Schmooze Review: Our Girls Book Launch

MC Wes Snelling (background) comperes the vintage fashion parade. Image: Louise M Cooper.

Launch of Our Girls by Madeleine Hamilton
Wednesday 11 November
The Order Of Melbourne, Melbourne

Arcade Publications is an avowedly niche publishing house, and it’s a clever niche to occupy. Arcade’s little books are vignettes of local culture and history that are fascinating and valuable, but perhaps in danger of falling through the cracks in popular non-fiction publishing. Many of Arcade’s titles spring from university research but aren’t packed with critical theory, or they’re the sort that might get turned into one-hour documentaries on ABC and SBS.

Madeleine Hamilton’s Our Girls ticks most of these boxes. Originating in Hamilton’s PhD research in Australian history at the University of Melbourne, it tells the stories of the Australian women who posed for pinup photos in popular newspapers and magazines during the 1940s and 1950s. This same ground was covered by the recent SBS documentary Paper Dolls, which I seem to recall screened in the coveted Friday Night Sex Doco spot.

Another thing I like about Arcade is their enthusiasm for events. The Our Girls launch was the first of theirs The Enthusiast has attended, and given the dapper sartorial sense of publishers Dale Campisi and Michael Brady, I was expecting the jauntiness factor to be through the roof. While there was sadly no bar tab or catering, the goings-on were definitely above and beyond those granted to your average first-time author.

Author Madeleine Hamilton (left) signs a book. Publisher Dale Campisi (far right) strikes a pinup pose. Image: Louise M Cooper.

Inflatable beach balls and colourful umbrellas dotted the Deco-esque Order Of Melbourne, which, under the booking auspices of Sweet Jelly Roll‘s Hannah Fox, is fast becoming Melbourne’s hub for vintage subcultures.

I’d thought myself rather kitted out for the occasion in a floral frock, Marge Simpson-style red beads and matching red lipstick. But on entering the room, fumbling with the switch between sunglasses and glasses, I immediately felt underdressed, as everyone I could see was in impeccable, head-to-toe vintage… and seemed to be giving me critical stares. Luckily, Brady made me feel better by pointing out that there was no glass in his Ronsirs. Yesssss. The Enthusiast: 1.

The sultry spring evening was drolly MCed by cabaret king Wes Snelling, who managed to strike precisely the correct note: slightly camp but not Bob Downe camp; respectful yet deprecating. I’m not sure precisely what he was standing on, but he towered over the proceedings. Due to issues with mic levels, his opening greeting came as an immensely loud boom that made the entire room flinch in unison.

Thanks to Circa Vintage Clothing, there was a fashion parade focusing on (I think!) the year 1956. The three models first came out in swimwear and playsuits, then in day dresses, cocktail frocks and, finally, evening gowns. Most garments were from local labels and couturiers. Tap dancers Miss Caroline and Miss Kaye provided two purple-sparkly-minidressed numbers between rounds.

The crowd took Arcade's exhortation to dress up very seriously.

I couldn’t help but wonder what the original pinup ‘girls’ at the launch – Mary Ward-Breheny, Lois Traill, Linda Browne, Lois Chartres, Robin Collins and Lynn Isaacs – made of this spectacle. Did it take them back to their modelling days, or did they find it contrived?

To me this seems to be a key issue in today’s vintage subcultures: do such simulacra of the past – and the affective responses of generations X and Y to old clothes, paraphernalia, films, TV and music – draw their power from our distance from those times?

But hold up, wait a minute, I’m getting way too academic, which the book decidedly is not. The author gave a nice little speech in which she thanked the publishers for turning her thesis into an approachable, elegant narrative. I also liked that Hamilton noted the gentility of pinup culture in Australia – she’d been expecting the letters from servicemen to their favourite ‘girls’ to be lascivious and suggestive, but they tended to be grateful and respectful.

Hamilton added that when she looked up these men’s service records at the Australian War Memorial, many of them turned out to have been killed in action. Remembrance Day, then, was a fitting day to launch a book about a pivotal part of Australian wartime culture.

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