Thursday 13 August 2009

A comment, a Reply and a Good Excuse for a Few Magazine Scans from My Collection

A comment was left on the last post I made saying: “Why does it seem like the girls in all these uniform specialist sites don't wear a uniform...uniform? They have multiple girls in the same scenes that are all supposed to go to the same school, yet they wear radically different uniforms.”
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This got me to thinking – and to rummaging around in my collection of magazine scans (see later) as on the face of it, that's a good point. In this particular case I like to think of it as being a more of a 'domestic' scenario - two girls too old to be likely to be actually at school living with some guardian or relative and under the control of the strict governess she has hired to curb them. The uniforms I imagine as having been procured from some local charity shop (thrift / second hand shop with the sole intention of introducing an additional aspect of humiliation into the regime - perhaps as a stop-gap, the intention being to have a suitably imaginative, juvenile and shaming uniform made to measure to their own specification at a later stage once the girls have thoroughly resigned themselves to wearing what they have been given now. But it's not true of all their films / photo sets in any case and definitely is not true of those wonderful East European film makers I mentioned before. Meanwhile, as with written work, I am always on the lookout for work that more completely matches my – and I guess, your – interests and predilections; it is the main reason I started writing my own stuff, after all!As you will know if you are a regular follower of this blog; I’m always on the lookout for perfection and so often, even with the best, it is those little things that mar the result; the school blouse with the collar and or sleeve cuff buttons left unfastened, perhaps the school tie left loose in a slovenly fashion. Then there is always the cane-wielding nurse, house-matron or governess, the cuffs of her long-sleeved uniform dress left flapping in the breeze or who’s elastic webbing nurse’s belt hangs slack around her waist or – worse still – is wearing trainers or even (and I have seen this - a very good example can be seen here and that belt will never do either - such a shame as the girl is perfect) knee-high fashion boots when of course to maximise the psychological effect on her charge those cuffs should be buttoned and stiffly starched to boot, that belt should cinch her waist in such away as to enhance the imposing effect of her well-tailored and fitted uniform dress and her feet shod in laced-up and well-polished ‘sensible’ shoes or medium-heeled courts, depending on the situation. I have even seen such a figure with bare legs when as a minimum standard the hem of her uniform dress should softly sigh and swish against nylon stockings as she moves, but preferably she should be wearing old fashioned ‘fully-fashioned stockings of course.
See you all soon - for now I am off to Clacton on the East Coast for a few days, cycling around and hopefully doing a bit of writing. As for a bit of news: recently I have been playing around with the extended title of volume 2 in the hope of making it more visible to search engines. In part I seem to have succeeded as the hit rate on Lulu, the publisher's site, has gone through the roof but on the other hand, now no one seems to be buying it; I am left with the conclusion that perhaps i have made it now appear too 'hard core' which of couse it isn't... oh well!

2 comments:

Colin said...

I like these pics, did you know that there are more of them? I think I've got one from earlier in the sequence, if I can find it would you like me to send it to you?

Toyntanen said...

I scaned them in from an old magazine but can't remember which one at the moment - I have the entire set though, so if anyone out there wants to see them let me know and I'll post them on the blog.