olourful (and often clashing) prints.She was a
one-woman
womens
evening dresses , three-ring circus of style.RelatedTwo new biographies
look at fashion eccentric Isabella Blow's life and legacyYoung starlets have a
retinue of stylists and yay-sayers who ensure they appear tasteful and on-trend,
and nothing could be more banal than either (or both) of those fates.The rest of
us may cluck, but even we fearfully wait for a sanctioned holiday like
Halloween, when such exuberant flights of fancy become downright mainstream, or
for the permissible occasion of a thematic fancy-dress party.I prefer the
eccentrics, even if I don t dress like one.They put together their toilette,
often with wild abandon, to please none but themselves.These peacocks are
sometimes ridiculous, often memorable, always inspiring.With age comes a certain
fashion fearlessness.Style writer Ari Seth Cohen eschews the typical gamine
twentysomethings that populate most street-style blogs and instead respects his
sartorial elders in Advanced Style.Like Piaggi, his new blog-turned-book favours
women who have the childlike sense of play that we lose when we grow up.sedate
is not in their vocabulary.for the past 20, a wavy Smurf-blue tinted quiff
emerged from one of her hundreds of Stephen Jones hats and snaked over a
quizzically cocked eyebrow.Generally, she clutched a brightly hued walking
stick.These items, and her theatrical makeup punctuated by a crimson moue,
clashed artfully with zebra trousers, harlequin dresses, spats, oxfords, trilby
hats and berets.You d naturally expect such a dresser to be a creative thinker,
and she was, as a veteran editor and fashion writer since the 1970s, chiefly for
Vogue Italia, where she had a lavish double-page column spread called D.Doppie
Pagine di Anna Piaggi.teenage Rookie magazine founder Tavi Gevinson is an
eccentric-in-waiting who infuses her look with whimsy, for example.Or take my
Grade 10 biology teacher.Give the classroom context of her outfits, Ms.but only
just (I blame the threat of Bunsen burners as potential hazard to hats and
feather boas).In my northern mining
hometown
womens
fashion evening dresses , pop.she stood out as an an inveterate and
inventive thrift and fashion shopper, and I spent the entire semester
chronicling her meticulously co-ordinated outfits, marvelling at how she never
wore the same outfit twice.Her approach to dressing captured my imagination more
than the internal workings of any dissected frog ever would.I attended my high
school reunion this past weekend and was relieved to find that my nostalgia had
not conjured Ms.Jenkin and her parade of outfits out of thin air.Presiding over
a retrospective fashion show, she paid special care to her outfit, just as she
had daily 20 years ago: an ornate black vintage dress and large matching New
Look-era saucer hat with coq feathers that quivered with every tilt of her
head.Her style captured my imagination all those years ago, and I m still
grateful for it.The mythology of Route 66John Steinbeck had a talent for seeing
the poetry in the commonplace, so naturally he was the American bard who founded
the legend of Route 66 as the great American highway, a legend that has outlived
not only Steinbeck but even Route 66 itself.arriving in Los Angeles.It was
replaced by bigger highways decades ago and decommissioned in the 1980s, but
nostalgists insist it never died and never should.For many it symbolizes the
spirit of American history.Their enthusiasm breathes life into an affectionate
but not uncritical tribute, A Route 66 Companion (University of Texas Press),
edited by David King Dunaway of the University of New Mexico.That novel became
the chief literary ornament of the Depression and John Ford’s 1940 film version,
with Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, carved the sorrows of the wretched Okies even
deeper into the public imagination.Steinbeck eulogized Route 66 as the mother
road, the route of a people in flight.RelatedRobert Fulford: Gore Vidal: The
no.anti-American AmericanRobert Fulford: A Habsburg Empire state of
mindAmericans have always had an enviable way of wrapping place names in
glamour.In 1885 Walt Whitman grew lyrical about towns called Fairplay,
Tombstone, Whiskey Flat and Squitch Gulch.t, in a poem called American Names
celebrated Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post, Nantucket Light and of course
Wounded Knee (he also gave a friendly nod to our own dear Medicine Hat).If
Steinbeck created the Route 66 myth, Bobby Troup, a pianist, actor and sometime
songwriter, greatly enlarged it.In 1946, Troup wrote a piece that’s listed in
the catalogues as (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 though it often appears as just
Route 66.A kind of musical
travelogue
evening
dresses for weddings , it’s lasted six decades.At first Nat Cole seemed to
own it, having made it a hit, but over the years Chuck Berry, The Rolling
Stones, Van Morrison, Diana Krall and many others have recorded it.I heard it at
a tender age, 14, and fell in love with it and its subject.Get your kicks on
Route 66.It listed places totally unknown to me but endowed them with
magic.Somehow, Route 66 became the highway of my dreams.I could recite Kingman,
Barstow and the rest.I never did travel the route, but decades later, when I
finally visited that region, the place names welcomed me like old friends.Flying
toward the Grand Canyon in a small plane, I asked the pilot to point out
Kingman.Today Kingman, Ariz.and has a Route 66 Museum located in an old
powerhouse on Andy Devine Avenue, named for the raspy-voiced Kingman boy who
ended up acting in 400 movies, several directed by John Ford.Troup’s song made
the road so famous that Route 66 became a television series and lasted from 1960
to 1964.rootless loner from the wrong side of town.itself now a cherished,
carefully preserved cultural treasure.Over the years artists have done their
best to enhance the cultural status of Route 66.in 1974, Stanley Marsh 3, heir
to an oil fortune, hired a San Francisco collective, the Art Farm, to build an
appropriate public monument.They acquired 10 old Cadillacs and h.