Dress Up

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.

Girls on film

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.

Here comes the revolution

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.

Spring cleaning

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.