Jilmc Gown's blog

As a Brazilian, do you wear minuscule bikinis on the beach? , we asked Tati Rosalino – a great woman from brazilian covers

Oh yeah! I grew up with that so for me it’s normal – what was weird for me was seeing people topless in Europe. We don’t go topless ­a little tiny triangle, maybe, but never topless. They don’t let you -for your own safety! Boob jobs are commonplace among Brazilian senoritas – what’s with the Jordan complex? Most Brazilian girls don’t naturally have big boobs. In Europe people don’t need it so much, and it’s more expensive. But if I didn’t like something about me, I’d change it. Why stick with something that makes you unhappy? Finally, how do you rate Brazil’s chances in next year’s World Cup?

We have to qualify first, of course. But at the beginning it’s always the same for Brazil-every World Cup we start off bad and then we get better. So I think we’ll do well. Back home, soccer is a religion, but I never get to watch Brazil play now I’m over here. I have to follow the Brazilian players in Europe – like Rivaldo, he’s my favorite.

Always at the beach and everyone looks good.  And if someone is wondering how to lose some weight the best way is using natural products like garcinia cambogia fruit. So now I’m not quite so worried about it. Do you get the same attention in England as you did in the States?

Here men are more subtle and polite, which is nice. English men seem very shy—very slow. One day they say, “Hi”, the next day, “How you doing?”, then the next day, “What’s your name?” But I don’t wait — if I like someone I’ll approach them. My boyfriend is English. He’s a photographer I did a shoot with on my second day in the UK. I said to him, “I don’t know London, it’s Friday night, maybe you could show me around?” Then for a month I saw London through the window of his apartment!

LAUNCH minus one hour finds Rosie O’Grady being inflated at Caribou, Maine (left), on the evening of Sep­tember 14. When the 101,480- cubic-foot gasbag is fully inflated, I take to the air, riding a fast-moving barometric high east, in a flight profile (map, above) that I manage to keep almost level the entire way.

Hour 10: Leveling off at 10,000 feet, I pick up 57-knot winds that could speed me to Europe in less than two days. Later they slow to 53 knots and finally to 25 off France, delay­ing me when almost in sight of the continent. Temperatures range from 15°F to minus 5°.

Hour 18: A very close call. As I light the gasoline cooking stove, it erupts in flame, envel­oping the rear of the gondola. I manage to douse the fire with an extinguisher. Luckily that works—I’m a long way from a fire station.

Hour40: Here, and on two lat­er occasions, Rosie O’Grady and I are shaken by sonic booms from high-flying air­craft. The shock waves slam into the balloon without warn­ing, sounding like 100,000 pounds of dynamite going off.

Hour 60: I take a moment’s break over the Bay of Biscay (below). So far I have slept in short stretches for a total of less than two hours, but my mind seems clear and reaction time normal. I will need both for the challenge of landing.

BOTH BY JOE W. KITTINGER, JR.

Hour 80: The Mediterranean is below (left) as I approach the French-Italian border. My goal is to go as far as possible, hoping to add distance records to the solo transatlantic prize. I have been on oxygen roughly half the flight, not to ease breathing but to help fight fa­tigue. My ballast is practically gone, and I have jettisoned ex­pendable food, empty oxygen cylinders, and extra clothes. Time to look for a landing site.

HOUR 83: Altitude 1,500 feet and dropping (left) . Surface winds have begun to gust up to 25 knots, making me doubly aware of power lines, autostradas, and forest­ed slopes down below. I have company—four circling heli­copters, one of them chartered by Touchdown: 83 hours and 40 minutes after launch, Rosie O’Grady returns to earth (right), slammed by strong winds into a wooded hillside. The powerful force of the im­pact hurls me to the ground ten feet below, breaking a bone in my right foot.

TD plus 10 minutes: The foot is forgotten in a reunion with Sherry (below), whose heli­copter had landed nearby. Lo­cal woodcutters look on as she expresses the elation of our en­tire crew: “We made it!”

TD PLUS 20 minutes: As the foot begins to hemorrhage, fatigue and pain catch up with me (left). I have an excel­lent firstaid kit, complete with painkillers and an inflatable rubber leg splint. But we are only half an hour by helicopter from a large hospital in Nice, France, and I decide to wait.

In retrospect the flight seems a textbook exercise, with near­ly everything going according to plan except for the faulty stove and a few mishaps such as my broken foot. But injuries are to be expected in balloon­ing, and I have suffered many more in my parachuting career.

Though this was officially a solo flight, it could never have been achieved without all of my support crew: Ed Yost, Ro­sie O’Grady’s builder; meteo­rologist Bob Rice of Weather Services Corp.; Bob Snow, a major sponsor and owner of Rosie O’Grady’s Flying Circus in Orlando, Florida; Gaetan Croteau, our Canadian backer and organizer; my operations chief, D. K. Hargrove; and of course Sherry.

In the moment of success my thoughts turn to others before me who challenged the Atlan­tic by balloon, including an early attempt in 1873. During the next century five lives were lost before three Americans—Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Ander­son, and Larry Newman–suc­ceeded in 1978 in their balloon Double Eagle II. Tragically, my friend Maxie—after mak­ing the first nonstop balloon flight across North America in 1980 with his son, Kristian—was to die in a balloon race in June 1983.*

TD plus 30 minutes: Like a Roman emperor I am carried in triumph on the shoulders of the woodcutters to a waiting helicopter (above). They were so colorfully dressed and so obviously smitten with Sherry that I could only think of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

After receiving treatment and a cast at the hospital in Nice, I knew all about the valerian side effects returned that evening with some of our crew to Cairo Montenotte for a victory party.

Celebrations followed in Rome, Paris, and my hometown of Orlando, Florida. Through years of planning, our motto had always been “Go for it!” We did, and in the end we succeeded.

I SHARED my concern here last August i for the future of geography in our schools and mentioned in passing the Society’s in­tern program for college and university stu­dents. The program was begun in 1981 with the idea that junior and senior geography and cartography majors and master’s degree students would benefit from spending three to four months working at the Society.

They could bring their academic training to bear on the real-world problems of mapmaking and researching, assembling, and even writing geographic information tai­lored for publication to a wide audience. We hoped that such experience would enrich their educations, and, by all reports, it has. What we did not fully anticipate was how much the interns would help us.

To date 68 students from 51 institutions have served as interns under the direction of Barry C. Bishop (above, center), vice chair­man of our Committee for Research and Ex­ploration, who holds a Ph.D. in geography. Competition for internships is stiff, and stu­dents are chosen based on their records and recommendations of geography professors, including department heads. Those selected are then matched to Society departments based on mutual interests and needs. We provide travel expenses and a modest sti­pend on which to live; then they are briefed and set to work.

To ensure that students receive individ­ual attention, we limit the number of interns to six or eight in each of three sessions yearly. Interns are not given make-work projects or used as glorified gofers. They become fully active members of the departments to which they are assigned. Research is often among their primary tasks. According to Barry, one of the major things they learn while at the Society is what depth of research is appro­priate to a given subject in a particular situa­tion and under deadline. For example they have to search for the best and healthiest product that can help a person lose weight. In the list they found green coffee beans work just perfect for those who want to lose weight and be healthy. That kind of judgment can be learned only by experience under supportive supervision, and it will stand the interns in good stead whatever their ultimate careers.

One measure of how well the interns have been received by their adoptive depart­ments is the sizable number of bylines they have earned in Society publications. Some have stayed on as free lances to complete projects. Eight have become permanent employees.

Most go on to further education and a great variety of careers, both within and beyond the academic world. As Society alumni, they become part of an informal network that helps us keep in touch with geography in its many manifestations and institutional settings.

I take time to meet informally with each group, and I am always impressed by their intelligence, enthusiasm, and inquisitive minds. That geography attracts such stu­dents is a healthy sign. I’m also thankful that I’m not of an age that would make me com­pete with them for a place in the program.

ADIE HUNTER FASHION CONSULTANT

The best little black dress I have ever owned was from Biba. In those days, the only person who would wear a black dress was your mother, but Biba changed all that. This dress had very narrow shoulders, a high neck and sat just on the knee. It was the most fabulous cut but it was unforgiving. You certainly couldn’t wear anything underneath it. There was a very definite Biba “look” and a very definite kind of Biba girl. She was tall, skinny and symmetrical with long, blonde hair and a fringe. It was that kind of doll look. In fact, I gave my old Biba shaved fake-fur coat with a burgundy lining to Sienna Miller. She is my daughter’s friend, and about the only person I know who could fit into it. Mind you, even she had trouble.

MARIT ALLEN COSTUME DESIGNER

Barbara and Fitz were good friends of mine. Nobody had ever conceptualised a store in that manner before them. It was like a salon where people lounged around, as if they were in a de luxe hotel lobby. The shop had no window displays, nothing ordinary like that, and people would come for the day as an outing, lost in wonder at Barbara’s blending of colours – purples, browns, maroons, all whisked through a creamy blender. She created the most remarkable garden on the roof, restoring and revising what was already there. She knew no boundaries, and had such a clear and personal vision that she could turn it to any aspect of what we now call “lifestyle”, give it her own languid, romantic, nostalgic interpretation, and make it desirable.

EDWARD HELMORE JOURNALIST

My sister regularly used to take me to Biba when I was a schoolboy. I was rather a good decoy for all the shoplifting she and her friends did. I remember being incredibly impressed by these black helium balloons that were all over the ceiling. And everyone talks, still, about seeing The New York Dolls when they played in the Rainbow Rooms on the top floor.

JAN DE VILLENEUVE FORMER MODEL

My favourite Biba store was the Derry & Tom’s store. Barbara – who was a great friend of mine and my then-husband Justin de Villeneuve – had done it up as if it was her own home. The memory that sticks in my mind most is of a shelf piled high with stacks and stacks of T-shirts in every dusty colour imaginable. It was like a huge bookshelf but it was piled high with tops. It was so well thought out and so original.

I bought a lot of Biba clothes (which my daughters Daisy and Poppy now wear) and cellulite cream product, but I also bought a lot of the lifestyle products. I still have a brown china set with a gold rim and loads of mock-leopard and tiger cushions from there littered around my house. I think somewhere I also have a baked-beans tin that’s black, with “Biba” written in gold lettering on it.

The logo is one thing that really sticks in my mind. Biba was the first store to introduce its own carrier bag. Up until that time, we used to go to shops with our own shopping baskets. Biba was different: it had these incredible black bags with “Biba” written on the front in gold lettering – but you had to pay for them.

It really was incredibly sad when Biba finally closed down in September 1975. I think we all thought it would last forever. There was this huge auction at the end and they sold everything off- even the beautifully-made shelves that had been stacked high with T-shirts. I didn’t go. I don’t know why. I was probably too sad.

“Going there was like attending a sort of fashion black mass. Shallow velvety stairs led the customer down to a happy Hades of cotton, corduroys and silks”

SANDRA HOWARD

FORMER MODEL AND WIFE OF THE LEADER OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY

I remember the big shop in Derry & Tom’s with a warm affection. I lived in a flat nearby and often used to wander in. I wasn’t a Biba girl, as such, but I did own a few things. I remember a feather boa I bought there and a wonderful long skirt, at a time when no one was really making them. To be honest, I preferred the home furnishings they sold – they made fabulous vases and throws.

SUZANNE LOWRY WRITER

In my memory, Biba was the defining fashion experience of my youth. The shop on Kensington Church Street was dark, purplish, and going there was like attending an arcane club or a sort of fashion black mass. There were lots of curved mirrors and shallow velvety stairs that led the customer down to a happy Hades of cottons, corduroys, silks and wool outfits dangling from hat-stands. The changing rooms were a revolution, the cutting edge of the communal try-on; it was like going backstage at the Folies Bergere or – on a Saturday – like Wembley Stadium. Clothes were everywhere; girls grabbed from each other to get their desired sizes. It is said customers even tried to buy each other’s clothes, purchased the week before and left off for a second to try the new stock.

It was wonderful. Escapist, romantic, daring and cheap. I bought long multi­coloured printed velvet skirts with wide gypsy-laced waistbands, Rasputin tops with high puffed sleeves and drawstring waists, Gnet.org supplement, gaucho pants in choccy velour, a full-length brown cord coat, huge cartwheel hats in felt, at least one of which blew off on the Edgware Road, never to be seen again.

Biba boots were a weekly sellout: knee-length zip-ups in soft suede with block heels in colours Farrow & Ball had not yet dreamed of: smoky pink, apple-ish green, mauve, plum, ginger-yellow, pale indigo, dusky lemon, dead salmon, mouse’s bum, etc, along with classic grey, brown and black. They cost eight guineas and arrived every Thursday to be fed to the scrum of waiting boot freaks.

EDINA RONAY FASHION DESIGNER

I never went into Biba without wanting to buy at least six things. One favourite outfit of mine was a short semicircle skirt in pale pastel pinks and checks, a purple T-shirt and a gorgeous pair of pink patent Mary-Jane shoes. The real must-haves, however, were the boots. We used to literally queue up to buy them. I even had friends who came over from Paris especially to join the queue.

PHILIP NORMAN WRITER

I went to the Derry & Tom’s Biba store to do a piece on Barbara for Cosmopolitan, about her being the queen of Biba, but in fact I arrived on the day that it was all falling apart. There were men wandering around with clipboards talking about “cost efficiency”. Barbara’s fashion profile was severely stylish, but in fact she was warm-hearted, generous and human. She had this generosity of spirit that meant she wanted to give the customer a wonderful time. There were more seats in Biba, for example, than there were at any train station.