only a game

"With Mike it was different. There was no pitying smile on Adair's face as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball. Mike, on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but a cricketer if he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots. Cricketer was written all over him - in his walk, in the way he took guard, in his stance at the wickets." 

P.G Wodehouse, Mike: A Public School Story

Isabel Lucas in Vogue Australia December 2013

Not only because I just spent the last year reading all about it, but I find cricket very, very interesting. The love of the game - one quote I particularly like is, "it was only a game... but it was life!" - and the historical legacy, spread out across the colonial diaspora, that sound of leather on willow reverberating everywhere from Sydney to Simla (and yes, even Hong Kong, as my thesis went into great lengths about), the sheer illogicality of it, its convoluted, elaborate, maybe, yes, archaic set of rules, and, most of all, the ritual. I remember that ritual well; watching my brother in pristine, freshly laundered whites, grubbied only by a bit of sweat and grass patches on the knees ('I had to dive mum, to get the catch!'), swapping his sneakers for shiny school shoes, donning his bright cerulean blazer, and walking into the hall for tea break with his team-mates. Gathered around a table, shaking hands with the opposition over cucumber sandwiches and early grey. Where did this sport come from? That year when the cup was in question and it took a whole day before the points could be accurately tallied up I remember my brother's tense, tightly wound psyche bringing us to the brink of exhaustion. 'It's only a game', I wanted to say, loudly, often. Oh, I didn't know then, not quite. It is only a game. But it is life.

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where

Vogue

Pink for the wardrobe but green for the house. Even back in February I knew this was the life I wanted (with Ashley's wardrobe, natch). But revisiting it now only drives the point home. I don't know what I'm going do, I don't know who I'm going to do it with, I don't know when, or how, or what, but I do know where. 

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think pink

Emilia Clarke in Vogue UK December 2013 // Fjura by Luisa Brimble // Protagonist by The Line

I almost can't believe I'm saying this but... I really want some pastel pink in my life. It's almost not even pastel, it's like that suede-y, blush colour of young peonies. I blame you, Jessie.

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don't worry, be happy.

Margot Robbie in Vogue Australia November 2013, styled by Stevie Dance

Okay, things are about to get a little bit silly. Things to do if you want to be instantly, irrevocably happy. Watch About Time. Listen to Kiss You (I said silly!!). Read The Rosie Project. Go to The Noodle Markets. Eat popsicles. Think big.

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oranges

"The car slowed down. It had to take its place in the long line of cars that moved at a foot's pace, now stopping dead, now jerking on, down the narrow street, blocked by market carts, that led to the Opera House. Men and women in full evening dress were walking along the pavement. They looked uncomfortable and self-conscious as they dodged between costers' barrows, with their high piled hair and their evening cloaks; with their button-holes and their white waistcoats, in the glare of the afternoon sun. The ladies tripped uncomfortably on their high-heeled shoes; now and then they put their hands to their heads. The gentlemen kept close beside them as though protecting them. It's absurd, Kitty thought; it's ridiculous to come out in full evening dress at this time of day. She leant back in her corner. Covent Garden porters, dingy little clerks in their ordinary working clothes, coarse-looking women in aprons stared in at her. The air smelt strongly of oranges and bananas. But the car was coming to a standstill. It drew up under the archway; she pushed through the glass doors and went in. 

She felt at once a sense of relief. Now that the daylight was extinguished and the air glowed yellow and crimson, she no longer felt absurd. On the contrary, she felt appropriate. The ladies and gentlemen who were mounting the stairs were dressed exactly as she was. The smell of oranges and bananas had been replaced by another smell--a subtle mixture of clothes and gloves and flowers that affected her pleasantly. The carpet was thick beneath her feet."

Virginia Woolf, The Years

Julia Nobis // Stephen Ward // Jillian Davison // Vogue Australia October 2013

The new Vogue Australia is something of a revelation, or maybe it's just this beautiful editorial with Julia Nobis in it (do you love her yet Talisa???). I know the quote doesn't really go with the images, but ever since I read The Years for the first time I've been struck with that idea of the smell of oranges and bananas. I'll be smelling oranges for weeks after seeing this spread.

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taking stock

1 and 3 - Miranda Kerr by Alasdhair Mclellan for Vogue UK September 2013 2 - Fashion Guitar

If I still wrote wardrobe planning lists - maybe I should bring them back, hmmm? - miranda would be on the top of the agenda. Not miranda herself per se, she's a babe and all, but she's just a little bit too perfect. I mean miranda in this editorial. This summer I want an extra piercing in my ear (sleepers, natch), tousled, beachy wave, the kind of tan that glows and a pair of double strap birkenstocks - in classic black or a washed-out taupe - for wearing with everything and nothing, jeans and tee shirts, and never taking them off.

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so fine

"So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea. A steamer far out at sea had drawn in the air a great scroll of smoke which stayed there curving and circling decoratively, as if the air were a fine gauze which held things and kept them softly in its mesh, only gently swaying them this way and that. And as happens sometimes when the weather is very fine, the cliffs looked as if they were conscious of the ships, and the ships looked as if they were conscious of the cliffs, as if they signalled to each other some message of their own. For sometimes quite close to the shore, the Lighthouse looked this morning in the haze an enormous distance away."

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

Vogue Australia August 2013 - Sofia Coppola

Sometimes the morning is so fine that you don't want to get up. Not slowly, not with cashmere, not at all. But you have to - despite all temptations otherwise - you have to. You have to get shit done. So you get out of bed, and you go into that morning haze and you don't look back.

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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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