Loraine Smith

A showgirl? yes! With a fabulous collection of costuming. We know that she adored Jean Harlow and devoted much of her costuming to reenacting the iconic starlet, clad in a beautiful white silk dressing gown and sparkly nitty gritty bits like this beautifully designed g string and silver, mirrored nipple Pasties I posted last week.

Jean Harlow was the original blonde bombshell in the 1930’s. Born in Kansas City, Missouri March 3 1911, she lived a short yet wildly successful career as a Hollywood starlet.

Outshining Clara Bow In “the Saturday Night Kid” in 1929 and stealing the show in “Hell’s Angels” , a Howard Heughs film, in 1930 in which she was granted the leading part because she was a better speaker for the talkies than the prior lead Greta Nissan, who spoke with a Norwegian accent. Therefore could not cut it when the silent films started to speak.

One reason for Jean Harlow’s rise to stardom could have been her ethereal white glow on screen. In an age when the world was trying its best to whitewash the lies of an undignified world war and usher itself out of a dark worldwide tumult, here stood an ivory skinned, suicide blonde beaming with purity in her white dressing gown trimmed in decadent, bright white marabou. As exciting as her showbiz life was, it was over by the time she had turned 26. A brutal death that is still unclear to this day left her essentially rotting from the inside out, bloated and balding in her death bed. Was it the weekly toxic concoction of hair dye she was subjected to? Was it a (rumored) botched abortion? Was she beaten into this state, as some speculated? Nobody really knows ... nor did anyone listen when she told them countless times that she was not well. The film industry did not skip a beat, rather, in a selfish hurry, they hired multiple body doubles to complete “Saratoga”, the incredibly successful film that the platinum starlet dedicated her last days to.

Today we can find all kinds of history on Jean Harlow but sadly we can find very little on Loraine Smith. No date of birth or death. No articles on her stage successes or lineage. The only thread of knowledge we have about her life is told through the Mid Century fabrics woven together and so painstakingly beaded (likely by her own hand) to cover her most intimate parts, on stage.

Now that you know the story, How would you like to see the rest of Loraines collection?