ପ Venus in Couture ଓ

The red dress has been a symbol in cinema since colour film was introduced. Think Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russel in matching, dazzling red dresses in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , Nicole Kidman in her sensuous satin red gown in Moulin Rouge , Julia Robert’s beloved red dress in Pretty Woman , or even Jessica Rabbit’s sparkling attire; the list goes on and on. These red dresses all have one thing in common, they represent a certain type of woman in film or signify a shift in a storyline or in a character's narrative. Often the red dress represents the sexuality of a woman, charging her with power and confidence, the wearer is ambitious and knows what she wants, if not always femme-fatale, but certainly femme-audacious in her show-stealing red dress. As bell hooks said, “She knows that red is the colour of passion, that a woman in a red dress is sultry, sensuous, that a woman wearing a red dress had better look out.” These acclaimed female characters in red dresses are unforgettable an

I haven't written anything that wasn't for university in a while, and I have a lot of half-written pieces for my blog that I don't have the energy to finish at the moment so in between longer, more researched posts, I have decided to introduce a little series called "a few of my favourite things". For this series, I will be discussing the various forms of art that have recently (in the last few months) sparked my interest, whether it be art, fashion, films, music, books or anything else that I have enjoyed. The other day I was going through the blog I had when I was younger and I would do posts similar to this but in the form of Zoella-style monthly favourites consisting of a few cheap makeup products I had bought from Superdrug that weekend and occasionally a book I liked. This series, however, is slightly different in the sense that it is a list of things I actually like and I am unlikely to talk about makeup since I wear the same mascara I have used for years a

I may be "fashionably late" to the fashion month posts, but I must discuss Dilara Findikoglu's latest collection. Findikoglu explores feelings of imprisonment, tension, and isolation in her darkly romantic collection, 'Freedom is a Two Edged Sword,' for Spring/Summer 2023. In a Vogue interview, Findikoglu says, "This collection is about my journey to physical and spiritual freedom," referring to the difficulties she had trying to leave her birthplace of Istanbul during the pandemic. She stated "Because of the visa problems I felt trapped. And that's the feeling that I had throughout my whole childhood and teenage years. I just wanted to get out, beyond the control of lots of factors like religion, like tradition - things that I couldn't change." The beautiful and poignant garments, as well as the overall curation of the show, left a lasting and powerful impression, with references to her childhood, Victorian dress, art history, and fash

            Before the feminist writing module I took at university, I had never read Virginia Woolf. But, as an avid reader and writer I was excited to finally meet her. I imagined that I would passionately agree with her point of view in A Room of One’s Own . Of course “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” or to engage in any kind of creative work. Wasn’t it obvious that “fiction, [and other] imaginative work…is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground” but that creatives, and the works they produce, are “attached to life at all four corners” ; that their creativity is either helped or hindered by socio-economic circumstances including “grossly material things, like health and money” . How could Woolf have been one of the first to notice that the economic disenfranchisement of women, and other consequences of the patriarchal society we (still) live in, thwarted their opportunities and abilities to write? As I thumbed through A Room of One’s Own

On Sun Swallowing  is Dakota Warren's debut collection of poems, prose and journal extracts that are seeped in hedonistic persuasion and a glorious lust for life (and death!). Touching on themes of girlhood, youth, femininity, existentialism, her relationship with religion and the gods, confessions of murder and blood spill, and letters to the devil himself. Dakota's words consumed me entirely. Her language, ingenuity and expression are beautiful. She has a way of connecting intimately with her readers and cult following, allowing them to escape reality for a moment. I am fairly new to poetry so perhaps I am slightly unqualified to be reviewing it but I feel Dakota Warren's work was the perfect gateway for me. We share a lot of the same interests in literature, art and culture, which she explores and references in her work. Before reading Warren's collection, my knowledge was limited to the collection of poems we studied at school which I found extremely unenjoyable; ma

Edgar Allen Poe once said, 'The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world.' ... A rather odd thing to say, albeit a common feeling in the nineteenth century, and a fascination that has lived on; perhaps it isn't quite so romantic anymore. The romanticisation, or beautification, of death, has been immortalised in every form of art; painting, photography, fashion, literature, poetry, film, etc. In many cases, it is the beauty of a woman's death that is most sought after, most written about, and most portrayed in art. In this piece, with the focus on painting and photography, I will be exploring the representation of death in the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and how a woman's suicide became a work of art. The magnum opus of paintings to emerge from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was Ophelia by John Everett Millais, 1851-52. Even those unfamiliar with the small group of painters in Victorian London recognise this bea