Elin Gregory

As last year, just click on the image to the left to be taken to the A-Z website and links to other blogs taking part. Good luck to everyone and I hope the inspiration keeps flowing.

Idolatry

This post stems almost entirely from the fact that last years A to Z challenge I post is the most frequently visited on my blog. It gets several hits a week even now and I know exactly why this is, thanks to wordpresses handy search engine term displayer thingy.

It’s because I used the word string “Brad Pitt in a tiny leather mini-skirt”. For some reason people search for that term a LOT.

Now I’ve used the term again I expect to get a few hits on this post too so – to make it worth their while coming I’ve added a picture.

It’s interesting what people idolise, isn’t it?

Okay I think he has nice thighs and I love the juxtaposition of the vaguely ancient look and the fact that he’s on a cell phone but the first thing that I notice is that the armour is all wrong.

This armour, on the other hand is correct and would not be hard for Hollywood to make. I wonder why they never bother.

Layers of linen and fine leather stiffened with animal glue and strapped together with leather thongs and metal eyelets, more strips of the laminated leather/fabric to provide protection to the belly and groin without hampering movement and under it the finest most densely woven material possible to prevent chafing, rather than for modesty’s sake.

This painter KNEW his stuff – so did his audience and if he’d painted something that was wrong the audience would have not bought his work. Designers who are working on modern films HAVE to get the clothing right – would you believe a man heading out to a nightclub in frogman’s flippers and a bowler hat? Or the head of a drug cartel driving a Toyota Yaris? But for historicals it’s always the LOOK of the thing that’s important rathe than any kind of accuracy or even comfort. The Lord of the Rings, though very imaginative, escped, that flaw because Peter Jackson got Jonathan Howe and Alan Lee in to do the designs, two men who really know how armour works and how to make it pretty enough for the modern movie going audience while making it possible for the actors to move. I think designers who do their research and try for a bit of practicality and authenticity are worthy of just a little idolatry, don’t you?