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.

Maxi memories

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

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

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

...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

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

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

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

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"

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.