Two Fabulous Shots of Diana Ross Taken by Steve Schapiro During the Filming of ‘Mahogany’ (1975)

Diana Ross photographed by Steve Schapiro during the filming of Mahogany, a film in which the singer took on the fashion world – and even designed some of the clothes.

The 1975 movie Mahogany may not be remembered entirely well by history – “a big, lush, messy soap opera,” said critic Roger Ebert in his two star review of the time. But, in lieu of a cohesive plot, rounded characterisation, believable dialogue (etc.) you have Diana Ross, and her wardrobe – both of which are, unsurprisingly, fabulous.

The film stars Diana Ross as Tracy Chambers, a struggling fashion design student who rises to become a popular fashion designer in Rome. Fresh from the success of Lady Sings the Blues, this film served as Ross’ follow-up feature film.

Amazing Photographs of Steven Tyler of Aerosmith on the Stage in the 1970s and 1980s

Steven Tyler (born March 26, 1948) took up drums and singing before becoming the bombastic, colorful leader of the rock band Aerosmith. The group would enjoy major chart success with hits like “Dream On,” “Walk This Way,” “Love in an Elevator” and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” having more than four decades worth of staying power. Tyler also served as an American Idol judge for two years.

Steven Tyler loves fashion, as he told in an interview: “I love it. Somewhere in 1967, when I was in high school, I remember getting made fun of because I wore cowboy boots. I sewed buttons on each side of the cowboy boot, which I attached to my pants, so they wouldn’t ride up. The haircuts and the style of clothes that I loved were Mod English, Carnaby Street, Anita Pallenberg.”

Also, he designs all the clothes for Aerosmith’s tours: “We did 33 tours since 1970. I designed most of the stage clothes. When you’re out shopping in Paraguay, you’re going to come home with some ostrich boots and a black-and-white checkered hat and some bolos they caught the ostrich with.”

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Two Women in Long Dresses and Hats Rock Climbing the Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh in the 1900s

These days, rock climbing equipment is very high tech, with safety features like harnesses, spring-loaded carabiners, helmets, as well as special climbing shoes with crips, spikes and rubber soles. This wasn’t the case in the early 1900s, as this amazing photograph taken in Holyrood Park shows.

Lucy Smith and Pauline Ranken of the Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club climbing the Salisbury Crags in 1908.

Lucy Smith and Pauline Ranken, two members of the Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club founded in 1908, can be seen ascending Salisbury Crags wearing long, ankle-length skirts, hats, blouses and smart shoes. The only protection they had was a length of rope that was tied around each of their waists. There were no harnesses, crampons or other modern safety equipment available to them at the time.

Lucy Smith, one of the women in the photo, was one of the founder members of the Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club: the other two founders were Jane Inglis Clarke and her daughter Mabel. They formed the club because as women, they were barred from joining the men-only Scottish Mountaineering Club, and they trained regularly on Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh.

All three women climbed extensively in Scotland and the Alps before forming the club, including the major climbing areas in Scotland such as Crianlarich, Glencoe and Skye. And they did much of that climbing in thick, long tweed skirts, smart jackets and hats. Unlike the men’s club, who wore stout boots and trousers, which must have made things easier.

The club meeting at the start of 1909. Founder Lucy Smith is leftmost while Jane Inglis Clark is in the centre of the doorway.

By the end of 1908 the club had fourteen members. To qualify, women had to ascend four peaks of at least 3,000 feet with two snow climbs and two rock climbs. To be decent, they would start their climbs in their restrictive, long skirts. However, when no men were around they would often discard these to climb in knickerbockers: knee length trousers that could be hidden under dresses.

(via Edinburgh Live)

The Immortals: Funny Photographs of a Group of Glasgow Students Having a Wonderful Weekend Together in the 1890s

Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s designs are so modern that it’s easy to forget that he was active at the turn of the 20th century. These group photos show Mackintosh and his fellow Glasgow School of Art friends, they came to be know as The Immortals.

The album is part of a collection of Jessie Keppie’s papers held at Glasgow School of Art’s Archives and Collections. Jessie Keppie’s brother, John Keppie also appears in the photographs. Keppie was a partner in Honeyman and Keppie, the architectural firm at which Mackintosh and Herbert McNair worked.

Back Row: Frances Macdonald. Middle row (L-R): Margaret Macdonald, Katherine Cameron, Janet Aitken, Agnes Raeburn, Jessie Keppie, John Keppie. Front row (L-R): Herbert McNair, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

L-R: Frances Macdonald, Agnes Raeburn, Janet Aitken, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Katherine Cameron, Jessie Keppie, Margaret Macdonald.

L-R: Frances MacDonald, Agnes Raeburn, Janet Aitken, Katherine Cameron, Jessie Keppie and Margaret Macdonald.

L-R: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Jessie Keppie, Agnes Raeburn, Janet Aitken, Katherine Cameron, Frances Macdonald, John Keppie (head and shoulders), Herbert McNair and Margaret Macdonald.

L-R: Katherine Cameron, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Janet Aitken, John Keppie, Agnes Raeburn, Jessie Keppie, Frances Macdonald, Herbert McNair, Margaret Macdonald.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Herbert McNair, with Agnes Raeburn (?), and Jessie Keppie (?) and her sister (?).

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, water colorist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with European Symbolism. His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macdonald, was influential on European design movements such as Art Nouveau and Secessionism and praised by great modernists such as Josef Hoffmann.

From 1889 he worked as a draughtsman with Honeyman and Keppie, one of the leading architectural firms in Glasgow, where he remained for most of his architectural career. It was in the office of Honeyman and Keppie, at first as a draughtsman and from 1901 as a partner, that he designed his finest buildings for sites in and around Glasgow and much of his remarkable decorative work. He was extraordinarily creative but his career was uneventful, at least until it started to go wrong. For many years it was simply the story of his work.

While training as an architect in professional offices, Mackintosh also attended Glasgow School of Art between 1883 and 1894. He was one of a group of talented students there, mainly young middle-class women, who called themselves The Immortals. Herbert McNair, a colleague from Honeyman and Keppie, was also part of the group and in the mid-1890s he and Mackintosh worked closely with the sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, painting complex watercolors and designing posters and works of decorative art. Symbolism, the arts and crafts movement, and art nouveau are all influences on this work.

Mackintosh’s experiences at Glasgow School of Art and the friendships he made there seemed to settle the shape of his career, with its interplay of architecture, decorative art, and painting, and he learned a good deal about himself and his abilities. Hard-working, voluble, kind, sometimes moody, and above all talented, he moved easily among these women despite his working-class origins.

In 1896 a competition was held for the design of a new building for Glasgow School of Art, to be built in the center of the city. Honeyman and Keppie won the competition with a design by Mackintosh, which laid out studios and workshops in two ranges of equal length on either side of a centerpiece with tall wings at either end. For lack of funds, only the eastern part and the centerpiece were built in 1897–9, with the rest left to be completed later.

Glasgow School of Art is an enigmatic and endearing building. It looks bare, as if the design had been generated only by its functions. But careful contemplation reveals Mackintosh’s purely compositional skill. He handled parts of the building, bays, wings, whole façades, with a freedom and expressiveness most architects achieve only in their handling of detail. The freedom of eclecticism, which amounted to little more than playfulness in the hands of Mackintosh’s British contemporaries, is here taken to an extreme, suggesting ambiguities and dislocations between the different parts, between inside and outside, between what seems to be the case and what is. The self-consciousness would be mannerist if Mackintosh had been working with rules that could be seen to be broken, but he was not. His design engages not with a stylistic code but with his own activity as a designer and with the perceptions of those who use and look at the building: it is a commentary upon itself.

(Images: Glasgow School of Art_ Archives & Collections)

Beautiful Photos Show Hairstyles of Hungarian Girls in the 1900s

Overall, women’s Edwardian hairstyles had a soft, fluffy and loose fluidity about them. They were large and often padded to create the bulk and size fashionable during this era.

The hair could even be quite fuzzy, especially if Marcel tongs were used regularly. Hair was dressed up and away from the face, with the exception of a curled fringe, which sat on the forehead. The perky Gibson Girl was the epitome of the feminine ideal.

In short, she was tall and slender, yet curvy, with her hair piled high on top of her head in the softly swirled pompadour style of the day.

These beautiful photos from Nori (Nóra Mészöly) show what Hungarian girls looked like in the 1900s and 1910s.

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40 Cool Photos of Boston Girls of the 1970s

The idea that 1970s fashion was an expression of one’s personality replaced the everyone-follow-the-famous trend of the ’50s and ’60s. Clothes were made to mix and match with each other as well as across gender guidelines.

Vogue declared “There are no rules of the fashion game now. You’re playing it and you make up the game as you go.”

Common items included mini skirts, bell-bottoms popularized by hippies, vintage clothing from the 1950s and earlier, and the androgynous glam rock and disco styles that introduced platform shoes, bright colors, glitter, and satin.

These cool photos were taken by AntyDiluvian that show what Boston girls looked like in the 1970s.

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20 Stunning Black and White Portraits of a Very Young Aretha Franklin in the 1960s

The definitive female soul singer of the 1960s, a symbol of black pride, and one of the most influential voices in the history of popular music, Aretha Franklin brought “black” music to an entirely new audience.

Aretha grew up in Detroit where her father was pastor at the New Bethel Baptist Church. She recorded her first album of gospel music at age 14. At 18, legendary talent scout John Hammond brought her to Columbia Records, “Columbia was a white company who misunderstood her genius.”

In 1966, Aretha moves to Atlantic Records and immediately hits her stride, producing a phenomenal body of work. “When I went to Atlantic,” she said, “they just sat me down at the piano and the hits started coming.”

“Respect”, her trademark song written by singer Otis Redding, is an instant hit in 1967, becoming an anthem for both racial pride and women’s rights. Within three years, she has eight crossover hits that reach the Top 10 in both Pop and R&B charts, including “Chain of Fools”, “Think”, and “A Natural Woman”.

On April 9, 1968, she sang “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” at the funeral service of her friend Martin Luther King Jr. A few months later she appears on the cover of TIME, in an article suggesting her husband/manager is abusive. A lawsuit was filed over the article, and her marriage subsequently ended in divorce. After this, she rarely talks to the media.

In 1987, at age 45, Aretha is the first woman inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, having charted more records selling over a million copies than any woman in history.

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