The Usual Grump

…about clothing, and the appropriate wearing thereof.  First, the plaudits.

I have always had an old-man crush on Anya Taylor-Joy, the chick from that chess movie, and her latest appearance did nothing to end that for me:

 

Best legs I’ve seen in quite a while, so why shouldn’t she show them off?

Her boyfriend, despite looking a little like a taller Frodo Baggins, was at least appropriately attired:

The same stylish and appropriate attire did not extend to some of the rest of the male(?) attendees.  The Skarsgård boy (Anya’s co-star in the movie) wore a tee shirt:

…while the editor of British Vogue  looked like a morning Tube commuter:

…and the whole thing went rapidly downhill from there:

 

This post has been brewing for a while, because a couple weeks ago at some other movie premiere / red carpet thing, we were treated to this horrifying nonsense:

 

Seriously?  At a formal evening event?

Compare the above with the 1940 Academy Awards banquet:

‘Nuff said.

Welcome Back

Several people have asked me to bring back Sunday’s “Classic Beauty” feature from the old website.

As all that content has lamentably been lost to the vagaries of Teh Intarwebz, this means that I’ll have to re-create the posts from scratch.

Which means hours and hours of looking at (mostly) B&W pics of gorgeous women of yore;  a job that is onerous, but which I will gladly undertake as a service to you, my Loyal Readers.

The first one, this Sunday, will start the ball rolling in no uncertain fashion.

Wallpaper

This is my current screen backdrop.  It’s the Scottish town of Inverary, with its castle in the foreground. (right-click to embiggen)

It will come as some surprise, perhaps, to learn that because of the whole hereditary thing, some childlessness and tangled family trees, the current (and next) Duke of Argyll is South African.

Scream Queen

I see with some regret that the exquisite Veronica Carlson, star in many a drive-in horror movie of my youth, passed away last week at, it should be said, a respectable age, of natural causes.

Who she?  you ask.  Let the camera do the talking:

She was unusual among actresses of her time, in that she steadfastly refused to appear naked in her movies — “often nude, always covered” as one critic wrote of her.

I don’t think she needed nudity to be sexy: