Violets « Lady Violette

Posts Tagged ‘Violets’

More Inspiration ~ Marlene Dietrich & Grace Kelly Wearing Flowers With Fabulous Furs

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

Ultra Fluffy Bleached White Fox Fur Frames Marlene's Face ~ Note the Corsage of Violets!

Marlene Dietrich in all her beautifully lit beauty wearing beautiful luxurious face framing fox furs. I love the added accent of the violet corsage! Nowadays it seems oddly out of season to wear flowers with furs but this was not always so. Apparently women wore warm furs over flimsy floral dresses with floral corsages or flower trimmed hats in past eras. It was certainly charmingly ultra feminine. And solved the problem of wearing a sweet spring light dress while freezing to death on Easter!

Grace Kelly Shortly After Her Arrival in Monaco

This is one of my favorite photographs of Grace Kelly wearing what looks like an exquisite sable coat with an adorable 1950’s rose trimmed pill box hat and white gloves. She looks so fresh and girlish and happy! And warm! So you see, it is possible to wear a spring outfit and not freeze to death! I have found many photos of Grace in furs and she was obviously someone who preferred to be comfortably warm by wearing a proper coat! More Grace in furs coming soon!

Tags: Fashion, Feminine Arts, Film, Flowers, Furs are Fabulous, Hats, History, How to wear Flowers with Furs, Photography, Style, Vintage, Vintage Fur, Vintage Gloves, Violets
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A Vintage Violet Cover Girl Model on Love Magazine 1931~ from Lady Violette’s Media & Print Collection

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

Here is a charming and oh so soft image of ideal beauty on the cover of a magazine called Love from 1931. The innocent blond model with soft curls and blue eyes seems a far cry from the models of today!

A Soft and Gentle Beauty Holding a Bunch of Violets on the Cover of Love Magazine in 1931

How sweet and gentle she looks! What an interesting contrast to the tough babe sexuality on the covers of most magazines today! I don’t think general public is conditioned to find this girl attractive anymore. They seem to need blatant sexuality on the cover of magazines to even give them a second look! I wonder, in contrast, what a cover model holding a bunch of violets on the cover of a magazine today would look like! Perhaps Lady Gaga in a shining purple patent leather bra and thong with a violet nosegay stuffed in her cleavage and thigh high purple boots? Yawn! She is so boring! I find her outfits actually so repetitive and derivative of what so many others have done before! Yawn, again!

Take note of the pretty scary story titles here! This cover was torn off its magazine so I don’t have the stories to read! I wonder what happened to Mary Lou in her Experiments with Life? Or at The Devils Alter? Scary stuff! Good titles for Halloween stories! The Haunted Wedding, The Devil’s Alter, 12 Questions From the Spirit World, Fate Traps Three Women and the clincher, Mary Lou Experiments with Life! They had no TV or Video back then. They could read for entertainment or go to the movies.

I love looking through old magazines like this for a taste of life in the days they were printed. They are very revealing of their times. And full of vintage fashion tips from the eras! I enjoy looking at the ads and the fashion layouts. I recently acquired a pile of magazines from 1952. They are full of great things but the pages are moldy and I can barely stand to look at them. I get instant allergic attacks. I have to store them in my garage and can only look at them outside in the fresh air and sun.

Tags: Fashion, Flowers, History, Lady Violette de Courcy's Media & Print Collection, Violets, Violets in Literature
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The Blue Moon – a Recipe for a Delightful Antique Violet Petal Cocktail Made with Creme Yvette or Creme De Violette

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

The Beautiful & Romantic Blue Moon Cocktail

We can now make the long lost, beautiful, and enjoyable, vintage Blue Moon cocktail again. It is made from liqueur compounded of violet petals and other secret flavorings and it is divine!

Lady Violette and friend, Lavande Lamour say,”Treat yourself. It’s absolutely fluerific.” We had read about it for years but the necessary flower liqueurs needed to create it were nowhere to be had during our lifetimes! Now they have been revived which, to us, is akin to reviving a lady who has fainted! What a relief! She is still alive! We thought, for a moment, that she might be dead!

The violet liqueurs Creme Yvette or Creme de Violette required to make The Blue Moon had been discontinued for decades, but are fortunately available again. The recipe and the story behind it, and other vintage spirits and forgotten cocktails are now available in a a new book by Ted Haigh reviewed in the Cookbook Profile of the Global Gourmet. The earliest version was created in 1917. Here ’tis:

Ingredients

2 ounces (1/2 gill, 6 cl) gin
1/2 ounce (1/8 gill, 1.5 cl) Creme Yvette or creme de violette
1/2 ounce (1/8 gill, 1.5 cl) fresh lemon juice

Shake in an iced cocktail shaker, and strain into a cocktail glass.

Garnish with a lemon twist. Enjoy and,

Tags: Flowers, History, Recipes, Violets, Violette Cocktail Recipes
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A Good Looking & Thorough Candied Violet Tutorial & a Recipe for a Feminine Rose Shaped Lemon Poppyseed Cake Garnished with Real Violets

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Sweet Candied Violets & Lemon Poppyseed Cake Done in a Rose Shaped Cake Mold! A True Example of The Feminine Arts!

I have found this tutorial for crystallized violets which looks very complete! Complete with a pretty cake recipe decorated with the lovely little real flowers. The writer, Diane Levinson, on her blog 2 Stews suggests it for Mother’s Day which is a very good idea! I must read everything she has written on food as it looks fascinating! Another good discovery dug up when resourcing how to sugar violets. Plant hunting pays off! I include looking for ways to eat edible flowers and collecting recipes for cooking with them as a sub category of plant hunting!

Personally I don’t always like cakes covered with thick sugary frosting and this manner of decorating looks like a pretty tasty alternative. Lower in calories too! This is an old fashioned homemade looking cake which is also appealing in it’s way! It seems to go with the old fashioned flower itself. I’m going to try it! It looks like a sweet blend of the feminine arts of baking and flower preserving and decorating. It is baked in a rose shaped cake mold as well. That actually makes it a rose violet cake! Just adorable! Merci Diane for sharing your recipe, methods for preparing sugared violets and great photos! Sweet Candied Violets and Lemon Poppyseed Cake .

Step One: Diane preparing to sugar the violet flowers!

Diane has beautiful step by step instructions with photos illustrating the making of sugared violets. These were the best instructions I found on the web for making them! I recommend them. I have made them before and she does a very nice job showing the steps and the patience involved!

Her explanations are complete, detailed and beautifully photographed. Lady Violette de Courcy approves! I love good photographs! This little bouquet has me smelling the scent of violets in my office. It is very cold outside where I am, in Seattle, WA and this has cheered me up today! When I see violets blooming even though it is nearly freezing out I know that spring is in the air! There is hope! It will eventually get warmer!

Tags: Edible Flowers, Feminine Arts, Flowers, Recipes, Violets
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