Mon-dandy amusement

A couple of weeks ago Jessica over at Chronically Vintage did a post that featured the seemingly highly diverting online tool, the Deluxe Pin Up Maker, producing a pretty caricature of herself.  Then on Friday just gone Porcelina, inspired by the same post, created her own pin-up persona using the same site.

Always quick to spot an emerging trend (!), it occurred to me that there should be something similar for us chaps (and that if there wasn't, there blasted well ought to be!).  As it happens someone did indeed have the same idea for the gentlemen, in the form of the Dandy Maker.  Not wishing to feel left out and with the thought of addressing the balance for the boys, I immediately took it upon myself to create a dandy in... something approaching my own image (within the constraints of the configurator, at any rate).

This is the result:

Hat - check. 
Glasses - close enough.
Features - a damn sight more handsome than in real life.
Collar - should be turned down, of course.  What am I, some sort of scruff?!
Bow tie - quite right.
Waistcoat - aye, although I fancied a contrasting rather than matching blue - he is still a dandy, after all!
Jacket & trousers - spot on.
Shoes - I wish!  Co-respondents/spectators are on the list, of course...
Cane - hand looked a bit unnatural without anything in it, and I don't smoke.  Do have a walking stick, though.

There we have it, then.  It is possible to go overboard with the dandification of the model, something which I will probably spend a few idle minutes doing at some point again in the future, but it's all good fun for the odd quiet moment and quite variable considering the limits imposed.  Thanks to Jessica and Miss P for highlighting this jolly little feature - and who else will create a dandy or a pin-up, I wonder?

Saturday Evening Fervour

I say! Get down and boogie, what?! Now where are my Oxford bags...?



Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everyone.

And now... the weather

Britain's obsession with the weather: 60 per cent admit it's a 'social prop'  

As interesting and amusing vintage-inspired news items seem rather thin on the ground at the moment (I've said before that they can be like buses - none for ages then two or three come along at once) I thought I would post a link to an article about the next best thing - amusing and interesting British cultural traditions.

"It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm."

So wrote Samuel Johnson, the great author and lexicographer, in issue 11 of The Idler on Saturday 24th June 1758. Two hundred and fifty-two years later and it is funny, yet somehow reassuring, to see that nothing has changed. Many observers, both British and foreign, have since noted that we as a nation seem strangely obsessed with what the weather is doing. It has become something of an international joke that all we seem to talk about is the climate. Now thanks to the survey mentioned in the article, we can see that not only is it actually true, but also why we do it. Yes, we do it to be polite! What's the one safe topic of conversation that you can introduce at any level and with anyone you meet? Why, what the weather's like, of course! I do so love how these findings have sought to explain this curious little characteristic of British life and I hope it has given anyone from abroad reading this some insight into one of the many peculiar traits of the British people. So, what's the weather like where you are?