EVEN MORE ON THE DOWNTON ABBEY PHENOMENON

From now on you'll find me randomly posting something or rather about this Masterpiece Classic. Every Sunday after Downton Abbey airs on PBS my Pinterest Board of the same name goes absolutely, stark-raving bonkers!  On it, pinners finding anything worn by Lady Mary repin at breakneck speed and I'm left to wonder how phenomenons like this happen.  I mean really, we can't seem to get enough fashion and social history out of this episodic soap.  Week before last, Lady Sybil died of child birth.  Next day on one of the DA pages there were several videos on eclampsia the condition that took her. Are we living vicariously through these lords and ladies?  Wanting or missing some kind of grand magnificence in our lives?
Maybe one of the reasons we love DA so much is that: It's epic.  And it seems every country has had one great epic in literature.  Russia had War and Peace, America, Gone With the Wind and South America--House of Spirits.    So why did it take good, old and established  England almost 1000 plus years to grind out a really magnificent drama like Downton Abbey to add to this epic stew?  Something very, very English, unabashedly playing out the dramas--warts and all-- of it's class system.  Of war and change.  Well, that is a question. I know it is a loaded one but I really want to hear more about from you fellow DA Addicts out
there . . . .

 Header Photo: Downton Abbey darlings in Alberta Ferretti (standing) and Julien MacDonald for the January 2012 Issue of Vogue.
Second Photo: The Crawley Sisters for the January 2012 Issue of Vogue UK
Photos 3 and 4: The Crawley Sisters wearing  their 1912 costumes designed by Caroline McCall via /Lady Mary in 1912--One of my very fave Downton Abbey designs by Caroline McCall and I can totally see this as a wedding dress in white or just as it is . . . .via
Photo 5: Lady Sybil in what is a great rendition of Paul Poiret's--daring for their time--haram pants. This whole ensemble is in a word, brilliant! Via