Dear Wardrobe
6th December 2006
Got hold of a marvellous book on the rise of the British Rubber Industry in the 19th Century by one William Woodruff. You all know it probly, but it's an exciting find to me! It was published in 1958, so I could almost put it up, but I'm currently trying to finish that Hancock Narrative text and it's taking me an age. I thought you could scan in a book on a wet afternoon! I suppose the scanning in is quite quick, it's the going through and picking up the things the poor machine got wrong. Maybe better scanners get everything right? Or maybe it's better software I need... Anyway, must find a way of getting the Woodruff highlights at least onto the sympathetic screen.
You may think I need to get out more.
Last night I did! Went to see the Queen, about the Royal family and the death of Princess Di.
But it turned out to be a busman's holiday! There was the Queen in what looked to me like a genuine, genuine, single texture garment designed to keep the wearer dry. I hesitate to say 'mackintosh' for fear of stirring the old man's bones. An absolutely bizarre piece of styling that could not have been conceived outside that very special Ceolocanth circle. Was I seeing things??
1st December 2006
Lovely to see some decent trenches about town this fall - short I know but still ...
The one on the right is just the right length though, and in a proper rainwear material I would say. Such a pleasure to come across it on a rail journey - in a brochure somebody had left behind. The brochure was trying to sell interior design, a firm called Poliform, very swish, like this adorable trench, which appears just once on page 81 of 192 pages altogether. Poliform could design my interior anyday.
I don't know what will happen to the update this month. It's done but I'm having problems uploading it. Hope you enjoy the bits that come through at any rate!
1st November 2006
Great new archive has reached me this week from JJ in North America concentrating on polyurethane and similar fashions from recent decades. Grey it ain't!
Alexander mcrobbie-Munro has
a new website offering image services: http://www.photoboxgallery.com/mcrobbiemedia |
1st October
Jess Cartner-Morley tells us grey is the now colour - 'since Moss started wearing a pair of grey Superfine jeans two years ago.' Grey with leopard-print she says will earn you a gold star this Autumn but grey with silver is sort of upper second.
Grey with leopard-skin??
Could Jess be that little bit tired?
Could we settle for grey with silver? It sort of is silver, when we are thinking rainwear with a decent sheen. A shimmer of silvery grey with every rustling step... and I don't mean the leaves.
Sounds like a lovely Autumn to me!
Do enjoy the update, please ...
17th September
The talented Rachael got a credit in the Guardian Weekend last week (9th Sept) - the main photoshoot. Did you see? Now about to start her MA in fashion journalism. Lots of RC people have written to wish her well!
13th September
Just had my attention drawn to a piece by Howard Jacobson in The Independent back in April (29:04:06), where he reports on a visit to 'a site called, succinctly, Rainwear Films'. The quotes he gives sound like it's our site he means (but almost all his quotes are slightly wonky). I can't find any site called Rainwear films myself - have I missed something? Anyway, what he says is that The Third Man is a surprising omission. So I've put it in. Thanks for the recommendation, Howard.
10th September
Its a snip! Made-to-measure reaches the high street:
" In two weeks, Harrods will be the latest large retailer to offer made to measure clothes on a mass scale.... With prices starting at £750 it is not a cheap way to shop but it is less than a tenth of the price of most made to measure services." Hadley Freeman in the Guardian, 09:09:06
Customers of other made-for-measure services I won't mention please note! 10 x £750 = £7,500.
Rubber knickers at Anatomicbomb.com, £30
1st September
September Vogue: waterproof lingerie for Kate Moss, indulging in 'fashion's new-found fetish for rubber and leather' p318.
Maybe most people find wearing rubber knickers 'unaccepable'. If so, watch out! The govt will try and make it illegal, penalty up to three years.
Enjoy the update while you can.
LE
1st August
People are getting into the way of sending me stuff just before the update - thanks! - but it means I can't always get them up all up in time - sorry. Eg Part 3 of Imogen's Equestrian School story, much anticipated I know, is on the way...
One really great development is DVDs of classic and not so classic rainwear films being increasingly available. Quality varies (depending on if it's a remastering and if it's not on what the copied vid was like). Used to think stills were second best to clips, but I now think you need both! Some of these DVDs produce fantastic stills.
Enjoy the update anyway. It may take your mind of all this scorching impermeaphobe weather some of us have been suffering from ...
Bryan says he has found a place to buy a DVD of No Blade of Grass here. Very interesting site anyway, devoted to visions of wasteland futures. He says: "I received mine today, and the quality is quite exceptional, considering the original release date." I've been in touch myself: nice guy to deal with. LE |
Designer Rachael Gibson just got a first class degree from Manchester Metropolitan University and now goes on to an MA in Fashon Journalism in London. |
31st July
Robin notes:
Brilliant sightings for UK viewers last week on BBC 1 Silent Witness
episodes. The attractive off duty police officer approaches, wearing
a silver grey lightweight mackintosh which I am sure was rubber lined. Two
brief shots but what was especially delightful was the second re-run
in slow motion showing the superb rippling movements of the creases gathered
above her tightly belted waist. What a shame she went under the
bus.
H. says: Mason, discoverer of impermeaphylum dunlopium and webmaster of the brilliant Tied and True Tales, is now letting it all hang out in a personal blog. Beware though: he appears to have placed himself at the mercy of Melai, who may not have forgotten her recent punishing ordeal buttoned and belted and hooded in said imper. dunlopium. You are advised to visit the blogger before she gets to work. Well, yes, but there's another reason to beware! Only browse through his blog if you are absolutely confident of your own emotional maturity! There are extremely candid pics. LE (Miss) |
Raincoat Girl has recently put up a lovely trawl of rainwear images. |
20th July
July 1st
A sort of rainwear coelocanth has been discovered in Australia: a single-texture rubberised mac made by Dunlop in 1966 which is still wearable and indeed pristine. All the ones I've ever heard about are real stiffs after even one decade and to think this one is alive and swell - well that's terrific. The Dunlop survival is put through its paces by model Melai - and so is she, poor girl - made to feed the ducks in it ('buttoned up to the collar and hood done up tight') in the 'thick muggy heat' (I know the Summer is Australian, but still ...). Soggy but smiling, she appears to come through the photoshoot OK, sharing I suppose the remarkable powers of survival shown by the mac itself.
A website is emerging from cyberspace for Designer Rachael - form already discernable but content mostly to come. Hope to have more pics and clips (cross fingers) to show soon. One of the students from Manchester Metro got the runner up thing for the big River Island Gold prize: Liam Jackson. Really well done! It was those machine gun cases wot did it!
I'm off-line for a couple of weeks. Enjoy the update while I'm away...
L
16th June 2006
Repeat of Rachael's Fashion Show in Manchester Town Hall on Wednesday. Everything looked better, cos it was Manchester I suppose. I still loved Rachael's own stuff best, with the charcoal grey rainjackets we made for her doing just what she wanted them to, setting off the pretty pink-palette dresses and skirts a treat. They looked cool (they weren't, I know!), they moved well, and, need I say, the rubber surface worked its shivery magic ...
5th June 2006
Rachael's stuff was strutted really well on the catwalk, as you can't see. Proper pics (I hope!) shortly. It was sooo good to see exciting rainwear featured...
RM has sent me No Blade of Grass, which I hadn't seen at all. If one discounts what are hauntingly called 'slickers', this must be the most mac-rich movie ever!
It's much-watched video quality, so it makes one hope for a remastered DVD, but meanwhile I'll put up what I can! Many many thanks to RM, for this and so much else.
31st May 2006
Went over to see if Raincoat Girl had got back from her training and Yes!! there she was, showing some familiar pics! I hope she will tell us what she's been getting up to... Do visit if you can.
Lovely
trench, but a bit waisted here?
'At Manchester Metropolitan University, fashion student Rachael Gibson, 22, is preparing her final collection, working from 9am to midnight every day. "The dresses I'm making require hand-stitched linings, but it's so much work I've had to get my mum in to help me." She submits next week, but it will be just the first hurdle; she still has to compete with students nationally for a catwalk place at Graduate Fashion Week, seen by many as the key to a job in the industry.' Education Guardian, 23:05:06 p.12 [more] |
24th May 2006
Our ace designer Rachael Gibson has got herself in the Guardian already!
Meanwhile her Gateway Collection will be showing in Manchester shortly. (Lots of pretty Summer things and featuring three jackets/macs in Lakeland Elements materials.)
After that, new Rainwear designs exclusively for us. Watch this space!
Sorry I missed that, but the first 3 minutes of the standard 'likely suspects being quite nice chaps really / us bikers aren't all Hells Angels' plot did it for me! I did notice tonight, though, that Frankie Baldwin in Coronation St was sporting a rather nice double breasted Trench with belt and epaulettes. - Harry Lethal Is there something wrong with me? Yes, Frankie has this trenchcoat, which looks as though it should be absolutely the tops - and yet all it does for me is look terribly Eastenders... -le |
1st May 2006
Wow! Red double texture mac on a horse (and on its rider) in Heartbeat last night! Update almost made me miss it! Looked like a Hereford style, but not from us. Did anyone get a picture? The official itv website appears to be talking about the wrong episode... (Sorry if this UK talk is no good to you)
Hope you like the update. Thanks to everyone who has sent things - esp this month for a second tranch of lovely pics from mags etc from George S. |
April 30th 2006
Delighted to see that Hunter Rubber (formerly, I didn't realize, The North British Rubber Company, has bounced back, bought by a band of excitingly well-heeled people who certainly mean to go on Hunting. Interesting story of the Wellington boot outlined in the Fashion Telegraph (30th April...) by Adam Edwards, whose Short History of the Wellington Boot is to be published by Hodder and Stoughton in October.
April 20th 2006
Wellymania has not saved Hunter Rubber from the Administrators. What a tragedy! I know you can get wellies with flowers on now but they are NOT the same (imho). Nice obit by Vicki Woods in the Guardian - Rubber boots, she says, "feel lubriciously pleasing to the naked foot". Oh, Vicki, don't they just! And the leg! And what an accomplished wordsmith you are! - Lubricity: slipperiness, smoothness, oiliness, (lit. and fig.); lewedness, wantonness (COD)
Main feature of the update is a film from the nineteen eighties a bit of which was sent me by Alan D. Critics on IMDB say the film is all talk, totally missing what is centre stage for quite a bit of the action - a little Grasshopper, fawn and yellow, so flauntily worn (and slipped off, and carried about, and slipped on again) by Anne-Laure Meury that the double act simply rivets the attention of any body whose eyes and ears and brain are all connected up properly. There is life after the Gangster! I mustn't forget. |
March 31st
The great news is that the old firm has been discovered by a young designer who is anxious to work on some new designs! Her muse is the nineteenfifties, the cottons, the colours and the shapes - but also as a sort of foil for the prettiness she wants to have us wear proper raincoats on top. Excellent thinking! Watch this space.
A special thank you to Alan D for outstanding services to impermeaphilia this month. Not just for the Grasshopper clip, but for a whole compendium of moving pictures which I shall be trying to put up as time (and, actually bandwith) permits.
Also to Dave R who made possible much of the Grasshopper material.
Even more interesting stuff still in the pipeline this month (what I mean is, there is even more, and it is all interesting!) - sorry to everybody for the delay in getting their things put up. But so nice to have people send such a lot of things in! Thank you so much.
March 16th 2006
A visitor asks if anybody knows of films where plastic, pvc or rubber raincoats are worn over other coats or mackintoshes. ??
March 11th 2006
At last! Thanks to terrific help and support of Alan D I've managed to put up a little clip of a French Grasshopper which makes some of the best susurrus on film imho.
March 2nd
Harry L 's Thought for the Day
The Guardian 25:02:06
1st March 2006
Where did you see this first?
- Thanks to AM Kate and friends for keeping us covered.
Several things queuing up I didn't quite get ready in time for the update - sorry. Will get them up as soon as possible as the bishops no doubt said. Hope you enjoy the bits that did get through.
LE
Trenchcoats still available from under £800
17th February 2006
"You know what's wrong with your wardrobe? It is lacking a gold coat which, as anyone knows, is an absolute must, Darling. Yes, this one is so expensive you'd think it was made of real gold, but who can put a price on something that brings out your inner Sharon stone? Trenchcoat, £759, by Burberry Prosum."
Guardian Weekend 11:02:06.
12th February 2006
Can anybody tell me which film these come from? Please. Somebody very nice sent me a clip and I'm completely obsessed...
Harry L writes to say he can't help with the name of the film, but will take very seriously the new NHS guidance, below.
[Now identified: The Aviator's Wife. Thanks among others to Bryn. See above.]
10th February 2006
Terrific advice on the NHS Direct website.
I didn't know about those muscles.
And what a great way to talk about going solo. Let's hope Kant is learning to turn enjoyably in his grave.
Muji
My machine has had one of its periodic nervous breakdowns, or, as I am beginning to suspect, a transient ischemic attack. Sorry for delays in emailing and naything worse that I may not know about... Hope you enjoy the update. |
M&S
31st January 2006
Decent spread of rainwear in Saturday's Personal Shopper column in the Guardian - though nothing to break the heart. Columnist Annalisa Barbieri responds to a Mum who wants rainwear for pushing a buggy in all weathers but not the "grim Gore-Tex 'mummy' jacket" she hates to wear at the mo.
Annalisa comes up with the Muji Freecut Raincoat, a sort of pakamac concept, capable of being pouched when not required, but this rather misses Mum's point that she needs the buggy-pushing garment to double as something smart for lunch with the client.
A trenchcoat called Tu, forthcoming at Sainsbury's, makes sense, but not in the serious wet, and an £895 number from Bamford would do no better and look suitably floppy only on a very soggy liberal.
Annalisa, there is another way!
29th January 2006
Bryan says:
For several reasons Genevieve is a very fine film. I've seen it replayed several times and, amongst other joys, love to see Dinah Sheridan in her lovely riding mac.
And yet; and yet - I feel sure that when I saw the film originally in the fifties, Kay Kendal waw shown, for quite a few minutes, too, in her mac, blue, single textured.
Have I been deluding myself all these years ? Or was/am I right and was the film cut for some reason?
Anyone agree with me? Better still has anyone a video of a longer (uncut) edition ? That'd be super.
Congenial, impermeable greetings for 2006.
Bryan
Jon writes:
Last week I happened to see part of Eastenders, and Pat Butcher appeared in what looked like a mackintosh jacket or coat of satin, silk or taffeta lined with polyurethane, or even (if you have a good imagination) rubber. It was bright pink and did nothing for her fashion image, but it was wonderful.
Any confirmation?
Raincoat Girl Erica has done her blog once or twice since we made contact, but her last post was to say she had signed up for some very particular training. Carmen has thinks she may be pulling our leg. (Thanks for the email, Carmen. Anyone can pull my leg anytime.) |
15th January 2006
Ben has written with a couple of great links to US tv clips. He says::
The first is from March 18, 2004, and while not quite as titillating, it's nice to see two attractive women talking about rainwear, and Lucy Sykes' English accent is quite a thrill.
The second link takes you to a story by Today Show fashion editor Judy Gordon entitled "You Won't be an April Fool in this Rainwear". Scroll down about halfway down the page on the right side and you will find a link to a video of this segment on NBC's "Today Show", as they put on a mini-fashion show for viewers.
Thanks Ben.
"[S]ince the advent of the Mackintosh raincoat in the early 19th century, our relationship with the weather has grown increasingly frivolous." Lawrence Norfolk, reviewing Under the Weather by Tom Fort, Guardian Review 14:01:06. |
12th January 2006
The perfect M-D.
Lovely New Year card, to you and me, from Namrof, creator of one the Club's most popular pages, Girlfriends.
Thank you!
James of Skin Two writes: Skin Two Online and Model Sanctum have teamed up to recognise outstanding members of the fetish community. Everybody, with the exception of myself is eligible for nomination and the winners of each category will receive major kudos, lots of publicity through both Skin Two Online and Model Sanctum and other bonuses too. For more details, please visit here. Cheers James |
7th January 2006
For his first pottery lesson, says Turner Prizewinner Grayson Perry, in a wonderful article about his development as a person and as an artist:
"we had to wear light-blue smocks. They were made of heavy, rubberised material, fastened at the back with snappers ... I had last pick of the smocks, so the one I got was tight. The classroom helper, Miss Maple, who looked like Dusty Springfield, snapped me into it. The combination of this and the squeaky, smooth, restrictive smock turned me on. I was being dressed like a small child; it felt very humiliating. Humiliation is one of the most powerful turn-ons for me."
Guardian Weekend, 07:01:06, p.17.
5th Januray 2006
|
Alexander mcrobbie-Munro spotted the reference on the Rainwear-Firms-in-the-Past page to his great "Doing time" webpage and is able to confirm details of the Jeltek rainwear factory in Dunfermline in the 70s and 80s. He writes: .....I left there and went into the coalmines....it's
been a long journey to get to here...........hope this is of
interest .... So you read my doing time, some things happen
in life we cannot control.....pushed over the abyss for a short
moment in time.........before being catapaulted at breakneck
speed back to the present , by then its too late......however
I'm settled now.......living on this idyllic peninsula albeit
a nuclear submarine base at the top of the loch makes interesting
viewing while walking the dog along the shore on a frosty morning
or a warm summer morning at 3am...... Meanwhile we are all invited to visit his ebay shop 'for bargains and unique scottish gifts....' |
New Year's Eve, 2005
Hazel and I have collaborated on the New Year's greeting from Blackpool that I hope you'll enjoy.
Thanks to everybody for their contributions this year - lots of lovely things, quite a few still in the pipeline to the site. Hope you like what has come out of the pipe this month.
Apologies to everyone for getting behind as I always do.
My hope for the new year is to make good progress with the history project. Trade Directories are the thing, and photographic archives in local libraries? There is a world back there to honour before it slips away completely - well, several worlds, actually.
15th December 2005
Ben sent me the following link to a terrific feature on rainwear fashions by CBS News - a video. I thought I had put it up before and if I have and lost it (!) ignore!
and also this:
You won’t be an April fool in this rainwear
Ben, you're lovely!
30th November 2005
Sort of progress with the enquiry below (25th Nov.) from Dee about some combination of Michael Winner, a Jane and a pvc mac. I looked through A Chorus of Disapproval on Robin's suggestion and found Jane Seymour wearing for a few moments a shiny raincoat that could have been pvc but couldn't have been red (since it was black). Otherwise a glittering cast (including lovely Jeremy Irons) and a screenplay by Alan Ayckbourn no less, were orchestrated by Winner, somehow, into a very dull song indeed. If you are very very keen on shiny black raincoats you might find it worth getting hold of - but do resist any temptation to yawn or you may miss the money shot.
And it seems to me Dee may be thinking of something else. Any more ideas?
Hope you enjoy the update.
LE
PS No sooner had I discovered and made friends with The Raincoat Girl than she went seriously offline - hasn't done her blog for ages! - What did I say? If a few of us were to leave nice notes she may be encouraged to come back ...
25th November 2005
Anybody help? Dee asks: "I am trying to find the name of a film that had Jane Seymour in it, wearimg a very shiny red P.V.C. mac, directed by her husband of the time, Michael Winner." L
Robin has come up with a lead on this at any rate. He writes: "Jane Seymour wife of Michael Winner? Unimaginable! He's never been married so we need more clues to track down this movie. I wonder if Dee means Jenny
Seagrove (Seymour-Seagrove?) who was a long time live-in girl-friend
and last seen (by me anyway) in Judge Deed. |
7th November 2005
Lovely to see there is a Raincoat Girl blog. A message from her here.
And her elegant blog is here.
|
|
Sorry, don't be misled, I've
added the interest on the right - LE |
31st October 2005
A bit of an attempt to invoke Britain in the fifties underway at the mo - Jericho, appearing weekly on a Sunday evening in the UK. I keep looking, but I don't see any evidence of the 'Golden Age' people tell me about ... The eponymous hero (hurrah! I love it when I can use this amazing word. Not as good as 'susurrus', though, I know) wears a shabby trenchcoat, it's true, but somehow it misses the mark for me.
Bought a cheap DVD version of The Blood of Fu Manchu the other day, ignoring recent disappointments - and thrilled to find excellent quality! (No macs but plenty of chains and pains.)
22nd October 2005
Terribly sorry but my computer is having a nervous breakdown and I can't be sure what will happen when it comes to the update. The doctor is away! If I'm not responding to your emails this is part of the reason (on yop of my usual slowness). Very sorry about this... I will try and upload this, captalising on a period of remission ... LE
29th September 2005
I guess lots of people have bought videos talked up on our films list (esp from e-bay). I have. But can be very disappointing, don't you think? The tape quality is often pretty well useless, the result I guess of many generations of copying. And quite often even if you can see something in the tired muddy-water gloom it's sometimes a reminder that tastes differ!
I suppose the middle way is the most frustrating, where the quality is awful but you see just enough to know it would be absolutely terrific if only you had a good copy! The Ragman's Daughter is like that for me. I've been looking for it for ages, and at last success! But it's like actually before they invented movies in quality - bottom of the canal stuff and jittering like Parkinson's. But you see enough to know what you are missing! A pristine Valstar Gangster, in period, in a starring role...
September 9th 2005
A friend asks if anyone can help with info about the mac opposite. Date? Value? Designer? It's made by Valstar. Further pics here. Please tell me if you can help.
L.
Geoff replies: Valstar Starsheen was produced in the mid to late 1960s. There were several designs and many colours, and they retailed for about £10. Most of the big manufacturers of the time, Dannimac, Quelrayn, Alligator, etc. used a similar man-made fabric. It was a time when they were trying to get women to wear rainwear for more formal occasions and as "duster" coats. They were definitely not waterproof. Regards, Geoff. And Robin: Well, Illustr London News of
March 22, 1952 has a Valstar ad and the style is what you'ld
expect from 50s. Or there's a web site |
One of Rimo's fashion coats
September 1st 2005
Made very friendly contact with Rimo this month, who tailor-make wonderful rainwear mostly in polyurethane and the like. (You all know that, I know!) But they are happy to have a show of their pics here. As I hinted last time, a friend of the site - TG - has put together a suite of PowerPoint presentations strongly featuring their work. I had prepared the first of these for the update but suddenly it won't work properly for Firefox! Oh dear! Back to the drawing board. But it looks OK using Internet Explorer, which is most of you. Meanwhile for Firefox people there is at least Rimo's nice site to visit.
Some interesting press clippings of riding macs are in the pipeline too - many thanks to Imogen.
| A clutch of big and wonderful contributions received this month, which I haven't had time to put up - or put up much of. A couple of long letters came through the letterbox - really interesting letters, thank you!! - but needing to be scanned in and edited (and a real help when letterbox letters are in a big clear font and double-spaced). And see the note > |
August 5th 2005
Anybody help with this?
"For years now I have been trying to trace a TV film
I saw probably in 70/80's. Unfortunately, I have no recollection
of names or title, but it was about a girl employed in the nuclear
industry setting out to expose irregular and unsafe working practices
at a plant ( no, it's not the one with Meryl Streep!) Thanks for a superb website, Adrian. Answer:
|
July 31st 2005
Visited Accrington the other day, the birthplace I believe of Jeanette W. Full of other interest if that were not enough. Leading courtiers of King Cotton did their business hereabouts, notably James Hargraves and John Mercer. An early polyester I read was first produced at Broad Oak Works in 1941.
I tried to look up Mrs Elizabeth Ann Jackson's place, 359 Blackburn Road, but it's a long road. She is down in Kelly's Lancashire Directory for 1924 as a waterproofer.
Also received this month: a Powerpoint display - a parade of big, powerful, entrancing images, beautifully presented. But not yet ready for the page - partly through jittering on my part over image copyrights. And then a treasure trove of magazines and catalogues and adverts collected over the past half century or so which I am hoping very much to make the basis of a valuable as well as a fascinating archive. Wonderful things, thank you so much! Please, please keep these things coming. There is such a lot of fascinating material that needs to be caught before it is lost forever.
Mary Rose and Mike Parsons, The neglected legacy of Lancashire cotton: industrial clusters and the UK outdoor trade, 1960-1990 |
27th July 2005
Just discovered a v.v. interesting article about the 'economic history' of proofed garments in Lancashire. I think it's saying that the hi-tech materials like Gortex etc owe quite a bit of their invention and development to the know-how gained in Lancashire from rubberising cloth over the Macintosh era, the decades say from the 1820s to the 1950s. It's on-line, thanks to the authors, Prof Mary Rose and Mike Parsons, and Lancaster University.
6th July: Terribly sorry - just discovered that quite a few messages have ended up in my Yahoo Spam folder - they must have altered their rules somehow. I've rescued those I can - but I fear I may have lost quite a few more. Do write again if you can bear to. LE |
1st July 2005
"I bought this mac just for Glastonbury. But you know the thing about fashion macs - they are not waterproof. I can't get any more wet than I am now." - Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs as quoted in the Guardian, 25:06:05 p.8.
Oh, Ricky, the thing is, you can keep dry AND look sensational if you really want. Think classic trenchmac, tailored for you personally of course, and insist: real mackintosh material and taped seams. Then you'll be really floodproof. And Cool (if not exactly cool).
Like the bottom 18" of the Glastonbury person on the left! Perfectly protected in the very coolest rubber boots - classic green Hunters, beautifully accessorised with authentic Wiltshire mud.
18th June 2005
John Loadman's brilliant Bouncing Balls site tells us about Stephen Moulton, otherwise 'the forgotten man’ of the UK rubber industry. He and Thomas Hancock kept bouncing off each other it seems, fighting over patents and licences. Anyway, I managed to look out the place where Moulton started to manufacture rubber goods, including rubberproofed cloth. It's an old woollen mill, Kingston Mill, in Bradford-on-Avon. Picture book town, and the building itself tremendous though disused and beginning to tumble down. (I expect you've all seen it, sorry. As I keep saying, just catching up!)
31st May 2005
Went to see the Matisse exhibition the other day - en route for the Burlington Arcade (or was it the other way round...)
He is said to have been very interested in textures and his pictures are shown alongside examples of the textiles he collected and he thought drew inspiration from. The textiles certainly have varying textures, but the interesting thing to me - the inexplicable thing - is that his pictures don't seem to attempt textures at all! they attempt patterns, but not textures - imho.
Textures, you will understand, are of interest! People who are good at painting textures give you a tactile image of what the stuff feels like - don't they? So it would be really good to find an artist who could conjure up the feel of a piece of rubberised cotton, say (just to take a completely random example).
Do you know of any one like that? I think either of the people responsible for the pics on the left could do it. (Only one is dead.)
28th May 2005
I see the government are now banning the wearing of dark suits in boadrooms, where they have in the past helped thousands of fraudsters to escape detection by lending them a spurious air of of respectability.
20th May 2005
I
have trodden the pilgrim's path to the Burlington shrine myself! And
received much blessing. Enough really to see the word MACKINTOSH in
slightly understated capital letters running along the frontage. But
then, behind the logo, three identical trenchcoats in white. Behind
that on a rail at the back about a dozen double-texture raincoats.
You see just their edges, so they are all promise, no delivery - titillate
rather than satisfy. But that is window-dressing for you. Personally,
I want them all.
April 30th 2005
The question that's obsessing me now is this: does warmth matter?
Hazel keeps coming up with all sorts of ideas from her History ferreting, and one is that pioneer Thomas Hancock insisted that the only to way to style wearable waterproof rainwear was to make it as loose fitting as possible. Otherwise it would make the wearer, as he considered, unbearably hot.
His advice has by no means always been followed, with trenchcoat styles, tailored for a smart fit, with belt and even functional wriststraps, featuring strongly.
Is it that Hancock was wrong about close-fitting waterproof rainwear being hot to wear, or was he wrong in thinking people would find this unpleasant?
A friend kindly sends me this pic (left) of Manchester taken 8 years ago and showing the Chorlton-on-Medlock Macintosh factory to the right of the cranes. What a fabulous city!
The Burlington Arcade boutique is getting mixed reviews! One reviewer questions what exactly it is trying to do while another questions where exactly it is - cos they can't find it! I'm pretty sure it is there, or was until recently, selling a small number of bags and macs for more than Arcadian prices.
Even if it is small and expensive, it's a jolly good thing, I say! And actually I don't mind too much if it isn't really there: it's lovely to think it might be.
Robin, Imogen: thanks.
April 12th 2005
Visited Kendal's brilliant Abbot Hall gallery again the other day. They have an exhibition of Sean Scully's rectangle pictures. He doesn't paint portraits or landscapes in this series of paitings, just rectangles, usually quite a few to the canvas. The rectangles bleed into each other, which the blurb says reveals great human warmth.
What a good idea! |
March 31st 2005
I got the Hazel bug last week and went in search of the old Manchester Macintosh Mill. I had never dreamt the orginal factory might still be there. But there it is! Well, sort of. There is a great hulk there, with the magnificent legend Chas. Macintosh India-Rubber Works only half-erased across the front. . It's actually visible from the railway that strides across Castlefield and into Oxford Road Station.But you will, many of you, have seen it I know. Just catching up.
Chas M actually started off in Glasgow, didn't he. I wonder where? My next trip!
My inspiration in all this is the Personal Narrative of Thomas Hancock, Macintosh's partner, which I'm scanning as an e-text. Engrossing. One specially lovely thing for the folks in Lancaster: Hancock says he was en route to visit his sick partner in Glasgow when news reached him at his arrival in Lancaster that he had died.
| Yes, macintosh in Burlington Arcade, sighted in shop-window,
October 2004.
Cheers Tony See also: |
Rosie in Burlington Arcade
Pluvious - thanks for your help.
Rosie in Burlington Arcade
Pluvious - thanks for your help.
February 28th
| Anybody help identify a book called 'Fable' by a Torbay-based author? |
I think I have understood properly: a new store has just opened in London's Burlington Arcade, selling posh bags - and proper mackintoshes! ("Globe-Trotter/Mackintosh").
This is wonderful news!
It has won 'Best Retail Space' award for Japanese interior designer Taisuke Higuchi. - Nice, but not so interesting, I know.
None of us here have been down yet. Reports please!
We are slowly building up information about the other end of the mackintosh - not the icon of highest fashion which it has now it seems become, but its first fascinating decades, around 1820 on, would you say? Any body who has time to use their local library - do please let us have whatever info you can glean. Or: does anybody have a picture of Marlborough Cottage, Green Lanes, Stoke Newington, where the great mackintosh pioneer Thomas Hancock used to live? ....
We've at last retrieved the name of the original Lakeland Elements website - my name actually ("lorraineelement.com") - so if someone looks for us under that name they will now get put through here. Such a struggle! No marks at all to Demon, who bought it 'for us' when we launched and then wouldn't let us tranfer us to a more reasonably priced provider! (Sorry, anorak talk, only of interest to those who cover up....)
These updates come round with frightening speed, only just keeping up - well not slipping hopelessly behind would be a better way of putting it. The stats on the server say we are getting an average of 20,000 'hits' a day - which may explain this punch-drunk feeling... It would help if I knew exactly what a hit was (I know what it feels like). I think it could be just one interested visitor getting carried away...
Hope the update is OK - the end of the month has come so quickly! I've spent ages trying to put the prices in the shop on a data-base, and think I've more or less succeeded. But though it's altered the design a bit it doesn't really bring any new stuff to the person looking for a mackintosh on Clapham omnibus. Still I've been able to add quite a few new pics even so. Hope you like them. |
January 30th
Gosh, where did that go? Valentine's day already (pretty much) and I've only just put the Christmas tree away.
Robin tells me it's not just riding macs that are about again:
Seen at 9:15 am Thursday [two weeks ago], walking in the rain up the side of Princess Parkway on the way into Manchester: a gorgeous full length, flowing, slivery mackintosh. Noticeable was, she had no hat nor umbrella, yet she wasn't hurrying particularly. The fabric looked Indonesian type, silvery sheen, silky with a light rubber lining and cut in a young but classic style. Not the most ideal distraction when following another car too close in dad weather. Eyes and heads turned rather like that movie clip, where the guy's head revolves but is yanked back by his own female companion.
Hazel tells me she has found the spelling 'Macintoshes' in a History of Manchester dated 1970s. When did 'Mackintoshes' first appear?
Burberry
hit the spot again in the Guardian at the weekend, another lovely
trenchcoat, this time in white, only £600, 'at once precious and
pampered -looking', says Jess Cartner-Morley (Guardian Weekend,
18:09:04, p.57).
June
24th
Did
you notice that latex has at last been recognised as a hazardous substance
Although
it sounds a bit contradictory to me, it's not just canvas Converse-type
trainers that are back in fashion: 
Hope
the update is OK. Sorry to quite a few people who have very kindly sent
things in which I haven't managed to include. This is partly because I'm
so slow, partly because I'm so disorganised, partly because changes to
my e-mail account (anti-spam) have created a mess and partly because I
try and create a bit of a balance between different interests...
Sorry,
very sorry, the site has been up and down like a yo-yo over recent months.
We have now changed host again and I think touch wood found somewhere
quiet and safe. Cross fingers as well.
I
see those lovely Converse-type softtop trainers 
GAP
mac of last season - keenly disappointing - but one lives in hope). Going
to Burberry's website was a disappointment too! Couldn't tell about the
holes, and couldn't tell about anything else either. State of the art
flash stuff, forgetting really that if you want moving pictures they move
much quicker and more smoothly on tele (eg the FASHION channel). And no
useful information whatever! If you have time on your hands, 
December
19th
November
14th
