1st May 2013
June Sohn is the inspired Korean designer presenting these knockout rain jackets at the New York Fashion week.
Would you call the designs minimal? In a way. No fuss. Focus on function.
What about the fabric?
Well, a revelation!
Such a performance!!
The hang, the drape, the movement. Doesn't it remind you of something? A lot?
BUT.
It's 'breathable'. Breathable!!
Just the spectator who is left gasping!
Gasping at what I suppose we have to concede is some kind of mirage.
The word is Jungwon.
Tony, who spotted these wonderful teasing garms: thankyou.
Meanwhile, in London:
New Bond Street. Thanks R.
2nd April 2013
Pic Courtesy SERIES-DDL.COM
We enjoyed MayDay here, and not just for the brilliant rainwear shown off by Lesley Manville in her Gail role. The colour is all wrong in the only pic I could find: it was a lovely orange on the screen, wasn't it? We thought for a moment it was one of ours!
But now I look at the pics together, how can we ever have thought that?
Don't forget the new series of Scott and Bailey with Amelia Bullimore opening shortly in a front room near you...
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Pic courtesy SixtyPlusSurfers
Lovely military double-texture found in The Sweeney, first aired 1975, much too establishment - and smart - for the twin heroes, worn in fact with wonderful posh-boy swagger by 'Major Carver', played by Jeffrey Wickham.
Another friend has pointed me to a DVD of The Ragman's Daughter, one of my all-time favorites, now available from Instant Vintage. Just arrived from Queens Village NY and superior by miles to a greying VHS copy I had. Wonderful!
And someone else again has marked the passing of HMP Lancaster with a suite of images which have nothing whatever, I'm sure, to do with the life that has fled.
Thankyou! Hope everyone finds something nice! LE
1st March 2013
The other thing is Benjamin Britten!
Classical rainwear to the fore on the cover of a collection of photographs to celebrate the 100th anniverary of Britten's birth. Here's hoping it will bring cheer, among others, to Alex who emails to tell us of the extraordinary pleasure she has enjoyed on a horse in a riding mac (she was the one in the mac) and promising 'raunchy scenes' in the novel she is finishing.
And smart raingear was no flash in the pan for Britten, here sharing the honours with long-time friend and collaborator, Peter Pears.
There's not are really enough days in February, so I'm gonna be a bit late with the update! I'll do the blog because I have a couple of nice things, then I'll keep putting up this and that over the next day or so...
The best thing is probably - as so often! - from Burberry! I don't think Burberry have any tradition of rubberised rainwear - do they? - but up they come in the Winter of 2013 with translucent rubber sleeves and gunpatches - even skirts - for their latest range. Designed of course by Christopher Bailey who keeps the brilliant ideas coming. And the trenchcoat fizzing.
Terra email to tell us they have won the 2013 Travel + Leisure Design Award for Best Women's Travel Clothing.
Winning entry: Tribeca in midnight blue.
I have never handled their quite wonderful-looking, absolutely unique fabric - but doesn't it look good? God to look at, but also - surely - a magic touch?
They describe it as 'breathable'. But isn't there a danger of it taking your breath clean away?
"Terra New York: 100% water resistant, sealed seams, breathable, touch screen friendly fabric"
1st February 2013
Lots of revolutionary stuff in Lisa Armstrong's piece on rainwear in the Telegraph recently!
Burberry developing the trenchcoat? Tosh! Aquascutum then? Rubbish! They didn't use the right materials.
No, it was the rubberised cloth developed by Charles Mackintosh and
It was Hancock that relieved the original invention of its smell and so brought the Mackintosh to its heyday, in the middle of the 19th Century, when everybody - well, every male person - had one.
Except Harold Wilson! - who had Gannex!
And the Queen.
And her corgis, all erring in exactly the same way: they wore Gannex. And Gannex was short on style.
British Railways on the other hand erred in the other direction. They made their workpeople wear genuine Mackintoshes.
So a pincer movement: the Royals didn't, the hoi polloi did. End of the Mackintosh as a desirable article.
Until now! Yagi Tsusho saw the good ship Mackintosh going down in Glasgow and now sells very flattering khaki trenches with mohair collars: in rubberised cotton.
Danel Dunko, eat your heart out! It was the Japanese what did it!
You can read the full amazing story in Lisa's lovely Telegraph article.
Pics, from the top, courtesy:
Burberry, Aquascutum, Harold Wilson, Gannex label, Corgi from Rendezvous, Gannex factory, Mackintosh styles under Daniel Dunko's supervision from Scottish Academy of Fashion
Remember Gannex?
It proletarialised the Mackintosh!
Pics above courtesy Jenny Wotherspoon: Gannex (BBC Developing Talent Winner 2011) and Gannex Mill.
Somebody very nice has sent me a lovely portfolio of pics and cuttings, I don't know who.
Thank you so much!
I will gradually put the pieces up, but here is one of the best, a fine quality capture from Lady Godiva Rides Again.
Is it strange that some of the best pictures of mackintoshes are to be found in films - especially films from the 40s and 50s?
Somehow rain is magic in the cinema - but outside? At least really difficult to find! I think it's to do with people in predigital times days only thinking of taking photographs in the sunshine...
An enquiry: does anybody know "the actual address of the old BTR/L & B Rubber Co site on Wheelton Lane [in Leyland] - which I understand was demolished in 2008". I think we are talking about the Birmingham and Leyland Rubber Company building. Can anybody help?
Thanks everyone - hope there is something here for you!
LE
New Years Day 2013
Happy New Year
So if you wanted to be an actual Christian, you would choose a demonstrable faith ... but if you wanted merely to self-identify as a reasonable, pro-social person, with a moral code, an empathetic nature, a sense of decency and probably an account with Lakeland...the Church of England said it all.
Zoe Williams, The Guardian , 13:12:12.
Goodbye 2012
Pic courtesy Sunchine Coast Daily
Can't help feeling that with all that rain there ought to have been much more excitement...
Christmas on the box
It's been a story of missed opportunity on the UK box - don't you think? Cm manages to stay reasonably cheerful when he writes:
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Pics courtesy BBC |
"We've had the Christmas special Midwife, with the usual lovely gaberdines, but, sadly, no sign of anything rubberised, nor in the thriller Restless or the repeats on ITV3 of Marple."
Nor (Hazel adds!), "in an impermeaphilially disappointing second series for The Hour, completely rivetting except for this one tragic weakness, and nothing remotely interesting in Downton, blithely sailing into the glory days of the mackintosh with nary a quicksilver drape nor a quickening rustle - and as for Homeland 2, such a wasted opportunity for military spic and swish and terrorist chic wasted - wasted. The Killing? Do I hear you say the Killing?!! Dead Dead Dead." [Hazel obviously quite upset!]
Cm has a reason to stay cheerful, though he has to go back to 1978 for real inspiration and the tv series Enemy at the Door. He finds the heroine Clare Martell in her authentic vintage mackintosh rustling fetchingly onto his desktop. His favorite image? The one that shows her as she climbs, so tightly-belted, into the horse-drawn cart...
(Eek! I don't whether it's Claire Martell or Clare Martel or some combination - authorities differ. LE)
Bright spots?
The Polish National Opera had the decency in 2012 to dress their production of Manon Lescaut in raincoats. What a climate- changical idea! Costume credits to Magdalena Musiał, may she stay dry and live long.
Thanks to Ted for passing on this remarkable and cheering information. Wielkie dzięki!
(I already shared Ted's information with the Newsletter subscribers, but just in case that didn't reach everybody...)
Pics courtesy Polish National Opera
Burberry gets bigger every year!
Courtesy The Guardian
Terrific redebut by Daniel Dunko with Hancock!
Pic courtesy Hancock
Rainy Brian's new and updated Film listings appear this month. The video details alone will have cost him a terrific amount of time and effort. Many many thanks Brian - from all of us I'm sure.
HNY! - LE
December 1st
A friend sent us this great picture of Toyah Willcox taking a mac to Croome Park in Worcestershire in support of the National Trust's Walking Festival.
In fact she seems to have taken two:
This is the second, something of a faux double-texture look don't you think ? (I've cut the picture off so you don't see the disappointing tiered skirt). Have a look at the video. And join in the Festival! - Well, actually, it will have to be next year now.
Pics courtesy The National Trust
Toyah in fact has form, confessing to have been "the first person to wear a rubber dress on tv."
And not just the first to wear a rubber dress on tv, but also the first (and between you and me I can only think the only) to have a rubber dress 'slide off ' her on tv (or off, I would have thought):
"It was 1984 I was on the set of Das Boot shooting a video for a music program in Germany and what they didn’t tell me is that if you wear rubber under lights it goes quite fluid and on the set of Das Boot at the time they would have train fulls of tourists going past the set taking pictures of the set.
"And these trains carried about 200 people so there I was shooting a video on the set, in this rubber dress, sweating profusely when the dress slid of completely, went down around my ankles, where it cooled and shrank around my ankles like clingfilm leaving me completely starkers."
Thanks to The Toyah Willcox Interview Archive for text and pic.
And from the incomparable Namrof, still making News with his International-looking and quite wonderful muse.
More on Flickr
Dinah Sheridan (1920-2012)
who probably gave much more pleasure than she knew. RIP
Some great trenches on uk tv just now, but only a glimpse at a time. This is the middle of Suranne Jones as Eve Caleigh in The Secret of Crickley Hall. A clip here.
Pic and clip courtesy the BBC.
And this from Landrover!
Pic courtesy Landrover
Thanks for all your trouble, you wonderful contributors, especially the anonymous person who put the National Trust magazine in the post to me.
Hope there is something for you in the update, and maybe in the Christmas Sale?
Do keep dry.
LE
November 1st
Pic courtesy Burberry
Victoria Pendleton speaks Burberry to Burberry. Preferring sprint to individual pursuit.
Pic courtesy Burberry
Otherwise the Fashion Weeks were a bit thin, I thought?
For your e-bookshelf: Not news to some of us, but for others a pointer might be welcome. Charles Goodyear's memoire on his dealings with Gum-Elastic, and his hopes for the future (1855) has been scanned in by Google. and is free to download. It's a pdf file, and a big one, so you struggle a bit. Maybe someone will serve humankind by converting it into a series of ordinary web (in html) pages? Lots of interesting illustrations.
For posterity: Thanks to Turing, you can now search with the touch of the button all the novels written in the 19th Century and most of those out of copyright written since. I've looked through a few, but maybe others would like to join in? It would simply be to search for 'mackintosh' or 'macintosh' or 'mac' or 'waterproof' or 'raincoat'. Added together, the results could be historically quite interesting - ?
For antiquity: You don't have to be terribly old to keep an eye on the Antiques Roadshow (BBC 1, generally Sundays in the UK) where NM is always ready to show off her brilliant taste in rainwear. We have seen before the bright green trenchy jacket she was wearing on her visit to St Andrews last week, but my goodness it doesn't matter one bit.
Pic courtesy the The Courier
Film guru and very generous contributor David has noticed what seems to me to be one of Rajkumar's drab-green Maidans in an Indian film called 'Raincoat'.
It's called 'Raincoat' apparently because it has nothing to do with raincoats! (But she does wear one, for a nanosecond or two. Or maybe something lost in translation?)
Telegraph.co.uk puts the question:
"What does the former owner of Mackintosh do when he steps down as the managing director after nearly 30 years with the iconic rainwear brand? "
and tells us the answer:
"Easy, he buys a factory in Scotland and goes into competition."
Daniel Dunko is the man in question, and he has set up his new company under the iconic name of Hancock.
See his new styles for men and women created in collaboration with tailor Timothy Everest.
This is brilliant news for the discerning impermeaphile - all the very best DD for the brilliant new venture.
Pics courtesy Hancock
Thanks to the ever-alert MacJames.
Another re-release!
It Always Rains on a Sunday. I'm getting the hang of these re-releases. There is a refurbished DVD available...And you should be able to see Patricia Plunkett, Susan Shaw and a mystery other (?) working their magic all over again in a multiplex near(ish) you.
Homeland is back (in the UK). Still cutting it! But surely Carrie can do better than this -
pic courtesy Variety Emmy Central
Hope there is something for you in the update, thanks as always to everyone who has sent things - much appreciated.
LE
October 1st
Doc has spotted the Princess Royal (1932) in her nursing uniform, complete with - working! - mackintosh.
Promising period drama on UK tv recently has not yielded any period mackintoshes, alas... Has it? But terrific compensation in the treasures that keep turning up on YouTube.
On tv we have to rely on modern trenchcoats to make a splash. Best I think was worn by Good Cop's ex, pin sharp detailing (I mean the mac, but actually it applies to the ex, come to think of it - which is probly why it works so well) and classical colour - navy.
But the only really good pic I can find is this one:
- though there's also this:
Good Cop pics courtesy Tinydl and AwesomeDL
I think it must be in the Station wardrobe, because here it is again on a different body which doesn't seem to like it as much:
Pic courtesy Boston.com
Amazed to award silver to Hermione Norris character in Mother's Son:
Pic courtesy The Arts Desk Com
Amazed because I didn't think I liked this kind of style. But the pockets and the studs suddenly seem nice to me. And the material is a bit scrunchy, at least it's not Harris Tweed. Am I just a follower of fashion?
Base pic courtesy ZIMBIO, manip by Lorraine
It seems The London Review of Books has been having a rubber moment!
John keeps himself informed on these matters.
First, he says, a new thesis about Lady Chatterley's Lover: from the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge. The Lady in question is made to wear rubber tennis shoes and a rubberised mackintosh as she walks from Wragby Hall to the Gamekeeper's Cottage in order to make the point that there is a happy state of living intermediate between the 'modern' and the 'primeval'. [All is explained]
Then the story of Roger Casement in the Congo, reporting to the UK Government the outrages committed by the rubber trade as it extracted rubber (principally for bicycle tyres, not mackintsohes) from what was at the close of the 19th Century 'one of the most lucrative places on earth'.
And then a letter, prompted by the Lady Chatterley article, reporting the presence in Faber the publisher in the 1980s of an American author (or would-be author) and gentleman member of 'The Mackintosh Club'.
Was there one? Or is this just another name for the revered Mackintosh Society?
Hope the update is Ok. Thanks everyone!
LE
Namrof's magnificent latest!
For more of the latest images from the wonderfully generous Namrof and his brilliant models do have a good look through our Flickr albums.
Belgian Gangster
"Martine Franck, Antwerp-born photographer and widow of the famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, died on Fri 17 August, aged 74, after a long illness".
Pic courtesy The Guardian.
Thanks so much to the friend who noticed this pic, and who added:
"On another note, have recently seen Namrof's latest offerings; what a talent this man has for capturing such beauty. I thought Nadia in black SlickR Mallik was... and then Angie appeared!!!
Much as I adore the Stephanie style mac, please Please PLEASE could we see Angie again very soon!! in a SlickR Mallik in that gorgeous soft cornflower blue, a colour that was made for her. (Why can't I stop thinking that the REAL history of the trenchcoat is surely "Make love, not war"?!)"
1st September
And then, a thousand years’ peace
J has been to Edinburgh and thought for a moment he was enjoying Stockhausen! It was a ballet, And then, a thousand years’ peace, he says completely brilliant, "with this thrilling soundscape against which beautiful bodies etched their tracery movement - achingly lovely, impossibly precise, thrillingly imaginative."
It wasn't Stockhausen, who was responsible instead for the partner ballet Helikopter, it was Laurent Garnier. But still, adding pictures to otherwise musician's music - for the rest of us - seems a good idea.
Sorry, nearly forgot! The female half of the cast were wrapped in clear and breath-threatening plastic for part of the time...
And, towards the end, the casting off of chains...
Pics courtesy Bella Figura, and Edinburgh National Festival.
Outside, it just rained. But plastic ruled. OK!
Pic courtesy Gestaurant
Thanks so much to all of you who have found something for us! A bit of an August edition... sorry I didn't have time to include more...
LE
Brilliant set of new photos of our macs from Namrof!
Look them up on Flickr.
On the right the Mallik trench in Rajkumar's double-rubbered slickr.
Steph in traditional navy single-texture rubberised cotton.
Mallik trench in Rajkumar's SoftBR
Coronation Street is good with rainwear, don't you think?
I was once told that one of Ken Barlow's daughters (there must be thousands) was a journalist character at one point, sporting the journalist trench uniform - but in genuine in rubberised cotton. Are there any pics out there?
Otherwise its ordinary poly/cotton trenchcoats, but 'expressive of character', don't you think? Like Carla's stern stormy black military number (that's Carla as she was of course)
and the mouthy twosome Stella and Leane.
Pics courtesy Throng, Throng from top
Meanwhile ace designer Victoria Beckham has been showing off her Comme des Garçons Cape Trench Dress.
Not a trench, not a cape, but charming bits of both. And, at the same time, a dress! Wonderful!
Pic courtesy Jett-Set Fashion
1st August
Czech this out 
The rainwear Olympics were a bit of a washout.
The Czechs did their level best, but honestly the rain boty is not quite what the host nation expects when it thinks 'wellie'.
Bronze for the rain boty then, but pure gold to the Dutch!
Their trenchy orange raincoats stormed out to the front early on and stayed the distance.
Pics courtesy The Globe and Mail
Otherwise
a lot of thin plastic
bringing up the rear?
and this is the best I could do for the traditional impermeaphile
Pics courtesy Evening Standard, azdailysun.com, El Paso Inc, from the top
There's talk of Emma Watson taking the lead in the film of Fifty Shades of Grey. She absolutely has our vote - so long as she wears, and only wears, her 3/4 length Burberry with that that awesome military belt...
Sorry about the other kind of figure putting Burberry in the news this month - profits down. I think , contra IMF, Osborne, et al, - belt-tightening is probably not the answer there.
Pic courtesy Millionlooks.com
Sorry for having to hold over more nice things than usual this month. Must try harder!
But - I think quite a bit to enjoy even so. Thanks very much to everyone. But especially:
Rainy Brian's list giving links to rainwear films, or bits of them, available on-line.
LE
The Camridge Raincoat Company - niche venture pedalling great rainwear for everyday bikers...
I've discovered quite a few nice things via Twitter, and amongst the nicest this newish venture based in Cambridge.
Mainperson's Sally Guyer's concept:
'to provide a chic and versatile raincoat which would look good off and on the bike, meaning the wearer could confidently step off their bicycle and go straight into their workplace, meeting or social function without needing to change or feel embarrassed by their ugly waterproofs or hi-viz clothing, or wonder where to get changed or put all their wet waterproofs on arrival at their destination.
Sally's site puts me onto:
which I didn't know about I'm now ashamed to say. One of the leading fashion blogs.
Zillions of great pictures of people looking great on bikes.
The concept? -
Style over Speed
Garden pond wearing mackintosh and galoshes
The highlight of poet Peter Redgrove's collection, , The Nature of Cold Weather (1961) is the prose poem 'Mr Waterman', according to reviewer Robert Crawford - 'in which the speaker tells a doctor of his fears that his garden pond is going to commit adultery with his wife':
"I invited it in as a lodger, bedding it up in the old bathroom. At first I thought I would have to run canvas troughs up the stairs so it would get to its room without soaking the carpet, and I removed the flap from the letter-box so it would be free to come and go, but it soon learned to keep its form quite well, and get about in mackintosh and goloshes[sic], opening doors with gloved fingers."
London Review of Books 21:06:12 p.15
Alas, I can't find a pic - even in my head!
(H)
Lost and Found
Dave D and key site Rainwear Central have come up with the name of the film I was asking about last time. It's the 1994 German film "Der Sieger". Many thanks indeed!
Encourages me to ask about the mac shown in these unknown stills. They come from an old clip and I was hoping if I could identify the film I might be able to get hold of a better quality original... It's a Gangster I can see, one of those in the then fashionable maxi length. The only other film I know of with something closely similar is No Blade of Grass, 1970, so I guess the mystery clip comes from around that time?
Lots of rain but ...
So many pics of everyone waiting in the downpours for the torch to come by..... and I couldn't find any that showed any rainwear style...
But! The happy faces trumped evrything!
I suppose.
A friend of mine has developed a web page builder on the drag and drop principle - makes it easier for a person newish to the web to build a good-looking fully-featured website in a few hours. I'm using it to develop the Rainflair site. It's called PowerPagePro.
L
1st July
Royal Highland Show
Lovely style, lovely shot. It doesn't all have to be shapeless anoraks and hoods with no fight in them. And look, that brilliant umbrella hasn't cost her the earth...
Thanks to Namrof. More here.
What your wellies say
Pics courtesy
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Welly style guide from North London:"The Duchess of Cambridge has revealed her preference for uber-posh Le Chameau wellies, asks Imogen Fox, but what do rival brands say about you?"The Guardian 18:06:12.
They fall into a certain order, says Imogen:
- Le Chameau
- Aigle
- Hunter
- Dunlop
- closely reflecting the social pecking order, with Kate's Le Chameau at the top and the Dunlop at the bottom, suggesting 'you genuinely work on a farm'.
But what does Grayson Perry say? He's thought quite a bit about this.
For the top people, Grayson saith, the things you wear say simply that that is who you are. A top person.
They don't tell you anything about aristocratic taste. (Have I got this right?) Aristos don't do 'taste'. They have a rule book and you follow the rule.
So quite wrong to think of Kate as expressing her 'preference' for Le Chameau. What she is doing is saying with her feet that she's a top person.
If so, a bit of a faux pas for the Daily Mail to accuse Kate of 'a rare fashion faux pas' when she turned up at a football match 'in the same green wellies as her brother-in-law.'
And in any case, I say:
(a) Top people do not commit faux pas.
(b) Maybe if there was a faux pas it was his??
Pics of Kate courtesy My Daily.
More on welly theory here.
Potted history of wellies in the Daily Telegraph 19:06:12
Hope there is something for you in the updates - many thanks for all your contributions...
LE
/Le Quai des Brumes 1938_03.jpg)
Le Quai des Brumes, the film by Marcel Carné released in 1938, has just been re-released. Just what re-release does to a film I don't quite know - was some kind of bail revoked and derevoked? Maybe the 'breathtaking sexiness', (Peter Bradshaw) of female lead Michèle Morgan got it into trouble, one can understand why - can't be too careful!
"Gasp-inducingly sexy" Michèle plays Nelly, a 17-year-old girl pretty much at the very bottom of 1930s Le Havre, nevertheless stealing Peter Bradshaw's breath with her killer ensemble of "jauntily angled beret and Coco Chanel mac".
"Each time the sun rises we think something new will happen." says Nelly.
Actually, when they are like this, even a re-release will do.
/Le Quai des Brumes 1938_022.jpg)
Peter Bradshaw's review appeared in The Guardian , 3/5/12.)
Pic courtesy The Guardian
Also reviewed in the The Upcoming.
Provenance?
Lovely pic, supplied a long while ago by DS, but can anyone say where it's from? We think from the German film Liebe und Verlangen but I haven't been able to confirm.
[Later: Dave D and terrific Rainwear Central have come up with the answer: The pic shows Katja Flint and Natalia Wörner and it comes from a 1994 German film, "Der Sieger", starring Herbert Knaup as Karl Simon and Katja Flint as Melba Dessaul. Natalia Wörner has a minor role as Saide. It was directed by Dominik Graf. It apparently cost twelve million Deutchmarks to make but was not a commercial success. Thanks very much!]
Our friend Cole C Porter has a couple of new stories you may not have seen. His brilliant and unique imagination is on the loose again. Look out!
1st June
The Vanity Trench
Thanks to Lisa Armstrong for noticing the Return of the Mac , - by which of course, writing for the Weekend Telegraph, she means the trench.
"Being a British invention, it is at once reassuringly safe and classic yet amazingly flexible in its ability to absorb all manner of compromises and updates." she tells us (This is Edmund Burke distilled I guess - did I say she writes for the Telegraph?).
But if the trench has come back, she observes, it has left behind its essential waterproofery!
Not all trench coats are completely waterproof.
Their very popularity has given rise to a genus we must call the Vanity Trench - a decorative garment that does the very opposite of what its inventor, Thomas Burberry (or, if you happen to have worked for Aquascutum, that outfit's founder, John Emary) intended. (I suppose she means the moment the sun comes out, you get completely drenched.)
This is why, of late, an army of shiny, downy, quilted nylon coats has invaded our streets. Warm, light and hooded (why can't all trench coats come with matching foldaway hats, by the way?), the quilty nylon legions have kept the trench at bay recently.
Thanks to MacJames for the pointer.
Pic coutesy The Telegraph
H.
Was going to put a nice picture of a shiny, downy, quilted nylon coat here - but can't find one! Thank goodness!
L
Pay or be paid?
Complaints in the paper today by graduate 'interns' being unpaid and made to work in 'a walk-in windowless wardrobe stuffed with clothes' for the Fashion business Arcadia. (The Guardian, 31:05:12 p9).
You mean for free?
They were allowed into the stockroom without charge?
Wow!
LE wouldn't exist if it didn't charge its 'interns' a hefty fee to enter the 'windowless walk-in wardbrobe' - breathe in the 'gasp-inducing' (see, left) ambience, and, yes, actually lay hands on the designer fest ranged along the rails.
Pic courtesy Warehouse, part of the Arcadia group
Dutch Auction No 2 just starting. Pick your moment...
Double texture persons: keep your eye on Rainflair
Thanks to friends who have contributed to the update - hope you see something nice in return...
LE
Aquascutum
having contemplated the dark for some time, have leapt.
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| Pic courtesy Fashion Foie Gras |
After a distinguished career going back to the Crimean War they tried so hard in recent years to Burberrise. We had photoshoots in Trafalgar Square, we had videos on YouTube detailing the deepest thoughts of their makers, we had all kinds of silliness - frilly lapels for example, and fashionably, alas appropriately, gloomy models ...
But it didn't work! Down went one of the least offensive icons of the British Empire.
On the other hand ...
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| Pic from Burberry's fabulous Art of theTrench collection. Emma watson from Paris. |
So let us drag the positive thought from the disaster: it's not always enough to throw lots and lots and lots of money around... Put it another way, creative geniuses like Christopher Bailey are worth every penny.
Zhu Ying
Thanks to David for sharing this with us:
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| Pic courtesy TheSnookerBlog |
"Zhu Ying (aka Ivy Zhu) - the first Chinese referee to officiate at the World Snooker Finals at the Crucible, Sheffield, this year. She looks good in a trenchcoat."
Singin' in the rain
Now the Jonathan Church stage show, launched at Chichester last year, is playing West End. Charles Spencer says it is terrific.
1st May
I've had a bad week with tv. Claire Danes has gone completely potty, and still hasn't used that terrfic mac she sported oh so briefly in episode 2.
But Liverpool came up trumps!
They put a big slicker in the sky.
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| Pic courtesy BBC |
"Chic wet-weather gear from Iceland"
"Rain wear inspired by the climate of Iceland. Rain Dear has made a collection of quirky waterproof coats that are a little bit more evolved than your average PVC pack-away-mac (a staple when I was growing up…). By bonding high grade plastic to materials such as wool, lace and silk, the textures that Rain Dear have created make these designs somewhat unique. Produced in Italy, these coats fall into the high-end category of rainwear."
Courtesy Glamour Fashion
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This is one I like - more chic than quirky imho!
and this - with Minnehaha at the back of the mind? Terrific! :-
Thanks for pointers to Glamour Fashion and Style Bubble
Hope the update has something for you...
LE
This is Paris, struggling with Steph, the new style from Rajkumar. Takes inspiration from the classic Gangster mac of the 1970s, designed by Maurice Attwood. Just the thing if you have run out of shoes.
This is Steph in another fabric, single-texture navy rubberised cotton.
Photos by the brilliant Namrof. More on Flickr.
Some great rainwear flashing up on the UK screen recently - but quite a lot of it passing in the night, apparently not captured for us to savour. The merest half-a-second for example of Amelia Bullmore in a perfect trench, playing DCI Gill Murray in Scott and Bailey. Recently become quite excellent don't you think? A really fresh take on the creased and baggy cop show format. Tip to costume though: Suranne Jones has tried the trenchcoat look and it WORKS.
That's not a creased and baggy look. Surely an appropriate genuflection to the genre to have her wear the gumshoe trench? (And ditch that camel??)
Pics courtesy Lazygirls.info
H
Claire Foy in White Heat, slips into her sixties red plastic mac the moment life beckons. Pic courtesy BT Vision
And Claire Danes I think wears a totally commanding trench in Homeland, whispering crunchily as she slithers it off. For about half a second in episode 3 (or somehing like that)? Can't find a pic of it. But this one is good too - Claire, I think in propria persona.
Pic courtesy Zimbio
2nd April
Here Paris has won, but doesn't look any more pleased about it. Vanquished is the Julia Moore trenchcoat, bronze double-texture rubberised satin.
I've noticed quite a few squishy wellies recently, like these, by Aigle, blogged by Wellies Walker on Flickr.
"Aigle invente RubberPack" is the delicious announcement: Une botte en caoutchouc repliable à mettre dans son sac et à emporter partout ! Not sure what I think, but you don't need a wheelie bin to carry them about. The main thing for me, I have to say, is the perfect trench.
This is the main thing I got out of the Feb Fashion Weeks: the marchy stuff, which I love. Not an inch of rubberised material in sight, but so easy to let your imagination loose on these khaki / uniformy / utility shirts and skirts and shorts. They could so easily be fully waterproofed, don't you think? And even if you don't, off-stage but ready to hand, surely, there are a couple of single-texture rubberised cotton army capes - like the one with Ladyhawk inside it, below.
Thanks to everyone for keeping on sending, esp those I have failed to include yet again...
Hope there is something for you anyway.
LE
PS
Do visit our new Rainflair site, where we are introducing these lovely things to those who want to click and buy. Please click and buy for at least FIVE for your favorite people, so that the streets of Europe (to begin with) are glamorised once again.
Uthereal or what...
Well, at least one good thing about the NYFW: these pellucid rainwears! You wear your cothes underneath them (speaking for myself), but somehow there is a delicious hint of the indecent... I think the trench is perfectly facinating, the way the belt and buttons and wriststraps and epaulettes hover voluptuously between what I fancy and what I see, between Being and Nothingness, I suppose, like the Cheshire Cat.
It's all done by Terra, in urethane.
And there's a sumptuous video...
Where have all the wellies gone?
Imogen has noticed it, the most strlking thing about the New York Fashion Week, all sludge and snow on the streets and nary a wellie in sight!
"In style terms at least. To recap: the past decade saw the rehabilitation of the wellington boot. The welly went through a fashion narrative that included Kate Moss, Glastonbury, Cath Kidston, Hunter, Jordan and Jimmy Choo. But the story has finally ended with a whimper. No one cares about wellies now. Snow boots have replaced them." The Guardian, 31/01/12.
Hazel says you could, probly should, get really serious about this - wholesale non-renewal of contracts for making them, somewhere in the global village - China she thinks. That which Fashion has given it taketh away. Very soon indeed.
1st March 2012
Pic courtesy Clash
Catwalk fashion is supposed to have gone military for the Spring, but I have to go to the brilliant Ladyhawke to find anything like inspiration ... Thanks to cm for the lovely tip.
cm thinks we must also make the most of Call the Midwife, and he is so right... Some pics gathered here. Meanwhile though we must try and persuade the Wardrobe Mistress to use some proper mackintoshes in Series 2. So period. And Upstairs Downstairs too? If anybody is reading... We woudn't charge a button...
I can't find any pictures, but am I alone in finding Claire Danes, playing Carrie Mathison in the brilliant Homeland, sometimes sports a very interesting trenchcoat ...?
LondonEthnic had a great party to mark London's (February) Fashion Week. Took some lovely pictures of our new (Julia Moore) double-texture trench. Satin. Very Marchy. What's not to like?
We are opening a new website in the Spring, to promote these rather wonderful new things Rajkumar are now producing. Watch this space... (But no way are we abandoning this one!)
Thanks for lots of pictures this month. Quite a few I haven't reached, run out of time, sorry, but more days to March, thank goodness!
LE
Either-Or
Prime Ministers in Denmark have an existential choice, it seems.
It has to be a trench, who would dare to think otherwise, but for Birgitte it is:
Either dark navy, three quarter length, single gunflap to the front, yoke to rear with a pleasing 2012 shape, pics don't do justice, sorry:
Or a rather naff white item:
Pic courtesy The Guardian
Never mind, it's the thought that counts.
And a really great series, isn't it? Have we ever had politics presented so intelligently?
Hazel
1st February 2012
Lots of cartridges emptied on Call the Midwife, story showing how humanettes were squeezed and hauled into the world in UK's nineteen- fifties. Why oh why are viewers interested in all that slime and general awfulness, they ask? When the answer is staring them in the face! Ms Raine (yes) does nasty things with her belt, but still, all is forgiven: she (with a little help from her friends) gives us screenfuls of what the nineteen-fifties did best.
Even the nuns can't keep their hands off!
Pic courtesy Metro
Isn't Dennis wonderful?
Pic courtesy Hey U Guys
At last I've checked out The Iron Lady, only a year or two late. Tour de force from Meryl Streep, I would have thought it goes without saying, but my goodness it is a completely magical piece of acting.
Huge gripe though with those typically gross headlines which billed Jim Broadbent as reducing Dennis to a figure of fun. In fact Broadbent is as brilliant as Streep in his way. He gives us a believable character who is (a) nice and (b) fond and forgiving and sustaining a very difficult partner indeed.
And (c), yes, does a little dance in what is almost convincing as a traditional UK riding mac, albeit in the most awful jaded orange. Just to cheer her up. We could wish more partners were prepared to do the same...
Hazel
I've been told that if I want to sell rainwear properly I have to twitter.
And do Facebook, which seems to listen to Twitter automatically.
In the shop I've put a new stocklist up. Pictures of Raj's new 'burnt orange' double texture satin coming shortly.
Sorry to quite a few generous people who have written great things or sent great pictures which I have had to hold over. Up asap.
Even so, quite a few really interesting things, I think you'll agree.
LE
New Year's day 2012
Broadleaf (Autumn 2011, p7), the magazine of the Woodland Trust, tells us their Give it Some Wellie campaign did them proud in 2011: headtachers squelched into wellies filled with custard apparently, and at IKEA stores from Birmingham to Belfast "customers and co-workers were asked to put on their wellies before setting a foot inside".
Pic Courtesy We Love It
Meanwhile, Hunter Boot Limited, which has been thoroughly Burberried since the business got stuck in the mud and had to be rescued in 2006, has been taken over again, this time by an American private equity outfit, Searchlight Capital.
But this time it's because Hunter is doing so well, recording sales of £56m in 2010 and still striding ahead.
A bit unfortunate that the Dumfries factory was closed in 2008, but hey that's international capitalism for you. (H)
Reported by FashionUnited, 17:12:11
Don't know quite why I think this pic will do here... But we seem to be coming from a rocky place, under stormy skies, and there seems to be more of both up ahead. Let's at least imagine the open bay in the distance, water, and a hint of colour? And we can keep the clouds...
The Editor of our Galerie Atwood has found a tiny clip of the 1969-1971 tv show Take Three Girls. And short as it is, there is Liza Goddard in her pink Gangster mackintosh. She is running, and her mac is tightly belted. Could the word be 'iconic'? I do believe it might be.
Next year anyway the President of the Rainwear Club promises to produce a tribute 'Gangster' style in his factory in West Bengal... He deserves to be Burberried himself...
News this morning of plans to build a highspeed railway to his factory, or at least to Kolkata, from Delhi. But a short step then to link up with Eurostar and Lancashire and lots of cheap, planet-friendly macs for Manchester - where the factory of Charles Mackintosh and Son still stands at the Northern gateway of that rain-blessed city...
Until that happens, we will have to make do with good wishes and strong imaginations all round.
LE
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