Praise for Glamour
‘In her relish for brassy blondes, gutsy flamboyance and tinsel vulgarity,
Dyhouse writes like a woman who knows her way around the lipstick
counter and the flea market. She shows how a parade in the trappings
of glamour expressed aspiration and assertion at odds with mousy,
unobtrusive conformity. Glamour was a cynical business, but also a shriek
of camp defiance. All fur coat and no knickers. Dyhouse has whipped
the stopper from a vintage bottle of Evening in Paris and conjured a
vanished world – cheap, a little tarty, but impossible to forget.’
Amanda Vickery, author of Behind Closed Doors
‘In Glamour: Women, History, Feminism, Carol Dyhouse has written a study
of the conception of glamour in the twentieth century that is sprightly,
provocative, and penetrating. She adds greatly to our understanding
of a phenomenon that has been central to women’s attitudes toward
themselves … This work will be interesting to both scholars and general
readers alike.’
Lois Banner, author of American Beauty
‘In her survey of changing ideas about “glamour” throughout the
twentieth century and beyond, Carol Dyhouse has succeeded in
fashioning scholarly empirical research into a clear, engaging and
enthusiastic account.’
Elizabeth Wilson, author of Adorned in Dreams
‘Rigorously researched and persuasively argued, Glamour represents
an important contribution to the social history of fashion and of
fabulousness.’
Caroline Weber, author of Queen of Fashion
‘Riveting – from perfume to sexual politics and the precise definition of
“It”, Dyhouse gives us an entertaining and innovative analysis of a topic
that, while hitherto underexplored, has a huge impact on all our lives.’
Sarah Gristwood, author of Fabulous Frocks
Glamour
Women, History, Feminism
Carol Dyhouse
Zed Books
London & New York
Glamour: Women, History, Feminism was first published in 2010
by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK
and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Copyright © Carol Dyhouse 2010
The right of Carol Dyhouse to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Text and cover designed by Safehouse Creative
Index by John Barker and Nick von Tunzelmann
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan,
a division of St Martin’s Press, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10010, USA
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed
Books Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available
ISBN 978 1 84813 407 2
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
vi
viii
Introduction 1
1
The origins of glamour: demi-monde, modernity, ‘It’
9
2
Hollywood glamour
29
3 Dreams, desires and spending
49
4 Princesses, tarts and cheesecake
81
5
Revolutions
109
6 Glamazons, grunge and bling
133
7 Perspectives and reflections: glamour for all?
151
Notes
Sources and select bibliography
Index
169
203
223
Illustrations
Advertisement for Helena Rubinstein’s Valaze skin creams, 1920s
16
Advertisement for Grossmith’s perfume Phul-Nana, 1920s 18
Perfume card advertising Shem-el-Nessim, 1920s
20
Wana-Ranee, another of Grossmith’s ‘oriental’ perfumes, 1920s
22
Fur wrap edged with rows of tiny feet and tails, 1900s
24
Adverts for Revillon Frères,1920s 26
Gloria Swanson on a tiger-skin
31
Adelaide Hall
34
Marlene Dietrich as Shanghai Lily in Shanghai Express 35
Coats with intricately stitched pelts from the late 1920s
36
Madeleine Carroll looking slinky in bias-cut satin
39
Advert for Ballito silk stockings, mid 1930s
40
Pulp novelette from Gramol Publications, 1935
50
Cover of the first issue of Girls’ Cinema, October 1920
53
Film Fashionland 54
Designs from Film Fashionland, mid 1930s
56
Advertisements from the British Fur Trade, 1937
60
Advert for Snowfire vanishing cream and face powder, mid 1930s
63
Cover of Miss Modern, March 1935 66
Advert for Atkinson’s popular scent Californian Poppy, 1940s
69
Advert for Coty’s Chypre, 1938
71
Illustrations
Wedding photo, wartime Leeds
78
Kestos advert, 1950s
82
Model Cherry Marshall in an advert for Susan Small, 1949
84
Hairdresser Betty Burden, photographed by Bert Hardy 86
Model Barbara Goalen, photographed by John French,1950
94
Lady Docker, 1954
98
Diana Dors on the cover of Picturegoer, December 1955
100
Alma Cogan performs for the BBC Home Service, 1954 103
Joan Collins on the cover of Picture Post, September 1954
106
A mother takes her daughter shopping in the 1950s
111
Adverts for Marchioness velvets (Martin & Savage Ltd)
and Hoggs of Hawick
116
Shirley Bassey at the London Palladium, 1965
127
Claudia Jones with black beauty queen Marlene Walker, 1960
129
Claudia Jones congratulating Carol Joan Crawford 130
Shoulder-padded glamazon in an advert for Krizia,
British Vogue, 1985
137
1980s tailored androgyny in an advert for Georges Rech,
British Vogue, 1985
139
vii
Introduction
When it was first used, in the nineteenth century, the word ‘glamour’
meant something akin to sorcery, or magical charm.1 It became a buzz
word in the twentieth century, its strongest associations being with
American cinema between the 1930s and 1950s, the classic period of the
Hollywood ‘dream factory’, and in particular the screen and still photography of its female stars.
Men as well as women can be described as glamorous, and the term
can also be applied to things, places or lifestyles. Any judgement of what
is and is not glamorous will be partly subjective: glamour (like beauty)
can be judged to exist in the eye of the beholder rather than that which
is beholden. Notions of what constitutes glamour have changed through
time, and yet there are marked continuities. Glamour has almost always
been linked with artifice and with performance, and is generally seen
as constituting a form of sophisticated – and often sexual – allure. This
book will focus on feminine glamour, the relationship between glamour
and fashion, and what glamour has meant to women in modern social
history.
‘Glamour’ as a term implying a form of sophisticated feminine
allure has a history which is interwoven with changing constructions of
femininity, consumerism, popular culture, fashion and celebrity. Few of
Glamour
those who have written on the subject have done so from a position of
neutrality. Some feminist writers have adopted a critical stance towards
what they have seen as the oppressive prescriptions for feminine attractiveness bolstered by capitalism and patriarchy.2 A growing body of social
critics and environmentalists deplore the ravages of unbridled consumption in the developed and developing worlds, highlighting the problems
of affluence and its inability to ensure human contentment and happiness.3 Women occupy uncertain positions in histories and critiques of
consumerism: representations of the prudent and socially aware ‘woman
with the basket’ of the early Co-operative Movement, the make-do-andmend housewife of wartime austerity, changed radically after 1945. In
the oft-quoted words of Mary Grieve, editor of the magazine Woman, in
the 1950s ‘it dawned upon the business men of the country that the Little
Woman was now Big Business’.4 Advertisers began to recognise more fully
the importance of ordinary women as consumers, and as living standards
rose, patterns of consumption expanded and changed. Concern about
the shopping addictions of well-off women was nothing new.5 However,
household expenditure surveys in the early twentieth century showed that
working-class women spent next to nothing on themselves, prioritising
the needs of male breadwinners and children.6 By the end of the century
women’s massively increased spending on fashion and beauty products
had helped to reverse this image of self-sacrifice and to ensure their new
representation as shoe obsessives and shopaholics, duped by the claims
of manufacturers of beauty products and anti-ageing creams. Criticism
of supermodels and celebrities can also foster a kind of misogyny, with
regular media witch-hunts around the rich and brainless – particularly
when glamorous and female.
Amongst the range of different ideals of femininity available to
women over the past century, what did the image of the glamorous woman
signify? Did – and does – it simply imply the objectification of woman,
subject to the male gaze? Did – and does – it represent the seduction
or subjection of women as consumer in capitalist society? John Berger
memorably defined glamour as a form of envy.7 Can ideals of glamour
be blamed for feminine insecurities, body dysmorphia, eating disorders,
addiction to cosmetic surgery, or a refusal to come to terms with old
age? Or did glamour offer a kind of agency to women, even sometimes
a way of getting their own back on patriarchy? If femininity can be seen
2
Introduction
as a form of belittlement, associated with the demure, the dainty and the
unassuming, then glamour – it can be argued – could offer a route to a
more assertive and powerful form of female identity.8 Glamour was often
linked to a dream of transformation, a desire for something out of the
ordinary, a form of aspiration, a fiction of female becoming.
What is fashionable is not always glamorous, and glamour has not
always been fashionable. In twentieth-century fashion, glamour had its
clichés: glitter, fur and slinky dresses, hothouse flowers and a slash of
bright red lips. Glamour was about luxury and excess. It spoke of power,
sexuality and transgression. It could also be about pleasure, the sensuousness of fur, silk and rich fabrics, the heady sensuality and reveries
of perfume. This book will suggest that in many contexts a desire for
glamour represented an audacious refusal to be imprisoned by norms
of class and gender, or by expectations of conventional femininity; it
was defiance rather than compliance, a boldness which might be seen
as unfeminine. Glamour could be seen as both risk and self-assertion, or
as a resource which might be used by women, albeit on what was often
dangerous territory, in a persistently unequal society.
Reflected from Hollywood cinema during the first half of the twentieth century, glamour allowed ordinary women to indulge in dreams of
escape from everyday hardship and to express interest in sexual power,
the exotic, presence and influence. The cinema exerted a strong influence on popular fashion and taste, although in the UK war, rationing and
limited incomes exerted strong brakes on consumerism. For the upper
and middle classes in Britain, American glamour had a more limited
appeal. There was a longer tradition of associating class with breeding,
elegance and restraint; for the middle classes, respectability and keeping
up appearances were governing concerns in matters of dress and social
comportment.
In 1950s Britain the idea of glamour became somewhat tarnished by
its associations with cheesecake photography, pin-up nudes or scantily
dressed models in naughty magazines. Women’s magazines in the 1950s
were leery about glamour. At the high end of the market, fashion editors
emphasised class, elegance and refinement: models such as Barbara
Goalen exuded an image of aristocratic, ladylike breeding, a somewhat
mannered and haughty disdain. Lower down the social scale, representations of ideal femininity were associated with modesty, neatness and
3
Glamour
domestic respectability. Glamour might be viewed by the socially secure
as brash and aspirational. For all of its associations with luxury and privilege, it was something middle-class England disapproved of, suggesting
women on the make, who wanted too much, knew too much, wore
too little or the wrong sort of clothes, and ‘were no better than they
looked’.
The style disruptions of the 1960s youthquake had a dramatic impact
on images of feminine desirability. Fashion models from Jean Shrimpton
to Twiggy adopted a wide-eyed, startled-and-innocent look: the glamorous sophisticate was out of fashion as swinging dolly birds and flower
children took centre stage, and haute couture gave way to Carnaby Street.
Glamour stayed somewhat out of fashion from the 1950s through to the
1970s: the word itself was much less frequently used by fashion editors
and in women’s magazines. There was less need for coded sexuality in
a world of free love. With the rise of the women’s liberation movement
in the late 1960s (so-called second-wave feminism), glamour became
something of a dirty word, associated with the sexual objectification of
women’s bodies, Miss World competitions and the cattle market. Fashion
ideals began to emphasise the desirability of the natural look, with girls
in long and floating floral dresses; advertisements for cosmetics depicted
these women in hayfields and meadows. Fur and heavy perfumes went
very much out of fashion.
But glamour was staging a comeback: in the pages of the magazine Cosmopolitan, confident, aspirational and sexually aware women
took stock of their image and were emboldened to look anew at the
old clichés. In the music world, ‘glam rock’, and the performances of
exponents such as Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Alice Cooper, disrupted
expectations about gender and style. Glamour in the 1980s drew upon
diverse elements: traditions of stage and screen, American soap opera, a
new affluence, public obsession with celebrity, and a heady and unapologetic consumerism. Glamour was more widely available than ever before:
piled on and parodied, it ran to excess. There was more than an element
of craziness and hysteria in the glamorous creations of designers such as
Jean-Paul Gaultier and Gianni Versace, in the productions of Dallas and
Dynasty, in the performances of Madonna and Elton John. Glamour was
cranked up and camped up, less an escape from the humdrum than a
clamour in popular culture from which it was difficult to find an exit. 4
Introduction
In the first decade of the twenty-first century the word ‘glamour’
was so widely used that it came to dominate the discourse of magazines
aimed at women, whatever their class, age or colour. Has the word lost
edge and meaning? Has glamour been democratised and, if now accessible to the many, does this reflect a new confidence and self-assurance
amongst women, or are they imprisoned and undermined by its dictates?
Will global economic problems fuel interest in austerity, vintage and
sustainable fashion, or intensify the desire for glamour as distraction and
consolation? This is a history not a horoscope, but some of these issues
are discussed in the final chapter of the book.
The organisation of the book is loosely chronological. It begins as
the word ‘glamour’ itself started to come into general use, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before that, the word was used sparingly.
Lord Rosebery had a racehorse called Glamour, and scrutiny of the use
of the word in The Times Digital Archive around the 1890s and 1900s
shows that references to this animal accounted for much of its currency
in these years. The first chapter of this book outlines the historical
context in which the word ‘glamour’ rooted and took more of a hold, a
context of widening horizons, new technologies, and shifting aspirations
and assumptions: what contemporaries and subsequent historians have
generally referred to as ‘modernity’. The catalogue of the Newspaper
Division of the British Library shows that a large number of magazines
and newspapers founded in the 1920s and 1930s were given the prefix
‘Modern’: Modern Home, Modern Marriage, Modern Woman, Miss Modern
and so forth. Representations of the ‘modern girl’ in her various incarnations in the 1920s – flapper, vamp or ‘dancing daughter’ – presaged
the impact of the screen sirens and glamour icons of the 1930s. The
Oxford English Dictionary records an early use of the term ‘glamour girl’
in a magazine published in 1940, which noted the emergence ‘of the
new glamour-girl, as one must call her nowadays, as thin and slender as a
flake of silver leaf, as blanched as an almond, as “platinum” as a wedding
ring’.9
This book has a broad focus because its aim has been to bring
together a number of lines of enquiry, about the representation and
construction of different femininities, about the shaping of aspiration
and desire, and about the relationships between social conditions,
fashion and material culture. When I first started out on this study, a few
5
Glamour
of my colleagues raised their eyebrows. As an academic social historian,
most of my previous research had focused on gender, family and education. ‘So it’s out of the bluestockings and into the fishnets, is it?’ quipped
a friend in the corridor.10 But the change of direction is not as radical as
it might first appear: education is also about dreams and aspirations (not
just the targets and skills of contemporary policymakers), and fashion,
cinema and magazines, like educational institutions, offer glimpses of
different worlds, different models and different cultural understandings
about ways of being female.
This book stems in part from a fascination with material and visual
culture, clothes, cosmetics, popular fashions and inexpensive jewellery.
Flea markets, junk shops and car boot sales have always distracted me,
offering a rich source of social history. Piles of moth-eaten old furs,
shoe boxes of paste clips, strands of fake pearls, and pretty, empty scent
bottles speak about women’s dreams in the past and are highly evocative:
especially the scent bottles. I am a pharmacist’s daughter, and one of my
earliest pleasures was playing with the discarded perfume display bottles
and cosmetic samples which my father would bring home. I particularly remember a set of Chanel No. 5, Cuir de Russie, Bois des Iles and
Gardenia, magical names and haunting fragrances in elegant bottles,
each with a ground glass stopper.
Perfume, as is well known, triggers memory, and sometimes a
profound sense of loss and desire. Glamour has been usefully defined as
a visual language of seduction but it also includes a dimension of sensuality and magic through touch, texture and scent.11 There are a number
of published histories and celebrations of classic perfumes, but less has
been written of the cheaper and popular scents worn by women since
the early 1900s. In 2003 Newcastle Public Library hosted a display celebrating the history of popular scents, perfume bottles and related products arranged by an enthusiastic local collector. Visitors were greeted
by a large display of Evening in Paris, a scent created by the famous
Russian parfumier Ernest Beaux (who also came up with Chanel No. 5).
Evening in Paris, marketed by Bourjois and widely available from 1929
to 1939 and through the postwar years, is remembered by almost every
woman over the age of fifty, and even the empty blue and silver bottles
are now eagerly sought by collectors. The exhibition in Newcastle was
enormously popular and moved many visitors to muse on the dreams
6
Introduction
they had cherished in girlhood and to share their memories of growing
up in the last century.12
Much of women’s social history is embedded in clothes, cosmetics
and material culture. Dress history is now an important area of study
in its own right, and there are many invaluable studies of the history of
fashion and clothing.13 There are also numerous magazines and books
addressed to collectors of such artefacts as powder compacts, jewellery,
scent bottles and the like. This book is obviously not simply a history of
fashion nor is it a collectors’ book, but I have found the focused collectors’ guides very useful. Indeed the breadth of my own focus, and a
synthetic approach, has meant a considerable reliance on the work of
other scholars, which I hope is fully reflected in the bibliography.
7
1
The origins of glamour:
demi-monde, modernity, ‘It’
The word ‘glamour’ was obscure before 1900. It meant a delusive charm,
and was used in association with witchery and the occult. Sir Walter
Scott is generally credited with having introduced the word into literary
language in the early 1800s.1 In Victorian times the word was often used
in cautionary tales. In a poem called ‘A Victim to Glamour’ (1874) by a
long-forgotten versifier, Annie the mill girl turns her back on the trusty
blacksmith who is courting her after she is seduced by the darkly handsome son of her wealthy employer. Shame and ruin follow as the two
men fight it out, and an ill-aimed shot nearly kills Annie. After a long
and painful convalescence she sees the light and is reconciled with the
distinctly unglamorous, humble but reliable Walter.2 Texts of this kind
warned against glamour as dangerously alluring, leading innocents
astray from virtue, and emphasised the perils in store for anyone with
social aspirations above their lot in life.
The period from 1900 to 1929 saw the beginnings of the modern
idea of glamour, in the opulence and display of the theatre and demimonde, in Orientalism and the exotic, and in a conscious espousal of
modernity and show of sexual sophistication.3 During this period, the
word’s meaning expanded to describe the magic of new technologies: the advent of moving pictures on the silver screen, new forms of
Glamour
transport through air, on vast, luxurious ocean liners and in fast cars;
travel to distant and exotic places. Glamour could attach to both people
and objects, and its connotations were by no means exclusively feminine.
Pilots and rally drivers could be described as glamorous, especially the
former. Later, in the 1930s, dashing young officers of the RAF in their
grey-blue uniforms stitched with silver wings would become stereotypes
of the glamorous male.4 Even so, the term ‘glamour’ came to be associated more commonly with women and with a type of feminine allure.
Stars of the stage could be glamorous: actresses, or singers in opera
and the music hall. The designer and photographer Cecil Beaton
recorded his childhood passion for the music-hall artiste Gaby Deslys,
‘the first creature of artificial glamour I ever knew about’, whose ‘taste
ran amok in a jungle of feathers, diamonds and chiffon and furs’.5 The
young fashion designer Norman Hartnell confessed to a similar infatuation, recalling Deslys looking ‘like a humming bird aquiver with feathers
and aglitter with jewels’ setting off ‘her custard blonde hair’.6 Her staggering toilettes were legendary; even her pet chihuahua was observed to
sport a pair of pearl-drop earrings. Beaton identified Deslys as a transitional figure, her style and demeanour deriving partly from the demimonde of courtesans and cocottes of the 1890s, but in her theatrical
performances the precursor of a whole school of glamour that was to
be exemplified later by Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth and the other
screen goddesses of Hollywood.7 Glamour, for Beaton as for many others
at the time and since, conveyed sophistication, artifice and sexual allure.
Extravagant displays of femininity were common in the Edwardian
demi-monde of actresses, courtesans and music-hall artistes. The actress
Sarah Bernhardt staged most of her public appearances as major performances, swathed in satins, lace and chinchilla. Beaton’s representation
of Deslys as standing out from other female performers of her day, and
as distinctly glamorous, stemmed not least from an appreciation of the
outré: the sexiness, confidence and air of indifference to convention that
this particular star exuded throughout her career. Norman Hartnell had
similar thoughts: at one point in his autobiography he suggested that
the word ‘glamour’ had become so vulgarised by over-use that it was no
more than ‘the small-change of advertising currency’. For him, though,
glamour remained inextricably connected with naughtiness.8
10
The origins of glamour
By the 1900s the prolonged proprieties of the Victorian period were
giving way to more open, though still highly coded, discussions of feminine sexual allure. Elinor Glyn’s sensational novel Three Weeks (1907)
was a watershed, thrilling readers with its purple-prose descriptions of a
mysterious Slav Lady arrayed in rich materials of the same colour, viewed
through silk curtains of ‘the palest orchid mauve’, squirming seductively
on a tiger skin.9 Here were all the stock props of Edwardian glamour:
heady Oriental perfumes pumped through Cupid fountains drugging
the senses of her young lover, couches of roses, ropes of pearls and rich
jewels twined through luxuriant, unbound hair. Above all, there were
the tiger skins themselves, replete with references to carnality, primitive
instincts, hunter and prey. Glyn herself owned a number of tiger skins.
She bought one with an early royalty cheque, and subsequently acquired
another eight, naming each after a man in her life: either fictional or
flesh and blood.10 ‘Would you like to sin with Elinor Glyn on a tigerskin?’ asked the doggerel verse of the day, ‘Or would you prefer to err
with her on some other fur?’ Elinor revelled in the sensuousness of
animal furs whether dead or alive: she once made a dramatic entrance
at a literary lunch party in London with her marmalade-coloured pet cat
curled around her shoulders.11
As a writer of best-selling popular fiction in Britain, and later as a
successful screenwriter in Hollywood, Elinor Glyn was even more than
Gaby Deslys a transitional figure, her colourful life spanning the worlds of
Edwardian luxury (country house parties, old aristocracy and new wealth)
and the new glamour of cinema. Glyn further bridged the worlds of the
kept woman and the celebrity writer and public figure. Her marriage
to the financially incompetent and emotionally unreliable Clayton Glyn
failed to provide the security and privileged lifestyle she had expected.12
As her husband’s debts mounted she relied on wit, talent and sheer hard
work to bail them out of ruin. Like her sister, the dress designer ‘Lucile’
(Lady Duff Gordon), she combined elements of a romantic, rather elitist
social vision with entrepreneurship and a very modern resourcefulness.13
In spite of her insistence on an exaggerated, conventional version of
sexual difference (man the hunter, woman his alluring prey), she was a
staunchly independent woman, carefully constructing her public image
and very much the author of her own life. Many of her fictional heroines
exhibit this same autonomy and independence. They refuse definition
11
Glamour
by birth, fate or fortune and make what they can of themselves and their
lives. The best example is the uncompromising Katherine in The Career
of Katherine Bush (1917). Of low birth (she is the grand daughter of a
pork butcher and the daughter of a Brixton auctioneer), Katherine sets
herself on a mission to rise up the social scale, acquiring classy manners
and accumulating what we might now call cultural capital in a process of
self-transformation. She is not shy of using her sexual powers to the full
to attract an aristocratic husband.14 There are echoes in this of Glyn’s
own love life – Katherine’s goal is the distinguished Duke of Mordryn,
loosely modelled on Glyn’s own amour of the 1900s, a former Viceroy
of India, Lord Curzon. Curzon eventually deserted Elinor and married
someone else. Elinor named one of her tiger skins Curzon.
Glyn’s romantic fiction, together with her pronouncements on the
nature of love, romance and attraction – famously referred to as the ‘It
quality’ – were eagerly devoured by an attentive public. ‘It’ was much
discussed, especially after Clara Bow was immortalised as the ‘It’ girl in
the 1927 film It, based on Elinor’s story and screenplay. According to
Glyn, ‘It’ could attach to both men and women: a quality not merely
sexual, but ‘a potent romantic magnetism’. In the animal world, she
declared, ‘It’ was most potently demonstrated in tigers and cats, both
animals being ‘fascinating and mysterious, and quite unbiddable’.15 The
public read ‘It’– like ‘oomph’– to mean basic sex appeal.
The glamour of early, silent screen cinema drew upon a heavy exoticism. Invited to Hollywood in 1920 to try her hand at script writing, the
56-year-old Glyn was in her element. Vamps, mysterious Slavs, doomed
queens and gypsies were her stock in trade. Glyn’s first script, for The
Great Moment, starring Gloria Swanson, met with considerable success,
the producer (Sam Goldwyn) announcing that Elinor Glyn’s name was
synonymous with the discovery of sex appeal for the cinema.16 Beyond
the Rocks, which paired Swanson with Rudolph Valentino, followed in
1922. The feminine aesthetic of these years combined a touch of the
harem with the Cleopatra look: women were kitted out in unlikely slavegirl costumes, wreathed in beads, with serpent-of-the-Nile arm and ankle
bracelets and kohl-rimmed eyes. This vampish Arab princess look, associated with Theda Bara, Nita Naldi and Pola Negri, gave way in turn to the
image of the flapper, the fun-loving, pleasure-seeking modern girl.17
12
The origins of glamour
As many historians have emphasised, the new freedoms of work and
the vote were seen as having revolutionised the role of women in the
years following the First World War, and the state of modern girlhood
became a cultural obsession.18 Probably a more enduring stereotype
than that of the ‘bright young things’ of the 1920s, ‘the modern girl’
was associated with much more than just hectic partying, jazz and the
dance crazes of the decade.19 Representations of both stereotypes owed
something to the literature of Scott Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh, and
also to the impact of screen performances by Clara Bow in The Plastic
Age (1925), Mantrap (1926) and It (1927), by Louise Brooks (Pandora’s
Box and The Canary Murder Case, both 1929, Prix de Beauté, 1930) and
Joan Crawford, especially in Our Dancing Daughters (1928). What was
distinctively modern about these performances becomes clear when
they are contrasted with earlier silent-screen heroines of rustic simplicity
and doomed innocence such as some of the roles played by ‘America’s
sweetheart’ Mary Pickford, or by Lillian Gish (Broken Blossoms, 1919, or
Way Down East, 1920). Whereas these earlier heroines embodied the
traditional virtues and values perceived as under threat from the city
and modernity, the shop girls, beauticians and husband hunters played
by Brooks, Bow and Crawford were modern, metropolitan, and in their
element; defying convention and revelling in a new freedom. British
film-makers similarly featured a new form of intrepid female: cinema
historian Jenny Hammerton has shown how the cinemagazines of the
1920s and early 1930s, particularly Eve’s Film Review, featured a carnival
parade of women aviators, stunt drivers, lion tamers and martial arts
experts in a celebration of modernity and of widening opportunities for
girls after the war.20
Emancipation was sometimes more apparent than real. Women over
the age of thirty gained the vote in 1918, but fears of the consequences
of ‘a flapper vote’ (and of women voters outnumbering men) delayed
full female suffrage until ten years later. There was much unease around
the new freedoms. Both in literature and in film the heroines depicted as
enjoying them were often made to suffer for their self-assertion. Today,
A. S. M. Hutchinson’s 1922 novel This Freedom reads as a maudlin antifeminist tract, but it was a best-seller in the USA and Britain when first
published. It depicts a woman involved in career ambitions as bringing
death and destruction to her children.21 The original, silent version of
13
Glamour
the film, which became Prix de Beauté or elsewhere Miss Europe, was made
in 1922, starring Louise Brooks. It was later dubbed and appeared in
France in 1930.22 Brooks plays Lucienne, a typist bored by her conventional boyfriend’s aspirations for her and his possessiveness. In search
of adventure, she enters a beauty contest; her success, together with the
attention she gets from other men, drives the boyfriend wild. In the end,
she leaves him, but he seeks her out in a murderous passion of jealousy,
killing her as she sits with a new lover, watching her own performance
on a cinema screen. Iris Storm, the undeniably glamorous heroine of
Michael Arlen’s cult best-seller of 1926, The Green Hat, flaunts all the signs
of modernity: she has attitude, sexy clothes, red lipstick and a fast car.23
The car is a yellow Hispano-Suiza: driving it is a metaphor for agency and
sexual self-possession. But Iris is doomed, for precisely these qualities.
The somewhat complicated narrative ends with a confusing mix of selfsacrifice and social vengeance: Iris engineers her own suicide by hurtling
her car into an ancient ash tree, which stands for tradition, in all its
obduracy. There was a stage version of The Green Hat, and in 1928 a film
based on the novel, entitled A Woman of Affairs, starring Greta Garbo.
The glamorous woman of the 1920s might still wear clothes inspired
by Orientalism, which had become fashionable under the influence of
set and costume designer Leon Bakst, the Ballets Russes and couturier
Paul Poiret before the war. Rich, embroidered fabrics, encrusted with
beads and glitter, were part of this look. A new, boyish figure increasingly
replaced the Edwardian pouter-pigeon shape and, alongside bobbed or
shingled hair, came to epitomise the modern girl. Bias-cut gowns, introduced by Madeleine Vionnet in the 1920s, emphasised slender curves
unrestrained by corsets, with crêpe and satin flowing down the body.
An advertisement in The Times, in 1922, for an exhibition of Japanese
kimonos in Harrods aptly illustrates the connotations of exoticism
carried by the word ‘glamour’ at this time: a graceful line drawing of
a woman in a silk kimono is set against a stylised oriental background,
and the text invokes ‘the witchery of the Far East’ and ‘the glamour of
blue-skyed Nippon’.24
These fashions involved a reworking of traditional ideas of femininity. In the eyes of many observers the modern girl embodied a kind
of androgyny: her boyish look went along with boyish habits, she was
not afraid to drink or smoke or drive a car. Nor was she slow to exploit
14
The origins of glamour
new and highly controversial opportunities for mixed bathing, sporting
increasingly revealing bathing suits. The rising popularity of sunbathing
and swimming as leisure pursuits after the 1914–18 war both represented
and reflected new freedoms for women.25 Bathing beauty contests may
have offended some, but proved enduringly popular: they were often
filmed, and the archives of British Pathé and the British Film Institute
preserve much footage of ‘aquatic frolics’ and beauty line-ups from the
1920s.26 Cinemagazines such as the already mentioned Eve’s Film Review
and Topical Budget are a particularly rich source of images of the fashions and styles of the 1920s. Wearing pyjamas – in bed, if not on the
beach as well – was considered daring but almost de rigueur for stylish
young women. In her autobiography, This Great Journey (1942), the politician Jennie Lee recalls how her mother scrimped and saved in order to
equip her daughter to go off to university in Edinburgh in the 1920s.
Collecting a suitable set of clothes was akin to, if not a substitute for,
assembling a trousseau. Alongside more serviceable items her mother
proudly produced a voluminous white nightgown, elaborately embroidered and adorned with frills and pale blue ribbons. Jennie was aghast:
The stuff must have cost a fortune. And this was 1922, the very height
of the pyjama age. I would rather have died than be caught by my
fellow-students floating around in an outfit of that kind. I was staggered, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My mother’s face was
the last straw … 27
A key sign of modernity in women was the wearing of cosmetics, particularly lipstick, probably the most significant issue marking the generation
gap between mothers and daughters in the 1920s. Iris Storm in The Green
Hat applies lipstick to a mouth described by her author as a drooping
red-silk flower.28 Tallulah Bankhead, who played the role of Iris in the
stage version of the book, used cosmetics freely. Cecil Beaton likened
her cheeks to ‘huge acid pink peonies’, adding that ‘her eyelashes are
built out with hot liquid paint to look like burnt matches, and her sullen,
discontented rather evil rosebud of a mouth is painted the brightest
scarlet and is as shiny as Tiptree’s strawberry jam’.29
Bankhead quoted this description in her autobiography, but left
out the words ‘rather evil’.30 Greta Garbo, playing the part of the siren
Felicitas in Flesh and the Devil (1926), touched up her lipstick in church
15
Index
Page references to pictures are given in bold italics
Abrams, Mark, 114
Acts of Parliament: Abortion Law Reform
Act 1967, 122, 134; Equal Pay Act 1970,
135; Sexual Discrimination Act 1975,
135
advertising, 2, 10, 32, 39, 135; and social
deference, 93; cosmetics, 4, 42, 65, 103;
cosmetic surgery, 144-5; exploitation
by, 166; mink, 38; perfumes, 44-5, 105;
shifts in, 151-3
Alexander, Sally, 55
Angeloglou, Maggie, 64
animal rights: Animal Liberation Front, 140;
Lynx, 140; Our Animal Brothers, 25;
Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals), 140; see also birds,
threatened
animal skins: bear-skin, 46; leopard-skin, 35;
tiger-skin, 11, 31, 45-6, 101, 134
Arden, Elizabeth (Florence Graham), 17,
19, 29, 42, 85, 87, 93; Ardena Orange
Skin Food, 17; Ardena Skin Tonic, 17;
rivalry with Rubinstein, 17; sanctuary,
38-9; Velva Cream, 17; Venetian creams,
17
Ayer, Harriet Hubbard, 17
austerity: in financial crisis, 5; interwar, 29;
postwar, 2, 3; wartime, 62
Bartky, Sandra Lee, 159
Basinger, Janine, 73
Beaton, Cecil, photographer and designer,
10, 15, 43, 105
beauty: as pornography, 156; differs from
glamour, 45; ‘fashion-beauty complex’,
159; in economic depression, 29;
parlours, 131, 160; standards of, 41, 167
beauty competitions: bathing beauties, 41;
Miss America and disruption, 123,
159; Miss Black Britain, 129, 167; Miss
Jamaica, 130; Miss World contest and
disruption of, 4, 123, 130
Berger, John, 2, 156
Bernhardt, Sarah, 10
Biba boutique, 111, 125-6; Angry Brigade,
128; bombing of, 128; Turner, Alwyn,
128
birds, threatened: campaigns against,
21, 25; Hudson, Revd, 21; marketed,
21; slaughter for hat feathers, 21;
smuggled, 34; types: birds of paradise,
21, 33, 34; egrets, 21-3; humming-birds,
21; kingfishers, 21
Black, Paula, 160
Blakely, David, 101
‘bling’, 147
bodies: and feminism, 157; and swimming,
41; changing shapes, 14, 38; Collins,
Joan, 142; Conley, Rosemary, 142;
Glamour
curves, 38, 44, 134, 142, 160; diets, 17,
38, 142, 159; dysmorphia, 2, 143, 144;
eating disorders, 2, 143, 159; exercise,
17, 38, 142, 160; fitness, cult of, 142;
Fonda, Jane, 14; Marmola tablets, 39;
obesity, 143, 144, 159; older women,
142, 143; ‘physical culturists’, 38;
salons, 38-9; skincare, 17; slimness, 38,
84, 143, 159; slimming plans, 38-41, 85;
Stephanie Bowman Slimming Garment,
85; waist sizes, 83; see also women
boots, see shoes
Bourdieu, P., 157
Brighton, 59, 64, 112-13
Bristol University, 113
Buckley, Reka, 162
Burke, Thomas, 72
Buszek, Maria Elena, 91
Campbell, Beatrix, 148
Campbell, Colin, 156-7
Cannadine, David, 95
Carnaby Street, London, 4, 113
Carrington, Edith, 25
cars with glamour: fast cars, 10, 14, 147;
females as drivers, 13, 14, 164; Daimler,
98; Hispano-Suiza, 14; Lancia, 35
Chanel: jewellery designer, 87; perfume
house, 5-6, 21, 45, 68, 70
Chapkis, Wendy, 158
‘cheesecake’, 3, 79, 90-2, 107
Chernin, Kim, 143
Chitty, Susan, 97
cinema, designs of, 51; see film (etc.);
glamour
class, social, 3-4, 43, 55, 74-5, 81, 83, 90,
93, 97-8, 103, 166; and ‘breeding’, 3;
and race, 82; Britain 1950s, 55, 109,
110; cinema-going, 49-51; housing,
86; incomes, 2; norms of, 3; poverty,
166; reading habits, 153; snobbery,
112; social deference, 93, 164; social
exclusivity, 112; social mobility, 47, 163,
164, 165
Clayton, Lucie, 95-6
clothes, see dress
Co-operative movement, 2
Cohen, Lisa, 105
consumerism: 2, 121, 135, 156-7, 159;
as pleasure, 134; conspicuous
consumption, 145
contraception, 122, 134-5
cosmetic surgery, 41, 143-5, 158; as ‘feminist
practice’, 2, 161; facelifts, 143;
makeovers, 41, 43; Noël, Suzanne, 161
cosmetics, 15-19, 29, 41-3, 64-5, 68, 74-
224
5, 89, 102-3, 118, 125-6, 138, 152-3;
‘anti-ageing’ creams, 2, 160; colours
of, 79; film stars, 41-2; grunge, 146;
lip gloss, 42; lipsticks, 15-17, 64-5, 67,
79, 104, 118, 153; make-up counters,
64; mascara, 42; nail varnish, 64, 68,
96, 107, 138, 146; opposition from
moralists, 19, 67-8; Ponedel, Dorothy,
42; rouge, 64.; Sforzia, Tony, 74
cosmetics, brand names: Aveda, 125;
Bonkers eye make-up, 118; Clinique,
125; Gladys Cooper’s Face Powder,
64; Guitare lipstick, 153; Hard Candy,
146; Jelly Babies, 118; L’Aimant, 87;
Leichner, 42; Luxuria face-cream,
17; Max Factor Pancake, 42-3, 64;
Outdoor Girl, 118; Pond’s vanishing
cream, 64; Shalimar Complexion
Creams (Dubarry), 21; Snowfire
vanishing cream and face powder, 63,
152; Starkers foundation, 118; Tangee
lipstick, 63; Tattoo lipstick, 67; Tetlow’s
Swan Down Petal Lotion, 152; Tokalon
Black Lipstick, 153; Urban Decay, 146;
see also Arden; Rubinstein
cosmetics designers and suppliers: Body
Shop, 125; Estee Lauder, 125, 141, 143;
Gala, 89; Max Factor, 42-3, 64, 118;
Quant, Mary, 118; Recamier and Co,
17; Revlon, 103, 104, 118, 141; Revson,
Charles, 103; Roddick, Anita, 113;
Stillwell and Gladding, 17; Westmore,
House of, 42, 43; see also Arden; Coty;
Rubinstein
Coty, perfumes and cosmetics, 70, 71, 87,
105
Coward, Rosalind, 157
‘Crawfie’ (Marion Crawford), 96
Crawford, Carol Joan, 130
Curzon, Lord, 12
dance: Ballet Russe, 14; Berkeley, Busby,
41, 128; lunchtime dancing, 113; teadances, 113
Davis, Kathy, 145, 161
De Beauvoir, Simone, 122-3
De Wolfe, Elsie (Lady Mendl), 44
debutantes, 109-10
Demeulemester, Ann, 147
dentistry makeovers, 41
deodorants: and perspiration, 97; vaginal,
135; see also perfumes and scents
department stores, 59, 64, 87, 140, 166; D.H.
Evans, 79; Debenham and Freebody,
59, 87, 140; Derry and Toms, 128;
Harrods, 146; Harvey Nichols, 140-1,
Index
146; Lewis’s, Birmingham, 58; Marshall
and Snelgrove, 59, 112; Selfridges, 146;
Woolworth’s chain store, 64, 70, 76
Deslys, Gaby, 10-11
diamonds, see jewellery
diets, see bodies
Dior, Christian, 95, 110; jewellery, 87; New
Look, 81, 83, 85-7, 90, 96; perfumes,
104, 141
Docker, Sir Bernard, 98
Docker, Lady Norah, 98, 99, 164
dress designers: Alaïa, Azzedine, 136; Ashley,
Laura, 124; Balenciaga, 88; Bakst,
Leon, 14; Beaton, Cecil, 105; Darnell,
Douglas, 131; Dolce and Gabbana, 141,
162; Edelstein, Victor, 149; Emanuel,
David, 148; Emanuel, Elizabeth, 148;
Fath, Jacques, 87; Gaultier, Jean-Paul,
4, 150; Givenchy, 114; Griffe, Jacques,
114; Hartnell, Norman, 10, 86, 95;
Head, Edith, 33; Hogg of Hawick, 117;
Hulanicki, Barbara, 107, 111-13, 120,
126, 128; Jean Louis, 108; Kawakubo,
Rei, 147; Klein, Calvin, 146; Krizia,
137; ‘Lucile’ (Lady Duff Gordon), 11;
Marchioness velvets, 116; Miller, Nolan,
136; Miyake, Issey, 147; Molyneux,
79; Muir, Jean, 140; Oldfield, Bruce,
149; Poiret, Paul, 14; Quant, Mary,
113, 121, 126; Rech, Georges, 139;
Schiaparelli, 37; Stambolian, Christina,
149; Valentino, 138; Versace, Gianni,
4, 138, 149, 162; Vionnet, Madeleine,
14; Walker, Catherine, 149; Westwood,
Vivienne, 146; see also Dior, Christian
dress history, 6
dress stores: chain stores, 118; D.H. Evans,
79; Fenwicks, 68; Jaeger, 70
dress style: and feminism, 123, 134;
androgynous, 46, 136-9, 150; as
rebellion, 55; beachwear, 41, 107;
beatnik, 113; beads, 55, 88; bias-cut, 14,
38, 39; comfortable, 102, 143; ‘Cosmo
girl’, 133-4, 136, 141; dolly birds, 4;
fitting, 38; flapper, 12, 14; ‘flash’, 143;
flower children, 4; for working out, 142;
from patterns, 52, 55, 58; ‘froufrou’,
103; gloves, 87, 93; home produced, 55,
154; kimonos, 14; ‘kinderwhore’ look,
146; leather, 141; materials, 38, 41, 55,
87; ‘Mrs Exeter’, 102; New Look, 81,
83, 85-7, 90, 96; power dressing, 136-8,
139; pre-Raphaelite, 124; punk, 146;
pyjamas, 15, 55; scarves, 79; shoulder
padding, 137, 138; ‘slinky’ 38, 39,
47, 55; stockings, 40, 93; street, 114;
structural supports for, 38; swimming
costumes, 41; ‘tarty’, 90; trouser suits,
136; underwear, 14, 37, 38, 41, 55, 79,
81, 82, 113, 123; uniforms, 79; Utility,
64, 88; see also feathers; fur; millinery;
shoes
dressing tables, 45, 86, 113
eating disorders, see bodies
Ellis, Ruth, 101
England, Carmen, 129
ethnicity, see racial and ethnic issues
Faludi, Susan, 144-5, 158
fashion, 2; and feminism, 162; different
from glamour, 3; ‘fashion–beauty
complex’, 159; impact of glamour on
popular fashion, 52; shows, 138; see also
glamour
feathers, 10, 21-3, 33-5; as camp, 33; as
exotic, 34; black coq, 34, 35, 44;
marabou, 23, 44; ostrich, 23, 34, 131;
peacock, 33; swan, 35; seductive power
of, 33; see also birds, threatened
femininity: and exercise, 142; and flowers,
43; of models, 116; contradictions of,
102-3, 144-5; versus androgyny, 142; see
also bodies; glamour; women
feminism: and adornment, 122-3, 144, 160;
and beauty contests, 4, 123, 129, 130;
and capitalism, 156; and glamour, 4;
backlash in 1980s, 144; pragmatic, 134;
puritanical elements in, 160; radicalism
of, 135; second wave, 122-3, 133, 144,
157
film: and leisure, 51; Bollywood, 167;
British, 15; creating dissatisfaction,
51-2; daydreaming in, 51; Hays Code,
49, 163; Hollywood, 1, 3, 10, 11, 12, 28,
29-47, 49, 52, 65, 72-4, 77, 90, 142, 150,
152, 162; morality bans of, 46, 49; social
stability effect, 51; star system, 47; style
influence, 58; transgression in, 163;
women’s opportunities, 13
film actors: Cooper, Gary, 44; Gilbert, John,
33; Harvey, Laurence, 134; Hope, Bob,
123; Navarro, Ramon, 152; Valentino,
Rudolph, 12, 19
film actresses: Ames, Adrienne, 54; Baker,
Carroll, 114; Bankhead, Tallulah,
15, 37; Bara, Theda, 19, 33; Bardot,
Brigitte, 107, 112, 125; Bow, Clara,
12-13, 17, 47; Brooks, Louise, 13-14;
Cardinale, Claudia, 107; Carroll,
Madeleine, 38, 39, 65, 66; Collins, Joan,
106, 136, 142; Crawford, Joan, 13, 17,
225
Glamour
30, 37, 41-2, 47, 58, 73, 77; Davis, Bette,
42, 47, 73; Dietrich, Marlene, 10, 30-2,
34, 35, 37-8, 41-2, 44, 46, 67, 78, 90, 163;
Dors, Diana (Diana Fluck), 100, 101,
164; Dunne, Irene, 37; Durbin, Deanna,
58, 72; Farrow, Mia, 138; Fields, Gracie,
73; Fonda, Jane, 142; Francis, Kay, 58;
Garbo, Greta, 14, 15-16, 30, 34, 37,
41, 43-4, 46, 58, 72; Gardner, Ava, 108,
113; Garland, Judy, 42; Gish, Lilian,
13, 43, 52; Grable, Betty, 91; Grahame,
Gloria, 108; Hack, Shelley, 141; Harlow,
Jean, 30 46, 163; Harris, Theresa, 46;
Hayworth, Rita, 10, 93, 95, 108, 113;
Hepburn, Audrey 93, 107; Hepburn,
Katherine, 73; ‘It’ girls, 12, 38, 65; Kelly,
Grace, 90, 93, 111; Lamarr, Hedy, 33,
43; Lamour, Dorothy, 91; Lawrence,
Gertrude, 37, 45; Lollobrigida, Gina,
107; Lombard, Carole, 30, 37, 43,
57; Loren, Sophia, 107; Mangano,
Silvana, 107; Mansfield, Jayne, 164;
Maguire, Dorothy, 91; Matthews, Jessie,
73; Mitchell, Yvonne, 102; Monroe,
Marilyn, 32, 85, 92, 95, 107-8, 150;
Morice, Annick, 112; Murray, Mae,
33, 44; Naldi, Nita, 12; Negri, Pola,
12; Pickford, Mary, 13, 43, 52; Rogers,
Ginger, 31, 58, 73; Sabrina (Norma
Sykes), 99, 164; Shearer, Norma, 31;
Stanwyck, Barbara, 46, 163; Sullavan,
Margaret, 58; Swanson, Gloria, 12, 17,
31, 35, 41, 46, 168; Taylor, Mary, 59;
Thaxter, Phyllis, 58; Turner, Lana, 45,
58; van Doren, Mamie, 108; West, Mae,
33, 38, 42, 44, 46, 126, 150; Young,
Loretta, 37
film costumiers: Adrian, 30, 37, 38; Banton,
Travis, 31, 35, 37, 47, 57; Travilla,
William, 32
film directors, etc.: Berkeley, Busby, 41,
128; Cukor, George, 107; De Mille,
Cecil B., 33; Fellini, Federico, 126;
Goldwyn, Sam, 12, 74; Hays, Will H.,
49; Hitchcock, Alfred, 39; Thompson, J.
Lee, 102; von Sternberg, Josef, 35; von
Stroheim, Erich, 33; Zukor, Adolph, 37
film studios: Elstree, 52; MGM, 30, 42;
Paramount, 37, 42, 43, 59; Walt Disney,
68, 93; Warner Brothers, 46, 163
Finklestein, Joanne, 157
flowers, 3, 43-4; American Beauty rose,
43; and femininity, 43; exotics, 43;
gardenias, 44; hyacinths, 78; lily, 35, 44;
orchids, 43-4; peonies, 15; roses, 44, 87;
see also perfumes and scents
Freedman, Rita, 158
226
Friedan, Betty, 122-3
Fromenti, artist, 89
fur, 23, 25-7, 35-8, 58-64, 88-9, 119-20,
138, 140; advertising of, 38, 59; and
feminism, 123; auctions of, 37; baby
seal, 62; Blackglama mink, 138; catfur, 62; cheaper pelts, 23-4, 59-62, 89;
chinchilla, 10; demand for, 23, 37, 59,
62, 89, 138-40; fake 89, 138; farming,
59, 89; mistresses, 119; fox, 37, 41, 59,
60, 88; for fur bikini, 101; fur coat,
23, 35-7, 36, 61, 62, 119, 140, 143; fur
collar, 36, 37, 59; fur muff, 37; fur ties,
60; gorilla, 37; marmot, 61; mink, 37-8,
62, 88, 89, 98, 101, 119, 140; mole, 59;
monkey, 37; musquash, 25, 61; ocelot,
88; opossum, 62; paws and tails, 24,
25, 37; rabbit (coney), 59, 62, 89, 101;
retailers, 59; Russian lamb, 62; sable,
23, 37, 104, 140; squirrel, 61, 62; Utility,
64; wallaby, 62; see also animal rights;
animal skins
fur breeders and trappers: Hudson’s Bay
Company, 25; location of, 59; number
in UK, 59; raided farms, 140
fur trade magazines: 23, 37, 59, 60-1, 203-4
furriers and fur stores: Bradley’s, 88;
Imperial Fur Traders, 59, 60-1; J.G.
Links, 88-9, 119; Maxwell Croft, 138;
Revillon Frères, 25, 26-7, 28, 62, 140;
Samuel Soden, 62; Ste Grunwaldt, 36;
Swears and Wells, 62
Gabor, Mark, 92
Gabor, Zsa Zsa, 99
Gardner, Joan, 65
gender: confusions in, 4, 135; differences in
dress, 166; inequities by, 163; norms of,
3; politics, 25; social changes, 164-5
Giddens, Anthony, 157
‘glamazon’, 137, 138
glamour (where not accounted for under
other headings): and beauty, 1, 45; and
cinema, 1, 30, 47; and escape, 167; and
fashion, 1-3, 29; and femininity, 1-2,
28, 45; and feminism, 2, 4; and magic,
1, 6, 9; and modernity, 162; and new
technologies, 9­-10, 162; and personality,
45, 65, 66; and patriarchy, 162; and
sexuality, 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, 46; and smoking,
14, 21; and travel, 28; androgyny of,
14, 46, 141, 150; as artifice, 1, 41, 101,
156; as aspiration, 3, 47, 163, 167; as
defiance, 67; as envy, 2, 47; as exotic,
9, 21, 28, 162-3, 167; as fantasy, 162;
as imperative, 155; as imprisonment,
Index
155; as luxury, 3, 45, 46; as nostalgia,
162; as perilous, 9; as pornography,
158; as power, 3; as provocation, 67; as
transgressive, 3, 10, 14, 167; defined,
6, 29; democratisation of, 5, 156, 167;
early meanings, 1, 9, 152, 156; feminine
style, 21; ‘glam rock’, 4; in and out of
fashion, 4, 28, 101; in demi-monde,
10; in men, 1, 10; in unequal society,
3, 4, 23; industries of, 166; name of
racehorse, 5; Orientalism, 9, 11, 14,
21, 28, 44, 167; racial differences of
meaning, 131; versus ‘breeding’, 46-7;
versus ‘daintiness’, 3, 72, 75; versus
‘elegance’, 101
Glendinning, Victoria, 120
Glyn, Clayton, 11
Glyn, Elinor, 11-12, 65
Graves, Robert, 17
Great Lakes Mink Association, 37-8
Greer, Germaine, 122-4
Gross, Michael, 104
Gundle, Stephen, 141, 162
hair: Afro-Caribbean salons, 129, 131;
‘Amami night’, 76; Antoine, 166;
Burden, Betty, 86; colours and tints, 10,
64, 142; curling, 64, 78; eyebrows, 64,
78; ‘glamour bands’, 79; hairdressers,
44, 86; perms, 65; styles, 14, 36, 58, 76,
142, 166; tiaras, 93; treatments, 17, 58
Hale, Sonnie, 73
Hammerton, Jenny, 13
Harper, Sue, 101
Harrisson, Tom, 77-8
hats, see millinery
Hauser, Gaylord, 38
Hayman, Fred and Gayle, 141
Hodge, Alan, 17
Hoggart, Richard, 91-2, 154
holidays abroad, 107, 164
Hollander, Anne, 30
Hollywood, see film
Horwood, Catherine, 74
Hulanicki, Barbara, see Biba; dress designers
Hutton, Barbara, 42
Internet, bringing ‘celebrity’, 147
Ironside, Janey, 78
Irvine, Susan, 141
‘Jane’ cartoon, 92
Jenkinson, A.J., 153
Jephcott, Pearl, 153
jewellery, 31-2, 87-9, 122; and vulgarity, 8990; as narcissistic, 122, 159-60; ‘bling’,
147; bracelets, 87; brooches, 87, 89;
diamonds, 10, 29, 31-3, 93, 99, 122,
131, 147, 158; earrings, 10, 87, 89, 113;
emeralds, 32; engagement rings, 32, 93,
122, 158; jet, 44; junk, 47; necklaces,
33, 87; pearls, 32, 35, 79, 86, 87; showy,
87, 138
jewellery, designers and jewellers: Asprey,
138; Bulgari, 138; Cartier, 138; Chanel,
87; Chaumet, 138; De Beers, 32, 122;
Dior, 87; Fath, Jacques, 87; Maer,
Mitchell, 87; Mann, Adrian, 87; Trifari,
87; Winston, Harry, 32
Jewesses, see racial and ethnic issues
Jones, Claudia, 129-30, 131, 167
Jong, Erica, 124
journalists and editors, 83; Bashir, Martin,
149; Boycott, Rosie, 156; Brown, Helen
Gurley, 121, 134; Carr, Diana, 152;
Cleave, Maureen, 111; Cleland, Jean,
70; Dark, Marion, 152; Dimbleby,
Jonathan, 149; Durbar, Leslie, 89;
Garland, Ailsa, 77, 83; Garland, Madge,
83, 105, 120; Grieve, Mary, 2; Hobson,
Violet, 52; Hutton, Deborah, 141;
Kurtz, Irma, 135; MacDowell, Colin, 33,
35, 95; Mansfield, Nigel, 152; Marchant,
Hilde, 86; McSharry, Deirdre, 134;
Miller, Beatrix, 140; Morton, Andrew,
149; Nast, Condé, 151, 154-5; Price,
Evadne, 152; Pringle, Alexandra, 120;
Settle, Alison, 68, 74, 83, 85-9, 105, 112,
114, 138; Tynan, Kenneth, 46; Vincent,
Sally, 135; Vreeland, Diana, 31, 33, 107;
White, Antonia, 42; Winn, Godfrey, 75;
Wintour, Anna, 140
Keeler, Christine, 119
Kings Road, Chelsea, 113
Kuhn, Annette, 47, 58, 73
Lakoff, R., 158
Langham Life Assurance Company, 135
Laye, Evelyn, 73
Lee, Jennie, 15
lipstick, see cosmetics
Lloyds of London, 91
Love, Courtney, 146
MacCarthy, Fiona, 110, 112
magazines: Boyfriend, 121; celebrity, 147;
cinema, 52-8; Condé Nast, 151, 154-5;
Cosmopolitan, 4, 133-6; Country Life, 95;
discourse of, 5; Esquire, 91-2; Eve’s Film
Review, 13, 15, 59; Flair, 115, 116-17,
121; feminine stereotypes in, 70-2; for
227
Glamour
men, 91-2; for women, 3; free gifts, 151;
‘girlie’, 91; Glamour(s), 142, 151, 154-5;
Glamour and Peg’s Paper, 89; Heat, 147;
Hello!, 147; Home Chat, 64; Honey, 122;
Life, 91; Marilyn, 89, 115; Mirabelle, 115,
151; Miss Modern, 5, 39, 65, 66, 75, 79,
164; Modern Home (etc.), 5; Nova, 115;
Now, 147; OK!, 147; Petticoat, 115, 121;
Picture Post, 42-3, 67, 74, 79, 86, 91, 96,
101, 106, 112; Playboy, 92; pop culture,
115; Poppet, 115; Pride, 167; Punch,
21; romantic fiction, 152-3; Romeo,
115; Roxy, 115; Spare Rib, 133-4, 156;
Valentine, 115; Vanity Fair, 93; Vogue, 36,
74, 77, 83, 89, 102, 105, 118, 136, 137,
138, 139, 140-1, 143, 146; Woman, 2;
Woman and Beauty, 101; Woman’s Own,
81, 85, 90, 94, 96; see also journalists and
editors
magazines, cinema ‘fan’: adverts in, 52;
advice on home fashion, 52; cheapness,
52; Film Fashionland, 52, 54, 55-8, 567; Girl’s Cinema, 52, 53, 55; higher
standards in 1930s, 55; love scenes,
52, 53; pattern services, 52, 55, 58;
Picturegoer, 52, 55, 100, 113; Women’s
Filmfair, 52, 55, 65
Mailer, Norman, 124, 128
Malone, Annie Turnbo, 17
March, Iris, 87
marriage: age of, 115, 121; and class, 78; and
cosmetics, 67; as a trap, 110; broken,
11-12, 73, 94; divorce, 165; impact
of war, 164; living together before,
122; multiple, 99; rates of, 165; social
betterment through, 105; to royalty, 93,
95; versus mistresses, 119
Mass Observation, 62, 68, 76-7, 79, 83, 85,
97, 142, 166
Max Factor cosmetics, 42-3, 64; perfumes,
118; marketing, 118
Mayer, J.P., 51, 58, 72
Mensing, Joachim, 141
Merriam, Eve, 85, 105, 118-20, 160
millinery, 21-3, 34, 58, 77-8; see also birds,
threatened
Miss World (etc.), see beauty competitions
models: ‘supermodels’, 138; Campbell,
Naomi, 140; Campbell-Walter, Fiona,
93, 95; Crawford, Cindy, 140; Dawnay,
Jean, 95; Dovima, 93; Goalen, Barbara,
3, 93, 94, 114; Hack, Shelley, 141; Leigh,
Dorian, 104; Marshall, Cherry (Miss
Susan Small), 83, 84, 96-7; McNeil,
Jane, 95; Moss, Kate, 145; Pugh,
Bronwen, 95; Shrimpton, Jean, 4,
228
116-17, 118; Stone, Paulene, 134;
Twiggy (Lesley Hornby), 4, 118
Molloy, J.T., 136
Moseley, Rachel, 93
Mulvagh, Jane, 87
museums (etc.): Brighton and Hove
Museum and Art Gallery, 64; British
Library, 5; Imperial War Museum, 67;
Newcastle Public Library, perfumes
exhibition, 6; Worthing Museum,
costumes, 55, 89
musicians: Baker, Josephine, 34, 131; Bassey,
Shirley, 127, 131; Beyoncé, 147; Black,
Cilla, 122; Bolan, Marc, 4; Bowie,
David, 4, 128; Brown, Foxy, 147; Cogan,
Alma, 103, 113, 120; Como, Perry, 115;
Cooper, Alice, 4; country and western,
131; grunge, 146; Hall, Adelaide, 34,
131; heavy metal, 146; jazz, 13, 34,
68; John, Elton, 4; Jones, Gloria, 128;
Knight, Gladys, 128; Liberace, 128;
L’il Kim, 147; Lopez, Jennifer, 147;
Madonna, 4, 146, 148, 150; motown,
128; opera stars, 45; Parton, Dolly,
131; pop, 115; Presley, Elvis, 115;
Previn, André, 138; R&B, 147; rap, 147;
Ross, Diana, 128; Vaughan, Frankie,
115; Warwick, Dionne, 128; Wynette,
Tammy, 131
N.W. Ayer, advertisement agency, 32
NAACP (National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People), USA,
131
‘nose art’, on aeroplanes, 79, 91
Notting Hill Carnival, 129, 131
Orbach, Susie, 143
orientalism, 9, 11, 14, 19, 21, 28, 44, 154,
167
Parker-Bowles, Camilla, 149
Partridge, Eric, 162
patriarchy: and capitalism, 2, 124, 145,
159; and consumerism, 121; and false
consciousness, 124, 145; and glamour,
162; and women’s bodies, 144, 150; as
conspiracy, 144-5; women as victims,
144-5; see also class, social; feminism;
women
Pearson, C. Arthur, 151, 155
perfumes and scents, 6, 19, 21, 44-5, 70, 76,
86, 89, 104-5, 125, 141, 147; bottles, 6,
45, 118; inexpensive, 6, 19, 68; luxury,
44; oriental, 44; Victorian, 44; see also
deodorants
Index
perfumes, brand names: Angel, 146; Bal
à Versailles, 104; Black Rose, 68; Blue
Mink, 105; Bois des Iles, 6; Bouquet
d’Orient, 19; Brownie, 147; BubbleGum, 147; Californian Poppy, 68, 69;
Carnet de Bal, 104; Chanel No. 5, 6, 21,
45, 70; Charlie, 141; Chypre, 70, 71;
CK-1, 146; Clear Water, 147; Cuir de
Russie, 6, 21, 45; Dans La Nuit, 45;
Diorissimo, 104; Dirt, 147; Electrique,
118; Evening in Paris, 6, 70; Femme,
104; Gardenia, 6, 44, 70; Giorgio
Beverly Hills, 141; Glamour, 45, 68;
Goya No. 5, 104; Grass, 147; Hasu-noHana, 19; Hypnotique, 118; In Love,
86; Jaeger Bracken, 70; Jolie Madame,
104; Joy, 105; June Roses, 86; Madame
Rochas, 104; Mary Garden, 45; Mink
and Pearls, 105; Mischief, 70; Mitsouko,
19, 21; Narcisse Noir, 68; Nirvana, 19;
Opium, 131; Orchis, 68, 70; Pavots
d’Argent, 68; Phul-Nana, 18, 19, 105;
Pink Mink, 105; Poison, 131; Primitif,
118; Shalimar, 21, 141; Shem-el-Nessim,
19, 20; Shocking, 44, 68; Tabac Blond,
21; Tsang-Ihang, 19; Waffle-Cake, 147;
Wana-Ranee, 19, 22; White Mink, 89,
105; Yardley’s lavender water, 19; Youth
Dew, 131; Zenobia flower waters, 19
perfumes, creators and marketers,
parfumiers: Beaux, Ernest, 6, 21, 70;
Collins, Douglas, 70, 76, 104; Daltroff,
Ernest, 21
perfumes, houses and manufacturers:
Atkinson, 69; Balmain, 104; Boots the
Chemists, 19; Bourjois, 6, 70; Calvin
Klein, 146; Caron, 21; Chanel, 6, 21, 45,
68; Coty 70, 71, 105; Demeter, 146-7;
Desprez, 104; Dior, 104, 141; Dubarry
Perfume Company, 21; Estee Lauder,
141; Goya, 68, 70, 104; Grossmith, 18,
19, 20, 22; Guerlain, 19, 21, 68, 141;
Hartnell, 86; Hayman, 141; Jovan, 105;
Max Factor, 118; Mme Gerard et Cie
(Boots), 19; Morny, 86; Patou, 105;
Raphael, 105; Revillon, 104; Revlon,
141; Rigaud, 45; Rochas, 104; Roger
and Gallet, 68; Saville, 70; Schiaparelli,
44, 68; Steiner, 89, 105; Thierry Mugler,
146; Worth, 45; Yardley, 19, 68; Yves St
Laurent, 141; Zenobia, 19
Petty, George, illustrator, 91
photographers, 46; Bailey, David, 140;
Beaton, Cecil, 10, 15, 43, 105; Bishop,
John, 137; Bull, Clarence Sinclair, 30,
31, 46; French, John, 94; Hardy, Bert,
86, 111, 120; Hurrell, George, 30, 46,
92; Keeley, Tom, 92, 107; Roye, Horace,
91-2, 101; Straker, Jean, 92; Vieira,
Mark, 30
‘pin-ups’, 3, 79, 91-2, 107, 164
political leaders: Kai-Shek, Madame Chiang,
42; Kennedy, John F., 108; Rosebery,
Lord, 5; Stevenson, Adlai, 108;
Thatcher, Margaret, 135, 138
post-modernism: and identity, 150; and the
self, 161
princes and princesses: Aly Khan, 94;
Charles of Wales, 148; Diana (Spencer)
of Wales, 148-9; Evlonoff, Michael,
93; Galitzine, George, 95; GourielliTchkonia, Artchil, 93; Kelly, Grace, 90,
93, 111; Margaret Rose, 85, 96, 112;
Rainier, 90, 93
Rachman, Peter, 119
racial and ethnic issues: activism, 131; and
beauty, 145, 167; and class, 82; and
fashion, 77; and glamour, 167; and
smart clothes, 77, 113; attitudes to
Jews, 77; black performers and singers,
128-31; black/white differences over
‘glamour’, 131; colour, 129, 131,
167; Pride, 167; racism, 82, 154, 167;
‘westernisation’ of looks, 167; see
also beauty competitions; musicians;
orientalism
Radner, Hilary, 121
Rechelbacher, Horst, 125
Revillon Frères, furs and perfumes, 25, 28,
62, 104, 140
Rice-Davies, Mandy, 119
Rodaway, Angela, 64
royalty: 42, 44, 67-8, 85, 93-6, 104, 112, 1489, 164; influence on fashion, 77; Kent,
Duchess of, 77; King George V, 68;
Queen Elizabeth II, 95, 164; Windsor,
Duchess of, 42, 44, 104; Windsor, Duke
of, 67; see also princes and princesses
Rubinstein, Helena, 17-19, 42, 79, 93; rivalry
with Arden, 17, 19; Valaze skin-cream,
16, 17;
Russell, Lilian, 43
Sambourne, Linley, 21
sanitary protection, Holly-Pax, 74
Scherr, R., 158
scooters, 107
Scott, Lady Alice, 95
Scott, Linda, 161
Scott, Sir Walter, 9
Seebohm, Caroline, 155
229
Glamour
Segal, Lynne, 124
sexuality, 3; ambiguity, 120; and modernity,
14; and power, 3, 91, 107; and scents,
44; and sexual exchange, 99-101, 105,
119; coded, 4; girls, 107, 114, 120;
morality, double standards of, 150;
women, 12, 107, 123; see also patriarchy
shoes: as obsession, 2; ballerina, 112, 113;
court, 110, 112; Doc Martens, 146; high
heels, 38, 77, 113, 143, 159; platform
soles, 38; slippers, 77
shopping, 2, 111; see also Biba; department
stores; dress stores
Silverman, Deborah, 145
slimming, see bodies
social class, etc., see class, social
Sontag, Susan, 33
Spencer, D.A., 51
Spring-Rice, Margery, 166
Stacey, Jackie, 72-3
Stearns, Peter, 159
Steedman, Carolyn, 85
Steinem, Gloria, 124
Straker, Jean, ‘photonudes’, 92
Summerfield, Penny, 79
Swarovski crystals, 131
Sweeney, Margaret (later Argyll, Duchess
of), 79
swimming pools, 41
Tapert, Annette, 58
Taylor, Lou, 79
television: Askey, Arthur, 99; Charlie’s Angels,
141; Dallas, 4, 136; Dynasty, 4, 136; Ways
of Seeing, 156
Thorp, Margaret, 45
Tinne, Emily, 23, 74
University Women’s Club, 75
USA (United States of America):
comparative views on glamour, 3; Food
and Drug and Cosmetics Act, 41; fur
craze, 23; lifestyles in, 41
USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics),
68
Vargas y Chavez, Alberto, 91
Veblen, Thorstein, 156
Waley, H.D., 51
Walker, Madame C.J., 17
Walker, Marlene, 129
Wall Street crash 1929, 29
230
Walsh, Jane, 55
Wilson, Elizabeth, 79, 112, 120, 161
Winship, Janice, 75
Wolf, Naomi, 144-5, 158
women: aspirations of, 163-4; black
women, 129-30; careers, 13, 121, 164;
commodification, 123; education,
115, 133, 135, 144, 153, 164, 165;
employment, 2, 13, 29, 133, 135, 144,
163, 164; entrepreneurship, 11, 46;
freedom, 13; living standards, 2, 3;
migrant, 81; objectification of, 2, 4,
46; older, 76, 102, 142, 166; property
values, 165; savings, 135; spending
patterns, 2, 165-6; status, 163-5;
suffrage, 13; sunbathing and swimming,
15; targets for business, 2; violence
against, 158; Woman’s Who’s Who, 59;
see also class, social; feminism; gender;
marriage; racial and ethnic issues;
sexuality
Women’s League of Health and Beauty, 41
Woodhead, Lindy, 17
Worthing, 113; Museum, 55, 89
Wray, Elizabeth, 62, 77
writers of fiction: Arlen, Michael, 14, 87;
Braine, John, 105; Brittain, Vera, 55,
75; Carter, Angela, 67, 168; Cartland,
Barbara, 148; Farrère, Claude, 19;
Fitzgerald, Scott, 13; Ginsberg, Steve,
141; Glyn, Elinor, 11-12, 65; Holtby,
Winifred, 55; Hutchinson, A.S.M., 13;
Loos, Anita, 32; MacInnes, Colin, 113,
115; Mansfield, Katherine, 75; Mitford,
Nancy, 113; Nabokov, Vladimir, 114;
Orwell, George, 72; Priestley, J.B.,
72; Tennant, Emma, 110; Waugh,
Evelyn, 13, 59; Weldon, Fay, 144-5;
West, Rebecca, 120; Wilde, Oscar,
157; Williams, Tennessee, 114; Woolf,
Virginia, 75; Worthing, Temple, 50
Wyndham, Joan, 64
youth: assertiveness, 114; ‘beat girl’,
117; emphasis on in 1960s, 164;
employment, 121; restrictions on, 115;
‘youthquake’, 4, 114