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.
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Deep thoughts
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...
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...
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Ten Years Younger
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.
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.
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Genius idea of the month
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.
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.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
The perfect trousers
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?
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?
Wednesday, 4 June 2008
A short tale
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.
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.
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
The girl with the golden gun
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.
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.
Monday, 2 June 2008
Six quirks
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
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
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.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Black & white
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.
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.
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