Manolo for the Big Girl

Love.

(click for shoe link)

…but is it art?

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Last week we admired the vintage Hilda calendars. Today we honor the work of the contemporary (living!) artist who uploaded those images, Les Toil (yes, that is his name).

For 11 years Mr. Toil has been lovingly and joyously creating vivid pin-up images of large women, often using his own girlfriend as a model and muse. He also does paid-for-hire work: for $300-400, you can arrange for him to paint a pin-up of you. (Note that he will ONLY paint large women, which Francesca does not think is right but is at least a change in our favor from artists who refuse to paint the fat girl.)

Here are images he has created of real live women just like us (click on them to see photos of the models and read their bios):

The Danni!

Francesca's favorite, the Elizabeth!

The Fierce Kaybelline!

The Amy!

Francesca wrote to Les asking for permission to post these images, and he wrote back:

Your blog is fantastic! It’s funny! It’s quirky! It’s informative! It’s positive! What would I object to?? Thanks much for the exposure and for considering my “skillz” worthy of Manolo. You rock like Elvis on speed.

Francesca thinks Les, too, is superfantastic.

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Our internet friend Steffi discovered this wonderful webpage, with dozens of pictures from the vintage Hilda calendars,  painted by Duane Bryers. (The host of this page is a different artist who also paints plus-size women; Francesca will post some of his “pin-ups” next week.)

Here we go.  Hilda!

From the website:  “[These] are many of Duane Bryers’ incredible Hilda paintings done specifically for Bigelow & Brown’s Hilda calendars. These were illustrated between 1957 and 1970 … They were primarily rendered in watercolor employing the service of a number of plus-size models, but more often than not, he used no model at all, a feat most impressive.”

Francesca loves the life and personality in these paintings. Hilda seems like a real person that the Francesca could know.

Pablo Picasso loved the Big Girls!

This painting, Woman With Flowered Hat, brings new meaning to “her eyes are like black pools.”

Francesca wishes to point you to the superfantastic Etsy artist and seller, LadyAtLarge. Francesca loves supporting the living artists!

The Big Mermaid!

The artist writes of her work:

This art is to celebrate the larger female form. Not to treat it as a joke but to show that fat women are as beautiful as their thinner sisters, despite what the media might try to tell us.

As a fat girl myself I get sort of tired of FAT being thought of as a four letter word, when so clearly it has only three. ;)

The Big Girl in Turquoise Panties!

This is entitled "Rose for a Lady"

Francesca loves that so many of the paintings are of Apple-shaped women, like Francesca. It is not often that the belly of the Big Girl is celebrated in all its roundness!

Note that LadyAtLarge has made a series of $5 bookmarks. Since Francesca has no more wall space, she may buy these.

Today’s Friday Fierceness will probably be unknown to many of you, although you’ve seen her a thousand times. Louise Weber, also known as La Goulue (The Glutton, a nickname given to her by journalist Gabriel Astruc who was bemused by her habit of dancing on a gentleman’s table, kicking off his top hat with her toe and taking his drink while he chased after his chapeau) was the Moulin Rouge’s first major star and is credited with creating the can-can.

Photo La Goulue, ca. 1895

The illegitimate daughter of a washerwoman, the outgoing Louise was hired as model by Pierre-August Renoir and soon became a favorite artist’s model in the Montmartre district, more in thanks to her over-the-top personality than any great physical beauty.

La Goulue Arrivant au Moulin Rouge, 1892

She was also one of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite subjects, painting her first for promotional posters:

La Goulue Poster, Moulin Rouge, 1891

and then for his personal work at the Moulin Rouge where she was known as “The Queen of Montmartre“  the headlining act, supported by Jane Avril –another Toulouse-Lautrec star– Nini Patte en l’Air (Nini Legs-in-the-Air) and of course the larger-than-life Môme Fromage (Kid Cheese) who was a big girl all through her career and was played by a size-22 actress Lara Mulcahy in the well-costumed but otherwise inexorably horrid Luhrmann flick, Moulin Rouge!

La Goulue et La Môme Fromage, 1892

At the height of her fame she danced nightly with Valentin le Decosse, a businessman who took an assumed name –his real name was Jacques Renaudin– and lived a sort of double life. The shadowy figure in the foreground of La Goulue’s Moulin Rouge poster is Valentin, and was a sort of inside joke as everyone in Paris knew of his “secret identity” much to the shame of his business-minded family.

La Goulue et Valentin, 1895

La Goulue was prone to plumpness –the success she found as a model with a trimmer figure can be attributed to her life of borderline malnutrition– and although she was corseted within an inch of her life and dancing non-stop for up to five hours a night rumor has it she left le Moulin at the height of her fame partially because famed manager Charles Zidler made comments about Jane Avril’s more slender figure and put her, not La Goulue on the newest Lautrec poster.

La Goulue et Valentin, 1886

La Goulue left le Moulin in April 1895 after what could generously be called “artistic differences.“  She was wealthy and famous and didn’t take well to being bossed so when the managers asked La G to tame some of her more raucous dancing and behavior –they were getting in trouble with the police bureau–she essentially said “screw you guys, I’m outta here” but, you know, in French.

Panel for the Stall of La Goulue at the Foire Du Trone, 1895

In retrospect, this was not her brightest move and she quickly lost her Moulin money through a series of failed business attempts and by the end of her life, she was living in a caravan and selling cigarette and peanuts on the streets where formerly she reigned as queen, suffering with severe depression and alcoholism.

Two years before her death in 1927, a journalist tracked down the former star and recorded just about a minute of silent footage where –with her trademark smirk and twinkle– she treated the young filmmaker to a brief glimpse of the dance she made famous.

Thomas Jefferson, who had the decency to do many sensible things like write the Declaration of Independence, create the Library of Congress, found the University of Virginia (well okay, jury’s still out on this one) and –most importantly– grew up in my part of Virginia, is know affectionately as TJ all over his old stomping grounds, but on the University of Virginia campus he is know exclusively as Mister Jefferson. It is a sign of respect.

In that vein, please note we will refer to today’s Friday Fierceness, editrix and icon par excellence Diana Vreeland strictly as Mrs Vreeland.

I don’t think I can overstate how much I love Mrs Vreeland, so let me try to paint you a picture:

Whenever faced with a sticky situation, I have an imaginary dinner party in my head (because I am, as well we know, completely mad). I go around the table and listen to my five regular guests argue out their opinions.

Here’s the guest list:

Jesus –the free space on any ethical bingo card

Mister Jefferson — for that diplomatic polymath touch

Socrates –an ethicist who damned the torpedos

Sheriff Andy Taylor –for gentleness and the people’s touch

Mrs Vreeland –for wit, vision and a healthy sense of the ridiculous

It’s hard to say where to start with Mrs Vreeland, because my admiration runs so deep.

Yes, she was a great editor, the best Harper’s and American Vogue ever had.

Her influence in the publishing world is still felt through countless people she discovered, inspired or worked with, including the most powerful big girl in fashion, Andre Leon Talley, her protégé.

If you’re a fan of Audrey Hepburn movies you’ll probably know Kay Thompson did a note-perfect homage in Funny Face as Maggie Prescott, the larger-than-life editor of Quality magazine. “Think Pink” was doubtlessly inspired by Mrs Vreeland’s famed quote: “Pink is the navy blue of India”

After the entire scene is painted pink, Maggie Prescott is asked why she wasn’t wearing the new “it” color she championed, since everyone one else was. Her perfect Mrs Vreeland line was a dismissive “I wouldn’t be caught dead.”

Mrs Vreeland wasn’t pretty. With her enormous nose, tilted pelvis and mannish features she came down on the laide side of jolie-laide, which always makes for the most interesting beauty. I’ve always said Sarah Jessica Parker must have a copy of the editrix’s playbook somewhere, so it was no surprise when SJP posed as Mrs Vreeland for Harper’s in March.


Her memoir D.V. should be required reading for every man, woman and child with even a glimmer of intellect or style.

It’s a tremendous read that begins with a perfectly aged Mrs Vreeland applying a back plaster to young Jack Nicholson’s naked backside, slides through her relationship with Wallis Simpson, Jackie Kennedy, Balenciaga and hits every note along the way with pizzazz (a word she made famous but probably did not coin. She became editor of Harper’s in 1937 where the word first appeared in print, attributed to a Harvard Lampoon editor.)

Here, just read the first page:

(click image to enlarge)

How much of the story is true? Probably more than she gets credit for, but it doesn’t really matter. Memoirs aren’t autobiographies.

So what can big girls learn from the reed-thin Mrs Vreeland?

She knew how to occupy space.

We all occupy space, that’s science. Learning how to occupy space is an art. I don’t suggest adopting her trademark pelvis-tilting swan slouch, but learning how to hold your body with unapologetic grace and power –even if it’s not traditional grace– is, like diamonds and the herp, a gift that gives forever.

When she sat in a chair, she didn’t perch on it trying to take up as little space as possible, she was in that chair.

It all comes down to honesty of being.

Mrs Vreeland was honest. She wasn’t necessarily factual but she was honest. I was astounded after my interview with The Daily Beast went public because dozens of my beloved readers thought I was actually a team of gay men because Plumcake couldn’t possible be real.  I loathe dishonesty of personality, especially in publishing. That’s not how I roll. I am what I appear (although I am more than I appear, like the rest of us) and I have Mrs Vreeland to thank for that.

She liked what she liked, said what she thought, wore what she pleased –usually black with wild statement pieces, which might be from ancient Greece or the costume shop around the corner– and knew she was the most fabulous creature on earth.

She didn’t pretend to fit traditional beauty, and that was fine with her because her concern was elegance and elegance was something far broader than black sheaths and knowing what fork to use.

“The only real elegance is in the mind; if you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.”

She had a vocabulary of elegance. When describing her hunt of the perfect red:

“All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, “I want Rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple”…About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in ANY Renaissance portrait.”

…and Mrs Vreeland did love her red. Her crimson nails and lips set against her kabuki white face and black lacquered hair, and of course her famed “Garden in Hell” living room.

I could go on and on, but I’ve been drinking tea since 8:00 this morning and there are tides in the affairs of men that reallyneedtogorightnowzomgow.

So have a fabulous weekend, have fun, be glorious and remember:

“I’m a great believer in vulgarity- if it’s got vitality. A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste- it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.”