Sighs and Whispers

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Sighs and Whispers

A newsletter and podcast about fashion and cultural history. https://laurakitty.substack.com/

05/18/2026

It’s hot out there! “Cool off from the city’s smoky steam” with these beach fashions photographed by Peter Hujar for GQ, June 1971. ☀️☀️☀️

05/17/2026

Advertisements for Charlie’s Girls (designed by Erika Elias), illustrated by Joanne Landis, 1966-1973. As Erika told an interviewer in 1970, “Charlie is a mythical character who represents the groovy guy this type of chick wants to be associated with. He changes from season to season in our ads. He’s been a rock star, guru, movie star, cowboy, astrology freak, writer, and race car driver.” Listen to my interview with Erika 💕💕💕

05/15/2026

Swirls of Stephen Burrows’ lettuce-edged chiffon and jersey against Giorgio Beverly Hills’ inimitable yellow-and-white stripe. Ad published in Vogue, September 1974. 💛💛💛

05/14/2026

My latest interview for is one I’ve long dreamed of. I’ve been interested in the fashion designer Erika Elias for many years, first coming across her designs for the mass-market teen fashion brand, Charlie’s Girls, in vintage stores over twenty years ago. Erika’s designs for Charlie’s Girls were basically the coolest juniors’ fashions to be sold on a truly mass scale in the late ‘60s and early 1970s, yet there was very little information to be found on her. After years of looking, I found an address, mailed a letter, and she later called me, inviting me up to Vermont to chat. Now 95 years old, Erika has this amazingly sharp memory for what it was like to work in the New York fashion industry from the 1950s through the 1980s. Our conversation covered everything from her childhood in Austria and Czechoslovakia, her time studying at the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design) and Parsons, and the many jobs she held at junior sportswear companies in NYC’s Garment District. Erika can be seen in the second image, at work in the Charlie’s Girls office in 1970; all of the other images are editorial photos and ads for Charlie’s Girls and its Hang Ten franchise. 🌈🌈🌈

05/13/2026

“In a season when prettiness and chic are one,” Iris Bianchi and Carmen Dell’Orefice modeling spring fashions against the night lights of Lever House (designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill). Their looks by: Leslie Morris, Bonwit Teller Custom Salon, Harvey Berin, Mary Black, Hattie Carngie, and Herbert Sondheim. Photos by Gleb Derujinsky for Harper’s Bazaar, April 1956. ✨✨✨

05/12/2026

Barry Zaid’s poster for the Colorado Music Festival, 1983. ✨

05/11/2026

“MAKING YOUR MAYTIME MOUTH not only merry but voluptuous, not only voluptuous but soft as velvet: whirls and swirls and twirls of variegated color enclosed in the same slim, summery white cylinder of a lipstick. There are a dozen meltingly lovely, striated DuBarry shades, ranging from iris to pink, from coral to apricot and amber (an orange-to-yellow-to-tan muted streak of honey.” Painting by Katharina Denzinger for Harper’s Bazaar, May 1967. 💋💄💋

05/10/2026

“The Creative Mothers”: The ultimate in seventies mommy-and-me hand-sewn fashions, as photographed by Joel Baldwin for Ladies’ Home Journal, August 1976. Featured in the photos are LHJ fashion editor Bonnie Cooper and daughter Claudia; fashion designer Meredith Gladstone and son, Gregory; artist Elizabeth Osborne and daughter Audrey; and landscape architect Martha Pasco and son Jesse.

05/09/2026

In the Bahamas with Yasmin Le Bon, photographed by Arthur Elgort for Vogue, May 1985; makeup by Linda Cantello and hair by Christiaan. Looks by Romeo Gigli (2), Krizia (3), Claude Montana by Alain Mikli (4), Joan Vass (5), Zoran (6 and 7), Issey Miyake (8), Calvin Klein (9), Ralph Lauren (10), and Oscar de la Renta (11). 🌴

05/08/2026

Some of my favourite posters from “Mystery and Wonder: A Legacy of Golden Age Magicians in New York City,” currently on view at . The exhibition explores the men and women who made magic into a professional art form, both entertainment and enchantment, during the Golden Age of Magic, from the 1870s to the 1930s. These posters were all produced using multicolor stone lithography: “In this print-making technique an artist draws with an oil-based medium onto a limestone block, creating one block for each primary color used in the final image. The stone is chemically treated and ink is applied to the block, adhering only to the oiled areas. Stones are then placed in a printing press, allowing the poster paper to be perfectly aligned as it is pressed onto each subsequent color block. This process produced artwork with delicate detail and subtle overlappings of colors that could be printed in very large quantities.” They are particularly gorgeous in person!

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