Hello everyone! Welcome to another instalment of On Tour, the blog post series where I talk about places I’ve been. I was originally intending to make this into two blog posts, but because I recently got a job and now that means I can’t dedicate as much time as I used to on my blog. Gotta pay the bills! After years of being unable to find work and then chronic illness kicking my ass and rendering me disabled, it was tough, but I’m finally well enough to work again, so I’m really proud of myself there and I think writing my book really played a part in me getting the job. I don’t want to ramble on too much about this, but if you’re going to write a book, you may not break even in terms of book sales, but you might make money through opportunities you get thanks to publishing your book such as jobs and gigs and in that way, your book kinda pays for itself. Just a little food for thought before we get to what I really want to talk about, fashion, museums, and castles!
Fashion: 19th century and 1970s
For those who might be reading the blog for the first time, hello! In addition to loving classic rock, I have an affinity for fashion and style and clothing. Every time I go to a museum I look for the fashion section. I’ve always loved historical fashion and I think like a lot of millennials, it was thanks to the American Girl dolls and books, which are these collectable dolls that came with lore and you could dress them up and see what life was like during various eras in the US such as the American Revolution, Civil War, Progressive Era, The Great Depression, and WWII. I never had the dolls, but I read a few of the books when I was a kid and I loved them! When I went to the American Girl Place in Chicago with my cousin when we were kids, I loved walking through the little museum there and seeing all the components of historical costumes. It was like travelling to a whole different world! Like imagine a time when zippers didn’t exist, you had to tie pockets around your waist, dresses were two pieces, and you had to wear so many more layers of clothing. Very complicated! Makes you glad you live in the present, right?
One old painting that has had me in a chokehold and that is John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X from 1884. A controversial for its time painting that led to Sargent being exiled from France, but thankfully the world wasn’t so globalised so he set up shop in the UK and became one of the most renowned portrait painters of his generation. The party ended 140 years ago, but I’m still here! I loved that painting so much that I commissioned someone to make me an outfit very similar to it (fingers crossed it arrives soon!). So when I saw that there’s a whole John Singer Sargent and fashion exhibit at the Tate Britain, I knew I had to go! Especially because not only was that on, so was an exhibit on the famous 70s department store Biba at the Fashion and Textile Museum. Two totally different eras and they fascinate me a lot. So why not go to London and kill two birds with one stone? It’s only a two hour train journey for me! So my husband and I went to London!
Sargent and Fashion at Tate Britain
The Sargent & Fashion exhibit is on until 7 July and full price it costs £22, but if you’re between the ages of 16 and 25, you can get in for just £5! A bargain for young people, but a bit pricey for us millennials. Still, just being in the same room as one of my favourite paintings is priceless! The Tate Britain itself is free admission for their permanent collection, and I’d never been before so I decided to check out the rest of the museum before making our way to the Sargent and Fashion exhibit and there were a lot of paintings to see and better yet, a lot of Pre-Raphaelite stuff and we all know how much I love that because not that long ago I saw a bunch of Pre-Raphaelite art in Birmingham and had written about it. A lot of these paintings were mentioned at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and it was so cool to see them at the Tate Britain and fill in the blanks so to speak. I also recognised the Ophelia painting from Animal Crossing New Horizons so that was cool! I love the colours in these paintings and I love the medieval inspired look.
From there, I walked through another section that was so aesthetically pleasing. You can really tell how much of an influence this aesthetic has on me and you can see it in my living room. I love that peacock green colour! Of course when I saw that first painting you see below I had to make a joke about the anime One Piece and how the women in the show have similar proportions.
Finally, we get to the main event and I’m so excited. On display are a lot of John Singer Sargent’s paintings as well as some accessories from the time period and some of the costumes as seen in the paintings, with a couple of House of Worth gowns in the mix. I just love those House of Worth gowns! One of those if I win the lottery things I’d do is get a replica of one made (that green one from 1897 has my heart!). Thanks to the movie Poor Things I’ve really fallen even more in love with 1890s fashion, the Belle Époque – I love the prominent shoulders and the dramatic, striking silhouettes. So that’s what people were wearing 100 years before I was born! One thing that I got a kick out of is all the people making remarks about how small the waists of the dresses are and how can the women breathe. Meanwhile I’m just standing there with a 20″ waist and moving around just fine, even went hiking in Hawaii like that too (it was the only way for me to relieve my period cramps and back pain that came along with it, which thankfully I don’t have to worry about anymore)!
The outfit
Whenever I go out I try to make it a whole experience and get dressed up. I hoard clothes and there’s no point in having so many dresses if I don’t parade around places showing them off. If you’ve been keeping up with my Crime of the Century content you might recognise this dress as being the book announcement dress in which I introduced the world to my true crime and classic rock book. I make it a point these days to take a copy of my book with me and take pictures of it in various locations and so that’s what I did here, played tourist for a bit and took pictures in a very stereotypical London location, not too far of a walk from the Tate Britain too! From there, we went to one of our favourite restaurants in London, Temple of Seitan: always hits the spot!
The outfit is a made to measure maxi dress made by the brand Scorpio Rising and it’s reminiscent of Biba’s 70s does 30s style and the colour reminds me so much of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting.
After lunch, we browsed the market and I was a bit tired. When I was younger I could spend all day in the big city and I couldn’t get enough, but now I don’t have the same energy levels, at least not without a few coffees. But in for a penny, in for a pound, we are going to make the most of our day in London and go to the Biba Fashion exhibit and so we did!
Biba at the Fashion and Textile Museum
When the exhibit first opened, Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki spoke at the museum and a few people I know on Instagram went and got to meet her. Unfortunately, money was a bit tight and my schedule was a bit full so I couldn’t make it them, but I’m fine just seeing the exhibit and like the Swinging London fashion exhibit I went to last time, it was amazing! That last exhibit featured some Biba clothes alongside other boutiques like Granny Takes a Trip, Apple Boutique, Hung On You, Mr Fish, and Dandie Fashions, but this time the focus was all on Biba: a brand that only lasted a decade, but made a huge impact, kind of like The Beatles!
For those who don’t know what Biba even is, it was a department store and brand founded by a Polish immigrant named Barbara Hulanicki in 1964. The brand had humble beginnings as a mail order company with affordable prices compared to other brands like Mary Quant. How were prices kept so cheap? Well, for starters the designs were quite simple, manufacturing was done in countries that was cheaper (many Biba clothes were made in Hong Kong, pre-dating the 90s move to offshore manufacturing), and the target market for Biba were teenagers and young adults (who are presumably skinnier) and that meant limited sizing – a big faux-pas in the fashion world today – not just in size but also body shape. These are clothes for skinny ruler shaped women. If you have any bit of curve, you’re screwed. The 60s and 70s were a politically incorrect time and body positivity wasn’t on the menu. In a way, Biba was like the original 1-3-5 from Mean Girls or the real life fast fashion store Brandy Melville, which sells clothing in one size (this article I linked is really interesting and goes into the manufacturing side of things – remember that just because it’s made in Europe doesn’t mean it’s ethical!).
Eventually though Biba started carrying more sizes, but the size range was more like 1990s/2000s Abercrombie & Fitch or 2000s/early 2010s Lululemon, so not the most inclusive. This is why I really wish that these old fashion houses of the 60s and 70s would do proper relaunches with reproductions of the old designs in new, refreshed colourways and with inclusive sizing from super skinny to petite to curvy to tall to plus sizes so no one is left out. Obviously, clothing brands aren’t obligated to carry all the sizes and there’s a lot of expense keeping up that huge range of sizes, but without inclusive sizing you’re leaving out a large portion of the market. Not everyone is super skinny and not everyone is ruler shaped. I still see this lack of diversity in vintage reproduction brands where most of the models are cisgender femme presenting women who are thin, white, and blonde with the occasional ginger or brunette or light skinned mixed person as the token minority. There was a push back in 2020 to get more black models to represent clothing brands, but companies just treated it as a trend and went back to the status quo not too long after. And if you’re trans or nonbinary, there’s not a lot of representation either. People just want to see what clothes look like on someone like them, not an aspirational looking model that you’ll never have a body like. Anyway that’s enough ranting.
This exhibit was cheaper with full price tickets costing just £12.65 with small discounts available to those under 25, disabled people, students, and those on universal credit. The exhibits at the Fashion and Textile Museum are quite small but I love how much thought goes into the design and the curation and I’m just a sucker for 70s fashion and I love how Biba takes a lot of inspiration from Art Deco and the 20s-40s. I think the pictures speak for themselves.
Crime of the Century goes to Oxford
Earlier this month, my parents and my brother came to visit me in England and I was really happy to see them and they asked me to suggest some day trips since where I live it’s not really the most touristy or the most beautiful (lots of brutalism in the city centre where I live, yuck!). When my parents visited last year, they loved Chester and Edinburgh and I knew the perfect place to take my family and it was just an hour’s train journey away, Oxford. Easily one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. I love the architecture here. In the city centre, there’s not an ugly building in sight! Everything is picturesque. Americans will say that it looks like Harry Potter, and they’re not wrong because the movies were partially filmed there. My brother said that it looked a lot like Disney World and I could see that. It’s the perfect place for a dark academia inspired photoshoot and that’s what I did with my book and you can see a video Eoin took of me in Oxford. In case you don’t have Instagram, it’s also on YouTube. You know I had to dress up in a dandy outfit for this. The duality of Angie: I can rock dresses and I can rock dandy clothes.
Here are some pictures Eoin took of me:
My recommendation was spot on with my dad saying that Oxford is his favourite place he has visited, even beating Chester, which is also incredibly beautiful. But that’s not the last of the beautiful places we’ve travelled to.
Warwick Castle
Throughout the British Isles you’ll find a lot of castles. Some are big like Edinburgh Castle, some are very small like that one castle on the campus grounds of the University of Limerick, right next to the River Shannon (that was a favourite place of mine to walk when I lived in Limerick). My mother in law was coming to visit and she has only been to England a handful of times despite being from Ireland, which is really really close. Because she has limited mobility we needed to figure out a good day trip that is scenic and we thought about going to a castle. There’s Kenilworth Castle, which is controlled by English Heritage, a charity that manages a lot of historical places around England, and there’s Warwick Castle, operated by Merlin Entertainments (partially owned by Blackstone – a corporation that has screwed over working people in the US by voting against rent control and buying up single family homes to rent them out and raising rents during the recession), a for-profit company that owns a bunch of theme parks and tourist attractions across the UK as well as various countries in Europe and overseas. I had my fears that this was gonna be a theme park and gimmicky, but actually I enjoyed my visit even if it wasn’t as enriching or educational as going to a National Trust site and I’m glad we chose Warwick Castle over Kenilworth because it’s much larger and has more in it. We got really lucky with the weather and it was beautiful and sunny so we got some amazing pictures and video of me at the castle. Of course, I had to make it another special occasion and so I wore my prized Gunne Sax dress and my shiny baby pink cape to the castle: I call this look Born to Die era Lana Del Rey. Worth it for the pictures alone!
Besides the castle, there’s a few other things like seeing peacocks on the grounds of the castle, a falconry show, and a trebuchet demonstration. There are some 19th century themed rooms and some talk of the history of the castle with a couple of guided tours a day, but for the most part this is a hybrid theme park/museum. I loved the views from the top part of the castle so if you have the stamina to walk up there, it’s worth it! Like The Who sang, “I can see for miles and miles”: we had some amazing views because of the sunshine. My knees aren’t the best but I survived! I really appreciated how in some parts of the castle it was quite cool and I needed a break from the heat and sunshine.
It’s a bit pricey so make sure you book your tickets at least a day in advance to get the best price. I’ve heard that you can get two for one vouchers on Kellogg’s cereal boxes, but I don’t really eat much cereal so I don’t know.
Anyway here’s a video I took at the castle and some pictures:
Anyway that’s just a roundup of the last 30 days of adventures. Here’s to more adventures this summer!
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[…] an hourglass figure. The beauty standard in those days was skinny and narrow hips were preferred. Biba was like the Brandy Melville of its day with its limited size range and clothes suiting skinny women. The 60s was the youthquake decade, so […]
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[…] Beautiful People: The Boutique in 1960s Counterculture at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London, Sargent & Fashion exhibition at the Tate Britain and Biba exhibition at the Fashion and Textile …, and Pre-Raphaelites in […]
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