There is a particular self-portrait of a bikini-clad Bunny Yeager (Yeager being the pin-up model-cum-photographer responsible for that 1955 Bettie Page Santa hat Playboy cover) perched on a stool on a beach, head thrown back in glee, which never fails to supply me with a healthy dose of self-confidence. At first glance, the image seems…
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Fashion
Ode to the nightie
Pyjamas. Jim-jams. Jammies. Or, if you prefer Cockney Rhyming Slang, Simon Schamas. Whatever term you opt for, the practice of wearing anything to bed at all is a fairly modern phenomenon. It is surmised that designated sleepwear was largely non-existent before the early sixteenth century. Up until then, men and women alike slept starkers –…
Fashion
The long lost brands of yore
There is something rather ghostly about sartorial memories; our recollections of cherished items that have long since been passed on or given away assume a sort of uncanniness when remembered. They belonged to a past version of our self; they would no longer fit us could we access them; their exact colour or texture is…
Travel
How to eat your way around Norwich
My stomach and I have had the pleasure of munching and sipping various food and beverages at many Norwich establishments over the course of my time here. I look upon the map of Norwich as a sort of tasting map now – areas associated with memories of savoured meals gone by. Here is a glimpse…
Fashion
Learning to heal: tattoos and me
I have always found it hard to describe my relationship to my tattoos. For a long time, though they were carved into me, embedded deeply in my skin to adorn my body for evermore, I struggled to articulate how it felt on a personal level to be decorated by ink in this way. I felt…
Fashion, Venue
Renegade fashion designer Kenzo Takada dies aged 81
Kenzo Takada, the visionary behind namesake fashion house Kenzo, has died aged 81, after a battle with coronavirus. Having launched Kenzo in 1970, Takada soon began making waves in the Paris fashion scene. A graduate of Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College, where notably, he was one of the institution’s first male students, Takada moved to France…