A New Look

Prada did it for A/W09. John Galliano for Dior followed suit in S/S10. From Land Girls to Film Noir, 1940s style never seems to go out of fashion – which is why you don’t need the excuse of a Blitz Party to set your hair in rollers or paint your lips pillar-box red. Although it doesn’t do any harm… 

Ahead of this weekend’s monthly East End Blitz Party, UKTV threw a Blitz Party to launch their Yesterday channel’s ‘Spirit of 1940’ season. The dresses. The diamonds. The coiffure. The pork pies. It’s not very often that fashion and TV collide, and when you spy an enormous hog roast being carved into a white bun with lashings of stuffing and apple sauce for a long line of hungry journos (with platters of ‘wartime’ doorstop sandwiches and scotch eggs if you’re still hungry) you can kind of see why. Rationing? We’ll leave that to the catwalk.   

In the foyer of the Shoreditch studios there was a dressing box full of pearls and costume jewellery, an assortment of hats, dainty gloves, military jackets, scarves and erm, novelty moustaches.

The crowd was a real mixture of people who had turned up kitted out and those who created an outfit on arrival... Lucy (top left) fished her five-year-old Primark skirt out of the bin for the occasion, having recently chucked it. You'd never believe Sarah (above right) was wearing jeans and a t-shirt minutes before this picture was taken. Or maybe you would.

I gambled on wearing my navy dress, t-bars and fur coat that could easily pass for 1940s but picking up the first hat I could find when I got there. As more than one person observed through the evening, ‘but you’re just wearing what you always do!’

But that was before I realised that UKTV had employed The Powderpuff Girls for the evening, at which I hastily threw off the hat, as hastily as I had put it on...

Et voila. 

The End. 

Party like it's 1950

I've had this 1950s silk gown (complete with original bones) in my wardrobe for about three years, after borrowing (well, stealing) it from my sister, who bought it from Bang Bang. It's rescued me on a number of occasions when I've needed a formal dress so it was great to wear it to a 1950s-themed party last night. It's a brilliant green, a colour that actually looks better on pale skin, and how often can you say that?! Because it's quite bold and structured (ie, hard to breathe in), accessorising needs to be kept to a minimum. I eschewed pearls or earrings and opted for a flower in my hair instead.

I didn't have many options with my hair, being cropped and about ten years too late for the era, but my friend Ellen curled hers and wore a sparkly hair grip a la Dita Von Teece, who does fifties hair very well.

Despite our efforts, I think the award for best-dressed has to go to Jesse, above. Ok, so he's clutching a plastic cup in this picture, but he was smoking a pipe, did have a hip flask and you can't really argue with that moustache (which he had started growing especially a month before).