Min boudoir

I guess my Swedish speakers already know about this new magazine, but if not, then I think you should. Min boudoir. To quote the website it’s “A Swedish magazine for all things retro/burlesque/vintage/pinup in Sweden (incl Finland, Norway and Denmark)” The founder is the beautiful Tifa De Leone.



The first number is out and as I understand it is meant to be a quarterly magazine. 60 pages on high quality paper which made it very nice to handle. Well, the reading was very nice too. Interviews, shopping tips, music and fashion, beautiful photographs, btw, which made for a good reading mix in my view. I especially enjoyed to relationship column which had two answers, one appropriate for 1956 and one for 2011. And not t be missed- my hairdresser Retroella gives hairstyling tips in every issue.

I really hope this will take off as I think it's such a great idea. There are similar magazines in English, but I think it’s great with one in Swedish. There is a growing scene for vintage and burlesque in Sweden and it’s nice to get a Scandinavian angle. And Min boudoir is no slapdash magazine, it’s obvious that a lot of hard work has been put into it.

(Picture borrowed from http://www.minboudoir.se/)

Those Verney Girls

I hope you don’t think I’m too odd if I recommend you to read a girl’s book, but that is exactly what I do here. This is one of my ultimate comfort books that I always rerun to when I need a bit of cheering up. Gwendoline Courtney (1911-1996) wrote several girl’s books that I have been told are all very funny, but I have only ever read Those Verney Girls. It was translated to Swedish, but I would probably never have read it had not my Mum had a copy. It was first published in 1948 with the title Stepmother and have also been released under Elizabeth and the Garret Theatre.

A good book or two

I have two days left at work, and then my vacation starts. Though I read a lot all year round, I usually read a little more during the summer. So here are a few books that I like and that I think you may find interesting, as they are written and/or about the 1920’s-40’s. You may notice, when reading this post, that I LOVE to talk about books.

A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine (1986) is about a middle age woman, Faith, who thinks back to her youth during the forties when she was sent to live with her two aunts in the countryside. The outset of the whole book is that one of the aunts, Vera, was committed and hanged for murder. The rest of the book is how Faith’s memories slowly reveal the events that have led up to the murder as well as what has happened to the main characters since. You also get a lot on how life in England during the war could be- for example Vera is once described to wearing a dress made of two worn out old ones.