Spring Fever

It feels like the first day of Spring today, which got me thinking about the trends this Spring/Summer. As always, so much is in fashion, and fashion moves so fast, that nothing is really out of fashion. But the words on everybodies lips from now until September is 'colour-blocking', and it's cousins Neon and Fruit. The colour of the year is honeysuckle, a reddish bright pink - a major counterpoint to last year's in thing, coral, which is a reddish orange.

Spot the difference.

Prada's gone fruity loopy, and Dior was all 1940s and bright colours. Which means only one woman can step up to the fashion plate as our style icon this season.

Carmen Miranda.

I'm fine with this.

Odette/Odile

"Black Swan" (2010, Darren Aranofsky)


“We all know the story. Virginal girl, pure and sweet, trapped in the body of a swan. She desires freedom but only true love can break the spell. Her wish is nearly granted in the form of a prince, but before he can declare his love her lustful twin, the black swan, tricks and seduces him. Devastated the white swan leaps of a cliff killing herself and, in death, finds freedom.”


I’ve always liked the idea of a horror or thriller where the audience sees through the eyes of a protagonist with paranoid schizophrenia. The wildest persecutions and the scariest experiences are outside of reality and take place in only two places: in film and in the mind of the psychotic.

The horrifying final reveal in Rosemary’s Baby is that she hadn’t imagined anything. I thought it would be creepier to have a character who is deluded but cannot snap out of it. Devil worship is rare, but mental health problems are common and the subjective experience can be just as terrifying for someone with delusions of persecution.

Darren Aronofsky’s new film has made a film along these lines. It’s set in a ballet company so it’s ticked a lot of my boxes.

The film uses the archetype of the doppelganger – the self’s double. Nina first sees corps dancer Lily out of the corner of her eye and she comes to represent the good time girl counterpoint to uptight and shy Nina. This is as in Swan Lake, the ballet they are rehearsing for. Nina must dance both the innocent white swan and the vampy black swan. Nina and Lily represent these opposites and, as Nina’s split with reality progresses, she confuses Lily with herself. Just as the white swan and black swan are danced by the same performer, Nina takes on some of Lily’s rebellious characteristics until the two young women become one in Nina’s mind. An ‘either Madonna or Whore’ personality is all very well in a fable, but impossible to sustain in reality. Even Nina’s reality. This reaches a climax (literally. Ha.) when Nina hallucinates Lily seducing her, presumably while Nina is masturbating. She has, like the prince in Swan Lake, been seduced by the black swan. She is now able to self-actualise, a rounded performer who is both the white and the black swan. But don’t forget what happens to the swan at the end.