My great-grandmother Idina Sackville was known as The Bolter because, in 1918, she left her young, handsome and extremely rich husband to run off (bolt) to Africa with a near penniless man. (I written her story in my book The Bolter which will be published by Knopf on June 2nd.) She divorced a total of five times when few people divorced at all and was one of the most scandalous figures of the 1920's and 1930's, very much excluded from polite society.
Nonetheless, she managed to be a style icon. She was a muse for Molyneux, one of the great designers of the day and the clothes she bought each season were reported in newspapers across the world. It was said that she "lit up a room when she entered it."
One of the most remarkable aspects of her style was that she managed to look immaculate even out in the African bush. As her friend the travel writer Rosita Forbes said about a trip in to the Congo jungle with her, Idina emerged from her tent "looking as if she had just stepped out of tissue-paper."
See some examples of this below.
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Idina had, as the newspapers wrote, "a much-envied gift for wearing clothes attractively...It has been remarked of her that the simplest gown becomes distinguished when she puts it on." In August 1911, aged eighteen, she sailed to the United States to spend a year with family friends, and she made a name for herself. This photograph was taken in October 1913 when, having returned to Britain, she became engaged to Euan Wallace, an extremely handsome 21-year-old Scotsman who had just inherited a fortune. The dress has a heavy train falling behind it, in accordance with the fashion of the day.
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The Bolter is published by Knopf on June 2nd.
One thing that I like about the pics is that the women shown are bra-less (not invented yet) and totally without cosmetic surgery alterations. 21st Century America doesn't even know what real women look like, anymore.
(Meanwhile, President Barack Obama's grandfather was having his testicles crushed by Idina's male compatriots somewhere in colonial Kenya, just for daring to assert that the place might actually not belong to them.)
What about the cruelty of White American slave owners. What about those who did not own slaves but arrived on American shores and dared to assert that America belonged to them; that they belonged to America.
I remember Africa as a green place where many black Africans who worked with White Africans had free medical care, free housing, free schooling for their children, free land on which to grow their traditional crops -- all funded by White Africans. Now Africa is a brown, polluted place with plundered forests and diminishing wild life; a poor, overpopulated place without infrastructure; a parched place unfit for scratching a living off the land. The black Africans I knew had jobs; they and/or their families are now unemployed. They were free from poverty, civil war, pillage and rape now rampant in Africa. There was no government corruption diverting tax dollars and business fees to private coffers.
I am not saying the White Africans couldn't have done better, but there was no policy of apartheid where I lived. I am saying it is not clear cut, black and white. I am suggesting that one should look at home first before criticizing others abroad.
Somehow, I think we'd be better off if that were still true.
Idina Sackville's story is so fun to read. She was like the Madonna of the 20s, it seems. LOL! I know Madonna is full of drama and slightly ridiculous but she is/was fearless and she blazed trails for women. We are all a little less repressed because of Idina and Madonna whether we like to admit it or not. Women that go for what they want and everyone else in the world be damned are my kind of friends. *high five*
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I make this kind of mistake all the time when I do rewrites: however, it's really bad form on a blog as popular as this one. The editing staff should have caught it before the page went up.