what her 84-year-old grandmother, Willie-Mae, who had raised
her whenever her young mother, Mary, was out of town, would make of
it. Highsmith never lied to her mother and stepfather; she assumed
they knew she was gay. But that didn’t mean she wanted to discuss
it with them, or anybody else. To her girlfriend Meaker, she was
outspoken: “The only difference to us and heterosexuals is what we
do in bed.” Her courage and openness about her sexuality were real
and admirable, not least because it warred with her intensely private
nature. But her anxiety was real, too. She was furious when her
mother, many years later, told her grandmother about the novel,
explaining to an unrepentant Mary that the obvious point of using a
pseudonym was to keep something private.
Two biographies (by
Andrew Wilson and Joan Schenkar) depict Highsmith as troubled,
obsessive and in many ways unsavoury. They chart her alcoholism, her
rudeness, her meanness. They reveal how later in life she frequently
exploded in virulent anti-semitic and racist rants; the increasing
isolation she preferred to live in; her eccentricities – that she
kept snails as pets is one of the few things many people know about
her. Yet love simmers away, deep in the ugly hearts of the most
psychopathic and dangerous of her characters (the obsessive stalking
of David Kelsey in This Sweet Sickness, or the confused infatuation
that turns to murderous hate in Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr
Ripley).
When The Price of
Salt was finally published as Carol by Bloomsbury 40 years later,
Highsmith proved as difficult an interviewee as she had always been.
She saved her honesty for her novels.
• Carol is
premiered at Cannes 2015. Jill Dawson’s novel The Crime Writer,
about Patricia Highsmith, will be published next year.
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