Newby a la mode

Eric Newby's name is synonymous with travel writing. A lesser-known phase of his life was his time spent, as it were, in ladies' clothing, which he wrote about in his lovely memoir Something Wholesale . Joining the family firm for want of anything more suitable to do, he spent the post-war years as a traveller in couture, and his often hilarious experiences as the innocent abroad are recounted in this book with an air of bemused detachment.

He found himself up against (often quite literally) some formidable women in the rag trade from the exacting Scottish buyers who wanted 'bullet-proof' tweed and funereal black chiffon, to 'traditionally built' Manchester matrons ("We like our pudding in the North"), to the dressmakers who insisted on doing things their own way : "Paris says beige".

Newby describes the immense impact of Dior's "New Look" quoting Harper's Bazaar from May 1947, "Ankles are regaining their old magical quality", and a buyer at a Liverpool department store, "That Dior should be shot".

The Epilogue sees Newby returning to Paris in 1985 to view the spring collections with senior editors from British Vogue. He comments on the vast cost of even the simplest of dresses and the morality of spending that sort of money on clothes, but then he points out that couture is an art form - without wealthy clients to keep it going, great skills would be lost, the textile industry would decline and the world be poorer for it. Thinking back to the seamstresses in his own firm's workroom he remembers the girls wore "expressions of incommunicable satisfaction."

Comments

[Bluestalking Reader]

The man's name sounds so familiar to me, but I'd never have been able to recall it if someone had asked me. Aren't these fashions lovely, though? Makes me wish I'd been born decades earlier, as today's fashions can give me the shivers!

[Peg]

The slim waisted gals perhaps 'liked their pudding', but I doubt the indulged. I remember wearing a hat similar to the model on the boulevard! Thanks for the step back into a more beautiful time in fashion!

[Nan]

I completely love this post. Everything in it was new to me. Just fascinating. Did I read that Newby had recently died?