Life must be filled up

Steve McQueen and The Beatles made an unlikely connection between two BBC4 programmes I’ve watched this week: Knitting’s Golden Age and Neil Brand’s series Sound of Cinema.

I was disappointed by the knitting programme. The films were good, especially the old black and white shots of women knitting Fair Isle patterns at astonishing speed while herding sheep at the same time. It was the voice over which was the problem; I felt it had a slightly mocking tone throughout which was at odds with the seriousness of the knitters. As for the old patterns, I seem to have most of them! The Beatles appeared because they popularized black polo neck (roll neck, according to the prog.) sweaters which everyone then wanted.



Polo necks were cool, as shown by the fact that cool people wore them, like Steve McQueen in Bullit.



I confess I still think black polo necks are pretty cool, also Cuban heels. Blue, not so much. I couldn’t agree with the programme makers that knitwear went out completely in the 1980s and 90s.



This oversized sweater by Nicole Farhi is from that era, as is this BikBok cardigan.



The Beatles turned up again in Sound of Cinema, illustrating the innovative use of pop music in films; in their case, using their own songs in A Hard Day’s Night (still one of my favourite films) instead of employing a composer. We also had a brief glimpse of Adam Faith in Beat Girl, Yay! I’ve yet to see that film. Then there was Steve McQueen, in his blue polo neck, epitomizing cool to the soundtrack of Bullit. I’m enjoying this film series very much but there should have been a health warning before yesterday’s episode. Viewers of New Tricks this week were warned that it contained ‘upsetting’ scenes. What? It was nothing at all, you see worse things on the news every day of the week. No warning, though, that Sound of Cinema would include scenes from films by Quentin Tarentino. I had to look away; I could never watch anything of his.

I could hardly believe my eyes when the latest La Redoute catalogue was retrieved from the letter box. (Hint: if you ever buy one thing from La Redoute you’ll be inundated by mail for ever more.)



‘La Redoute are proud to invite iconic French fashion house Courrèges to lead in our new Autumn-Winter collection. Considered ‘futuristic’ in the 60s, Courrèges’s instantly recognizable style – clean, structured lines, strong geometric shapes and splashes of vibrant colour – has timeless appeal …’

I remember all this from first time around, when I was at school! The white boots, mid-calf length in those days, and the little bonnets. I still love the neat little coats but wonder if anyone will adopt the whole look. Only a teenager with legs like sticks could get away with those thick, white tights. Yesterday the latest Boden catalogue arrived. On offer: ‘sixties-inspired’ (dress); ‘a Sixties sensibility’ (skirt); ‘chic, retro’ (collarless short coat); ‘Sixties Funnel Neck’ (jumper); ‘Carnaby dress’; ‘Sixties Heel’ (shoes). I could go on but you can see it all for yourself on the website.



So, who’s up for yet another sixties revival?

Why Thailand?
BECAUSE powdery jasmine wreaths, strung in offering, prove that a simple gesture is often the most meaningful. BECAUSE witnessing a procession of marigold-wrapped monks (barefoot, silent, endless) is transcendent. BECAUSE the quietly building fire of soupy curries, tempered by the juicy relief of never-riper, never-sweeter mango, ignites your entirety. BECAUSE the fulsome floral garlands and sun-faded buntings that honour gods and kings remind you that to adorn is human instinct. BECAUSE even the humble alphabet’s curly-curvy characters seem outlandishly glamorous. BECAUSE crumbled ruins and gleaming temples stand side-by-side, neither claiming more gravity, trading moments ethereal and down-to-earth. BECAUSE breezes are weighed down by coriander, galangal and kaffir lime. BECAUSE green-crowned palms and spindly bamboo tiptoe to brush the sky. BECAUSE the earth yields greener and lusher and newer here than any place other. BECAUSE the warmth is cultural as well as climatalogical. BECAUSE at dawn, the sun doesn’t rise so much as slowly sets the day aglow.

This is from an Anthropologie catalogue I received yesterday. ‘ignites your entirety’? ‘tiptoe to reach the sky’? So much of this cries out for the blue pencil. Do you think other people just don’t notice or, heaven help us, think this is good writing? It didn’t stop me being tempted by something I saw on their online site yesterday (until I clocked ‘hand wash’) but perlease, don’t send me this rubbish.

Yesterday evening I watched Turn Back Time, the first time I’d watched any episode all the way through. (I can’t stand Greg Wallace and all that phoney ‘this is very serious and important’ stuff he does with dramatic pauses for no drama at all.) I’m surprised to see that the series is being plugged as genuine history rather than reality TV. Try BBC 4, Dahlings.
Anyway, last night's The High Street reached the seventies and for me the most interesting thing about it was to see Lee Bender appear. Lee Bender of Bus Stop! Absolutely iconic. I still have a Bus Stop dress, which has somehow escaped all my clothing purges and here it is.


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A lot of my favourite clothes have come from charity shops, courtesy of people who are better off and better shoppers than I am. Recently though, going round the shops, I’ve found the clothes on offer look as if they should be in a jumble sale and have walked out with my nose in the air. Perhaps this is because in the UK last year charitable giving was down 10% and donations to Oxfam were down 15%.

Buying really cheap clothes in this way (thrifting, as Americans call it) can help you dress more creatively. I’ve been checking out some of the many style blogs. They’re rather fun and are produced by women (and some men) of all shapes and sizes who say, ‘Hello world! This is what I’m wearing today and I look gorgeous!’ I prefer the ones which show a daily outfit; it’s just like dressing paper dolls. Already Pretty is a little too instructional for me but obviously produced by a Nice Person. You won’t see me in bondage belts and swear rings but I love Fashion for Nerds. Isn’t she cute?

So, as part of a new leaf for a new year, why not give some decent clothes away? Then we can all start clothes swapping again.

I’ve been making more use of my local library lately. It’s very small and Dorset’s library resources are so limited that books are passed around between branches. I will quite often ask for a book and be told, ‘We did have it, but it’s gone somewhere else now’. You people living in London, Oxford or Cambridge don’t know how lucky you are. I only mention this because the copy of The Clothes on Their Backs which I’ve just read came from Weymouth. It has a special sticker inside saying, ‘Man Booker 2008’; obviously purchased so that we culture starved provincials can keep up. Even so, I was only the second person to borrow this (not so cultured in Dorset, then?) so it was like reading a lovely new book.

I loved this book from page one. Vivien is the child of immigrant parents, people so timidly fearful of authority that they have stayed in the flat found for them on their arrival by the WRVS in ‘a twenty five year hibernation’. They tell Vivien nothing about their background; it’s a while before she realises she is Jewish. Vivien only learns the truth from her ‘evil’ uncle Sándor, a character based on the notorious slum landlord, Rachman. ‘I felt that everything had happened already, that we living ones were just shadows of the real events, weak outlines cast down the decades.’

Clothes are central to the book, the power of clothes to define and transform a person. The second-hand beiges of Vivien’s parents; her own progression from vintage chic through punk until she ‘started to dress like a woman approaching thirty’; Uncle Sándor’s love of the flash suit and the expensive jewellery; his elegant girlfriend. Set mostly in 1970s London, this is a rite of passage book with a difference.