Cold Comfort Farm

Lately I've been finding myself drawn to fiction from the interwar years-- especially the '30s. I'm working my way through Dorothy Sayers' Peter Wimsey mystery novels (my favorites, so far, are all the ones with Harriet in them!), and once they're done, next on the list are two books that have been made into movies. Shamefully, while I've seen the movie versions of both Cold Comfort Farm and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, I haven't read the books yet. But they're on the list!

Cold Comfort Farm is about a young woman named Flora Poste, an aspiring novelist who goes to live with her country relatives on the grounds that, first of all, it'll make good fodder for a story, and second, she can probably improve their dreary lives. She is correct on both counts, even though she is kind of a nitwit. I say this in the fondest possible way; it's just that everyone in this movie is a nitwit, and no exceptions are made for the protagonist.

Flora spend the movie wearing a series of cute, tweedy outfits, fixing everyone's lives for them, and avoiding the amorous attentions of Stephen Fry. I approve of the outfits, but I am a little confused about why anyone would want to avoid Stephen Fry.

It's a sweet, charming movie-- not spectacular, but funny and totally worth watching.





'30s fashion is really interesting to me. It feels very much like a transition period, and you can follow the movement from the drop-waisted, boyish silhouette of the '20s to the higher waist and broader shoulders of the war years. I'm sort of on the fence about the formalwear-- it can be really good, but sometimes not to my taste at all. But the separates and daywear are fantastic. Here's some Flora-ish outfits, courtesy of Etsy:



1.vintagebutterfly94 2. staretvintage 3. DearGolden