What the Young People are Wearing

My son goes to a local high school that has no uniform, and that prides itself on its sense of style. It's in the heart of Carlton, a suburb close to the university, that was also settled by waves of Italian migrants after the war. It was also a kind of hippie enclave for several decades. The school has a no-uniform policy, and also prides itself on its artistic and musical and creative endeavours, as well as its strong academic record.

One of their former students is the photographer Christian Ghezzi. He's just published a sequence of photos of current students in the Benetton Colors magazine. Click to see what the funky young Carltonites are wearing - and seriously, this is what they do wear to school. They buy second-hand clothes from Savers and the Brotherhood. Don't they look amazing?

Of course, sometimes when I drop J off it's just a sea of jeans and black sweats, but I've certainly seen some remarkable ensembles. I love the way these kids are putting themselves together!

Zuleika Dobson

I've been reading this hilarious novel, first published in 1911. It tells the story of the young Duke of Dorset, an Oxford undergraduate who is also a Knight of the Garter, who falls in love with Zuleika, the niece of the Warden of Judas College. After a desultory career as a governess, moving from family to family as the young men in each household invariably fall wildly and unsuitably in love with her, she steals one such young man’s box of party magic tricks, and establishes herself with great success in the music-hall world. She has never felt love for any of her many conquests, until the Duke of Dorset ignores her on her triumphant entry into Oxford. When, over the course of the next day, it becomes clear that he does in fact love her, she is repelled, and dismisses him, refusing his vast fortune and estates.

In despair, the Duke says he will drown himself for love of her, at which news she is delighted, and wants to make sure only that he will call out her name as he plunges into the river after the boat race. Hundreds of other youths make the same pledge, and the Duke’s attempts to dissuade them to no avail. On the morning of the fateful day, the Duke tries on his Garter robes one last time, and is so captivated by his magnificent appearance in the mirror that he decides to take his last fatal walk in them. Once the boat race is finished, he appears to hesitate before taking the final step, but it starts to rain, and fearing becoming a sorry, soggy, bedraggled lump of heron and ostrich feathers, the Duke plunges in to the river. His Garter mantle floats a while on the surface before finally sinking along with its wearer. Hundreds of other young men similarly drown themselves. We last see Zuleika asking her maid to commission a special train to Cambridge.

The story does so much lovely work for me: it describes the black japanned boxes in which the Garter robes arrive in London, and the "octoradiant star"; it has a scene where the Duke impatiently dresses himself in his robes; and it has this gem of a line: “It was only in those too rarely required robes that he had the sense of being fully dressed.” Beautiful! Fits my theory of the Garter as Derridean supplement: that which is added to the courtly body; but the thing which makes the ungartered body seem incomplete.

I have a folio edition with a few of Beerbohm's illustrations. I've recalled the Baillieu library's copy of the fully illustrated text; and am hoping soon to check out the edition in our rare book collection with Osbert Lancaster's drawings, too.

I love my work!

Other avatars

Ok, so here's the avatar Joel made for himself. Very serious. But he has got the hair and the eyebrows exactly right. He hasn't done the face recognition test yet, but was looking over my shoulder at a distance the other night and saying things like "I know who that one is", with great confidence, and he is always recognising actors in the movies, etc. Lucky I didn't pass this problem on to him.

And really, it's hardly debilitating. Though I am a bit shocked to see how well other people have done on the test!

Update:
And here is Pavlov's Cat's glammo avatar of me, done from memory, no less, based on the photo on my home page. Charitably, she has portrayed an avatar of me of at least two decades ago, but she matched my favourite black top pretty well. Though I must say, I am often pretty good with remembering and recognising textiles myself: no clothes-blindness for me! For the record, I am also very good at remembering menus. In the old dinner-party days in the 80s, I could always remember what I had served, and what I had been served, for years afterwards. It's not really a memory problem, this prosopagnosia thing.

Garter curtain ties

I'm replying to Highly Eccentric's comment on the previous post in a new post, as I wanted to show some pictures. This is Edward, Prince of Wales, from Bruges' Garter Book of c. 1430, with a much older version of the ties holding the mantle:



And then by Charles I's time, they had become so long (especially on a young man: here he is as Duke of York) they had to be looped up into his sword belt:



At the Restoration, Charles II regularised the Garter "underhabits" with "the old trunkhose" of cloth of silver, which persisted at least until Edward VIII's time (shown here as Prince of Wales, complete with enormous ties):



And yes, you are right that the blue ribbon is worn when the full robes aren't being worn. The image of St George on a ribbon is called "the lesser George", and replaces the big chain, or collar, with the little model of George killing the dragon you can see hanging on William's chest in the previous post. By 1508, it was recognised that this collar was to be worn only on feastdays, and "on the other days the image of St George shall be worn at the end of a little gold chain, or in time of war; sickness or on a long journey, at the end of a silk lace or ribbon." In the early seventeenth century, it became customary to put it over the left shoulder and under the right armpit, "for conveniency of riding or action" in Ashmole's words. You sometimes see this in portraits that emphasise the military accomplishments of the knights.

As ever, I'm indebted to Peter Begent and Hubert Chesshyre's authoritative book, The Most Noble Order of the Garter: 600 Years, published by Spink in 1999, for many of these details.