hippy happy hoppy birthday

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
George Bernard Shaw









Today is my 19th birthday! Everything feels exactly the same, and in a few hours i have to go to work (can you believe it?). This year has been an interesting one. A year of firsts - University, driving, writing, working, independence. When I turned 18 I had the world at my feet. I think now I've kicked it around a little (and, in the immortal words of pete doherty and the libertines, when you kick out at the world, the world kicks back a lot fuckin' harder).

I love balloons as a symbol of birthday, but i love them more as a symbol of whimsy. That's what i would like from this year, a real sense of whimsy. Not taking things too seriously and having the best time of your lives. I thought that would be 18, but 18 turned out a little too teary, a little too complicated and a little too busy for my liking. I hope 19, my last year as a teenager, will be teenraging. Oh god did i actually just write that? ha. For me balloons symbolise what my heart really desires - freedom, beauty and fun. The sight of balloons will always raise a smile to my face, especially those tied to the fences outside houses. I loved when i was little and my dad would drive me to a birthday party and say 'look for balloons, that'll be the house.' I still love searching for them on streets, because for little 6 year old me the sight of balloons promised such exotic things as fairy bread, clowns and jumping castles. Face painting. pass the parcel. That sense of excitement and joy is still there, for me.

It's odd. A lot of people have told me that 19 wears a lot better than 18. 18 is a scratchy party frock that doesn't quite fit, but 19 is perfect - smoothing over curves and highlighting all your best features. I'll get back to you.

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jump!

In fashion, as in life, they just don't make 'em like they used to.





Whenever i look at a picture by Richard Avedon I am struck by the energy that it exudes. Each and every one of them resonates with an infectious, powerful pulse. He captured energy unlike any other photographer working today, somehow his pictures (the bulk of which were in black and white) could transmit the movement, the grace, the actions with ease. It is a truth universally acknowledged that clothes look better in movement, it was Avedon who transferred that knowledge to photography, it was his models who started jumping in studios. It is his legacy that still exists in the pages of Vogue Us today.

Fashion photography today can have a staid feel to it, no matter the publication. Shock tactics and pushing the envelope are all very well, and work in their own ways. But there is something to be said for taking a leaf out of the masters books. Indeed, did not painters once study the 'school' of Rembrandt or Van Gogh in order to emulate their style? Out of reverence and, it must be said, out of acceptance that they were in possession of real mastery? There are those that hate the jumping in studio shots of US Vogue, but by god, when they are done well they look damn good. Clothes take on a far more powerful presence when they are on a body in movement. They billow, they unfurl, they pull taut, they swish, they kick up. Movement is life.






Perhaps its the spirit of the silly season, or perhaps its that full-bodied summer promise, but I can't stop looking at his photographs for their unbridled exuberance and passion. In the January issue of Vogue UK David Bailey wrote a tribute to Irving Penn, another great 'classical' photographer whose influence on fashion photography is resounding. He wrote that Penn's photographers were still and serene, and Avedon's were frenetic, passionate, imbued with something that Bailey could only identify as sex. Those clothes flying around, all that tousled hair, miles of legs... It's easy how someone can confuse that with sex.

It's actually exuberance. bright-eyed, wide-smiling exuberance. The best kind of energy, in my opinion. It's girls jumping around giddily, it's throwing back your head with laughter, not giggling politely or secretly. It's skipping down foreign streets, just because you can. No other model represents this kind of exuberance today, for me, than Karlie Kloss. She's got the grace of a dancer and the cheeky grin of a teenager. Haters can hate, but she's one of my favourite models today, and an Avedon girl through and through.




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birthday wish









In 4 days it's my birthday! i can't believe it has snuck up on me, i never even realised until yesterday that it was so close, and by default, that christmas was so close (my birthday is on christmas eve). I haven't really had a chance to plan a birthday celebration, it has turned into an impromptu dinner party on tuesday in my garden, hopefully the good weather holds out. I've been too busy working all day (and all of the night, sometimes) for david jones, and helping my mum out with christmas preparations. For the first time in years I feel really relaxed about my birthday, and not stressed, or supremely excited, or eager. Just chilled out. Which is a very good thing.

If any of you happen to be in the giving mood, which christmas is all about really, isn't it? Here is a little collection of things I wouldn't mind finding in my letter box come christmas eve. In my perfect world my dinner part on tuesday would be all champagne and lobster - however i'm operating on a lemonade budget here. Similarly with presents, i know that this year will be a very simple, home made christmas for my family. But perhaps I can dream?

It's almost my birthday... almost. I love the word almost. It just drips with promise. Just saying it gets my heart beating ever so slightly faster. Almost.

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maximum exposure

American Apparel - Lightweight Sheer Rib Raglan Pullover in Dark Violet, Cream, Black and Violet.

I think one of the most beautiful parts of the body is the shoulder. The shape of the shoulder is so intriguing and so fascinating, it undulates and moves gracefully no matter the person. Although i may not have a great relationship with my upper arms, my shoulders i love a lot (which causes problems, evidently, when trying to 'expose' them). They have a light smattering of freckles and are emotive beyond belief, I shrug them to indicate boredom or confusion, I coyly turn my head to their side, I raise them out of self-consciousness or self-attentiveness.

I went into American Apparel this morning and bought myself one, okay, two, of those pullovers. They are perfect, and this is coming from someone who vowed never to set foot in american apparel on principle (i think the policies veer ever so slightly too far into the sexist arena). However, fashion won out, as it always does, and I needed an off the shoulder jumper that was actually off the shoulder rather than just pulled over to one side, as I do with my other jumpers. This one is absolutely perfect, it hands down loosely if i want it to, but it also falls flush against the chest when my shoulder gets a little chilly as well.

For someone who doesn't like to get her legs out and whose chest remains hidden from view other ways to reach a level of sexuality and allure in dress must be found. Not that one has to always look sexy, far from it, sexy is the last on my list of priorities believe you me. However sometimes, just sometimes mind, you want to inject a little something something into an outfit. Sexiness is not just about sex, i think, it's more about inner self confidence and appeal. I think that flashing a little bit of shoulder is the perfect way to do this when everything else is hidden. It's degradee and undone, it suggests clothes that have been quickly thrown on... in haste.




It's that idea of balance, too. The best looks for me are always ones that turn balance into a fine art. Eclecticism and eccentricity never becomes overpowering, but rather a finely tuned mix that complements and contrasts. The off the shoulder look is one way to reach this kind of balance - by exposing one of the shoulders you, by default, have to cover the other one up, and although the top is visually non-symetrical, the contrast between both arms is striking and significant. It is effortless, as if someone has pushed down the sleeve of your jumper, and exciting.

In fashion and in life it is often the littlest things that make the most impact. Details like these make outfits - how much less wonderful would Yasmin's outfit have been had she not exposed her shoulder (and the strap of her muted fuschia silk dress) with her off the shoulder jumper? I remember reading somewhere an interview with street style photographer Garance Dore. She was talking about what makes her stop in the street to take someone's photo and she cited the little things, the knot in a tee shirt, the slick of pastel nail polish, the cuff of a pant. I think that we can reasonably add the glimpse of a shoulder here. For who would not want to instantly catch on camera that moment when a jumper slips down the arm, as you reach for a wine glass or heft your shopping bags higher upon your arm. That little slip is so human, and therefore by default, so beautiful.


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simply sosume



all images sosume lookbook, click to enlarge for details

My style is so schizophrenic I should be committed. I love me a good print, and I have my fair share of weird and wacky things in my wardrobe (my sheer flower shirt and calf length structured checked skirt are two of them that are in constant rotation) but then i also have a deep-seated love of simple, luxurious basics. I think that the contrast between, say, a floral embroidered purple swing coat with the clean lines of the most beautiful grey tee shirt can be marvelous to behold.

Which is why i got excited when I saw the lookbook for Sosume's new range in my inbox. Exactly the kind of building blocks for my wardrobe - the draping was perfect, the material ever so slightly sheer giving just that hint of sexiness (something the olsen twins pioneered), the cuts were long and flattering. God, i'd like 2 of everything if possible, even those harem pants (and i'm still not 100% sold on the whole harem pant thing. I dabbled, and they've been reserved for the odd yoga trip only. i feel they're not quite the thing for my body). But if Sosume is making it, i want it.






I may not be one for minimalism in the manner of black-clad fashion editors and hipsters. I have a friend who is just like that, dresses in all manner of black bodycon skirts and grey cropped tees with gladiator sandals and a long line blazer. She looks fabulous and fierce all the time. But then, she is a real minimalist in all areas of her life, her apartment is white and clear, her favourite perfume is one by issey miyake (which, i think, doesn't actually smell of anything at all which i think kind of defeats the purpose of perfume, really). Personally i like to be a little more haphazard - I would pair that cropped blazer with my mustard circle skirt, espadrilles and armloads of indian style bangles. The beautiful tailored structuralism would clash so well with the eclecticism of the rest of the outfit. A real statement.

And there is something to be said for simplicity. For me, adopting minimalistic elements into my wardrobe is like creating the calm before the storm. There is a quiet yet powerful beauty in clean lines and neutral colours. They are unassuming, but never underwhelming. One of my friends bemoaned the fact that street style websites frequently show shots of 'the perfect tee shirt' or 'so simple, so good' where the girl is wearing tapered pants and a draped top and that's all. 'It's boring,' she said to me, 'street style websites should be artistic and inspiring.' I don't agree, i think that style is style, the beauty of the beast is that it can come in the form of rodarte or rick owens, vivienne westwood or vanessa bruno. The minimalist can often be just as beautiful as the artistic, it can even be just as artistic. I'm sure the many designers from Sosume (1 from Sydney, 1 from melbourne and 2 from New York) would agree.





And all this quiet, understated luxury comes with an added bonus - it's eco friendly. The micro modal fabric uses a tenth of the water used in cotton production and is sourced from beech tree wood pulp. 'Sublimely soft' the press release says, and after receiving it i trotted off to a sydney stockist to see for myself. I think 'ridiculously soft' would be an even better label. It's so soft it should be illegal. You can comfort your body with these delicious threads as well as ease your mind with the fact that they didn't cost the planet as much as scratchy old cotton.

There's a little wait for simplicity - the range won't be in store till February 2010. But i'm sure it will be worth it. The collection will be available online at www.sosume.com and at various australian and new zealand stockists (lucky us) including tuchuzy in bondi, one of my favourite beachy stores for a lazy sunday perusal.

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shoes, shoes, shoes.

Yes, i'm late to the party, and yes, it's not a small intimate gathering but rather the biggest party in the world, but i really need to get me a pair of these:




They may have hipster cred up the wazoo but i think that they're the kind of shoe that a girl can put her own spin on, you know, a pair of socks poking out the top with a calf length skirt could make them more kinky librarian than ass-kicking hipster. i hope.

For some reason i can't stop thinking about shoes. my last 3 purchases were shoes. I don't know what's going on, i actually don't really care about shoes in the grand scheme of things (unlike Carrie Bradshaw et al). I mean, i'm as happy in havianas as i am in heels. But man, those buckle wedges, and these gorgeous k jacques sandals i bought at blood orange yesterday are the only things i can think about.

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sunday meditations upon style





jak and jil

Whatever happened to the fashion eccentric? Fashion Editors are so generic now, they stand around in their denim cut offs, their balmain strong shoulders and their $600 tee shirts, feigning nonchalance and attempting to get hipness to ooze from their pores. They're interchangeable - beautiful and well dressed, undoubtedly - but interchangeable nonetheless. Don't you remember the days when Isabella Blow used to swan around London, arriving to the Vogue offices under Anna Wintour at 11 AM and getting the job done by 12, all whilst wearing a giant ship on her head, or something of such sort.

Even Daphne Guinness, Blow's great friend and once a reach character in fashion, has turned hip. She runs around with Olivier Zahm (shudder) in the ugliest shoes known to man and bears all for purple magazine. I don't know... it's just not the daphne that i fell in love with. The one who enthused about the artistry and fantasia of haute couture and who nurtured Alexander McQueen's fragile genius. Now the fashion editors strap on the highest heels they can find, the shortest dress they can find (or the tightest pants) and some sort of statement jacket. Then part their hair in the middle and then wait around to be photographed by the hoards of street style photogs just waiting to fawn all over their 'achingly hip' looks.

I know this sounds anti-fashion eds when actually i think they are uniformly well dressed. The problem for me is that, on the most part (taylor tomasi, giovanna battaglia and yasmin sewell excepted), i can't distinguish one editor from the other.

All this existential fashion soul-searching comes from the fact that i am having a few issues with my style. I feel that i always wear the same thing over and over again, that my style is predictable and that if you took away 3 or 4 things from my wardrobe i would have nothing to wear. Whenever i feel like this i try and go away with a bag of things i never wear to force me to expand my horizons, but since work has prevented that kind of therapy i instead have taken to perusing the web for inspiration. I used to think i dressed a lot like Alexa Chung, but as i survey my closet i really don't, not at all. I admire her style greatly, but since it's not legs-a-go-go here at my house the only thing we really share in common is eurasian heritage and nars lipstick.

People always ask me who my style icon is, and i used to spurt forth Alexa like a broken record. Although i still love her (and always will), i feel that i need a real icon who is relevant to my wardrobe, my sensibility and my style. Having more than one icon is, of course, fine. Alexa's prep and (more than a bit of) yasmin's ability to mix sharp tailoring with australian effervescence will forever inspire me. But recently i've been craving a bit more.

It was a happy accident that i stumbled across Catherine Baba's thread on the fashion spot, and i can safely say i haven't looked back since. Her inner elegance and poise, redolent of some bygone era where bright young things held absinthe parties while swathed in furs, , is even more striking than her clothes. She is a character, often called the most stylish woman in Paris, who eschews all the trends and all that hipster fuckery to wear clothes that are arrestingly beautiful. Vintage kimonos, turbans, more costume jewelry than a seniors bridge night and the odd smattering of current designer fare makes for a style that is just magnificent to behold.

The funny thing is that I used to dress a lot like her. Not now, now i prefer something that is a bit more simple, less theatrical. But deep down there is the girl who once wore an entire outfit to a country races source from the 1930s - from cloche to mary janes. I just looooove her elegance and old hollywood worldliness. She looks like Jean Harlow with Katherine Hepburn eyes. And i love the fact that, like Blow, you remember her. She doesn't melt faceless into the crowd of fashion editors in their thigh highs and messy hair.

There is a great interview with her and Diane Pernet where Pernet asks her, sarcastically, whether her fur coat was quite necessary in the balmy heat of Paris in April.

'But darling, it's freeeeeezing, no?' she replied.

I may not revere her and wish to copy her every move, but seeing these pictures have made me dig out my old vintage fur collared coat that saw me through 2 teenage winters when i was trying to be an evenlyn waugh-esque bright young thing with strands of onyx beads and a happy go lucky attitude. What i've learned is that your icon should not be someone that you wish to copy head to toe, but rather someone that you respect and admire. I admire her elegance, her theatricality and grace, just as how i admire alexa's gazelle-like stature and rock credibility and yasmin's inane ability to compose outfits that are so 'her'. You can't quantify her style, really, it's that mixture of suggestive drapery, clever tailoring and classic lines.

Catherine Baba is exactly like that, and so much more. She's the kind of woman that someone who has grown up reading Waugh and Mitford and Forster can only dream of. The kind of woman who has a lace fan stashed in her bag and sips her bourbon whiskey out of tea cups.

The kind of woman who i thought couldn't exist in a fashion world that worships Wang and Balmain at the expense of Galliano and Gaultier. But it's kind of comforting to think that even though we are prostrate at the altar of fast, commodified fashion and all our high priestesses dress themselves in the same erin wasson-style threads, women like Catherine Baba can still thrive. I hope that no matter where fashion goes in this next decade (and it's sure to be an exhilarating ride) there'll still be fashion editors like her. Ones who don't care if studs, khaki and everything shredded are in, they'll still wear their ripped crinolines... with a pair of new season boots underneath.

Here's to the eccentric!

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that's amore!

"You may have the universe if I may have Italy."
Giuseppe Verdi

















Vogue US 2006 (?)
Grace Coddington, Natalia Vodianova, Mario Testino.


This editorial is just too good not to share. Sure, it's all a huge cliche - the pigeons, the prada, the peach bellinis. But who says that cliche's can't be lovely? often, that's all that cliches are. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Doesn't it make you yearn for baskets full of apricots and walking barefoot across the Via San Marco in a circle skirt and costume jewelry? I love Italy for it's voluptuous, full-bodied beauty. Italy is ripe, for me. That's the word i would use to describe it. Nothing is done in a half-baked way. Everything is full, rich, almost creamy in its vivdness.

Luscious.

I suppose it's because I always equate a place with its food, and then the sensation of that food with what to wear. In France the food is sophisticated, clever and delicious. In Italy the food is simple, rich and vivacious. Think about it, all those Italian staples - pizza, pasta, panna cotta - are so ripe and full of life. Tomatoes bursting with flavour, the tangy green of basil, plump rounds of oozing bocconcini, the wobbling mass of the most voluptuous panna cotta cream, lemons bursting with juice, the rising crusts of a floury pizza. That lusciousness is extravagance through and through. You can't be on a diet in Italy. (you certainly can't be gluten free in Italy). Who would want to miss those bowls of pasta, glistening with olive oil, or the cakes piled high with summer fruits?

The full skirts and ruffled shoulders of Italian dress simply mirror that aspect of their culture. Whenever i thinko of Italy i see thick tumbling locks of hair, hourglass figures and tomato red suede heels. It's tied up, of course, to Roman Holiday and Fellini and The talented mr Ripley - 50s-style sillhouettes and vespas and the like. But, then, it has some grounding in reality. I've never met an Italian who doesn't live life to the absolute fullest, whether it be through food, leisure or clothes. They are renowned for high quality, for luxury and glamour. But there is an earthy sensuality that pierces everything Italian. As if the leather of your gucci bag has just been tanned by grimy hand, or the dirt just been brushed from the stalks of your basilico. They are a people who, quite simply, know how to live, and love. And it's not just any kind of life, oh no. It's La Dolce Vita.

Here's the rub, though. Why can't real life be just as beautiful as the magazines, the movies, the 'magination? (nice alliteration). Don't answer that question.

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