Reality Vs. Ideal

Several bloggers of costuming and historical clothing (American Duchess, Wearing History, Dreamstress) have written about the issue of privacy and the reality behind their 'seemingly perfect' lives as doyennes of the historical sewing world, and issued a challenge to others to consider this, both as a topic of contemplation and doing so oneself, at least briefly.

This arose because of commentary from readers, asking if they ever made mistakes, despairing because the readers didn't have time or money to make such gorgeousness, or that they felt run over by their real lives.

There is an opinion in our media-driven world that anyone who publishes a blog is thereby a public person and forfeits the right to privacy; we take an older view, that public and private lives shall not mix, that decency, courtesy, graciousness, civility, and tact shall reign in one's public life, and that differences of opinion, whether social, religious or political, should be civilly discussed in private, and affect neither business nor political life.

It should be a given that 'life happens' to us all in equal measure. However, with the rare apology for absence due to illness, death in the family and so on, we believe that our public life should focus on its purpose, in this case the English Arts and Crafts and its methods, designs, ethics, and continuance. If our aim is to inspire, and to enable others to have oases of graciousness and beauty in their lives, it serves no useful purpose to lament the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It might serve us to reflect on a Pre-Raphaelite painting of some similar subject (Waterhouse's Miranda springs to mind), but that is misfortune made an opportunity for Beauty, which is perhaps a good spiritual practise.

Further, we have ideals - of beauty, of form, of philosophy - to uplift us from the mean concerns of the everyday, and to help us give meaning to such happenstances as Life chooses to visit upon us. We think of the private lives of Msrs. Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Ruskin. Every PRB fan knows these details, as indeed did the whole group at the time. But the details were not splashed all over the media. Nowhere do we find Mrs. Ruskin/Lady Millais writing to the agony aunt of the Times, or Topsy publishing his domestic intricacies alongside News From Nowhere.  Not because these details are shameful or embarrassing, but because in the end, they do not matter.

They do not matter.

What matters is what we create, the legacy we leave.

Ars longia, Vita brevis, as Topsy liked to say.

DIY Hairpieces for the Lady Re-enactor, Part One

Some time ago, I purchased a cheap child's Rapunzel wig at Party City, as an alternative to more expensive hairpieces at Sally's or online. This was done for two reasons: ease of acquisition, and the fact that my natural haircolour is now a variegated sandy ginger blonde, which is very difficult to match.

The original wig was closer than anything else found, including the Sandy Blonde wefts at Sally's.
The first necessity was to tone down the unnatural blonde a bit. Into a pot with several dark Irish tea bags went the wig, soaking overnight. Then into a similar pot of dilute Manic Panic Atomic Turquoise conditioner, which is what I use to tone my hair around here. Easy, non-chemical, vegan. This was the resulting colour:

When the wig was dry, I combed it out with a shower comb and began to cut apart the wefts from the wig cap:

Don't be dismayed if you accidentally cut the weft, especially around the front edge.

When all the bottom wefts were off, I arranged then according to size:

The very top, I left whole as the basis for a fall of curls, as my primary hairstyle for Pre-Raphaelitism is 1870s:

The small wefts were then sewn together in pairs. they will be used for side curls, braids, and back curls, depending on need:

These will all go woven into my own hair, which, although hip length, still is not enough to make up the hairstyles of the 1820s-1900 to my satisfaction.  Some of this volume in the latter period may be created with pads and frizzing, but not the mass of curls of the earlier periods.

The switches were then braided loosely so as to avoid tangling, ready for the next part of the adventure, curl-papers and rags:

 As every reader of Victoriana knows, curling rags were used in the period, as an alternative to curling tongs (irons), which did not damage the hair. Some used curl papers instead, including Lord Byron and Beau Brummel.

More on which anon!

Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture

Rush out NOW and read this book.
EVERYTHING that Shannon advocates for in Radical Homemakers is what I've been about since I was 14 years old. Everything. It is downright amusing that a radical sociology book about taking back the home can make me CRY. But it does.

I feel validated for everything I have ever believed and striven for. And she describes the three stages of the process, and I can agree with her conclusion that if one spends too long in Step Two that one becomes subject to the kind of depression and futility that Betty Friedan wrote so passionately against.

She also argues against the wife-mother as chauffeur car culture that arose after the Second World War - which was totally foisted on us by the corporations. We are not here to drive our children from this and that or to buy this or that for the husband and 'the house'! That is not our role in life! But we have been pressurised into that role. Unless we rebel...

=) Here's to rebellion! and making a real home.

Viz:
Renouncing: increasingly aware of the illusory happiness of a consumer society. Recognise and question the compulsion to purchase goods and services that they feel they could provide for themselves 'if only...'

Reclaiming: Recovering many skills that enable one to build a life without a conventional income. This phase can take a few years or a lifetime and will perpetually be returned to as one builds ever more skills. If dwelt only in this phase for too long begin to manifest symptoms of Friedan's housewife's syndrome - 'what's all this for?'

Rebuilding: Take on genuine creative challenges, engagement with community, make significant contributions toward rebuilding a new society that reflects one's vision of a better world, through artwork, writing, farming, fine craftwork, social reform, activism, teaching, or a small business.

'The choice to become homemakers is not an act of submission or family servitude. It is an act of social transformation.... it is time we come to think of our hoes as living systems. Like sourdough starter, the home's survival requires constant attention. A true home pulses with nonhuman life - vegetable patches, yeast, backyard hens, blueberry bushes, culturing yoghurt, fermenting wine and sauerkraut, brewing beer, milk goats, cats, dogs, houseplants, kids' science projects, pet snakes and strawberry patches...'