In my opinion one of the most striking contributions to the extraordinary 1927 book The Robes of Thespis, were a series of drawings – classed as costume designs – by the artist Gladys Spencer Curling. She appeared to have a brief flurry of recognition and success in the late 1920s and designed the costumes and decor for several Anton Colin ballets but then faded from view.
Tag Archives: 1920s
The Fox Picture Fig Leaves, 1926
This splendid advertising card was created to advertise the 1926 Fox picture Fig Leaves that was screened at the Capitol Theatre in the Haymarket, London in October 1926, along with a stage fashion show provided by the department store Stagg and Russell in Leicester Square.
Marie Woods in La Revue Negre, Paris, 1925
The enigmatic Afro-American dancer Marie Woods appeared in the original line up of the famous La Revue Negre in Paris in 1925. This unique photograph shows her in costume from the show.
Dolly Tree: A Dream of Beauty
Dolly Tree: A Dream of Beauty by Gary Chapman
A long lost artistic genius of the Jazz Age, Dolly Tree was famous on both sides of the Atlantic, for her extravagant creations that appeared in stage shows, cabaret, couture and film in the glamorous 1920s and 1930s. It is now time for her to be reclaimed as one of the great British dress-designers of the 20th century
Dolly Sisters: Icons of the Jazz Age
The Dolly Sisters: Icons of the Jazz Age by Gary Chapman
The Dolly Sisters biography is a dizzying cocktail of delight, extravagance and pathos. Teeming with fantastic and fascinating stories from the Jazz Age of the twenties and thirties, it tells a true story every bit as dramatic and engrossing as the best fiction
The Chateau de Madrid
The Chateau de Madrid was regarded as perhaps the best and finest restaurant and summer resort of Paris in the Jazz Age. A favourite rendezvous of Americans in Paris and Parisian society, it’s allure was because you could dine and dance outdoors under the trees in the cool night air at the height of the Paris social season.
Chez Victor
Chez Victor
One of the most exclusive members-only night-club in London in the mid to late 1920s was Chez Victor, owned and run by the Italian Victor Perosino. It had a glittering, but short, 4 year career becoming‘a popular haunt with the gilded youth and flapperdom’ before it was targeted by the police and closed down in early 1928. Victor moved across the Channel and with noticeable panache re-opened various other Chez Victor’s in Paris and elsewhere. But Victor’s story, and his deportation, hide a scandal that eventually became public in 1932
Rome ‘The Eternal City’ in the 1920s
Rome ‘The Eternal City’ in the 1920s
Described as the Capital of Civilisation, Rome was known as the ‘Eternal City’ because civilization had endured there for thousands of years. As a result the passion to visit Rome had never died and was felt by the modern traveller as much as it was by the citizens of the Roman Empire, the medieval pilgrim or the renaissance artist. Naturally, the attraction of Rome has always been its classical monuments and the Vatican.
The costume designer Gene or Gene Boshko
Gene or Gene Boshko
A while ago I acquired a few delightful costume sketches sighed ‘Gene’ and dating from the 1920s. Further research has revealed that the artist was named Gene Boshko – but who was Gene or Gene Boshko?
The Dolly Sisters Biography
The Dolly Sisters Biography
The Dolly Sisters: Icons of the Jazz Age is out now
