Delight In Disorder ~ Jane Woolrich

by Morgan O’Neill

I cannot explain what made me think of Robert Herrick as I stood there, in the middle of the Curve show last February looking at this beautiful, delicate diaphanous baby doll designed by Jane Woolrich, but I did.  It was exquisitely simple, though I knew that the intricacy in the detail and the quality of the workmanship was anything but simple.  The first lines of Herrick’s poem, Delight in Disorder, sprang to mind,

“A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes wantonness: ~
A lawn about the shoulder thrown
Into a fine distraction;”

 I won’t go on, but trust me; it was as if Herrick was Jane’s art director.  There was no disorder to this nightie draped over the statuesque shoulders of the model, but the combination of lingerie and model provoked “a sweet disorder” within me.

How is it that a poet born in the late 16^th century could capture so sweetly an image standing before me in the 21^st century? Conversely, how does a talent like Jane Woolrich capture forever in her work the passion of a poet long gone.  The bridge seems ephemeral but it is there. A beautiful piece of intimate apparel on a woman always affects me, as I expect it does with all men.  Maybe this is why Ellen understands that lingerie to be “the poetry in a woman’s wardrobe.”