"you do not support the root, but the root supports you."

Yesterday I set about making a birthday card for Grandma's birthday. With Sense and Sensibility playing in the background, and this beautiful belt gifted to me from my sister as my inspiration, I started painting.

Eva has a huge box of old letters in her room that she's sorting through right now. It really made me glad for my own letter-writing, but I wonder if I shouldn't be a little more decisive in it - that is, that I could ask more meaningful questions and because of that, cherish the answers even more. Surely that is a precious thing about letter-writing? That one can express more through writing than can be expressed in spoken word. Part of me wants to splurge on a box to hold them all, but instead I went on a little wander round the charity shops first and stumbled across these two dresses.

I'll finish with one of my favourite quotes from the film Bright Star:

"A poem needs understanding through the senses. The poing of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it's to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out... it is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery."

The Girl in Green

As anybody who has seen my bedroom knows, I have a bit of a thing about the colour green. This also extends to my wardrobe. Today I decided to go for my green 2-piece knitted set, which I haven't worn together for a long time. I decided to go with my red Torpatoffeln clogs (please note: open-toe clogs and freezing temperatures do not a comfortable experience make).

On my way back home, I had a little look in my local vintage/retro shop, where I found a lovely little jumper in exactly the same shade of green as my outfit!

Jumper: Vintage from Really Me 

Trousers: Charity Shop

(The Book is Känner du Pippi Långstrump?

Outfit Rotation

When people see me once a week at dance, for example, the general consensus is that I have a large and diverse wardrobe of garments ranging in style through half a century. In the day-to-day, however, particularly when I am at university, I don't often have the time to be as creative as I can be when going out for the evenings, and often wear the same clothes in rotation. To show you what I mean, and how easy it can be to do, this is what I have been wearing over the past week:

THURSDAY

SUNDAY

MONDAY MORNING

Necklace: charity shop

Headscarf: jumble sale

MONDAY EVENING AND TUESDAY 

Skirt: charity shop

Rucksack satchel: Ebay

WEDNESDAY

Jumper: charity shop

Cardigan: charity shop

(I wore the cardigan because it has daffodils on it and I decided to celebrate the first day of Spring)

TODAY (THURSDAY)

Cardigan: charity shop

BOOK - 'THE UNCOMMON READER' by Alan Bennett (read it! It is fantastic!)

All of my outifts here have revolved around the same one t-shirt (I was trying to get as much wear of it as I could before returning it to my sister, from whom it was borrowed!), and two skirts.

What else have I been getting up to of late, you may well ask. Yesterday I went along to the 'Milton-athon' - a day long reading of John Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. Hosted by RHUL lecturer Dr. Eric Langley, it was a shared reading which went from 10am-6pm. In order to read an extract, you had to be given the apple (or, perhaps I should say, the Fruit Forbidden). There was also wine and 'Just Heaven' fruit juice, which was all very fitting indeed. Unfortunately I could not stay for the whole reading, and so spent most of today catching up. I am exhausted but I have finally read 'Paradise Lost' from cover to cover (although not chronologically!) I have now read 30 and a half books thus far this year, eight of those in the past two weeks, and can't wait to start on the next one.

Finally, I have been listening -utterly spellbound - to Radio 4 Extra's production of Neil Gaiman's novel 'Neverwhere'. The very nice people manning @BBCRadio4Extra's twitter have told me that the first episode of it will be available to download as a podcast. You can download and listen to it all here.

Au revoir all, I hope you're all looking forward to the weekend...

Jess xx

...And back in time

I decided upon a slightly different look today...

The outfit is certainly not authentic but I bought it as my Christmas outfit because it gave off the '20s/'30s vibe that I wanted. It is a two-piece skirt and top, and has since shrunk in the wash slightly, so fits a bit more tightly.

Hat - TK Maxx

Top/skirt - charity shop

Necklace - hand-me-down from friend

Whilst I was out, I bought a couple of things from the charity shop, including some 1920s cups and saucers and tea plates. Here are a few photographs of some of the other things:

I bought these tap shoes because I thought re-learning tap might help me with my technique for dance.

Jess xx

A Trip to the V&A Museum

As always, I managed to forget to bring a camera with me on my short trip into London, so I have had to resort to the V&A archives for the wartime and fashion photographs.
For those of you who don't hail from the UK, The V&A is the Victoria & Albert museum, which was built in 1852, following the huge success of the Great Exhibion for which Crystal Palace was built:

Its founding principle was to make works of art available to all, to educate working people and to inspire British designers and manufacturers. Profits from the Exhibition were used to establish the Museum of Manufactures, as it was initially known, and exhibits were purchased to form the basis of its collections.

The Museum moved to its present site in 1857 and was renamed the South Kensington Museum. Its collections expanded rapidly as it set out to acquire the best examples of metalwork, furniture, textiles and all other forms of decorative art from all periods. It also acquired fine art - paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture - in order to tell a more complete history of art and design.

The museum stayed open for the duration of the Second World War, despite being hit and damaged by bombs.Some of the damage to the stonework is still visible today. It was also used as an RAF training college canteen between 1942-45.

This is what it looks like today:

I went to the V&A for a Medieval and Renaissance tour, which was very useful for my Renaissance and Medieval modules at uni. Once the tour had finished, I had a snoop around the rest of it. They have a fantastic fashion exhibition, showing the evolution of fashion from the 18th Century right up until the present day. I spent a good half hour mooning over the '20s '30s and '40s collections. Unfortunately I missed a fantastic exhibition on 50 years of fashion, but will try to make another post about that soon! One of my favourite pieces was this worsted wool skirt suit, by Michael Donéllan from 1954:

Next, it was time to look for the 20th Century section (which took an age to find). They have a great collection of radios there:

Tesla Talisman 308U (1939)

Pye Portable M78F (1948)
An incredibly controversial radio that was
withdrawn from production as the design
resembled the Japanese flag. There are only
around 200 left as 800 of the 1000 produced
were destroyed. 

Murphy A100 (1946)
This radio marked the transition from wartime to peacetime
in industrial production.

Marconiphone P20B (1948)
One of the fist portable designs for radio.

Unfortunately I didn't get a full outfit photograph, but here's one from later on in the day:

Jess xx