Lily Cole for Corduroy Magazine with Photographer Peter Ash Lee.

http://www.corduroymag.com/

Zoe my God daughter at Vintage at Southbank

Terrace Drinks at Vintage

When Britain really did rule the waves, the high-point of her Britannia arrogance and verve was the 1851 exhibition.  A huge house of glass – a ‘crystal palace’ –  was constructed in Hyde Park.  Queen Victoria, her handsome consort Albert and their 9 children were resplendent in matching costumes: a visual hit of majesterial alchemy.  Exhibits from the Empire wowed crowds who had never left seen Dover’s white cliffs, as well as foreign guests and exhibitors who wanted to display the latest designs, inventions and innovations. 100 years later, to cheer ourselves up after WW2, Britain decided to hold another exhibition based on those same national pride principles, albeit now in a world where not only was the Empire and our certainty shrinking, those participating and attending had survived a war beyond all wars and still six years later wanted some fun and optimism after nearly a decade of post-war rationing.

70s Styling - Vol Au vent anyone?

The 1951 Exhibition saw the building of The Southbank: a concrete modernist Ark of artistic endeavour cutting a sharp swathe across the recently bombed southern side of the Thames: from Royal Festival Hall, to National Theatre, art lived on here in its mid-century absolutism.  The glass house which had encased the original exhibition was bombed and destroyed in its South London suburban location; what people needed was a boost, a sense of hope, yet like all British institutions, one founded upon a memory, an old idea made good, a sense of the past, of continuity into new ideas.

Which leads me to vintage: when I started buying old clothes, they were that, old clothes, secondhand was the name used and they were: 60s cocktail dresses bought from charity shops, deco bags at jumble sales, Victoriana from Portobello, as a teenager my penchant for silk velvet grew unabated as I would forego supper to buy something which I believed enchanted.  I can’t quite remember when secondhand morphed into vintage: perhaps when the prices went up? Perhaps when others en masse showed how they too shared my love affair with the old, with the stories, the craftsmenship and the unique beauty these clothes hold in their seams and darts.

Last Friday, my mother, my god daughter Zoe, my old friend Sukie and my 3 month old baby all went to Vintage at Southbank.  An homage to all things nostalgic curated by the Hemingways of Red or Dead infamy, to celebrate 60 years since the 1951 with a party/shopathon/fete/festival celebration of Twentieth Century modes in music, art, design and fashion.  Transgenerational, we moved from Abigail’s Party installation, to retro Art School printing class.  But it was the shopping, oh my friends the shopping, where my girls of all ages swooped on pieces of beauty, while my baby snoozed on magnificently.  You see he was already wearing the best in vintage: for I had prized onto him that morning a wondrous 1950s playsuit, baby shower gift from the lovely Mica, offset with a red and black check pair of M&S Vans.  I am sure if he could speak he would say ‘Mummy vintage rocks’.  Somehow too vintage has become a noun and for that I applaud last weekend, as a celebration of the best in past memories reshaped into something tantalising and hopeful.

The next day we went to Kew Gardens: both for Jeremy and Dukey their Palm House debuts.  For a still-standing glass palace and a relic of Victorian splendour in a cozy corner of South West London, I can recommend no greater way to spend a sun-kissed day.

Too Much is Just Enough Ladies!

Sophie striking a pose in the first look from this afternoon’s shoot.

Such a lovely day: great team, Sophie was a total pleasure.

Top: : Beyond Retro

Body: American Apparel

Skirt: House of Holland

Shoes: Bordello

Eye shadow and shoe harmony: the all new matchy-matchy...

Jacket: Mishka Vintage

Blouse: Atelier Mayer

Trousers: Topshop

Shoes: Topshop

Fade to Grey: Sophie Sways and Swirls to Donna Disco in Halson Heritage.

Dress: Halston Heritage

Shoes: Terry de Havilland

Dukey Dreamboat: my gorgeous baby boy on set.

So great to be able to combine the madness of styling with the earthiness of mothering, thanks to everyone for being so open-minded, I love days like these…

Fade To Grey

As the mother of a newborn, I’ve appreciated that now is the key time to shape Dukey’s future: from his intellectual to sartorial futures.  Our days veer from light ‘reading’ while punching monkey and parrot on his playmat, to my finger-light taps to his forehead with a smile, saying: ‘lawyer, architect, doctor…’ (turns out I am truly a North London <half> immigrant mother!).   ‘We’ve‘ simultaneously been working out our sartorial style in coherent coalescence (indulge me!): think rock and roll lite, lots of easy jersey pieces, with colour coordinated casual charm.  Let the journey, the joy, the future commence…

Dukey working the sweats on rocker look.

Monkey should be very afraid: Dukey anticipating using his left hook...

Happiness.

True Style Often Displays A Playful Element...

The Sex Pistols were cited as the voice of the underground: daring to swear on national TV, wearing safety pins and gobbing at the audience, they were the 70’s merry pranksters, hell-bent on pogo-ing their anger into our expletive-shocked consciousness: a reaction to the death of hippie free love and the shell-shocked dawn of Thatcherism. But look again, weren’t they styled to within an inch of their Westwood tees and Malcolm McLaren graphics; the World’s End refrain to punk’s politically angry throes: more boy band hype than voice of a generation?  Perhaps their svengali, Malcolm McLaren was a precursor of Simon Cowell; perhaps the Pistols were nothing more than a manufactured by-product of a maestro on the make.

However, the vital difference is that they celebrated their teenage angst: a half-arsed career, spiralled by bad management and indolence, where shock was the common denominator, they didn’t care who realised how disgusted with the state of the nation they were, indeed I’d argue it’s this for which they are remembered more than their music; while the country waved Union Jacks to celebrate the Silver Jubilee, they dared to ask whether this really was a load of old bollocks…

A generation ago, in 1981, while the world was brimming with excitement over the romance of a Royal Wedding, in a parallel to today: Diana, a teenage virginal shy bride, who blushed into her fringe, the fascinating innocent, was held aloft with our expectations and collective gasps of adoration. We all bought into the myth, millions watched the spectacle and believed in the fairy tale. Sadly, like all fairy tales it had its dark flip side. Perhaps if we had been a little less naïve and more astute, we might have woken up from the fantasy earlier, to realise, that like all mythologised stories, there is always a rite of passage, a big bad wolf, a witch and a sacrifice.  A virgin bride, an older, diffident man who loved another, the innocent, yet aristocratic nursery worker who was bound to grow up and ask questions, the institution of royalty; it is only now with hindsight perhaps that we can see what a recipe for disaster this truly was.

While most of us were fluttering flags at street parties, or watching fireworks explode in red, white and blue celebration, there were already the hints of the anger at Thatcherism’s divisiveness to come. That summer saw the Brixton riots: London literally was burning, people who had lived and worked in this country for over a generation, were no longer simply happy to bow down to institutionalised racism, they took to the streets and dared to answer back.

To come were the Miners’ Strike, the Poll Tax Riots, the St Pauls, Toxteth, Hansworth and Tottenham Riots. While it was the era of yuppy, meritocratic materialism: a glossy sense of grab-it-now excess, where we were told that we too could work hard and reap the benefits, that if our prime minister was a shop keeper’s daughter, we too could rise to the top of the pile through hard work and endurance and even buy our own council house at a heavy discount to gain entrance into the exalted realm of the home owning middle classes. There was the insistent drum beat of the angered anti-voice, those who questioned Tebbit and Thatcher’s political framework, the dawn of a time when Britain morphed from manufacturing global force to banking pleasure isle and dared to fight back.

So what has changed in the past 30 years?

Well, again we are about to celebrate the flag flutterings of another royal wedding: this time not to Diana the hunted, but to Kate the middle class, a proto-icon of discreet taste and astute acceptance, who, let’s hope, is more protected, loved and aware of precisely what the contract she has entered into is.

Again, too, we have a Conservative (albeit in coalition) government, again we are in recession and again we really ought to be angry.  Ought to be…

But are we really? Personally I am furious! I am appalled that the cabinet is made up of the over-privileged and under-qualified; I am disgusted that they are closing schools, libraries, crèches, charities, hospitals and public sector jobs; I am shocked that they propose university fees which will prohibit the majority of students from leaving without a debt so epic they will never be able to pay it back. When Winston Churchill was asked to make cuts in the arts after WWII, his response was that the arts were what they fought for and if you cut these, what you had fought for was worthless.

I never thought that there would be a government worse than Thatcher. I loathed her with the venom of my youth: despising her glib, controlled platitudes. Where I too woke up from the seductive dream of the Blairite New Labour’s Cool Britannia, horrified at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least I felt that my sense of Britain was echoed back in the Labour government’s Thatcherism-lite appropriation of social conscience socialism. One where the state of the nation was tied into a world order of equality and democracy, however hard that might be to implement in reality.

Perhaps as one of the last of the meritocratic generations: a product of a grammar school and the first in my family to go to a university, I was a Thatcher’s child. Certainly I grew up believing that I too could and would do whatever I wanted, if I worked hard, possibly doubly hard than those from a more privileged background, who maintained their sense of collar-up entitlement, but against whom I knew I could play career poker and win the game.

The fashion industry I entered as an assistant stylist was a fascinating secret world and I was intoxicated by its perfume. I worked for the Fashion Editor Anna Cockburn, doyenne of a style called ‘grunge’ (but so much more), who challenged the style status quo, with work which allowed the raw, the beautiful and the damned their place; a fragile voice made strong, which meant fresh air, ruffling the feathers of fashion’s establishment (who else would call in Ann Summers which was then mistaken for Helmut Lang by colleagues at a Vogue shoot?), while we partied to Nirvana and rave and believed love was the way to break down the class barrier.

So here we are 30 years on from 1981 in 2011: another Royal Wedding about to entrance us with the dream of a good girl made good princess; another Tory government telling us they are in this too, while George Osborne, the trust fund tax exile, pushes through a budget so draconian, a generation of children will be tied into debt.

While the 1980’s had the Falkland’s War: a battle for a place which sounded Scottish, but which was actually closer to the South Pole; we have wars of so many fronts, that the war on terror seems an endless, expensive sacrifice.

While the 80’s had the poll tax riots, now they are about to make squatting illegal; while students then lost the right to claim benefits, now they are tied into a £60,000+ debt per BA degree; while then we had Section 28, last month Philip Sallon was seriously attacked while walking in Piccadilly, yet curiously there is no CCTV of the event; while then we saw the closure of mines and factories, of any possibility of Britain maintaining an industrial autonomy, now we sit back while the bankers foreclose on our debt, yet issue themselves with bonuses akin to Third World economies.

Am I alone in thinking the world has turned topsy-turvy???

Am I alone in thinking the world needs to wake up??

Am I alone in wondering why people aren’t taking to the streets?

Am I alone in wondering where is the voice of the counter-culture?

Am I alone in thinking that Lady Gaga and her glossy, veneered ilk are not enough of a reaction and wondering where fashion’s politically expletive voice is in all this?

Am I alone in disbelieving that what we have now is worse than what we had?

Am I alone?

Words by Tamara Cincik

Please click on the link:- http://testmag.co.uk/painted-eyes/

Here are some screen grabs from the film for you to enjoy.

Screen grab from a film for Test Mag I styled; shot by Daniel Sannwald.

PAINTED EYES

Director: Daniel Sannwald
Director of Photography: Ruta Balseviciute
Stylist: Tamara Cincik
Model: Elena Sudakova @ FM
Hair: Hiroshi Matsushita using Kiehls
Make Up: Thomas De Kluyver @ D and V Management using Mac Pro
Music: Architeq (Fulgeance Remix) by Birds of Prey
Stylist’s Assistant: Siam Goorwich
Photographer’s Assistants: Moses Power, Christian Roman Thumm
Digital Assistant: Studio Private
Lighting and Location: Studio Private
All fashion by Michael Van Der Ham
Sunglasses by Janz & Cooper, jewellery by Erickson Beamon
Copyright TEST 2011

Purple Magazine, Photographer: Daniel Jackson.

Just chanced upon this from a shoot I styled for Purple Magazine.  I think it looks quite beautiful: inspired by Rackham’s illustrations on my part, it somehow feels rather Rembrant-like with the use of light when I look at it now.  The jacket is by Roksanda, who later made my deliciously sublime wedding dress.

Photographer: Daniel Jackson

Stylist: Tamara Cincik

Make Up: Alex Box

Hair: Rudi Lewis

Arthur Rackham: Alice

Rembrant: self-portrait - see what I mean?!

Mishka Vintage

swathes of lame

Treasures resplendent.

One balmy evening two years ago, driving a back-route from Jeremy’s parents through North London, I had one of those rare stop the car please (!!!) moments, as we chanced on Mishka Vintage’s closed potential.  My only other equally memorable stop the car moment, being somewhere in the Transylvanian mountains of Rumania in 1995, when I saw the multi-coloured fantasia-incarnate of a hand embroidered 100 year old traditional folkloric waistcoat.  I live in a world of clothes: literally surrounded with treasures sourced over the past 20 (eek!) + years, plus the weekly supply of designer options prepped in, edited, shot and returned for editorials.  Ergo, I am not easily impressed: I knew this had that rare alchemic frisson where magic realism meets vintage treasure trove.  The window was filled to brimming with stories: Victorian lace,  deco lingerie, 50′s dresses, 70′s clutches; layer upon layer of beautiful things.

History was my route into fashion: a childhood geeky addiction to history reference books fed into my frequent flyer time traveller daydreams, leading me to start my own vintage collection aged 7, as I felt entranced (and still do) by the stories and skills used to create such pieces.  I would imagine people’s lives when these clothes were made; how their world felt and looked.  Never for me just tired old rags: a Flemish lace collar, a beaded deco bag, or a velvet Victorian jacket, has always felt just as fantastic as the this season’s must-haves I work with on a weekly basis for the fashion styling day-job and with the added bonus of running their own  storyline: one filled with gilt-edged glamour, music hall melodrama, or Hollywood dialogue.

While organising my wedding 2 summers ago, I took the drive out past Crouch End one Saturday, between bouts of buying most of North London’s charity shops stock of vintage china for the wedding, to see what lay inside the promise of this newly found delight.  In my head the owner would be old, eccentric and prone to hoarding.  Imagine my surprise therefore, when I met the smiling glamour that is Lizzie Greene: a woman who manages to combine motherhood, high heels, a predilection for bold lipsticks and an encyclopedic knowledge of British 20th Century fashion design.  ie my kind of woman: someone for whom too much is just enough, while geeking out on quirky sartorial trivia; albeit yes indeed known to hoard, or as I like to term it to my husband: archiving.

Say cheese Jet: Lizzie with her youngest son Jet.

Jet is quite the mini rock star and taken to lying on furs, while making Darth Vadar noises.

Towards the light: Mishka's red mood section.

Sorbetastic treasures.

True blue, baby I love you....

Lounge lizard jackets for Studio 54 moments...

Lizzie has become a dear friend: someone who has lent me the most precious pieces for my editorial shoots, as well as a first port of call for music or advertising jobs, as her clothes often add a necessarily unique flourish.  The skirt I used for Charlotte Church’s recent single cover, was a Mishka purchase.

Charlotte Church: Back to Scratch.

Worn with Rochas, to me the Mishka Vintage Victorian Cape makes the outfit. Taken From my Shoot for Grey AW10; Photographer: Stefano Galuzzi.

The Bat's Brits 2010 bag: a Mishka find.

This afternoon I was there returning pieces lent for 2 of my 3 shoots this week: one for Six Magazine, one with Lily Cole for Corduroy.  However, if you were my styling client and looking for that one-off party dress, wow factor wedding gown, or retro-referenced Annie Hall meets Celine this season piece, Mishka Vintage would be on our list of must-dos.  When you do get there, take the time: this is not a 5 minute Primark collision course.  Chat to Lizzie, allow yourself to relax into remembering/experiencing what boutique-style one on one smiling service feels like; then see what magic you walk away with.

Mishka Vintage Clothing

Address:

212a, Middle Lane

Postcode:

N8 7LA

City/Town:

London (London)

Main phone:

020 8341 3853