In memory of Eve Hall 1937-2007

Nikosi Sikelel' iAfrika

Eve Hall born Paris 1937 died South Africa 2007

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed I am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
it flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the
shadowed wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.


From Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

A mouth painted with Chanel lipstick can still say anything it likes.

JANUARY 1993: I was standing in the offices of The Daily Telegraph being issued with a company flak jacket. It was navy blue, fastened at the sides with Velcro tabs and weighed a ton. "Don't take it off," they warned me. "I absolutely won't," I told them. I loved my new flak jacket more than any item of clothing I have ever owned. It could have been designed by Coco Chanel herself, that was how attached I was to it. Why? Because I was going to Bosnia.

. . .

I tell this story because a myth has grown up that you cannot be serious and be interested in fashion, or in anything else that defines femininity. If you read the Economist, you cannot also read fashion magazines to find out what's happening on the catwalks.

Why? Who says? People who want to put down intelligent women, I think. It's a kind of warning to the wannabe babe: hide your brains, darling, if you don't want to wear flat shoes and no make-up for the rest of your life. It's as if there is some piece of government legislation on the matter: be a babe or be a bore, it's your choice.

published in the Telegraph February 2002

(the Bag Snobs meet the Wall Street Journal here)

Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate

When I got my first job in journalism, my mentor, Diana Pulson, feature writer on the Liverpool Daily Post, warned me to stay away from women's pages, which were she said, a ghetto of knitting patterns and recipes. A few years later, feminism had turned the Guardian women's page into the place where the feminist revolution was celebrated and debated. I thought myself incredibly lucky, in the early nineties when I eventually started to write for the Guardian women's page, under the editorship first of Louise Chunn (now editor of Good Housekeeping) and then Claire Longrigg, now editor of Psychologies. The story I did then that sticks in my mind was about the so-called False Memory Syndrome, when Louise and I fought a lengthy and fierce losing battle against some obtuse male editors.

Last night was the 50th anniversary celebration of the Guardian Women's page and I was gutted that I couldn't attend. Feminism is the only ism I will own up to; misogyny still rules the world, despite the absolutely concrete advances women have made in the past forty years. When I went back to my old university, York, last year, I remembered vividly the early meetings of the York women's action group:

I remember the fights over our women-only consciousness-raising meetings, invaded by male students who said they were undemocratic, and us marauding round the college television rooms turning off the sets where a few boys were watching Miss World. But now, 30 years later, there was Amy Burge, the university's elected women's officer, who is a third-year English student. I was incredibly pleased that what had begun with that manifesto on the dining room tables had survived into the present. I wanted to know what contemporary issues they were dealing with.

'Members of the student union want to outlaw women only meetings," she said. "We were told that we couldn't have elections for the women's officer where only women could vote, even though the women's officer was representing women, not men. We've got a campaign against sexual publications, and there's a motion to cover up lads' mags, but the student union gets a premium [from the distributors] to have them on display. We get a lot of support from the NUS but Nouse attacked us."

There was a stigma about being labelled a feminist, she said. People thought of them as hairy-legged lesbians in dungarees from the 1970s. I was about to say that it was ridiculous to peddle stereotypes, until it dawned on me that she meant us. It's true - I did have a pair of dungarees. Burge showed me a feminist "zine" the women's officers had produced that term. It was called Love Your Body. It had a big article on anorexia and self-harm scars. And I realised that back in the 70s we hadn't even heard of eating disorders. No one was on a diet; it was too cold not to fill up with scotch eggs and cake. There was no real pressure to look a certain way. We wore makeup at parties and when we felt like it. We lacked these deep, painful insecurities about our bodies - or did we?

I suppose I would have been horrified, back when I got my first journalism job, if I could have foreseen that I had, so many years later, implanted myself in the very ghetto (this blog, or aspects of it) that my mentor had warned me against. On the other hand, I remember, awestruck, meeting the seminal feminist Sheila Rowbotham whose book Hidden From History had so influenced me when it first came out. She was forty-eight at the time. 'Remember how we used to go on about not wearing make-up?' she said. 'It's all very well when you're in your twenties, but at my age it's a different matter.'

Still the battles for women's rights remain. I'd still march for pro-choice and against this sort of thing

The face!

I asked a make-up artist a bit ago how it was that Helen Mirren, who is actually quite lined, and appears to have had no 'work' had that radiant glow when she accepted her aOscar.

'This' said the make-up artist, handing me a small bottle. It's called All over shimmer liquid luminizer. Apparently what the make-up artist for the Oscars would have done is paint the thing all over her face, it reflects the incredibly strong lights and by some scientific miracle, deflects away from the wrinkles. Of course, off tv it would look incredibly mask-like, but for real life you'd mix a bit with your foundation. Obviously I bought some. As did a friend, another journalist turned novelist who reported back: 'My goodness. It does make a difference.'

Yet more mutton

(photo credit, The Sartorialist)

Gina in the comments at my first mutton post, says:

It is a sad state of affairs when it comes to shopping at most malls in the US -- there's precious little between the extremes of Homely Housefrau Frump and Teenaged Hooker. Where are those clothes with attitude?

A valid question. I am fortunate to live in London, but I come to America quite frequently and I know the malls. The first thing to say is that many of the clothes in my wardrobe come from Gap, Banana Republic (which hooray, is supposed to be opening in the old Dickens and Jones building on Regent Street in January, though BR itself won't confirm it), Marks and Spencer (of which Jess Cartner-Morley, fashion editor of the Guardian, is a big fan as I know because I've seen her wearing their shoes) and Zara. The latter, in particular, is a fantastic source of incredibly well-designed, exciting things. I notice Trinny and Susannah, interviewed in the Guardian today say the same thing:

Let's move on. Where do you shop?

S: Zara is a great favourite of both of ours.

T: I'd say Zara and Balenciaga.

Now It happens that I go to the same hairdresser as T&S and I can tell you, there's a a Zara right next door. But are there Zaras in Middle America? You probably have to make a trip to the big city if you live in a small town, but what I want to say about mutton dressing, is that you're unlikely to find clothes with attitude in Ann Taylor.

I would suggest that you have to think out of the box if you want to have attitude at fifty. The box being your own budget. A while ago I was out shopping with a person of my acquaintance and we stepped into Emporio Armani where she was had the coup de foudre moment with a long, waisted cardigan with an extraordinary collar. It was £299 (over $600). Now for some of you paying £50 for a cardie has you reeling, while others might think it was a little on the cheap side. The point is, if you find that absolute knock-out garment you need to buy it whatever the price. We tend to put a ceiling on how much we're prepared to pay for clothes, based on a whole range of reasonable factors. However, to dress with attitude at 50 one needs to think more carefully about how one is spending one's money and on what. In other words, spend more on less.

If you live in Middle America and there's no Armani, wait till you make a trip to the city, or plan an annual shopping expedition. There's nothing more depressing than having a wardrobe full of so-so clothes. If the mall doesn't stock what you want, get on a plane and go to Barneys.

I'll return to the question of high street labels soon.

Thought for the day

Fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and then they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how. Charles Dickens

Lady Macbeth in the reading group

It is a perennial complaint of readers of literary fiction that they ‘don’t like’, or ‘can’t relate to’ the characters. It’s my impression that ‘liking the characters,’ or even ‘loving the characters’ forms one of the chief discussion topics in reading groups. However, it is not the role of the novelist to provide complete strangers with sets of imaginary friends. It is not up to me to second-guess the type of individual whose company someone I have never met, nor will ever meet, enjoys.

The creation of characters in fiction is one means, amongst several, of producing work of the literary imagination. At the baseline of fiction, the foundation that hold it up, is the telling of a story – the fulfilment of a human drive to tell and hear stories has its earliest manifestation in European culture in Homer. The story orders experience and makes sense of it; it contains within it wonder while feeding, at its most crude, our curiosity, but there really is nothing wrong with wanting to find out what happens ‘in the end’ even though in life the only endings are death.

An additional purpose of fiction is to point out that not only likeable individuals have stories, but also monsters. The murderer Rashkolnikov, in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, has a story. Another murderer, Macbeth, has one, too.

Wanting to ‘like’ characters, is to miss what the author is trying to tell us. That humanity comes in many manifestations, and even those who are evil are aspects of our selves. Indeed, one of the advantages of literature is that you can enjoy the company of individuals whom normally you would run a mile from, particularly their smells and grunts and bad breath. Every year or so I re-read Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater to spend time with the appalling Mickey Sabbath, the repulsive puppeteer who turned down the opportunity to join Jim Henson and make muppets. He’s a lech, a hater, a thug, but at least he reminds you what it is to be alive. He is all passion, unspent.

And it is not only the demons who deserve to have their stories told. I am currently re-reading Anita Brookner, whose work I avidly devoured for several years after she won the Booker in 1984. An encrustation of scorn later grew up around her; her characters, it was said, were all the same – wet young woman, doormats, in an era which was producing a new fictional female type, the ‘feisty heroine.’ Brookner remained coolly admired, but fell from fashion. Re-reading three of her novels in the past couple of weeks, I have been astounded by the quality of her prose and the delicate, compassionate forensic quality of her mind. It is true that many of her characters are passive (both female and male) but their passivity conceals longings which they can neither express nor fulfil.

If you are looking for people to like, turn to the people in your book group. Literature is not escapism, it is a reckoning with reality. My friend, the poet George Szirtes, more or less exactly explains what literature is, in this series of posts about Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist, on his own site:

‘The novel's contract with reality is different from the poem's contract with reality, but reality itself - the out-thereness of it, the strange semi-documentary concreteness of it - is the same for both, exerting the same pressure. And this is true not just of novelists and poets but of humanity at large, or rather of that aspect of humanity that comprehends – however inarticulately - what the project of novels and poetry, indeed of all art is about, art being the place where experience, imagination and language flow into each other.’

Indeed. It is not life, it’s more.

More mutton observations

Materfamilias observes, 'Generally, I'm looking for clothes with a bit of attitude.' Now this observation seems to me to go to the heart of the mutton question.

Society demands of women over the age of fifty that they go away, be unseen. It reinforces this by trying to sell us what it considers to be 'classic' clothes in bland unflattering shades. In the past this might have indicated a certain timidity and resistance to fashion in older women but we are talking here about the baby boom generation who wore mini skirts, tie dye, false eyelashes, Biba feather boas and Mary Quant purple lipstick.

If we choose not become invisible as we age, we need to find clothes that fit and flatter, that express our individuality, not repress it, but at the same time we should, I think, avoid clothes that are too girly (and by that I don't mean too feminine, not at all.) There is nothing more sad and desperate than a woman of fifty boasting that she can wear her daughter's clothes. It's too do with the contrast between the body and the face.

But having attitude is a signal of self-confidence. Clothes, as we get older can be stronger, not weaker. At the 2002 S/S Paris collections I saw a woman aged circa 80, on the arm of a very young man - probably her grand-son or even great-grandson. She was dressed from head to foot in khaki combats with copper discs the size of small plates dangling from her ears. And she walked through the crowd like a queen.

Similarly a decade ago in New York, two extremely elderly women, making a slow progress across the lobby of the Carlyle in that season's Chanel little black suits.

The point about these three was that they understood that the parade has most certainly not gone by. None of them looked ridiculous, they had elegance and distinction and above all, a strong sense of personal style. You understood at once that their clothes mattered to them, because they understood why clothes matter.

Look at me, they said. And I did.


(yesterday, at the State Opening of Parliament)

Thought for the day

Fashion dies very young, so we must forgive it everything. Jean Cocteau

Educational opportunity

I draw this email to your attention:


I am pleased to invite you to the John Lewis Oxford Street Lingerie Academy for Men on Thursday 13th and 20th December, from noon until late.

To help confused and stressed men shopping at Christmas, the Lingerie Advisers have transformed their department into a men-friendly sanctuary with beer, mags, plasma screen TVs and even a Wii. Finally lose the fear of entering the Lingerie Department and find out what to buy for wives and girlfriends that will be happily worn and shown off, not hidden at the back of a drawer or returned!

Please see below for further details and a checklist of things to remember when lingerie shopping.

All best,

Ruth

WISE UP AND SIZE UP
WELCOME TO THE JOHN LEWIS OXFORD STREET LINGERIE GIFT ACADEMY FOR MEN

Giving lingerie as a Christmas gift to your wife or girlfriend should be the ultimate romantic gesture. However, when many women open their presents on 25th December, they are often confronted with the results of a 5pm panicked, self-conscious shopping dash on Christmas Eve – lingerie in the wrong colour, the wrong style and sin of sins, the wrong size.

This year, John Lewis is inviting men along to the John Lewis Oxford Street Lingerie Academy for Men on the 1st Floor of the flagship Oxford Street store on the 13th and 20th December, from noon until late. The lingerie department will be transformed into a gentlemen's paradise with leather sofas, chilled beer, plasma screen TVs and a Wii. Shop in style with expert Lingerie Advisers on hand to give one-to-one guidance to help you find the perfect present and guarantee a red-hot Christmas.

Maria Walker, Chief Lingerie Adviser for John Lewis Oxford Street, reveals the most common mistakes men make when scouring the lingerie department and how best to shop for smalls..

· Size

No woman wants to receive a bra that is too small or knickers that are too big. We are used to unprepared male customers using their hands to indicate breast size or comparing their partners to other women in the lingerie department! The first lesson of 'Boob Camp' is - glance in her wardrobe or laundry basket to find out her size, you'll save a lot of time and embarrassment and also surprise your girlfriend. If you do completely forget, why not consider a slinky negligee instead?

· Colour

While red may appear to be a sexy and indeed seasonal choice, men should remember that few women would actually choose red lingerie for themselves. For a seductive look, black is a fail safe classic. Chocolate is this year's hot colour and is kinder to pale, winter skin. A Lingerie Adviser will also be able to recommend colours to compliment her hair colour, eye colour, and skin tone.

· Style

The lingerie department at John Lewis has a huge variety of styles, from silk to lace and underwired to padded or strapless to backless and plunge to push-up. Try and strike a balance between what you would like her to wear and what she likes to wear. Talk to a Lingerie Adviser about her lifestyle and make the most of browsing the department while it is men-only. Always buy lingerie in a set – bra and knickers – this shows that you are generous and thoughtful!

· Presentation

To round off the LingerieAcademy for Men in style, the Lingerie advisers will also be available to gift wrap your purchase and gain you some cheeky extra brownie points this Christmas.

History

"A newspaper today might be full of bullshit," says Yoni Stern, "but it's all a part of the history of culture - the bullshit, too, no less than the reality. You can't get that from history books."

Putting every copy of the Guardian and its sister title, the Observer online, from their first issues in 1821 and 1791 to today .

The mutton question

Reading Sarah Mower's informative piece in the Telegraph last week on grown-up dressing, I was nonetheless, taken aback by the following statement:

Everyone past the age of 40 needs a "mutton monitor". I belong to a telephonic kaffee klatch that does the job without the slightest risk of false flattery.

In the case of black leather biker jackets – this winter's high street sell-out – there wouldn't be the minutest margin of a doubt. Should one of our number be tempted to revert to Suzy Quatro mode, she'd just have to be stopped.

The rock chick mantle must always be passed to those in their twenties, fact. That means it's the property of the likes of Amy Winehouse. Even Kate Moss, moving up into her mid-thirties, will be pushing the mutton-button with that one any minute now.

Erm, I just bought a leather jacket. I had been looking for a leather jacket of this length and shape for four years.

Now Sarah Mower has enveloped it in slight doubt.

The mutton question is relative, like whether one can wear a short skirt after the age of forty. In my case, with my knees, I shouldn't have been wearing a mini-skirt at sixteen - it's the legs that matter, not the age.

What are often hauled out in fashion magazines as styles suitable for the over fifties, labelled 'classic', make me look like a frump, particularly as they are recommended in those shades known as neutrals, first developed in England amongst the country house set, so as not to frighten the grouse, then taken up by Donna Karan and transferred to New York.

Classic neutrals turn me into the invisible woman. They make me feel depressed. I am not myself. Working out what suits you is a fine art, and the younger you begin your training the better for you will need it in later life. By all means wear what everyone else is wearing at fifteen, even if it is one of those midriff-baring tops, revealing a bluish slab of wobbling goose-pimpled flesh. Adolescent bad fashion, like drugs and bad sex,* are part of the rites of passage we need to go through to weather us for the storms ahead. Then the real work begins.

A while back I had lunch in my neighbourhood with an American artist who had just turned sixty. She was wearing paint splattered jeans with the bottoms rolled up, Converse All Stars and a sweater. Her hair was what's known in the US as a Jewfro - a mass of wild reddish curls with streaks of grey. She looked just fabulous. You're not supposed to dress like that at sixty, I said. Whose law? she asked.

Jeans and a leather jacket at sixty are a wonderful look, I contend, combined with fantastic hairdressing,** which from the age of forty-five should be a woman's single largest personal investment. A subject to which I shall no doubt return.

* Though just say no, is good too
** Thank you, Mario and Roger

Heroism

For a few months, when I was a teenager, I knew a woman called Eve Hall. My obituary of her appears in the Guardian, today:

One summer's afternoon in 1970, by the banks of the river Cherwell in Oxford, I went on a picnic and received a political and culinary education. Eve Hall, who has died aged 70, was the wife of my new boss, and she explained to me that the secret of a good potato salad was to use new potatoes and to toss them in olive oil while they were still hot. Sprinkled with finely chopped parsley, they seemed to me then, aged 19, the epitome of continental sophistication.

Article continues

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As we ate, Eve went on to tell me, equally insouciantly, of her time in a South African jail. In a case that had startled the white community in the early 1960s, she was one of four women - "mothers and housewives" - sentenced to six months' imprisonment for a clandestine leaflet and poster campaign promoting the banned ANC.

Eve was born in Paris to a Jewish father and a German mother (her uncle was a famous actor in the Munich theatre). The second world war broke out while her father was visiting South Africa, and her mother was left behind to cope with a half-Jewish child under Nazi occupation - she refused to pin the yellow star on her daughter's clothes. In contrast, her sister-in-law, an opera singer, wore hers with pride, only to be taken from the street to an unknown death camp. Eve's paternal grandmother died in Treblinka.

Arriving in South Africa after the war to join her father, Eve later enrolled at Witwatersrand University, where she met her future husband, Tony. Together, they became, in their own words: "Gypsy journalists and development workers." Eve joined the ANC the day after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. Four years later, after being listed as members of a banned organisation and prohibited from being published, the couple were forced to leave South Africa with their three sons and banned from ever returning.

Read the rest here

Thought for the day

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. Samuel Butler

High heels

I have added a poll at the right-hand side - High heels: Empowering for women or the contemporary equivalent of Chinese foot-binding?

Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments below in support of your beliefs.

Designer Warehouse Sale, London

Next date, November 30

Bring sharp elbows

Hollywood Writers' Strike

I support. There's an old joke about the starlet who was so stupid that she slept with the scriptwriter. American tv is in its golden age at the moment, and that's because of the phenomenal quality of the writing. So pay for it.

Comrades, the massed ranks of the Society of Authors are behind you all the way.

Meanwhile, aspiring writers who think there's a living to be made from literature, should check this out.

Jellyfish

Last night I saw the second London screening of the film Jellyfish directed by my friend Etgar Keret and written by his wife, actress Shira Geffen.

They won the Camera D'Or at Cannes this year.

A young waitress whose boyfriend has just left her finds a little girl wearing nothing but a rubber ring around her body, wandering on the beach. A Filipino care worker, a long way from home, looks after the cantankerous mother of a busy actress while homesick for her own little boy. A bride gets locked into the toilet at her wedding reception, climbs over the top of the compartment and injures her leg, so they have to honeymoon at home. A beautiful woman has taken a hotel suite all by herself.

These stories play out separately, occasionally interconnecting. The sea, full of mysteries, draws all of them, vivid and blue. Full of longings, hidden pain, the legacy of suffering pervades this film yet it is charming and beautiful, sad and hilarious.



This is an ice cream seller on the beach. The actor is Etgar's father, and he's some story in his own right. He's in the hospital right now, but Etgar says he's getting better. Some survivor.

I dreamt of this film all night long.

The war within

I had a cortisone injection on my left ankle on Wednesday. Every since then my left foot has been contorted into an awkward position, hanging around my left ear, begging, wheedling, demanding, that I buy it these.



However the rest of my body has sent up a more deafening crescendo. 'Don't listen. If you buy those, you'll wind up looking like this.'




And furthermore the whole business might end up here.

Or worse, like this

The only kind of non-old lady slippers are red leather Moroccan mules, with artificially pointed toes, an Aladdin's lamp air about, them and preferably some gold around the toes.

Thought for the day

It's almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim you are beautiful. Edith Wharton