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The Clothes on our Backs: How Refugees from Nazism Revitalised the British Fashion Trade

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This is my kind of book- a well-written novel from a woman's point of view that has layers and layers of meaning. The story is captivating and the characters fully realized and multidimensional without being overly conscious. This paragraph from the novel sums up for me how Linda Grant used clothes in this novel as an allegory of personalities. We truly can’t let better in until we have the faith to believe that we deserve better. Clearing clutter, or getting rid of things that don’t serve us, isn’t just a physical removal of stuff, it is a mental one too.

Tânăra este nepoata lui Sándor Kovacs, un baron binecunoscut pentru afacerile sale necurate, care şi-a construit averea pe baza chiriaşilor săi de culoare. Vivien l-a văzut pentru prima dată când avea zece ani, iar imaginea lui a marcat-o pentru multă vreme. „Acesta purta un costum de mohair albastru electric, pantofi negri de piele întoarsă cusuţi manual, iar la mâna lui lucea un ceas cu brăţară de diamante” (p. 41). The main character, Vivien, is endearing through as she searches for her family history by talking with her father's estranged brother, Sandor, once convicted of being a slum lord. Sandor is complicated-a slum lord, a pimp, a survivor of slave labor camps during WWII, an escapee from communist Hungary. He is by turns the face of evil and the soul of human kindness. I’m sure this won’t always be easy. There will still be pangs of guilt and feelings of remorse that will surface each time we opt to pass something on that is “still perfectly good” or for which we spent “good money.” But life isn’t just about saving money, getting a “great deal,” or mitigating our mistakes. How great to see you comment here, Bridgette. Thank you so much for all of your kind words! My time with you (as well as reading all of your great blog posts) has been instrumental in my style and wardrobe growth and transformation. But I had to be ready to make the changes and take in the suggestions. I don’t know if I would have been in the right place a year ago.

Metaphorically Flogging Ourselves

Is the speaker, Harry’s uncle, talking only about clothes, or saying “you live in comfort with basic needs for life”? When Vivien finds the swasti­ka draw­ing in Claude’s note­book she says, ​ “When you are the ene­my of aper­son with an ide­ol­o­gy, you’re in seri­ous trouble….I knew that quite ordi­nary peo­ple, who had no thoughts at all, just feel­ings, could be equal­ly dan­ger­ous.” What is dan­ger­ous about Claude? What is the sig­nif­i­cance of this state­ment as it relates to the his­tor­i­cal con­tent of thisbook? If I can re-coup some of my money through consignment, great, but that won’t be my primary concern. My first and foremost commitment is to enjoying my life. So no matter how much money I spent on something, I won’t keep it if it’s uncomfortable, ill-fitting, frumpy, or in a style that doesn’t mesh with the aesthetic I want to present. We Are Given No Guarantees What did you think of Vivien’s father? Were you sym­pa­thet­ic toward him? Why might it be eas­i­er to like Sán­dor bet­ter thanErvin?

As you can tell, I have very strong feelings about this. I wanted to write this while my emotions were still heightened and my commitment was maximized. I want you to remind me of what I wrote here if I should ever falter. I want to be held to the promises I’ve made here today and I encourage you to make similar promises to yourselves, if you have not already done so. concluzie, prin intermediul rochiei celei noi, Vivien face o retrospecţie asupra întregii sale vieţi. Ea vede hainele ca pe nişte măşti. Hainele, la fel ca măștile, odată ce le porți, devin o parte din tine.When you think about how fast fashion has sped up,” says Aja Barber, author of Consumed: the need for collective change: colonialism, climate change, and consumerism, “if you think about the popularity of social media, there’s a huge connection there. I don’t remember being encouraged to spend and buy the way that teenagers are spending and buying today, because social media didn’t exist.” My own interest in clothing is one of necessity, although not in the strictest sense of needing it to survive. I don't love clothing for its own sake, for the most part, but because it allows you to present an image of yourself. It's completely superficial and shouldn't matter, but it seems to. I revert to adolescent angst about what to wear to important events, and occasionally find myself half-naked in front of the bedroom mirror and unable to get dressed for work. Life is to be enjoyed, cherished, and experienced. After all, we are given no guarantees. While many of us will grace this earth for eighty, ninety, or even more years, some of us won’t be blessed with so much time. I’m not assured that I will reach 49 and I’m definitely not promised decent health (I already struggle a lot there) with which to fully embrace my life.

Orange Prize Winner and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008, Llinda Grant has created an enchanting portrait of a woman who, having endured unbearable loss, finds solace in the family secrets her estranged uncle reveals. You know, my life turned out more banal than I ever expected, for as I found out, to live IS banal." This book was a birthday present, and it's not a mystery why it was chosen for me. The story contains, among other things: slumlords, Jews, immigrants to the UK, the UK, and (as the name suggests) clothes. The giver probably over-estimates my interest in clothing and the acquisition of clothing, as many men do of many women, but it's a forgivable mistake. Is Harry’s answer purely about clothes, or a part of the idiomatic meaning which he took it literally on purpose? Ah, let us not forget the random introduction of a “sub-storyline,” the Skinheads, Neo-Nazis, etc. The introduction of graphics in a text-only novel generally indicates something significant and important. I cannot figure out why the author even bothers with the sign used by the Hungarian Nazi-sympathizers or with the logo for the National Front in England. Who cares? Write it if you must, but don’t introduce any graphics unless you’re writing “The Da Vinci Code” and your graphics lead to the discovery of some incredible esoteric secret. Anyway, it’s obvious the attempts at introducing some neo-Nazi theme is to give some edginess to the story, but, as in the rest of all attempts, this fails again.Why do we do this? We do we insist on punishing ourselves and prolonging our self-effacing feelings? Do we think that by continuing to metaphorically flog ourselves, we’ll teach ourselves a lesson or be able to do penance for our wrong deeds? It may be one or both of those things or something else entirely, but I’m here to say that life is too short to settle for less and feel bad! Linda Grant was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1951, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She was educated at the Belvedere School (GDST), read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and did further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984. The strategy I adopted with these now is to learn something from these mistakes and think about them when I’m about to buy something new. So I assess this “mistake” this way: Are there indi­ca­tions that Ervin and Sán­dor love each oth­er despite their decades-long feud? In what ways do they express their love? What is iron­ic about the way each influ­ences the life of theother? Also, taking away learnings from such a mistake helps feeling less guilt about removing it from my life – OK I wasted the money but at least I learned something about my style and shopping habits. I won’t fall into the same trap a second time.

Fans of 20th-century textiles will be well acquainted with the work of Jacqueline Groag, Marian Mahler, Tibor Reich and others. But they may not have made a connection with brands such as Kangol, Ettinger or Charnos. And yet both the textile designers and the manufacturers of berets, wallets and underwear share a common story: they were all refugees from Nazi Europe. Some 80,000 people came to safety in Britain before the outbreak of World War II. Most of these refugees were Jewish, or classified by the Nazis as such. Jews have long been active in the textile and clothing trades, since the Middle Ages in fact, when one of the limited options open to them was to walk across the country selling second-hand clothes and lengths of fabric. This was the beginning of the ‘rag trade’. Some came as designers, like the talented and tenacious Otto Weisz from Austria who landed the job at Pringle of Scotland’s first professional knitwear designer. It was he who came up with the concept of the twinset, that most British of outfits. Vivien Kovacs, sensitive and bookish, grows up sealed off from the world by her timid Hungarian refugee parents. She loses herself in books and reinvents herself according to her favorite characters, but it is through clothes that she ultimately defines herself. Sán­dor is acon­tro­ver­sial char­ac­ter who, despite his crimes, has many like­able qual­i­ties. What did you think of him? Were you more sym­pa­thet­ic toward him after read­ing his sto­ry in his own words? Are his actions forgivable?Interspersed with thread narratives about slavery, the plight of East European refugees, discrimination and family ties, it also tries to deal with a displaced youth's sense of belonging and relations with her timid parents who are afraid to live life (in her opinion). But you are right that we should focus most of our attention on learning from our mistakes, and the questions you pose are very helpful. As for my mistake dress, I loved the print and it was being sold for a low price. I was also feeling excited about wearing dresses more often this summer and fell into the trap of thinking I needed to have A LOT of dresses instead of wearing what I have more often. I’m still not used to repeating things so often, but in truth, I’m NOT really re-wearing my items all that regularly.

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