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Weekend Reading: Self-care, disney, and Tim Gunn’s vocabulary lessons

paperwhites

Every winter, I buy paperwhite bulbs in bulk and force them indoors. They’re such a pretty treat and a little reminder of spring as things turn bare and stark outside. These guys are currently sitting on our big work table and perfuming the studio.

What are your winter self-care rituals?

Weekend Reading:

For more links every week, you can follow me on Twitter, where I’m always posting interesting tidbits I find.

image above via colettepatterns on instagram

Sarai Mitnick

Founder

Sarai started Colette back in 2009. She believes the primary role of a business should be to help people. She loves good books, sewing with wool, her charming cats, working in her garden, and eating salsa.

Comments

Ellen

December 12, 2014 #

Got to love Tim Gunn. At least he utilizes an extensive, and expressive, vocabulary. As for the Walt Disney article, in many ways he represents the attitudes of the times.

No real suggestions for the blog, I always find something to interest me.

Sarai

December 12, 2014 #

Perhaps, but Disney also helped formed the attitudes of the times. It’s really difficult to separate those things in retrospect.

Betty Jordan Wester

December 12, 2014 #

Retta Scott was a Disney animator and the mighty Mary Blair was a concept artists that shaped the look of many Disney films as well the Small World ride. Blair is now somewhat well known, but Scott is still underappeciated- I have a beautiful Cinderella Golden Book illustrated for her.

Yes, past Disney Princesses were humorless, but so were the Princes. Snow White’s Prince? Anyone? Those filmes followed Hollywood storytelling conventions with “straight men”- non comedy leads (male and female) and supporting comic relief. Interesting, Sleeping Beauty was Disney’s attempt to give a Prince more personality, although Aurora is written a little on the bland side. The film was a huge financial disappointment & buried the animated Disney fairy tale until The Little Mermaid, which began the trend of giving it’s leads a more varied personality. Am I the only one who finds Ariel funny? ;)

I think it’s more productive to look at what the company is doing now in terms of representation & hiring practices, which can always use improvement.

Sarai

December 12, 2014 #

Really, the sleeping beauty prince was supposed to have more personality? That’s so funny, I barely remember a thing about that character!

Betty Jordan Wester

December 12, 2014 #

haha, yeah, he actually has a lot of lines & charater development. Nothing like what a modern audience is used to, but he defies his father, refuses to marry his betrothed, Princess Aurora bc he wants to marry the peasant girl, Briar Rose (oh the irony!), gets captured by Malificent, is rescued by the Fairies, & eventually battles Mal as a dragon.
Unfortunately Aurora gets the shaft a bit as a character. She does have some epic crying jags over the realization that she’s going to marry someone she doesn’t love. There’s an undercurrent that Aurora must fulfill her duty over her heart desires that echos “Roman Holiday.” In fact, Audrey Hepburn in both Roman Holiday & Sabrina was the original inspiration for Disney’s Princess Aurora, before she was redesigned with sharper features to match the amazing backgrounds by Eyvind Earle.

Eleanor

December 12, 2014 #

The Disney article was interesting, but I wonder if we can blame people for not being ahead of their time? Of course it would be great if everyone was forward thinking, but the fact that Walt Disney lived when he did shaped his way of thinking. Who knows what people will think of us in 70 years?

As far as the blog is concerned, I love it when you highlight what sewers have made with your patterns. It’s always so inspiring! And especially if it’s an older pattern.

Betty Jordan Wester

December 12, 2014 #

Exactly. I’m always wildly excited when I discover people, movies, & books from the past that aren’t sexist. But even my Grandmother who was incredibly progressive still embraced the common domestic ideal of a woman not working once she got married. For her and her peers, if a woman HAD to work outside the home it meant she married unwisely or was unlucky enough to have a husband who was injured or deceased.

Films of the past reflected common ideals and in doing so enforced them. And bc a film was expensive to mount, studios tended to not blaze new trails unless they had a very good financial reason to take a risk.

Donna

December 15, 2014 #

Yes! Even decades later, when I was looking at colleges, I got a similar response from a professor. He asked what I planned to do after college, and after listening to my plans, he said, “That sounds good. Just don’t get married and spoil it.”

Today’s Wall Street Journal (or was it the weekend edition?) even had an article about gender in the workplace – saying that it’s the men that need to be trained, more than the women. As the “privileged” sex, they don’t realize things the underprivileged see/feel in work situations. The example was when a man walks into a room he expects respect right off the bat, while women walk in trying to figure out how to earn it.

Isaboe Renoir

December 12, 2014 #

I don’t understand why they don’t understand Mr. Gunn… I found him perfectly comprehensible and didn’t find any of his words to be antiquated or moribund, or indeed even out of context. I in fact found his usage of language to be delightfully mellifluous and I wish others would make such capacious use of our wonderfully nuanced language.

Sarai

December 12, 2014 #

Ha!

Mary

December 14, 2014 #

Have you read; Gertrude the Governess, or Nonsense Novels, perhaps you’d enjoy, The Importance of being Earnest.

Since you enjoy toying with the English language… You might also enjoy Stephen Leacock’s take on fashions. It is a short satirical work, written around 80 years ago that will still make any seamstress/tailor laugh out loud. Short excerpt below. Enjoy.

My Pink Suit.
The buttons are in a large size mother-of-pearl and are carried in a bold line edge ways from the shoulder to the waist with two more buttons larger still, at the place where the back in dips above the hips.
Everybody agrees the buttons are very bold, but they thought the buttons would be quieter on the street than in the house.

Ana

December 12, 2014 #

Thanks so much for sharing my little project, Sarai. (Great list of links too!)

Emileigh

December 15, 2014 #

I love Tim Gunn’s word choices! I do sometimes wish the definitions would appear onscreen like in the video, though. It would sure help me in learning more vocab!

I like the idea of that art made of tailoring patterns, but it looks like the artist is using the original patterns, not copies. Not so sure what I think of that…