some people just have it

carey mulligan.com via tFS

some people just have it... you know, that certain je ne sais quoi that gives them the shine, the pizazz, the inability to look away. Carey Mulligan is awkward in front of the camera, but so natural, and so captivating. You really can't look away. One of my best friends is like that - you just can't take your eyes off her, rain hail or shine. a very enviable quality to have in a girl, i think.

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tunic-ed in

In my attempts to create the line I want - languid and loose, flowing, drapy - tunics are an inevitable staple. But i didn't want my tunics to be drab or reminiscent of some bad hippy re-dux. I belt dresses that I would deem too short (though my long-legged friends would be quite comfortable in, thankyou very much) over long-ish skirts, cowl-necked tee shirts are reigned in with sashes, loose crop tops are left flowing over maxi dresses. It's all ensuring that despite the structure and despite the implied 1940s pin up implications your outfit never veers into territory that is too buttoned up, too belted in. I used to dress like that, but it can be harsh and unforgiving. I much prefer my current mode - drapy and flowing - like a greek goddess, if only she wore less robes and more richard nicoll.

Fabulous Future Me has been having a break, but Megumi lamented her absence last post so she's back. with a vengeance. Yesterday I wandered about paddington, bought a piece of fudge for my mum's afternoon tea, bought a bunch of flowers for a friend's birthday, perused a few shops, searched (in vain) for vogue america february 2010... I feel really calm and content at the moment. I'm not sure what it is. It's nice though.

Monday

burberry trench, vionnet tunic, giles and brother necklace, acne wedge boots, dries van noten skirt, chloe paraty.

There must be some way of wearing a tunic without the unwanted 'pregnancy' jokes. Are tunics really the lot of pregnant women and frumpy olds? Is there a way for them to be fashionable, chic and flattering? Surely there must be, you remember gadding about for days in your youth in tunics. You couldn't have been wrong then. And you're not wrong now, not now you've seen this glorious Vionnet tunic in the windows of Harvey Nichols. Oh Vionnet, how do you love thee? let's count the ways... Drapey - check. Interest detail on the sleeves - check (shoulders bared, not so practical in winter but oh oh oh! so chic). A sash to tie at waist, providing definition but not severely so - check check check. You belt it in over a leather skirt - grecian goddess meets dominatrix? Only you could pull that out on a monday morning.

Tuesday

lanvin shirt, linda farrow for alexander wang sunglasses, smythson clutch, b-low the belt belt, lee angel bangles, aurelie biderman star bracelet, dries van noten skirt, k jacques sandals.

There's nothing like a day at the beach to cool you down... oh wait... you're working. it's got to be the hottest day ever and you have to work, and worse yet, you have to work and watch everyone else having fun at the beach. You're covering the launch of a new swimming costume line - the face of whom is a most hilarious ex-it girl now fiance of sports star - and although you're sure to be wined and dined (well, it is swimwear, so in typical fashion mode more champagne than canapes) you're not going to have a good time. Although you are wearing new shoes - strappy sandal things that are blissful for feet and make you feel happy. And you have the most incredible top on, loose and flowy and incredibly cool. When you arrive and see all the it-girl's friends sweltering away in bandage dresses and balmain-esque jackets you can't help but smile... cooling down? who needs a beach for that, all you need is a tunic top and a glass of champagne.

wednesday

alice and olivia leather jacket, acne tunic dress, benjamin eyewear glasses, stella mccartney necklace, chloe shoes, mulberry 'alexa' bag.

whenever you wear denim you can't help but feel connected to some historical american purpose. The fabric of the people, the fabric of work, the fabric of blood, sweat, tears and getting the girl anyway. Denim is such a quintessential American fabric, and even though you are far from quitessentially american whenever you wear it - regardless of whether its ripped levis or organic full skirts - you feel stronger and more powerful. And with a tunic belted over the top, coral and saccharine maybe, you feel freshly pressed and ready for a hard days work at a cotton mill, or something of such sort. That is until you get to work and see a raft of invitations and a box of godiva awaiting you.. hard work can wait for now. It's the denim's fault.

thursday

betsey johnson earrings, elizabeth and james mini dress (seriously mk+a that thing is sooo short), dries van noten evening coat, debenhams skirt, miu miu heels, lanvin clutch.

you feel covered. You're wearing a mini dress that you would usually pair with bare legs and killer heels with a skirt underneath it. You're not really sure why, you suppose you're experimenting with this whole 'tunic' theme, but still... weird. covered. unsexy. But wait, that guy is shooting you the glance. you know, the glance. But why? you're thighs are hidden beneath this skirt, you've got the goods all covered up. Have you been missing the point your whole life? is the point to be a little mysterious every now and then? Or is this tunic see through and that guy can see your agent provocateur lingerie...

friday

opening ceremony faux fur coat, temperley london smock top, ioselleani earrings, miu miu belt, proenza schouler skirt, celine shoes, cearis bag.

you think it's weird how your life seems to be an endless cycle of trudging through week days to reach friday and, thus, the weekend. it's not that you hate your job, far from it (you actually adore it, darling), but it's that weekend, those 48 hours (and friday night, naturally) of lazy, hazy bliss. you always seem to imagine better weekends than they actually are - all picnics and art galleries and brunches and night-time mis-behaviour when in actual fact it's more like errands, visits and duties. blurggh. but at least, friday morning as you dress, you can maintain the optimism. nothing's going to get you down. it's the weekend, after all. almost.

TGIF!

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haute haute haute

I've never been the type of girl you have to SELL couture to. I mean, yes, i see that economically the world may not be in the best shape, but that doesn't mean that extravagance does not serve it's purpose. Haute Couture is the height of extravagance, the frou, the frills, the buttercream frosting. I love it all, i even used the documentary 'the secret world of haute couture' as one of my related texts for my english HSC (topic: telling the truth).

It was in that documentary that the CEO of Dior - Sidney Toledano - summed up the purpose of couture. Questioned by the documentary director about the costs, the extravagance, the money spent on the staging of the shows alone, let along the clothes themselves, the fact that the return was so low with so few customers wearing couture nowadays, Toledano responded saying that Couture was about formulating the image. Couture conjures up the iconography and the atmosphere of the brand - Couture is the imaginary playground of designers and the stuff of dreams for the average person. He said that if one person went out and bought a Dior lipstick after seeing a Couture show it would all be worth it. Couture shows are about the wider return - the fact that Dior itself, as a name, as a brand, as a fashion house, is manufactured through the sheer opulence of couture shows, and not just the couture clothes themselves.

This is the relevance of couture today. Couture is the cornerstone of a fashion house's credibility and reputation. To be able to produce couture is a mark of respect in and of itself, but further than that is the purpose that Couture serves. The power of brands like Chanel, Dior and Armani was forged through their reliance upon couture. Their very position in the world of luxury also comes from couture. It is not wise to believe it as only important for the wealthy wives of Sheiks, Aristocracy and merchant bankers. Couture is so much more than that.

Chanel Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2010

style.com

Like I said, Haute Couture is about extravagance, showing off (how can it not be when one dress alone can require upwards of thousands of hours of handiwork by artisanal Parisienne seamstresses) and maintaining, updating and elaborating on the legacy of the brand. Chanel's Spring collection was all of these things.

It wasn't quite the revelation that the spring 09 collection was, remember all of Karl's quite poetic meditations upon paper with the white dresses and laser cutaways and those gorgeous head pieces? But this collection was everything we come to expect from Karl - sharp, fully realised and beautifully rendered. This season he was drawn away from black and navy, creating a whole collection in whites, silvers and pastels - even the tights were a sheeny grey.

The show opened with a series of Chanel boucle jackets in various silhouettes paired with matching culottes - Karl's twist on the typical Chanel suit. It was fresh and modern without seeming futuristic, and charming in a way that has come to be associated with Chanel. Lagerfeld then moves seamlessly into the evening wear - dozens of jaw-droppingly embellished cocktail dresses and shrugs for the haute couture VIP customer set, and then a raft of rippling silk floor length numbers that are sure to pop up on Diane Kruger's lithe body for the Oscars. All of the dresses in creamy berthillon shades and finished with the supreme skill of the chanel haute couturier.

It was pretty and sweet. Even that heart shaped hair never tipped it into the 'too sweet' range. It's all going to look great in a Grace Coddington editorial. It is part of the Elbaz Lanvin school of extravagance - more is more, more jewellery, more shine, more embellishment - the evening dresses bedazzled with bejewelled collars and straps. There was a take on the strong shoulder - still looming ever present, yet subtler and cleaner, the arms of a dress extended long, like a Chinese traditional dress, and the bodice was glistening with sequins above the flouncy full skirt.

Beauty and luxury and all things divine - that's what Couture is. And, if you think about it, that's what Chanel is. That the two are indistinguishable is a mark of how powerful Lagerfeld is as a designer and how well he understands couture. This collection had couture written all over it from the Daphne Guinness-esque hair (and no-one does couture better than daphne herself) to the gloriously over the top feathered skirts that were probably the work of 10 seamstresses working full time for a month, backs bent and eyes squinting as they laced feather after feather into the gown.

So beautiful, so luxurious and so divine. It makes one proud to be a woman, no?

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funny face

gettyimages

so... tavi gets to hang out with alexa? well, i'm a blogger, i'm a teenager, i can do a pretty good funny face.. i think i should sit front row at chanel haute couture with alexa too!!! :) Oh man. i bet they had heaps of fun together too, meeting karl and swapping notes. How cool is tavi's hair! I wish i could pull of blue, my friend just dyed hers back to black after being cookie monster blue and i miss it.

on an unrelated note, what i love about alexa is that you can never be quite sure whether she is being serious or not - in her life and in her clothes. sometimes she says things and you're like... what??? For example - she was asked about underwear and she said 'i prefer granny pants.. not a big fan of strings.' I may have chuckled at that. Similarly, when Alexa wears something like, oh, i don't know, CLOGS, you can never be sure if she's doing it for a laugh or if she genuinely likes the things. Regardless either way i hate clogs, but hey, she looks good in them, so, more fun for her.

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beauty is terror

'Death is the mother of beauty,' said Henry.

'And what is beauty?'

'Terror.'

'Well said,' said Julian. 'Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.'

I looked at Camilla, her face bright in the sun, and thought of that line from the Iliad I love so much, about Pallas Athene and the terrible eyes shining.

'And if beauty is terror,' said Julian, 'then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?'

'To live,' said Camilla.

'To live forever,' said Bunny, chin cupped in palm.

The teakettle began to whistle.

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

This passage is quite possibly one of my most favourite passages from any book, ever. I'm no classics scholar (although i have dabbled with the idea of taking up ancient greek), but i think you don't need to be one to appreciate this sentiment. Beauty is terror. We desire to live, forever. Human nature distilled into a few sentences.

I remember posting this poem 'An evil spirit, your beauty haunts me still', with a picture of Lily Donaldson way back in the archives. I think she is possessing of the kind of beauty that haunts, that keeps you up at night, tossing and turning. But beauty that is terrifying, that alarms? What immediately springs to mind is the ferocious vision of the Rodarte girls. Their spring/summer collection was certainly fearsome to behold - futuristic and yet harking back to those ancient days of female warriors like Boudicca. With tattoos snaking up their arms and their dresses slashed and ripped, 'ruined' in the words of laura mulleavy herself, the rodarte girls were the remnants of a post-apocalyptic civilisation, scavenging for clothes in the wreckage of their world and trying to forge a new existence.

Beauty is terror, desire is to live forever... The Rodarte girl, with her rags and steely glare, the dry ice curling around her feet is a terrifying and alarming, yet overwhelmingly compelling beauty. Every season they send forth their particular brand of haunting, gothic romance, but this season was a departure from that. It was Beauty in its purest, crystallised form - frightening in its fury. So frightening that you cannot look away. I can't get enough of Rodarte, and neither can the rest of the fashion world.

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throw another shrimp on the barbie -

flickr

happy australia day!

i am thankful for this country of wide open skies, bright sunshine and bare legs. i love many things about australia - seafood so fresh it is practically leaping off the plate, water you can swim in all year round (if you're particularly daring), fresh fruit as big as your fist, golden, sandy beaches as far as the eye can see, that you can wear sandals all year round, boys carrying surfboards, footy balls and cricket bats, girls carrying lands end shopping bags and bunches of fresh flowers, al fresco dining every day of the year. I wish it was a smidgeon less hot every now and then, but it is the heat that begets (real) tans, sun-kissed hair and the general easygoing ebullience that we aussies are so often tagged with. I may hate the sun (sometimes), but it is an inherent part of australia.

to my fellow australians, have a snag or two for me! for those living overseas...

where the bloody hell are ya??*

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* hmm a little australian humour for you... there was this infamous australian tourism ad a couple of years ago now which featured our most famous WAG Lara Bingle (engaged to Michael Clarke of cricketing fame, and styled by Christine Centenera of Harpers AUS, to give a fashion context). It was banned from being screened because of the catchphrase, 'where the bloody hell are ya?' supposed to convey how great australia is, why don't you come over here? But apparently some people found it offensive... hmm... maybe they just don't get our sense of humour haha. :)

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the wind change

Cedric Bihr

For the first time in a long while i scrubbed off my nail polish and let my fingers go bare. I wasn't sure what colour to paint them next - i'd had enough of my mint green, a lipstick pink was getting tiresome and i couldn't stomach red. My great browns and greys seemed too dismal for summer.

Then i saw these pictures and instantly reached for a shade i have (and have never worn) called 'rockmelon'. It matches the model's luminescent pink perfectly. It's a perfect pink, not too saccharine, for wearing out the distance between now and my holiday (which i need oh so badly). Isn't it fascinating how a photo can be so influential. these photos are calm and still. When i saw them this morning, rushing around to get to work and start the day, I felt myself relax almost imperceptibly. Photos like this with their stillness are so powerful.

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man power

There was an article in a recent american vogue about a guy trying to contact all his old girlfriends. i can't remember the point of the article now, but there was one part of it that struck home. He said that women just don't know how they make men feel when they casually pick up a tee shirt of theirs, or a pair of jeans, and wear it the morning after. He used this anecdote of a girl just dressing in one of his button downs tucked into a pair of his jeans, her party dress in a paper bag swinging from her hand.

Much is said about how the girl feels - I remember when I nicked an old rugby jersey (it was the in thing then) from a boyfriend and slept in it, loving the smell of him on the collar. He smelt like grass and shampoo and lynx. I could wear his jersey because he was big and tall, but I've always lamented the fact that I wasn't smaller all round and could slip into a man's tee shirt bra-less without looking incorrigibly sluttish. There is nothing sexier, in my opinion, that a girl in her man's shirt. Think Sienna Miller in Alfie, painting the apartment in Jude Law's pink brooks brothers shirt, unbuttoned and unbridled. I've always wanted to be kate moss when she was going out with johnny depp - a beautiful slip of a thing wearing his leather jacket and scraggly hair.

There is a power to wearing man's clothes. I had a tuxedo tail coat from a charity store that used to imbue me with all kinds of masculine powers. One of my friends wears biker boots with everything and they turn her distinctive stomp into something remarkable - swagger. And not in the Ke$ha kind of way, but in the james dean kind of way. Wearing men's trousers makes me walk taller, straighter than in any of my skirts. It's something about the pockets. Maybe i haven't taken these from a boyfriend (chances for inter-closet swapping has been pretty low on the ground, to be frank), but i still get that same sense of naughtiness mixed with irreverence that i felt the first time i stole that rugby jersey. It may not be taboo to wear men's clothes anymore, but there's still that added dimension that you must have found them lying next to some guy's bed in the early hours of that morning.

But how do the guys feel? that's a question I've always wondered. Do they hate it and secretly wish we wouldn't steal their clothes? Do they, deep down, harbour a similar desire to slip into our little babydoll numbers and maxi dresses? Or do they, like the author of that vogue us article, get this strange swelling feeling in their stomach when they see a girl pull on a shirt as simply as if it was one of their spangly party dresses...

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straw

'who could love you for yourself alone, and not your yellow hair?'

Yeats

God. There are some days, especially in summer, when I ache for yellow hair. Long, messy, blonde hair that glints with every movement and hints at days of sunshine and nights of frivolity and, well, fun. Blondes do have more of it after all. Maybe it's because i'm the darkest of brunettes, and the grass is always greener sort of thing. Yellow hair is captivating. Red hair is remarkable, especially on a great beauty (but how many of those do you know?), and brown hair is fascinating. But Yellow hair can stop traffic. Once, in Vietnam for a school trip, a girl tossed her hair to shake a fly away and a boy riding a bike crashed into a car. True story, one which we teased her about for years. But oh! Sometimes i wish, i just wish i could be one of Sofia Coppola's milky skinned lovelies with their tumbling flaxen locks and little phoebe philo chloe era babydoll dresses and wedges with socks.

Life would be a lot simpler, i think.

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bright and burnt

'He watched these through the glass; the sky here was so different, he thought, from that other sky under which he had grown up. This one was constantly changing, was washed out; at times covered with curtains of rain, at times made of an attenuated blue that was gentle, like the surface of a milky sea; the sky of his boyhood had been high, and wide, empty and intensely blue, like lapis lazuli; filled with light, too; a great theatre for the sun.'

Alexander McCall-Smith, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

It's no secret that i'm a bit of a fan of colour. But when it comes to talking about my favourite colours, there i can be a little stumped. My default answer used to be red, as back in my days of slavishly following 1930s fashion I used to wear a lot of red, but now I think that i've grown past it. I still love red - potent fire engine red, seductive crimsons, cheeky cherries - but i don't wear it that much anymore and I think i'm warming to some other colours. Green, purple, pink - all lovely in pastels and brights. Mint green especially is a favourite of mine. But when I really think about my favourite colour, and what I've started to tell people when they ask, is orange. Orange and Blue.

I've always loved orange, much maligned as it is. From the pinkest of corals right to when it burns and becomes darker, orange has been a colour that has pervaded my life. It's my father's favourite colour, he has about 20 orange shirts that are in constant rotation. It's the colour of my first party frock, a spotty frilly little thing worn to the first birthday party i ever attended (aged 1 and totally wicked, of course). And recently, after a brief hiatus, i've gotten right back into my love of orange. It's a powerful colour, my favourite shade is that smoky burnt orange that reminds me so much of the rugged australian landscape. Burnt orange is just... remarkable. It's more fascinating than a red, it is so earthy and sensual.

the opera house turned orange in sydney's 'apocalypse now' dust storm

Complain as i might about Australia, i do think there is an overwhelming amount of raw, natural beauty to be found in our country. Like burnt orange, a colour that is undeniably a strong part of us. It's in the sand, the earth, the rocks, the landmarks. It's streaked across faces and flung through the air. It's the colour of hard work and 'toil'. The colour of the bushfires that ravage our countryside. The colour of our harsh, unforgiving sun. I remember waking up in the middle of the year to find the city covered in orange dust. It had swept in from the central Australia on powerful winds and engulfed Sydney, turning everything orange. Despite my initial thoughts (i honestly believed that the sky had exploded or that there was a huge fire) the dust storm was actually rather beautiful. the city went quiet, there were hardly any people on the streets. there was no noise. i suppose dust storms are our snow storms - people retreat inside to let nature rage in all its glory.

Similarly, blue can claim a place in my heart because of its ties to thing that I love about Australia - the beach, the sky, the water, the freedom. Water, dark and deep, stretching out to a horizon, flawless and neverending, is one of my favourite sights in the whole world. You know that bit in Pirates of a Carribbean, when Captain Jack Sparrow explains the allure of ships and sailing? 'Not just the spanish Main, luv. The entire ocean. The entire world. Wherever we want to go, we'll go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs. But what a ship is... What the black pearl really is... is freedom.' Perhaps I was a Pirate in another life, but that sight of water, and sky and overpowering, infinite blue makes my heart soar.

Australian desert - flickr

Together blue and orange represent Australia more potently than green and gold, i think. Blue and Orange is what we are, desert and water and sky and land. Sure, blue could be any country's, but that same kind of blue. Not the flawless, sparkling blue of Australian water. Not that mighty azure blue of our sky that really is so different to that which stretches across other parts of the world. Although it may rain, it may pour, it may fog over occasionally, it always treats us at the end with a rainbow as if to say sorry for some indiscretion.

That's why i love orange and blue, because they are a great combination together. Like desert and sky, or sand and water, they go together perfectly. They balance out. The brightest of sherbert oranges looks amazing with a pastel blue dress, and burnt orange is striking against the darker teal shades. Coral goes perfectly with royal blue. At the beginning of this post I quoted from Alexander McCall-Smith, in his latest novel an Australian character reminisces about his past childhood where the sky was 'a great theatre for the sun'. I think that blue is a great theatre for orange, and vice versa. They bring out the best in each other - Orange's rich tonal varieties appear to their most potent when contrasted against blue and all her depth.

my friend and i at the beginning of this year - summer staples in summer colours.

You may not remember, but wayyy back in march of this year I made a couple of purchases. It was these two things - a Richard Nicoll shirt dress in the most captivating of murky blues and a Mad Cortes bright orange silk shirt that set the tone for my wardrobe until about July. I had sort of forgotten about them until now, let these two great pieces that I wore in constant rotation, together, back then be lost. But when looking for clothes to take to New York I found them again, and am deeply back in love. It's like at the end of the Sex and the City movie when Miranda asks 'why did we ever stop drinking these?'. I don't know why I ever stopped wearing it, but i know such an oversight is never going to happen again.

And though it may not be boardshorts and a bonds singlet, or it may not be green and gold, i feel very Australian in this outfit. I might even wear it to Australia Day! Now that's a thought... Right now, though, all i can think about is this gorgeous yves saint laurent ring. It's a similar vein to the turquoise one we all fawned over last year, but slightly more. It's organic - i love the way the gold claws over the stone. And the colour of that burnt orange... My heart sings.

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