happy snaps

How do we remember? In snapshots or feelings or the shadow of a movement long forgotten? What happened casually remains.

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left alone

'How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills you by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...)'

Philip Larkin, Letters to Monica

vogue

Some people found the Stella McCartney show boring. A letdown. Not me. And maybe this quote doesn't quite work but I thought it summed up well how I feel about fashion at the moment and how I feel about Stella McCartney. That sometimes it's nice to be left alone. And that these beliefs of yours - to wear baggy clothes, and simple things, and no make up, as well as to wash the cups and work hard - are yours, habits and convictions formed over years of knowing yourself and becoming comfortable in your skin. It is something of Zoe's letting it settle, of taking a breather. I remember when I used to do Public Speaking the coach used to say how important the pauses were. 'They're almost more important than the speech itself,' he would say. 'Because a pause lets the speech sink in.' Stella McCartney is like one big pause for the whole industry. She doesn't always get it right, but there's something about her conviction that makes up for the mistakes. Left alone, this is the kind of stuff that I would wear all the time. So simple, so clean. So fresh, yes, fresh even in its simplicity. The problem with fashion lies in this innate, ingrained search for the new. How tired that phrase seems, now.

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

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not yet

 garance dore

Thanks for reminding me I still haven't got the perfect leopard print coat yet, Garance.

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la cantoche

Think of your dream restaurant. It has a babyfoot table in it, doesn't it? It doesn't? Well, is it filled with hot french guys? Yes, I thought so. And the food is a perfect balance between Asian and French, not so much fusion as finesse? Me too. And there's six different kinds of home-made desserts on the menu, ranging from Tarte Tatin to Fondant (but they change regularly, so don't go making plans)? It's the dream, isn't it? And the vibe is halfway between hip urban hangout and laidback suburban hangout? Not quite sure what I mean by that? Well, is it both simultaneously a place for young and old, regardless of trend or trade, provided that they love France, love French food and are hungry? For bonus points can you speak French? Yes, of course, I understand. You see, I've been to your dream restaurant. It's called La Cantoche and it's in Hong Kong. Reserve the babyfoot table and book a flight now. In that order.

La Cantoche, 5 Wa Lane off 227 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

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found

1-2, 5, 7 - pages from MUJI Found, 3 - Byredo Perfume Dispenser, 4 - TOME tunic from My Chameleon, 6 - Celine Aviators, 8 - Dieppa Restrepo loafers from My Chameleon and Porselli ballet flats

 

This book is one of my favourite buys from Tokyo. I picked it up from the MUJI flagship store in Marounouchi (the one with a restaurant, oh be still my heart!) but only got the chance to have a proper flick through it once I got back to Sydney. "Rather than just making things, MUJI has always taken the stance of "searching and finding" a lifestyle," the first page says. "We search throughout the world for items that have long been used in daily life without ever going out of fashion, improve on them a little to fit changing lifestyles, culture and customs and reproduce them at a reasonable price." I have always loved Muji's retail philosophy, but this book has really reinforced all the conceptions that I had about the brand. Filled with low-fi, analogue images of everything from bamboo chopsticks and plastic wrapping from China to naan bread dishes from India and - my favourite section, of course - the classical beauty of Paris ("France is always a model for Japan, in fact, it is a model for the world"), the book celebrates everyday life as it is distilled in the objects that litter our existence. It is minimal and simple, a fete of paper napkins and handwriting as well as hand-embroidery and the particular elegance of Parisian streets. Of Paris, the book says "Streets of stone, bridges of stone. A city created to never change". 

 

The idea has struck me recently as I unpacked my bags and set about resuming Sydney life. I have long searched for a wardrobe that is built to last, created to never change. As I add - and subtract - from the bits and pieces hanging up, folded down, stacked in boxes and piled in their dustbags above and below, I have always been moving slowly yet steadily towards that end goal. Some of the items that I have found along the way are odd - yellow suede ballet flats, flashy aviators with a horn trim - but that is all part of the fun. Style is as much about the idiosyncrasies and the outliers as it is about the standard. I think what I love most is how comfortable I am about my standard now. I know instantly, sensorily, the first touch of a murky brown cotton twill tunic, the first feel of my toes in a pair of loafers, the first sight of those Parisian streets. It has something to do with growing up, I think, but also to do with where I am in my life at the moment. I know what I'm doing. And that, inextricably, yet undeniably, helps with what I'm wearing.

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what is this light that holds us fast?

"When he grew tired of walking he went to the cinema. (Ah, cinema, solace of the lonely young men and women of all great cities.) He saw a film a day, sometimes two. He became a connoisseur of the non-time that preceded the films themselves, especially in small cinemas where there were no advertisements or previews, where the audience was made up of four or five people, all of them alone. It is easy to see why, in films, fugitives and wanted men went to the cinema: not just to hide in the dark but because these intervals between performances were out of time. To all intents and purposes you might as well not have existed - and yet, simultaneously you were acutely conscious of your existence. When the lights faded - always that same sequence of perception: the lights are fading, no they're not, yes they are, yes - and the curtains cranked back slightly to extend the tiny screen, there was always a moment, after the studio logos had been displayed, when the blaze of projected colour lit up the screen like Eden on the first day of creation. Disappointment and boredom often set in very soon afterwards but, for a few minutes at least, Luke's head filled with verdant images of city and sky, landscape and trees, and he believed utterly in the cinema's loneliness-obliterating promise of brightness and colour." 

Geoff Dyer, Paris Trance

La Pagode cinema in Paris

March is humidity and heat, peaches and ginger, university and work, counting pennies and splurging recklessly, and - of course - the french film festival. It is all of these things but it is mostly the french film festival. For the whole of March my mum and I walk up our street to the cinema in the town hall, we queue up amidst the crowds of people gabbing away in impassioned, mellifluous tones that could only be French, we file in and take our seats (red and squishy) in the darkened hall, we check our phones and munch our popcorn/smuggled goods like Mazet chocolate, we bite our lips as the lights dim, we sit through 20 minutes of awful advertisements for Tefal and Renault cars, and then (then!) we catch our breath as the screen lights up and for one brief moment we could be anywhere, but mostly we could be in Paris. Oh, what is this light that holds us fast?

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blush

 purple

 I always love the sets at the Celine fashion shows. Often - thought not always - held at the Tennis Club, they tend to run along that fine line of graphic minimalism, with organic materials, modernistic seating and something dynamic to hold it all together. The ceiling display this year is what really caught my eye. The opaque lightboxes were beautifully rendered, and those long, slightly haphazard stretches of blush and white paint. The white - splodgy and impatiently daubed on with the air of something done not for posterity but for convenience - reminds me of the stores, with their exposed wiring and waxed floors, so low-fi that when I first went into the Celine store on Madison Ave in New York I thought it hadn't been finished yet (faux pas). But it's the blush that is best. That beautiful, rosy-cheeked pink hue, that reminds me of all those lovely Benah bags from a couple of seasons ago, that reminds of me of Talisa and her paintings last year, that reminds me of being young and sweet, so unlike Celine, which makes it very like Celine indeed. That pink - with its white blemishes throughout - is the perfect reflection.

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ladies who brunch

To fete my return to Sydney my mum celebrated in the way she does best; with a brunch party. We gathered croissants from Bourke Street Bakery (all the better for lathering with Apricot and Ginger or Raspberry and Rose jam, hauled back from La Chambre aux Confitures in the Marais), we brewed Caramel Damman Freres tea (also hauled back from the Marais!) and I cooked my favourite lemony peach and raspberry cake (a modified Donna Hay recipe), jet-lagged and resolutely wide-awake at five am in the morning. The table was set - in fact, it came first - and I saw family and the best of friends surrounded by the sweetest of gifts, eagerly devoured. It is this that I love the best; the ease and comfort of relations with your family, when it doesn't matter if you're twenty minutes early or twenty minutes late, when stories told a thousand times seem brand new again, and all that matters, all that ever matters, is tea (a drink with jam and bread).

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