I Love Honey West and So Will You

OK I’m in an internet cafe and it smells vaguely of urine and looks like a cave, so i had better make it brief.

But seriously - am i the only person in the world who didn’t know about Honey West?

Costume Envy: Earth Girls Are Easy, 1989

I bet you didn’t see this one coming.

Here’s the scenario. The beau and I are in our local video shop. The beau approaches me as I dither around in the ‘Highly Recommended’ section:

The beau (holding ‘Shooter’, which stars Mark ‘Marky Mark’ Wahlberg): How about this?

Me: Marky Mark? Really?

The beau: You love cheesy action movies.

Me: You’re right. Nothing like a bit of Jean Claude Van Damme-age.

The beau: So we can get it?

Me: Sure…but if we get that, then we’re also getting THIS.

Costume Envy: Stage Door, 1937

Sometimes, it can be a blessing to accidentally fall asleep and wake up at 2am on your couch with the cat blissfully napping next to you and a light rain blowing through the still-open window (whoops).

Because the ABC perversely seems to screen the Best Movies of All Time in the wee hours of the morn, and last night (this morning?) was no exception. Instead of screening one of the 500,000 spare episodes of The Bill that are surely lining the shelves at ABC HQ (I must tip my hat to Martin/Molloy – how 90s – for that one), they show long-forgotten gems from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and save Reg’s fumbling for prime time.

In this instance, it was the Katharine Hepburn/Ginger Rogers classic, Stage Door, a bittersweet, tough-talking drama about a rooming house called the Footlights Club where young, semi-desperate actresses go to learn their craft and land a part. Or a sugar daddy.

The costumes are like a guide to between-the-wars glamour

Costume Envy: You Know You Have It

I often find myself nudging friends/the beau in movies and whispering ‘costume envy!’ with one eyebrow raised high enough to graze the ceiling and my fingers digging into the arm rest with excitement (or something less disconcerting).

It’s a fairly self-explanatory term, but if you’re not on board allow me to word you up. ‘Costume envy’ is that rush of admiration you feel when you see an amazing (usually historical…at least in my case) costume in a film, which is followed by an equally powerful rush of envy/hopelessness, as you know it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to wear such a garment in the course of day to day life, (which in my case tends to involve more working/commuting/shuffling down to the bakery than swanning around at balls/lavish dinners/being present at events of historical importance).

The recent news that Keira Knightly’s green dress in Atonement has been rated the greatest movie costume of all time has gotten me thinking about costume envy. Why did this dress win?