Beauty – Page 56 – Splendid Isolation

3 Brit Women I Find Inexplicably Sexy

January 18, 2022 Kim du Toit 3 Inexplicable Things, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Coleen Rooney (wife of former England and Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney)

Anna Chancellor

Claudia Winkleman

Of course, it’s all about personal taste, so feel free to add your oddities in Comments.

Near Miss

January 13, 2022 Kim du Toit Gratuitous Chick Pics

I know that most if not all my Readers are interested in the shenanigans of the BritRoyals, but that’s the flimsy excuse I’ve used for showing the following totty:

You see, her name is Cressida Wentworth-Stanley (née Bonas), and at one time she was the girlfriend of Prince Harry, a.k.a. the Duke of Sussex, a.k.a. Harry Markle, a.k.a. the Ginger Whinger. However, although he was reportedly quite smitten with Cressida, she was somewhat frowned upon by the Palace because she was an… actress.

So they split up, and you know the resultant mess.

I think young Cressy had a lucky escape. She later married another guy named Harry, who has no title but is the son of a marchioness and is also related to a marquess via his mother’s second marriage. Anyway, he has a hyphenated name, which takes care of half the issue for a young Brit girl with aspirations.

Should I explain the middle bit, again?

And One More Thing

January 12, 2022 Kim du Toit Architecture, Two-Minute Hate

After the British Virgin Islands were smacked by not one but two Cat 5 hurricanes in quick succession, most of the islands suffered massive property damage.

Since then, a lot of the wreckage has been rebuilt, and not to World Emperor Kim’s liking, either. Try this little piece of heaven:

The caption for the pic was “Paradise restored”.

Paradise was not restored; it was beaten to death with a lead pipe, driven over a few times by a Chieftain tank, and the remains wrapped in concrete and barbed wire.

Would it be wrong for me to wish for a Category 10 hurricane to come calling over there some time soon?

Swoopy

January 11, 2022 Kim du Toit Architecture

Following on from last night’s post, I happened on this little photo essay:

Eero Saarinen’s outlandish air terminal for TWA at New York’s JFK International Airport was sculpted as an abstract symbol of flight.

Now most Readers. knowing my abhorrence for Modernist architecture, would be forgiven for thinking that this post will be a diatribe against this building. But on the contrary, I think it’s beautiful — for one thing, there aren’t any hideous straight lines and corners such as found in Bauhaus monstrosities. As the writer of the article puts it:

Unlike most air terminals, which seemed intent on depressing passengers, Saarinen’s not only raised the spirits but also showed that concrete structures could be truly delightful.

And it is. In the time it was built, I would imagine that its space-age, swoopy shape would be very much in keeping with the age of early space travel of the late 1950s and early 60s. As the designer himself put it:

“…the architecture itself would express the drama and excitement of travel… shapes deliberately chosen in order to emphasize an upward-soaring quality of line.”

The first tragedy is that Saarinen died the year before his creation was finished.

The second tragedy is that the beautiful building has of course been “modernized” to make it “more efficient”.

Ugh.

There’ll be a parallel essay to this topic on Saturday.

Getting Worried

January 10, 2022 Kim du Toit Architecture, Resistance

Not me, for a change, but the Modernists certainly are. Note the panic in this piece:

This time around, the traditionalist lunatics have succeeded in taking over the asylum. Reactionary ideas hostile to the cosmopolitan, to Modernism, to modernity itself, are in the ascendant. Tory placemen (and they are generally men) are being appointed to the boards of cultural institutions such as the British Museum and the BBC. The thoroughly middle-class National Trust is under attack as “woke” for exploring colonialism.

I am so pleased that our ideas so hostile to Modernism and all that Le Corbusierian ugliness are starting to alarm the Left.

I also love the fact that the author of this nonsense reveals his bias and prejudices so clearly, such as referring to respected philosopher Sir Roger Scruton as “tweedy” — tweed being the clothing fabric of the hated upper classes, don’t you know — and saying that we conservatives are the lunatics simply for wanting to keep and maintain our heritage (as opposed to “rebuilding better” every generation or so). And gawd forbid that more men are becoming influential in the cultural wars…

Note too that this Lefty asshole is a “a member of the Mayor of London’s Diversity in the Public Realm Commission“. Diversity in the public realm?

Never let it be forgotten that people of his ilk perpetrated crimes against the “public realm” such as the infamous Red Road housing units in Glasgow: