Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Chap Olympiad

We're staying near the Bloomsbury area, which is full of Georgian era squares of houses surrounding a central park area. These houses were early gated communities. When they were built, entrance to the streets around them would have been controlled by locked gates to keep the riff-raff out.


Anyone can walk the streets now, but most of the parks are still private. Yesterday, one of them--Bedford Square--hosted a fancy dress event, the Chap Olympiad, put on by the self described anarcho-dandies at Chap magazine; the events include a martini relay and a cucumber sandwich discus throw, all accompanied by outrageous mustaches whenever possible for the men.



I didn't come close to catching photos of all the dresses I coveted, but I caught a few. Although people were there in costumes and vintage dress that spanned all eras from the Victorian to modern, the '40s...



...and '50s predominated.




It looked like a lot of fun; a live band was playing vintage tunes, and the booze seemed to be flowing pretty liberally. (I highly reccomend following the link above to see the video of last year's event.) If I'm back in town when they put this on some year, I'll be sure to pack my crinoline and go!


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