'He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"
He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.'
He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.'
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
Bizarrely for something ostensibly about fashion, this blog is named after a book and a film, that is quite wholly unrelated to fashion. Apparently. The reason I named my blog after Dodie Smith's 'I Capture The Castle' and the subsequent 2003 film starring Rose Byrne, Romola Garai and the delicious Henry Cavill, it this - the uniting thematic thread of the text is writing, writing, writing. The novel may canvas other ideas and events like love, loss, and everything in between, the heart of the tale is Cassandra's attempts to 'capture' everything that happens in her life in a meaningful and lyrical way. She wants to capture saddening beauty, eye-opening love, heart- beating life and heart-wrenching despair, sisters, brothers and the closeness of family, draughty poverty, then later, honeyed wealth, and, of course, the Castle in which they all reside that is crumbling around them. When I started this blog I wanted to write in the way that Cassandra did (though hers was in a diary and not on a mac laptop), and get everything down, no matter how trivial. It turns out that it leans heavily towards the fashion. But I think, and I hope you do too, that although there is a lot of fashion, it's not meaningless. I wanted to write about things that meant something to me, and fashion is one (just one, mind), of those things. Just like how somewhere within Cassandra's musings on buttered toast and hot cups of tea there is a poignant exploration of first love - overpowering and all-engulfing, unrequited though it may be, i hope that somewhere within this blog there is some reality and meaning, too.
But why am I revisiting this, when I've already written about it before?
screencaps from I Capture The Castle (2003)
I was watching the 'I Capture The Castle' film a couple of days ago, checked out from the library in a post-easter chocolate haze. I hadn't seen it in years. As I watched again I remembered all those feelings of companionship, comradeship I felt for Rose and Cassandra, lamenting their drama-less lives and longing to live in a Jane Austen novel. And then I noticed something else - lovely, lovely fashion. Costume Dramas will always be a source of sartorial inspiration. But for some reason I had always written 'I Capture The Castle' off as something more about life than clothes. But re-watching this film when I wasn't caught in starry-eyed youthful adoration of the film (I really did read this book about 100 times during my adolescence) I saw what I missed the first (well, 20), times - wonderful, wonderful fashion.
I've always loved the 20s and 30s, and this film captures it all. Fringed dressing gowns, swingy bob cuts, calf length full skirts and prim little cardigans. Over the course of the film the girls move from impoverished but so romantic to wealthy and well-heeled. I can't say which girl i like more - the one wearing a frayed tea dress with hair wild and winsome or the one who is perfectly coiffed and pressed down in shades of ivory and cream.
There was once a time when I wore head to toe vintage and recreated looks straight from 1920s and 30s costume dramas. Those days are no longer, but I still have all those clothes, and I still wear them. Something that I marvel at daily is how they manage to fit into my current wardrobe with as much ease as they did when I was wearing gloves and carrying powder compacts in my clutch bag. It is most certainly a testament to vintage clothes and their powers of transformation, but also to personality. I believe that it is a person who wears the clothes, not the other way round. When I was a little sprite of a thing with a louise brooks bob and a fur coat in Sydney my personality was all Cassandra Mortmain or Cecilia Tallis or Tallulah Bankhead, wide-eyed and lip-biting. Now those same clothes form part of my slightly more grown up personality... which i'm still trying to work out. But that's half the fun, right?
30s-inspired
giorgio brato leather and fur coat, balmain shirt, mihoko saito cardigan, forever 21 satin obi belt, vintage skirt, judith lieber clam bag, chanel rouge coco lipstick in organdi rose, miu miu platform heels, lanvin ring.
new new new!
moschino jeans coat, balmain shirt, marian vidal necklace, 7 for all mankind jean jacket, b low the belt belt, benjamin eyewear glasses, virginia johnson scarf, celine bag, vintage checked skirt, chloe wedges, jordy askill heart ring, nars lipstick in roman holiday.
See how the same shirt and skirt can be completely different things depending on the accessories (And personality, of course)? Marvellous isn't it?
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