House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth

A monumental exhibition at Chatsworth, home of the Devonshires, began when Laura Cavendish Countess of Burlington went in search of a christening gown withn the estate's many textile storage spaces.
What results is House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth.
Upon folding back the tissue papers covering one gown, her first thoughts upon reading the handwritten label— “Christening robe made for Nancy Mitford by her mother Lady Redesdale in 1907. Also worn by her brothers and sisters,” was what lay beyond this single treasure.


The Countess of Burlington on Chatsworth’s terrace wearing a Gucci suit with the necklace from the  Devonshire parure (1952) and Debo’s bejeweled bug brooches. —Photograph by Anton Corbijn

The Countess, along with Hamish Bowles and costume historian and exhibition curator Patrick Kinmonth and his creative partner Antonio Monfredo have mounted Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth. She also sought out Hubert Givenchy's advice, saying to Vogue UK, “He told me not to make it all about couture and grand things – personal things, he said, are as important as great craftsmanship – and that I should look for Andrew Devonshire’s embroidered slippers.”  Along with those slippers, his jumpers (sweaters to the colonies) emblazoned with pithy quotes, there is a coronation gown worn by Duchess Evelyn in 1937, and Duchess Mary in 1953.

photograph by Thomas Loof

The Exhibition runs from March 25 until October 22
See all the images of the Exhibition and read the story by Violet Henderson at Vogue UK here.  Hamish Bowles writes about the Exhibition here.

There is no doubt this Exhibition will rival the Costume Institute's Spring Exhibition. I am certainly intent on England before Chatsworth closes its doors on Five Centuries of Fashion.

Song of the South in the South about the South & the Written Word by Southern Authors

My 10 Favorite Songs of the South on the South sung or played mostly by Southerners. I've been thinking about this post for years. I've lost the thread of writing with intent. This is an attempt to get it back. To start again. To mean what I say as write here.

If you don't Know these songs Listen. I've not provided links but—

They're all out there— & along with these quotes by venerated Southern writers Listen and you might Hear something new, amusing, different—

Listen with a new ear. 

Favorite Things ~ John Coltrane 1961 jazz, no words necessary

"So you stomp the blues away. You don't stomp the blues by turning your foot into a sledgehammer. You stomp the blues by snapping your fingers, tilting your head a little on the beat, and snapping on the after beat. The more elegantly you move when you're dealing with the blues, the more effective you are. That's art." Albert Murray 1996

Rainy Night in Georgia ~ Brooks Benton 1969

"May, June and July and the best part of August I've squatted and sweltered on that damn back porch without an ounce of screening." ~Truman Capote 1945

Young Gifted & Black ~ Nina Simone 1958

No one questions the deep pathos of our sorrow songs sung in a minor key, the feeling tone of our religious and gospel music, the melancholy note in our blues, or the rhythmic syncopation of our jazz; but what most white America still does not know is that our literature reveals how we have transmuted suffering into song and heartbreak into compassion." ~Margaret Walter 1970

A Change is Gonna Come ~ Sam Cooke 1964

"A change will come out of this war. If it doesn't, if the politicians and the people who run this country are not forced to make good the shibboleth they glibly talk about freedom, liberty, human rights, then you young men who live through it will have wasted your precious time, and those who don't live through it will have died in vain." ~William Faulkner 1943

Don't It Make You Want to go Home ~ Joe South 1971

"Even today, the South is quirky, quick to take offense, fanciful: it has an attitude, a frame of mind. It prefers the flowery to the plain, likes its own jokes, its own rhetoric. It can laugh at itself at home, but it is immediately riled at any snicker from outside." ~ Eugene Walter 1971

Strange Fruit ~ sung first by Billie Holiday 1939 & by Nina Simone 

It was a strange land, amphibious, and whether water-covered or grown with jungle or robbed entirely of water and trees, as now, it had the same loneliness. He regarded the great sweep—like steppes, like moors, like deserts (all of which were imaginary to him); but more than it was any likeness, it was South. ~ Eudora Welty

Hard Times- written by Stephen Foster ~1854

"You have to push as hard as the age that pushes against you." ~ Flannery O'Connor

Ode to Billy Joe Bobbie Gentry ~1967

"Love is big. Love can hold anger, love can hold pain, love can even hold hatred. It's all about love." ~Alice Walker

Carolina In My Mind James Taylor ~1968

"Home is where you hang your childhood." ~Tennessee Williams

Melissa ~ The Allman Brothers 1972 written by Gregg Allman in 1967

"Respectable ladies in those days were not supposed to rouge; rice powder was as far as you were thought to go. Aunt Julia used to nibble slightly at a petal and rub a delicate bloom onto her cheeks, and would remark on occasion that she had always had color, that was her phrase for it." ~Stark Young 1951


& 1 of GOOD measure

Blue Sky ~ The Allman Brothers 1972 written by Dickie Betts

"I don't think serious people, no matter where they live, hold it against any other person for where they come from." ~Eudora Welty 1978


Most of these songs originated during the 60's and early 70's. My older brother was the influence here-6 years older, he was spinning the tracks in my ear. In 1968 I was 9 years old, so I got these memorable songs at home from his room next door, or down in the Alapaha River house one summer, and later on the radio where he spun his tunes over the wires.
The songs stuck.
Why? I don't really know.
But they are the songs of my life— and they still move me with memory, with longing, and with hope.