The other day I mentioned in this blog Nancy Cunard, a woman I looked up to for years, considering her as one of my personal role models and icons. I first got interested in her work not because I read something by or about her, but because, many years ago, I saw a picture of her in a book about rare jewels and accessories and was instantly fascinated by her style.
Thin as a rake, her kiss-curls hidden under a toque and carefully pinned round her face, African ivory bangles covering most of her arms (bangles that she sometimes used as weapons, apparently...), never a smile on her thin lips, enigmatic eyes: this is the image that comes out from most of the portraits of Nancy Cunard that famous photographers such as Cecil Beaton or Man Ray left us.
Born in 1896, the daughter of Sir Bache Cunard, an English baronet, and Lady Emerald, an American society hostess, Nancy lived her childhood in the rather shunted environment provided by her parents in the mansion of Nevill Holt, Leicestershire. Here, the differences between her mother and father were soon revealed: the former used to surround herself with artists, among them George Moore, who’ll eventually become one of Nancy’s best friends, while the latter didn’t show any interest in the world of arts.
In 1916 Nancy married Sydney Fairbairn, whom she divorced after three years, moving to Paris in 1920. While living in the French capital, she became the constant obsession of many writers who drew on Nancy to portray their heroines: she is indeed behind the main characters of Michael Arlen’s ‘The Green Hat’ and Aldous Huxley’s ‘Point Counter Point’.
In 1921, Nancy - who had been writing poetry since her early teens - published ‘Outlaws’, a collection of poems, that was soon followed by ‘Sublunary’ (1923) and ‘Parallax’ (1925). During these years she befriended Louis Aragon, bought a hand printer and started The Hours Press in Le Puits Carré, a small house in the French countryside, where she moved with black musician Henry Crowder with whom she had started a relationship after meeting him in Venice in 1928.
The late ‘20s-early ‘30s were the heyday of the small publishing venture: Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ came out under Sylvia Beach’s imprint in 1922; Robert McAlmont founded in the same year Contact Editions in Paris and was the first to publish Ernest Hemingway. Nancy started The Hours Press to be able to publish contemporary poetry and to learn how to print by hand for “the sense of independent creativeness it might give one”. The first authors she published were her friends, among them George Moore, Alvaro Guevara, Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound, Norman Douglas, and also Samuel Beckett. Nancy’s publishing house closed in 1931, after only three years of activity, yet The Hours Press was a fundamental experience in her life: through it she gained the necessary knowledge to go onto researching and later publishing the 855-page anthology on black politics and culture ‘Negro’ (1934). The book, featuring work and translations by many distinguished contributors, was inspired by Nancy‘s support of the black cause. She defended it already years before the Scottsboro Boys case, but this episode – the arrest of nine black youths in Scottsboro, Alabama, on the charge of raping two white girls and the sentencing of eight of them to the electric chair after a travesty of a trial – came to stand for everything she had been moved by when she first heard Crowder describe American racism. Nancy’s interest in the problems, history and culture of black people ended forever the ties that remained with her mother, as she announced in her pamphlet ‘Black Man and White Ladyship’.
After ‘Negro’, Nancy visited Moscow, worked as a journalist in Geneva, then left for Barcelona to report about the Spanish Civil War. Near the end of the conflict, Nancy assisted Spanish refugees interned in southern France and obtained the release of the Spanish poet Cesar Arconada. In the early ‘40s, Nancy travelled through Chile, Argentina, Jamaica, Mexico, Ellis Island, Cuba, then went back to England where she remained until the end of the war. Later, she moved back to France, then returned to Spain where she suffered from a serious nervous breakdown and was hospitalised in a mental sanatorium. She died in 1965.
Over forty years from her death, it is still worthwhile remembering Nancy Cunard because she refused to conform to a gentle, passive, dependent female stereotype; she broke from her social class to defend the rights of black people and to fight against Franco and she embodied the ideals of creativity and freedom from ready-made ideas.
Towards the end of her life she recalled only a few things with pride: ‘Negro’, her rescue of Spanish refugees and her collection of ivory bracelets, nothing more, nothing else, no love, no man – though she had been attracted by many and had made many suffer – just a few lines from her poems and not even her publishing house.
For Solita Solano, Nancy had a vast anger at injustice and her life’s purpose was to use it for the moral evolution of mankind. I’d like to think that Nancy Cunard the “perfect stranger, outcast and outlaw from the rules of life,” as she described herself in her poem ‘In Answer to a Reproof’, achieved her purpose through her works, her struggles and her obsessions.
To be inspired by Nancy Cunard you can read her works or the books about her, but you can also try to copy her style by buying vintage bakelite bangles. You can find the best ones on the Morning Glory Jewelry site that sells absolutely amazing pieces. The prices go from $40,00 to $2,000, but their bangles are really unique.
There are pieces with carved floral motifs, hand-painted flowers, cats and dovetailed swirls, featuring translucent inserts and art deco elements. For the perfect Nancy Cunard effect stack lots of different bangles in contrasting colours and styles one next to the other.
Fans of Nancy Cunard's style will also be happy to know that, for this Fall, many designers looked back at the past as inspiration for their collections: Halston has a skirt suit in rusty orange that reminds me of a suit Cunard wore in a picture taken in Spain.
Bottega Veneta opted instead for an effortless look with nude-toned liquid dresses that flicker fluidly on the body and give an elongated line to the body, perfect for the thin-as-a-rake Cunard look. For the evening, choose Allegra Hicks' glamorous dress in deep blue, a sort of brighter version of the dress worn in Picasso's 1917 painting by Ballets Russes' dancer Olga Khokhlova.
Don't forget, though, that Cunard's glamour is not all in the dress, so try to read at least Anne Chisholm's biography to get to know more about her work, battles and lifestyle.
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