Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station
Every friday night
But I am so lazy, don't want to wander
I stay at home at night
But I don't feel afraid
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise.
As I sat in the backseat of our family car on long drives, listening to Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks, I always imagined things from the perspective of the singer, looking out on the world. I guess I misheard the lyrics because I thought he sang "But I am so lazy, No one to wonder if I stay at home at night" which sounded to me like an odd reason to be lonely.
I'm working on a dress called the Terry Meets Julie dress. It has long been rumoured that the Terry of the song is Terrence Stamp, and the Julie is Julie Christie, who dated in the Sixties as young London scenesters. Ray Davies denies the song was written about the two, but to me it doesn't matter. I found a lot more glamour in my own imaginings, which revolved around Terry and Julie being ordinary, young, working class Mods with clerical jobs. A song so evocative of weariness and ennui beyond that was always the perfect fuel for my teenaged imagination. I would get completely washed away over this kind of thing, just kind of drowned by British pop pathos. The two are meet at dusk on a cold, grey day, improbable happiness in the dreariest setting imaginable, and I like it better to imagine that they are beautiful, but they don't have much of a future, so aren't to be envied from a window above anyway. Just kind of temporarily beautiful, they meet at the end of a grey work week outside a busy tube station, with people hastily rushing home all around them. What I'm designing is the dress that I imagine Julie, fit bird that she is, wears directly from work to go to the pub with her boyfriend. And possibly they drink pints. And play darts.
Forget glamourpuss Julie Christie: I want to dress like a secretary on a date in 1967.
I'm working on a dress called the Terry Meets Julie dress. It has long been rumoured that the Terry of the song is Terrence Stamp, and the Julie is Julie Christie, who dated in the Sixties as young London scenesters. Ray Davies denies the song was written about the two, but to me it doesn't matter. I found a lot more glamour in my own imaginings, which revolved around Terry and Julie being ordinary, young, working class Mods with clerical jobs. A song so evocative of weariness and ennui beyond that was always the perfect fuel for my teenaged imagination. I would get completely washed away over this kind of thing, just kind of drowned by British pop pathos. The two are meet at dusk on a cold, grey day, improbable happiness in the dreariest setting imaginable, and I like it better to imagine that they are beautiful, but they don't have much of a future, so aren't to be envied from a window above anyway. Just kind of temporarily beautiful, they meet at the end of a grey work week outside a busy tube station, with people hastily rushing home all around them. What I'm designing is the dress that I imagine Julie, fit bird that she is, wears directly from work to go to the pub with her boyfriend. And possibly they drink pints. And play darts.
Forget glamourpuss Julie Christie: I want to dress like a secretary on a date in 1967.
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