The Great Gatsby Giveaway

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Wasn't The Great Gatsby beautiful? I mean, wasn't it really, really beautiful? The production, the costumes, the make up, the jewellery. Rewatching it now, a few months after I first saw it on the big screen, I am struck by how truly spectacular it really is. It's such a perfect metaphor for the story's central message. Beauty is promise. But it is also ephemeral. It's growing up, it's getting old, it's the discarded party favours and crushed flowers that Gatsby treads on after the party... I really liked this film. And thanks to the lovely people at Village Roadshow I have 5 copies of the DVD to give away to readers of Capture the Castle! To enter, please leave a comment on this post with a link to your favourite image from The Great Gatsby. I shared a few of my own to get you started - Daisy and Jordan on that pristine, perfect lounge, Daisy surrounded by flowers at the afternoon tea, Daisy covered in rumpled silk shirts. Daisy, daisy, daisy. I really couldn't take my eyes off Carey in this movie. So, to win a copy, just leave a comment with a link to your favourite image and an email address so I can get in touch with you if you win, and I'll pick 5 winners in exactly a week's time on Thursday, October 3. It's that easy! Unfortunately this giveaway is only open to Australian residents. I can't wait to see your favourite pictures!

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EDIT: CLOSED. WINNERS ANNOUNCED SHORTLY!

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what a lot of parties

"'Oh Nina, what a lot of parties.' (... masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity … Those vile bodies...)"

Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies

Paris Hilton by Sofia Coppola in Elle July 2013

 We all seem to be drawn to star quality - the brightness and the ebullience that makes famous people so famous - like moths to a flame. We pore over the pages of gossip magazines and discuss celebrities with our friends with a very real sense of investment into their lives. Some more than others, yes, but it's something we have programmed into our DNA since we first tore out that Leonardo DiCaprio poster from Dolly magazine, or we played our 'mysterious girl' single so many times we wore it out. It's heartening - endearing even - to realise that even the loftiest of lofty idols is capable of being starstruck. Sofia Coppola, the girl crush to end all girl crushes, bought up in the foothills of Hollywood and never short on celebrity acquaintances, is as drawn to star quality as the rest of us. It's pretty clear from this spread on Paris Hilton in the July issue of Elle US. The socialite, dolled up in tasteful makeup, canoodling her dog beneath baroque chandeliers and mirrored bedheads, is a slightly toned-down version of herself, but still radiating that sense of celebrity and persona and money which is really what we talk about when we talk about fame.

 Sofia understands - as F.Scott Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh understood before her - that what draws us to stars (talent or no, Paris Hilton is certainly a star) is not actually the looks or the love but the lifestyle. When we see a celebrity we don't ever really see the movies they have been in or the model they're sleeping with but the parties, what a lot of parties, that they call meaningless but to us, mere humans, seem like everything. When people pose the question 'why is Kim Kardashian famous for doing nothing' they are slightly missing the point. What she 'does' is live a moneyed lifestyle that speaks of everything that money can bring. It doesn't have to be Kim K. Pick your poison. But I've seen enough Gossip Girl to know that now, more than ever, we are as closely aligned to the celebrity-obsessed, stargazing society of the 1920s as we ever were. We dream in technicolour, we look in repetition and we long for carelessness. All of Sofia's movies have, in some way or another, dealt with this central conceit of being young and beautiful and so very, very rich. Perhaps because she is part of that world she always treats her characters if not through a rose-coloured lens then at least without judgement. Don't ask me whether that's a good or a bad thing, I love her too much to be able to answer. But I know that I can't wait to see The Bling Ring because I, like every other warm-blooded human being just cannot get enough of that foul dust that floats in the wake of dreams.

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a little luck

Au petit bonheur la chance translates to something along the lines of the best of luck or the randomness of luck, and that suits this store pretty well. It's lucky to find it open, and even if you do it's lucky to find a shop attendant. It's lucky to find it empty, or empty enough for you to pick your way through the boxes of luggage tags, old street maps, vintage school supplies and sugar jars. It's lucky not to break anything as you move around the tiny confines of the shop with purchases in hand. It's pure, sheer luck (which is kind of what 'au petit bonheur la chance' means, too) that you find beautiful picture postcards from the 1970s in bundles in an old suitcase, or reams of ribbon in happy jewel tones, or the prettiest cafe au lait bowls that you have to take home, even if you know they'll break, even if they haven't got a chance in hell. This is one of those quirky, happy stores that you could lose a day in, but as luck would have it, you don't. Chance finds often turn out to be the best.

Au Petit Bonheur La Chance, 13 Rue Saint Paul, 4eme Paris

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cinematic style - Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris

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I saw this three times at the cinema. Three times. And it wasn't enough. It's one of those movies that speaks to you instantly - speaks to so many people - that opening montage of Parisian streets, those wide, far-reaching boulevards that everyone knows, without even a shred of doubt, are in Paris, the lovers kissing on bridges, those blue skies, the way the light falls, golden and honey-hued on everything. I saw it firstly for an amazing PR event put on by Katerina, celebrating a French lingerie brand's launch in Australia, then I saw it with Rachel, a fellow Paris-lover, who was as wide-eyed as me, dreaming of a world with Si Tu Vois Ma Mere as the constant soundtrack. The third time, though, was the best. With my mum - the world's ultimate francophile - the person for whom this kind of film was made. Art and history, Versailles and Giverny, Hemingway and Fitzgerald... Midnight in Paris.

It's funny how Woody Allen movies always seem to present different or even maybe idealised versions of the same self. Men in Woody Allen movies always have a crisp, J-Crew kind of look to them, they're hapless and neurotic and a bit lost, wearing their too-long chinos with thick leather belts and polo shirts tucked in. It's endearing, it's the look of a man dressed by his mother (if the mother ran the country club with a pearl-clad fist). I was watching To Rome With Love the other day, Allen's latest paean to a foreign city, and I was reminded by how much all of his more recent movies look the same. Vicky Christina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris and now this one - they all share that same summer shimmer, that same light, irreverent touch, that same nonchalant, masculine styling. The comparison between Lea Seydoux in this movie - who has a beautiful wardrobe of high-waisted denim and blush coloured shirts, but she's only in 3 scenes so I couldn't really justify doing a whole cinematic style on her, maybe something else though - and Gerta Gerwig in To Rome With Love was so striking. It's as if Diane Keaton walked out of Manhattan and into Incu or Bloodorange and started wearing Acne and K.Jacques. It's startling, and it's kind of a bit telling to look at.

But, back to Owen Wilson. I love the palette of his wardrobe in this movie - the beiges and the greys at first, and then the more daring reds and mint greens and even a bit of a pattern later. I love how relaxed it is; a true writer, solitary and simple. I love how he seems to always be wearing that one pair of chinos and that wide leather belt, and how it's so similar to what Lea Seydoux wears, you're just desperate for them to get together - even over the radiant Marion Cotillard, and the radiantly bitchy Rachel Mcadams (so spoilt for choice). And I love how the simplicity and the preppiness of this wardrobes allows Gill's quirky, slightly neurotic humour and personality to shine through. He was the perfect person for this part, he always seems to have that dazed, wide-eyed look, like he's not quite sure what's going on. It works so well in this scene (and how great is Corey Stoll, hamming it up as the Hemingway with all of the stereotypes and all of those long, grammar-less sentences that we knew existed), and really in the whole film. The slightly too-long pants and the low-slung belts have just the right amount of childishness about them to make all those stunned gazes and those disbelieving stammers work. And it's so relateable, not because we all want to time travel back to the time of hemingway, and not because everyone wishes they had met picasso. It's believable because those stunned gazes and those disbelieving stammers are exactly what we all do when we're in Paris in summer, and everything is just so, so beautiful.

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ps. don't forget to enter my Shopbop giveaway!   Ending tonight at EST 8PM! good luck!

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cinematic style - Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark

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To love Indiana Jones - and to my absolute horror, not everyone does (jesu christi you have not lived!) - I think you need to have all the groundwork laid down as a child. You need to have read those Cairo Jim books and maybe done a unit in school on Ancient Egypt. You need to have a fascination for history and for the process of archeology. You need to love adventure and that typical, 1930-s serialised derring-do novels, which Indiana Jones borrows heavily from, all sardonic gestures, empowered yet ultimately quite silly women and Harrison Ford's uniquely, well, Harrison Ford-ian way of doing everything from the corner of his mouth; speaking, smiling, shouting, crying. And, speaking of Harrison Ford, you gotta really love him. I got all of these things at a young age for a variety of different reasons, including but not limited to a mother who so loved Ford that she threatened to name my brother after him (last name and all) and younger brothers that, in the way younger brothers often do, dictated play time with their pith helmets and explorer kits of binoculars, microscopes and peanut butter sandwiches (which I'm sure Cairo Jim took on his expeditions, too). It's not wonder that I really love other movies, more dramatic and grown up, but no less mired in the drama of exploration, like The English Patient, or Out of Africa.

These kinds of films tend to share a colour palette, and Indiana Jones is no different. What I love about Indy's wardrobe is that delicious, washed out neutral colour mix. Like all good archaeologists - and history professors - Dr Jones limits himself to clothes that are practical and easy. Slightly oversized khaki chinos held up with a big leather belt. Linen shirts (all that Egyptian humidity will make you sweat!) with the sleeves rolled up and unbuttoned to reveal some 1980s chest hair. A dark, weather-beaten chocolate brown leather jacket that seems to have an endless supply of bottomless pockets. Aside from Junior's three piece tweed suits at college, fulfilling every female history's student's dream of a lecturer that looks like Harrison Ford, and another three piece woollen suit at the end of the film, his wardrobe pretty much consists in it entirety of those pieces, with the added accoutrements of a bullwhip and a fedora, which is often left inside the slowly closing door of a cave or Temple of Doom which Jones then has to quickly fetch because nothing would be as bad as losing his hat. Indiana Jones doesn't faff about! Indiana Jones doesn't worry about what he's wearing! Indiana Jones gets the job done!

It works in part because Ford is so charismatic. You have to have a special something to pull off a movie where you are pretty much wearing the exact same thing in every scene. Where you don't really get cleaned up, ever, you're covered in sweat and sand and, on occasion, blood (!!!) as you get thrown into all manner of melodramatic situations, like gun fights in the streets of cairo, or buried alive in a snake-infested tomb (why don't bad guys ever just shoot their enemies? it would solve a lot of problems). I've always held this wardrobe up as a great way to do colour and comfort in hot climes, all whist trying to unearth the ark of the covenant. I watched this movie tonight for the first time on the big screen, and it has aged so beautifully (much like Harrison Ford himself, no?). Still as hilarious, still as ruggedly stylish, and still as classic as ever. As long as there are dreams of being an explorer, Indian Jones will never get old.

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into the blue

vanessa jackman

 This summer, after an absence of almost 4 years, my family is going to be returning to our beach-side haunt of old. It's this little hamlet of golden sand tucked behind a cliff-face up the coast, with just a little convenience store, a fish and chip shop and, somewhat incongruously, a nail salon. I loved it there - I used to get to sleep downstairs in the basement flat all by myself, and I would scribble in my diaries and stay up till midnight reading Jane Austen of Little Women and wishing myself into a family of sisters. So, so much happened there. Too much, really, all things considered. I'll tell you about some of it some day. But suffice to say I had a lot of fun there. My brothers and me used to run from the house to the store, singeing our feet on the burning sand as we went, and sit with the soles of our feet touching eating scores of mangoes while we watched the Australian Open. I wonder if it's going to be the same place 15 year old me really loved? You know what, I think it will be. It has always reminded me of that line from Karen Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales. In Deluge of Nordeney, which tells the tale of a rising, rising flood, the protagonist is told "I know a cure for everything. Salt water... In one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea." Karen Blixen really is the most incredible writer - Out of Africa is probably my favourite book, although I do say that about a lot of books. But oh! It's so beautiful. Set in the early 1900s through world war 1 and the 20s, it is the autobiographical tale of Karen's life in Africa, of her farm at the foot of the ngong hills, her love affair with the enigmatic Denys Finch-Hatton, her attachment to the rough, raw, rolling beauty of Africa. The movie with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford is pretty amazing too, but the book is a million times better. Anyway, I have always agreed that salt water is the cure for everything. A good cry is often the best way to alleviate melancholy.

Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.

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ps. Oh and I just remembered my second favourite moment in Out Of Africa (my first is a little weird haha)! Karen arrives in Mombasa and heads to the club, while there she wanders into an open room and starts poking around at the books there (not know that it is denys' room). His friend Berkeley Cole discovers her snooping and at first she is awkward about it but soon realises that he doesn't care. He can't stop staring at her, and remarks that when he was at Oxford he used to take a girl to the dances and she wore the same perfume as Karen is wearing now. Without even blinking she proffers her wrist, slowly, towards him. He leans in and then pulls back. "No. It's very nice, but not the same", he says. There is a lot of perfectly realised tension in the scene, it's sexual, but it's something else too... It's a really wonderful moment. God I love that movie!

pps. don't forget to enter my Maille giveaway! Closing on Friday :)

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walk like an egyptian

"Our new range is called DUST and it was inspired by David Bowie's alleged interest in Egyptology and Occultism. We loved this image of Bowie dressed in a sphinx costume shot in 1969 and it pretty much went from there. We wanted the range to look like it belonged to Egyptian royalty, excavated from a tomb, earthy but also quite luxurious.... So we've used raw crystal stones and motifs like hieroglyphics, eyes and snakes in the beaten metal pieces."

Tamila Purvis and Melanie Kemsler of THEMANIAMANIA

Images: range from Edwardian and 1930s archaeologists including Howard Carter on digs to Modern day Cairo via Indiana Jones, Elizabeth Taylor, the Mummy and David Bowie. 


I have always, always, always been fascinated and enraptured by Egypt. I can even remember the exact day. Year 2, our first taste of history, studies of Ancient Egypt. We looked at things like mummies, Nefertiti, scarab beetles, enough turquoise to turn your eyes blue and my mum told me that Ancient Egyptians used to tread things like the common cold with panther poo infusions. I was completely in awe. This civilisation is magnificent. Splendour, would be an apt word. There was gold and pyramids - oh! pyramids at age 8 are something marvellous indeed - and huge sphinxes and weird cultural practices and tombs full of treasure ripe for the picking. The first nightmare I can remember happened after I read a book all about Howard Carter's famed discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. The first 'grown up' film I can remember seeing was Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I read, NO, I devoured the Cairo Jim books. Aged 9 all I wanted to be was an archeologist.

Today I've got a little bit more of a balanced mind. I know that there is much more to archaeology than cracking a whip and riding off into the sunset - but by that same token Indy had it right when he challenged the grave robbers "it belongs in a museum. I love watching films like The Mummy, Troy, Gladiator, Cleopatra... Not because they are inherently good films - although Cleopatra certainly knows how to put on a good show - but because they take you back somewhere, maybe not back into the past, but somewhere mythical and magical where history - a film-maker's history - comes alive and you can drink and walk and talk and see what the Ancient Egyptians saw for 2 hours or so. I am a history major, and have recently ended up in lots of medieval and early modern europe classes that I forgot just how much I love Ancient Egypt. I think next semester I'm going to enrol in a few classics classes (anyone remember that time last year when I had read The Secret History and wanted to take up Ancient Greek? well, i think this is a little more achievable than that). Who knows. I might learn something!

Tamila Purvis and Melanie Kemsler of The ManiaMania, who I have a great respect for, are basing their next collection on Ancient Egypt, filtered through David Bowie and Cleopatra (seen above). One can only expect that their natural, roughly-hewn aesthetic will easily adapt to things like turquoise, shining gold chokers and kohl-lined eyes. It is a logical progression to move from the 60s and 70s American Indian motifs of their current collection to something more historical, more earthy, more ancient. The idea that the jewellery could have been sourced from tombs themselves, as if Howard Carter (or indeed, Indiana Jones, or Rick O'Connell, natch) had reached in and pulled a cuff, dusty and sand-entombed, to see the light of day. It's certainly dramatic and powerful. In my mind's eye I'm seeing things like pyramid rings, rough and raw, cut out of hunks of sandstone and amulets in flawed jade with the eye of horus. I can't wait to see what they come up with. If it's anything as wonderful as the jewellery in Cleopatra - think blood red rubies and gold-feathered head pieces - It will be something truly magical indeed.

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No deaths in Venice.

There is some small comfort to be found, in times likes these, in the Chanel Resort/Cruise and Pre Fall shows. Firstly, the fact that Chanel even stages these shows, usually in glamorous locations with a cast of hundreds, a front-row showing of A-listers and clothes laden down with fanciful embellishment, is a marvel in logistics. Secondly that Chanel has enough money to produce resort and pre fall collections, let alone shows, is incredible considering the economic climate. And finally, the sheer spectacle and theatrics of the show are comforting in the way that a gauche, over the top musical is comforting, and the way watching the lavishly produced, exorbitantly made 'Cleopatra' with Elizabeth Taylor is comforting... We all love to indulge, even if that encompasses watching others do so and not ourselves.

There was no way i could NOT like this Chanel collection, i love every chanel collection this is true, but this one, peppered as it was with touches of 1920s/30s glamour, the whispers of by-gone eras where the lido deck in Venice was like a runway unto itself, when women dressed up every single day and when not wearing gloves outside the house was considered the height of informality. There were long, tailored silhouettes, plenty of structured ballerina length skirts and the usual boucle cropped jackets in stunning colours of titian red (subtle allusions to Venice continued throughout). 

There was a definite air of 'so what' about it. Karl is a man (all evidence to the contrary, i know) who constantly remarks that fashion is fashion, and will continue through recessions and long after them. In fact the 1930s silhouettes, think column dresses, wide-legged Hepburn pants, floppy hants and little sailors suits, were appropriate (more appropriate than they have ever been) considering the similarities we are feeling with the 1930s. And i'm not talking about women's liberation, the beginning of cinema, the golden age of couture... No i'm talking about economic recession. I suppose this is Karl's way of showing solidarity. We went through it then with all the glamour and glitz of the bright young things, perhaps we could learn a thing or two from them. Forget austere dressing, you can't maintain high spirits in black and grey. 

I, for one, am inclined to agree with him. Who could not raise a smile to their face when watching Marc Jacobs' FW show with all that bright neon and crazy 80s colours. Life is more beautiful in colours i've realised, and more uplifting. And Chanel always does colour in the most interesting way. There is the usual proliferation of black and white (this is Chanel after all), but mixed in there were the most gorgeous shades of crimson titian red, burnished gold, oranges and pinks in chiffon, even some deep purple in there. Colour, yes, but oh so tastefully done.

 

Karl always manages to involve influences and motifs from the country/location in which he is showing or upon which he has based his collection in the most ingenious way. Though some have maligned the lack of venetian imagery in the collection and its location (i suppose they expected the models to be sailing down gondolas through the canals) i think it was both an informed choice of location and well-done allusions. The choice of the beach outside the hotel excelsior was perfect, it was once the stomping ground of the bright young things, i remember a picture of Idina Sackville-West on the day she announced her engagement to Josslyn Hay on the Lido in the same kind of drop-waist white dress as seen on the models, the spitting image of the picture which cause scandal, outrage, and countless imitations across the jet-set. And the sunglasses with venetian mask handles was a nice touch too, you have to admit. As was the stunning finale of models stomping down with black hats and billowing silk organza capes. Their 1940s esque bra-let swimsuits a nod to trends no doubt, but in that irrepressibly 'chanel we dont care about trends' way. 

It was theatrical and over done, but well done. I am constantly amazed how Karl can manage to turn out these resort and pre-fall collections for Chanel that are so gloriously luxurious as well as manage to maintain the rest of the Chanel line, the Fendi house and his own personal design house and diffusion line. The man is a machine. When does he sleep? 

Never, it would seem. But if he continues to produce these beautiful, show-stopping collections of chanel staples and stylish extras then i won't complain. I promise. 

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[WWD via The fashion Spot]

also how exciting to see Myf Shepherd, my favourite australian model in the show. She's definitely on the up, can't wait to see her rock couture (again). 

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