No-one Wears the Pants

Travelling along the Mekong River in Vietnam last year, I visited a Cham village. The Cham are an ethnic group in Southeast Asia, and are the remnants of the Kingdom of Champa, that ruled much of Vietnam from the 7^th to the 15^th centuries; there are smaller populations in Cambodia and Malaysia, and most live in riverside villages.

The society is matriarchal – our guide informed us with a wink that it was the women who wore the pants in Cham society – unlike elsewhere in Vietnam! However, you won’t find anyone actually wearing pants in a Cham village – except perhaps the little children running around.

…you won’t find anyone actually wearing pants in a Cham village…

Traditionally, both sexes wear a sarong-like garment called a batik, which is worn knotted at the waist. I was shown how to wrap and knot my own brightly coloured batik, woven from cotton in the village I bought it from. Men usually wear a shirt over their batiks, and the women close-fitting blouses that are open at the throat and have tight sleeves. Their customary headdress is a turban or scarf (both of which you can see in the snapshots above).

My lilac scarf is triangular, and trimmed in lavender crochet; I was shown how to wrap it around my head and hair by one of the villagers. The linen shirt was tailored to fit me better while I waited in a nearby Saigon café; the leather thongs, various coloured jade bangles and silver earrings were all purchased in local markets. Although not all of the pieces conform strictly to Cham dress, the combination does create a charming effect!

A Nod to the Forties

Follow Me, Aug/Sep 1987. Ph: Martyn Thompson.

Peplums, polka dots, houndstooth checks and stripes and high waists; burgundy lipstick and polished chic: so many things to adore here. But what immediately struck me as I flicked through #10 of my tearsheet books was the photography and styling.

These pages are from FOLLOW me, a magazine of Australian publishing lore (I have waxed lyrical about it on previous occasions, here and here), and the pictures were shot in 1987, for the Aug/Sep issue of that year by one of my favourite Australian (although English-born) photographers, Martyn Thompson.

There is certainly a reference to the 1940s with such a fantastic selection of black and white garments, but the whole effect is modern – although these outfits would now be considered vintage themselves! The model has an air of Forties elegance about her, in her pose and the tilt of her head. Yet she is a little more relaxed, less stuffy than her decades-older counterparts. Perhaps it is also the fact that she is not wearing any confining undergarments – she actually looks like she could take a deep breath quite easily.

The desaturated colours of the images are beautiful too; the pale lemon and taupe backgrounds create that vintage look much more prettily than stark white would have.

Click on the images for larger versions.

Signalling a new silhouette, a body skim that moves to the rhythm of swing. Note fitted tops with full skirts, long-line jackets, tucked at the waist, empire-lined skirts, waisted high jackets that flounce and skirts that shorten to flip a pretty flirt. It all fits in with a femininity that fancies the classic curves.

Full Tilt

Tilt Hat, The Vintage Hat Series. Marshall Field & Company, Chicago.

In the 1940s tilt hats – or perchers as they were also known for obvious reasons – were worn on top of the head. Often decorated with ostrich plumes that bobbed about provocatively, they were tilted at a saucy angle (for greater effect as one fluttered one’s eyelashes at a handsome officer). Add a veil and a flick of black liquid eyeliner, and that officer had no hope. Precariously angled, the hats were prevented from succumbing to gravity by means of an elastic band.

My brown wool felt hat trimmed in a toffee coloured feather indeed possesses one of these wide elastic bands, but either women’s heads (mine) today are much larger than their Forties sisters’, or the band has lost its elasticity, because I cannot fathom how to attach it to my head without utterly ruining my hairstyle. Or perhaps the knack for it has been sadly lost in the mists of time. I shall have to invest in a hatpin.

Homage To An Australian Childhood

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs (1918) is the quintessential Australian children’s storybook, all about little gumnut babies and their adventures with other creatures of the bush. I remember having it read to my third grade class by a favourite teacher, and being entirely enthralled.

After joyfully pouncing on it in a bookstore one day, I begged my sister to buy me my very own copy “for my 8^th birthday”, I coaxed. It cost six whole dollars; very expensive at the time. She bought it for me on the spot – or so I remember – and I have it to this day. The book is very decrepit now, having lost its spine through some misadventure long ago, and I have a recollection of spilling Coke on the cover. I was very upset at the time.

I’d had an idea to dress up as Ragged Blossom in homage to May Gibbs last year, but it was only when I found a vintage hat with all its unravelling tulle that it began to come together. Then I snapped up a pink Hawaiian skirt, and found a Ragged Blossom tree actually all in bloom just three weeks ago. Add a magenta wig borrowed from my cousin, a bit of Photoshop magic, and Little Ragged Blossom comes to life a hundred years after she is first written.

I particularly love the suave pair of gumnuts in the upper box. I distinctly recall being fascinated by this particular illustration. How apt.The End.

A Shoe Tragedy

Another tragedy involving red shoes: a pair of Gary Castles in a sublime wine red, with a heart that caught fire like Dorothy’s heels in the sunshine (more subtly than the stinky shoes), and a smooth patent finish like a glossy cherry.

High, yet not impossibly so, with a little strap adding a lick of mary-jane; they delighted me. Until the day the heel on one snapped in half.

Now, the very sight of them pains me. They have gathered dust, pining on a shoe rack, waiting for the day they would have the heels replaced. But I cannot bear to see the patent heels lopped off, with the ugly stacked versions (which would be the most a cobbler could offer me) put in their place.

So fare thee well, pretty shoes. You go to a far better place where you belong… No, not Shoetopia; that’s just a myth hard-hearted Russian cobblers made up to console bereaved fashionistas (she says with meaningful rancour, dwelling unlovingly on one particular stinging memory). I mean the trash can.