Say what you will about Ayn Rand, but that monster could describe a dress.
“She lay in bed, propped up on pillows of pale green linen. Her bed jacket was pale green satin, worn with the untouched perfection of a window model; its lustrous folds looked as if the crinkle of tissue paper still lingered among them. The light, shaded to a tone of apple blossoms, fell on a table that held a book, a glass of fruit juice, and toilet accessories of silver glittering like instruments in a surgeon’s case. Her arms had a tinge of porcelain. There was a touch of pale pink lipstick on her mouth.”
NOBODY LOOKS GOOD WEARING PALE GREEN, IT IS A RECIPE FOR LOOKING SALLOW AND CONSUMPTIVE, BUT DAMN IF I DON’T WANT TO SIT IN THAT ROOM BREATHING SOME APPLE-SCENTED AIR IN A SICKLY GODDAMN BED JACKET
“The dress she wore was a slender tunic of dusty blue that gave her a look of unprotected simplicity, the look of a statue in the blue shadows of a garden under the summer sun. What he brought and put over her shoulders was a cape of blue fox that swallowed her from the curve of her chin to the tips of her sandals.”
SWALLOWED BY FURS: THE SECRET DREAM OF EVERY WOMAN, EVEN IF SHE IS AGAINST FUR IN THEORY
“She wore a black dress that looked as if it were no more than a piece of cloth crossed over her breasts and falling to her feet in the soft folds of a Grecian tunic; it was made of satin, a satin so light and thin that it could have served as the stuff of a nightgown. The luster of the cloth, streaming and shifting with her movements, made it look as if the light of the room she entered were her personal property, sensitively obedient to-the motions of her body, wrapping her in a sheet of radiance more luxurious than the texture of brocade, underscoring the pliant fragility of her figure, giving her an air of so natural an elegance that it could afford to be scornfully casual. She wore a single piece of jewelry, a diamond clip at the edge of the black neckline, that kept flashing with the imperceptible motion of her breath, like a transformer converting a flicker into fire, making one conscious, not of the gems, but of the living beat behind them; it flashed like a military decoration, like wealth worn as a badge of honor. She wore no other ornament, only the sweep of a black velvet cape, more arrogantly, ostentatiously patrician than any spread of sables.”
FIND ME A DRESS THAT FEELS LIKE A NIGHTGOWN AND LOOKS “SCORNFULLY CASUAL” AND I WILL WEAR IT WHILE SLOWLY WALKING INTO THE SUN
“She moved at random, enjoying the sense of being seen, her eggshell satin gown shimmering like heavy cream with the motion of her tall figure.”
I WANT A DRESS THAT LOOKS LIKE I’M BATHING IN FULL-FAT DAIRY
“She wore a wine-colored dinner gown, an imitation of an Empire traveling suit, with a miniature double-breasted jacket gripping her high waistline over the long sweep of the skirt, and a small hat clinging to one ear, with a feather sweeping down to curl under her chin. She entered with a brusque, unrhythmical motion, the train of her dress and the feather of her hat swirling, then flapping against her legs and throat, like pennants signaling nervousness.”
WINE
PENNANTS
A CLINGING HAT
A BABY JACKET BUTTRESSING THE RIBS
THIS ISN’T A DRESS IT’S A WEARABLE CASTLE
“She stood leaning back, as if the air were a support solid enough for her thin, naked shoulder blades. Her evening gown was the color of glass.”
WAIT WHAT COLOR IS THAT
“The huge blanket of fur made her look like a child bundled for a snowstorm; the luxurious texture transformed the innocence of the awkward bundle into the elegance of a perversely intentional contrast: into a look of stressed sensuality. The fur was a soft brown, dimmed by an aura of blue that could not be seen, only felt like an enveloping mist, like a suggestion of color grasped not by one’s eyes but by one’s hands, as if one felt, without contact, the sensation of sinking one’s palms into the fur’s softness. The cape left nothing to be seen of her, except the brown of her hair, the blue-gray of her eyes, the shape of her mouth.”
INVISIBLE BLUE THAT CAN ONLY BE FELT LIKE A MIST AND NOT SEEN IS MY FAVORITE COLOR
“She wore an Empire garment of pale chartreuse, its pleated skirt streaming gracefully from its high waistline; one could not tell at first glance whether it was an evening gown or a negligee; it was a negligee.”
MY HEART WEARS A NEGLIGEE
“The huge hoop skirt of the wedding gown brushed against the walls when she moved, her slender figure swaying above the skirt in the dramatic contrast of a tight, severe, long-sleeved bodice; the gown had been made by the best designer in the city.”
FREEDOM ON THE BOTTOM, PRISON ON THE TOP; THIS DRESS IS THE OPPOSITE OF CAPITALISM AND THEREFORE OFFERS A WORTHY CRITIQUE OF RAND’S OWN POLITICS
“The pictures of Dagny Taggart in the newspapers had shown a figure dressed in slacks, or a face with a slanting hat brim and a raised coat collar. Now she wore a gray evening gown that seemed indecent, because it looked austerely modest, so modest that it vanished from one’s awareness and left one too aware of the slender body it pretended to cover. There was a tone of blue in the gray cloth that went with the gun-metal gray of her eyes. She wore no jewelry, only a bracelet on her wrist, a chain of heavy metal links with a green blue cast.”
I DON’T KNOW WHAT “SO MODEST IT VANISHED FROM AWARENESS” MEANS BUT THIS DRESS SOUNDS LIKE WEARING A GUN
“She wore a dark blue suit with a white blouse, beautifully tailored, suggesting an air of formal, almost military elegance. She sat straight, and her manner was severely dignified, just a shade too dignified.”
THE CLOTHES IN THESE BOOKS ARE BITCH CLOTHES AND THAT’S WHY I LOVE EM
“She stood leaning against a column, a cocktail glass in her hand. She wore a suit of black velvet; the heavy cloth, which transmitted no light rays, held her anchored to reality by stopping the light that flowed too freely through the flesh of her hands, her neck, her face. A white spark of fire flashed like a cold metallic cross in the glass she held, as if it were a lens gathering the diffused radiance of her skin.”
THIS LADY IS DRESSED LIKE LANCELOT CARRYING THE HOLY GRAIL
Tags: ayn rand, books, fashion, fuck you i love ayn rand in all her bonkers evil glory, outfits i want
I would have loved to see Ayn Rand as a fashion designer. I feel like she would have given up in frustration because none of her clothes seem like they could ever be real or be on real human beings, but GODDAMN she would try!
Maybe if Vogue had given her a job we would have been spared all of this published “literature”.
It reminds me of the old version of the Sweet Valley High books when they describe some sort of ludicrously ugly/implausible outfit, all the while assuring you that it is spectacular as if they could make them so by sheer force of belief.
Sounds very Babysitters’ Club-esque. “On anyone else it would have looked terrible, but on Claudia it looked amazing.”
I was always disappointed when I’d go back and look at the cover illustration after imagining Claudia’s outfits. “She wore THAT?”
I would give all the money I don’t have to just see one episode of Project Runway Ayn Rand
PROJECT RANDWAY
WOULD WATCH, ENDLESSLY
So, Edna Mode from The Incredibles?
Egg-freakin’-zackly!
Surely the purpose of this post was not to make me want to read this book, yet somehow that is the result…whoops?
So is this permission to only read Atlas Shrugged for the outfits, like watching the Oscars red carpet?
The only way to read it, really.
*looks down at dressing gown, crumbs and cat, realises place in the hierarchy is now fixed forever and always has been*
Under the cat, yes.
oh hey Patricia Neal.
also I want a dress that is the color of glass…whatever that is.
I’ve always imagined this as a superlatively pale grey satin of the type that makes you think you’re falling into it–incredibly thick and luxurious and weighty, like an antique wedding dress of the highest caliber.
/has maybe thought about this topic before
Bless you for having thought about this before. Goddess bless you a million times.
I assume it means transparent, so that woman is basically naked. I’m starting to think Lady Gaga got all her ideas from Ayn Rand.
If Eurythmics could do a 1984-based concept album, Gaga can do an Atlas Shrugged-based one.
Came on over for a Patricia Neal photo and was not disappointed.
I just envy being Patricia Neal. Her interview with Robert Osborne on TCM a few years back is well worth catching.
I was imagining it as a sheer and flimsy fabric with an iridescent weave throughout. It is just the right amount of see-through that you can see something, but you can pass it off as a trick of the fabric.
I think I need a Dagny Taggart style board on pinterest? Is that the right answer?
And name it “Bitch Clothes”
This whole thread just reminds me of “Ann Rand’s The Devil Wears Prada” and it is awesome.
Miranda Priestley is, in fact, this post right here.
On it.
FOLLOWED THANK YOU!!! The Madame Gres dresses are an awesome choice.
To be fair, I got that idea from another commenter. I’ve been monitoring this thread all day for ideas.
She wore a dark blue suit with a white blouse, beautifully tailored, suggesting an air of formal, almost military elegance. She sat straight, and her manner was severely dignified, just a shade too dignified.
I desperately wish it were possible for me to dress in such a manner. I can pull off “smartypants librarian/English grad student,” because I am indeed an English grad student and most of my friends are librarians (that ish rubs off), and I can generally muster “cute,” but I never look anything like “sharp” or “an air of formal, almost military elegance,” or “just a shade too dignified.” Maybe it’s that I’m a fat girl in general? Definitely being pregnant right now cuts out “beautifully tailored,” siiiigh. MY KINGDOM IN EXCHANGE.
(I bet this is what made me love Dagny Taggart so much when I was 17. All the bitchy elegance.)
I think it’s less about physique and more about impeccable Katharine Hepburn posture? And also having really obedient hair? I’m just speculating because even if I think I look dignified for a moment, I catch sight of myself in a mirror and realize I have potato chip crumbs all over me.
God, the hair. I have wild-crazy-frizzy curly hair, and it’s just…every time you see a picture of A Serious Woman, they just don’t have hair like that. Like, I could spend an hour fussing with my hair, and thirty minutes later, it’ll still look like I combed it with a tornado funnel cloud. I try to ignore it and do Katherine Hepburn posture anyway, but it still feels like it’s hard to take any woman seriously when her hair is standing out from her head at frizzy right angles.
36DD/E and thin yet frizzy/curly hair. I’m doomed to a life of inelegance *weeps*
Sharp pointed lipstick always does the trick. I am a short lady with a large rack and general round-ness, and yet I always find that a mix of attentive posture, sharp lipstick, and a general look of amused disappointment can convey this Randian look that people seem to be coveting above!
Yeah, if you pull your hair back in a ballet bun and get your suits properly tailored, you can totally be a Fat Lady with almost military elegance (it’s a look I have to pull off sometimes for work)
Yeah I feel like boobs and general ampleness get in the way of all that elegance and austerity. Even if I did have good posture (which I don’t). Plus, I could *almost* imagine myself being severely dignified, but then I envisioned how my feet most likely wouldn’t reach the floor properly. I guess I could be severely dignified while standing up?
I assumed you were standing the whole time: why care about looking dignified when you can levitate!
I have often felt that way, but I suspect now that it is merely societal fat shaming at play. Elegance and austerity are practically synonymous with anorexia around here- think about how ballet, elegance and visible bones are connected, and conversely, how even at our best(stereotypically) fat women are jolly and bouncy and neither sexual nor dignified.
I realized how silly it is to think that it’s our bodies that stop us being dignified when I tried on a dress to attend a wedding. I felt like a dowager duchess, and that my bosom was the prow of a ship. It was glorious! Most clothes are not made for dignity , particularly fat/female clothes. These traits are all personality, our bodies are just there to express them.
I was in my favorite fabric store the other day, and this statuesque elderly woman who makes her own clothes came in. She was very much not thin and was wearing a variegated knitted sleeveless cashmere vest in slightly iridescent jewel tones that hit at knee level, a shining long black pleated taffeta skirt, and a red silk blouse, all of which she had made. She looked AMAZING, very elegant and austere.
Actually, in a way reminiscent of the size/elegant austerity perception being discussed, she and the proprietor kept trying to get me to buy pastel fabric because I’m much paler than either of them and “it looks good on YOU.” Which made me sad, because I think they would look much better in it than I would, since it would kind of wash me out. (I have the same conversation with my MIL fairly often because she tries to get me to wear these pastels that she loves but “can’t” wear. Sigh.)
All the feelings in my bosom that I couldn’t articulate, you just turned into words, and for that I am extremely grateful
Swallowed by the furs! Like the woman in Ghostbusters whose fox stole comes alive! Someone has to have that giffed.
Ok, the “gown or negligee” thing reminds me of a story, as told to me by my grandmother. This was in Soviet Russia and would’ve been… probably the 50s or 60s. German nightgowns become available in stores and are so pretty that women literally can’t tell they’re not gowns. They wear them to work, to the theatre, etc.
So basically 1990’s/early 2000’s American women were copying 50’s/60’s Russians who were wearing German-made clothing. Makes sense somehow.
oh yeah some of this is also the fountainhead
I hate that I knew that.
I always liked Dagny Taggart much more than the book she’s in. I’d like to put her somewhere nicer where she can reign as the industrialist bitch queen villain of the story who we all love and fear. Maybe Narnia.
Middle Earth? She can take over the industrialism from Saruman. Then the majority of The Two Towers can be Dagny Taggart vs. the Ents.
I’d drink to this idea. Or wear wine-dresses. Whichever and both.
YES
Goddamn no wonder Atlas Shrugged is so long. Approximately 7/8ths of it is dress describing.
I fucking WISH.
If anyone saw the Charles James exhibit at the Met this summer, some of the gowns were EXACTLY this. I’m pretty sure he was the inspiration for the fashion descriptions. Basically impossible for human hands to construct, dresses that drape like scornfully casual nightgowns, waistline-gripping dinner jackets, fabric made from the tears of poor children covering the breasts of women of unimaginable wealth, the whole shebang.
I highly recommend reading the exhibit catalog, but there are a few images here: http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/201…
Oh, and my most favorite part of the exhibit were James’ framed notes about people he would have liked to have dressed, including everyone from “Mrs. Leonard (Virginia) Woolf, a rarely sensitive beauty” to “Mrs. William Buckley, smart, imaginative, ready to develop taste; still lacking it.”
Okay, I had completely forgotten who Charles James was until I clicked through and saw the Butterfly gown, and it reminded me that some EPICALLY TALENTED home seamstress had literally just gone and replicated a couple of his designs.
I had no idea this shit was even possible.
If you’re interested, her blogs on this can be found here.
Ooh, I love sewing blogs. Off to read!
That red and white ballgown is like the inside of my head, but made out of various kinds of silk.
You know, I loved the pieces in that exhibit, but the layout bugged the crap outta me. It didn’t have a great flow. (I mean, it was probably also my fault for going on a Saturday afternoon when it was MOBBED.)
Their current exhibit, Death Becomes Her, is a different layout but IMO suffers from a similar “ehhhh, this is hard to navigate” malaise, despite being small.
Yep! Saw it and can confirm!
Also loved that half of the labels in the exhibit were just ‘yeah, so this dress is a giant vagina.’
I DON’T KNOW WHAT “SO MODEST IT VANISHED FROM AWARENESS” MEANS BUT THIS DRESS SOUNDS LIKE WEARING A GUN
obligatory: NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS BUT IT’S PROVOCATIVE
IT GETS THE PEOPLE GOING
I do! It’s when everything is covered, so nothing is covered. The dress equivalent of the cat-suit.
Damn. And I thought Dan Brown was the master of terrible descriptions with too many adjectives. Ayn Rand was writing Dan Brown descriptions before Dan Brown was even born.
…. what colour IS glass?
This is a new zen question
You can usually see some colour if you look at the cut edge of a sheet of glass. It generally seems to be greenish.
Charles James definitely but all that “tunic” and “column” stuff is very Madame Grès: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/fashion/19iht-f…
Madame Gres is my absolute everything. If possible I would wear nothing but.
Agreed. I felt that way about a *single dress*
of hers in the “Duke and Duchess of Windsor” exhibit, like I would just wear it until it fell off my body in rags.
I never got around to reading Ayn Rand in high school, which everybody who interacted with me during my teenage years should probably be grateful for. I would have been an insufferable little objectivist. As it was, I just read vast quantities of science fiction, and still do.
Come to think of it, I have Heinlein to thank for my feminist awakening. It was the particularly infuriating attempt at benevolent sexism/misogyny, plus just enough overt misogyny to be really offensive.
I don’t think of myself as super-feminist or anything, but Heinlein just triggers my ‘you know what? Fuck this guy’ reflex.
I have such a weird relationship with Heinlen’s work and Tom Robbins’s. They were some of the first people I read who female characters who were both sexy and interesting, but it was all such a giant creepy wet dream too.
OK I NEED TO SAY SOMETHING
I read Atlas Shrugged at a vulnerable age (14) when all I wore was band tshirts and plaid flannels and mens’ corduroy pants (it was the 90s) and this book affected me deeply and to this day my sense of elegance is 3/4 my diva grandmother and 1/4 Dagny Taggart and when I was 22 I owned a woman’s tuxedo and also a dress of blue-green velvet that covered my entire body because I felt that my own beauty should be my only ornament and my mom bought me a necklace made out of iron links for my birthday because it reminded us both of that Rearden Steel bracelet Dagny trades her diamonds for and this article makes me feel so validated thank you Mallory thank you
That is just incredibly awesome.
I have long since heartily and vocally disowned my own Ayn Rand phase, but man, the Readen Steel bracelet trade scene still speaks to me.
A bit of confusion, because I wasn’t immediately clear on what an “Empire traveling suit” looked like, and the first Google Image result didn’t seem quite right:
I guess Rand was referring to something like the Spencer jacket?
I think the first one but cut down and more traditionally feminine, so the same kind of jacket but made as short as the Spencer, and the hat miniature too but with the feather?
SWALLOWED BY FURS: THE SECRET DREAM OF EVERY WOMAN, EVEN IF SHE IS AGAINST FUR IN THEORY
painfully accurate, tbh
One time I tried on a Marc Jacobs chinchilla coat annnnd it was incredible. The pockets were fur-lined!
Edited to note: am a vegetarian, own no fur, lived with a live chinchilla, would NEVER. But still.
I remember thinking, when I read _Atlas Shrugged_, “This might make a good movie* but they’d never get the clothes right.”
*almost certainly not
It would require Edith Head
I must have the same coloring as Ayn Rand, because light green and especially chartreuse are my JAM.
“toilet accessories of silver glittering like instruments in a surgeon’s case” — because I am sure her morning routine involves vivisecting some unworthy creature and using its blood to redden her perfect lips.
Someday I’m going to write a fantastic thesis (book?) about design aesthetics, western beauty ideals, fascism, body politics, objectivism, the Bauhaus, etc. Please don’t get me talking about the politics of design as it relates to the canon of 20th century modernism, I will literally never shut up.
Please do? *puppy dog eyes*
I want to hear ALL ABOUT this.
+1000 body facism and actual facism. Thinking of you John Galliano.
Meanwhile, you and your commenters would probably like _The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion_ by Virginia Postrel.
New Pinterest Board: “SCORNFULLY CASUAL”
I’d follow that.
dammit Mallory you’ll make me read this after all
My goal in life is that my outfits/the way I hold myself in general can be described as SCORNFULLY CASUAL at all times.
When I read Atlas Shrugged at like… what, 14? It was the passages like this coupled with the first 80 pages or so that made me think the book was gonna be a rad love story between Dagny and Frisco, going off to pirate the high seas together instead of making her deal with her obnoxious brother the whole book.
BOY was I wrong. Man fuck Hank Reardon, he deserved none of Dagny. None of that book deserved Dagny.
I would happily read 1,000 pages of Dagny and Francisco pirating the high seas.
That hot guy (the one who was friends with John Galt and Francisco) who was a pirate in the books can be their pirate captain.
Honestly, of all the disappointing things in the book, the fact that we constantly hear about this pirate who was friends with Galt and d’Anconia and then he only shows up in like ONE SCENE where he isn’t doing any pirating at ALL might have been the most disappointing.
We need Ragnar fanfic and not fanfic where he is married to the absurdly beautiful actress. Frisco + Ragnar fanfic.
YES SERIOUSLY. I was awestruck by Dagny Taggert.
As someone who makes her living translating other people’s bilge… um, I mean, literature, sentences like “the luster of the cloth, streaming and shifting with her movements, made it look as if the light of the room she entered were her personal property, sensitively obedient to-the motions of her body, wrapping her in a sheet of radiance more luxurious than the texture of brocade, underscoring the pliant fragility of her figure, giving her an air of so natural an elegance that it could afford to be scornfully casual.” is exactly the pretentious, oooh-it-sounds-so-loverly-but-if-you-look-close-enough-means-squat drivel that I detest with every fibre of my (grey pants and dark blue turtleneck wearing) being.
And while on the subject of things that are all form and no substance – what exactly *is* the colour of glass? Was she wearing a transparent dress?! Colour of glass, forsooth!
My usual fix for this kind of word dribble is to chuck a handful of semicolons in there. Or just break it up in 3-4 sentences.
Yeah, that does work with sentences where there is at least some semblance of meaning. A lot of the time, I swear, it’s just pretty sounding words strung together. And then there are books (and I use the word extremely loosely!) like my current one, where on the second page I was confronted with “I shall be gentle unto your form the now”. Apparently, in ye times of olde people used “unto” a lot. And said “THE now” instead of now. I kid you not! Every time I see “the now” I can hear the tiny death screams of thousands of my precious brain cells.
Which is when I *really* start chanelling Stephen Fry 😀 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPRThhXT-xc
Wow, you weren’t kidding. Why didn’t Ayn Rand just publish this stuff without all the chaff about emotionless architects? Am I the only person who would pay good money for a book of fabulous clothing descriptions?
Unfortunately, the clothing descriptions are the architecture of the female characters, so you get ~symmetry~.
No, I would definitely pay good American dollars for such a book.
Change Hank Readon’s sixty page wankfest for a description of the then contempory New Look from Dior, and I might actually finish the book!
This is the kind of description that begs to be realised on-screen but would also be impossible to do correctly. Like, I know what “the colour of glass” says to me; I can see it in my mind’s eye; but damn, you’d never be able to make it in real life.
This is not to say that I am not itching to try and replicate some of these. I want a black suit that makes me look like Lancelot carrying the Holy Grail, dammit.
(Although *cough*Arthurian pedant alert*cough* Lancelot never actually gets his mitts on the Grail in the most commonly circulated Grail narratives – only Galahad and Perceval get to do that. Lancelot, forever tainted by his inability to repent for committing adultery with Guinevere, sees the Grail procession, follows it, and ends up falling helplessly on his knees as the door to the Grail chapel shuts in his face. He can see the light under the door as it is unveiled … but will never be able to touch it.)
GOOD CALL
Thank you, Mallory. I would have never known about these amazing passages if not for you! They are really great and I am very grateful to have them collected here, outside of their sources…Because I am not reading those books. Ever.
I’m pretty sure the outfits were the only reason I got as far as I did with these books. BLACK VELVET CAPE. If only Rand had done something sensible and not monstrous with her life, like writing for Vogue. (lol)
I look good in pale green.
*tosses hair*
FREEDOM ON THE BOTTOM, PRISON ON THE TOP; THIS DRESS IS THE OPPOSITE OF CAPITALISM AND THEREFORE OFFERS A WORTHY CRITIQUE OF RAND’S OWN POLITICS
That is it. I am dead now. Thank you all and someone please feed my fish.
I WANT TO WEAR A GUN!
Ugggggh, damn you for reminding me how well Ayn Rand can write. Because yeah, this is true:
“SWALLOWED BY FURS: THE SECRET DREAM OF EVERY WOMAN, EVEN IF SHE IS AGAINST FUR IN THEORY”
even if I never realized it until I read it.
but ugh, “wealth worn as a badge of honor” sums up Rand’s philosophy and books perfectly.
I’m sure this has been covered elsewhere, but aside from The Bracelet, the always-violent, vaguely-rapey sex scenes left a way bigger impression in my mind than the clothes in general. I am not sure what to think about that at the moment.
I realized I had always thought of chartreuse as a sort of pink, but I looked it up and it’s completely different. I think I found the chartreuse “it’s a nightgown/no it’s an evening dress/it’s a nightgown”: Chartreuse garment
By the way, if you like focusing on clothes in books, there is a blog called “Clothes in Books”. I don’t recall any clothing descriptions as spectacular as this on the blog, but it is an interesting way to look at books, and to get recommendations for books you otherwise (a) would never have heard of, or (b) would not have had motivation to get around to reading. I am sure many of you would enjoy Clothes in Books.
Remember that play Ayn Rand wrote, “Night of January Sixteenth”, where the heroine would literally wear lingerie made of platinum mesh that had been heated over a fire by her lover so that it would burn her skin during their S&M sessions? Fredericks of Hollywood needs to step their game up.
“Remember that play Ayn Rand wrote, “Night of January Sixteenth”, where the heroine would literally wear lingerie made of platinum mesh that had been heated over a fire by her lover so that it would burn her skin during their S&M sessions?”
I don’t, but somehow it doesn’t surprise me.
Oh goodness, I still lust after that fox fur cape. Dagny had the best clothes. (I know Ayn Rand is evil in my brain, but sometimes I still want to be Dagny in my heart, but like, a militant environmentalist Dagny or something, which is probably not Dagny anymore.)
Dagny-esque…
All the feelings in my bosom that I couldn't articulate, you just turned into words, and for that I am extremely grateful
“…an aura of blue that could not be seen, only felt like an enveloping mist, like a suggestion of color grasped not by one’s eyes but by one’s hands, as if one felt, without contact, the sensation of sinking…”
I’m pretty sure that’s infraviolet. Lovecraft described it and I think it has something do with Cthulhu.
Ayn Rand and H.P. Lovecraft had a lot in common. Lovecraft at least had the decency, sometimes, to call the unspeakable, unspeakable and not waste reams of empty verbiage on semantically empty “descriptions.”
Also, Rand might be more readable as eldritch horror. I’m not sure if anything can actually make her brutal exposition readable, but if anything can…
I am reading Atlas Shrugged now. As a left-leaning gal, I’m fascinated by the guru of the right wing – Ayn Rand. The photographs you show are from The Fountainhead – another disturbing book / film of hers. Ayn Rand’s work is disturbing and offensive in different ways. The thing is – she is such a great writer – so enjoying her writing is actually making me feel guilty!
That photo it makes me remember my grandmother wearing that.
Wooww…this is classic design that I like. I have lot of picture like that
amazing…
is Atlas Strugged about capitalism or is it really just dress erotica?
Thanks for sharing, hope that it can be a goodness for us all. be a modest muslimah , Keep istiqomah. ^^