Monday 10 October 2011

Working a Late Shift in the Glamour Factory at the National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery and a few friends helped me kick off my birthday weekend in style with their vintage Glamour Factory museum Late Shift. Old time studio star factories- where they invented and churned out their contract actresses was the story of the event.

A chic black and white dress code was enforced and I wore a variation of this outfit, but with silver screen Giuseppe Zanotti heels and a faux fur collar.


Upon entrance I was handed a studio contract, christened with a stage name and was typecast before I even took a sip of my fizzy Gin & Ginger cocktail.

Meet Brenda the Sophisticated lady.


Ok, maybe not too sophisticated if my Walk of Fame hand print has anything to say about it.


My friend Nat works on her Hollywood John Hancock.


If you had the will power to stand in a queue, there was a fancy retro salon where you could get a glam pinup makeover.


I, however, was more drawn to the Broken Hearts Cocktail Lounge, though over-crowded had some great 1920s & 30s tunes playing while we were there.


Seeing what people were wearing and how they did their gorgeous pin-up hair was the best part of the evening. Unfortunately the planning did not live up to the amount of publicity and many more people were in attendance than they anticipated so it ended up being a lot of waiting around in a queue for those of us lucky enough to get in, as many had to be turned away.

We ended up skipping the talks and the pinup makeup for some breathing room elsewhere in the city.
 However if they run this event again and have it much larger, or ticketed I would definitely go back and try the things I missed!


See future Late Shifts at the National Portrait Galley and read about my experience at the V&A Friday Lates. Have you been to any museum lates?

3 comments:

  1. Hey Brenda the Sophisticated Lady!!! HAHAHA LOVE IT! That event is so unique and has so much potential. As you mentioned Dani, they could've planned it a little better (the number of people that attended). No, you didn't give them the finger. HAHAHAHAHA Oh you were in rare form girl! :D Well it looked like FUN and I bet the cocktails were yummy!!! Hope you had a great bday weekend. ((HUG))
    http://sassyuptownchic.blogspot.com/

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  2. I was trying to organise a London expat bloggers meetup at a museum late but I must not have been using the write search terms as Google was definitely not my friend that day!!

    I'll follow your links and try again and I'll be sure to post on my blog if I do set a date and time for a meetup.

    This sounds like fun. I shall definitely have to make a plan to attend a late night one day.

    I think your wall of fame entry was totally classy.

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  3. Kim- Cocktails were good, but I needed a bit more Gin in my Gin & Ginger ;) to deal with the crowds!

    Emm- A museum late meetup would be fun! I'm in.

    I was a bit aggrivated at the chaos of the event- and I decided to be a good ol' fashion DIVA when I was making the hall of fame print.

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