June 18 2024 - The Wedding Dress Runway

 

I did not get the wedding dress of my dreams.  I wanted a Victorian style wedding dress with the high collar, large sleeves at the top narrowing to the wrists, and a narrow waist with a bodice of lace. My mother had other plans based on price and convenience.  There was no "Say Yes to the Dress" sort of event back then.  I got to thinking of this because this is the wedding season.  The wedding dress is the highlight. Our world of celebrities - whether born into Royalty or akchieved through endeavours - gives us a view of how far things can go.  THE WEDDING DRESS - all caps.  And why is that?  These are dresses of significant cost and astonishing designs.  Let's go down Fantasy Lane and see some of the greatest wedding dresses of all time.   There seems to be a mix of American celebrities and British Royalty in the line-up.  Most of the line-ups are based on spending a lot of money.  In the age of Billionaires on Beserk, these dresses are something to witness. It is a long line-up of dresses - I have scrolled down to 59 and am now weary of white, so I'm going to share the link HERE.   No one will commit to the greatest wedding dress of all time.   Do you want to find out about the most expensive?  Angelababy Wedding Dress – $31 Million - worn by Chinese actress, singer and model The Diamond Wedding Dress – $12 Million - I guess it is for sale? No wearer Yumi Katsura's White Gold Dress – $8.5 Million - Japanese fashion designer creation - no wearer  Serena Williams: $3.5 Million - tennis star Victoria Swarovski: $1 Million - Swarovski jewellery heiress Queen Elizabeth's dress would have been work $1.6 million today - it cost $42,000 in 1947. The above are all in the white wedding dress tradition, started by Queen Victoria.  For wedding sarees, there is Isha Ambani Piramal's worth $1.08 million.    Isn't money so easy to play with?  We can compare and contrast everything based on money.  We don't have to do any real analysis or make any decisions.   I think of Cosmos as the Wedding Flower - it looks like a ball gown to me.  There's always white Cosmos in my garden.

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Dec 9 2022 - Cut-out Paper Dolls

 

Something popped into my head - cut-out paper dolls.  When I was little, I used to make evening dresses that would fold onto a cardboard adult doll.  They came in comic book formats in the 1950s.  We made glamorous evening gowns for celebrity stars in Hollywood.    "Between 19th and 20th century paper dolls were used by department stores as fashion advertisement. Paper dolls started appearing in ladies magazines and helped sell clothes and other items such are coffee, flour, chocolate, sewing machines, nail polish, underwear, fabrics, cars, soaps and threads. When comic books started appealing to the female market, paper dolls started appearing in comic books too. Some paper dolls were inspired by comic book characters." At Christmas there were Santa Claus towns to cut-out and set up.  There are lots of these on the internet now.   Here's the promo:  "It's amazing what can be done with just paper and glue..."     This was on Queen Street West one year, and gives one a different perspective on paper dresses. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

June 7 2022 - The Dress

 

The Black Dress, or little black dress, is considered to have been originated by Coco Chanel.  It is intended to be long-lasting, versatile, affordable, and widely accessible. I think the most famous version is the black dress of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, designed by Hubert de Givenchy. It epitomized the standard for wearing little black dresses accessorized with pearls (together called "basic black"), as was frequently seen throughout the early 1960s.  Decades later came the "The Dress" - this was an internet sensation in 2015 when viewers of the image on Facebook disagreed on whether the dress was coloured black and blue or white and gold.  Millions of people got involved from all walks of life and all manner of celebrity status. It has become the subject of ongoing scientific investigations into neuroscience and vision science, producing a number of papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is currently no consensus on why the dress elicits such discordant colour perceptions among viewers, though these have been confirmed and characterised in controlled experiments. No synthetic stimuli have been constructed that are able to replicate the effect as clearly as the original image. Here are the two ways in which the photograph of the Dress may be perceived: left is the blue and black under a yellow-tinted illumination or white and gold under a blue-tinted illumination.  Here's the illustration and then the actual photo.  i can't make the dress white and gold at all.  What colours do you see?   The dress was intended to be worn by the Mother of the Bride at the wedding.  Can you imagine the scenario?  Bride pushed out of way while everyone stares at "The Dress". In comparison, In think everyone stared at Audrey Hepburn in the black dress,  standing in front of the Manhattan Tiffany's window eating a croissant. No mistaking that dress or that colour. I am eagerly waiting for my Marathon Lilies to bloom.  Here are some in Creemore, naturalized in a rural garden.

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Feb 7 - Successful Lawyers in Beamsville

One of the sponsored ads on the Weather Channel is "The Most Successful Lawyers in Beamsville" and the picture is of a young woman with long hair and casual top.  This is a 'dating-style' picture, rather than the picture of what you'd expect a lawyer to look like.  And what makes them choose Beamsville rather than Grimsby?  It all gives rise to curiosity to find.  That's because we know what a 'stock lawyer' looks like. Photo stock pictures show us people dressed in dark suits and white shirts.  There is an exception -  pictures from the careerist.com in an article about successful Chinese Female lawyers.  Are the three women in the pictures are lawyers - they have no names, so I expect they are stock pictures of some sort. Their clothes are too colourful to "represent" lawyers in the workplace.  The article is about Chinese lawyers in top firms, but it is too liberal with personal opinions rather than facts. The fashion advice from lawandstyle.ca matches up with the images of lawyer on stock services: "Choose conservative pieces: sheath dresses with jackets, shoes in pristine condition, simple jewelry and accessories. For skirts, go with knee-length or slightly above the knee. Always wear a cardigan or jacket if you’re meeting with clients or if you’re wearing a sleeveless top. To make daring fashion choices when you’re just starting out takes the focus off your talent as a lawyer during that precarious time when you’re trying to stake out space and build your identity at the firm. Once you’ve proven yourself to be bright, capable and hard-working, then you can experiment with fashion within your comfort zone (and that of your workplace)." What is the advice for men?  Well-kept facial hair is fine. Just no soul patch. Ever When the collars or cuffs start to wear, toss the shirt Skip the bow tie So I completed my investigation by googling "best lawyer in beamsville" and took a look at the top three lines of images - all wearing dark suits, white/light shirts.  After that, the flaws of google retrieval come forth and anything can show up - purple bricks ads abound. Our Valentine today is the spring flower "Bleeding Heart".

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Goggle Every Day

Do you remember the burning man festival?  This is a yearly event in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.  It is a radical movement based on 10 principles, such as communal effort, civic responsibility, and radicalism - self-reliance, self-expression and inclusion.   What does this have to do with Google?  I though I'd find out about the daily theme.  I guessed it is a great accomplishment in one of the largest companies in the world to have one's theme chosen.  How does it work?  The very first google doodle appeared in honour of the Burning Man Festival of 1998, and was designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed.   This has evolved over time into a major activity with a Google Doodler team, and competitions in various countries. The history of the google doodle is available on Wikipedia here. I am looking forward to the Canada Day google this year with the 150th birthday.  You can see the Canada Day google doodles here. Last week Queen Street West had a window display that got my camera's attention.