3.28.2011

roaring

"I like to come," Lucille said. "I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last, I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked me my name and address—within a week I got a package from Croirier's with a new evening gown in it."

"Did you keep it?" asked Jordan.

"Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars."


I've been teaching The Great Gatsby for a couple weeks, now. It's one of my favorite books and one of my favorites to teach (a necessary distinction, incidentally), and inevitably when I do my background PowerPoint at the beginning of the unit, I digress into discussions of the prevalent styles of clothing and jewelry . . .

The twenties are by far my favorite period in fashion; the length of my current hairstyle is even loosely inspired by it. So it was with some delight that I stumbled upon the following pieces of 1920s clothing on a website called Shrimpton Couture.









Museum quality piece. Don't look at the price. When I saw it, I thought immediately of that passage from Gatsby. If I were a size 4 starlet, I would be wearing that to some awards show . . . even though it's pink, and I'm not typically a fan of that much pink.









Silver. Hammered around the mesh. And the girl says that you never find a coat like this. . . just shawls, maybe a dress . . .

Ugh. I've been dreaming about them for weeks.

6 comments:

  1. It's funny, because I have always loved "Tender is the Night," and my mother said when she was young she agreed. She said after re-reading all of Fitzgerald she now considers Gatsby to be the better book. Perhaps it deserves another read by me. That said, Fitzgerald is my all time favorite writer.

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  2. I tried to read Tender is the Night in high school and didn't make it more than a quarter of the way in. I've been meaning to pick it back up again for awhile.

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  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Poiret

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  4. Did you see that they're tearing down the home that was the model for Daisy's house?

    http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052970203523604576189561904065784.html

    We tear our history down, man...

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  5. No, I didn't, and I can't read the full article! Curses!

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  6. Found another with good pictures, though: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364184/Crumbling-30m-Great-Gatsby-mansion-faces-demolition.html

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