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Fresh from the sumptuous Isabella Blow exhibition at Somerset House in London, my mind is reeling with images of stunning, ground-breaking clothes. The exhibition features 100 pieces from Blow’s private collection and highlights the work of designers she cultivated, notably Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy.

Treacy’s hats are phenomenal. They are works of art, flamboyant, dramatic installations which burst from the head or perch on top of it in the form of lobsters, antlers, satellite dishes, spiked helmets, pheasants, castles and an eighteenth century galleon. What qualities would you attribute to a woman who wears such creations? Confidence, daring, style, a sense of fun, artistic aplomb for a start, I imagine.

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The tracks of our years are studded with references to the way we looked and the clothes we wore.

Marty Robbins’ White Sport Coat And A Pink Carnation captures in a phrase the prom dress code and etiquette of 1957 teenagers, just as four years earlier Guy Mitchell’s She Wears Red Feathers And A Hula Hula Skirt caught the essence of the cheesy cabaret acts and exotic dancers which entranced uptight London bankers. (A brilliant choice of song for the nightclub scene in the film Scandal, about the 1963 Profumo affair.)

The rock and roll years are captured through images of blue suede shoes, blue jeans, pointed toe shoes, leather jackets, courtesy of Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent in particular.

And so on through the decades – Sham 69’s Hersham Boys in their lace-up boots and corduroys, the Burton suits noted by the White Man in Hammersmith Palais, Suggs and the boys in their Baggy Trousers.

Some images reach further than the here and now. Bob Dylan’s Brand New Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat, with its nod to Jackie Kennedy and its evocation of the ambience of Andy Warhol’s Factory, transcends the particulars of the song.

The apricot scarf worn by Carly Simon’s subject in You’re So Vain captures a timeless attitude of preening self-regard.

In songs, as in life, clothes reveal not just a place and a time, but character and personality. Here are three great sartorial songs – one is a famous classic and the other two deserve to be.
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Pauline Boty painting in her studio.
Copyright © Michael Seymour

Pauline Boty was at the heart of the London scene when it swung.

She was stunningly good-looking in a way which transcended the ubiquitous ‘dolly bird’ image.

Known as the The Wimbledon Bardot, she combined Bardot’s kittenish sex appeal with Simone Signoret’s mature sensuality and a touch of Marilyn Monroe’s vulnerability.

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For the wannabe Beat Girls of 1963, trapped in the suburbs and scrabbling at the edges of an alternative culture, Little Boxes was a gateway song.

We heard it at the end 1963, the year in which our antennae became tuned to satire. We absorbed the lampoons on That Was The Week That Was, we laughed at political cartoons, we added our own satirical twists to gossip about the Profumo Affair.

We weren’t quite ready to satirise aspects of our own lives. Then along came Pete Seeger’s version of Malvina Reynolds’ song, and there was our ready-made indictment of the middle-class conformity which we longed to shake off.

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When it comes to books, don’t we just love our categories. What do you like to read? Oh, I’m into chicklit, Scandi-noir, vampire fiction, Fifty Shades, misery memoirs, steampunk, chillers, thrillers, horror, erotica, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal, cyberpunk, cosy mysteries, hardboiled crime, sagas, golden age crime, Victorian novels (or VicLit – you heard it here first).

Categories are undeniably helpful for publishers and booksellers, but sometimes rather less so for readers and writers. Elizabeth Jane Howard, the writer and novelist who died this month, did not receive quite the acclaim her work merited and this may be because of the perception that her books belong in the category labelled ‘women’s fiction’.
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We’re all hanging up our stockings by the wall, walking in a winter wonderland, rocking around the Christmas tree and telling Rudolph to run. The seasonal imagery is familiar and reassuring and maddening. It becomes strangely comforting when placed alongside more astringent takes on Christmas experiences.

Which of these three great acerbic Christmas anthems gets your vote?
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Biba was the legendary fashion shop which started on a kitchen table, developed into a boutique, grew into a store and finally died.

The brand still exists in different contexts but nothing will match its heyday. The classic years must be 1965-69 when Biba on Kensington Church Street in West London was the mecca for with-it (as we said then) teens and twenties looking for cutting-edge fashion at a price nearly everyone could afford.

As Biba’s founder Barbara Hulanicki said, ‘The worst economic freeze does not touch the pockets of secretaries.’ Those were the days.
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Little did we think as we stuck posters to our bedroom, bedsit and halls of residence walls that we were initiating what would become a rite of passage and a marker of our progress through life. We thought our choice of poster said a little bit about ourselves and our similarity to or our differences from other tribes.

There wasn’t much choice, back in the day. Alberto Korda’s renowned photo of Che Guevara was a safe option, indicating right-on credentials.

Posters of Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with beard and moustache hovered on the borderline between being knowing and just following the herd. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers indicated a desire to be thought of as arty, while anything referencing Lord of the Rings screamed fey and fanciful and to be avoided.
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The contestants

Philomena is the hit film starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan about a woman’s search for her adopted son.

Once A Catholic is the hit play by Mary O’Malley, first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1977 and currently enjoying a revival in London and Liverpool.

Villains in habits

Nuns are at the centre of both works. In Philomena, we have the nuns who ran baby-farms in Ireland, taking in pregnant young women and sending their babies to be adopted, often to America, often for money.
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John Braine’s novel, Room At The Top, published in 1957, contains many of the elements of a racy blockbuster. The tale of ambition and adultery, fuelled by issues of class, sex and money, follows the fortunes of 20-something Joe Lampton as he climbs his way up the ladder of social and economic success.

But this isn’t a story of glitz and glamour. The novel is set in England just after the the Second World War and Joe’s upward trajectory is not towards the golden pavements of London, or the dreaming spires of Oxford, or the glittering lights of Hollywood or Broadway.
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National Poetry Day this week saw the publication of an anthology of poems about trains, Train Songs, edited by Sean O’Brien and Don Paterson. The poems cover a wide field, representing American Blues and the troop trains of two world wars among childhood favourites such as Auden’s Night Train.

The descriptions of the anthology refer to the celebration of carriages, platforms, waiting rooms, and ‘the poetry of departures and brief encounters’. I have explored these ideas in previous posts (search for Railway Romantics in the search box at the top of this page) and it’s great to see more about the impact of train travel on the national collective consciousness and imaginative sensibility.
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