Stripping History: 1980s Jonquil Dressing Gown
🕑 Added 2021-03-23 20:49:15 +0000 UTCI spent yesterday with my friend Menesis, filming this incredible Jonquil dressing gown that I picked out East on my second pick after Covid kicked up.
Jonquil is primarily a bridal lingerie line that started on a romantic note in 1980 by designer Diane Samandi. While Jonquil is not an antique line, it has been around long enough to become a beautiful vintage line.
In 2007, Jonquil began incorporating molded cups into their designs and celebrated huge success in that endeavor.
Menesis, my gorgeous model looks so at home in this lavish Jonquil lace dressing gown with intricate floral detail.
These dressing gowns are some of the most sought after in the world for that special day for over 30 years.
I paired this incredible dressing gown with some of Lorraine Gail Smith‘s beautiful handmade burlesque lingerie bits.
This beautiful hand made, highly detailed bra and panty set was designed by Lorraine Gail Smith before 1975, when her life was tragically taken in a park while she was talking with her new beau Peter.
Her jealous ex boyfriend Donald approached from behind while her 2 German Shepard’s were frolicking in the park. He beat her into unconsciousness with a metal pipe, some say it was a table leg.
Donald brazenly attacked both Lorraine and her new partner Peter Gardner until a priest saw what was happening and interrupted the attack.
Sadly, Lorraine died two weeks later while residing in the intensive care ward of the hospital. It is documented that many of her friends from the combat zone as well as her family stayed by her bedside for two weeks in hopes that she would pull through.
I don’t know whatever became of Peter Gardner. Her new beau, I’m still looking for him, hopeful that he is still alive and could possibly speak to the events of that tragic day.
Their attacker, Donald Gahan was almost a decade her senior. They started dating when she was still in high school. Donald claimed to have developed Lorraine‘s Jean Harlow act that she became so well known for.
Lorraine had always loved Jean Harlow, she traveled around the country inspired by her, replicating Her movements and aesthetic as closely as possible. She was always creative, her mother said. She was well known in high school for her love of the arts and her rebellious streak that undoubtedly took her to the combat zone to begin with.
In addition to her talents on stage, It was well known that Loraine could whip up some incredible G strings backstage before or after performing.
A newspaper article that I recently read claims that while she was performing in California, girls would wait backstage for her to finish up their G strings so that they could sparkle too.
It is documented that Loraine worked in California before she came back to Boston ‘s combat zone and the 2 o’clock Lounge and eventually, to her untimely, brutal demise.
Lorraine Gail Smith went by a different name when she worked in California. Possibly to outrun her obsessive ex Donald.
It had been said in the newspapers that she had been away from home, trying to get away from an ex partner that was obsessed and problematic. So I’m guessing she went to California to try to run away from Donald but but he was obviously unwilling to detach from the relationship.
He simply would not let her go. He had that old fashion mentality that if he can’t have her, nobody can, and we can clearly see how that ended for her.
I have read that she was known by Sweet Lorraine, Lorraine Smith, Loraine Gail, Lorraine Gail Smith, but there were several other names that she was known by as well.
I am still researching to see if I can find what name she worked under in California so that I can uncover which clubs she worked in.
So many pieces of Lorraines story have been lost to time, but fortunately Jeremy and I have been able to recover a lot of her history with daily detailed research.
In two weeks I leave for Las Vegas to speak with Tiffany Carter and Tempest storm, two performers who regularly worked in Boston.
I spoke with Tiffany Carter about a week ago and she said that she in fact does remember Lorraine, and that she would love to talk about her time working in Boston at the combat zone and answer some questions about our Sweet Loraine.
This is a story that I’ve been working on for about five years and in the last year, because of Covid, I have had much more time than ever to research so as you can imagine all of the details are flooding in. Finally, I’m finding answers.
But the biggest question that I have is why men continue to do this. Why men feel that they have the right, authority or privilege to destroy a woman’s life because she rejects him.
Obviously Donald knew for sure that he would never have to go to jail for this horrendous act of violence towards Lorraine. And as you can imagine, he did not go to jail, Donald spent 40 days under psych evaluation because he claimed temporary insanity, and then was released to the general public. Never serving one day in prison for taking the life of Lorraine.
Women in the sex industry have an internal fortitude like none other because of having dealing with brutality of all sorts since the beginning of time.
Men have long blamed their sexual shame, repressions, desires, proclivities , And deviancy‘s on women, especially women in the sex work industry or sex work adjacent industries such as striptease.
Society generally does not see sex workers or strippers as humans with feelings, lives or rights, we can clearly see this today in in so many ways, the most recent, the Alabama shooting of several sex workers within Asian massage Studios.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/03/16/us/metro-atlanta-shootings/index.html
I will end with this sobering quote by Margaret Atwood.
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
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Comments
Stephen Potter
To sum Donald all up, he is just a little kid who never grew up. His story could easily be based on the fact-based verismo opera, "I Pagliacci" by Ruggero Leoncavallo where Canio, the owner of the play troupe interrupts the play-within-the-play by breaking character and stabbing his wife Nedda to death in an absolutely jealous-turned-homicidal rage after she refuses to tell him her paramour lover's name who Canio also stabs to death after Nedda cries out to Silvio, her lover for help and he comes running only to confront Canio who screams, "A! Sei tu! Ben Venga!" (Ah! It's you! Here's vengeance!") and stabs Silvio to death and after he recovers his reason, he drops the dagger and declares, "La comedia e finita!" ("The comedy is ended!") as the police arrest him. It should be noted that jealousy has absolutely nothing at all to do with love; it is purely a symptom of emotional insecurity.
