death becomes her

It’s been a minute: I was sick! I was forlorn! I was traveling! But now, we’re back. We are so back.

Initially, I had planned to write a comprehensive break down of fashion month. But I was too slow, and not only did the times change, but so did my mood. In the weeks after fashion month, a lot of things have happened: Loro Piana has engaged in some unluxurious practices, Dries is retiring, Pierpaolo Piccioli is leaving Valentino while Alessandro Michele is joining, Matches has shuttered, and Phoebe Philo broke her silence. Below, you will find none of that. Instead, we’ll be chatting about all things mourning and Simone.

Simone Rocha’s Fall Winter 2024 runway show, entitled The Wake, was partially inspired by Queen Victoria’s mourning dress. Guests sat, salon-style, in London’s oldest parish church, St Bartholemew the Great, to see a collection that played with ideas of life and death using faux fur, corsets, Crocs, and more. 

Following the death of Prince Albert in 1861, Queen Victoria wore her widow’s weeds for forty years until her own death in 1901. This fact inspired me to do some research as the monarch’s commitment to her sombre uniform was an unusual move. 

In the Victorian era, grieving was not a private matter, it was a public affair where one’s clothes signaled not just the loss one had experienced but also the gravity of that loss. Mourners wore dark colors because of the belief that spirits would be repelled by non-reflective material. It was appropriate for the bereaved, in particular, women, to don their mourning attire for at least one year. They would gravitate towards black dresses in lusterless crepe, bombazine, and heavy veils. Even underwear and handkerchiefs were frankensteined during this time with the addition of a simple black ribbon or black lace. 

After six months, the bereaved entered a period called half-mourning where purple and grey hues were appropriate. Nonetheless, the demands of a mourning wardrobe were such that women would often lend garments to their friends during their months of need. Thankfully, diamonds were considered more than appropriate as the gem is colorless! (Hard to ascertain if the ladies were swapping jewels though.) 

Mourning attire was a public signal. On one hand, I believe these garments led to interactions of grace and compassion. On the other hand, we know that these clothes signaled to men that a woman in black was “both sexually experienced and available.”

The 19th century, and in particular, World War I, permanently changed the game for public lamentation.* As an edition of American Vogue from 1918 noted:

Returning back to the Simone show… All things considered, an obvious translation of Queen Victoria’s mourning wardrobe would have been a collection of sombre monochromatic looks. But that is not how Rocha plays it. Instead, the designer notes the use of boning and plays with the corset’s shape; all while saying, “There’s the perversity of being adorned, and cupped, in these organza corsets: it’s really stimulating on.”

Beyond the corsets: a dark romanticism, seductive and heady, runs through the collection. Silhouettes are lengthened, faux fur is anointed with diamonds, and sheer fabrications abound!

RECENT READS:

• Here’s a Molly Young article from December 2023 that looks at the memoirs of yore while also getting to the heart of why our current celeb memoirs are just not hitting:

  • “Intriguing memoirs tend to be written by people who have nothing to lose, or who have managed to delude themselves into thinking they have nothing to lose. “Spare” and “Paris: The Memoir,” on the other hand, read like exercises in brand management by people positioning themselves for future conquests. The prince and Paris aren’t boring; they’re just utterly devoid of Agassi-level imperviousness.”

• Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose was one of the first non-fiction marriage books I read last year and it is such a major read when it comes to looking at marriage as a political unit as well as dissecting the lives of the literati.** Sheila Heti interviewed the now 81 year old author and it was such a lovely conversation about why you shouldn’t marry writers, bravery, and more. There might have even been one sentence that made me cry.***

  • “A good first marriage is luck. A good second marriage should not be. The overall tone of Parallel Lives, its attitude toward marriage, derives from my own experience as a young woman discovering that the person I thought was autonomous, me, once I got married, no longer was. I was part of a couple. That is a brutal transition in life. I was too inexperienced to know at that age what kind of person would satisfy my emotional needs over the long haul. I hoped then and still hope that Parallel Lives might help other people make this transition, with a greater understanding of the dynamics of couples.”

  • “Couples like the Carlyles who lived together for so many years, people who made each other, in some ways, so miserable, were nonetheless really and truly married – that is, they became something different together and the connection enabled them each to be even more themselves. I would say now that the terms ‘happy marriage’ and ‘successful marriage’ signal different expectations, and ‘successful’ is the more useful word.”

  • “This structure broke down with George Eliot and John Stuart Mill, though it’s there vestigially, and, like all structures, its importance is more for the writer than the reader.”

  • “For the George Eliot letters, I tried to use a researcher, but it didn’t work. Only I knew what phrase or detail would be useful to me. I read all the letters myself and copied out by hand passages I wanted to quote. Pre-computer. I still think it’s the best way to understand another writer.”

  • “Terms like auto-fiction may stir up interest in critics and readers, but writers will write what suits their talents and needs of the moment regardless. Proust was writing auto-fiction. Thank goodness he didn’t wait for the term to be invented. I personally don’t care where the material for a book comes from, so long as I enjoy the experience of reading it. I read fiction and non-fiction with equal pleasure. Even the terms ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ seem at times artificial.”

  • “One of the most abused battle cries of my generation was ‘The personal is political’. This has led to an ocean of banalities in public life – politics and journalism both – so that it seems every speech, every investigative article, must begin with a personal narrative. The personal is political only if you are a good enough writer or a good enough politician to make it so.”

  • “A long marriage is a work of art. Relationships get deeper the longer they last. But multiple marriages, whether legal or not, have their own art and depth. I would also suggest that even in a long marriage, especially in a long marriage, it can seem like you are married sequentially to more than one person.”

• Having read Dorothy Molloy’s first and last poetry collection Hare Soup, I have been doing some background reading on the poet. This TLS article describe the Irish artist’s life in Barcelona as a painter as well as the themes that ran through through her poetry.

• I read Into Siberia: George Kennan's Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia and loved it. The book inspired me to search for images—lucky for me I found these sepia-hued photos from his travels.

• Having finished Binstead’s Safari and Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls, I have been eager for more information about the author. Her work is eerie and unsettling. This New Yorker article explores the themes that defined her work.

• A recent Merve Emre article about realist characters in Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You and Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood. It is also in this article where I learn the word: shibboleth.

  • “How to derive specific types when individuals in the world appear as both anonymous and conspicuous, opaque and transparent, strange and intimate, fictional and factual? How to deduce characters from types amid the bewildering paradoxes of the present?”

• An inside look at Brigitte Chartrand, SSENSE’s Vice President of Womenswear Buy, doing her job courtesy of Rachel Tashjian.

• Pamela Anderson spoke with The Face about happiness, styling, and her latest iteration. Did you know she has her own newsletter?

• Is the publishing industry prepared for a seismic shift in its business model? The author of Big Fiction (still need to read this) has a new Baffler article exploring the possibilities of “gigification.”

  • “Authors Equity brings Silicon Valley–style startup disruption to the business of books.”

  • “Authors Equity’s website presents its vision in strikingly neoliberal corporatespeak. The company has four Core Principles: Aligned Incentives; Bespoke Teams; Flexibility and Transparency; and Long-Term Collaboration. What do they mean by these MBA keywords?”

• If you’re curious about how much it might cost to open a bookstore, this was an eye-opening article.

Some things I read and quoted in the process of writing this: 

• Women’s Expressions of Grief, from Mourning Clothes to Memory Books: mourning through the ages and the shift from the public to the private

• Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire: a review of the Met’s exhibition of the same title

• Queen Victoria’s Mourning Dress Inspired Simone Rocha’s “Preserved” AW24 Collection: British Vogue’s review of the show

• The Fashion Week Cheat Sheet: Simone Rocha AW24: Harper’s Bazaar’s review of the show

• The American Vogue Review

*It is at this point where black becomes fashionable. This dovetails nicely with the Sargent and Fashion exhibit I just saw at the Tate Britain. But, that’s (maybe) for another newsletter.
**Not monetized!
***Edit: I actually cried twice!

Special shout out to Owen for their edits. Any errors are mine and mine only.