Summer. It’s such a lie. Grey drizzle prevails throughout June. The sun makes a cameo appearance one icy, blustery day in July, and everyone in Scotland takes off their clothes. We shiver stubbornly, on beaches and in parks, across hills and glens. We go swimming in lochs, and get out quickly and pretend that we’re […]
Category: Old movies
Secret Style Icons No.21 & No.22: Thelma and Louise
‘I don’t ever remember feeling this awake’ – Thelma It starts the way all films should – two gals, a convertible and a loaded gun, off on a road trip together. They’ve got high-waisted jeans and enormous swaying hair. They’re getting away from hard work, boredom and Thelma’s cretin of a husband. What could possibly […]
Secret Style Icon No.20: Wednesday Addams
Name: Wednesday Friday Addams Born: 1938 Hobbies: Ballet, pyromania, raising spiders Likes: The Bermuda Triangle; witchcraft; misandry Dislikes: Smiling; team activities; other people Style: Impeccable It’s October: the best month of the year. The days are still bright, but brilliantly chilly and serene. The ground is crispy with leaves. Spicy hot chocolates can be consumed with […]
Lolita, Madame Bovary, Roxana: Life Lessons from Beloved Books
This is mostly about Lolita, because it is my favourite novel. If you don’t want to encounter spoilers or opinionated ramblings, I’d advise clicking away. (That can apply to any post you see here.) Novels are foxy and full of tricks: they wear guises, they steal tales and retell them, and they shape-shift shamelessly. You can […]
The Wonderful Life of Mary Hatch
Christmas is here, season of goodwill and morning drunkenness. It’s my favourite time of the year. Everyone wears wool. We all eat pastry a lot more than usual, and take a moment now and then (lackadaisically dusting pie crumbs from our jumpers) to think of those less fortunate than ourselves. So let’s do that. Join […]
Secret Style Icon No 18: Etheline Tenenbaum
She’s not so much a secret style icon, as my blueprint for a life. When I grow up, I want to be Etheline Tenenbaum. You can’t discourage me by suggesting she isn’t real. I know there’s a New York out there where it is always autumn, turning to winter; where baroque townhouses sit in faded […]
Dressing for the New Season: Jane Russell Advises You
Autumn is on its way. Season of tawny sunlight, blackberries, cosy gloom and fireworks. The wee heat-wave we’ve enjoyed in Scotland this year has sadly come to an end, and wasn’t it just amazing too. Amazing, and yet, perhaps little fraudulent, no? On the Hebridean island from which most of my family came, older relatives, […]
Secret Style Icon No 14: Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter
If you were expecting saucy romance (or aliens) from a film called Brief Encounter, this British masterpiece of the 1940s instead offers a wonderful oddyssey of longing, compromise, disappointment and despair. I love it. From the cut-glass accents and minutae of everyday middle class life (making a phonecall from the tobacconists, taking brandy in a […]
Fleamarket Finds and Good Films
The rain and wind are caterwhauling around these parts at the moment, but the city has proved itself full of brightness and exciting things (as well as rain), from beautiful foreign films to the thrill of treasure-seeking at a Sunday fleamarket. Here’s a look at the gems that I found at the Glue Factory fleamarket today… I got […]
Secret Style Icon(s) No.10: Vamps
“So you’re a private detective. I didn’t know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you’re a mess, aren’t you?” As if it wasn’t enough that everybody knows Bogart and Baccall were falling in love in real life while filming The Big Sleep, they get […]
Amy Jardine 