Charponnaise

Roman holiday

2012-01-07T00:07:00.006Z

Typical, you wait for a year in the rain, and then three come along at once.

I think I've realised where I'm meant to be.

I spent a few days in Rome between Christmas and the new year.

Rome is a city of mixed memories for me. There was the first encounter; the whole place was cold and windy and rainy! Not whatI had hoped for. Everything since has been better, from romantic getaways to simple family returns to my favourite not-London city. It's a couple of years since I've been back, so I was excited.

It hit me as soon as I was there - I've never felt anything so powerful for a place. I knew I loved the city but I had never felt any city pull me away from London before. I dreaded going home. I didn't particularly revisit places I knew, other than the cat sanctuary I always visit. I explored Trastevere properly, and sought out vintage shops in Via del Governor Vecchio (success - the suede lace-up black ankle boots to eclipse all other boots, 80 Euros - secondhand Gucci!), and sipped Aperol alone at sunset behind Piazza Navona, and plunged into the huge Saturday fruit & vegetable / spices market in Campo del Fiori. I walked along the river for the first time for a few hours - what a beautiful, desolate, lovely, lonely walk it is. I fell in love with every single bridge. I took eight hundred photos on three cameras.

Things:

- The colour of the city. Everything is sand and sunset coloured. Even the grey buildings are warm looking. Everything is lit at night. The cobbles reflect everything. It's not a city for heels but I did admirably nonetheless.

- It's a city you can get lost in, after a hundred twisting streets explored, and think yourself miles from anywhere you know, only to find yourself thrown out onto Vittorio Emmanuele - recognisable bus numbers, and that shop you walked past two hours ago! A compass will not help you in Rome. Optimism will.

- Everyone in Rome wears puffa jackets. Everyone. Some of the men wear discreet navy options, and some wear terrifying PVC abominations with shiny jeans. Some of the girls wear short casual versions, and others wear snow-bunny style knee-length fitted puffa coats. Inflation is alive and well in Roma. If I lived in Rome, I would not succumb to this trend. I will never clad myself in balloons.

- The girls do not seem to wear high heels! It is in my nature to make an effort (to be taller), and while I thought I looked perfectly December-practical in skinny jeans, soft jumpers, a warm fluffy hat, my aunt's old plum boucle jacket and a big wrappy scarf, my stilettos seemed to attract attention. A man followed me across a piazza in Trastevere to tell me I was 'the best tourist' he had ever seen. Damning me with faint praise perhaps? They were nothing flashy - warm brown leather ankle boots, albeit mounted on lethal weapons holding me aloft. I looked at the other girls' shoes, and to a woman they were all either trainers or flat boots. I guess the cobbles partly account for that, but they really aren't that difficult to negotiate if your shoes are comfortable, heels or no. Heels are perhaps just not the culture.

Going home was awful. I didn't think I could bear to get in the taxi to the airport. A week later I am still not used to London. It feels cold and unreflective. This has never happened - I LOVE London. I think Rome is the place for me. I know no-one there but it deters me not. Time to sell some paintings and learn Italian.

Oh, hi by the way.

2012-01-06T23:51:00.003Z

Been a while. I know. I can't promise to keep writing here, though I might if write-y thoughts occur to me. In the meantime I am also writing here about paintings that I am doing and other related gumph. There will be a proper website with pictures and exhibition details and painting-buying options when I have reminded myself how to write HTML, which won't take as long as it sounds.

The paintings are about music and tall buildings, which are two things very close to my heart.

Ulterior - Wild in Wildlife

2012-01-06T23:34:00.005Z

Ulterior? Ulteri-phwoar, you mean. It's preposterous that I haven't seen Ulterior before. Since HTRK knocked my socks off back in 2007 (and kept on keeping on, their recent post-Sean full-length is an inky masterpiece) and S.C.U.M. caught my eye with a live set back at Offset a few years back, I have had my eye on this whole goth revival. Fuck it, I've had to put up with people calling me a goth for years, it's about time I got something back. So how did I miss Ulterior? It's not like I never heard of them; I just never got round to them.

Anyway, last night I did, and onstage marched this gang in black (except for the keyboardist in white jeans who didn't get the memo); tall skinny guitarist with his too-big clothes pinned roughly around him, and singer who looked like the chappy from The Big Pink if you wrapped him in gaffa tape and shiny puffa cladding and made him wear leather trousers against his will. There were also some unjustifiable reflective aviators, but he carried it off because when you're wearing a pvc puffa jacket, nothing seems ludicrous in comparison. (The Italians know this.)

And it was all *SLAM SLAM SLAM* (no, NOT in a Spice Girls way) and vocals shouted into the stagesmoke and massively overstated synth drums, but it felt very industrial and brutal and empty and - key - MODERN. Something newly carved and freshly birthed, not a rehash of all the stuff that was done better by better rehashers.

I'm listening to them now on Spotify. Strange, they sound very different. It's a funny thing, when a band you like live is a completely different band that you still like for completely different reasons on record. This record is properly gothy and 80s crashdrum-laden. The vox are sung, not roared, and they have that purified quality that every singer who loves Dave Gahan tends to cultivate. It really really works because they're just harder and better than a lot of the bands that attempt this sound.

Part of me can't help but think this is the sound that White Rose Movement would have aimed for if they'd had a brain cell between them. Which is a bit mean, not to White Rose Movement (because they deserve it), but to Ulterior, because I really think they're better than comparisons to WRM suggest. But nonetheless, that's what comes to mind. It sounds like sleaze and leather jackets and tall buildings and the moon through smog and fast cars with buzzsaws for tyres. And that all sounds shittily cliched because this sound is, it's nearly 30 years old, but fuck it, if chaps like Ulterior can keep it alive and kicking, then long may the life support continue.

Flat-hunting

2010-03-16T10:46:00.003Z

Posts are a little thin on the ground at the moment, as I am spending all of my time on property websites, trying to find a nice flat to rent. Our landlord wants to sell our flat, so it looks like we are reluctantly moving on. For a dedicated follower of a fashion, it's a trying undertaking - I must have enough storage for my clothes! Right now, and in my previous existence at my parents' house, I have been lucky enough to have a spare room to put my clothes in. It's higgledypiggledy but basically organised. Except when it's not. I don't know if I will be so lucky in our next place - though we can afford a place with enough space, it's simply a case of actually finding it, in the area we want (i.e. exactly where we are now, thank you very much).

The search goes on... wish me luck.

Rainbow warriors

2010-03-10T17:04:00.014Z

I've always had a penchant for very colourful makeup. At 16 I had a Saturday job in the long-gone but legendary South Molton Street Pharmacy - a treasure chest of Spectacular and Barry M rainbow nail colours, cheap sample-size posh products (Eight Hour Cream for a fiver!), and make-up of every shade, consistency and brand imaginable. You'll be shocked to learn that I amassed quite a collection, and wore absurd eyeshadow every day. At one point I owned four hundred bottles of nail polish. Worrying.

The legacy of this still lives on in my three make-up boxes and tendency to buy everything I think I might ever need. Admittedly in recent years I have been a bit more grown-up about things, sticking sensibly to dark brown liner, soft neutrals and occasional metallics, and buying much less as a result (no-one needs ten grey eyeshadows). Nails are still fair game, although my collection's shrunk to about 40. Lately though I have felt the need to explore colour again. Music videos are a great source of inspiration for me; blame Gaga, Katy Perry or Karen O... either way, it's fun to play with colour.

Yesterday I had a bit of a splurge, as tends to happen when I go into Superdrug. Here's what I got, as well as a few of my regular favourites.

I love Gosh products. I'm wearing the nail polish above on my nails, and the green eye pencil makes a great base for green or yellow powder. I've found the products I've used to be as good as Mac, and significantly cheaper. (I strongly recommend the eyebrow pencil/brush combo.) And they have a great sense of colour - they aren't limited to traditional colours or even the very primary and secondary shades that Barry M use. Lots of weird combinations. Yum!

I'm quite impressed with this colour palette from Collection 2000. Cheap as chips, you get nine superbright shades in varying textures. It's a tiny detail but I also really like the flexible plastic overlay (like thick clingfilm - not shown) that protects all the colours once you open the palette.

And some old favourites:

I'm getting a lot of use out of this Rimmel solo at the moment - a really nice pastel aqua-green powder that's great with pale skin. A nice zing of colour without being too neon or vulgar.

I use this magenta Mac lip pencil lots. A light covering gives a soft, matte look, or it can provide a base for dramatic pink or magenta lipstick.

Regular shoppers at Superdrug will know what a treasure trove it is for affordable and modern make-up. I believe if you know your way around Superdrug you rarely need to even venture near the pricier make-up stands. Sam of make-up artist duo Pixiwoo has made no secret of her admiration for the Sleek colour palettes. I haven't bought any yet (it's only a matter of time) but I have to throw my hat into the ring for BeautyUK. Their muted forest-toned iridescent palette is a modern classic, but this rainbow palette is great fun, and less than £5. You'll get a lot of colour out of each shade, and they wear really well over a good base. I can't recommend it enough.

Best eye quartet I ever ever bought. I bought this Hard Candy quad when I was sixteen. I'm now 27 - and still using it. The pressed powder hasn't degraded at all; it's heavily pigmented and very iridescent with a thick, luxurious texture. The yellow is fantastic with a strong green shimmer and the darker shades are gold-shot. I know you're not meant to keep make up for so long but when it works such a treat, and is so irreplaceable, how can I throw it out?

I miss Hard Candy SO MUCH. I'll probably do a post dedicated to them shortly.

Who doesn't love Shu Uemura? A deliciously pigmented shimmering yellow that I like on its own with black mascara and minimal make-up elsewhere.

Very excited

2010-03-05T17:17:00.003Z

This layabout blogger is going to be a paid-up member of society once more. No more daytime television or odd days of work for me for a while... I just landed a very serious executive PA job, starting at the end of the month.

My father and boyfriend's responses: "Congratulations!" My mother's response: "You'll need to sort your wardrobe out, dear. Not that you don't have wonderful clothes, but I think you might need to . . . er . . . " Yes, Mother, I know. Yours truly will be finally sorting out her tax this month and trotting off out in search of a couple of suitably executive looking shirts. Advice, Londoners? Where will I find beautiful shirts? Thomas Pink's shirts are a bit stiff for me... I need something with a narrow, slightly mannish fit and very sharp but understated collar in fairly thin fabric, nothing that looks like it could stand up on its own. Proper cuffs a bonus.

My mother is desperate for me to buy a silk shirt. I think this has been her ambition for me for some time now.

Dress Up

2010-03-03T09:07:00.003Z

I am very taken with Aussie label Dress Up.

The current collection suggests a preoccupation with a state of undress. Dresses fall off shoulders, or sections are pinned together, baring small, irregular expanses of skin. It's sexy and risque but quite the opposite of the sucked in, va-va-voom of body-con or burlesque's old-school kitsch.

Black, brick red and nude prevails, in degrees of sheer.

The perfect black trousers? Dainty and beatnik with flat sandals or pumps, elegant with wedges, and they'd tuck perfectly into some calf-length boots.

Dress Up are stocked at Liberty - and here's Yasmin Sewell, Liberty's Chief Creative Consultant, wearing the most wantsome skirt I've seen since records began. Photo by the very talented Vanessa Jackman, from her blog.

I also just noticed that fellow Aussie label Shakuhachi are now being stocked at Urban Outfitters. Long have I waited for this moment, Shaku fangirl that I am. I had a peruse yesterday - beautiful, loosely structured grey jackets with zip-off sleeves, softsoftsoft black jersey and drapey nude chiffon. Perhaps what you'd call quirky future classics. Pricey though, mostly £150-£200. All the more reason for me to get a permanent job, stat.

Photos, (c) Dress Up, except last photo, (c) Vanessa Jackman.

Maxi memories

2010-03-02T11:51:00.013Z

I'm disconcerted.

The maxi skirt has resurfaced. People are actually wearing them - well, in blogland anyway. And I cannot remember the last time an item of clothing made me feel so uncomfortable. The jumpsuit, the 80s shoulder pad, the leggings - these were all remnants of a decade long gone, but for me they held no personal memories. I knew that they were wrong (until they were right again) but I had no personal issue with them. But the maxi is another story.

I'm trying to pin down what it is about this garment that seems so alien, so out of time and place - why does it make me uncomfortable? My first glimpse in years was on another style blog. My first thought - "Why would you do that?" Then on Off the High Street, a member asking how to wear one. And indeed, they have been all over the catwalks, though they escaped my attention entirely. Ann Demeulemeester and Max Mara sent them down the runways last year, and the fall '10 catwalks were awash with swishy skirts, sweeping the dust from beneath the models' shoes.

My memories of the skirt are mixed and frequent.

1994: aged 12, in a long dark green tube skirt with a Chinese print on it. Think there was a matching shirt.

15 years old, still indulging life-long hippy tendencies (now quashed forever) in a purple satin C&A floor-sweeper and vest top. There was also a black jersey version.

Aged 16, seeing one of the cool girls in college rock a ballgown skirt to the Christmas dance, teamed awesomely with pink basketball vest and Vans. The ballgown skirt flounces its way insouciantly through art classes for the next month.

Aged 16, shamelessly copying her in a pale grey jersey Topshop maxi with back slit, Converse and red basketball vest. The look is infinitely less successful on my pale, bony, sort-of-brunette body.

Aged 17, still enchanted by that one look, attempt to team under-netted gunmetal maxi (more ballgowny, see??) with corset at indie/rock clubnight. Oh dear. The end of my career in maxi skirts.

The 90s ends.

And here's Ann Demeulemeester, with a rufflier version of my grey jersey tribute skirt, to remind me of what I did not look like.

Yet fashion is so contextual, and even now, seeing the new maxis with fresh eyes and surrounded by new opinions, I have no idea what I think of them. I recoil, but not with a familiar "Ugh, how ugly" reaction - I think it's just simple, personal confusion - "Why is it back?" How did I actually feel in my long skirts? I think I felt elegant, flowing, otherworldly, TALL. All the things I was not when I was an insectoid teenager. Looking back, I know I was merely deluded, and the thought, and these reminders, leave me uncomfortable. (Maybe I tried so hard to make this skirt work, with such rubbish results, that I resent its return.) Could I feel elegant now in a skirt like this?

And could I get through the day in one? Floor-length feels all wrong in this bustling city. I'm not Sienna Miller, nor do I have a meadow to frolic in. Even my beloved long grey strappy chiffon Jigsaw dress, bias-cut and perfect with a tough brown belt and flat red sandals, feels bizarre in smoky London. What would I wear a maxi with? How does one look defined and sharp in one, without losing half one's shape or looking out of one's time? Fashion has become so sexualised, culminating in last year's body-con; am I ready to sartorially silence half my anatomy?

No, I do not trust the maxi skirt.

Two to read

2010-03-01T09:53:00.004Z

Some interesting thoughts about the future of thrifting over at No Signposts in the Sea and The Girl Who Married a Bear (and some bewitching old photographs at the latter). They make an astute point - for those of us who adore second-hand shopping, what future are we storing up for ourselves with the new purchases that, in theory, will populate charity/vintage shops in twenty years - if they make it that far?

Worth a read.

Giddy stratospheres

2010-02-26T13:26:00.011Z

So kitten heels are replacing vertiginous spikes are they? Not on my watch.

I love an improbable heel, the more jawdropping the better. I still moon after those Chanel gun heels, and in an attempt to move on from the McQueen/Gaga shoes that I posted about a few days ago and will never ever get to wear... I stumbled across the work of Chau Har Lee, as documented by Susie Bubble recently.

Magnifique!

The heel-less heel is a much-done thing, yet this feels fresh and jawdropping.

As some shoes look blissfully comfortable, and others make one recoil in horror about how painful they must be to hobble about in... these fill me with curiosity. I can't imagine what it feels like to wear a shoe like this!

Perhaps it is beautifully supportive.

Perhaps it would leave indents and stripes across my feet for days.

I long to find out!

Perhaps I'm overthinking this

2010-02-25T16:33:00.003Z

...is it just me that feels the impulse to dress a certain way for a certain part of town?

A lunchtime walk in south Kensington (to gaze at the Chanel, Joseph and Coco de Mer windows in Draycott Street) left me feeling distinctly shabby in my purple H&M coat and stompy brown riding boots. Particularly when a very tall young marquis (probably) strode past in a modish black jacket, floppy ginger hair and, truly, a white cravat.

When I passed two old gents on the same street in impeccable tweed and dapper silk scarves, I felt that I had really let the side down.

And I feel altogether too dull if I don't make some sort of artfully indifferent, clever effort for certain bits of east London. Constructing a look is half the fun of it.

Don't get me started on what happens when I go abroad.

Perhaps I'm too self-conscious - but as I am not the type to cultivate a monochrome capsule wardrobe or breeze through life in one pair of ripped jeans and perfectly rumpled hair (I wish), I always feel as thought I ought to give some sort of nod to my intended surroundings...

Hello new world

2010-02-25T15:25:00.003Z

This year I turned my back on the career I had pursued for the last three and a half years. They say January is a time for fresh starts - ain't that the truth! Starting anew presents myriad challenges, not least financial. The one challenge I didn't think about is the sartorial.

For almost four years years I've scurried about in performance venues, carrying the amps and guitars of bands from Wichita, Wyoming and Wolverhampton, welcomed terribly posh clients ahead of their 50th birthday gala banquets, told a rather well known broadcasting company where they can and can't film, lugged cases of beer about the place, and looked after music industry from the green & nervous to the hardened - as well as all the accompanying correspondence and paperwork. Behind a bar one minute, behind a laptop the next, be it 8am or 3am. It demanded a very hard-working and versatile wardrobe - it paid to be all things to all people. Well-heeled corporate clients appreciated serious presentation; bands were put at ease by a scruffy chick in jeans, flatties and checked shirt. The more unusual clients (including one fabulous and infamous drag-wearing stylist/designer) were impressed by a more creative and colourful approach to one's clothes - and whoever the client, my clothes had to allow physical work. The only wardrobe style I've not cultivated in the last few years is the most obvious - officewear!

Now I find I'm grateful to have my evenings back - three midnight finishes a week will take it out of you if you do it for long enough, and with a new domestic situation I'm glad to get home of an evening. So I've joined the ratrace, seeking to try my hand at a normal day job. In the search for my next adventure, I am yo-yoing between interviews and the second oldest profession - temping. Every job I go for is of the PA/admin variety. The work is easy, the people amiable. Yet, unexpectedly, the clothes are a challenge - because right now I never seem to be in one place for more than a week.

Initial impressions are the first thing. Interview or first day, you want to look professional. But if you are there for more than a day at a time, you want to be liked, right? You don't want to look cold and unapproachable. I like to look chic and modern, but want to be taken seriously, so fashion's extremes must wait till after-hours. My last temp job was a success, and I was encouraged to apply for a permanent job at the company when such a thing comes up. I want that hit rate with every job - someone give me a permanent job! A sharp suit works for day one, but then my creative juices kick in and I want to introduce my personality into the mix.

And of course every company is different. Sharp-shouldered, razor-haired city slickers populate one office, while the PA in another place trots cheerfully about in jeans and boots. The challenge is finding the right vibe in the few days that I'm there, while trying to look smart and memorable. Of course I want my work to be the thing that sets me apart from the rest of the crowd, but it doesn't hurt to leave a visual impression too... right?

I don't own a suit so for smart days I've opted for black suit-y separates - the McQueen trousers (creased just so down the front) and a Tara Jarmon blazer with a tiny waist and three folded corners at each shoulder. I own two white shirts - a very stiff twill-cotton Thomas Pink shirt with a rebellious that I fear carries Harry Hill connotations (sewing the collar firmly in place diminished it, but still...) and an ivory Chloe shirt with a frilled collar - very pretty but difficult under a suit. A recent swishing event furnished me with two more shirts - a pinstripe one I've decided I loathe and a useful white tuxedo-front thing that I can wear with cufflinks. Otherwise I'm opting for knitted dresses, a trusty black Uniqlo pencil skirt, sorbet-coloured Topshop Unique dresses and Mascaro ankle boots, with bits of posh knitwear (Rykiel/Pringle) to cheer things up a bit. Yet so far I never feel I've quite hit the mark...

McQueen

2010-02-22T19:45:00.012Z

I'm sure that every self-respecting writer in blogland will have paid tribute to the late and unusually great Alexander McQueen in the last few days. Quite right, and I'd like to do the same. It's sad when anyone passes but I have not felt so personally saddened by the death of someone I didn't know as I did when I heard the news about Lee McQueen. There are plenty of crassly overused adjectives (genius, artist et al) that fly around when someone well-known dies, but the aptest word I can think of for McQueen was "magician". He took the materials that every designer uses and created entire narratives, worlds, ideas, sculptures and statements out of them, moulded around the female form in a way that made thousands of us want to wrap ourselves in them.

He was totally out of my price range, but I got lucky at a sample sale last year, and my haul included some exquisite, tall nut-brown heels which work wonders on one's ankles...

...a pretty strapless black silk dress with pockets in a tulip skirt, the only perfect black work trousers I've ever owned, and the corsetted black satin pencil skirt to end all corsetted black satin pencil skirts. It was comforting to know that the designer who sent feathered wonders down the catwalk could also produce some of the most wearable clothes I've found - clothes that truly justify the accompanying designer price tag.

My favourite recent memory: the magnificent shoes donned by the equally magnificent Gaga in the Bad Romance video.

I can't think of a better muse for McQueen's fearless work. Too early lost - RIP Lee McQueen.

Hello again

2010-02-21T19:40:00.000Z

Life has changed a lot in the year or so (!) since I last posted. I miss having an outlet for my thoughts, and I'm going to try and post here more often. Things are in flux a lot for me at the moment but either way, I hope some interesting posts will come out of this.

"Luxury is a necessity that begins where necessity ends" - Coco Chanel

2009-01-08T01:08:00.006Z

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury - Charlie Chaplin

Credit crunch, M&S closing 25 branches, clothing labels shutting up shop, Debenham's profits down, luxury goods sales waning...

I recently read Dana Thomas' Deluxe - How Luxury Lost Its Lustre. It examines the luxury goods industry, from how it's produced to how it's marketed and consumed, and speculates on what value it has lost, now that £1500 bags are produced in Chinese factories by poorly paid teenage girls and every other woman totes an LV logo around in some form or another. At the same time it studies the old guard of luxury goods - Hermes' equestrian roots... oldskool luxury perfumers (Chanel's Jacques Polge, creator of the Les Exclusifs range, gets airtime, as does a jolly French farmer from Grasse who grows the exquisite flowers that go into Chanel's perfume)... the mills and weavers in Florence that supply the rarest silk for the most sumptuous of purposes (couture gowns, the walls of the Kremlin)... and an insane, sprawling Brazilian department store that is run like a salon and sells everything from couture to cars, with a personal shopping ethic that goes beyond imagination.

It's not written for the anti-consumer but the discerning customer and the jaded shopper. Her message is not 'stop buying', but 'stop buying indiscriminately' - it's an entreaty to respect the quality of personally crafted things, and know the difference between conglomerates that buy up every company going [and the companies that end up under their wing], and companies that nurture the highly skilled artisans that contribute to their luxurious reputation and preserve a little old-time plushness. It's a book for people for whom spending big doesn't automatically equal living well. I am an unabashed snob and have long despised the culture of logos and averagely made It-buys, from the LV print and 'luxe' handbags to sleb-designers and ubiquitous high-street horrors, and while Deluxe could have been more damning of the repulsive conditions that spawn much of what we consume, it's a pretty engaging read.

Luxury to me this month is...

...reserving an hour and a half before bed to watch French noir thriller I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed, with a small cold glass of orange liqueur, homemade and gifted by Italian friends
...spending £42 in Liberty on a full set of glossy black cotton bed sheets and duvet covers with pretty white piping for a quarter of their usual price - a little piece of bitesize, enveloping luxury without the financial implications!
...tidying my house with a vengeance, throwing out mountains of inhibitous old junk I haven't needed for years, leaving space to make my habitat look exactly as I want it to... and stretching out in the newly freed up space for days after
...a chocolate orange all to myself, consumed e-e-e-ever so slowly.

(I was happy to hear that Liberty's profits are bouncing along healthily, winking merrily at her ailing peers. Dear old Liberty - well bloody deserved. What a luxury that shop truly is - even if one wanders through its wooden halls and spends nothing, it feels like time beautifully spent, from the flower stall at the entrance to the towering piles of Turkish rugs on the third floor. Long may she rumble on.)

"The woman who does not perfume herself has no future"

2009-01-05T17:01:00.006Z

Chanel No 5 was always my favourite scent, and until recently, the only one I wore. But I think it's time to shelve it.

...she says, having just got a new bottle of the eau de parfum for Christmas, and indulged herself with a tiny wee bottle of the pure parfum as well.

Wonderful and timeless as it is, I have lately felt the desire for a more unusual, less readily available scent.

I'm extremely selective about perfumes - I don't like the idea of them being produced in vast laboratories and sold to fit a marketing brief, as is the case with so much perfume [I'm reminded of a satirical quote in a book that I do not have to hand, so I will roughly quote it - "We want a perfume for a woman! What kind of woman? Every woman! Modern but classic... Confident, and liberated - but not too much so!.] And I loathe the phenomenon of the 'celebrity perfume'. I like the romantic idea of a company employing a 'nose', an olfactory auteur who creates scents inspired by a memory, a visit long ago, a palace, a souk, an old lover, a wish... someone who seeks out the best organic ingredients they can and makes something beautiful out of it. How much this comes into play with even my favourite perfumes, I don't know, but at least companies like Patou, Chanel and the fiercely independent perfume branch of the Sisley name [still held onto by the original family whose names are inscribed on every bottle] make a good show of it.

I bought Sisley's Eau de Soir a few months ago - a chance discovery after my mother brought back two tiny, inch-high sample bottles she found in a Belgian junk shop - the perfume had degraded a little, but not enough to quell my curiosity, so off I went to my nearest Sisley counter. I wouldn't wear it every day - it's too heady. But with certain occasions, certain dresses, certain shoes, certain people, it's just right. I wore it to a huge Christmas party where everyone was dolled up in 50s attire, and teamed it with a swooshy skirted, high-necked backless black & white Marilyn dress and pink patent peep-toe shoes, and quiffed hair. On holiday in Rome, too, it was just right for every day as I always dress a little more 'up' on holiday. And I love its simple bottle with the mysterious gold top. But it's too bold and uncompromising for me to truly love it.

The answer: Chanel's Les Exclusifs - the range that Chanel released a couple of years ago, comprising a few originals and six newies. I went looking for a bottle of No 5 parfum in Rome's Chanel store, and decided to try them out instead - any Chanel or perfume connoisseurs will already be well aware that the Exclusifs range can only be bought in Chanel boutiques, and come only as a 200ml Eau de Toilette. I think at heart I will always cling to Chanel perfume. My favourites are Coromandel and the very oldskool Cuir de Russie. The latter is dry and elegant and very grown-up, and I like it but think I might get slightly bored of it if I tried to wear it regularly. 31 Rue Cambon is one I can see myself liking in years to come, but not yet. But Coromandel has stolen my heart completely.

It's a strange, quixotic scent... very sweet, and at first sniff I wrote it off. But some of it rubbed off on my sleeve, and all throughout dinner that evening, it pestered me maddeningly. The more I inhaled it, the more I wanted it. It changes as you wear it, and for an eau de toilette, clings wonderfully - it doesn't fade off until you shower. It starts sweet and very perfumey, but within a few minutes of wear, it settles into your skin, and as the day goes on, it shifts and changes, and smells increasingly edible. It's remarkable - it's like it's alive. I've never smelled anything like it. And it's packaged with perfect Chanel simplicity - a sturdy, plain bottle with a spray and satisfying magnetic cylindrical lid, on a black card plinth under a stiff white cardboard box.

I will still wear No 5 when I want something very understated. But Coromandel... I am in love. £140 for a 200ml bottle, and I think it will be worth every penny. I can see myself wearing this for years.

The shirking violet

2008-12-05T16:17:00.003Z

It's been very quiet here of late, and for that I'm sorry. I've been on a self-imposed shopping ban for ages, and work has left me with no time for fashion, so I've had little to write about!

The shopping ban was majestically blown out of the water with Liberty's 50% off sale the other night, though, so I'll post some pictures shortly and normal-ish service will resume.

I'm going to Rome at Christmas, and possibly New York in January, so give me your tips for good shopping haunts.... it'll be far too cold for aimless exploring!

x

Kate does Debbie

2008-10-24T15:05:00.006+01:00

Intriguing!

I don't think I will be buying any of the Kate stuff though. I've always loved her style [though it has been well-documented that the past few years of rock n roll uniformity have definitely been a drop in form] but I know I'm not alone in noticing that many of the pieces look stunning on Kate and distinctly average on the rest of us. People buying into the idea of looking like Kate will be disappointed unless they already have her hair, cheekbones, stats and general fashion nous. Much like the rest of the collection, that dress will look like A Dress, not The Dress, on most people.

My only Kate piece is a one bell-sleeved, black chiffon pussy-bow blouse from about 6 months ago. It never looks or hangs right, and has been worn once. Overall it's a nice idea and some of the clothes are pretty but several seasons of KM for Topshop have shown that trying to sell her style so bluntly just diminishes its magic, and doesn't produce anything really covetable.

For those still really keen in emulating her style, I think Topshop's other ranges inadvertently do a far better job. Particularly the Tux Delux range at the moment. I nearly cried when I tried on their beige snakeskin tux jacket. It fits exquisitely, but I cannot bring myself to buy it when I just spent £45 and innumerable visits to the tailor getting my old black second-hand men's tux altered to fit me perfectly.

The Crunch Bunch

2008-10-21T14:21:00.007+01:00

An email in my inbox, from a shopping website that will go unnamed [but...uh... if you got it, you know who I'm talking about]:

You don't need us to tell you that this is the time for investment. Forget fast fashion and quick fixes. We're investing in timeless basics that will last year after year and stand out from the crowd.

Don't think me hard-hearted. I know retailers've gotta make a dollar [and no-one benefits from the economy going down the tubes], I know they've got overheads and bottom lines and masses of stock that they need to shift our way. No-one expects them not to. But one thing is being ignored: after you buy this season's timeless classics, there'll be another raft of essential, three-figure long-term buys next season. All of which, of course, will carry us safely through to the good times again.

I know full well that I sound like a mardy cynic, and I truly will try not to rant about any more recession-related idiocy for at least a week. I'm just rather weary with every advertising line now referencing the credit crunch, and with the moronically topical tone they all take.

"There, there. We know you've got no money. [Ha ha! Sucks to be you!!] We know you can't afford to buy your next tin of baked beans, or make rent. Instead of buying that new house, savvy savers will downsize and buy this handy 3-pack of classic alpaca cushion covers. These amazing, dual purpose delights will make your home look up-to-the-minute AND mean you don't need to buy a new house. Take that, credit crunch! The perfect investment to carry you through the recession. 'Er from next door might be sitting on the kerb this morning with the few worldly possessions she has left since the bailiffs battered the door down halfway through Newsnight, claiming their due, but you can feel cosy and cocooned from the financial maelstrom with your timeless soft furnishings. Available now for the inflation-busting price of £159.99."

If I exaggerate, they drove me to it. I'm sick of hearing about it. Give me facts and reportage - the latest bank to crash and burn, our good PM's newest and boldest strategy to dig us out of this apparently apocalpytic mess. But I really don't need credit-crunch themed shopping journalism, ta very much. I've heard of spending your way out of recession, but this bullshit about this being the time for investment, buying something [coincidentally 'on-trend'] to 'take you through' several seasons... It's getting my back right up.

Can we not just be honest about it, and admit that we should be saving, not investing, but that when the spending urge hits you, it's better to buy this product than that product, because "ours is totally... like... BETTER"?

Tagged...

2008-10-16T10:49:00.006+01:00

Miss Dressed & Pressed has tagged me. Eleven things about myself...

1. My pickiness about food means I discover treats really late in life. [Some would say a good thing... delayed gratification?] This autumn I found out about popcorn. I'm now far too keen on the salted variety for my own good.

2. I envy men sartorially. If reincarnation exists, I'd like to come back as a very wealthy international playboy. I would never ever wear shorts [however long], combat trousers, a parka or a football shirt. I would be a beacon of masculine style. I would live a James Bond lifestyle [without the nearly-getting-killed-every-other-day antiperk], get exquisite suits handmade for me at Henry Poole, and indulge in technogadgets [a posh Omega watch, perchance the new qwerty Prada LG phone, and definitely the ~~shiny new Macbook - the only Apple product I have ever shamelessly craved~~ that iniquitous bunch of bastards can fvck off, everything I've owned by Apple has broken repeatedly. FURIOUS ANGER.]. Fashion-wise, women do certain things far better than men [underwear, bags, hats], but men pull off tailoring and technogadgets much more suavely and convincingly than women, and of that I am jealous.

3. Seeing birds in cages upsets me. I looked in a pet shop the other day and saw rows of cages with tiny white birds and magnificent, personable blue parrots. I wanted to buy them all and send them back to their natural habitats, but of course they'd just get caught and sold again. Or eaten.

4. I collect gloves and umbrellas. Friends and regular readers will know of my umbrella craving, but I also have a drawer full of beautiful gloves, mostly Italian, in every colour leather, suede and silk I can acquire. I get them in Rome, at airports, and second-hand from Blackout II. My favourite new pair are diagonally striped in black leather and black patent. I like them with black cigarette pants, a black mohair cardigan with a ribbon-tie at the waist and very high heels.

5. I love Home & Away. But I'm never at home to watch it. Sniff.

6. I take great pleasure in fancy dress.

7. I have never been in debt.

8. I have never managed to save much money either. I am what you might call a break-even gal.

9. I hate the free London papers but really like Shortlist [the free men's paper they give out on Thursdays]. This week they had a story about high-rolling multi-millionaire gamblers, the swankiest hotels around the world, and a good piece on George Clooney. Again I think it taps into my penchant for the James Bond aesthetic.

10. I get really vexed by poor spelling or bad pronunciation/grammar. Particularly when it's done by People Who Should Know Better - journalists [Vogue let the side down this month], news readers and the like. I don't know whether it's technically bad grammar or not, but I really hate the American way of saying 'I'm excited to see/do whatever'. I always think it should be 'I'm excited about seeing/doing etc'. And though I am unhappily as guilty as the next person, I HATE 'like'. It's, like, the most over-used word in existence.

11. I am fairly competent with most technology, but there has never been a printer I was not able to break. They hate me, and I hate them. So much the worse for our relationship if they are a printer/fax - we will never be friends.

And now I tag the ever engaging Sister Wolf, Luxenoir and Knight Cat as I am a new reader to her blog and something of a fan.

And what's more...

2008-10-15T17:12:00.003+01:00

...as an addendum to the other day's post about the fashion press's response to the credit crunch, I really like this month's Bazaar.

How timely to run an issue of icons, of people that never go out of style and clothes that never lose their cache. It's rather comforting to flick through the pages of their '40 classic pieces' article. It could have been dull, but typically for Bazaar, there's enough elegance to the pieces they suggest and enough sense to their arguments for them, to make me return to my own wardrobe and remind myself that I really don't actually need to add to it right now.

Is it just me that isn't at all impressed by Peter Blake these days though? Oh, British institution, fiddlesticks. Sgt Pepper is all well and good, but what's he up to now? 'Designing' the cover of the magazine with Swarovski crystals by sticking them in doltish stars at obvious points on the photo? Yes, very good, well done. Pfft. There was another piece of his in the magazine, I forget where, but if I'm sufficiently annoyed when I get home this evening, perhaps I'll scan it in. Not impressed.

The credit crunch / the recession / the impending depression / the end is nigh

2008-10-09T14:06:00.007+01:00

Curious that as the media blare shock-and-awe headlines about the credit crunch, fashion is unapologetically back on the mainstream radar. Compare fashion coverage seven or eight years ago with the frenzy now. [Maybe this has something to do with fast fashion, Topshop, Primark, the accessibility of good design etc]. I remember as a teenager feeling awkward among my peers for liking Fashion with its designers, fashion houses and iconic history, while my friends were more tribal about the clothes they wore.

Now fashion is in fashion again [is that like black being the new black?]. Every day it's all over the free London papers and the TV [Gok, the Fashion Show, the incoming Frock Me with Alexa & HH], and every teen seems to know her Miuccia from her Marc Jacobs [and own some of it, too. Jesus!]

And as governments bail out reckless bankers, on we shop, from Primark bargains upwards. Meanwhile the fashion press contextualise clothes economically, analysing designers' responses to the crunch via their collections, and telling us how to style and save at the same time.

But UK Elle's November issue is the proverbial straw on my imaginary camel's poor overloaded back. I can deal with repetition of a theme, but I can't deal with being sold idiocy under the guise of 'top tips!!'. The running theme is 'beating the credit crunch', bargain shopping, sneaky savings etc; timely and helpful, one might think. Sadly, quite the opposite, to a laughable degree.

They're not encouraging us to stride defiantly into our nearest Tiffanys and and load jewelled diadems on our cards. Nor are there helpful ideas to maintain some style when all your money is going on bills and basics. No 'More Dash Less Cash' here.

Rather, empty & idiotic advice; the hypocrisy of encouraging a fashionista spending habit under the guise of saving money. Plenty of us do this, but I don't need to read journalism to the same effect, without writers even questioning why. Their advice is the equivalent of giving someone a fiver and asking for five pounds change.

If November Elle is a joke, the punchline sees their Mademoiselle columnist venture into Zara [a little-known, backwater boutique the eagle-eyed among you might know] for the first time in years and registers surprise at their stock and prices. These people live on another planet.

Buying a K by Karl Lagerfeld sweater because a diffusion range is cheaper [an actual Elle tip] than the main line is not saving money! Nor is buying £135 men's indoor slippers instead of a pair of shoes, or a new bag because, thrills!!!, you can use it both day and night. I know they have to be seen to sell, but not one shred of their style advice this issue practically encourages the reader to spend less or observes that fashion can be fun without costing much.

Vogue has never made any pretence about affordable fashion - they separated the cheap from the luxe with their occasional Cheap'n'Chic features, and are thoroughly and honestly aspirational - and a good read for it. By contrast, and of all the real glossies, Elle always seemed like the credible, accessible option - couture here, high street there. If they want to encourage people to lavish their way through the current times, fine, but this kind of journalism is insulting.

A double page spread about the psychology of shopping in the high street supplement, based on an Elle survey, notes that despite the crunch, we're shopping as much as ever. The tagline led me to hope it might explore why we all seem so shopping addicted, and ways of replacing it with a less costly kick. Sadly not. Just a handful of statistics and cheerful 'Off you shop!' encouragement.

It can be done, and it can be done well, from individual blogs to mainstream TV. I liked the observations over at Make Do and Mend, on the reality of living on a real budget [as opposed to a diffusion-range-only budget] and how she does it, and Twiggy's Frock Exchange on BBC2 the other night, if a bit WI-esque and sugary, proved a joyful hour of swapping, out-of-town thrifting and reinventing, with not a penny spent by the 100 women that participated.

If Elle let me write an article on saving money, I'd advise:

- sample sales through Fashion Confidential et al
- recon high street missions - as soon as you see the new season's clothes, if you must shop, hit the high street with no cash/cards, just a notepad and camera. Try things on, note who does the best versions of high-end clothes, note prices, and work out what you really need.
- smalltown charity shops [and charity/2nd-hand stores if you happen to be abroad too - almost always cheaper than UK ones]
- identifying what you will never wear again. What you can't sell on eBay/thriftstoreuk etc, alter - especially if you'd have thrown it away anyway. Success = new clothes, failure = nothing lost.
- part-exchanging good quality unwanteds for vintage goodies in shops like Bang Bang
- clothes-swap parties with similarly-shaped friends
- learn to dye your clothes [practice on unwanted bits], choosing and mixing subtle hues to avoid the limited high-street palette
- make clothes if you can, or befriend the dressmakers/tailors in your local dry cleaners. [I did this tonight, potentially to great effect.]

It's not exactly rocket-science, but when Elle's advice amounts to 'spend hopelessly and pretend you didn't', I wonder how much grasp they have on common sense.

I confess

2008-10-02T11:08:00.010+01:00

I've been a little lazy. I could give you a string of excuses about my working hours, other commitments, etc etc, but it simply boils down to: I haven't had the time to post lately.

Anyway. Steps are being taken and posts will follow. Many photographs have been uploaded this evening.

Here is a photo of my favourite, favourite sort-of-new jacket. It's Paul Smith Women, and was a gift from the exceptionally kind Sister Wolf. She dispatched it across the pond in the mail a couple of months back, and the other day I figured out exactly how I want to wear it - either with wide, high-waisted trousers and my favourite old hand-me-down cream and navy striped jumper [very English, what? My mother's. I like it because it makes me think of cricket. Even though I hate cricket. Ridiculous.] or with black skin-skimming trousers, bitch heels, cobwebby neutral layers and hair up, up, UP in a kind of Glenn Close quiff. Sadly I do not have a photo of the latter, but you may take it for granted that I greatly enjoyed wearing it.

Yes, you're quite right. The jumper does have moth holes in it. Quite a few in fact. And the neckline needs mending. [A job for tomorrow]. I shall continue to wear it nonetheless. Lovely, dear jumper.

I think the jacket might also look sharp with a dark, clashing tweed tulip skirt & graphic tee, and some new suede heels that I will post tomorrow.

I love the old fashioned pockets - two on one side, one on another, the four-button cuffs, and the amazing three different linings [the sleeves are my favourite]. And I love the fit at the back - something that is problematic for me with most jackets. It's this sort of detailing that is maybe why I rarely buy high street jackets or blazers - coats, certainly, as the high street does snug & chic very well, but on a little tailored jacket you'd never get the perfect cut or attention to detail like this in high street shops.

[A case in point: I so NEARLY bought this angular tailed riding jacket from Todd Lynn for Topshop the other day.

[Image: Topshop.com]

£130, and it was so chic - the pointy cuffs, the velvet collar, the sharp lines. But the fabric feels cheap, it doesn't sit quite right around my tummy, and I know I'd be wriggling about it in all the time, pulling it this way and that. A jacket - even a sharp, tight one - should be easy and let you forget you're wearing it - except when you see it in the mirror.]

A funny old week

2008-09-22T00:22:00.003+01:00

I emerged at 7.30pm tonight after an extremely odd weekend involving drawn-on moustaches, new shoes and new friends. Don't think me slack, but I'm wiped out, and far too tired to post all of the details now. But photographs will follow - Coco de Mer's new opening in Chelsea on Thursday with a ridiculously decadent gang of cocktail-hatted, risquely-attired revellers, and a pirate party last night beneath the murky depths of the Thames riverbed. I will hunt for my camera cable tomorrow and document all the shenanigans as soon as possible. For now, back to bed - my hangover rages, and I have only myself to blame. I just bought some beautiful new Liberty bed linen, and need to cocoon myself in it forthwith.

Kate Moss and the House of Blue Eyes

2008-09-09T01:09:00.001+01:00

It's been all over the papers by now - Kate's first catwalk show in 4 years.

It happened at the venue where I work now, and was the climax of a party that went off the end of the Richter scale. No-one was expecting her to walk... we thought she'd just sit back and enjoy the show.

Kate aside [well, she did look superb], it was a great party in its own right. The guests looked phenomenal - a friend of mine turned up in a coat made of stuffed toys, Bishi was there looking elegant, and I saw the most convincing drag queen I've ever witnessed - s/he was tall, very slim, with a pretty Louise Brooks face and hair, a tiny cupid mouth, and a very sharp but restrained 1930s style suit. I was admiring how pretty she looked, when she opened her mouth and out came this bellowing, unmistakeably baritone voice. Gosh! I wish I'd had my own camera on me to capture some of these wonderful creatures.

The party launched stylist Johnny Blue Eyes' label House of Blue Eyes, a punky collaboration with several designers he knows, including Giles Pearson, Carol Wiseman and others. His background is mainly in styling music videos and bands [including Scissor Sisters' 'Filthy/Gorgeous' and the amazing 1930s-swimsuit dancers in Take That's 'Shine', and that showed on the night - Ana Matronic hosted, Beth Ditto catwalked and sang, and the guestlist was longer than a life sentence.

I spent the night on four-inch heels [thankfully my own - I was offered some 1970s de Havilland shoes to wear but there's no way I could have stayed on my feet all night], helping our besieged bar staff, generally trying to control the chaos and keeping Miss Moss in alcobooze.

But my favourite bit of the whole thing wasn't so much the party as the preparation - Johnny styled me and our bar supervisor for the night, so I began the day in a dressing room in Goldhawk Road surrounded by improbably tall, thin boys and girls in various states of undress, with two hair-stylists setting about me with hairdryers. A very strange way to commence work for the day! I don't have any photos of my outfit yet - a lady did photograph me, so I'm hoping she'll send me the photos. I wore my Mango/Yousefzada dress, a little 1940s veiled hat, some black suede peep-toe platforms and an amazing necklace - a huge [fist-sized, truly] brass lion's head pendant on a metal and suede chain. Our bar supervisor looked like Jessica Rabbit in a vintage black & gold high-cut swimsuit and Brigitte Bardot hair... wonderful!

Roll on the next party...

[All photos: Lucy Johnston]

Another day, another dollar

2008-09-05T18:57:00.008+01:00

I have a long post to write about the fashion party the other night - albeit rather late, given it was all over the front page of the papers the next day, with everyone excited about Kate Moss's impromptu catwalk appearance. I'm waiting to see if I can use some photos for the post, though - so many people looked amazing it'd be a shame not to include the images.

Today, meanwhile, another catwalk show - though this is a private one, for a video shoot. A bit of a strange one - it's for a bingo advert. The models look great, though. It's all graduate fashion, and much of it is covetable. The girls are wearing stunning cream structured coat-dresses and space age pillowy white clothes with inflated shoulders and hoods by Min-Kyung Kim, a 2008 LCF graduate; here's the dress as seen in her graduate show -

[It looks better on the model today though, it sits absolutely straight on her, the effect is killer.]

...And the pillowy stuff:

[Photos: Christopher Moore]

Some of it intrigues me - it's like fencing outfits for ballerinas. Very beautiful structure.

For the final walk, the girls are in stupendous black drapery - backless dresses that gather up at the front and what looks like papery cut-out swimsuits under harem pants that are tight to the knees and extravagant at the hips. I will be making enquiries when all this is over, about where I can lay my hands on the garments. The film crew didn't mind me snapping a few shots, so this is roughly what's going on behind me...

Apologies for the awful photos, my cameraphone really is pretty unacceptable.

A short, pictureless update

2008-09-01T18:31:00.005+01:00

Time on my hands: none. My poor camera hasn't been out to play at all lately.

But I found a chic little navy and white Pierre Cardin handbag this weekend, hidden in the unlikely corners of a tiny second-hand stall at Offset Festival. I will photograph it shortly. I love Pierre Cardin. My favourite pair of jeans ever were Cardin, a hand-me-down from my cousin, five years older than me. I grew out of them when I was fourteen though. It is sad that my jeans ownership peaked at such an age, but perhaps it is for the best. The cult of denim is something that mystifies and depresses me a little.

Tonight I am trying on some likely very colourful Terry de Havilland heels which I am being loaned for a party tomorrow. I get first pick out of a suitcase full of vintage TdCs. This is not something that happens very often, or indeed ever. We're hosting a dizzyingly colourful, queeny party for a stylist, with a catwalk show, two very famous ladies hosting and performing, and some NYC djs playing 'bitch-house'. Our lovely bar supervisor has gamely agreed to don a vintage 70s high-cut black & gold swimsuit and gold lurex tights for the occasion [and she carries it off, too]. Me, I'm sticking to the safety of this Mango/Osman Yousefzada dress with geometric tights and the most startling rings of blue kohl I can come up with. There will be hairdressers, and they will give me Veronica Lake hair. Maybe.

It's going to be a glorious day.

You talk like Marlene Dietrich and you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire

2008-08-25T12:09:00.004+01:00

When Peter Sarstedt sang 'Your clothes are all made by Balmain, and there's diamonds and pearls in your hair', it's a pretty safe bet his muse wasn't wearing tartan bondage trousers and a lame singlet [much as I very, very much love Balmain's most recent offerings]. I want to live an elegant life like his St Moritz-hopping, Picasso-robbing heroine!

I like to think she would have looked like a cross between Grace Kelly and a Rene Gruau drawing.

I've become fixated on Gruau's drawings since a friend bought me a charming Gruau-illustrated birthday card the other week. They look the way I wish, WISH I could draw [and look] - all nonchalant, fearless brushstrokes, cigarette holders, inkpot eyes, insouciant, pointed little chins and ingenious bolts of colour. These are not chicks, girls, ingenues or even women - these here is LADIES.

He was the son of an Italian count and a French aristocrat - after they separated, he spent his childhood travelling Europe with his mother before pursuing a career in fashion illustration. Throughout the 1930s and early 40s he worked from Paris & Lyon, drawing for Marie Claire, L'Officiel and Vogue. After WWII, a meeting with Christian Dior injected his career with new energy - he created the inimitable image for the Miss Dior fragrance, and immortalised the New Look of the 40s & 50s and the designs of Dior, Balenciaga, Balmain, Schiaparelli and Givenchy. Right up to his death he was still illustrating for Elle, Figaro and Vogue - he never seemed to run out of inspiration and ideas.

[Images: Operagloves]

1910-2004. What a life!

All quiet on the western front

2008-08-23T19:10:00.002+01:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Just started a new job and it's keeping me busy. I've got a bit of a backlog of posts to put together, so normal service will resume shortly....

Belgian shopping

2008-08-12T16:39:00.001+01:00

This wasn't quite the angle with which I expected to approach my stay in Belgium, but an interesting point on Make Do & Mend set me in mind of it.

It was a four-day trip and I stayed in Ghent, making day trips to Antwerp and Bruges. It became something of a shopping frenzy, as the soon-to-come photos will attest to.

I was really struck by the superb layout of their stores, particularly the smaller boutiquey ones. As Kate of MD&F rightly observes, many British stores really self-sabotage by cramming in so much stock that you can't see the wares for the trees, so to speak. One thing I like about Belgium is its pace, and this seemed to translate to their shopping - there's none of the frantic rail-to-rail nonsense that makes shopping an ordeal. In many of the stores I went into this week, boutique or chain, there was floorspace a-plenty, and goods wisely and pleasingly displayed with enough surrounding room to let them breathe and entice people. Some honourable mentions:

- Eva Bos, Ghent

Eva is apparently a teacher at Ghent's fashion academy and this is her own personal fashion display case. There's a mirrored golden pole outside the front door, and the interior is equally yummy. McQueen shoes, a small display of jewellery from the reasonable [45 euros] to the very expensive [800 euros], and perfect dresses [vintage couture and new designs] in black, red and powder pink, all in a low-lit jewelbox of a space.

- Iki, Bruges
My favourite second-hand shop in the world. Another ancient tiled floor, and the minimum of merchandise - one rail of clothes, a low wall shelf of bags and shoes, a cabinet of 30s and 40s jewellery, and occasional other pretties dotted here and there. Everything's shockingly inexpensive [10 euros for a sweet black suede 40s purse? 5 euros for a fetching short navy paisley men's scarf? Gosh...] and very well chosen - not one dud in the place. First time round, I bought out nearly the whole shop. Sadly it was closed on my return visit, but re-opens on August 14th.

- Bruphils, Bruges

An average-looking, well-laid out chain for elegant workwear at first sight, with a fairly pricy main collection and a younger concession range, until you notice the expertly cut sailor-waisted trousers and the oh-so-shiiiiiny patent boots, and the little garden out the back. Also, I enjoyed the awfully heavy, lime-green felt curtains on the changing rooms - a wee spot of well-placed childishness in an otherwise very grown-up store.

- Au Bon Marche, Ghent
A screamingly delectable little place with an antique tiled floor... a glass cabinet housing pretty snap-close purses and wallets made of such soft-looking leather, nothing less than 'succulent' describes it... eye-wateringly pricey, delicate handmade jewellery and funny little stationery and curiosities. Everything is far too expensive [triple-figures for the tiny diamante bracelets], but it's all so pretty and so well-displayed, one can't leave without spending at least 50 euros anyway.

- Episode, Antwerp

[Image: FashionFillers]

Pretty well known across blogland. Londoners know the Chalk Farm Road branch, with its orange shop front and somewhat unremarkable Camden-y 'vintage' stock. Antwerpers have it so much better. Imagine Mint of Covent Garden, but much large, better organised and with dramatically slashed prices, and a really nice, airy space lit by skylights and left to breathe. Again, ample space between the carefully ordered rails - relief! Some second-hand places are an explosion of headachey colour; this one's a rainbow. An hour and a half later I was still trying things on, to the probable chagrin of the staff who were too polite to request I leave so they could go home. I redeemed myself at the till with my debit card.

I can't wait to go back to Belgium and explore more. I can see myself moving there one of these days.

Missing the point

2008-08-11T21:02:00.004+01:00

...in which your correspondent veers off course, incensed by inadequate arguments in Richard Dawkins' futile documentary.

Brit readers might have just finished watching episode two of Dawkins' The Genius Of Charles Darwin. Such a promising programme, much as my agnostic mind detests Dawkins and his misfiring attacks on religion as a whole. Such a disappointment, in the end - he doesn't tackle any of the things you hope he might [or even, in the end, talk a great deal about Darwin]. He just uses Darwin's theory to state the obvious - not even covering the whole of it - and it's so unsatisfying.

Tempting as it is in this context, I won't launch into my own opinion on evolution, religion's place in society etc - suffice to say as someone pitched between agnosticism and atheism, I think its existence - as a construct in the human mind and society - is wholly logical and simply badly used. I'll save the full lecture for the day I get to sit down in a room with Dawkins and tell him I think he's a reasonably clever idiot.

But I find it so frustrating the way he totally misses the point. He preaches the basics of evolution to a viewing audience who, if they've settled down to watch the show, likely already agree with him and know the theory of evolution. The show might have been better if it involved a panel discussion between intelligent people of varying - moderate & otherwise - opinions. We might then have learned something.

He begins conversations with people of opposing beliefs with deliberately inflammatory, rhetorical questions [asking a creationist bishop in Africa "Are you an ape?" - of course the guy's not going to say "Yes, Richard, yes I am - how kind of you to notice", is he??] designed to start an argument before expanding into a lecture. [The fella, to his credit, clarifies his argument peaceably, and then has to listen as Dawkins lectures him on the basic mechanics of evolution.] It's not a dialogue - he picks out people he believes less factually or intellectually equipped to argue with him [e.g. the bishop, who appears to have been unaware of the finer points of man's relation to other primates], and bashes them about the head with his version of the world.

He launches into his ideas about altruism, and terminates his argument at the conclusion that it is exists solely to make creatures sexually attractive and to enable friendly relations among familial groups, and remains in humans as a throwback to this, much like the sexual instinct existing alongside contraception. I wish he had considered the idea that maybe as our brains developed and we think about the future of our species, the altruistic instinct remains as a sensible mechanism [the better part of human nature vs the fear/mistrust/destruction instinct?] to promote harmony [and therefore longevity] to our species and the world we live in.

I'd like to take him by the shoulders and shake him.

Girls on film

2008-08-11T01:10:00.007+01:00

I find I have been drawing out my birthday over as long a period as humanly possible, and to that end, I will be celebrating at the end of the coming week with a costume party [I will be a flapper, if I can find a cigarette holder]. And I just spent a week in Belgium, enjoying its many shops and birthday-gifting myself. More of that later, when I've photographed what I bought.

Meantime, here is a picture of the unutterably fetching birthday present a close friend gave me yesterday. I am more charmed by it than I can describe. It just remains to be seen whether I can find the requisite 4x4 127 film [some places in Canada still make it...?], flashbulb and funny looking flash battery and capacitator. If not, it will just be the prettiest ornament I ever did see.

Beautiful, beautiful 1958 Sawyer's Mark IV twin lens reflex camera. You open the top and look down into the camera, and out through the top lens [the bottom takes the photo]. Sawyer's was the American branded version - it's basically a Japanese camera, otherwise known as the Primo Jr.

I can't find a picture of the superb flash unit, but it's basically a version of the below, except not Ricoh - Sawyer's, like the camera.

The camera and flash unit come prettily housed in brown leather cases. I'd so love to request a photopass for a generic indie gig, turn up in the photopit with this and catch the looks on the pro photographers' faces. They'd be pitched somewhere between "WHAA" and "LOL".

For now I will put it next to my old Russian Zenit camera and let them pose it out in a walk-off. Zenit can be Stiller, and my Mark IV baby can be Wilson.

Though you were just a little swirl, you understood every word

2008-08-01T12:16:00.004+01:00

A lady on Livejournal posted this photo in a list of her fashion inspirations for this season, as part of the new romantic [soft goth? I hate that label but that is, if one is to adhere to Vogue's lexicon, what they're calling it] look.

It has just occurred to me that I used to dress almost exactly like that when I was eight. I don't think I had the high heels, but velvet shorts, black tights, hippie-ish brown top, pendant - check, check, check, check. My hair was much shorter and distinctly mousy, but I was only eight, so... fcuk all y'all.

Now I know there's something of a nineties revival going on, but was this actually in fashion back then? I don't remember it being so... or if it was, I don't remember being aware of it, though I do remember there were always piles of Vogue and Harpers & Queen in our house. I was eight, and all I wanted was to be a mysterious looking hippy-goth. It is doubtful whether I succeeded. Whether Peaches succeeds now or not is, perhaps, a separate discussion entirely.

Birthday shopping

2008-07-30T21:43:00.005+01:00

I needed a new pair of trousers, something skinny and cigarette-like. So naturally on my birthday at the weekend I went shopping, and bought a bunch of dresses and a jacket. Let it never be uttered that I am not possessed of logic and wisdom.

Sadly my camera was uncharacteristically uncooperative, so some of these photos are somewhat overexposed. Man Ray I am not.

I love this knit dress by Japonica. The bow detail is cute and it's unbelievable easy and comfortable, even in sticky weather like this.

Belted with an ancient Liberty silk scarf [sadly my camera wouldn't pick up the pattern detail, it's very wispy and delicate]. The bump on my leg is me realising I need to be careful which lingerie I wear with this dress - anything involving knots and ties clearly won't do. Live and learn...

A cute shirt-dress from whereareyounow. Most shirty things on me look a bit stiff but this one is made of really nice, almost degraded cotton. Soft soft soft.

I had told myself I would not indulge in the trend for stars, as it can look quite teenage, but gosh I love this Reko dress. I can wear it anywhere, and the top part is double-lined so it holds its shape well and doesn't feel flimsy.

Dreeeeeeeeeeeeam. I have wanted a leather jacket for years, and never ever found a second-hand one that fit me [they're all cave-like on my frame]. God bless Topshop for this butter-soft little lovely.

I don't want to take it off. I wore it to lunch today in the clammy afternoon heat, and it was gorgeously comfortable, not too warm at all.

The odd one out. I didn't get this necklace at the weekend - got it a few weeks ago at a vintage fair in Notting Hill but haven't had much chance to wear it yet. It's good with silky camisoles and lacy/crochet v-necked tops. Not as heavy as it looks...

If you steal my sunshine...

2008-07-29T23:59:00.006+01:00

It was my birthday on Saturday. In past years I've had very silly picnics and booze-a-thons, but it's been a pretty difficult few weeks and I just felt like spending it with my family.

And shopping.

I'll post my purchases later, when I've photographed them. Meanwhile, a post about my lovely dad's birthday present to me - I spent a happy hour in my favourite umbrella, swordstick, cane and life-preserver emporium, choosing my present.

I picked out two umbrellas - a big one for dark, rainy days, and a small one for toting about town when the weather is less inevitably filthy.

The little one:

It makes me think of Gustav Klimt paintings and the endless joy of school days at the back of the classroom, armed with a shakeable gold pen and a shiny new exercise book.

And the big one:

The photo doesn't do it justice - it's got a nice weight to it, with a wooden shaft and exquisite thick silky fabric which shimmers beautifully in the sunlight.

Two of my favourite things about JS&S:

- they can put together a semi-bespoke umbrella for you, for little more than the standard brolly price, because they keep the heads and frames in their workshop downstairs. I very nearly plumped for a Quant-patterned brolly with a crimson resin parrot for a handle, but they hadn't the parrot head in stock.

- they stamp their larger brollies with their beautiful silver nameplate:

I think I should start naming my umbrellas.

This concludes my umbrella geekery for this week.

"Help me to be sensible!"

2008-07-25T00:21:00.006+01:00

For my friend Ian's birthday this week, a bunch of us took a trip to see the live production of Brief Encounter at the Haymarket. It's truly magical. From the time you go in, it's era-perfect - a little skiffle band playing around the auditorium as you enter, uniformed attendants serving refreshments. The same people get onstage and turn out to be the cast, and then provide the intermission entertainment. It's tickle-me-pink funny and unbearably sad, and the staging is so inventive and gorgeous. If you're a Londoner, I recommend it heartily.

They are apparently taking it to Broadway, and Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick will play the leads. Ugh. I imagine Sarah Jessica Parker will relish the opportunity to be TERRIBLY! DRAMATIC! AND! OVER! THE! TOP!!!!!!!!! OH! WOE, WOE IS SHE!

Rather you, dear New Yorkers, than I.

Anyway, we thought we'd have a jollier time if we dressed up, so dress up we did. I can't really do 1940s very well, because I have neither curl-friendly hair nor pneumatic bosoms. So I went for a marcel-waved 1930s look. I know I look like Olive Oyl - it doesn't need saying, so don't say it.

And here we are with the lead actor, Tristan Sturrock. He seemed much taller onstage, but then he wasn't dressed like an emo mime at that point. Still, a very nice man, stripes or no.

The Sewing Chronicles - part the first

2008-07-25T00:13:00.004+01:00

So, I have a sewing cupboard full of assorted silks. A box with 5 different kinds of scissors, thread in every colour, needles of every size, two tape measures and numerous pots of beads, buttons, sequins and sundries. £85 worth of beautiful English pinstripe wool. An unfinished silk backless top for which I have just found some suitable lining, and some purple dye & white silk just in case it isn't all that suitable after all.

I chickened out, and spent a day making a purse out of my old scarlet silk-satin dressing gown.

The underside isn't perfect but I kind of like it. Mostly hand-sewn, lined in the same silk, so it's as tough as old boots.

The ribbon is part of a whole roll of antique ribbon that I got for £2 in Notting Hill the other week.

I'll attempt the trousers...um... next week.

When in doubt, make stuff

2008-07-22T02:24:00.004+01:00

I have been off work for the last week, for medical purposes, and have not been wasting my days. In between work emails [I can't just leave it all alone, the sky will fall in if I do...] I have spent much time at my sewing machine and dress form. The combination of that and my continuing lack of a camera cable is not helping my blog's cause, and for that I apologise. BUT! It will not all be in vain.

I am making:

- a backless mauve silk top, slightly 1930s style - a little like the top half of that dress that Keira Knightley shags about in for a couple of scenes in Atonement

- a crinkled mauve and green silk dress - initially documented here, it has been modified and will soon be finished. I toy with the idea of putting epaulettes on the shoulders, to lend structure and bash a bit of the softness out of the dress

- a Japanese silk drawstring purse, to replace one I lost last week. More people should carry their money about in pouches, for to fling them at surly innkeepers and tavern wenches in return for their mead or silence. There's a medieval elegance to it that's sadly missing in our shiny, seedy society.

- The trousers to end all trousers. A while back I waxed lyrical about these Paul Smith beauties:

On Sunday I bought several metres of beautiful pinstripe wool-cashmere. Unfortunately I was fleeced, and paid over the odds - had I waited a day, I could have bought it in Shepherds Bush for a quarter of the price. Curses! Still, I got my lining nice and cheap, and saw Henry Holland mooching about in A1 Fabric Stores looking very VERY quiffed and blond.

So that's what I'm up to for the foreseeable. No expensive nights out for me... just hard graft over a hot sewing machine. The credit crunch, they say, is a-coming, and by God I'll be ready and well-clothed when it does.

Patent and silk, satin and ribbons

2008-07-11T00:46:00.005+01:00

Four things very dear to my heart.

Unfortunately for my attempts to save in this darkest of recession-shadowed times [--Side note - is it just me that's really not gotten into the spirit of the incoming poverty panic that's sweeping the nation? Is it unpatriotic of me? Perhaps as someone in a not well-paid or secure job who is hoping to buy a house in the next 12 months, I should be hiding behind the sofa right now, but I can't shake the thought that if I just keep saving and secreting £50 notes in envelopes around my house, I'll be okay...--]

Phew! Sorry about that. Where were we?

Ah yes. My inability to keep my debit card in my pocket in the face of shiny shiny patent. I've already got a pair of nude patent shoes [and blue patent shoes... and black patent shoes...] and really didn't need these, but there was something friendly-looking about them, and when I buckled them onto my feet, my tootsies smiled and introduced themselves to the leather with surprising cheer. Plus they remind me of Chloe shoes, though I'm sure I don't know which particular style, and that makes them more appealing, being as I certainly can't afford Chloe shoes.

At this point I must apologise for the shocking photo quality. Phone photos, as my camera cable is lost in the ether, post-house-decorating. There's official photos as well so you can see what they really look like.

Until I put them on and fell in something like love, they were the fallback option for these, which are ridiculous.

I never thought I'd succumb and buy something as patently [ho ho] ridiculous as satin shoes ["Ughhh! RUIN my satin shoes, why don't you?!?!?"}, particularly a pair of open-toed monstrosities spewing forth a froth of silk ribbon at the ankles, but then, I'd never seen these.

I can't work out whether they're pretty or pretty horrific. I've got 21 days to make up my mind, but unless I invite all my friends around to my house to help me with the decision, I'll have to decide on my own, because once I touch them to outdoor concrete I'm stuck with them.

For now, though, I love them.

Also, they have patent heels and ribbon-ends and a teensy-weensy little bar of patent over the toes. It's like a textural free-for-all... patent and satin and silk, oh my!

I think I would like to try living in the eighteenth century, when I think my taste in shoes would have been highly regarded throughout the land.

Thank you, Kurt Geiger. Thank you, Carvela.

P.S. Within my own, slightly oval sphere of logic, I can justify buying two pairs of shoes at once, because I also bought a book of sheet music this week for Chopin's nocturnes, and once I learn to play them all, my soul will be repaired and I will be a worthy individual again.

Seven favourites

2008-07-09T21:10:00.005+01:00

I've been tagged by luxenoir...

The Rules: List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.

- Rihanna - Take A Bow

How Rihanna went from that bratty , whiny-voiced kid to this sleek, self-assured madam with a rack of great songs, I have no idea. All I know is it has something to do with Jay-Z and umbrellas. I love this song. It sorts a few things out for me right now, and I love the video - very simple, but she looks magnificent in it. Cutting her hair: a wise move.

- Magnetic Fields - California Girls

A very pretty, dreamy, fuzz-laden reverie about California girls, and creeping up behind them with an axe because you're so sick of their coke-snorting, rockstar-fucking, moneyed airhead ways. This song should have been the theme music for Laguna Beach and The Hills.

- Chet Baker - I Get Along Without You Very Well and You Don't Know What Love Is

If Chet Baker doesn't reduce some little, still-soft part of you to a jellied mess, the likelihood is your heart hasn't been switched on yet. You should get that checked out by a doctor, because there's all sorts of associated health issues just waiting to happen there. You Don't Know What Love Is has the only trumpet solo [that I've yet heard] to make my bottom lip wobble.

- Haddaway - What Is Love

You remember this. Yeeaah, you do. C'mon.

- Sun Ra - Nuclear War

The combination of avant-garde jazz and a bloke slurring 'whatcha gonna do... without yr ass? You lost yo ass, you got no ass', by way of a guess at what might happen if El Presidente ever presses the big red button, is an outside contender for 'most giggle-inducing song ever recorded'. Yo La Tengo have at least two different versions of this song. Their versions are also very good and worth tracking down.

Subgud - Kameleon

I don't know how many people will appreciate this. I really like it. I bought the record this hails from on import from a Norwegian site about 5 or 6 years ago, because one of the songs had vocals by the singer of another Norwegian band I really liked. Anyway. This is a strange, pulsing electronic, maybe a bit housey song with all sorts of mysterious and possibly mistranslated lyrics going on [example: We're by the moon and the sun / Tonight the stars drive limo...]. Like most good electronic music, the louder you play it, the better it sounds.

So now I tag thesearchforchic, enc at observationmode, makedoandmend, sister_wolf, and my little bruv. That's only five, but it's late and it'll have to do.

Deep thoughts

2008-07-08T01:51:00.004+01:00

I'm sorry. This has nothing to do with fashion or music or indeed anything I intended this blog to be about. But two news stories have caught my attention, and I have to share.

First: Chess Boxing.

This is so much poorer than it could be. Two blokes play chess, then get up and slug each other, then sit down and play chess some more?

It would be far better if they took it back to the game's routes, and actually took their places on a gargantuan chessboard [or... someone's chequered kitchen floor?], and the pawns bashed each other in the face as they took each other... and the knights roundhouse-kicked each other, whizzing through the air like ninjas... and the rooks charged headlong at each other, like old-skool jousters. Maybe the queen could be armed with all sorts of ferocious weapons... nunchukas and African hunting knives and a spiked ball-and-chain... perhaps a Gladiators squashy pugil stick. Why can't people do things properly?

Second: 13 people hurt in Pamplona bull run

Seriously, I find it hard to get my head around this. Bull runs through streets chasing people... people get hurt... presumably they do it all again next year. Spanish culture has much to recommend it, but the whole fixation with bulls... something funny's going on there.

Normal service will resume shortly...

Ten Years Younger

2008-07-01T20:58:00.003+01:00

It's been a while - work and other circumstances have kept me rather preoccupied and away from the blog. Thank gawd, then, for Channel 4's Ten Years Younger, always on hand to give me something to rant apopleptically about.

This week, a lovely 44 year old lady who's spent years sunbathing. Oddly, instead of looking like your typical perma-tanned, orange leather visaged Majorca matron, she looks like a lady who's spent her life rambling about the Cornwall countryside, getting the sun on her face and mud on her boots. She's got lines and wrinkles, slightly stringy blonde hair - and a really kind looking face. That's the first thing you notice - how kind she looks. She has a face you could paint, all history and expression and character, with pretty pale blue-green eyes and a sweet smile. The lines look like laughter lines and smile creases - hardly the worst thing that can happen to a face over the decades. She pads about in pale, baggy clothes - long skirts, boxy fleeces.

The five children she's spent her life bringing up say they're 'embarrassed' to be seen with her, in her quite ordinary, fleevy oversized beige jacket. If she was Mad Hippy Mum, resplendent in violent tie-dye, or I'm Just Like You Gals Mum, bandaged in skintight Topshop, maybe their embarrassment would have some basis in reality.

An hour later, they've stretched her skin, squeezed her into tight purple clothes with constrictive - and horribly cliched, already dated - waist-cinching belts, high heels that obviously hurt her from the outset. They ignore her skintone and obvious colour preferences, and dress her up in colours that just make her look like the stereotypical older woman, trying to look younger.

She does look older than her years, and some simple changes would have made a great difference. If they had any sense, they'd have picked up on her warm skin, gold hair and outdoorsy nature, and stayed with the white and cream she's used to, livened up with gold, nut browns, marigold, tan, burnt orange, and maybe the odd safari print. They'd have put her in soft, flowy summer dresses with light gold jewellery rather than the cheap, tight satin monstrosities they decide are necessary.

But then I suppose that wouldn't make good tv. Changes must be made, and they must be drastic.

The haircut they give her is pretty, but the colour is dubious. Her skin, lined before, now looks like it's been stretched like a balloon - the texture's unnatural. No-one's skin is like that! Even before they put makeup on it, it shines like rubber. The colours they put her in... ye gods. The only really good thing they did for her was improve her teeth. The rest would have been far more effective if they'd taken it only halfway.

At the end of it, her children are finally proud of her. It's good to see that after 18 years of bringing up your brood, it's your new-found 'stylish' [read: high street of the traddest, least personal nature] look that will make your children express their pride in you, their mother.

Christ.

Genius idea of the month

2008-06-12T20:00:00.007+01:00

Women! Want to look like like an escaped jailbird on the run? Perhaps you reckon that tough, prison-hardened aesthetic is just the thing to combat this summer of fey florals and revolting ruffles. Maybe you want to look like everyone's favourite smackhead/crackhead/convict/generally distasteful and worrying tabloid hero/villain, Pete Doherty, mere minutes after replacing his Likely Lads suits for crim-wear on his latest visit to one of Her Madge's Pleasurable outposts.

Or maybe you just want to look like The Penguin.

Hurry on down to Topshop now! This superb . . . um . . . I'm not quite sure 'jumpsuit' covers its full glory . . can be yours for fifty of your British sterling.

Regular readers will know it's not often that I write posts of the 'buy this here!' nature, but this one was too good to miss.

The perfect trousers

2008-06-08T22:58:00.006+01:00

What are yours?

As well as my fixation with the perfect pair of skinny-fit tuxedo trousers, for years I have hankered after some dream wide trousers. But two things come to mind when I think of wide trousers:

- Katharine Hepburn, striding about in her trews with thunderous defiance, telling her studio bosses to stick it when they request that she clothe herself in ladylike skirts
- 'What Not To Wear' type shows, where middle-aged women are made to don characterless two-legged high street cotton sacking because they're supposedly too fat to show their legs

They can go very right, or very wrong. This is what I do NOT want:

[Image: Industryfolio.com]

Wide trousers are meant to make a woman look statuesque, nonchalant but powerful - the kind of woman that glides through life wreathed in odourless cigarette smoke and cinematic shadow, knocking down her peers and subjects with dry quips and gusts of air from the movement of her eyelashes. They're meant to make your legs look like they go on forever. If they make a catwalk model look like the average woman on the street, they'll do precisely nil for that average woman.

I've got some nice black high-waisted ones, very tight in the waist, but I want some cooler, mannish ones too. When my dress-form arrives, instead of finishing the dresses I have started, I suspect my next sewing project will be a pair of heavy wool pinstripe trousers. Heavy enough that they can be wide and show some movement but not flap stupidly in the wind as cheap trousers do. Wide on the leg, medium-rise on the waist, with just the right amount of insouciant slackness on the legs. I'm not thinking Annie Hall and her kooky granddad dressing, though this admittedly has a separate appeal.

Mainly I'm thinking Madonna in the Vogue video - these trousers have hovered in my imagination for years -

. . . and Irina Lazareanu in the current issue of Tank. The photo's not too clear, sadly, but these Paul Smith trousers are magnificent [pity I can't afford them]:

[Image: Stefano Galuzzi, Tank]

Pinstripe wool, some heavy machine needles and thread, and a couple of days of patience. How hard could it be?

A short tale

2008-06-04T02:21:00.005+01:00

Once upon a time in a great big city there was a lady, and she had an unused sewing machine. It sat in a dark cupboard for five years, because it did not have a pedal, and without its pedal the lady could not use it. She sewed clothes by hand, but it took a very long time, and she did not make many. The sewing machine was very sad. It wanted to help the lady but it couldn't.

Then one day the lady went to a magical sewing machine shop in Camden. The man in the shop was very helpful, and kept the shop open for her because she couldn't get there until the evening. She bought a small black pedal and some scissors, and when she got home, she took out her sewing machine.

Her sewing machine was very happy with its new pedal, and its light glowed happily. It whirred and clicked, and its metal parts didn't even need oiling.

The lady took out all of her bobbins and threads and beads and sequins and needles and pins and tape measures and ribbons . . .

. . . and made a proper sewing box.

And then she settled down to work, and made a skirt. When she sewed clothes by hand, it would have taken her a week. The lady made a skirt in one evening.

It was made of beautiful pea-green tweed and it fit her perfectly.

The lady was very happy and the sewing machine was very proud.

The lady couldn't believe she had wasted bloody YEARS bloody well hand-sewing, and was secretly VERY cheesed off, but didn't say so to the sewing machine, because she didn't want to remind it of all the years it had sat in its cupboard in the dark, all alone with the dust and bookboxes and old shoes and occasional spiders. Instead, she patted her sewing machine kindly, and went off to bed.

The sewing machine wondered what it would make next.

The girl with the golden gun

2008-06-03T00:46:00.001+01:00

I know many will find them ridiculous, objectionable, in poor taste, glamorising guncrime, etc. etc., but I cannot lie. I'm awfully charmed by these shoes.

Karl Lagerfeld had Laurence Decade make them for Chanel's 2009 Cruise collection. I love the surreality of them. I think Magritte would love them. The Bond afficionado in me longs for a pair. In each colour.

Six quirks

2008-06-02T17:00:00.002+01:00

I was tagged by Kate at Make Do & Mend to list my six quirks. I'm not sure whether these are to be style-based or general, so let's go half and half.

1. Everyone who knows me knows this one - I'm besotted with umbrellas. Long, ornate, unusual ones with spectacular handles and exquisite fabrics. No travel-sized rubbish. I have different ones for every weather [there's different kinds of rain . . . ]
2. This obsessive nature extends to food. I have a narrow palate but get crushes on particular foods. Currently: tomatoes [raw as a garlicky salad], cous-cous, fine green beans.
3. I always wear a toy, properly loadable silver pistol around my neck. Extremely rare for me to take it off.
4. I really, really, REALLY enjoy Home & Away. I'm not much of a tv addict; H&A and Gossip Girl are the only two shows I really treasure.
5. I once owned 415 bottles of nail polish and 26 packs of cards [all different and beautiful]. I told you I fixate on things . . .
6. I love James Bond. Everything to do with it. The books, the films, the cars, the girls, the guns, the evening dress, the casinos, the exotic villains' lairs, the white cats, the diamond-encrusted and laser-equipped satellites, the destructive and desperate flights through Russia, China and Harlem. The only bad things about James Bond are the last Pierce Brosnan film, Madonna's cameo [the woman's an abomination], Chris Cornell & Garbage's respective theme tunes and Timothy Dalton, but these faults are balanced out by Basil Fawlty being the new Q.

I now tag the search for chic, Luxe Noir and Wish Wish Wish

Goodnight Yves St Laurent

2008-06-02T00:21:00.006+01:00

Yves St Laurent just died, aged 71. I'm sure a lot of other people will write about this far more eloquently, so I'll just say: to the man who invented Le Smoking and defined feminine-masculine tailoring, carried the house torch after Christian Dior's death, was the first to use black models in his catwalk shows and, with his Rive Gauche label, put ready-to-wear fashion on the map: sir, we'll miss you.

Black & white

2008-06-01T01:00:00.001+01:00

Once, I was a girl who loved colour. Now I find myself gravitating towards monochrome. I guess in part it's down to the tuxedo obsession that, after a good year and a half, I still haven't gotten over.

I had almost given up on finding a white shirt to suit me. £30 shirts from Zara, or £100 twill shirts from Thomas Pink [one of my illest-advised purchases ever]. They sit wrong on me. The fabric's too stiff, or badly cut, or the white makes my pale skin look pallid.

But the Chloe sample sale the other week yielded the shirt of my dreams. While the other customers hovered over the handbags [sorry, Chloe fans - I can't get my head around paying £300 for a bag, let along their real shop price], I found something curious: the one item in the room without a label. No washing instructions, not even a size label. Nothing to say it was by Chloe, except that if you peer closely at the buttons, the name's engraved on each. And it was the only one. I briefly pondered whether some crafty customer had furtively swapped their own posh shirt for a posher one earlier in the day. It is the finest - nay, the only - white shirt I have ever enjoyed.

Excuse its rumpled-ness - took this photo at the end of a long day.
It sits just right. It feels just right. I think it's some kind of raw silk, or extremely fine cotton. The shoulders . . . oh, the shoulders! I love it. Mostly, I love it because it is unremarkable - it does what I have always wanted and never managed to get a white shirt to do - its job. There now follows a series of self-indulgent photos of it.

The sleeves . . . the collar . . . truly, I love it. And the slightly dulled off-white colour is much easier to wear than white.

With some Topshop khaki shorts I bought recently too. Nice with grey tights and black suede platform sandals.

Such was my joy that my white-shirt goggles then led me to buy this monstrosity:

It seemed like such a good idea. I daresay Kate Moss thought so too, when she approved its inclusion in her collection. [My first time succumbing to it.] I learned two things then: never buy cheap shirts, and never buy two shirts in one day. We will not dwell on the error: it went back the following day in disgrace.

. . . and I bought it in black instead. Curiously the black version is quite lovely. I learned a third thing: when in doubt, always get it in black.

Last, a sweet jersey minidress. Comfy, great with tights of any colour [black, coloured, or white with flat black ankle boots for super-cuteness], good over t-shirts or shirts, simply cut enough to be able to tuck it into a skirt and wear as a top. I won't hear a word against Topshop.

The white detailing is gorgeous - linen and netting, quilled [remember doing this at school with strips of curly paper?] into flowers. Très jolie.

Katie Jane Garside and birdcage clothing

2008-05-31T16:36:00.004+01:00

Not quite what I was aiming for, but I like this accident of a photo anyway. Katie Jane Garside of Queen Adreena, playing at our club last week.

She fascinates me. She's gorgeous and repulsive all at once. Never seen onstage without a bottle of wine and a veritable garden of foliage, she looks like the most delicate thing ever born, but revels in absolute and wanton destruction, careering into her bandmates, crashing into the crowd, getting her clothes torn and her make-up smudged across her face. The first time I saw them play, she crowdsurfed from the stage of the Barfly - with a cast on her leg. She's demented but phenomenal.

[Image: James Sutton]

I like her style in small doses - all together the effect is very witchy and banshee-like, but I like the component parts separately - gossamer-fine silk and lace, vintage lingerie, shocking pink lipstick and wild, tousled hair.

Here she is, looking like a Victorian dalek, complete with modesty-preserving ankle ruffles. It's a very apt photo - a woman who sings like a crazed songbird clad in her own birdcage. This photo plagues me, I can't figure out where the skirt is from, though it's so familiar. It reminds me of the wooden, mechanised skirts of Hussein Chalayan's A/W 2000 collection . . .

. . . and Acne's caged skirt as shown in Nylon's February London issue . . .

[Image: Ruven Wijesooriya]

. . . and Comme de Garcon's odd cage dresses from Another Magazine.

The Dreamers

2008-05-26T23:42:00.005+01:00

...is on Film4. One of the most enchanting films I've ever seen - it is, to quote director Bertolucci's description of Eva Green, obscenely beautiful. Many people I know loathe it. They are wrong. Horribly, pitiably wrong. Eva, Louis Garrell and the admittedly rather creepy and slurry-voiced but ever watchable Michael Pitt drifting around a labyrinthine, decaying French apartment, mercilessly outdoing each other in film geekery and social/sexual deviancy, to the backdrop of the 60s student riots in Paris, with the odd Wizard of Oz/Bande a Part clip thrown in for fun and some sinister communist undertones.. what's not to adore?

The music is gorgeous [Somewhere Beyond The Sea in French, some agreeably tuneless Janis Joplin and lots of stoned 60s guitars], the cast are shockingly beautiful, and when they can be bothered to clothe themselves, the clothes are to die for. The boys lounge about in cheap-looking tweed and velvet jackets and black shirts, and Eva models a parade of Frencher-than-thou demure bell-sleeved black dresses, red berets, thread-bare paisley shirts and flippy A-line skirts. Even when she's clowning about in white dungarees, with a head of white fringing and a mop, she looks phenomenal. I'll never tire of looking at Louis Garrell, but this is the film that made me fall in love with Eva Green.

[Images: Evagreenweb.com]

1940s nonchalance

2008-05-25T12:47:00.003+01:00

This is the best photo I've seen today:

I found it on Café Mode, from the Life In Occupied Paris exhibition, a show of 1940s photos by photographer André Zucca.

I must admit I like the photo quite out of context . I love the fit of the trousers and the insouciant way she wears them. It makes me want to take these trousers from Topshop Unique:

...and edit them, now that they've have mysteriously lost their original cut as shown here, and gotten several inches shorter. [Really, though, this is puzzling. I don't know what can have happened to them, I was careful how I washed them - but I can't wear them with high heels anymore, they're too short for it. The effect is baggy rather than louche, so I've gotta do something with them...]

Here comes the revolution

2008-05-25T00:51:00.005+01:00

I'm terribly excited. For years, I have been struggling to make clothes by hand, armed with nothing more than a needle, thread, box of pins and a mirror. It's very frustrating, having to pin garments to one's own body [not quite literally, you understand] to see if they fit yet. Things that ought to take an evening take weeks.

Tomorrow, I am getting one of these:

Once it arrives, I will get a new pedal for my never-used sewing machine, an instruction book so I can work out how to thread the infernal thing, and the revolution will begin.

Foiled again

2008-05-24T01:49:00.003+01:00

Fie! I have mislaid [I must stress the temporary nature of this word] the charging adaptor for my camera, and so cannot show you my newest purchase. It's a damn shame. The weekend will be spent rectifying the matter. [...and finishing She, attending a friend's barbecue, sourcing unusual bulbs and finishing the dress I started a couple of months ago].

Until then, have a photo of Liv Tyler, making an oversized jumper look far better than anyone has any right to.

[Image: Style.com]

A busy week

2008-05-22T12:48:00.003+01:00

So not much posting for me. But to keep you amused while I toil, here are two blogs I have recently encountered and been wholly charmed by.

Yekaterinburg on Livejournal

She also has a similar blog here - but there seem to be more posts on her livejournal. She posts about her own clothes, and shows photos from bygone eras and ever-interesting literary and historical excerpts. I love her aesthetic.

The Cherry Blossom Girl

Maybe some of you already know this one. I'm captivated by it. French stylist wears Chloe shoes and bowler hats with aplomb, and writes her entries in French and English, so I can improve my française while I indulge my eyes. I love every single thing the lady wears.

Summer solutions

2008-05-15T16:15:00.000+01:00

.......I haven't found any yet.

I'm trying out clothes to get me through the summer, through festivals and city heat. I will not resort to smock dresses and shapeless tops. I'm not flapping about in flipflops or wearing the smallest thing I can find simply to combat the incoming heat. I've worn my used-to-be-skinny grey jeans every day for the past week, with sailor vests and unbuttoned men's shirts tucked in at the back, or loose black cut-off jersey tops, or semi-halterneck mesh-cutaway vests. I'm bored. BORED. I want some elegance this summer.

Some ideas:

I got this grey silk dress at the weekend in Appletree. Very comfortable and airy, and I like the shape and the satin roses. I need to find ways to wear it in the daytime, but it'll be nice at night, with black tights and low-heeled second-hand ankle boots or with high black suede platform heels.

These shorts were once a pair of black trousers I bought five years ago. Hell am I paying for new shorts when I can modify things I know already fit me. I'm not sure about the length yet - I've rolled them into cuffs and pinned them, but not sewn them into place yet. Constructive opinions welcome. I probably wouldn't wear them with this top, either... I'd likely keep it monochrome with a loose top tucked in, or a satin 30s-style cap-sleeved top. They will solve lots of problems with tops I have that need tucking into higher-waisted shorts and skirts than I currently possess. Shoes... not sure yet.

Tried this shirt-dress on in Appletree when I bought the above silk dress. The sleeves and collar were too big but a bit of rolling fixed that. I like it but I'm not sure if I like it enough to buy it. I'd rather buy a large men's shirt from M&S, sans flowers, and attempt the same shape with it than spend £60 on this [though I don't know how I'd do the rolled collar, which in hindsight I really like]. Still, it is an idea. Nice with gladiator sandals, or white tennis shoes.

None of these options seem quite sharp enough yet though, and being pale [and I'm not doing anything about that] the easy-breezey nautical looks that work on tanned girls won't look right on me; I think I need to play up the contrast, rather than try to look classically 'summery'. I'm just not a summery-looking lady.

I want to look relaxed and comfortable..

...but more chic than everyone else. Is that wrong?

Quote of the day

2008-05-14T20:47:00.004+01:00

"I think a lot of girls look really over-styled."

Peaches Geldof

[Image: Defamer.com.au]

The awful truth

2008-05-14T00:39:00.006+01:00

Pooh-pooh to these preposterous notions of high heels being bad for your health.

I knew it was a bad idea to buy these sandals. Yesterday I broke my little toe. It's twice its size, purple, and hurts like a Johnny Cash song. Now I walk funny.

Women! Keep your feet encased in improbable, towering patent-leather fortresses. It's just safer.

Steam and sequins for Larry Levan

2008-05-13T22:31:00.007+01:00

Today I was sent the photos from Sunday's shoot.

It was fun looking so completely different... we had to walk back and forth from the location to the flat where I got changed, along Hackney Road. At first I felt more self-conscious about that than anything else - close proximity to a chap with a camera justifies any look, but just walking along a high street on a Sunday morning in 5-inch wooden heels and pink hair, totally out of context, I felt a bit awkward... until I realised even if I saw anyone I knew, they wouldn't recognise me anyway. It was funny seeing people lurking surreptitiously behind the photographer, taking their own photos. There were lots of little kids at the farm who didn't know what on earth to make of my get-up.

It feels like a very odd, severe look for me, but that was what the stylist, make-up artist and photographer were going for, and they were happy with the results... as for me, I had a triffic day.

I wish I could have kept this dress....

More photos beyond the cut.

[Images: Kurtay
Styling: Kasey Noziskova
Make-up: Laurey Simmons]

2008-05-12T13:58:00.002+01:00

Life's too short for me to spend it deleting unprovoked and spiteful personal comments on here from 'anonymous' individuals, so no more anonymous commenting. Sorry.

'And everyone is gonna dress like me...'

2008-05-12T12:01:00.005+01:00

The modelling yesterday was great fun. No photos yet, but the photographer and stylist are happy for me to show a few so when they're ready, I'll post a couple. Readers, you'll laugh your heads off. I spent the day under the blazing sun in a farmyard in Hackney, trussed in skyscrapingly high silver wedge heels, chin-length pale pink hair complete with fringe and angry-looking dark lipstick, holding this Matthew Williamson dress together [it was precarious in the extreme] while conversing with a goose named Gregory and holding a hen aloft. [It was very well-behaved and cheerful, and didn't flap at all.]

As Sunday afternoons go, it was surreal but delightful.

How to get past clipboard nazis - a tale of daring and folly

2008-05-09T01:12:00.004+01:00

On Sunday I am doing a shoot with S/S 08 Matthew Williamson clothes. Exciting! I'm standing in for an absent model. Should be fun, my first shoot of this kind.

In less fashion-related news, rounding the corner of Soho Square tonight en route to the Everisto Club, every Londoner's favourite dive since Tattys closed, I saw two not entirely sober men trying to get into a heaving nightclub . . . by climbing into the window round the side of the building, in full view of the square. Very very funny. One was carrying out sloppy look-out/encouragement duties while the other struggled somewhat intemperately with the ground floor sash window [this gave one a view right onto the dancefloor of the club, which is actually some kind of religious organisation/homeless shelter] and tried to climb in but with scant luck. Naturally I got out my camera.

Sadly I was too slow to capture the full glory of his ungainly half-in-half-out state before he admitted defeat, arse in the air 'n' all, but perhaps you can imagine it instead.

The bouncers, a few feet away round the corner, were oblivious to the crime happening under their noses. These days you really can't get the staff.

Summer dressing

2008-05-05T16:40:00.002+01:00

I detest flip-flops. What an unimaginative and thoroughly uncomfortable breed of footwear they are. Almost no-one can look dignified in them, and how they stay on one's feet I'll never know. Even the sound they make is abhorrent. I saw a man on the tube in them this week, with loose shorts and a dark, very heavy wool jumper - what an odd combination. Insult was added to injury when, sitting two seats away from me, he took his flipflops off and curled his bare [and not so fragrant] feet up on the seat next to me, and fiddled with them for the duration of the journey. I was not impressed.

Still, I have now come dangerously close to owning something resembling the hated item myself. For a few weeks now I've been on the prowl for some patent red gladiator sandals - no variation on this would do. It's rare I buy something purely to match one item in my wardrobe, but this was a necessity.

They were £20 from Aldo, which is about as reasonable as I think I am likely to find without venturing into Primark. I'd have preferred something more heavily styled, and in nicer, more tomatoey patent than this, but whaddayagonnado? After wearing them around the house a bit, I think better of them than I did initially. And they strap around the ankles, so are very much not flipflops. My integrity is saved.

I shall wear them thusly:

I bought this grey silk ankle-length Jigsaw dress secondhand at least two years ago, and have never worn it, lacking the right footwear. It will make its debut at my friend's housewarming barbecue in three weeks. Like the footwear, the bias-cut floaty dress is not my usual style - I have resolved to be sharp this summer, not boho-pretty-pretty - but it is lovely enough that I'll make an exception. The red patent sandals will keep it safely out of hippy territory, along with a narrow, chic belt and my old silver pistol necklace.

Orient Excess

2008-05-05T12:35:00.003+01:00

There's some beautiful photography in the June issue of UK Vogue. Not a particularly engaging issue this time round, but I enjoyed the fashion spreads [the Patrick Demarchelier one is also very much worth a mention - Foto-Decadent has scans here - Jessica Stam looks phenomenal.

However I think they shot themselves in their bejewelled feet in the way they arranged the Orient Excess story.

[Images: Javier Vallhonrat for Vogue UK]

Two enticing double page spreads, then a two page article by Syrian writer Rana Kabbani about the decline of the Ottoman empire, as experienced by her grandmother. The writing is evocative, fierce and deeply saddening, and makes no bones about the author's contempt for the sensationalism of the western view of the harem, and the popular view of women's place in this much romanticised world. She goes to great pains to separate her [and her family's] first-hand experiences of it from the salacious image many people retain, and describes it as a place where women of the time could convene, converse, work, entertain, rest, learn from each other and be themselves, 'relieved of the intrusive presence of their men'.

[Image: Javier Vallhonrat for Vogue UK]

Following this intelligent, thought-provoking article with 6 pages of a semi-orgasmic white model, surrounded by diaphonous silks, her hair clinging sweatily to her face and throat as she arches backwards on piles of cushions, rather suggests that the photo editor, the features editor and the person who put the page order together did not have a conversation. The images are superb in every way but they're let down by the context they're placed in. If Vogue had run these images before the article, letting them stand for themselves in their beauty and then having the article offer a social and historical counterpoint, I think it would have been more successful; as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if the author felt rather insulted.

Nevertheless, it's still a beautiful feature, and one I'll keep and look at again.

I also really love the Tim Walker feature [he of this much-adored photograph]; I want to tear out all the photos and spread them across my walls like one of his scrapbooks. I'll definitely be going to his show at the Design Museum.

Vogue Nippon

2008-05-02T13:39:00.005+01:00

I love these images from the May issue of Vogue Nippon. On one level they make me think of Vermeer paintings - the colour and the poise are incredibly painterly, each colour seems to have been painstakingly mixed and crafted, not snapped [and, I guess, photoshopped].

[Images: Yasunari Kikuma for Vogue Nippon, scanned by Linka-Lebedeva in Livejournal/Foto_Decadent]

[Image: Johannes Vermeer]

They also make me think of Nancy Cunard - they have something distinctly late '20s / early '30s about them, and the hair fashioned into a turban-like headdress is something I think she would have wholeheartedly approved of; the photos seem to tap quite strongly into early twentieth century society's well-meant [if rather patronising/insulting - circle as appropriate] fascination with what they deemed the exotic.

[Image: Curtis Moffat]

After the fact

2008-05-01T19:59:00.000+01:00

I get a little annoyed with stating-the-obvious reportage. Frequently I read something that proclaims the entrance of this trend or that style - not six months after it first broke, but actual years, by which point it's pretty much taken hold anyway. The guys over at the recently launched Ponystep.com report this week that big brows are back. "Eyebrows are huge again this season", they say, citing the catwalks and the popularity of brow bars across the cityscape.

Without wishing to pick holes, this one is rather stating the obvious. The fashion press have been hailing the bigger brow and urging women to grow beyond the super-thin arch for several years now, and the photographed ladies of the world have been sporting them with aplomb. See below - the admittedly dubious Sienna Miller, last summer, and Lindsay Ellington at Chanel in 2005, with what look like stick-ons. One's opinion on either of these particular examples is another issue entirely, but the point is, there is nothing new about this look.

And then there's the ever wonderful Eva Green, with her beautiful and very definitely there brows:

It's pretty rare now that I see women with overplucked brows; I think to most stylish women, the pencil thin brow is anathema. Me, I'm cursed with near non-existent brows, always have been. The little beasts just won't grow. So for years now I've been shaping them to look a little fuller and darker, and I don't think I'm particularly ahead of the curve as far as the heady world of eyebrow trends go.

It happens with many a catwalk style too - Grecian/Roman draping and the corresponding gladiator style footwear has been around for ages and ages, but admittedly this year it does seem to have a stronger presence. If fashion writers wish to express the growing success or endurance of a particular mode, or to lend their support to it, I support them fully, but I wish people would stop reporting the established as the new. It doesn't have to be super-super new for us to read about it, surely - it just has to be interesting and appealing, or have a new angle.

[Images: About.com Beauty, TheFashioniste.com and the Sydney Morning Herald]

When you're finally done beating a trend to death, point and laugh at it

2008-04-30T20:26:00.005+01:00

Ubiquitous as they are [and not especially attractive] I've never understood the appeal of those Anya Hindmarch bags and their numerous descendents. Perhaps it makes me terribly snobbish but I feel weary just typing the name. Everyone could, of course, just use any other decently sized non-plastic bag out of the hundreds of thousands [millions?] of different decently sized non-plastic bags available to our greedy paws, rather than feeling the need to point out what our bags are not. There are after all an awful lot of very attractive bags around that I certainly wouldn't care to throw away. Who knows... maybe I could even do my shopping in them. There's a thought.

[Image: Fashion Indie at Cafepress.com]

But I suppose this version is briefly more amusing than all the other ripoffs.

Sigh.

Can they all go away now, please?

New coat

2008-04-30T11:13:00.004+01:00

I meant to post about this last month, but didn't. As per a couple of posts below, I've been seeking a good knee-length coat for a while now. The only long one I had is a very lovely but now rather beaten up black wool-cashmere belted 40s-style coat by Tara Jarmon - too heavy for spring weather.

I wanted a delectable, unusual trenchcoat with proper buckles - none of this cheap slide-buckle/tie-belt absurdity. Sadly it's not easy finding the coat of one's dreams when one doesn't have the budget of one's dreams.

I had finally accepted that I wasn't going to find my coat on the high street, when I was directed to Burberry's factory store in Hackney. Unsure of what to expect [a striplit room full of people hunched over boxes, rummaging furtively? A chilly railway arch with one row of last-season stock? A high security facility to which one could only gain access by invitation or staff privileges?] I took the two and a half hour round trip it takes me to get to that end of London, and wandered in.

It's huge and well-lit, on one floor, the size of a big high street store, and everything's very well organised. They have everything - coats, dresses, bags, umbrellas, shoes... The tops start from £9, but that was not what I came for.

I found this:

I tried on every trenchcoat they had. I had been after a beige one, but none of them fit quite right - too big in the shoulders, belted too low on the waist. This one was the only one that fit me like I really wanted it to, and happy coincidence of happy coincidences, it turned out to be the cheapest too, at £195 - not pennies, but far less than I expected.

I love it. Not too warm, not too flimsy, goes with everything, and dry cleans well - your slovenly correspondent managed to stab it with an inky line of black kohl one day, and it dry-cleaned out perfectly.

Also it folds up into a travel pillow. With its own bag. Amazing.

I now never need to buy a coat again. Maybe.

Spring cleaning

2008-04-27T20:00:00.003+01:00

Since I started cleaning out the room I use as a wardrobe, I've found all sorts of stuff tucked away in cupboards and corners. Like a whole drawer of my mum's old shoes [nearly all quite dusty and worn out, so they got chucked out], mad old computer bits from the 80s [with plugs the size of Venezuela], gossamer-sheer Liberty scarves [that refused to be photographed identifiably] and and boxes of my dad's old brass cufflinks.

I also found these little treasures:

My mother's old Salvatore Ferragamo shoes, from the early/mid seventies. I showed them to her and she spent ten minutes waxing lyrical about them - "they're like bones, they're so well-structured, they've lost nothing since I bought them". She's not wrong. They're really nice, firm-looking patent, the straps and buckle still look great, and you can't see it in the photo, but the gold printed logo on the sole is still very visible. I wish I could wear them but they're two sizes too small for me. Sob.

And an odd bag from Harvey Nichols, circa 1978. She said this was actually a men's bag [!] with a sort of wrist-strap on it, but she had a new strap sewn on so she could use it as a handbag. I am definitely keeping this one. Really nice clasp on it too, and a good zippy pouch inside.

Clothes swaps

2008-04-26T15:53:00.003+01:00

I shop a lot. More than is good for me, and of late, I'm cutting down. One symptom of my overshopping is my running out of space for my clothes. I haven't enough hangers. I have not-right-now clothes stuffed into cupboards, simply because I can't bear to throw things away. And I stubbornly hang onto clothes that categorically Do Not Suit Me because I kid myself I bought them for a better reason than "oooooOOOOoooh pretty colours!" or "one day it'll suit me"...

I don't want to join the madding crowd on eBay, I'm not generous enough to just give them away, and I don't really want to get into selling them and faffing about with Paypal or over-the-counter 'vintage' store negotiating. What I want is more clothes - clothes that will suit me better. [You can see I'm making progress with my behaviour].

Anyone done clothes swaps? How did you organise them? Did you do them online or in a friend's living room? I'm not going to insult anyone by foisting worn-out clothes on them, but I thought about picking out the few things I've bought and just regretted, barely/not worn, and offering them up on here.

All thoughts welcome... this whole 'getting rid of things' lark is new ground to me.

Maybe I'll just make a 'sartorial mistakes - why did I do this?' post, and you can stick your hand up if you spot anything you want to swap something for.

Tea for two

2008-04-16T15:58:00.005+01:00

I wouldn't normally gravitate towards white shoes.

But these Miu Mius are the greatest thing I've seen... well, all week anyway. I wonder if they can still be bought.

I wonder how long they'd last on London's pavements though...

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

2008-04-13T23:54:00.004+01:00

Following below's mention of the upcoming film adaptation of Winifred Watson's Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, I found this very lovely new edition of the book - Persephone Books have re-released a string of books in this format, and the little brother's staff discount in Waterstones encouraged me to buy this one.

I was looking forward to reading it before I even opened the cover, but then I flicked through, and saw that I shall cherish this book for a long time. Mary Thomson's illustrations are splendid and very charming, and if they're anything to go by, Miss Pettigrew's going to be a far less sedate read than I expected - copper-bashing, cheerful drug use and drunken OAPs. What larks!

[Images: scanned. Copyright Persephone Books Ltd]

Little black dresses

2008-04-10T21:26:00.003+01:00

It's a sickness. I've got to stop buying them. They're just so appealing.

The sweet...

Reko @ Pop Boutique

And the not-so-sweet...

Osman Yousefzada @ Mango

'The other woman has fresh-cut flowers in her room...'

2008-04-09T16:13:00.005+01:00

What fashion-enthusiastic woman doesn't want a dressing room of her own? Somewhere to shut herself away from the world, surround herself with her most beautiful possessions and style herself as she wants to look.

Old novels and period films always make me hanker after such a thing. The only modern movie I can remember that celebrated the dedication of personal space and time to one's wardrobe was Clueless - everyone remembers Alicia Silverstone's modern miracle of a computer that mixed and matched her outfits for her, and that ridiculous circular, colour-coded closet. It was a bit Clarissa Explains It All though.

What I'm really talking about is Glenn Close, stalking about her mirrored and gilted rooms in Dangerous Liaisons, exuding puff powder and spiritual venom. Emily Mortimer in Bright Young Things, hiding behind the telephone in her beautiful apartment with its interior railings and curved walls, covering her eyes in glitter and kohl. Colette's aging but still graceful Lea, with the incorrigible Cheri running amok within the walls of her home.

missbondage's post on The High Street reminded me of it, as did the photos of Dita Von Teese's vanity room in Fur Coat, No Knickers.

This is mine - it's an optimistic mess, marred by awful yellow and terracotta [!] walls [not my doing], dodgy laminate flooring [also not my doing] and a woeful lack of space. The redeeming features [beautiful old wooden furniture, pretty trinkets, my desperation for it to be better than it is] fight frantically with the sheer dreadfulness of the room.

[Two] [more] images

Interior design blog Brilliant Asylum provided me with plentiful inspiration though.

From Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day - I shall certainly be seeing this, as much for the magnificent Frances McDormand as the delectable set design
[Images: IMDB.com]

Katie Lee Joel's dressing room in New York. Covered in gilt. Gosh.
[Images: Town & Country]

I've been inspired to take action. I will blitz my sorry looking 'other room' with paint and whatever gilt, crystal and lacquer I can lay my hands on [albeit in moderation - there's only so much a small room can take].

I WILL surround myself with beauty. I will.

And now for something completely different

2008-04-05T16:29:00.002+01:00

"If the semicolon is one of the neglected children in the family of punctuation marks these days, told to stay in its room and entertain itself, because mummy and daddy are busy, the apostrophe is the abused victim."

John Humphrys in a moment of typically sardonic brilliance, on the endangered status of the semicolon, in Friday's Guardian. God bless the delightful old bastard.

Autumn 2008

2008-04-02T00:34:00.004+01:00

I'm impressed, as ever, by Sonia Rykiel.

Her Fall 08 collection is as elegant and playful as ever. And while I love her simpler looks, like the boyish black suit below, I'm really keen on some of the patterns and prints she's using. Feminine and unusual, deeply wearable, and I love the colours she's using, offsetting autumnal shades with her trademark shots of bright colour.

I also love Anna Sui's collection. My wardrobe is one of block colours and easily mixable prints; I usually stay away from manic prints, not least because they remind me of my ill-advised love for anything hippy-ish in my teens. But hers are so gorgeous and wilful and eye-popping, and enhance rather than distract from the shapes she's using. There's nothing dingy or throwback about any of it. I'm not sure how print-happy I'll get with my own wardrobe, but this does make me want to play a little, and I just want to dive into each of the colours, they're jawdropping.

[Images: Style.com]

The coat search continues....

2008-03-29T12:13:00.000Z

...and so does the Eva adoration.

Someone please, please find me a passable, affordable replica of this coat:

Contemporary Wardrobe Collection sale

2008-03-28T14:58:00.003Z

The Contemporary Wardrobe Collection are having a sale this weekend. They're a specialist hire company, set up in 1978 by stylist/costumier Roger K Burton, that provide film/tv/fashion bods with vintage and contemporary street fashion. As a fundraiser for the Horse Hospital Gallery's 15th anniversary, they'll be selling off tons of clothing - it's advertised as 1940s-2007, but a quick phonecall to them suggested it's more likely to be 1950s onwards. They've also got lots of memorabilia onsale - posters, magazines, records, postcards, collectable toys & all sorts. By the sound of it, it'll be the best jumble sale around and the prices are low - most things'll be between £5 and £40.

It's at the The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1HX. It's open to the public from 29th-31st March, midday-6pm, and the preview is tonight.

Two people who never age

2008-03-28T02:23:00.003Z

[Image: Ellen von Unwerth, US GQ, April 2008]

40 year old Claudia Schiffer evidently made some kind of Dorian Gray pact in her late 20s, and Joseph Gordon Levitt, bless his heart, still looks about sixteen.

They're great photos though. Someone on thefashionspot forums scanned them here [scroll to the end of the page].

Osman Yousefzada

2008-03-28T01:45:00.002Z

Everytime I've gone shopping lately, I've come home with a new black dress. It's not intentional, it just keeps happening. With that in mind, I like Osman Yousefzada's capsule collection for Mango. I like him generally but didn't think it would appeal - black dresses one and all, highlighted with plasticky looking gold or dull metallic ultramarine, didn't sound the most inspiring thing. Looking at them the other day though, they're pretty good, albeit overpriced [£80 is too much for dresses like these - nice as they are, they look very high street]. Really, really well-cut. Actually, one of the cheapest ones is the most attractive, a terrifically sharp black racerback column with a tiny waist accentuated by ruffles. Getting the thing on is rather like reverse escapology, but it's worth it.

His main A/W 08 collection upsets me though. It ranges from the uncomfortable to the unspeakable. He's gone and decided that matadors and Latvian figure skaters are the thing, and the clothes are horribly literal. Oh god.

[Images: Kirk McCoy, LA Times]

The best of the collection is uninspired and dated looking, and some of it is deeply, deeply unattractive. Not a fan of the cheap-looking satin. I hate the palette - and I suspect there will be a lot of these awful salmon and aqua colours around in the coming months.

Eva Green - Mont Blanc

2008-03-24T23:10:00.000Z

How amazing does Eva Green look in this Mont Blanc ad? I saw one of the watches ads a few weeks back, didn't make much impression on me, but this one [for their jewellery] is stunning. Very Bond-esque. Way better than that ill advised dark lipstick and hippy/witch look she was given for Dior Midnight Poison.

[Image: scanned from April Harper's Bazaar]

I could pretty much look at Eva Green all day. I think she and Justine Frischmann are the only two women in the world who could turn me.

Hendricks Spring Masked Ball

2008-03-22T20:32:00.007Z

To celebrate the Spring Equinox, The Last Tuesday Society convened in Covent Garden's Historic Arts Theatre for an incognito night of music, food, alcohol, and unabashed glamour. Among others, The Broken Hearts spun the tunes while an eclectic and gloriously clothed crowd danced, posed and cavorted the night away. And they all looked bloody wonderful.

Among the revellers was Lucy Wills from Glamour Kitten, selling a selection of her vintage jewellery. I bought these earrings for £15 [they're £12 on the website]:

Love the fastenings on them - much more comfortable than normal clip-ons. Lucy also has a couture/ethical/reused jewels service called Seraglia - more details here.

Here's more photos from the night.

And this is my mask. Made from a scrap of lace and two chocolate box giftwrap ribbons. I wore it with this tasselled black dress.

The odd couple

2008-03-21T03:34:00.006Z

Never thought I'd see this [before January of this year, anyway]. Eyewear shot from the Burberry S/S 08 campaign. Most over-exposed model ever - she of the 'kooky' wonky limbs and slack-jawed angry-eyebrowed perma-pose... draped around Martin of Selfish Cunt [alias Best Rock 'n' Roll Frontman In London], the pair of them decked out in posh togs.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

At least Peaches Geldof isn't in the photo.

Question: If Agyness had long hair, how much attention/how many bookings would she get?

And ALSO

2008-03-21T02:36:00.003Z

Well done Jasper [Project Catwalk]. I'm dead pleased he got it.

I know when the judges are doing their thing, they're supposed to be harsh, but their comments about the 'impracticality' of his collection were absurd. No-one accuses our favourite inventive designers of being absurd [hello John, Miuccia and Jean-Paul, for three really no-brainer examples] - they send magical creations down the runway, and they get interpreted into versions we can actually wear. The work involved in his collection - and the professionality with which he produced it - really didn't leave room for anyone else to win.

Thank God Chelsey didn't get it.

Actually looking forward to seeing what he produces for Oli.

Also

2008-03-21T02:09:00.004Z

I really like Leona Lewis. Like Girls Aloud [and yet.. er.. so not] she's one of those freakish examples of Re-ally-dee Teevee actually producing something of worth. This doesn't happen often, and it should be clung to passionately, as a talisman against the rest of the crap that Pop-Idol-Factor usually excretes. Like her songs - just the right side of epic, clutch-your-heart sentiment. Like her videos - colourful but not garish... she looks great in each [the sparkly gown in Bleeding Love, the white silver-screen style silk dressing gown in the new one]. Like her - she comes across as really likeable. Keep it up, Leona. Far rather see and hear you than the crop of boring, dull-eyed Amy MacDonald types that are everywhere right now.

Project

2008-03-20T23:03:00.006Z

This is what I spent tonight doing. Once a big crinkly Indian silk scarf of my mother's. A slit across the middle, and some strategic pinning later, and this is where it's going. I guess I'm aiming for somewhere between Prada's liquid prints and green and purple S/S 08 palette, and Marios Schwab's soft structural shapes.

Marios Schwab S/S 08

Prada S/S 08

Haven't sewn it together yet, so that's work for tonight and the weekend.

Runway images: Style.com

P.S. It goes without saying I will be finding some kind of under-dress option once this is done. Tempted to cut wide stripes out of a black vest for graphic, sheer/not-sheer approach.

Dry the rain

2008-03-19T20:17:00.007Z

My biggest weakness is umbrellas. It started a year and a half ago, when someone left a £100 umbrella in the club where I work... and still hadn't claimed it after six months. By the law of finders-keepers, it was mine. All 34 inches of Liberty-print silk and sturdy fox frame and maple handle and silver engraving. Miiiiine. And so the obsession began.

My favourite shop in London for brollies is James Smith & Sons, a small, elegant gentlemen's outfitters style emporium on New Oxford St. They do bespoke umbrellas, if you can afford such things, and even mend broken brollies [as I found after a drunken friend shattered the resin cane-top on my favourite parapluie].

I'm not altogether pleased with the manic explosion of florals across the fashion landscape this spring, and I certainly won't be stepping into flouncy little teadresses for spring. But a floral umbrella seems like a gorgeous and practical way to indulge in the trend on my own terms. My favourites:

In the end, not having £120 to spend, I went for this one:

Try out these sites for unusual umbrellas:

Signature Bella
Umbrella Boutique
Simply Umbrellas
Brollies Galore

The difficulty of buying coats in any month other than August

2008-03-19T01:43:00.008Z

Tonight I spent a fruitless evening searching for a new coat. Spring/summer might be coming, but it's cold out there, and my black wool/cashmere beast is getting rather beaten up with being worn every day.

The problem is, I want these:

[Images: SoniaRykiel.com]

Sadly I can only afford these:

[Images: Stylefinder.com]

And a swift recon mission around Oxford Street's main stores surrendered nothing except a pleasant but average Zara trench that in desperation I probably would have snapped up, had a rival shopper not beat me to the last size S. Curses.

The search goes on. Sigh.

She & Him

2008-03-18T23:50:00.005Z

M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel are already a pretty charming pair. He does antiquated, rattly blues folk very well, and there's a definite warmth about his music that I always find comforting. But somehow he just seems to keep passing me by. I always forget about him as soon as I stop listening to him, and it takes other people to remind me of him, to make me go back to it. I like Zooey Deschanel in a similar kind of way, I suppose. I always forget she exists until I see her in a movie or a photo and am again startled by how appealing and chic and watchable she is.

She & Him, their new project together seems to have filled in the blanks, though. A friend who just got back from A&Ring at SXSW pointed me in their direction.

And y'know... it's early days, we've just met, it's premature to start saying the L word... but gosh, I'm so bowled over by them. She's an actress! I didn't know her voice could swoop like that! Or that the two of them together would write such fluttery, dextrous and addictive songs. Change Is Hard is like a beaten Jolene's dejected apology, and Sentimental Heart starts off naive and raw, before... well, I won't ruin it for you.

I know I'm jumping in here, but I think I love them.

Myspace
She & Him @ the Hype Machine

John & Jehn

2008-03-17T01:44:00.003Z

Maybe you already know John & Jehn.

Maybe you've witnessed their live show - petulant guitar stabs, sparse but insistent basslines, Farfisa organ that hovers over the songs like a swarm of bats, and the French duo's voices echoing around each other. Maybe you've just heard songs here and there, likely online. Maybe you've read the recent press about them calling them the coolest French export in years. If none of these apply to you, maybe it's time you listened to them.

I first heard them on Myspace in 2006, when my boss was trawling the net for bands to book. They were so different from anything else around - I've seen people compare them to the Kills, but it's a lazy and inaccurate point of reference, particularly given how unwavering the Kills are about their sound and their style. [There's also the fact that J&J don't make b[l]oozy sleaze-rock or sound like Royal Trux.] Looking at J&J, the first thing you notice is how unstylised they are. That's not to say they lack style. Actually they're rather like the lovers in Bande a Part - Jehn's rather like Anna Karina, chic and gawky and charming in a completely unstudied way, and wonderfully sabotages real-life-lover John's skinny, 'man-in-black' mystique. But there's no visible suggestion of them having made stylistic decisions. The music seems to reflect their moods quixotically, touching on shoegazey guitar screes, ghostly Gainsbourg duets and painfully tight, spiteful post-punk; the recorded drums veer between Spector-ish crashes and Pink Panther cymbal tsh-ti-tshhs as befits each song.

Did I mention they're shockingly - and increasingly - good live?

Myspace
John & Jehn @ the Hype Machine

Lost+Found

2008-03-16T16:40:00.008Z

I picked up a copy of new fashion fanzine Lost+Found on Thursday. Their first issue, Brand Archaeology, is sparse but intriguing, with features on famous photographic homages, Ossie Clark shopgirl and Harpers/Vogue fashion editor Vanessa de Lisle, and 14 pages on the inspirations behind Chanel's most iconic trademarks, all printed on black and white newsprint.

[Images: View Creative]

With this and rightly admired music sharpshooter The Stool Pigeon, it's good to see newprint being used creatively and cleverly in magazines. There are worse things in life than inky fingers.

You can view the PDF or order a printed copy at View Creative.

Happy feet

2008-03-16T16:00:00.005Z

I got these yesterday.

They'll be a good way of wearing all the coloured and patterned tights I have, which don't go so well with closed-toe shoes [as most of mine are]. They remind me of original Biba shoes [incidentally, when are Biba going to take on board the concensus of everyone from regular shoppers to Ossie Clark/Vogue veteran Vanessa Lisle, and realise that Topshop rendered them obsolete long before they relaunched - their transition from daring, inexpensive and inventive everygirl phenomenon to exhorbitant, 70s retro-hash catwalk brand is irrelevant and far from convincing? Only good thing Biba have done since Barbara Hulanicki left is the brief revival of their makeup and nail polishes, 10 years ago or so]. Yesterday I wore them with shocking-fuschia Topshop tights. Today they're paired with red, white and black houndstooth tights from Emilio Cavallini. Their height & platform are leg-lengthening enough to make even the least flattering tights a possibility.

One look I really liked from the shows in Feb was this:

[Photo: fashionista.com]

Tights the same colour as one's shoes are fun and very flattering, and an easy, chic way to wear bright colours. I've been wearing blue tights with blue patent stilettos, and now I want more. [I particularly want more patent. I now know how addictive this stuff is.] I went in search of coloured, round-toed, ultra-high-heeled shoes yesterday, but drew a blank. Best I found were some admirable fuschia suede round-toed stilettos in Schuh but my inbetweeny sized feet scuppered my chances. Everything else was either too low, or leaning towards open toed boot styling. I'm not convinced by this whole open toed boot phenomenon. I shall keep looking though...

Missed opportunities

2008-03-16T14:18:00.006Z

Last year I spent a long time hankering after this jacket by Australian label Shakuhachi.

I wanted to wear it with cigarette pants, draped or tuxedo-style tops and high pointy brogues or flat ankle boots. Or over knitted dresses. UK stockists were non-existent, and the only websites I could find selling Shakuhachi's clothes weren't stocking this jacket. Now I'm living in high-waisted, tightly belted trousers, the jacket would still be the perfect piece to go with it. Alas.

Their current collection has a few consolation prizes though. Plenty of their trademark informally masculine influences, with summery 70s shapes and 80s prints - some of it seems to be informed by the Kylie of the late 80s and early 90s.

[All photos from Shakuhachi's website.]

Still no offline UK stockists, but you can buy in Australia, US, Ireland or Japan, or online at My Catwalk or 0Z Designer. I'm off to said websites to see if they have any of my favourite pieces...

Hello

2008-03-16T11:28:00.005Z

For months I have intended to start a blog of this kind, and procrastinated myself out of it. No more prevarication! I cannot say yet how its format or style or content will unfold; merely that it will be a place where I'll scribble about fashion, music and occasional miscellaneous gumph. I expect for a while I'll be burbling to a non-existent audience, as I suppose is the case with any new blog, but burble I shall.

The name is a corruption of an Eartha Kitt lyric [you win points if you can guess which one]. People talk a lot about Nina Simone and Billie Holliday, and certainly these ladies are to be admired. But I'd like to see a little more love for Eartha - it's kinda sad that she seems to be most famous for 'Santa Baby' when it wasn't a patch on her better stuff. She was as cool and funny as Nina, she could sing in Turkish, she sang unashamedly about wanting to be filthy stinking rich, and her French accent is devastating - if it doesn't reduce you to rubble, there's something a bit wrong with you. Download C'est Si Bon if you can find it.

x