It's the Fashion, Dahling!

RHYS BOWEN: A few weeks ago my daughter and I were wandering a street of chic boutiques, looking for potential Christmas gifts. In one of them I found a striped blue and white sweater with holes in it. Real holes. It looks as if someone had snagged it on a barbed wire fence, or it had met a particularly hungry moth. No, many hungry moths. It was $450.

"This sweater has holes in it," I said to my daughter.
The boutique owner was close by. "It's the fashion this year, madam," she said.

Has the world gone mad? People would actually buy a sweater with holes all over it?  I remember when they first brought out ripped jeans. I thought that was stupid. Why would anyone want to look as if they couldn't afford decent clothes? What about those jeans that are so ripped there is nothing left but the side seams?

I can understand fashion trying to push the envelope, to make a statement against what is the status quo, but to look like a homeless person? How can a person want to do that and feel good in those clothes? Do you know that there are even YouTube videos on how to distress your sweaters and Tshirts? All you need is a good sweater and a pair of scissors!!!

I confess that I haven't followed fashion for years now. In the Sixties when I started working in London I dressed Mary Quant with my Vidal Sassoon haircut. I wore long and flowing in the Seventies. I wore shoulder pads in the Eighties. But since then I have ignored trends--especially the trend to have skirts halfway to my butt and leggings that highlight all my faults. My skirts have to come to my knees. My waist has to be where waists are supposed to be. I want to look like the person I am: classy, Ralph Lauren.

So confession time, Reds. Are you a slave to fashion? Which fashion trends did you follow? Would you ever buy a sweater with holes in it?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: No. I would also not buy "distressed" jeans. Or anything "distressed," in fact. Or scandalously low cut, or cut out shoulders, or cut out anything, for that matter. No backless, or sideless. No surprise openings, keyholes, illusion lace, see-through places or bondage straps, or cutoff jeans that are so short that the pockets show.  Nothing that looks like underwear on the outside, or even underwear showing. NO straps showing under anything. That is not nor will it ever be okay. I have spoken. :-) 
(Yes, I have become my mother. I am the girl that got sent home from school for having my skirts too short. And I looked great, so there. But apparently no one else on the planet thought so.)

JENN McKINLAY: Safe to say my clothes get "distressed" all on their own, especially if I wipe on my skateboard, so there's no need to give them a running start. As for fashion, which is really just for conferences and book signings these days, I try to buy items that don't age. So, if Audrey Hepburn would wear it, I buy it. If she wouldn't, then it's a solid no. Around the house it's jeans and t-shirts all day every day. I love my life!

LUCY BURDETTE: I can't imagine what guidelines I could offer that would be better than Hank's! For me it's t-shirts and yoga pants, and I so love my jeans. If I have an event (such as the big launch last August with Rhys and Hallie), there's a little shop near my town in CT where they'll help me choose something. It always looks good, though it's rarely something I would have picked. And it doesn't cost a fortune. One day you must post a video of you on skateboard Jenn!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Maybe we could start a Writers in T-shirts and Yoga Pants club? WTYP? I do like nice clothes, actually, but I can't say I follow fashion. The most distressed I get is faded wash jeans (and the GAP hoodies I wear around the house which are at least 20 years old...) Yesterday I did some spring shopping. I bought a black Eileen Fisher t-shirt, a pair of black ankle-length spring weight pants, a classic white shirt, and a pair of light wash jeans. Wardrobe complete. (I will try to remind myself of that when I do my spring closet organizing--I don't need MORE clothes!)

HALLIE EPHRON: I love Jenn's question: What would Audrey Hepburn wear? And no, I pay no attention to fashion. I do mourn the GAP of olden days where you could buy a great classic white collared shirt or V-neck T-shirt. And no cutout shoulders or distressed jeans or wonky hemlines for me. Thank you.

Eileen Fisher is my splurge. Their clothes are truly classic, they last, and they'e washable. I just bought a dark green velvet top at their 50% off sale. Win, win!

RHYS: You see how sensible we Reds are! We like to look timeless and well-dressed (apart from Jenn on her skateboard and we can't do anything about that. She's our wild child!) We wear Eileen Fisher and channel Audrey Hepburn.
So who would wear distressed jeans? Holey sweaters?

You Are What You--Wear?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Scarlett O’Hara’s curtain dress, of course. When you’re talking about the best and most memorable movie costumes ever, that’s on the list. 

EVERYTHING Grace Kelly wore in Rear Window, including that little cosmetic bag.  



Slinky exec Faye Dunaway in Network, and always-icy-chic Miranda Priestly, and Rita Hayworth’s black strapless Gilda dress, and Ilse’s slouchy Casablanca hat, and …well, I’ll going to have to stop myself.

My very favorite move costume ever, though, is the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in the tennis court dance scene of Sabrina.

Or wait, maybe Julie Christie’s furs in Dr. Z?  Or Rene Russo’s backless gown in the new Thomas Crown Affair. Remember that? Anyway. Enough from me.

But that is why I also swoon over “Renee Patrick’s” new novel—featuring Edith Head! Ah. Such a brilliant idea!

So we’ll let Renee—who is really Rosemarie and Vince Keenan—tell all.

REAL OR REEL, CLOTHES MAKE THE CHARACTER

by Rosemarie Keenan

Ask any costume designer and she’ll tell you costume design is all about character. As a writer, I can get behind that. Characters become living, breathing people on the page when we convey their thoughts, their words, their actions. And of course, when we describe their clothes.

In Design for Dying, we spend a fair amount of time describing what our characters are wearing. It’s not just because we love clothes. (OK, I love clothes. Vince is largely indifferent.) It’s because one half of our detective team is the legendary costume designer Edith Head. How legendary was she? Edith had a Hollywood career spanning seven decades. She was nominated for thirty-five Academy awards and took home eight of the statuettes, the most of any woman.

The diminutive designer, consistently clad in her trademark tailored suits with dark bangs and tinted glasses, knew that character could be revealed by costuming. “The story is your Bible,” she wrote in her 1959 memoir The Dress Doctor. “First and above all, what kind of character are we dressing?”

Take Double Indemnity (1944) for example. In that film the character Edith outfitted was a manipulative woman with murder on her mind. Barbara Stanwyck plays the scheming Phyllis Dietrichson, intent on entrapping Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff. Phyllis’ seduction of Neff is executed through wardrobe. Stanwyck’s form becomes more concealed as the film progresses; how could it not when the movie begins with Phyllis clad in a towel? In the “honey of an anklet” scene she flashes her gams. Phyllis later arrives at Neff’s apartment in a not particularly daring skirt-and-sweater ensemble—except her brasserie is visible beneath the angora, a brazen reminder of her agenda. By the time of their supermarket rendezvous, Phyllis is armored in a long-sleeved blouse with a tailored checked vest.

Poor Walter didn’t understand what Edith knew and practiced. She states it plainly in The Dress Doctor: “Clothes not only can make the woman, they can make her several different women.”

Edith didn’t save her sartorial smarts for movie murderesses or even the beautiful people of Hollywood. She offered advice to the average woman through her books, newspaper columns and regular appearances on Art Linkletter’s radio and television shows. Edith diagnosed the fashion faux pas of the ladies in the audience, teaching them how to camouflage flaws and accentuate strong points.

Such style tips provide a connection between Edith and her detecting partner, Lillian Frost, in Design for Dying. While investigating the murder of an aspiring starlet, found in a costume stolen from Paramount Pictures, Edith teaches Lillian a few things about dressing, including how to use a belt to create a makeshift peplum top, lending the illusion of curves to Lillian’s somewhat boyish frame.

“The way you dress – or package yourself – is the one thing over which you have absolute control. You can’t change the size of your feet, the shape of your legs, the color of your eyes or the texture of your hair – but you can change the way you look as easily as an actress does each time she plays a new role.” Edith Head, How To Dress For Success

I’ve certainly packaged myself in different ways over the years, changing styles more often than a con man changes IDs. Pink jeans and a leather jacket during my New Wave phase, a black mini-skirt and glossy red lipstick in the late 80’s (remember Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love video?), khaki-casual through much of the 90s (I know, what was I thinking?). Once I hit my forties though, and now entering my debut author phase, I finally know my type. These days I’d describe it as “as close to Amal Clooney as I can afford.”

 From time to time I still want to change those unchangeable aspects of my appearance that Edith catalogued but as always, she was right. No matter how often I try on the size eight slingback pumps I always walk out of the store with the size nines.

And what of my co-writer? Some of Edith’s style savvy has rubbed off on him too. I mean, just look at these shoes.

HANK: Love this! And VInce, very very fancy forties.  So Reds, let’s talk about movie clothing! What do you love and remember? What worked for you, and why?

DESIGN FOR DYING

Los Angeles, 1937. Lillian Frost has traded dreams of stardom for security as a department store salesgirl ... until she discovers she’s a suspect in the murder of her former roommate Ruby Carroll. Party girl Ruby died wearing a gown she stole from the wardrobe department at Paramount Pictures, domain of Edith Head.

Edith has yet to win the first of her eight Academy Awards; right now she’s barely hanging on to her job, and a scandal is the last thing she needs. To clear Lillian’s name and save Edith’s career, the two women join forces. Unraveling the mystery pits them against a Hungarian princess on the lam, a hotshot director on the make, and a private investigator who’s not on the level.

All they have going for them are dogged determination, assists from the likes of Bob Hope and Barbara Stanwyck, and a killer sense of style. In show business, that just may be enough…

RENEE PATRICK

Renee Patrick is the pseudonym for married authors Rosemarie and Vince Keenan. Rosemarie is a research administrator and a poet. Vince is a screenwriter and a journalist. Both native New Yorkers, they currently live in Seattle, Washington.

You can friend Renee on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ReneePatrickAuthor), follow her on Twitter (RPatrickBooks) or find more information at her website: http://reneepatrickbooks.com 

D.E. Ireland--Going Off Script

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Check your compasses, folks! We are still across the Pond, but we've moved from freezing cold Yorkshire in the present day to London post 1912 and the fictional world of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. What could be more delightful?

Here are Meg Mims and Sharon  Pisacreta, writing as D.E. Ireland, to tell you about--

GOING OFF SCRIPT

Basing a mystery series on real people or famous fictional characters has its advantages. Whether an author decides to make their protagonist Arthur Conan Doyle or his famous Baker Street detective, a lot of the groundwork has been done. And there’s a ready made audience comprised of readers who either are intrigued by this historical figure or love the books these characters were first seen in. Jane Austen is now sleuthing, along with her delightful heroine Elizabeth Darcy. Mozart, Jane Eyre, Beatrix Potter, and Dorothy Parker are the stars of their own mystery franchises, and Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock Holmes’s housekeeper, has joined her clever employer in the crime solving game as well.

Since our series is based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, we’ve reaped the benefit of fans who remember the play with fondness or – more likely – adored the 1964 musical My Fair Lady

starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. Shaw made it easy for us. He not only created such memorable characters as Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins, and the lively Alfred Doolittle, but he wrote a lengthy epilogue on what he envisioned for these characters after the curtain went down. However, his future plans for Eliza and Higgins didn’t include solving murders, so that required some tweaking on our part.

Sometimes more than tweaking is required and we have to go completely off script. For example, we introduced Eliza’s cousin, Jack Shaw, another East Ender who pulls himself out of the slums and is now a Scotland Yard detective. Having a relative in the Yard allows Eliza and Higgins access to police information they otherwise would never be privy to. We’ve also taken the liberty of adding suffragette Sybil Chase to the cast. As Jack’s fiancée, Sybil will become a “sister” to Eliza, initiating her into the fight for women’s rights. Principled and politically driven, Sybil reflects Shaw’s own version of a modern woman.

Although Colonel Pickering has an important supporting role in Pygmalion, we adore him as much as Eliza does and plan to expand his character in future books. Certainly he must have interesting stories to tell about the many years he spent in India. And if any My Fair Lady fans were curious about the woman Alfred Doolittle was preparing to wed when he sang ‘Get Me To The Church On Time’, wonder no more. The colorful Rose Cleary Doolittle will have a chance to shine – and argue with Eliza – throughout the series.

When it comes to Shaw’s original characters, Freddy Eynsford Hill and his younger sister Clara, we’ve gone completely off script. In the play, Freddy is a love-struck swain who does little more

than moon after Eliza. Shaw claims that he and Eliza eventually marry and run their own flower shop. When they run into financial difficulties, both of them are forced to take night classes in bookkeeping. Clara is a foolish and snobbish teenager in Pygmalion. Shaw stated that she later becomes a devotee of H.G Wells, and works in a furniture store with a fellow Wellsian. We couldn’t do much with either of those scenarios. So in our second book, Clara falls in love with a young baron, who luckily takes as great a fancy to her. Will wedding bells be ringing for these two in the next book? We certainly hope so.  A pretentious 18-year-old with a new title and loads of money should make for a few interesting adventures.

As for her brother, we decided our Freddy has “a need for speed”. In Move Your Blooming Corpse, he’s a proud member of the London Rowing Team at the Henley Regatta, and may end up racing automobiles! But don’t be surprised if a romantic rival for Eliza’s attention turns up in Book Three. Where Freddy is concerned, we generally side with Higgins. We have no wish to see the independent and feisty Eliza Doolittle become Mrs. Eynsford Hill and go back to selling flowers.

We definitely went off script when Eliza became a fellow elocution teacher with Higgins in our series. Shaw made it clear in his epilogue that neither Higgins nor Pickering thought Eliza was ready to be an instructor, and that Eliza would not go against their wishes. Our Eliza is even more stubborn than Shaw imagined, and she’s been teaching her own students how to speak the King’s English from the opening chapter of our first book. This also allows us to keep her and Higgins in close proximity, especially since they live together at 27A Wimpole Street… chaperoned by Colonel Pickering and housekeeper Mrs. Pearce, of course.

While we are endlessly grateful that Shaw created such colorful and engaging personalities, we believe taking creative license with his characters refreshes and livens up the series. We hope readers agree.

And Sharon and Meg have a copy of their new book to give away to THREE lucky commenters!

Writing under the pen name D.E. Ireland , longtime friends and award winning authors Meg Mims and Sharon Pisacreta teamed up in 2013 to create a series based on George Bernard Shaw’s celebrated characters Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins. The first book in the series, Wouldn’t It Be Deadly, was a 2014 Agatha Award finalist for Best Historical Mystery.

In Move Your Blooming Corpse, Eliza and Higgins are off to the Ascot races when Alfred Doolittle becomes part owner of the Donegal Dancer, a champion racehorse. But the victory is spoiled when a man is trampled on the course and someone is found murdered in the stables. With time running out before the next race, Eliza and Higgins investigate jealous spouses, suffragettes, and the colorful co-owners of the Donegal Dancer. But can they outrace the killer, or will there be another blooming corpse at the finish line?

DEBS: It's been years since I saw the movie, and  I did NOT remember that Jeremy Brett played Freddie! How fabulous!  I'm going to have to watch it again. And I can't wait to read Move Your Blooming Corpse.

REDS and readers, do you enjoy seeing fictional or historical characters in a new incarnation? Tell us and be eligible for one of three copies of Move Your Blooming Corpse.

Fragrances of the stars... Preciousssss

-->

HALLIE EPHRON: A subplot in NIGHT NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT involves a hush-hush new perfume being developed and branded for Elenor “Bunny” Nichol, a still gorgeous but past her prime movie star.

As I was researching perfumes launched by movie stars, I discovered that post-Dynasty Joan Collins launched I AM WOMAN (musk, citrus). Givenchy supposedly made L’INTERDIT (woody, floral) for Audrey Hepburn. Coty created the spicy SOPHIA scent for Sophia Loren. And Elizabeth Taylor went for the Trifecta with WHITE DIAMONDS (candy sweet), BLACK PEARLS (soft powdery, floral), and VIOLET EYES (rose, citrus).

Taking a cue from Violet Eyes, I named Bunny’s scent CERULEAN – the color of my character’s legendary eyes. 

And I made up this TV commercial for it.

#

Violins, piano, and finally an accordion swell to a tango rhythm. A tall, slender man dressed all in black moves slowly away from the camera toward Bunny, takes her in his arms, twirls her once, twice, then bends her backward. Dissolve to a close-up of Bunny raising a bottle of Cerulean as if in a champagne toast, arching her head back and spraying her neck with the perfume. In smoke, words write themselves out on the screen in front of her.

Because

you’re a woman

“Cerulean,” Bunny’s voice whispered as the words disintegrate in a skim of mist that slowly dissipated to reveal a bottle of the perfume.

#

I was tickled when I saw an ad for ENGAGE, a men’s fragrance with (be still my beating heart) Jean Luc/Patrick Stewart shilling for it. Sadly it's a parody because I was ready to punch the replicator and order a bottle.

But it got me thinking about what men’s fragrances I’d like to see and the stars who’d promote them:

Lucky - Clint Eastwood

Iron – Arnold Schwarzenegger

Shaken – Sean Connery

D’oh – Homer Simpson
Green – Kermit the Frog

Preciousss - Gollum

Contender – Marlon Brando

Lookin’ at You - Humphrey Bogart

Alive! - Boris Karloff

Elementary - Benedict Cumberbatch

So what other fragrance/star combinations would you like to see?

It's About Time

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN?  Do you recognize this woman? She’s Emmeline Pankhurst. leader of the British suffragette movement. I hear Meryl Streep is playing her in an upcoming film! And I had to think--mightn't she make a great character in an historical mystery?  

I love when Jungle Red weeks take on themes–themes that weren’t planned. (I once heard David McCullough speak, and someone asked him—do you have themes in your books? And he said yes, and I write the books to discover what they are.)

This week is turning out to be about imagination, and history, and time. About turning characters from one place onto characters from another. You’ll see as this week’s blogs unfold.

So as I was reading D. E. Ireland’s new book (more about “her” in a minute), I was not only humming “I could have read all night” and loving the brilliant idea of having Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins as sleuths (whoa) I also thought about the imaginations of the two friends (Meg Mims and Sharon Pisacreta) who make up the moniker DE Ireland.

How did their brains work? And it turns out they get inspiration—from the past—the real past, and the fictional past.   They’re making history come alive. (Kind of like—Pygmalion.)

Which, of course, is loverly.

IT’S ABOUT TIME

By Meg Mims and Sharon Piscareta

SHARON: It was the era as much as the characters that intrigued us in our series based on Shaw’s Pygmalion. The years between the official end of the Edwardian era in 1910 and the outbreak of WWI, served as a bridge to our modern world.

Violent protests by suffragettes, the popularity of the cinema and motorcar, and the growing emergence of middle-class women in the workplace helped usher in the 20^th century.

Eliza Doolittle might not have had such an easy time of it had she tried to transform herself from a Cockney flower seller to an elocution teacher during the reign of Queen Victoria.

MEG:  So for Jungle Red, we challenged each other to think of a stand-out historical mystery book or series that also prompted us to write our own.

I chose Kate Ross’s series set in Regency England. All are marvelously complex mysteries that mesmerized me and whetted my dream of writing my own mystery one day.

 Even though I’m not a true fan of the Regency period, I was intrigued by Ross’s unusual amateur sleuth, Julian Kestrel--a new style Sherlock Holmes.

He has a keen intelligence, an uncanny ability to assess others, and varied skills in weapons and stealth that served him well in investigations.  His valet is a former cutpurse, loyal unto death, and the dandified Kestrel wears his clothing and manners like a cloak to hide his real persona.

In Ross’s books, all the lush period details I loved in historical fiction came in spades; the witty dialogue, the cultural and class distinctions between ladies and gentlemen versus servants.

SHARON:     I love historical mysteries that shed new light on an old era. My favorite example is Margaret Lawrence’s superb Hannah Trevor mystery series set in the aftermath of America’s Revolutionary War. Her rendering is historically accurate and all the more eye-opening because of it. Lawrence’s books don’t feature any cheery fife and drum corps, or stirring patriotic speeches by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Instead we are introduced to a burgeoning nation mired in debt, and struggling to recover from the Loyalist and Patriot divisions that tore communities and families apart.  

In Hearts and Bones, one of the best-written debut books in the genre, midwife Hannah Trevor is abandoned in 1786 Maine after her Loyalist husband flees to Canada. When a townswoman is murdered, Hannah learns the victim had also been raped by men in the Rufford Patriot Division.  Lawrence’s post-American Revolution world is filled with despair, uncertainty and poverty. In such a time, fear and suspicion run high which often lead to events spiraling out of control. In other words, a perfect setting for a mystery series.

MEG: Like Hannah in 1786 Maine, Kestrel in 1820 and Eliza Doolittle in 1913 London, historical characters need to find themselves in the era best suited for them.

SHARON: Twenty – or even ten – years earlier or later can make an enormous difference to both the novel’s characters and storyline. As in life, so it is in literature. Timing is everything.

HANK: Of course, My Fair Lady is based on Pygmalion, but it’s impossible not to envision Audrey Hepburn, right?  Let’s think of other musicals that might contain good amateur sleuths. Oliver? Annie?  (Oh, I am laughing now…)

What do you think, Reds?

And Meg and Sharon have a copy of their new book to give away to TWO lucky commenters!

*******************************

D.E. Ireland is a team of award-winning authors, Meg Mims and Sharon Pisacreta. Long time friends, they decided to collaborate on this unique series based on George Bernard Shaw’s wonderfully witty play, Pygmalion, and flesh out their own version of events post-Pygmalion.

WOULDN'T IT BE DEADLY   -- Following her successful appearance at an Embassy Ball—where Eliza Doolittle won Professor Henry Higgins’ bet that he could pass off a Cockney flower girl as a duchess—Eliza becomes an assistant to his chief rival Emil Nepommuck. After Nepommuck publicly takes credit for transforming Eliza into a lady, an enraged Higgins submits proof to a London newspaper that Nepommuck is a fraud. When Nepommuck is found with a dagger in his back, Henry Higgins becomes Scotland Yard’s prime suspect. Eliza realizes the only way to clear the Professor’s name is to discover which of Nepommuck’s many enemies is the real killer.

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