Town & Country Summer 2018
Town & Country Magazine UK edition was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1769, originally featured stories and affairs between members of London upper classes. It gained the name ‘Town & Country’ due to Hamilton had two offices, one in urban and one in a rural area of Greater London. With the decline of fashion magazine, on both the qualities onto content and photography, Town & Country is more upscale than many of its magazine competitors, who focus on merely celebrities gossips or studio photo shoots. Town & Country has been featuring ‘Tête-à-Tête’ articles that detailed illicit stories between high societies of the United Kingdom, most are inspired by actual events. For the photography, Town & Country editorial crew, perhaps, the most willing to produce the contents with open skies, great houses and grand gestures full of every page, and often links the stories with literature or historical figures. For the readers’ perspectives, reading Town & Country is more of the alternative window to view the elegant lifestyle within the amaze of the landscape, as if we travel around the world within 24 hours.
On July 30th1818, Maria Brontë gave birth to a baby daughter, christened Emily Jane; at that time, the Brontë family were staying in the Yorkshire village of Thornton, until Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman served as a curate, took his family to live in the Parsonage in April 1820. Nowadays, The Brontë Parsonage has been a museum since 1928. In 2018, together with Town & Country editorial crew, Justine Picardie writes the visit in 1854 between Emily Brontë and her ancestor grandmother, the Victorian author Clara Balfour. Balfour described on Parsonage as ‘Yet even in these summer splendours, the extensive graveyard all round the lonely severe-looking house, the old grey clock tower rising just above….made it a melancholy-looking place’ (T&C, 170).
Following the tradition of Tête-à-Tête content, Justine Picardie on Balfour’s description suggests that the gothic romance of the house, as well as its inhabitants, was already alluring, and integral part of the Borntë story was the spectre of death, in particular Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Motherless children were a constant feature, as Emily and Charlotte lost their mother, Maria, only one year after the family moved to Parsonage.
And the photography and style of ‘In Search of Wuthering Heights’ of Town & Country 2018 summer issue, is highly solitude, romantic, but with the touch of the bleakness. Model Cibele Ramm wears Valentino poppy red polka dots gown outside of Parsonage, while the hue is warm and yellowish, while at Haworth to the hills, Chanel Haute couture silk organza deep purple cape and off-white dress are echoing the Gothic yet elegant of Brontë style, in a mysteriously reserved way.
Having read Wuthering Heights at college and fascinated by its Victorian Gothic genre, I was captured immediately by the cover of Town & Country 2018 summer issue while passing by the magazine shelf. As for my own photography, I place Chanel white camellia, and also the dried roses, they were supposedly dark red while alive, in order to represent the death motif of Brontë family’s tragic circumstances. To match the tones of Agata Pospieszynska’s photography and Chanel organza Haute Couture, I place Chanel Le Vernis #542 Pink Rubber and #599 Provocation for the Tête-à-Tête symbolic feels (I will soon apply these two colous on my toe nails for the summer mood!) Also, Chao & Eero pearl rings and Chanel Byzantine pearl earrings give the romantic touches of the layout, and Byredo Burning Rose candle not only answers the romantic theme of my photography, but also gives the warm scent of the lightening for the photo shooting.
From Brontë sisters, Photographer Pospieszynska, Writer Picardie, Model Ramm and my very own interpretation, the representation of Brontë’s legend, is the magic of the season and is in search of the female world.
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