Life|Style|8
Downton’s flapper fashion The gowns of Downton Abbey are on display at Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight. Liverpool Life’s Megan Hill went down to the glamorous exhibition
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ownton Abbey fans are not just attracted to the unforgettable characters or poignant story-lines. The stunning costumes play a key part in the massive public obsession with the ITV period drama. We can’t help but find ourselves in awe of the pearls, beading, colours and materials. How Lady Edith Crawley’s dress hangs on her as she saunters around the manor house is top of our topic list in the office come Monday morning.
Viewers of the 20th century drama can now relive these days gone by somewhere other than their living room sofa as Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight is exhibiting some of the best costumes from the TV show until January 2015. ‘Style from the small screen’ will compare costumes from the screen with historic garments of the 19121923 period, including some from the National Museum Liverpool’s own collection named after Liverpool lady Mrs Tinne. Nicola Cunningham, exhibition officer for National Museums Liverpool, told Liverpool Life: “We wanted to marry the six costumes from our original collection up with the Downton Abbey costumes so you getting the feeling of fictional reality. So our visitors could really have a good look at the details and style of the dresses so you can see the differences and the comparisons between the two.” The garments worn by women over the last 100 years have been carefully altered, remod-
eled and embellished for the Sunday night drama. Among the costumes on display is a silk and velvet dress worn by Lavinia Swire in season two and a maternity dress worn by Lady Mary Crawley during season three. Provided by Cosprop, one of the world’s leading costumiers for TV and film, the company hoped to capture the period of time through their designs. Pauline Rushton, curator of costume and textiles for National Museum Liverpool, said: “We have never shown costume before at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, we have shown accessories from our own collection but we wanted to try it out in this space. “We know it will be popular because Downton is so popular and there has only been a couple of shows in the UK before so this is really exciting for us” Pauline added: “There are so many that I really like there is not one that is my favourite. “The one that has the edge is the beaded one which is fantasti-
cally ‘blingy’. It is really quite modern as well and definitely something that you can still wear today. Cosprop have them just right. It is very easy to think of the characters as well as soon as you see the dresses.”
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he post-World War One culture and society change can be seen in the apparel on display, it shows how fashion was reacting to the new world that the women were forced to live in. Dresses got looser as women began to follow more active lifestyles. A red embellished loose dress displayed was one of Lady Mary Crawley which was said to emphasize her place in society putting her in the forefront of the scene. She wore this dress in season two at the dramatic moment where she told Sir Richard Carlisle that they will not be married. Nicola said: “It’s just going into the 1920s now and fashion changing and women are
becoming empowered in terms of what they wear and the style that they wear it to express their political feelings and decisions moving forward.” Port Sunlight was the perfect venue for such an exquisite exhibition, she said. “With the Lady Lever Art Gallery itself, we
chose this gallery as it’s almost like a time capsule, in Port Sunlight it very much looks like that era and the building itself was completed in early ‘20s so it’s a perfect fit.” ‘Style from the small screen’ runs until 18th January 2015 and is free to visit.
STATELY: Highclere castle, the set of Dowton Abbey © Bas Sijpkes, Flickr
Are we losing our love for books? by JOSH KELSALL
COSY: Inside Reid of Liverpool © Josh Kelsall
With the ever-present rise of technology and innovation the humble book is coming increasingly under pressure from its much cooler and younger cousin, the eBook. The rise of the Kindle is threatening the future of the hard copy book industry. However, days like ‘Super Thursday’ mean the hard copies can come out fighting and show the new kids on the block that they are not ready to retire. Super Thursday is the name bestowed to the day that marks 300+ titles being released, which gives the book industry a much-needed boost and is the most successful day on the book calendar. This coincides with the hotly contested race for the Christmas No1 in the bestseller charts. Still an immensely popular Christmas present, autobiographies from celebrities such as John Cleese, Stephen Fry and Roy Keane were all released on Super Thursday last year. The industry is expected to generate an estimated £30m in the run up to the festive season. So it seems there is life in the old dog yet, local and second hand book shops are noticing an
increase in sales and custom this year after the sales of printed books fell by £98m the previous year. Gerald Fitzpatrick, owner of Reid of Liverpool on Mount Pleasant, which has been established since 1975 and holds over 40,000 titles, explained why he feels there is a new found excitement for the old fashioned way of doing things. He told Liverpool Life: “It’s starting to turn up a little bit, just a fraction, because it plummeted, it was on its knees for several years; it dropped right off the cliff face.” “My survival has come from being a novelty, people are seeing this a novelty.” He continued: “It’s an experience in the midst of everything going on out there, it becomes an escape. I’m not trying to sell anything as such, you can come in if you want or have a browse.” Whilst the Kindle is leading the way for the new school, Mr Fitzpatrick isn’t entirely convinced that they are the sole reason behind why things are changing. He said: “They’re a fabulous piece of technology, but it changed before the Kindle. People are accessing things in different ways now.” “People are spending less on things anyway
right across the board and books are one of the things that they spend less on. To attribute this specifically to Kindles or computers is a bit of red herring, it’s not the complete picture.” “We are straddling two worlds, the electronic world and the hard copy world. For kids growing up now this (books) will become something very different because of the way they will access their information.” “It’s a whole generation of kids that are growing up without books, they’re being stripped out of libraries and computers are becoming the norm. In 15-20 years’ time it will be par for the course.” Austin Seal, a regular at Reid’s, explained the romance that he feels that surrounds the unique experience of buying a book and visiting bookshops. Speaking to Liverpool Life he said: “As an inveterate book buyer since the age of 13, many moons ago, there’s nothing that beats coming into a book shop on a rainy day because the books smell is even stronger!” “You can just say ‘Yeah, I’m not going to do anything today but sit in a book shop and I might not even buy anything or I may even just browse’, it’s great!”