Hedi Slimane's diary

P.S. All pictures are from www.hedislimane.com

P.P.S. How do I stop Blogspot from shrinking photos so much!?

"President Bush is a caterpillar"

At the moment I'm listening to a podcast of an interview of Fay Gillis Wells. Fay Gillis Wells (1908-2002) was an American aviatrix (oh alright, or "aviator" but aviatrix sounds so much more glamourous). She also pioneered overseas broadcasting and travelled extensively as a journalist. This interview was made when Fay was in her 90's, yet she talks about the little details of her life with charm and about her incredible achievements and experiences with humbleness.

Here's the link:

http://www.podfeet.com/wordpress/2006/07/20/nosillacast-07232006-show-52-ron-david-fay-wells/

Wells and her interviewer, Ron David, have just been talking about The Caterpillar Club (of which Fay was the first female member)! 

"The caterpillar club is called the caterpillar club because in those days the parachutes were all made out of pure silk and when a caterpillar gets in trouble it lets itself down with a strand of silk and that's why we were called caterpillars"

Obviously this was an incredible woman who achieved mindblowing things, but let me have one moment of weakness...I find her super adorable when she's talking about the caterpillars and goes on to say "President Bush is a caterpillar".

OK enough of that silliness.

Ron David was a close friend of Fay's and he made this video in order to honour his friend. It has some rather awesome images of early women aviatrixes (and features some bangin' Satie):

Did you notice her standing next to Amelia Earhart?!

Interesting details about Fay from the podcasts and her Wikipedia article:

• At the time of her death she was one of four charter members of the Ninety-Nines remaining active.
  
• She and her husband Linton Wells spent their honeymoon covering the Italian invasion of Abyssinia and the Syrian riots for the Herald Tribune.
• After the birth of her son she was a full-time mother living on a houseboat.
• She was the first female broadcaster accredited to the White House, and one of three women reporters chosen to accompany President Nixon to China in 1972.
  
• She flew Tigermoths in the Penang - "It just happened. It was on this trip from Tokyo to Athens, Greece to go back to Russia"
• Explaining how the Ninety-nines came to get that name: "This [argument over what the name should be] went on and on and finally this quiet voice in the back of the room said "Why don't we name ourselves after our number of charter members?" And that was Amelia Earhart and I didn't even know she was in the room"
• Still talking about the first meeting of the Ninety-nines: "I'd been out flying [...] and I came in and I had to help set up the cookies and the tea and whatnot and I didn't have time to change my clothes and I thought 'Well it's a woman's pilots meeting and that they'll all come in pilot's clothes 'cause they'd be flying in, you know?' and of course they all turned up with gloves and cloche hats and all dressed to the nines and I'm sitting here the only one in a bunch with the dirty coveralls on [laughs] and I've never lived down that picture!"
• And a bunch of other stuff guys! This woman had an amazing life! (Also she sounds pretty cute on the podcast..)

The picture she never lived down:

I came across Fay Gillis Wells while perusing Wikipedia looking up other aviatrixes of the early Jet Age.

This is Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes (1901 - 1975) about whom a stellar looking documentary is in the works:

Photo source: http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/images/pancho_5_500.jpg

Watch the trailer and you can see Buzz Aldrin (a real live freakin' ASTRONAUT so she must have been good, huh?) in awe of her. 

Here she is with Roscoe Turner, Katherine Cheung and....a lion:

photo source: http://cutandpasteaviation.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_cutandpasteaviation_archive.html

Pancho's legend has endured, in part, because of her Happy Bottom Riding Club, a notorious guest ranch hotel that hosted many test pilots (the sort that were involved in high-speed aeronautical research!) from the Muroc Army Air Base. You can see Pancho and her dude ranch immortalised in The Right Stuff. The Happy Bottom Riding Club (I just wanted the opportunity to type that out again!) did battle with the US government for its land, faced charges of being a brothel, survived an earthquake and, in the end, mysteriously burnt down.

Oh and this might be my favourite bit: they say she rebuilt the pool in a circle so that she could ride her horse into it!

Some of it looks like this today:

photo source and a lot more pictures:http://picasaweb.google.com/howard.clark.jr/HappyBottomRidingClub#

Look at that documentary website though...I'm just repeating tidbits less eloquently and less acurately.

There's one other aviatrix I want to post about - Elsie Mackay:

 

photo source: thepeerage.com

Elsie Mackay (1893 - 1928) aka Poppy Wyndham aka Gordon Sinclair was an English socialite and actress who took up flying in 1923. 

  

In 1928 she and Capt. Walter G. R. Hinchliffe were lost to the Atlantic as they attempted a pioneering flight from Lincolnshire to Long Island. They were never found, only a piece of undercarriage (with a serial number on it) was ever recovered.

Poppy Wyndham (in 1917 Elsie married actor Dennis Wyndham, supposedly causing her family to disinherit her. Elsie and Dennis' marriage was annulled in 1922) was Mackay's stage name and Gordon Sinclair is the pseudonym under which she registered for her fatal flight.

Ya vas lyublyu

Sedgwick: Danny, do you speak Russian? 
Danny: A little, but only one sentence. 
Sedgwick: Well, let me have it, mate. 
Danny: Ya vas lyublyu. 
Sedgwick: Ya ya vas... 
Danny: Lyublyu. 
Sedgwick: Lyubliu? Ya vas lyubliu. Ya vas lyublyu. What's it mean? 
Danny: I love you. 
Sedgwick: Love you. What bloody good is that? 
Danny: I don't know, I wasn't going to use it myself.

(The Great Escape, 1963)

Time for a great escape. My captors tonight are the remaining 2183 words of an essay due in on Monday afternoon. Ruthless. Sadly it is my fault for wandering sleepily into their trap 4 weeks after the assignment was set.

Means of escape being considered:

1. A pair of Repetto ballet flats (created by a guest artist in celebration of Repetto's 60th anniversary) embellished with feathers and the power of flight

2. A shimmering Desert Queen. Priscilla!

3. Catbus

And now, I really feel the best way to choose between the three (read: procrastinate further) is to compose a different outfit for each scenario. Fantastic! Let's get to it!

1. For floating wispily away to a meadow:

• An Edwardian tea dress (from Honey Childs Vintage on eBay)
• Hazy, seductive glimpses of pink lace through white lace, by Elle Macpherson
• Molly Ringwald's ear. No seriously. I remember when I first watched 'Pretty in Pink', that flower through her ear amazed me. There's a lot of interesting fashion in the movie, but that flower is what left the biggest impression on me. If I owned that dress I'm sure I'd only ever want to accessorize it with flowers.
• Well, and 8 rings and 4 bangles..

With magical shoes I'd float away to Cottingley to be among the fairies at the bottom of Elsie and Frances' garden (remember that film Fairy Tale: A True Story?)

Resting with the fairies I'd sleep for twenty years Rip-Van-Winkle-style. However, on awakening I'd find much more glamourous consequences had arisen, thanks to the flowers' enthusiastic siege and subsequent occupation of my sleeping form:

Or, in this case, Tanya Dziahileva's Mcqueen-S/S-'07-catwalk-stamping form.

2. For blazing through the desert with two drag queens and a grieving transsexual:

• All black out of respect for Bernadette's bereavement
• Swimsuit of my dreams by Anthropologie
• Strappy beauties by Celine. Check out the detail at the base of the heel!
• Eyelid adornments by Shu Uemura
• Hair and cigarette holder by Holly Golightly

2b) For drinking cocktails and breaking into song atop beautiful martian anomalies of geography:

• Carrie Bradshaw's Something Blue by Manolo Blahnik
• Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen S/S 2005
• Shu Uemura
• Marchesa

2c) If I were a drag queen, this woman would be my inspiration:

Marchesa Luisa Castrati dressed for a fancy dress party in 1920's Paris. 

Castrati was a notorious diva who wrought a decadent kind of havoc in various luxurious mansions throughout Europe. It wasn't unusual to see her in the company of blinged up cheetahs and servants dressed only in gold leaf. 

2d) Fallback option for drag-queen-accompanying attire in hot climate:

No matter the outfit, no doubt this scenario would climax with the descension of numerous John Waters characters and cheekily named midday cocktails.

3. For careening through the Japanese countryside in the most environmentally friendly, most kawaii vehicle:

3b)

I've really outdone myself and not only lost motivation for my essay, but also lost motivation for this post. Oh to be young and in ennui. 

Also, I still can't really make blogspot do what I want. Look at this underlining! How did this get here!?