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standing ground fw26 haute couture look twenty-five

— Velimir Khlebnikov, from Collected Poems & Writings of V. K.; “Visitations,”

Diana Stoessel | © Ellen von Unwerth

Some are heart-shaped: vintage face shapes diagrams.

Elizabeth Taylor, Cleopatra.

Born on this day: perennial starlet, sex kitten, the former Mrs Russ Meyer and quintessential ultra-vixen Edy Williams (née Edwina Beth Williams, 9 July 1942). Reflecting on their stormy marriage, Meyer famously recalled that the fun lasted “about 45 minutes, but we were married for four years.” Williams’ voracious performance as predatory porn queen Ashley St Ives in Meyer’s 1970 sexploitation magnum opus Beyond the Valley of the Dolls – particularly her purring delivery of the line “You’re a groovy boy. I’d like to strap you on sometime” - ensures her cult cinema immortality.

Boom! is baroque. It’s opulent. It’s decadent. It’s berserk! How can you resist? See the film Hollywood Reporter called “an ordeal in tedium” and Newsweek deemed “a pompous, pointless nightmare!” Buy your tickets NOW! Link.

The perfect fashion accessory for summer 2026: sultry Gene Tierney modelling super-stylish “veil-specs.” Why didn’t these catch on? Via the essential In Search of Pagan Hollywood Facebook account.

Seventy years ago today (2 July 1956) in showbiz history impossibly glamorous “Venus in Furs” Hollywood diva Elizabeth Taylor attended the Los Angeles premiere of Moby Dick and was captured by “the beatnik photographer” Earl Leaf (1905 – 1980). This will always be one of my favourite photos of Taylor. That imperious expression! That perfect plume of smoke! The dangle of the cigarette!

Born on this day 100 years ago: scandalous golden age Hollywood screen diva and glamour icon Lana Turner (née Julia Jean Turner, 8 February 1921 - 29 June 1995). How I choose to remember her: as a scantily-clad pagan high priestess in Biblical epic The Prodigal (1955)! Full disclosure – I’ve never seen The Prodigal, but clearly, I need to. I cherish Turner’s performances in both great films (A Life of Her Own, Imitation of Life) and trashy ones (too many to list here, but including Portrait in Black, Love Has Many Faces and The Big Cube).

Recently watched: Sins of Jezebel (1953). Tagline: “Delilah. Cleopatra. Salome. Bathsheba … they learned their wiles, wickedness and evil from the woman called Jezebel.” Sometimes nothing hits the spot like a kitschy 1950s sword-and-sandals Biblical epic. This one feels directly inspired by Cecil B DeMille’s earlier Samson and Delilah (1949) – you can certainly imagine Jezebel’s veteran leading lady Paulette Goddard (playing “The Most Wicked Woman Who Ever Lived!”) wanting to replicate the success of her 1930s contemporary Hedy Lamarr. But while Samson was a lush spectacle via a major studio (Paramount), by comparison, Sins is independent and low budget (as the critic from The Toledo Blade concluded, "The desire was strong, but the cash was weak”). The setting is visibly Californian (exteriors were shot at the Corriganville Movie Ranch in Ventura County, normally used for Westerns). At points, Sins suggests a campy and exotic Maria Montez movie with Goddard wearing the yashmak instead, or even the underground cinema of Jack Smith or Kenneth Anger. I didn’t think I was familiar with Sins’ poverty row journeyman director Reginald Le Borg, but I Googled him and I have seen his horror movie So Evil, My Sister (aka Psycho Sisters) from 1974. The New York Times review was dismissive: “Most of the time the cast edges in and out of court boudoirs or uneasily holds forth on Jehovah and false, graven images … As the hypnotic heroine, Miss Goddard fans her eyelashes, swings a bare midriff with pendulum precision and weighs crises of religion and state as though a wad of gum were parked behind the royal tiara.” 43-year-old Goddard is juicy and glamorous as the conniving Baal-worshiping bad girl, but in terms of eye candy she’s upstaged by hunky George Nader as Jehu. My favourite line of dialogue: “Captain! There hasn’t been such a gathering here since the Queen of Sheba came to see Solomon!” There’s a gorgeous HD restoration of Sins of Jezebel on YouTube. The blazing garish “Ansco Color” really pops!  

I’m deep into my Saturday ritual of compulsively scrubbing the flat and as usual, keeping the TV on as background noise. Saturday Kitchen this morning with Matt Tebbutt and special celebrity guest Stanley Tucci was like dying and going to DILF heaven. Then I switched to BBC2, where King of Kings (1961) was concluding. Like all Hollywood biblical epics of its period, it’s ponderous, solemn and bloated (168-minutes long!) but made great use of Technicolour and widescreen and at least director Nicholas Ray knew how to move a camera around. As cinema’s all-time hunkiest Jesus, dreamboat Jeffery Hunter looks like a surfer or – with his long hair and beard – a grunge musician. But for sheer kitsch appeal, King’s chief pleasure is Hurd Hatfield and Viveca Lindfors as the film’s deliciously hammy villains, Pontius Pilate and wife Claudia Procula. I mean, check out Lindfors’ outrageous bouffant wigs, which SCREAM “1961.”

Arrivederci to sublime Italian actress Claudia Cardinale (Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale, 15 April 1938 – 23 September 2025), who has died aged 87. (Note that Cardinale was born in Tunis but embraced as “Italy’s girlfriend”). What a woman, what a career! In 1963 alone, she appeared in Federico Fellini’s 8½ and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard! I’ve always wanted to see her play opposite Bardot (in the Western The Legend of Frenchie King (1971)) and fellow Italian goddess Monica Vitti (in Midnight Pleasures (1975) and Lucky Girls (1975)). My much-missed late friend Alison spent several years living in Italy and used to tell me about being in a restaurant when a dazzling Cardinale swept in wearing sunglasses and a white pantsuit. The details are misty now (was this in the late 1990s? The 2000s?), but I remember her saying no one even attempted to feign nonchalance – they gasped and stared in starstruck awe! And that Cardinale acknowledged everyone’s adoration and smiled as she passed! Pictured: portrait of Cardinale for Vogue magazine by Bert Stern, March 1962.