THE PROMISE OF A NEW DRESS

The Cazalet Chronicles, a trilogy of novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, follows a wealthy English family during World War II. Three generations of the family, along with their servants, lovers, nurses, school friends, and a governess, retreat to a country estate in Sussex to brave out the war. The daily life here is richly described. Howard has a gift in offering seemingly mundane details (what’s served for dinner, what’s blooming in the garden, what’s being worn) that also, somehow, work to reveal the inner life of each character. There’s a precision and ease about the writing that makes the harried, melodramatic storytelling on Downton Abbey, which covers similar territory, seem downright amateurish.

During the war clothing can only be purchased with ration coupons, so the Cazalet women continually mend existing garments and fashion new ones from scraps. But every so often they take the train into London and visit a dress shop run by the socialite Hermoine Monkworth. They typically visit as they are about to embark on a new romantic drama, and Hermoine outfits them properly for it while also offering words of encouragement. For these ladies a new dress is more than a new dress. It’s a treasure, a talisman for romance, glamor and sex in a world whose foundations seem to be crumbling about them.

Juliettte Longuet’s silk Olympe dress is that kind of dress. It’s both modern and modest, cut slim, skimming the body, without any fuss. Villy could wear it to to rendezvous with her composer heartthrob, Angela to go dancing at a club, or Zoe to meet her soldier paramour. It’s a warm, deep shade of peacock blue that would draw attention in the dark wood-paneled lounge of a private club, or a first class train compartment. The silk has a lustrous skin, and is embellished with tiny pintucks and bias inserts. The dress has been crafted like jewelry, and would feel just as precious for the woman wearing it.

Image courtesy of Juliette Longuet.

February 01, 2015 by Nalina Moses

I swoon for Mr. Bates, I swoon for Lady Mary’s drop waist gowns, and I swoon for the house itself, Downton Abbey. The show is filmed at Highclere Castle, the real-life home of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon, a young couple who look alarmingly non-royal. The current structure was built between 1838 to 1878 on an historic site that has been continuously occupied since the 800’s. Like Downton, Highclere served as a hospital during WWI and, in the happier times before and after, as a venue for highly glamorous parties. The house has neo-Gothic facades with a storm of crockets and finials disguising its hearty stone walls. But its interiors, cavernous halls furnished with dark orientals and spindly tables and chairs, embody a restrained, anglophilic glamor.

An American equivalent might be the Henry Clay Frick mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York, which houses the Frick Collection. This grand limestone house and its gardens fill and entire block above East 70th Street, yet still feel intimate, like a family’s home. The rooms are finely scaled and spin off a skylit courtyard that’s a bit like Downton’s entry hall, although much smaller. Just the room names themselves – Garden Court, West Gallery, Oval Room – conjure a finer life. On a weekend afternoon the museum is filled with visitors plugged into their audio guides, focused so hard on the docent’s recorded voice that they’re inattentive to the stupendous artwork in front of them, including several iconic Vermeers and Rembrandts. As I made my way through the galleries, rediscovering a Whistler here and an El Greco there, I felt an incredible sense of ease. It could imagine that this place was still a house, and that it was entirely open to me.

February 22, 2012 by Nalina Moses