Boden, Charleston, Barbara Brown, and My Left Arm

There's been a dearth of blogging over here, while my left arm takes a time-out. 

There had been a good deal of keyboarding and quilting going on this summer, and I think that my arm, shoulder, and neck demanded a vacation. 

But food for thought while my arm chills out: does not this fall dress from Boden remind you of the Barbara Brown prints I posted a while back . . .

as well as have Charleston undertones?

If only the style didn't remind me of Coronation Street, circa 1975, watched faithfully by my grandmother (and ignored by me as I thought of circus-colored awning stripes). 

More to come on that, as I have recently bought an outrageously striped pair of vintage Miu Miu shoes. They're visiting the cobbler, getting a couple of upgrades that will ready them to challenge Usain Bolt in the 100-metre dash.

Gayle Olinekova: Powerful Beauty Found

I've been searching for this image, of a female runner with extraordinarily powerful legs, for quite some time, but could never come up with just the right computer search terms to locate it.

I initially considered Grete Waitz, because I thought "marathon," but no.  Then I tried various combinations of key words, believing that the image was from the 1980s, but had no luck.  At one point I thought that Annie Leibovitz might have been the photographer and felt myself growing warm, but twas another dead end. 

A computer search of Olympic female sprinters who won medals in the 1970s and 1980s?  Some promising European names were on the list--how Inge and Lyudmilla started to ring ferocious bells--but no, again.

Then tonight I typed in "Helmut Newton woman running beach" and my heart started to beat, because of course it was he who had photographed the gorgeous Gayle Olinekova, who was, of all nationalities, a Canadian(!) who transplanted to California, where Mr. Newton took her photograph (below): 

Olinekova (born Olinek) initially ran the 400-meter before becoming a marathoner  Her runner's legs were everything I aspired toward in my teen years, with their balance of muscularity and femininity. And these photos, from around 1981, taken when I was in Grade 10 or so, still inspire awe.