I adore fancy dress and indeed, sometimes people think I am wearing it when I'm not. Dressing up is wonderful..why let children have the monopoly? They don't need the escapism, anyway,their lives are a riot of pleasure and fantasy as it is.It is we adults,tragically welded to the rusty hamster wheel of bills, mortgage calculations, changing our power suppliers,and monitoring our chloresterol, who require an imaginative mini-break. Things are currently a wee bit cheerless, as you will agree. However, this is nothing new in the great spincycle of the bagwash we call life. In the 1920's and 1930's, times were tough,and Britain responded in characteristic fashion by dressing up as babies and Policemen and Marie Antoinette,gallantly amusing themselves despite what we are now obliged to call the "Gathering Clouds Of War" hurtling over the horizon. Evelyn Waugh describes the febrile atmosphere of those years in his superlative "Vile Bodies" ‘Oh Nina, what a lot of parties!" exclaims the anti-hero, Adam, and the narrator continues;
‘Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity … Those vile bodies "
I thrust my vile body into a selection of outrageous costumes in the name of fancy dress, over the years. I always wanted to be decorative and semi-clad, never seeing the point of dressing as a bee or a pizza. I remember a FD party in Manchester many years ago. I went with my friend Barb,who could drive and had a car and everything. So , freed from the restrictions imposed by public transport,I went as Cleopatra,complete with elaborate black wig and brown body paint. I found an old nylon nighty of my Mum's, which was white,pleated, and almost totally transparent. I wore gold snake bangles and sandals and eyeliner, and that was about that.
Barbara was dressed as a bat.
We drove off happily into the night, and if any passing lorry drivers glanced down and were perturbed by the sight of a large bat driving along with the Serpent Of The Nile sitting in the passenger seat swigging vodka straight from the bottle,they did not show it. We got to the party, and swaggered up the steps, ready to join the costumed throng. Except that there wasn't one . Everyone else had chickened out of fancy dress entirely.
After the initial awkwardness, we got into the swing. I have a strong recollection of Barb The Bat leaning on a mantlepiece,one wing dangling, a claw-gloved hand clutching her pint. I left body paint smeared over every surface and woke up on a sofa wearing someone's brother's trousers.
My brother always went to F.D. parties in the same costume, a white boiler suit on back-to-front,a mask on the back of his head, and a baseball cap the wrong way round. If he had encountered our Manchester situation, he would have been fine with just minor adjustments. He and several friends once got together in identical white boiler suits with large white uninflated balloons worn as caps,and went in a group as Sperm. History does not relate whether or not they arrived too early,or were ejected..
I used to run a Burlesque event, back in 2006,at the Royal Court.It was called "Retrosexual", and was very fine indeed.One of the best features of this charming Bacchanal was the propensity of the punters to dress up creatively whilst the acts undressed with equal imagination. A grotto for grown-ups, it was an opportunity for Edwardian Toffs, Gaiety Girls,Flappers, Dollymops, Queens and Fairy Princesses to rub shoulders and several other important little places, in a lush Art Deco theatre bar. Unlike other events, the impromptu cabaret in the interval was as decorative and entertaining as anything on stage.It felt intimate,and people do love an intimate feel, I find.
Halloween will soon be upon us, and you might think it the perfect time to rush into Lili Bizarre for some fangs and a broomstick.But I don't care for mass rallies of FD, and too many folk make themselves hideous in rubbery masks and wobbly warts. There is always the disconcerting possibility in certain quarters,too,that their faces are the ones with which they were born. If someone has to say "Ok,I give up,what are you?", you have not succeeded.The same applies if you were just dancing.
So I shall continue to bide my time for the right party to come along,and pretend that is the reason I cannot resist buying preposterous wigs. If you are stuck,and the hire shops cannot help, it may be that I can provide a mermaid costume at short notice. Always happy to contribute to the sum of harmless human lunacy.But no comedy costumes,I'm afraid. If you want to dress up as Snoopy, you are barking up the wrong woman.
‘Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity … Those vile bodies "
I thrust my vile body into a selection of outrageous costumes in the name of fancy dress, over the years. I always wanted to be decorative and semi-clad, never seeing the point of dressing as a bee or a pizza. I remember a FD party in Manchester many years ago. I went with my friend Barb,who could drive and had a car and everything. So , freed from the restrictions imposed by public transport,I went as Cleopatra,complete with elaborate black wig and brown body paint. I found an old nylon nighty of my Mum's, which was white,pleated, and almost totally transparent. I wore gold snake bangles and sandals and eyeliner, and that was about that.
Barbara was dressed as a bat.
We drove off happily into the night, and if any passing lorry drivers glanced down and were perturbed by the sight of a large bat driving along with the Serpent Of The Nile sitting in the passenger seat swigging vodka straight from the bottle,they did not show it. We got to the party, and swaggered up the steps, ready to join the costumed throng. Except that there wasn't one . Everyone else had chickened out of fancy dress entirely.
After the initial awkwardness, we got into the swing. I have a strong recollection of Barb The Bat leaning on a mantlepiece,one wing dangling, a claw-gloved hand clutching her pint. I left body paint smeared over every surface and woke up on a sofa wearing someone's brother's trousers.
My brother always went to F.D. parties in the same costume, a white boiler suit on back-to-front,a mask on the back of his head, and a baseball cap the wrong way round. If he had encountered our Manchester situation, he would have been fine with just minor adjustments. He and several friends once got together in identical white boiler suits with large white uninflated balloons worn as caps,and went in a group as Sperm. History does not relate whether or not they arrived too early,or were ejected..
I used to run a Burlesque event, back in 2006,at the Royal Court.It was called "Retrosexual", and was very fine indeed.One of the best features of this charming Bacchanal was the propensity of the punters to dress up creatively whilst the acts undressed with equal imagination. A grotto for grown-ups, it was an opportunity for Edwardian Toffs, Gaiety Girls,Flappers, Dollymops, Queens and Fairy Princesses to rub shoulders and several other important little places, in a lush Art Deco theatre bar. Unlike other events, the impromptu cabaret in the interval was as decorative and entertaining as anything on stage.It felt intimate,and people do love an intimate feel, I find.
Halloween will soon be upon us, and you might think it the perfect time to rush into Lili Bizarre for some fangs and a broomstick.But I don't care for mass rallies of FD, and too many folk make themselves hideous in rubbery masks and wobbly warts. There is always the disconcerting possibility in certain quarters,too,that their faces are the ones with which they were born. If someone has to say "Ok,I give up,what are you?", you have not succeeded.The same applies if you were just dancing.
So I shall continue to bide my time for the right party to come along,and pretend that is the reason I cannot resist buying preposterous wigs. If you are stuck,and the hire shops cannot help, it may be that I can provide a mermaid costume at short notice. Always happy to contribute to the sum of harmless human lunacy.But no comedy costumes,I'm afraid. If you want to dress up as Snoopy, you are barking up the wrong woman.
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