Hello, Dear Readers!
It's been quite the busy past few days, especially for Call Her Alaska Vintage. Here's a sneak peek at what I've been up to...
I'm so excited. And so very grateful for my wonderful models, makeup artist, and of course, my photographer. More to come....
The Lost Generation
I've always been partial to 'The Lost Generation' when it comes to literature. Writers of post WWI were disillusioned with the exuberance and happiness of the materialistic, salacious, and bawdy jazz age that immediately followed a devastating war - a war which shattered the belief that good, virtuous character would be rewarded. Good men, strong men, either came home from the war shattered, broken, and hollow shells of their former selves, or they didn't come home at all. The roaring 1920s which rose out of the ashes seemed to them a dangerous façade, an illusion of contentment and happiness that was sure to implode into a million tiny fragments whose reach would know no end. A small group of writers in Paris, mainly Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, reacted to this pretence of jubilation and fortitude by eschewing the florid, affected writing style of Victorian literature and writing searing satire or dispassionate, detached, stripped-down prose based on action instead of emotions. This literary movement was also happening west of Paris. In America, writers like TS Eliot and William Faulkner were writing poetry and novels like
The Waste Land and
The Sound and the Fury. The titles say it all.
I recently watched Woody Allen's movie
Midnight in Paris, and fell in love. Nowhere had I actually seen the characters of the Lost Generation portrayed with such vividness and accuracy. Granted, sometimes their characteristics may have been a little affected for emphasis on their perspectives and dispositions, and sometimes the less than savoury aspects of their lives were downplayed (especially the intensely tumultuous relationship between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald), but for the most part it gave me goosebumps to see what I imagined them to be coming to life onscreen. If you haven't seen it, you should. If only for the aesthetic of the 1920s jazz age in Paris (eeeep, swoon). And there are more than just literary legends evoked. Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Josephine Baker also make appearances.
Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald c. 1921; The couple portrayed in
Midnight in Paris. Wonderful likeness, no?
If I could travel to any place, during any time, 1920s Paris would be it. Le sigh....
That's all for today, Dear Readers!!
