![]() If Instagram is to be believed (don’t), everyone is going about their business in opera gloves and thong bikinis. Larger-than-life style is everywhere and nowhere in 2021. Elizabeth Taylor’s jewellery arsenal? For sure. ![]() Jayne Mansfield’s Pink Palace (complete with heart-shaped swimming pool)? That was showbiz. ‘Showbiz’ should be overtly decadent to the point of cliche – you must categorically not be able to look away. Showbiz style is the fashion world’s sickly dessert course – the one buried under a waterfall of toxic-hued sauces, which arrives embedded with sparklers after a procession to its own theme song, and has the whole restaurant craning their necks to see what on earth just passed by. Cascading ruffle gowns, acres of fringing and dinner-plate-sized sunglasses fire our most elementary fashion synapses. A constant in Sally’s appearance is her strong beauty look, which remains an alluring compilation of thin penciled-on eyebrows, opaque blocks of coloured eyeshadow framed by spidery lashes and aforementioned emerald green talons.We don’t use the word ‘showbiz’ enough any more when describing knockout style. ![]() When she nocturnally takes to the stage, Bowles is evidently a huge fan of masculine bowler hats combined with backless playsuits or dresses, emphasising collarbones and shoulder blades. A particularly notable outfit is the black and yellow ensemble she sports during a language lesson between Brian and his German student, declaring: “I spent the entire afternoon bumsening like mad!” (For those unfamiliar with the meaning of the word, we’ll leave it up to your imagination – or Google translate – to figure it out.)Ī clear advocate for underwear as outerwear, Sally whiles away her day in chemises, negligees and kimonos, supping on her hangover cure of choice – a prairie oyster cocktail – concocted from a raw egg, Worcestershire sauce, tomato juice and vinegar. The costumes for the film were designed by Charlotte Flemming, who added a distinctly 1970s twist of eccentricity into the garments draped over Liza Minnelli. These sartorial codes were all employed by Fräulein Sally Bowles to ensure she was fully abreast of the latest Weimar trends. The most contested and celebrated symbol of the nation’s social revolution was the Neue Frau, or ‘New Woman’, with her short skirt, bubikopf (bobbed hair) and strümpfe (stockings). She had very large brown eyes which should have been darker, to match her hair and the pencil she used for her eyebrows.” Bowles is self-professed to be ‘divinely decadent’, yet, as her lover Brian astutely points out – and Isherwood’s description would attest to – she is more faux fatale than femme fatale, with her outward flamboyance concealing deep-seated psychological pain and a childlike vulnerability. Her face was long and thin, powdered dead white. Liza Minnelli’s notorious characterisation of Sally is a full representation of the ‘Weimar Girl’ she sold herself on appearance, offering up sufficient fuel for the ’male gaze’.īased on Jean Ross, a woman Isherwood became acquainted with through the cultural renaissance taking place in the city of Berlin during his visit, he describes the character of Sally thus: “I noticed that her fingernails were painted emerald green, a colour unfortunately chosen, for it called attention to her hands, which were much stained by cigarette smoking and as dirty as a little girl’s. ![]() The 1972 film adaptation of Cabaret, directed by Bob Fosse, is a semi-autobiographical account of novelist Christopher Isherwood’s time in pre-war Germany, originating as a hit Broadway musical: cue visions of fishnet-clad dancers suggestively cavorting about on stage with chairs. ![]() The year is 1931 and the rise of National Socialism looms ominously against a backdrop of the Weimar Republic Cabarets the embodiment of which takes the form of Miss Bowles herself. “You’re about as fatale as an after-dinner mint!” shrieks writer Brian Roberts at his girlfriend Sally Bowles during an argument over their shared love interest and intertwinement in a ménage à trois. ![]()
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