Saturday, June 27, 2009

Yesteryear


London
"The world only spins forward."
- Prior Walter


Is it possible to be nostalgic for something you never had? 

Photo by Richard Avedon
What English student hasn't fallen in love with the worlds of the Brontes, Austen and Gaskell? There's something incredibly alluring about a place where men rarely stop at one proposal and where the only thing standing between you and your dreams is an overly-critical and domineering elderly woman. 


It seems like such a leisurely life...embroidering in the morning, then taking constitutionals across the cliffs in the afternoon, reading by the fire each evening. I do understand that this is a total romanticisation but I sometimes feel as though perhaps we let some old fashioned practices fall by the wayside a little too fast. Propriety has connotations of stuffiness and grace has connotations of aloofness. Conformity is a dirty word. 

But it shouldn't be!



Sorry about the lack of labelling sources, I never used to save them so all my older ones are unattributed. From memory I would say all the uncredited ones are Vogue and all are Steven Miesel, except the last. 

2 comments:

  1. This is such a fantastic post. I was just thinking about this the other day. I'd love to just live in a world that wasn't dominated by technology, no facebook, twitter, blogger gasp! etc. I'm actually writing a piece for college at the moment about whether romance can exist today as it did in the Cary Grant films of yesteryear.

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  2. I love Cary Grant! North by Northwest is the best film! That's such a nice idea for a piece as well...I hope the answer is 'Yes, of course it can'?

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