treats

private


Remember that friend who moved to Paris to make pastries and generally live the dream? Well, she made these the other day. She actually made them. She's always been one of life's generally perfect people, and I miss her so much. She used to live in this beautiful little shoe-box apartment and I would call her up when I was going to bloodorange, or having tea at room 10 and we'd meet up near the fountain and just tell each other everything that was going on in our lives. She used to work in the french bakery and she would sneak me croissants over the counter. On her 18th birthday we went to Sel et Poivre and we had snails. I still can't quite believe she's actually doing all those things we talked about. It makes me think. It makes me think really hard about what I'm going to do next year when I finish uni. What do I really want, what's holding me back, what can I do? What can I not do? What I really want right now, though, is some macarons.

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the now



1 and 6: badlands, 3: RUSSH, 5 and 7: My Chameleon, the rest: my polyvore


When RUSSH profiled TOME way back when, they summed it up better than anyone else. "TOME is now." Some things are so compelling that even though you are looking at the future (future seasons, future collections, future orders) you can only think about now. So it was when I first saw that original slice of TOME last year, the two-tone denim shirts, the flirty taffeta skirts, the simple dresses and easy silk tees. So it is now when I look at shots from their new collection - the best of which Talisa has joined together on her blog, including that incredible oversized trench coat, probably the best of the variety I've seen in a while, and the amazing Karate Kid-esque white smock, complete with obi belt and high neckline - and can do nothing but long, and I mean actually long, for these pieces to be in my wardrobe now. It's the cruel irony of the international fashion circuit that the moment you see clothes pertinent to your season now (European winter collections were just presented on the runways and are being shown at the moment) it is accompanied by the knowledge that they won't be in stores for another 6 months. When all I want to do is wear TOME now, please, I have to wait a little while for that amazing trench and smock to drop. Until then, I'll settle for gazingly lovingly at their first offering, admiring those soft-as-anything jerseys and silky-smooth taffetas and dreaming of the kind of wardrobe where nothing is forced, nothing is difficult, and everything is of the now.

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cinematic style - Johnny Depp in Chocolat



Stevie does a pretty great series of posts like this - where she takes the wardrobe of a character or characters from the movies and shares what's great about it. I've been thinking of starting one for a little while, and a recent re-viewing of Chocolat reminded me just how great that film is. The provincial french life, Vianne's red suede heels, that incredible spanish-influenced soundtrack! I studied this film as a related text in year 12 English, but the first time I saw it was as a shiny-haired 10 year old with my best friend and her mum. What I remember most about the aftermath was how much we both wanted to each chocolate - we ended up dragging her mum into the corner store to buy us Kinder Surprises - and I have loved this ever since. My mum has a friend who is like Vianne. A veritable free spirit, she wears 1950s-esque clothes and dyes her hair and is one of the most creative and enterprising people I know. A joy to be around. 

Vianne's wardrobe is pretty lovely - shawls and full skirts and cropped cardigans and all of that good stuff. But it's Roux's wardrobe that I wanted to remark on. It's Johnny Depp at his best - tall and tanned and quite, quite lovely - with that Irish brogue and that beaten up leather jacket and the sailor's-neck sweaters with holes in their collars. I love how he wears a lot of blue and burgundy in this film - blue on blue, burgundy on burgundy. My favourite look is the blue sweater with the blue cords. Delicious. It's the wardrobe of a guy who goes where the wind takes him, the OG "river rat", someone who will roll up his sleeves and say "I can fix that" with a smile. He wears braces like no-one else and doesn't mind a bit of man jewellery and there's not a cuban heel in sight. You can't tie him down. He'll go away with his worn-in jacket on his shoulders when the time seems right and there'll be nothing you can do about it. But, if you're lucky, he'll come back with a smile on his face and his shirt un-buttoned and you'll give him his favourite - a cup of hot chocolate.

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all gone


A slice of Carrot Cake from Bourke St Bakery.

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think pink


Well, I might as well push the boat out. 

The Gentlewoman's fantastic new issue // prettiest pink roses // Aesop Rose hair and scalp masque // Line and Jo's Roberta ring with its salmon pink packaging // very busy and important planning meeting at Room 10 with Rachel scoffing that glorious, prosciutto covered Salvatori.

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soon

all photos by Clarice Demory on her blog En Suite, images from Alix Thomsen, Alexandre Thumelle, Tara Meyer and Sophie Toulouse's apartments and Thierry Boutemy's Fleuriste as well as these posts: 1, 2, 3.


My idyllic few weeks spent running up and down from my house to the Chauvel Cinema for the French Film Festival is almost over, with the last couple of movies rolling out over the next few days and I'm a little sad. It was fun to forget all of life's craziness - and there is much of that at the moment - and sit back in velvet chairs and watch movies that were a little quirky, a little bizarre, but totally charming. And so full of French! The film I saw on Monday with my mum - Baisers de Papillon (Butterfly Kiss) - was incredibly moving yet so simple, and since I couldn't see the subtitles I ended up listening to most of the film. It was difficult, especially since my French has enjoyed a steady decline since I stopped taking formal lessons, but I surprised myself by my level of comprehension. It has spurred me into wanting to start French again and commit to it this time. A New Years resolution made in March - we're allowed to do that, right?

The more I think about it, the more I realise that I've been thinking about France - and Paris especially - a lot recently. I don't know what that means. I think maybe it means that I want to go there for a while, not just a couple of weeks, and live there, maybe after uni. I don't know if that's going to happen and maybe I'm just tossing ideas around. Maybe I've been wearing too much Carven, or Isabel, or listening to too much Charlotte Gainsbourg or spraying too much Diptyque and remembering the perfect Paris moments of my last holiday so much so that I feel like Carey Mulligan in an education humming to herself in her room. A couple of my friends have just made the big leap overseas - to Singapore, to New York, to Paris! - and I envy them their bravery and their courage. My friend who is now in Paris is actually living her dream, attending patisserie school and living in a tiny flat with white walls and high ceilings and speaking French every day. When we were at school together we would always have these wild day dreams in French about how we were going to move to Paris and eat croissants and marry Louis Garrel (on a time-share, obviously). I can't believe she's actually doing everything we talked about those incredibly long five years ago. I'm envious, I'm so envious. 

 It doesn't help that pretty much the only thing I've been doing the past couple of days - instead of uni readings or important and pressing essays - has been scrolling through the archives of En Suite. I found this site through a lovely Australian blog Somewhere, here, and Dee in turn found it through Natalie's (amazing) new blog Magic Surrounds. I can't stop looking at these pictures, so simple and easy and unforced and yet, so full of life. I love how real the apartments are, the rubbish bins are overflowing, there are boxes of unpacked bits and bobs, it looks like someone actually lives there. I love the Selby, but sometimes I get the feeling that these people are just models, hired to pose in an empty space for a few hours. This is the kind of apartment that I want when I'm all grown up and very busy and important. If I move to Paris I have this vie-en-rose certainty that this is what my life will be like; wooden floorboards, clean sheets and breakfast in bed. I'm going to work from home and wear ballet flats always and have fresh flowers simply everywhere. And I'm going to be so, so happy!

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sneak peek: kenzo




Yes. Sahra is wearing that Kenzo top from the new collection by designers Carol Lim and Humberto Leon of Opening Ceremony. You know the one - featured on street style stars and illuminated by Maya Villiger in an editorial for Oyster. It's so much fun with its little peplum and it's bright shape I think it might be my favourite piece from the collection. You can see everything that will be arriving at The Corner Shop over on their blog - believe me, it's some kind of wonderful.

Check out the whole post on The Corner Shop blog here

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back to school

"Oxford - submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding in - Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when to chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still joyously over the intervening clamour."

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh



The start of uni - going back, buying books, that fresh paper smell, that feeling of levity and a supreme sense of confidence in your abilities - is something quite marvelous. Somewhere in the third or fourth week it spirals downwards as assessments pile up and classes take a turn for the worst, but at the start, on the first day, in that first step back onto campus after a blissful summer holiday it seems like anything can - and will - happen this year. It's a feeling that is somewhat magnified when you're in your last year of study. In second and third year when I started it was with a sense of "getting shit done", I was here to slog out the year and get it over with and that was that. There wasn't a sense of the magical so much as there was the mundane. This was routine. But in my first year - and now, in my fourth and final - I arrived on campus with something I can only describe as elation. When I was freshly 18 it was the elation of tertiary study and the first steps into adulthood and of borrowing books from the storied Fisher library and making intelligent conversation in tutorials. Some of you who have been reading long enough will remember my first day of uni. (my, how so many things have changed! how so many things have changed...)

 But fourth year is a different kind of elation. It's not an aching happiness in the knowledge that you are finishing; that would be relief, and I haven't felt that, not quite yet. I want to finish but I won't be relieved when it occurs. I happen to quite like university, that is, I happen to quite like learning. It's an elation that holds a strong sense of satisfaction. I've stuck it out with something that people thought I wouldn't - or shouldn't - do. I've made it through the hard and the easy, the fantastic subject choices (Jane Austen and her contemporaries and American Indian Holocaust question-mark?) and the not-so-fantastic (I still regret that damn Medieval Germany subject from second year, that was a mistake). I was elated when I first walked onto campus three weeks ago because I finally felt comfortable and like I knew what I was doing, at least in some small respect in regards to my education. I may not have any idea about what's going to happen when I finish or even what's going to happen this weekend, but when it comes to education I know I made the right decision four years ago to go somewhere where I could learn something about media and journalism but also balance it out with my favourites: English and History. These things have kept me sane these past couple of years as I have battled with learning html for online media, or how to operate a marantz recorder, or struggled with the ethical implications of press releases. I had a real feeling of success. And, on that first day, I had the feeling that anything could happen. If you talk to me now - especially today - you might hear something different, but I felt pretty happy back then.

I think it has something to do with how bloody good Sydney Uni looks. I took these photos on one quite spectacular day last week when the sun was high and there wasn't a cloud in sight and Sydney was resplendent in sandstone and mossy green. The Quad at Sydney Uni couldn't be more perfect in its loveliness. Even four years in I can't shake the feeling that this is the way that universities ought to look. It has that "cloistral hush which gives our laughter resonance". Its age makes our youth - my youth - remarkable. A couple of other things that add to the university experience. A new bag for carrying all those books and pens and apples and magazines and water bottles around. Comfy walking shoes, buttoned up shirts and something to keep the time (although to be honest it doesn't really work - I've been late every day this week, for shame). A gang of friends to walk down Eastern Avenue with - perhaps not as cliquey as Emmanuelle et al, though. And a bike. University isn't university unless you can bike around in cable-knit sweater and your sleeves rolled up like Charles and Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited. I still remember the first time I watched the television series. I had just finished school and my parents had gone away for the weekend and left me with some pastabilities four cheese ravioli packets and the 12-episode series of Brideshead Revisited. I watched it all in one go and was enchanted. Enchanted by Jeremy Irons' dulcet tones, by champagne saucers resting on fountain edges, by getaways in Venice, by the "thin batsqueak of sexuality" that Charles felt when he lit Julia's cigarette for her, and by the possibility that at uni, if everything went right, it might be always summer.

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ps. That last clip and the screenshot above are from the movie version with Hayley Atwell and Mathew Goode which is also excellent, but the TV series is even better.
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high of 21




Tim Bailey proclaimed that it would be a high of 21, cloudy and wet today, and what Tim Bailey says is Law, so accordingly I have shacked up in this incredible Amy Kaehne coat - which I rhapsodised over here - double tied to keep me extra toasty, my favourite COS oatmeal sweater (actually a pyjama top but I've said it once, I'll say it again - I do what I want) and the perfect tapered trousers pilfered, as most good things in my life have been, from my mum's wardrobe. Summer is definitely, definitely over!

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my kind of gal



This was good in the way that spanish tortilla or home-made mac and cheese is good - it looks kind of wrong but it feels so right. Who cares if the shapes are unflattering? Wearing things that make you look good is so last season. An over oversized silhouette is the kind of thing that I want to wear, and I haven't seen shapes this good in a long time. Boring leather skirts that hit below the knee (yes!), ballooning jackets and coats in shades of salmon pink and lemon yellow (yes! yes!), funny, frumpy, bizarre-o sweaters in a wide cut with the sleeves rolled up (oh, yes!). Everything was bad at the Chloe show, which is to say, it was so very, very good. 

The bags were either too big or too small - little crossbody things on dainty chains or oversized clutches with triple zippers and lots of pockets. The shoes were clompy - flatform wedges with an ankle strap or the kind of mary-jane with a massive heel you could stomp around in. The colours were kind of weird - classic french lace in creams jostled for attention alongside ox-blood red, mustard yellow and mint green. In fact, nothing was just right. But I'm no goldilocks. I don't want just right, I don't even want too small. I want too big with plenty of room to breathe and more fabric than you can poke a stick at. If you can hide within a too-big fleecy lining then sign me up. If you can shove your hands deep into your pockets then sign me up. If, in my favourite look from the whole collection, you can layer a delicate little lace thing under a printed sweatshirt then please, please, please, sign me up! People have been saying it looked like the dowdy younger sister of Celine. Well - I've always said that as much as I love and admire everything that Phoebe Philo even looks at  I often feel that it is too polished for me, too grown up, too sophisticated. My hair is too messy, my nail polish too chipped, my clothes a bit too scruffy. I'm just, I think, a bit too young. And that's that.

People can dislike it all they want. People can say that it looks more like Stella McCartney or Celine than it does Chloe (and yes, there are touches of both to it, but it bears remembering that both Stella and Phoebe worked at Chloe previously). I have loved Claire Waight Keller since the moment she sent massive cable knit sweaters in shades of clotted cream parading down the Pringle catwalk. This collection is the Chloe DNA but modernised for the contemporary trends. Modernised for the Ashley Olsen generation who like their clothes a little bigger. There were still elements of the pretty - pastel shades and dainty bags and little slips-of-things lace pieces. There were still elements of the youthful - comfortable shoes for running around in, fantastic coats for wearing to death, plenty of leather. And there was plenty that was French - the bow-tie jumpsuit, the simple silk shirts and the chic clutch bags. But it all seemed so new, what with the little ankle cuffs on the pants, or the XXL cut of the culottes, or lace-fleece-cotton mix sweatshirts. And it all seemed so British, too. It was cosy and quirky and not at all sexy. Alexa Chung, distilled into clothes. And I want it all!

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