all in one

collage vintage

I'm not going to lie. Fashion month has left me a little bit cold this season. It's not only the shows on the runway. It's the street style too. Normally I get excited for the simplicity of Paris, or I seek out the well-dressed lurkers in the background of the pictures. But this season, no matter how many times I refresh style.com (and trust me, I've been doing it daily), I haven't been able to find much sartorial inspiration. It might be me. It's almost certainly me. But doesn't that still say something? Doesn't the fact that, despite hours spent trawling through street style websites and backstage images, the most inspiring thing you find is a black silk jumpsuit and a washed out red lip say something? I think it does. I just wish I could work out what, exactly.

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ps. don't forget to enter my Gatsby giveaway!

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the thing

tommy ton style.com

The ear is the thing. I'll be keeping it simple with BRVTVS's delicate ear cuff, but this is clearly a case of anything is more.

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getting old

1 and 3 - style.com // 2 - vogue daily

I love hearing people write rude comments in the Ashley Olsen TFS thread about how she's dressing too old for her age. Those comments are like catnip for me. I love how Ashley Olsen dresses (understatement, I idolise it). I love dressing more than ten years older than my age, I love the idea of aging gracefully, I love the idea of sensible clothes, quietly elegant in their unfussiness and simplicity. That's why I love these street style looks from London and New York - Sarah Harris and Virginia Smith, two of my absolute favourite mag girls, the former for her long grey hair and the latter for that one line in The September Issue, when Anna fixes her with a withering stare in regards to that lovely accessories shoot with Daria Werbowy, "I think it's pretty" - of women who are so supremely comfortable in their skin that they wear their hair naturally grey, they run bare-faced to a fashion show with just a celine pouch for comfort, and they team a cashmere turtleneck with a fur coat and jeans. I love looks that come together with little thought at all - the clothes pulled from the drying rack and slipped into, the shoes grabbed by the laces as you run out the door. In my experience, it is those outfits that look the best. And that confidence and understanding of your personal style can only come with age. 

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that girl in the hat

jak and jil

All throughout Paris and London I toyed with getting a hat. I perused the windows at Lock and Co, I stalked the display area for Maison Michele at le Bon Marche. The idea was fermented in Milan, after seeing scores of women running through the Galleria wearing their purchases from Borsalino. After that it just grew - the Italians wear hats well - until by the time I got to Paris all I could think about was snapping up an expensive felt topper of my own. I thought I had put this whole hat thing to rest. Remember the year before last when every second post was about hats and how I was obsessed with finding the right one? Well I found one, and I wore it, but I soon came to the realisation that I might not be a hat person. As I tried to explain to my friend in Paris, it all seems fine and dandy to buy a hat in Europe, and wear it with belted tweed coats and cashmere scarves wrapped tight, but then you get back to Sydney, and instead of being that girl in the hat, you're just that girl in the hat. I'm not convinced that I'm ready for the scrutiny that comes with wearing a hat. But I just can't quite get this image out of my head; of hair tucked up, and oversized turtleneck sweaters, and a stiff felt hat on top of it all.

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ciao, milano!

After leaving Como and on the way to Florence we had a brief stop in Milan for brunch, cappucino and sight-seeing. We managed to snag a park right next to the Duomo and the galleria, so we soaked up those beautiful stained glass windows and amazing expanse of vaulted glass and iron light (it doesn't get more 19th century than a glass covered shopping arcade!) greedily. After that was more hot chocolate and then the Scala to pay homage to my favourite Ballerina brand; Porselli. We stumbled in as night had fallen, red-nosed and chilled to the bone, and were greeted by two Italian grand dames who didn't speak a word of English (and us vice versa!) gesturing wildly and pronouncing "Bella" at everything shoe we tried on. After some mishaps with describing sizes and colours (sign language, as always, is our friend), we were dragged into the store room and up the ladder to pull down the pairs we wanted ourselves. It doesn't get much better than that! For a brief second I had some kind of out of body experience, like this is what it must feel like to be Audrey Hepburn or Brigitte Bardot, surrounded by people and at least 10 pairs of shoes on a chesterfield lounge next to La Scala. 

Porselli ballet flats are my absolute favourites; they're handmade by the Porselli company (founded in the early 1900s by Mr Porselli, of course) in Italy and their location right next to Milan's grand theatre casts them as the pointe shoe maker par excellence for the city's limber ballerinas. Not being a ballerina myself - try though I did! - I come for the ballet flats, which are soft and supple, long in the toe box and high on the sides (to avoid buckling and toe cleavage, two of my least favourite things in ballet flats), completed with a grosgrain trim with smooth leather or the softest, simplest brushed nubuck. These shoes are perfect. They are as light as a cloud and so chic. They're so difficult to get your hands on - hence the need for pilgrimages! - but if you're lucky enough to have an A.P.C store nearby you can pick up a pair from their collaboration with the french brand (thought at slightly elevated prices). The best, though, will always be a trip to the store itself, slipping out of your shoes, your coat, your beanie and scarf, and onto that red carpet, where a line of ballet flats will be laid out for you and for a moment you can feel just like Brigitte.

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over and over again

Once again it's that time of year we all know and love. Funnily enough, though, this year TTH hasn't been as much of a repeat offender as she has been in previous seasons (remember that fall/winter when it seemed like all she wore were those damn drop-crotch khaki pants???). I think the fact that she's been taking less accessories means she has more room in her closet for other exciting things. Like Dries Van Noten checked shirts and Balenciaga skirts with naughty thigh-high slits. Still, she can't help herself. especially when it comes to skirts and pants. I think that TTH is the same as me - I have any number of coats, jackets and tops that I wear all the time and I tend to repeat my bottoms endlessly. I casually drop musings like this into the conversation to prompt the thought that, perhaps, I'm just as amazing as TTH when in fact I'm writing this in the daggiest pyjamas known to mankind with a biro pen hanging from my mouth. Glamour!!!

Oh and thanks for that leaving-half-your-shirt-out tip Taylor. I guess I was sub-consciously drawing on it in my post below. Great minds, you know...

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no party

tommy ton for style.com

The most conspicuous absence this fashion month hasn't been Yasmin, surprisingly. In fact, it's been the lack of jewellery and accessories on perennial arm-party favourites. Think Christine Centenera and Taylor Tomasi-Hill. Yes. Taylor Tomasi-Hill. She of the riotous arm jewellery candy that often mixes cuffs with bangles with chains and watches. She who, it has been said, would jangle as she walked. She who has made her reputation as the veritable queen of accessories. Look at that! Not even a watch! And Christine, pared back and the atypical modern woman as per, with a single string bracelet and fine chain, looking like something magnificent from the future. What is going on here? I like to think that it is a reaction against this, and a move towards delicate, simple jewellery. For the past couple of months or so I've really enjoyed building up my fine jewellery collection, just wearing one piece of at a time and making my statement that way. TTH is the accessories editor at Marie-Claire and should know a thing or two about that. Her spreads for the magazine are often complete cacophonies of accessories - bright backgrounds covered with product in bulging, bountiful presentations. I'm excited to think that next season her spreads might be more simple and minimal. It seems more modern, more, well, grown up to wear less jewellery. To find your favourite pieces and stick to them. It's not about having a uniform, but rather about being comfortable with knowing your tastes completely. There is a self-confidence that comes from wearing just one or two pieces at a time. You don't have to think too hard, you just pick up your favourites from the dresser where you leave them and slip them on, almost without thinking. After a while people notice that you wear them all the time and they become an inherent part of you. And that is the best thing about jewellery.

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Be Italian

the sartorialist

Out of nowhere today rain clouds stormed in and ruined what had, this morning, been quite a nice autumn day. Tomorrow is set to be, in the sad tones of the weather announcer, "a bone-chiller of a day" and although it is exciting to get out coats and scarves and boots and all my old winter-weather friends, it's not so exciting when, dressed in my favourite sandals and flippy skirt, I was caught outside in the wet and wind today. Now it's only 5 O'clock and the sun has set, it's dark outside and I've had to close all the windows, turn up the heater, and put on some extra layers. And I'm sick. In short, I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself as I sip on Turkish Apple tea and make best friends with the tissue box. 

This photo is pretty marvelous. I have to say I've gone off the Sartorialist lately, through no fault of his own, but rather a combination of factors - I thought the subjects of his photos had become predictable, I read a couple of very bad articles about him, and then he did a couple of posts where he said some pretty questionable things. But that's all by the by. Especially when he shoots something like this. Eva Fontanelli is one of his old school subjects - you know the ones, from way back when he wasn't with garance and caught Yasmin Sewell laughing in the Tuileries in what would become his standard, renowned street style pose. This may very well be the best photo he has ever taken (although this one comes close, and so does this one, funnily posted one after the other way back in September 2008). When I went to go get my book signed and meet him back in, oh, it must have been 2009 now, I remember he asked me what my favourite photo of his was, and I said it was this one, incidentally enough of Eva in her jeans and fur coat, who I have always loved. He said that she had an Audrey Hepburn character about her, and wrote in the book that she wears some crazy things, but it's all part of her appeal. You sit back and watch the show. I love that because it reminds me of one of my best friends. You can never quite put your finger on her style or why it's so lovely, but it is, and you do. 

This photo is amazing. It has that cinematic quality that people love about Italy, the colour, the effervescence, the exuberance, the light. It has a pretty girl with a beautiful smile and the classic, brash clashing of patterns that has become so synonymous with Italian fashion. Yet, there is not a skerrick of leopard print or a hint of va-va-voom Monica Belluci Italian fashion in this picture. I think this is what I love so much about this photo, it's Italy, but old school Italy, all Bellini's at the original Harry's Bar, yachting down the amalfi coast and rooms with a view. It's that glamour, untapped and unbridled and totally, wildly uncontrollable, that wafts from every circle skirt and every bright print and every thin belt buckled easily around the (real, not high) waist. The fashion crowd love Italy. They love setting editorials there so they can dress the models in what they call "classic sexiness" and the male models in "suave threads", so they can devise scenes where a couple can shoot across pigeon-strewn piazzas on little vespas, share a heaving bowl of spaghetti with green-as-envy basil leaves and recline gracefully against the walls of old forts.

Italy doesn't disappoint. Sure, there's less of the vespa-zooming and graceful reclining to be found in the tourist traps of Venice, Rome and Florence, but it's still achingly, overwhelmingly beautiful. At times there is too much to take in and too much to admire that you have to close your eyes for a second. And that is true beauty. This is what this photo by the Sart captures. He captures that over stimulated, awesome feeling of being in Italy. Awesome in the sense that you are faced with something so much more, well, incredible than you. Eva is beautiful and her smile is captivating and it looks like she's wearing a great little outfit with cute shoes. But it's not really about that, is it? There's so much going on in this shot that it becomes more than Eva, more than the framing - although if it had been a different girl, how would the photo have looked? - it's all about Italy.

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give me an O!

 style.com Jil Sander FW11

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packing light

vogue.com, streetfsn, street fashion 5xpro, jak and jil

Did Taylor Tomasi only bring one clutch to fashion week? We all know she likes blue and that she likes wearing her favourite things over and over again (just like us, right?), but isn't this taking it a little far? Won't we get sick of seeing that pochette all the bloody time? That beautiful, buttery electric blue leather pochette with the discreet gold embossing, the perfect minimal period to a high fashion chameleon's sentence. That beautiful masterpiece of accessory design with its perfectly practical shape and single zip, it's almost pencil-case like purity that opens out to give easy access to the items within? Well it certainly leaves more space for clothes. And anyway, it's Celine. Who's kidding, we'll never be sick of it!

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