Clothes in Books is about to take a small holiday – so no
more blogposts for the next 10 days or so.
And this last one is something different…
In a recent comment on this book:
Someone
from the Past by Margot Bennett
staunch reader Christine Harding said this: talking of under garments, what happened to the regular posts you used to do on what goes on beneath the clothes we see?
My reply: I think those posts -
they were called Dress Down Sunday - came to a natural end, but how nice that
you remember them, and I did very much enjoy doing them. And, I recently was
looking at my huge and unwieldy file system for CiB, and came across the folder
containing collected pictures for Dress Down Sunday, ones I had come across and
saved without a specific purpose in mind. I'd forgotten I had them, and was
delighted to rediscover them! Now I need to find the books to match up with them...
I should have guessed what would come next…
Susan D
Perhaps you could post a few and let your legion of fans suggest books they
relate to?
Christine H again
I’m with Susan D on
this - you post the pictures, and I’m sure your readers can fit them to books
and characters!
Well I love a challenge to me nearly as much as a challenge
to the reader (which is common in Golden age fiction, but not quite the same
thing)
So here are a few lovely pictures from the Clothes in Books
lingerie collection. If you have some great ideas for books to feature them,
please put them in the comments below. When I get back from my holiday I will
have all these ideas ready for me…
[This is by no means all of them: there is material for several posts]
What a clever idea! I'm sure you'll get lots of suggestions, Moira! I hope you have a wonderful holiday and get the chance to really recharge. Oh, and I miss Dress Down Sunday, too.
ReplyDeleteThe first one- A Shilling for Candles (Josephine Tey) For the victim in the story.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your holiday but be sure to come home again! Here's hoping your holiday includes comfortable weather and smoke-free air.
ReplyDeleteWell, I cannot ignore this, can I! Thinking cap is on, and I am scouring the bookshelves. Enjoy your holiday.
ReplyDeleteWell, like Christie H, I'm committed to this. They're all tapping at my literary memory, but I'll need to think a bit more. The title Girls of Slender Means comes to mind, but I can't recall if the girls themselves were all that glamourous.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile.... "Foundette"??? Seriously?
Not a suggestion--the top pic reminds me of some old commercials with the line "I dreamed I went to [someplace] in my Maidenform bra." (They featured bra-clad ladies in various locales.) Is it just me or is that gal's waistband kind of tight?
ReplyDeleteThat third one with the two horizontally recumbent lingerie models reminds me of Pandora Braithwaite borrowing her mother's Janet Reger slip and allowing Adrian to touch the lace on the hem.
ReplyDelete"I was more interested in the lace near the shoulder straps, but Pandora said, 'no darling we must wait until we've got our O levels.'"
Actually there's another bit in Adrian Mole, not sure if it's the same book as this, where Grandma Mole has him spray Ralgex on her shoulder and reveals a corset like a parachute harness, and says that since they went out of fashion the country has lost its backbone.
DeleteGrowing up is realising that Adrian Mole isn't actually the hero of the early books, and that their real heroine is Pauline, his mum.
I'm remembering more and more underwear related stuff now, like how Pandora's gang put punk studs on their underskirts after the headmaster
Deletebanned studs from being worn in school "except on the soles of football boots" and that then led me to the Red Socks situation (not really underwear, but Pandora's were lurex and then they had to wear them under their regulation black socks). And now I've just remembered Pauline Mole hiding her padded bras so that her husband doesn't find out (although I think that's Adrian misunderstanding the situation, cos it seems unlikely that his father wouldn't notice something like his wife's boobs suddenly reducing in size sans bra)
Of course there is The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee (NOT ghost written by Craig Rice!). Most of the cast is in their underwear in the many dressing room scenes. Several American private eye novels have scenes with women in negligees though I'm unsure if the mostly male writers spent any time describing the women's clothes in detail. Their bodies, yes. The clothes...probably not. The most memorable one that comes to mind is purely from the title: The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown by Sylvia Tate (1956). It was made into a movie with Jane Russell. A woman writer so maybe a good one for intimate apparel descriptions.
ReplyDeleteThe foundation garments may be a little earlier, but I think they are the sort of thing Marian let the saleswoman persuade her to buy in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman.
ReplyDelete“She oozed herself into the new girdle she had got to go with the dress, noting that she hadn’t really lost much weight: she had been eating a lot of noodles. She hadn’t intended to buy one at all, but the sales lady who was selling her the dress and who was thoroughly corseted herself said she ought to, and produced an appropriate model with satin panelling and a ribbon at the front. ‘Of course you’re very thin dear, you don’t really need one, but still that is a close-fitting dress and you wouldn’t want it to be obvious you haven’t got one on, would you?’ At that time it had seemed like a moral issue. ‘No, of course not,’ Marian had said hastily, ‘I’ll take it.’
I always thought girdles were worn to make you look thinner - I didn’t realise that it was socially unacceptable not to wear one,
That was me. I put my name on comments and it just disappears.
DeleteThe two young women in deshabillée in picture 6 brought to mind Julia Larwood and her acquaintance Rowena in Sarah Caudwell’s “The Shortest Way to Hades”, unwinding after an eventful but hazily remembered evening - Rowena relaxing on the rug, Julia still puzzling over what they could have done to cause the staff of the Vashti’s House nightclub to throw them out.
ReplyDeleteSovay
This is brilliant!
DeleteWould the pink negligee do for Gwendolen in the pink flat above a nightclub (The Shrines of Gaity, Kate Atkinson), or would something a little slinkier be better? I think she might enjoy this, so different from her sensible, old night attire and her life as a librarian.
ReplyDeletePicture 5 - the young woman despairing in her petticoat - that’s clearly a 1950s petticoat rather than 1940s but in every other respect it would be perfect for one of Elizabeth Bowen’s WW2 ghost stories, “Pink May”.
ReplyDeleteSovay
It's surprisingly difficult to come up with suggestions that fit the pictures - especially suggestions for books or stories not already featured on the blog. Lady B in Joyce Dennys's "Henrietta Sees It Through" (which HAS already featured) says she's been wearing the same style of stays for the last 30 years, which must mean something like the "Jurna" model in picture 4 - the "Foundette" garments don't look like her sort of thing at all (and what big heads you have, 1930s Foundette-wearing ladies ...)
ReplyDeleteSovay