The Apple Watch: Time Running Out?

The advertisements for the Apple Watch (note the capital “W”) are rolling thick and fast into my mailboxes. On sight, I am impressed. The Watch is as slick a piece of engineering that micro technology has ever delivered. No feature has been left to chance. The customer has a choice of Watch weights and strap colours, and numerous faces are on offer, Mickey Mouse, et al. You go through a “fitting experience” before buying one, and then order it online. Apple describes it as “an accurate timepiece, an immediate communication device and a groundbreaking health and fitness companion.” Companion, eh – are we all that lonely?

But, I digress. Not only is the Watch all of the above, it is attracting reviews too raving and numerous to reproduce here. With prices beginning just under £300 and rising to just over £1,000 for a “basic” Watch, it hardly breaks the bank, either. The cheaper models are made of aluminium, while the more expensive models are of stainless steel. Whatever the material, the details are just too cool; every button and panel, buckle and strap honed for style and simplicity. The Edition Watches are the most highly prized – and priced – with both rose gold and yellow gold models on sale for £8,000 rising to £13,500 – so, you see, something for everyone! Why am I not dashing out to purchase one of these wonderful talismans, as desirable and beautiful as the Philosopher’s stone? Why, when not even the price is a challenge, am I not panting with longing for this magical device that will knock untidy lives into order, keep us connected and fit, and all but endow the wearer with superpowers? Because, gentle reader, in a year or two, the Apple Watch will be obsolete. Another beautiful gadget will displace it, promising to knock untidy lives into order, keep us connected and fit, and all but endow the wearer with superpowers, etc. The Apple Watch will be consigned to the Great Repository of Objects, so longed for once but hence abandoned and forgotten. Besides, I don’t really need one. Fitness I do at the swimming pool, communication I’m doing right now and as for a timepiece; well, I hear Argos has got nice tickers on sale for £10 or so. Watch this space.

It’s your duty to be beautiful….

For centuries, being “fashionable” meant belonging to a particular social set. If you didn’t belong with the in-crowd, then all the clothing in creation would not render you “in fashion”. This state of affairs lasted a surprisingly long time, into the early twentieth century, in fact. However, somewhere between the Great War and World War 2, a sea change came about – fashion historians, inform me – and by the 1940s, the meaning of fashion had morphed to encompass the clothing of “ordinary” people.

Fashion on the Ration, now open at the Imperial War Museum, demonstrates how the same people strove to maintain their fashionable status. At £10, the exhibition is a little pricey and (hint to curators) I would like to have an information booklet included for the money. But it is worth going to see, if only to witness the sheer quality of the garments aged 70+ in years. Near the entrance, we see a floral print blouse that would not look out of place in today’s high street – will Primark items be around in seventy years’ time? There follows displays of more street clothing – don’t miss seeing the extraordinary waisted red wool coat or the mesh summer shoes – children’s clothing, knitting and sewing patterns, an elegant wedding dress, graceful lingerie, fine gloves and handbags, dainty furred shrugs – truly, less was more. We see items of jewellery fashioned from scraps of plastic, utility stockings, lengths of the fabrics of the day (tweed, serge, cotton drill, cotton print, rayon, elastic and lisle), magazine pages of model shoots, and surviving cosmetic items by Yardley and Coty. A rolling vintage video demonstrates the art of felt hat making while another information board describes how women were constantly reminded of their duty “to be beautiful”, if only to maintain public morale during the Blitz years...opinions, please. Fashion on the Ration is open at the Imperial War Museum until August 3, 2015

At home with the Kindle Paperwhite

A few posts ago, I extolled the wonders of white in nature and now, I have another reason to celebrate that convergence of all rainbow colours. My old and faithful Kindle died, leaving me bereft of a bedside and travelling companion and, of course, with the task of choosing a new one. After mussing over the models on sale, I upgraded to a Kindle Paperwhite. At first, KPW felt like a stranger in my company, the home button having vanished in favour of a tap function that conjures a tool bar at the top of the screen. After four days, an interval that included a dash back to the retailer – my thanks to the kind young gentleman in Waterstones who dealt with a sobbing and hysterical me – I finally got to grips with the new machine. The strangeness vanished and I began to warm towards my companion, delighting in the finger gestures that can flip pages forwards and backwards, and magically (it seems) reduce and increase the size of the text. Another thumbs-up to Amazon for retaining the series of original fascias that appear when the machine is turned off, archaic typefaces and typewriter wheels, antique nibs converging in a star, and the wonderful brass inkwell accompanied by a filigreed pen, tropes that refer to the genesis of printing and wordpressing…

Je Suis Art Deco

Shining, gleaming, curved and creamy
Lean and clean and slender, dreamy
Lovely, modern, ship-shaped, steamy
Je suis art deco

Le style moderne est international
Uber chic and uber rational
Bauhaus bling is ever fashionable
Je suis art deco

A city decked in neon light
Sun by day and moon by night
Silver, chrome and grey and white
Je suis art deco

Cocktail bars and jazz and blues
Josephine with painted toes
Black and white and ties and bows
Je suis art deco

The ladies they all dress with care
Diamante bows and shoulders bare
Painted lips and marcelled hair
Elles sont art deco

Smoke rings in a crowded room
Tuxedoed chanteurs start to croon
A silhouette against the moon
Ils sont art deco

Glide across a Bakelite floor
See right through the porthole door
Keep on coming back for more
Je suis art deco

A monument to monochrome
Cooker, fridge and telephone
We love the gadgets that we own
Je suis art deco

Clarice Cliff and Eileen Grey
Merveilleux et enchanté
Day and night and night and day
We love art deco

Marble lido, swimming pool
Ultra chic and ultra cool
A fur bikini is the rule
Je suis art deco

Surfaces subdued and muted
Buildings stepped and glasses fluted
Cities planned and suburbs routed
Je suis art deco

Senate House and Modern, Tate
Chrysler Building, Empire State
Buildings small and buildings great
That was art deco

Bauhaus bling is now passé
Oh, la la, we’ll rue the day
Machine aesthetic went away
We miss art deco.

Fifty shades of white...

White is the colour of winter, ironically when the days are shortest and darkest - what a glorious time of year for artists to chart the structure of trees, branches denuded of foliage against grey skies and blood-red sunsets! White symbolises purity, peace and cleanliness, but there is nothing tame or timorous about the shade. White light, actually a combination of all colours in the rainbow, is brilliant and strong, evoking the might of the thunderstorm with loud crashes and flashes, and bright forks renting leaden skies. White evokes the richness of milk and cream, the tenderness of pale-green meadows sprinkled with flowers of yarrow and myrtle, the beauty of white roses in a summer garden, the mystery of moonlight falling upon leaves of silvery artemisia. Like snow, white is evanescent and ethereal, happening rarely – in Great Britain, at least – and never lasting for long when it does come. Pure white is very volatile, ever threatening to “corrupt” into grey and lemon, pink violet and pale green. Artists have made much use of this volatility, giving us fifty shades and more, of white – just look at The White Duck (1753) by Jean-Baptiste Oudry. It was the longing for well-designed sheets in white linen that caused Chrissie Rucker to found the White Company. Twenty years down the line, it has built a reputation for selling quality bedding and towels, nightwear and cushions, candles and perfumes…

Elfies Rule OK.......

....finding your inner elf...is easy when you try....whatever elf you want to be...

Deck the malls....

Ye gods – it’s happened again. The narrative runs something like this. Somewhere in space and time, a businessman with a mill or two to spare dresses up a slice of unused land as a Christmas theme park. With promises of a “magical experience” or a “festive day out”, he proceeds to extract money from punters – lots of them. The opening day is followed by tears of disappointment and angry requests for refunds when said punters discover that the snow isn’t real, that the reindeer is a decrepit donkey bearing wooden antlers, and that the elves turn out to be all too human with needing fag breaks and the minimum wage, just like anyone else. It has happened before; in 2008 in Lapland – in the New Forest, not in Finland – and in Milton Keynes last year. The venue this time was the “Magical Journey” in Sutton Coldfield and the venture promoted by television doyen of design, Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen. Indeed, it seems to have become almost a metaphor of Christmas itself, the triumph of seasonal hope over actual, mundane experience. Maybe it’s good in us, this atavistic longing for a place that never was, a mist-enshrouded forest at the foot of a mountain where elves dwell and trolls lurk – and wishes really do come true for those with the right attitude. The sad truth is that no reality can ever match even the most jaded and clichéd of fantasies. Nowadays, the maestros of the season are the store managers who deck the malls with a thousand boughs of holly, piped carols a-playing and cash machines jingling in the place of sleigh bells. By the way, Selfridges of London is looking great with its gold-and-green indoor theme, and fairytale dressed windows. If you can, do pay it a visit.