Remembering Kate McGarrigle

Sad to learn that Kate McGarrigle recently died of cancer.  She and her sister Anna released many beautiful albums.  We saw them once in concert in Boston where they were also with another sister who sang with them.  They were funnier than I thought they would be -- silly, ironic, whimsical, and of course they all sounded amazing. 

Still on heavy rotation: "Heart Like a Wheel," " NaCl," "Talk to Me of Mendocino," "I Eat Dinner," "Heartbeats Accelerating."

For awhile she was married to Loudon Wainwright III, which I wrote about earlier, and their children Martha and Rufus are great singer-songwriters on their own.  Their McGarrigle House Christmas Album features all of them and, like every McGarrigle Sisters album, is wonderful to listen to.

Gazing into the Looking-Glass behind high fashion

Alice in Wonderland is inspiring high fashion designers as they pick up on trends from the upcoming film, the Victorian Alice novels and its upper-class, very proper British sensibility. 

Stella McCartney is creating Alice-themed jewelry for Disney that's scheduled to appear in stores in January.  Stella's certainly been steeped in Alice culture through simply being an upper-class girl in England and through her dad's band The Beatles.  John Lennon had numerous references in songs to Lewis Carroll and his world.  Carroll, of course, is pictured on the cover of Sgt. Pepper.Tom Binns' Alice jewelry

Tom Binns, high-end jewelry collaborator with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, has a collection of chunky, opulent jewelry with keys and trinkets that are inspired by Alice in Wonderland. These are also in collaboration with Disney and will sell for $100 to $2,000.  Michelle Obama, by the way, has worn Binns' creations.

OPI has a special edition of colors linked to the upcoming Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland film. The glittery, over-the-top colors include: Absolutely Aice, Mad as a Hatter, Off With her Red!, and Thanks So Muchness! 

OPI's display for Alice in Wonderland nail polishFashion has always been an important part of the Alice novels.  Of course, she does spend a great deal of time looking into a Looking-Glass. Carroll, too, was a devotee to fashion.

According to Alice Liddell, Carroll "always wore black clergyman's clothes in Oxford, but when he took us out on the river, he used to wear white flannel trousers.  He also replaced his black top-hat with a hard white straw hat on those occassions, but of course retained his black boots, because in those days white tennis shoes had not yet been heard of."  Carroll favored black, always a fashion statement, and tended to wear his hair longer than others.  He was decidedly class conscious in his clothes.  He almost always wore gloves in public.

In the novels, Alice is a bit of a snob, a proper upper-middle-class child who longs toStella McCartney's jewelry inspired by Alice in Wonderland play croquet with royalty.  When she falls down the rabbit hole and wonders who she is she is afraid she might be Mabel and be forced to live in that "poky little house" and "have next to no toys to play with."

More fashion designers teaming with Disney include Sue Wong for Walt Disney Signature. "I have long been mesmerized by the fantastical tales of Alice and her surrealistic adventures in Wonderland and am thrilled to be collaborating with Disney on this project," explains designer Sue Wong whose Alice clothes will be sold in Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom's, Lord and Taylor and Macy's, as well as on www.SueWong.com.

Alice Is The New Black. Here's a video of how Disney promoted its high-end fashion last year at the MAGIC Convention in Las Vegas.

Can you pass the Alice test?*

As they said in San Francisco a few years ago, "Can you pass the Alice test?"  Check out this test about Alice in one of many covers for Alice's Adventures in WonderlandWonderland and Lewis Carroll in USA Today.  I helped with some of the questions and am listed as a contributor.

Thanks to Mike Cadden, a professor at Missouri Western State University and an ISU graduate in children's literature, for connecting me with the reporter at USA Today.  It was lots of fun to put together references to Alice in pop culture. 

Here's a .pdf of reference points to Alice, Wonderland and Lewis Carroll in popular culture, which I sent to the reporter.

*By the way, what they said in the 60s was "Can you pass the acid test?" and that reference should not be considered a way to connect Charles Dodgson to drug use.  There's no real evidence that he used any kind of substance altho he did seem to occasionally drink red wine, or at least order it for his house in Oxford. There's more about incorrect ideas about Carroll in the introductory chapter in The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature.

A complicated press kit for new Alice film

The press kit for Tim Burton's new Alice film is a series of boxes within boxes.  The last box is a key.  But it's also a USB flash drive that contains material about the new film.  Quite clever.  Here's a link to more info about it and some photos from that site. And a link to MTV on the press kit. If anyone has an extra one that they'd like to send to me, please email...!

Tim Burton in press kit book for his new film, Alice in Wonderland

Clever USB flashdrive key for Alice in Wonderland press kit

New Emma series on PBS

The library has bookmarks advertising a new PBS series based on Jane Austen's Emma so I had to check out the PBS website to see what the show is going to look like. Screenwriter Sandy Welch says she wanted to focus on the modern aspects of the characters in Emma, but she's also very aware of previous interpretations, including the film Clueless.  Emma, as you may remember, is a character who's not quite as lovable as some previous Austen heroines.  In fact Mr. Knightley laments how little Emma has taken up on the suggested reading plan he gave to her.  Gillian Dow has a good discussion of the kinds of books women were reading during the Regency Era.  Which begs the question, have you read a few of these books which were considered important for well-educated women at the time: Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest (1791), Regina Maria Roche's The Children of the Abbey (1796), Stephanie-Felicite de Genlis's Adelaide and Theodore (1782), Maria Edgeworth's Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), and Frances Burney's Evelina (1778).