Katie Jane Garside and birdcage clothing

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

...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

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

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

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

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

.......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

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

Peaches Geldof

[Image: Defamer.com.au]

The awful truth

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

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]