Silent Era Vamp

The exquisitely exotic and gothy Musidora (born Jeanne Roques) was introduced to me by this week’s movie pick, Irma Vep which imagines a fictional remake of Les Vampires, the silent serial that made Musidora famous in France in the early 1910’s. With her heavily kohled eyes and gorgeous alabaster skin, she shines in the dramatic styles she donned. Aside from her stunning looks and personal style, though, she was quite a pioneer in the cinematic world. At a time when women rarely worked beyond the roles of actress or costume designer, she was both a director and producer. Many of her works are sadly lost.

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Classic Designer

Timeless, flattering, and subtly daring, the fashions of Jean Muir would be as welcome and beloved today as they were in her heyday. The elegant Scot is considered among the finest dress makers to ever live even if her name is perhaps less known than fellow greats Chanel and Vionnet. I’d live in her dresses if I could right now and feel that the drapey, often printed dresses with impeccable details have influenced today’s designers of easy high fashion. She was also a big proponent of the turban, which you know makes me love her more.

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Elegant Dressmaker

While the name Valentina Nicholaevna Sanina Shlee (she was commonly referred to as simply Valentina) is not the most widely remembered of her time, from the late 20s to the 50s the Russian born beauty was a highly skilled, dramatic dressmaker who was as stylish and remarkable herself as her simple and gorgeous creations. She was designer for the stage and dressed the rich and the famous of the era. One of her clients was Greta Garbo, who once had an affair with Valentina’s husband. The fued between them resulted in an elaborate leaving and entering schedule so they’d avoid each other in the halls of  the ritzy apartment complex they both lived in. The Museum of the City of New York had a retrospective of her career last year that I am sad to say I missed.

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Girl Sleuth

While I am sure lovers of the classic Nancy Drew series were justifiably horrified with the late 80’s redux The Nancy Drew Files. I personally devoured the first  incarnation for a time and was plenty taken with the painted covers that always featured the kind of outfits I saw high school girls wearing and some sort of generic stud boy that looked about 30 years old.

Drew, the trailblazing amateur girl sleuth who was created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate through several authors using the enduring pseudonym, Carolyn Keene, continues as a young adult all American character now being played by Emma Roberts and fighting Vampires in Japan (?).

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Golden Girl

First Bea, now Rue McClanahan. The Golden era of girls is truly coming to an end. And while the hit show they shared fame on is considered a kitschy guilty pleasure, it’s a surprisingly funny and watchable one thanks in no small part to the cast. Rue as the man crazy Blanche Devereaux, who worked more than one man to his death in her Florida retirement home bedroom, was hilarious.

Other appearances included outside my old apartment on Bedford Avenue as the mistress of ceremonies for the Dog Parade, and the Film Crew narrated lost classic B movie Hollywood After Dark.

And if we didn’t already love her enough, the world just learned that her apartment features this:

“The door to her office is another conversation piece. It is sculptured to look as though a naked woman was walking through it. The woman’s head and one breast extend into the hallway; her hand is the doorknob. From inside the office, you see her backside.”

as well as a secret passageway.

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Style Iconoclast

The irreverent style of Iris Barrell Apfel was introduced to me by my sister and we’ve both kept the ingeniously fashionable eccentric as a semi guarded secret. But the feeling of sharing has won over and I give you Miss Apfel, a lover of huge wild jewelry, exaggerated silhouettes, and inventive color combinations, a truly remarkable inspiration. A chance to wander through her closet would probably make me weep and pass out.

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Georgy Girl

While Lynn Redgrave may lament the typecasting as she said as “the happy lass with the broken heart” that her iconic role Georgy Girl led to, it’s a pretty wonderful role to be remembered by. And if you’ve not seen it, I recommend after Lynn’s recent passing you check it out.

From a famous family of thespians, Lynn was known as the comedian, perhaps even the less perfect “ugly duckling” (though she was certainly by no means ugly at all), but that only made her a most sympathetic and lovely actress. She sucummed to a long battle with breast cancer.

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Famed Dancer

When Jadin Wong passed away at 96 recently, it was proclaimed “the end of an era”. I was introduced to the brassy, ballsy, eccentric and spectacular woman in a clip from a Budd Mishkin interview where, at 90, she was still dancing and told the world that she “kicked tush”. From nightclubs to Broadway to comedy to film, her career was varied and pioneering.

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Belle Epoque Dancer

As one of France’s most beloved dancers, Cleo de Merode caught the eye of artists (Gustav Klimt) and kings (Leopold II), the latter of which resulted in scandalous rumours that haunted her throughout her life despite the lurid tales of an affair being wholly untrue.

She gained even more admiration from a wider audience when she joined the Folies Bergere. Here’s a link to a 1897 article about her stateside arrival which describes her actual upbringing as much more humble than the royal background she claimed . I find her beguiling and the fashions she dons in her many portraits to be inspiring and beautiful. There are many to gaze at below/after the jump.

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