Glamour!

by Anna Campbell

I've just got home from a week away in Brisbane, my local big smoke, a couple of hours away via public transport.

I had to go down for the Brisbane Writers Festival where I ran a workshop on Writing a Romance that Sells with my friend Christine Wells (sold out which was nice). I also did a signing on Wednesday night at one of the big bookshops in town. In between, I got to catch up with my oldest friend and celebrate my birthday that had occurred the previous week when I'd been head down to meet a deadline on my latest story.

So as a belated birthday celebration, my friend and I went to the Gallery of Modern Art on Brisbane's Southbank to see the Valentino Retrospective. GOMA is the only Australian venue for this marvellous exhibition of high fashion so I felt very lucky that I was in town to see it and that it was in town to be seen!

I hope you enjoy the pictures of these incredibly glamorous gowns. It was interesting - he worked with a limited palette of colors. Lots of red (the famous 'Valentino' red), pink, black and variations of white. In the 60s, he also used a lot of animal prints - very swinging 60s indeed! There was one ice-blue dress - it turned out that it belongs to the collection his successors put together after his retirement in 2008. It was almost shocking to see the blue once my eyes had adjusted to the other colors!

There were some famous dresses in the collection. Jackie Kennedy's dress for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis in 1968. A surprisingly simple cream number cut above the knee, high-necked with long, gathered sleeves. There was the extremely elegant black and white dress Julia Roberts wore to the Oscars when she won her best actress award for Erin Brockovich. There was a luscious creamy dress that Cate Blanchett wore when she collected her Oscar for The Aviator.

Most of the clothes were what I'd classify as evening wear. Not a lot of stuff you could imagine slipping down to the local supermarket in! Some of the 60s designs were accounted day wear, but I suspect that would only be if you were Verushka or Twiggy or Jean Shrimpton!

Actually speaking of Twiggy, I think you needed a particular sort of figure to carry these dresses off with any aplomb. A VERY long waist - a lot of them featured beautiful ruching around the waist so someone short and short-waisted like me would have looked a little like a bag tied in the middle with string if I'd worn them! You'd need to be tall and not terrifically heavy up top. In fact, heavy anywhere probably wasn't going to be suitable!

All the mannequins they displayed the clothes on had outlandishly long necks. This made sense when I saw some of the archive films that were part of the show - the models looked rather like high-strung thoroughbreds with long, LOOOONG legs and swan-like necks on which perched small, neat heads. It's a very distinctive look and it certainly suits the lovely clothes!

It was wonderful being able to get really close to the dresses and see the level of detail that went into constructing these beautiful shapes. Gussets and darts and bias cuts galore, as you can imagine. The fabrics were also luxurious beyond the dreams of mortal women. I kept saying to my friend, "Wouldn't you feel like a princess in that?" For example, look at this beautiful rose pink fantasy of a gown on the left. Cinderella would have been happy wearing that!

Something I love about the dresses is also apparent in these pictures. Many of them are extremely feminine and romantic. More of the princess look! There's a lot of flower detailing in the gowns - look at that spectacular red dress with the coquelicot poppy train. Isn't that gorgeous? But the florals and the floaty fabrics in many of the designs - tulles and organzas and silk voiles - make the dresses themselves seem like flowers. Definitely hothouse blooms!

As I think you can tell, I had a wonderful time living in this glamorous world for a few hours. It actually made me think of the Regency where women from the highest echelons of society would commission gowns of this caliber for the London Season. The level of craftsmanship on display certainly harked back to an earlier age.

So do you have a famous glam designer? Do you have memories of a dress that appeared at an awards ceremony that you either hated or loved (Bjork's swan outfit at the Oscars a few years ago springs to mind!)? Do you think fashion belongs in an art gallery? Let's talk the girly stuff!

Behind a Mask - The Joys of Pretending (and Dressing Up!) Annie West

We’ve all done it, or dreamed of doing it – pretended for a short time that we are someone else. Someone exotic and interesting, perhaps a fascinating femme fatale or a heroine from a favourite book.

Here in Australia, whenever Book Week rolls around most schools have a costume parade where children get the fun of dressing as Harry Potter, Heidi or whatever fictional character most appeals. And the kids respond enthusiastically – there’s something so liberating about becoming someone else, even for a few short hours.

Costume parties are a perennial favourite and I know that all around the world festivals abound where people are invited to tug on a costume or a mask and enter a world of make believe for a few hours. Mardi Gras, Carnivale, Fasching and Halloween all beckon as chances to let down your hair, frock up in something outlandish or stunning and take on a new persona. In a world where most of us are busy being responsible, sensible and careful (most of the time) the lure of a mask or a costume is irresistible.

My most recent experience of this was at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference where the cocktail party theme was Venetian Carnivale. Wow! What a night. So many smiles. So many masks, cloaks, feathers, fabulous costumes and general glitter. The idea of a costume party at the Conference has been fantastically successful since so many people love to dress up and because there’s no pressure to do so. The rest of the attendees get to admire and chat about the costumes. It’s a terrific ice breaker as well as being enormous fun. The woman in gold here is one of our members. Hi Christine!

Perhaps too, some of the success of that party was because these were authors attending, people who make their living, or hope to, from exercising their imaginations and creating fantasy worlds. For most of the year we work alone, in well appointed offices (I wish!) or in a corner somewhere, trying to block out the rest of the world and enter the realm of our latest story. After a year of solo writing no wonder we were ready for some outlandish celebrations. But more than that, I think people who love books also have a love of make believe which allows them to enjoy fictitious worlds, even if only for a few hours.

How many romance readers would love to spend an evening being Cinderella at her ball or Elizabeth Bennett being courted by Mr Darcy? One of my own personal fantasies as a girl was taking Grace Kelly’s place in the movie ‘To Catch a Thief’. I’d go to the masked ball wearing that stunning gold ball gown and dance with Cary Grant!

I’m sure learned books and articles have been written on why people like to make believe, explaining the primitive urge for fantasy, escape, release, or just plain fun. I just know it works, especially if I haven’t had to spend a fortune on a costume.

I suspect that writing romance feeds the desire to escape from the mundane world and stand for a while in someone else’s shoes. To experience the exotic for just a little while. When I write I can be my heroine – strong and confident in situations where I’d be a nervous wreck in real life. Or petite and delicately vulnerable (at around 5’10” I’ve never been described as petite!). I can live my heroine’s exciting life just for a little while, then safely return to my own. The best of both worlds!

What do you think? Do you like to pretend by playing make believe in costume or do you unleash that urge only in the books you read or write? What would be your favourite costume or character for a masquerade?

Annie is currently grappling with another fictitious world, one where the heroine occasionally gets to wear silks and satins and where the hero has just FINALLY realised he can’t live without her. Sigh.

If you want to dip into one of Annie's favourite alternative realities, check out her most recent release for Harlequin Presents – 'For the Sheikh's Pleasure'.