Reflections on the Vulture 1: Lawrence Doesn't Like Them

I.

Vultures are large scavenging birds of prey. Although they rarely attack healthy animals, they may move in for the kill if they chance upon a wounded or sick individual.

Found in both the New and Old World, many think of them as secretly belonging to a dark and disgusting Underworld due to their penchant for feasting on the decaying flesh of corpses until their crops bulge and they vomit like an Ancient Roman. They're able to safely digest putrid carcasses infected with dangerous bacteria thanks to exceptionally corrosive stomach acid.
 
Their looks don't do them any favours either; particularly the bald head, devoid of feathers. And - just to ensure their repulsiveness - nor does their habit of pissing on themselves in order to keep cool and clean (the uric acid kills those bacteria picked up from walking through blood and guts).  

II.

According to D. H. Lawrence, the vulture was once an eagle who decided that it was the high point of evolution and thus no longer in need of any further change; it would henceforth remain as it was for all eternity, in a state of static perfection.

The vulture, in other words, is a perfectly arrested egoist as well as a foul carrion-eater; fixed in form and corrupt of soul. It should be noted that Lawrence says the same of the baboon and the hyaena too, but here I'm only interested in his particular fear and loathing of vultures: shameless birds with "obscene heads gripped hard and small like knots of stone clenched upon themselves for ever".     

His ornithophobic vision is a crescendo of vulture hatred:

"So the ragged, grey-and-black vulture sits hulked, motionless, like a hoary, foul piece of living rock, its naked head and neck sunk in, only the curved beak protruding, the naked eyelids lowered. Motionless, beyond life, it sits on the sterile heights.
      It does not sleep, it stays utterly static. When it spreads its great wings and floats down the air, still it is static [...] a dream-floating. When it rips up carrion and swallows it, it is still the same dream-motion, static, beyond the inglutination. The naked obscene head is always fast locked, like stone.
      It is this naked, obscene head of a bird [...] that I cannot bear to think of. When I think of it, I never live nor die, I am petrified into foulness."

As we'll discover in part two of this post, other poets have a rather less negative view of the vulture - and some even manage to write about the actual animal, without immediately assigning it a symbolic role within their own philosophy.

Lawrence, however, can never resist lapsing into metaphysics. Indeed, the argument has been made that ultimately - for all his sensitivity to the otherness of birds, beasts and flowers - Lawrence only has two great objects of concern: (i) himself and (ii) language.

Amit Chaudhuri is right to suggest that Lawrence never accurately describes creatures at all, nor directly touches on them as things in themselves. Rather, he recreates and imitates them for his own artistic and philosophical amusement, assembling a menagerie of textual mannequins and symbolic beasts.  

See: 

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Crown', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988). 

Amit Chaudhuri, D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference', (Oxford University Press, 2003).


To read part two of this post - on Robinson Jeffers and his poetic vision of the vulture - click here. 

Mr. Erbil: Revolt into Style

Members of Mr. Erbil Gentleman's Club

Photo by Hugo Passarello Luna

I.

Some stories are just too perfect to be true: and the story of Mr. Erbil - a Kurdish gentleman's club spreading positive socio-cultural change via sartorial elegance - is one such story. For theirs is a genuine revolt into style that demonstrates the importance of fashion in the never-ending struggle with fundamentalism and militant stupidity (of whatever shade or stripe).

London hipsters should, I think, take note and learn from these Kurdish dandies that it's not only important to dress well and look good with lovingly-trimmed beards, one must also endeavour to construct an ethical life. In other words, as the chaps at The Chap have always rightly insisted, the key thing is to expand your mind at the same time as refining your wardrobe.
  
  

II.

While the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq was somewhat sheltered from the war, in 2016 the black flag waving lunatics of Islamic State descended from Mosul and onto its borders. Most young men - and many women - joined the Kurdish military (Pashmerga) ready to fight not only for their way of life, but their very lives.

Obviously, armed resistance was absolutely crucial. But a small group of friends who liked to talk clothes and football over tea and shisha, realised the importance of also displaying cultural defiance in the face of an enemy that despises art, fashion, beauty and joie de vivre. And so, Mr. Erbil was founded, cleverly mixing Western styles with their own history and heritage.  

Starting with an Instagram page, they soon established a large following across social media and grew to over thirty members. They also launched their own line in men's grooming products and began to advocate for women's rights and equality across the Middle East (female activists and artists were invited to address events held in Erbil).

One can but admire and respect the founders and members of Mr. Erbil and send them the very warmest of fraternal greetings.

Notes

Mr. Erbil can be followed via: Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

For an excellent feature on Mr. Erbil in The Chap (13 Dec 2017) by freelance photojournalist Elizabeth Fitt, with pictures by Mustafa Khyat and Shwan Blaiye, click here.

This post is for my beautiful friend Nahla Al-Ageli at Nahla Ink. 

Don't You Ever Stop Being Dandy: In Memory of Bunny Roger

Bunny Roger by Francis Goodman (1951)

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Neil Roger - known by friend and foe alike as Bunny - was a couturier, war hero, and what the Victorians would have politely termed a confirmed bachelor. A man loved within fashionable society as much for his kindness as his impeccable (sometimes flamboyant) style.

It's said that everybody's favourite fictional dandy, John Steed - played so beautifully by Patrick Macnee - was partly based on Bunny and his neo-Edwardian wardrobe that featured long tight-waisted jackets, narrow trousers and a high-crowned bowler hat. His exquisitely cut suits showed Savile Row tailoring at its very finest.

As a boy, his Scottish parents sent him to an independent boarding school in East Lothian. Founded in 1827, Loretto School is currently under investigation as part of an inquiry into historic child abuse. Bunny then spent a year reading history at Balliol College, before deciding to study drawing at the Ruskin, having determined on a career designing clothes.

The Oxford authorities had their eye on him, however, and he was eventually expelled from the University, accused of homosexual activities. The fact that he enhanced his good looks with rouge and hair dye didn't help his case (though I don't know if he even attempted to mount a defence against the charges made: Never complain, never explain).

In 1937, aged twenty-six, Bunny established himself as a London couturier who could name Vivien Leigh and Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent among his clientele. His shop, in Great Newport Street, was decorated in camp Regency Gothic style. Unfortunately, his career as a dress-maker to the rich and famous was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War.

Serving as a commissioned officer in the Rifle Brigade, Bunny saw action in Italy and North Africa. He was greatly admired by his fellow soldiers for his courage under fire - and for the fact that even in the most demanding of circumstances he always made sure his makeup was carefully applied with a showman's resilience and went into battle wearing a mauve chiffon scarf, brandishing the latest copy of Vogue.  
       
Following the War, Bunny was invited to run the couture department at the exclusive West End store Fortnum and Mason. He seemed to enjoy his job. And he certainly enjoyed his colourful social life, holding lavish and often outrageous parties for his many friends and specially invited guests, until his death in 1997, aged 85.

Indeed, party-giving was arguably Bunny's true vocation; he had a great passion (and talent) for dancing, dressing up, and entertaining. One notorious fetish-themed party in 1956 even provoked tabloid headlines.   

In an obituary published in the Independent (28 April 1997), Clive Fisher closes with the following rather touching paragraph:

"All dandies need an audience, but Bunny Roger inspired what almost amounted to a following - partly because by word and deed he never stopped entertaining; partly because we are all nostalgic for style. Most crucially, however, he was true: beneath his mauve mannerisms he was stalwart, frank, dependable and undeceived; to onlookers a passing peacock, to intimates a life enhancer and exemplary friend."

Only the puritans of Dandyism.net seem unable to resist casting aspersions upon his character ...

For Bunny, they insist, was not a prominent figure within the history of dandyism; just an old school queen too prone to wearing sequins and rightly regarded as a marginal character. Indeed, all that saved him from being "just another flaunting, excessively camp clown like Patrick McDonald", was his Edwardian-infused sobriety and "genuinely good taste in conventional attire".

Unfortunately, nothing saves the Junta - as the staff of Dandyism.net like to refer to themselves - from lapsing on this occasion into ill-mannered homophobia.


Notes

Clive Fisher's obituary for Bunny Roger can be read in full by clicking here.

The Dandyism.net editorial (14 Nov 2007) can be read by clicking here.

Women in Trousers 2: A Brief History of Capri Pants Featuring Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn

There seems to be some confusion as to who invented the tight-cut ankle-exposing trousers known as Capri pants ...

According to an obituary written by Clive Fisher in the Independent (28 April 1997), credit should go to English couturier and dandy Bunny Roger. Usually, however, credit is given to the German fashion designer Sonja de Lennart, who opened a boutique in Munich after the War and called her first collection Capri after the island that she and her family very much loved to visit.

Aiming to provide a chic and sexy alternative to the wide-legged and rather masculine looking women's trousers of the time, de Lennart created the slim three-quarter length Capri pants with super-stylish short slits on the outer-side of the pant leg.

The radically innovative design of the trousers soon caught the attention of brilliant American costume designer Edith Head. She had a pair made for Audrey Hepburn to wear in the movie Roman Holiday (1953), along with other items from the Capri Collection including the wide-swinging Capri skirt, the high-neck Capri blouse, and the wide Capri belt to hold the entire look together.

The following year, Hepburn again appeared on screen in a pair of Capri pants - this time made by Hubert de Givenchy - in Billy Wilder's romantic comedy-drama Sabrina (1954). The cropped black pants were paired with a long-sleeved black top (with a plunging V-neck at the back) and a pair of ballet flats. It was a brilliant and captivating look that showcased Hepburn's slender physique to perfection.   

I have to admit, however, that it's just a wee bit too jazz-hipster or beatnik for my tastes; all she needs is a beret and some cat-eye sunglasses!

I prefer the above photo of Grace Kelly perfecting her own casual, understated elegance in a pair of Capri pants worn with a simple blouse and espadrilles. It's both a signature style and a classic look; one that many women have tried to copy, though rarely with the same degree of success.

She looks so radiant ... So fresh ... So blonde! It's no wonder Hitchcock loved her, once describing his ideal leading lady as a snow-covered volcano.            

To read a related post to this one - Women in Trousers 1: The Case of Katharine Hepburn - click here.

Women in Trousers 1: The Case of Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn (1907 - 2003)

Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt (1939)

One of the things that Roland Barthes doesn't like is women wearing trousers.

Obviously, he's not alone in this. Indeed, I prefer to see women in skirts myself. But it depends on the woman. And it depends on the skirt or slacks in question ...

For some skirts are very ugly. Whilst some trousers - such as a classic cut pair of Capri pants as worn by Grace Kelly - are very beautiful. And some women look so sexy and stylish in trousers that this is how they are best remembered within the cultural imagination. Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Katharine Hepburn are very obvious examples.*

And let's be clear, when these women pulled on a pair of pants it took real courage. For in the twenties and thirties clothing was regarded as an outward sign of gender rooted naturally and essentially in biology. Crazy as it seems in our gender fluid non-binary times, women could be arrested for wearing trousers in public back then as it was illegal to masquerade as a man (particularly for the purposes of deception).**

Further, many medical professionals were convinced that if a woman persisted in her desire to wear trousers it was clear evidence of lesbianism or mental illness, both of which were stigmatised as conditions betraying some kind of moral failing or weakness.

Hepburn in particular took a lot of criticism for her provocative appearance and prickly personality. Intelligent, outspoken, and fiercely independent, she refused to conform to society's narrow definition of womanhood and was equally contemptuous of the Hollywood lifestyle. One article, written in 1934, accused her of being a strutting revolutionary who aimed to destroy models of traditional (and cinematic) femininity - which, of course, was true.      

My favourite story concerning Hepburn, however, comes from the time she was still under contract at RKO: Studio heads decided they didn't like her turning up to work wearing blue jeans, so one day had them removed from her dressing room whilst she was on set filming. Far from persuading her to toe the line and put on a skirt, however, she returned to the set in just her knickers and refused to cover up until her jeans were returned.

As Dewey Finn would say, that is so punk rock ...


* The argument has been made by her biographer that Hepburn's androgyny was angular and sexless in comparison to the undeniably erotic allure projected by Garbo and Dietrich. Whilst I agree that for Hepburn her dress sense was more about personal freedom and comfort, rather than cultivating a seductive queer style, I find it hard to ever think of her as sexless - in or out of trousers. See William J. Mann; Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (Henry Holt and Company, 2006). 

** Various US cities passed legislation barring women from wearing trousers in the 19th and 20th centuries, including San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston. But before any Europeans smile at their American cousins and congratulate themselves on their own sophisticated liberalism, it's worth noting that it was only in 2013 that the French finally revoked a 200-year-old law forbidding women to wear trousers in Paris (unless riding a bicycle or on horseback). If interested in this subject, see Clare Sears, Arresting Dress (Duke University Press, 2015). 

To read part 2 of this post - a brief history of Capri pants (featuring Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn) - click here.     

Cruella De Vil: If She Doesn't Scare You, No Evil Thing Will

Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil in Disney's
101 Dalmations (dir. Stephen Herek, 1996)

Cruella De Vil is a character originally created by Dodie Smith in her 1956 children's book The Hundred and One Dalmations. But probably most of us know her via Walt Disney's animated film adaptation or later live-action version, starring Glenn Close (1961 and '96 respectively).   

As the (less than subtle) name suggests, the puppy-stealing London heiress wrapped in mink is one of fiction's great villains. She has become an icon of stylish (and stylised) evil within popular culture, both in the English-speaking world and beyond. The Polish, for example, are very fond of the woman they know as Cruella De Mon, whilst the French are equally attracted to Cruella D'Enfer. 

What very few people realise, however, is that her surname is also a literary allusion to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). In the novel, the Count sometimes goes under the name of De Ville; he purchases a house in London under this alias, for example. Thus, Roger Radcliffe's description of her as a vampire bat and an inhuman beast, whilst intended to be humorous, is perhaps more apt than he realises.    

The animated Disney version of Cruella - voiced by Betty Lou Gerson - differed from the character described by Smith in several respects. For example, in the novel she is said to be cooly indifferent and detached. But in the film she's a manic character, only just managing to keep things together. Gerson is believed to have based her version of Cruella on the actress Tallulah Bankhead, known for her outrageous personality and many mannerisms.  

In the live-action 1996 film, meanwhile, Cruella was re-imagined as the glamorous head of a haute couture fashion house specialising in the use of exotic skins and fur. At the start of the film it's revealed that she had even had a rare white Siberian tiger slaughtered for its pelt.       

Although the movie wasn't particularly well-received, Close's performance in the role as the cigarette smoking doraphile and zoosadistic sociopath won critical acclaim and secured her a place within the pornographic imagination; as did her distinctive costumes, make-up, and jewellery (the latter made from teeth to emphasise her fetishistic penchant for wearing dead animal parts).

Ah, Cruella! Cruella! This evil Venus in Furs! This mad embodiment of coldness and cruelty!

The curl of her lips
The ice in her stare
All innocent children
Had better beware ...


Notes

The song Cruella De Vil was written by Mel Leven and sung in 101 Dalmations (1961) by Bill Lee. Lyrics © Walt Disney Music Company / Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Click here to watch on YouTube (and don't forget to sing along).

The animator for Cruella in all her scenes in the above film was Marc Davis. 

The costumes worn by Glenn Close as Cruella in the '96 movie were designed by Anthony Powell and Rosemary Burrows.

Capnolagnia (Fragment from an Illicit Lover's Discourse)

Jennifer Lawrence in an ad for Dior Addict Lipstick (2015)

Prior to the 20th century, smoking cigarettes was not something that respectable women did. And, even now, there's still an association within the pornographic imagination between women smoking and vice. For whilst there's nothing sexy about lung cancer, there is something erotic and aesthetically pleasing about a beautiful woman holding a cigarette and blowing smoke in your face (and I say that as a non-smoker).

I'm not sure this is due to advertising by the tobacco companies, who preferred female smokers to be perceived as modern independent women, rather than prone to immoral behaviour; a cigarette was meant to be a sign of freedom and equality, not deviance and depravity. 

Probably Hollywood is more responsible for advancing the idea that sex and smoking belong in dangerous combination and for creating the seductive figure of a femme fatale who is always looking for some poor sap to provide her with a light.

Of course, the golden age of smoking in movies belongs to the distant past. In the puritanical 21st century, studios have surrendered to pressure from anti-smoking groups and the health lobby. In 2015, for example, Disney - the studio that gave us one of the silver screen's great female smokers, Cruella De Vil - issued a total ban on smoking imagery in all its films.

Nevertheless, despite censorship and campaigns to stub out smoking once and for all - campaigns based upon overwhelming medical evidence showing a clear link between tobacco and a whole host of horrible diseases - the mythology of cigarettes and their sexiness refuses to die. 

Thus it is that, in the same year as the Disney ban, Dior launched a campaign for its new range of Addict lipstick (available in 35 shades), featuring the American actress Jennifer Lawrence as seen above. Smoking in public may no longer be socially sanctioned behaviour, but I have to admit that even the suggestion of a woman holding a cigarette is still enough to excite my fetishistic interest.       

Give Your Heart to the Hawks: On the Inhumanism of Robinson Jeffers

Photo of Robinson Jeffers 
by Carl Van Vechten (1937)

As for me, I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.

It's only very recently that I've become familiar with the American poet Robinson Jeffers (1887 - 1962) - this despite the fact he's highly regarded by admirers for his Nietzschean philosophy of Inhumanism and came spinning out of the same cultural vortex as D. H. Lawrence.

Like Lawrence, Jeffers wrote of the astonishing beauty twinned with the savage cruelty of the natural world and contested all forms of anthropocentric conceit. His uncompromising relationship with the physical world is described in often brutal verse and, like Lawrence, Jeffers also had a penchant for exploring controversial subject matter, including rape, incest, bestiality and murder.

Both writers, we might say, subscribed to a model of the sublime that was erotico-daemonic in character. The key question was how mankind could find its proper place in the world as a being amongst other beings (be they animals, flowers, or rocks). This, Jeffers suggests, would involve men and women learning how to uncentre themselves and accept that all things have an element of divinity and are interconnected in what is essentially a tragedy of existence.  

Sadly, like Lawrence, Jeffers has largely fallen from favour and been marginalised in the mainstream academic community during the last thirty years. And probably for some of the same reasons; how many students today care about the extraordinary patience of things or want to hear that the universe is absolutely indifferent to them and their narcissistic politics of identity and social justice?

Still, Jeffers does have his followers and devotees; particularly within the burgeoning discipline of eco-poetics where his effort to shift emphasis from man to not-man is met with approval. And I certainly intend to read his work closely and at length over the coming months; who knows, I may even become a member of the Robinson Jeffers Association ... 

Notes

Readers interested in the Jeffers-Lawrence connection might like to see Calvin Bedient's essay, 'Robinson Jeffers, D. H. Lawrence, and the Erotic Sublime', in Robinson Jeffers and a Galaxy of Writers, ed. William B. Thesing, (University of South Carolina Press, 1995).

See also the foreword written by Jeffers to Fire and Other Poems, by D. H. Lawrence, published by The Book Club of California / The Grabhorn Press, 1940, in a limited edition of just 300 copies (with an introductory note on the poems by Frieda Lawrence).

Robinson Jeffers, The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Vols. I-V, (Stanford University Press, 1988-2000).
Robinson Jeffers, The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, ed. Tim Hunt, (Stanford University Press, 2001). 


Thanks to Simon Solomon for introducing me to the poetry of Robinson Jeffers and inspiring this post. 

In Praise of a Well-Turned Ankle

A judge and contestant in an ankle contest 
organised by the Women's Section of the 
British Railways Social Club, 
Oxford, 1949 

I.

Some men are very fond of shapely female legs. Others are partial to a pretty pair of feet. But I've always been an admirer of that erotic zone where these things intersect; the so-called talocrural region. Indeed, if a woman has ugly ankles, then it's almost irrelevant to me how shapely her legs or how pretty her feet.

And the key to a lovely looking ankle?

The curve: that and a pronounced narrowing from calf to foot (an effect easily enhanced by wearing a pair of high heels). Ideally, there should also be a little vein - visible, but not overly-prominent - cutting across the malleolus (whether this be the medial or lateral malleolus is a matter of personal preference).

Essentially then, it's fair to say that fine ankles determine my desire; just as they did for the ancient Greeks, who often explicitly related the (un)desirability of woman to the slenderness of her ankles. According to the lyric poet Archilocus, for example, a woman with fat ankles deserves to be thought of as a vulgar object of loathing.


II.
 
I have to admit, this seems a bit harsh - certainly by modern standards. So maybe it's just as well that Archilocus wasn't around in the 1930s and '40s to judge the ankle contests that were very popular in England at this time, with even an annual pageant on the rooftop of Selfridges.

Originally, the contestants were concealed behind a thick curtain, only displaying their lower-legs and feet and still wearing their stockings and shoes. In later years, however, the organisers did away with this aspect which was meant to afford anonymity and modesty.

Once the women were lined up, a judge - usually but not always a man (and, strangely, often the local bobby) - would slowly walk up and down, occasionally stopping for a closer inspection and to take a few measurements. Finally, he would announce the lucky winner who - as the events were often sponsored by hosiery companies - could expect to receive a prize pair of stockings, as well as the adulation of her local community.

Now, I know what some will say about these contests. But such spoil-sports view everything with an evil eye and are possessed by the spirit of gravity. Women should be proud of their ankles, poets should sing of them, and honours should be bestowed upon those who possess the prettiest looking pairs.

Surprisingly, the associate fashion editor of The Guardian agrees, arguing that the ankle "should be a focus of national celebration". It's a blessing, she writes, that whilst British women are often large of thigh and chunky of calf, they have ankles "made in the image of Persephone".   


See: Jess Cartner-Morley, 'What makes a nice ankle?', The Guardian, (12 April 2006): click here to read online.

See also Phoebe Jackson-Edwards, 'Best foot forwards ...' Daily Mail (14 Oct 2015), an article which is illustrated with marvellous black and white photos of ankle contests in the 1930s and '40s, including the one below, taken in Hounslow, in July 1930. Click here.

Reflections on the Death Mask (With Reference to the Case of L'Inconnue de la Seine)

 L'Inconnue de la Seine (c. late-1880s) 
A favourite pin-up of necrophiles

I. How Even the Dead Can Continue to Make an Impression

Napoleon, Nietzsche, Alfred Hitchcock, James Joyce, and Malcolm McLaren have at least one thing in common: they all left behind them a death mask, which, for those who don't know, is a post-mortem portrait sculpted from a wax or plaster impression made of an individual's face shortly after their passing (either with or without their permission).

Although such masks have a long tradition, I suspect that most modern people find them a bit creepy and would happily consign them to some dark corner of the uncanny valley out of sight. But, even today, we find them displayed in libraries, museums, and art galleries.

Dead kings, politicians, philosophers, poets, and even notorious outlaws including Ned Kelly, have all been commemorated in this manner. One of the most famous death masks, however, is that of an unidentified teenage girl known as L'Inconnue de la Seine ...


II. The Unknown Woman of the Seine

At the end of the 19th century, the mask of a pretty young suicide fished out of the Seine became a must-have fixture on the walls of fashionable people's homes and inspired numerous literary works. The story goes that a pathologist working at the Paris Morgue was so enchanted by her serene beauty that he felt compelled to immortalise her features.  

Rilke and, later, Albert Camus both compared her eerily joyful expression to the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, whilst, in The Savage God (1972), Al Alvarez notes that L'Inconnue was the erotic ideal for an entire generation of girls in the pre-War period who morbidly based their look on hers.

And, amusingly, the face of the world's first CPR training mannequin - known as Resusci Anne and designed by a Norwegian toy maker - was modelled after this unknown adolescent corpse (thus adding a darkly perverse element to the already slightly queer act of administering the kiss of life to a rubber doll).


Note: 

Anyone interested in having a death mask - or a memorial sculpture - made of themselves or a loved one (which can be cast in a variety of materials, including marble and bronze), should contact the British sculptor Nick Reynolds, who is renowned for his work in this field and has produced masks of, amongst others, the film director Ken Russell, actor Peter O'Toole, and his own father, Bruce Reynolds, mastermind of the Great Train Robbery: click here.