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sweat


So you gotta excuse the black eye - poor Ellen Roark had just been kidnapped, beaten and left for death at the pivotal moment in A Time To Kill when Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey with that trademark southern drawl showing why he was born to play a lawyer, even if he never gets to take his shirt off) is going full steam ahead with his defence of Carl Lee Hailey and him and his team, including little Ellen, a freshman at Ole Miss, with her midriff shirts and her fancy porsche car, who gets caught up in the middle of all of this for better and for worse, are getting into all kinds of trouble. I was going to do a cinematic style on her, but then I got caught up in Grisham-mania and did Julia Roberts instead. And also, really, the best thing about Sandra Bullock's style in this movie is this Reebok sweatshirt. The circumstances leading up to the wearing of the sweatshirt are not ideal, but isn't it great? That perfect marle grey colour, the high-school football lettering, the blue, yellow and grey. I still want that uni sweatshirt to wear on my days off to wandering around my 'hood, buying important things like bread and fresh flowers and back issues of Vogue UK. I wouldn't mind an old Reebok one too. I wonder if there's one lurking around in my dad's cupboard...

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cinematic style - Julia Roberts in The Pelican Brief







Darby Shaw you beautiful little go-getter you. Pre-law at Tulane, Julia Roberts' Shaw in The Pelican Brief epitomises that early 1990s casual style. I've been thinking about Darby recently for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'm writing my last ever essay for history (!!!) on legal fiction of the early 1990s, and obviously we've got some Grisham figuring in there. But also because, as a student, I've always been drawn to representations of university or college life - and style. In her student guise she wouldn’t be seen dead in anything other than too-baggy sweatshirts and leggings and trainers. When she’s trying to foil a dastardly plot by a Southern oil giant to stack the Supreme Court with judges who are pro-his case she wears some double-breasted pastel blazers, high-waisted denim and classic court heels, or my favourite – a short-sleeved midi dress with thigh high splits (Stellaaaaaaa!) with a matching vest, all in a washed-out, forget-me-not blue. How could you forget Darby Shaw? Sam Shephard couldn’t. And what about Denzel Washington? He certainly couldn’t forget Darby Shaw. I wonder if people forget me when I wander around campus in sweatshirts and tapered slacks?

There’s a wonderfully sexist description of Darby by John Grisham in the original novel, and it goes something like this. “For two brutal years, one of the few pleasures of law school had been to watch as she graced the halls and rooms with her long legs and baggy sweaters. There was a fabulous body in there somewhere, they could tell. But she was not one to flaunt it”. Julia Roberts is all that and more. She spends most of the movie hiding that Pretty Woman body in out-sized oatmeal sweaters and ochre-hued shirts, and tucking those wayward tendrils under baseball caps and headbands. In the film this tension between Darby's dynamic, active control over her life and her simple - sloppy even - wardrobe is made all the more exaggerated in the film by the sheer, almost remarkable beauty of Julia Roberts herself. Remember, this is just 3 years after she makes Pretty Woman, and following on from Steel Magnolias and Sleeping with the Enemy. If she wasn't "the most popular actress in America" she was almost, almost there (and after this film, and My Best Friend's Wedding in 1997 and Notting Hill just a year later she would be). This isn't the kind of makeunder that Charlize Theron endured to win her oscar, but there is an element of this here. Darby Shaw is a great beauty, but she doesn't dress like one.

What does that mean, anyway? That just because she doesn't wear fitted clothes and toss her hair that she can't be a great beauty? More so than any kind of crime-fiction thrill or investigative journalism impetus, what I always draw from this film is how when you're running around trying to save the world - well, save your world - you'll be much better off doing it in sweats and jeans than you will be in heels and leather. I mean, Lucy Liu, My Girl Drew and Cameron D looked great and all, but it's not exactly practical, is it? And, anyway, the moral of the story is, Darby Shaw gets her happy ending. And she's barefoot in a massive, blown-out chambray shirt when she gets it.

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picnic


Photos by Rachel Kara, Words by me. See the full post on Rachel's blog!

Some days are made for ginger cake. They are those days at the end of August - an Australian August, a Sydney august - when there are blue skies and bright sun but a stubborn, resistant chill in the air. I'm not going without a fight, it says. You can't get rid of me that easily. Because we try, how we try! to shake off the cobwebs of winter as we shrug on little chambray shirts and strappy sandals and defiantly parade our first bare legs of the season. And those are the days that you need ginger cake. You need it because it's cold and sometimes only cake will do, and if it's going to be cake you might as well make it something dense but not overpowering, with a handful of grated carrot thrown into the mix, and a practiced, too-easy shake of cinnamon (from the wrist, of course!) and a good cup - or two, if you're particularly generous, which we are, of course - of crystallised ginger which you cut into gem-like slivers and distribute with a fair but gentle hand (noblesse oblige) throughout the honey-hued mix in the scant few moments before you put it in the oven. That's why you need ginger cake. But you want ginger cake because it's really, really,really delicious. 

There were other things at this picnic for a trio of friends, too. Some ice tea and raspberry lemonade to drink. A loaf of crusty bread, some butter (not French, but Danish, which is the next best thing), two different types of jam (Rose Bakery's apricot and lavender leaf and home-made cherry and vanilla), Fromage D'affinois, which is a hard-working little crowd-pleaser of a cheese if ever we saw one, and some ham off the bone. 

We planned this picnic spontaneously - as most of our food excursions are - over the counter at bread and circus as we saw the glimmer of a shared Saturday afternoon off. Lucinda, whose birthday celebrations we missed last month, was dragged along for the ride, and our duo became a trio. The problem with spontaneous picnics is that the weather doesn't always co-operate. It was just a tiny little bit too cold to be sitting out all afternoon, even this late in August, with just a cotton rug for warmth. As the sun sunk further and further out of sight and the wind kicked up - as winds are loath to do, cheeky little things - none of us wanted to be the first to pike out and make the move inside. Part of this was because of the array of food before us, too good to abandon because of a trifling little wind, but part of it was because of how great it all really was. Spontaneous and unpretentious and totally easy. An afternoon of laughter and advice and confidences shared with exasperated shrugs punctuated by that comforting and even a little therapeutic routine of sharing food. Just some rough-cut bread and butter and jam, some slices of cheese and ham, and a generous slab of ginger cake. 

You could say that me and Rachel are food explorers - we go botanising amongst the produce, to butcher Benjamin's phrase - so see us bake a cake, review The Grounds and have breakfast in New York at Cafe Gitane. More food stuff to come, as always!

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repose


One afternoon I stopped. Just like that. I had been walking all day - uptown, downtown, turn the beat around town - and I was exhausted. I was meeting a friend later that night for dinner - a raucous, eye-watering dinner that would turn into a raucous, eye-watering morning - at a mexican restaurant in soho and I didn't want to go all the way home to brooklyn but I just simply couldn't shop anymore. Sometimes you hit a wall. I knew more than I knew anything else at that moment that I had to sit down, and I had to have some tea, and if I was going to have tea I might as well have some cake, and I just had to do it right now. 

At first I didn't see it because I was so tired. I walked right past it the first time and then did this comical, almost cinematic - not in grace, just in goofiness - swivel-cum-backtrack. A tiny little shop front. Flowers in the window. A few cosy tables. The word smoothie scrawled almost illegibly in what I like to call 'boy handwriting' across a mirrored sideboard. I stood there for a moment, staring into the window. What was this magical place? The more I stared the more I saw - white walls, wooden benches, plump cushions, an appetising cake stand of something dark - brownies?? mud cake??? slice??? the possibilities of pastry balm to my exhausted self were endless.

"Are you going to stand there all afternoon on the sidewalk and freeze to death?"

The words were joking and they came with a smile, but more than that - and even more than the blue-eyed, rough-hewn man who delivered them - was the accent. It was Australian. I had stumbled upon an Australian in New York. No big deal, really, considering the amount of expats and the neighbourhood I was in. We were right next door to the ksubi store for crying out loud. But an Australian voice in an Australian cafe making an Australian coffee (I mean really, how hard is it to make a flat white?) and eating Australian pastry - further examination revealed that those dark delights on the pastry strand were, in fact, lamingtons, of course - was exactly what this Australian girl needed. It's not a particularly Australian thing to do; sit in cafes for 4 hours and read a book and drink tea and go on your computer for a bit, and talk to the cute barista who is also a sculpture artist from Brisbane who has been living in New York for just 3 weeks but already feels at home. But it is something that I like to do. It is something that I don't do enough - or enough as I wish that I did - because I think I do my best work (university, here, life) when I sit at cafes and drink something warm and just write. Perhaps it's something that writers in particular need to do. I wish it didn't take complete and utter physical exhaustion to force me to unwind for hours on end in a cafe but sometimes I'm glad that it does. Because it means that, above everything, I really enjoy it.

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footloose

I love sandals. I really do. And now that the sun is shining - even if it does get a little chilly underfoot in the evening - I'm breaking out my favourites in all their glory. I've got my k.jacques ones out from their dusty boxes, unearthed my old favourite A.P.C and Benah pairs and have just unwrapped a brand new pair from Cali and Cale that I can't wait to wear. There's something about sandals that make me so, so happy. Just by wearing them. They're easy and simple and they go with everything. In Spring - and these brief moments at the end of August that are slowly but surely starting to warm up - I love nothing more than wearing a typically winter outfit; cosy jumper, baggy chinos, maybe even a cashmiracle wrap, with a pair of strappy leather sandals. I've been wearing them for the past few days and, barring some freak weather aberration, I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. 







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trio


My first love was L'Eglise, which reminded me of my old school chapel, quiet and dark and smelling like myrrh and frankincense. Wooden booths that covered the sides and pews that stretched out in neat orderly rows, sandstone walls, gilded edges. I lit it for the first time in the blue mountains and curled up in front of a fire and thought of home. My second was Le Sud, firstly because of the hit of lavender, and then because of the lavender, and then because of the lavender. It really does smell like the south of France, like this. And my third love, set to become a new favourite, La Rose. I lit it for the first time just now, and, it is nothing more or less than what Elise said; a bouquet of roses. Candles are one of the great small pleasures of life, a touch of luxury that is simple and uncomplicated, yet ephemeral and visceral, as all luxury should be. But the best thing about candles, which allows them to - in my brooks - trump champagne, or chocolate, or any other of those small pleasures that life dangles before us on so many occasions, is that the memory of them - that waxy feel, that fragrant smell, that smoky wick - will last forever.

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the colour



I have a friend who loves the colour green. Green bags, green wallets, green sweaters, green bedspreads, green laptop cases, green umbrellas, green ballet flats and green turtle-shaped decorative lamps. She's tiny and cute and her love for green is so passionate and heart-felt it's endearing and it makes me smile everytime I hear her gush about something green. I'm sure that one day she will live in a house with green walls and a garden full of green leaves and wear a green dress every day.

On days like today in Sydney - still winter, but hot and sticky and with a dry wind meandering through it all - it's not hard to remember that this time last year I was surrounded by green myself in country France. As we walks those tree-lined avenues, leading to good things like chateaus and museums and tiny little village restaurants, or the leafy foliage of our secret picnic spot, where 'by the bank of the Seine we sat down and wept', or the windows shrouded with green hedges that we peered through in medieval towns, or the days where we sat in our courtyard terrace, shaded by trees and washing lines, and watched the movement of clouds. I think that green, true green, is always shocking. In Australia things are not so much green as they are yellow, or orange, or even blue. But I love it!

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so long, farewell


Oh boy I'm gonna miss you usyd, you beautiful, beautiful thing you. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

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spring-a-ling



I love winter, I really do, I love the coats and the scarves and the long pants and the boots and the knitwear, and the wrapping up, and the belting of the things, and the bracing cups of tea, and the warm soup, and the steam, and the rushing around, and the fires, and the wind, and even the rain, but there's something kind of really, truly wonderful and just wearing a shirt, and a pair of sandals and having a so-fresh-so-clean salad for lunch and a glass of apple, carrot and ginger juice. I don't want to cheat on winter, you'll always be my one true love, but, you know, sunshine is nice too. Well met, almost-spring.

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summer wardrobe planning - 2013: continuing thoughts



1. A massive, so-big-you-look-kind-of-homeless, wrap-around-you-three-times trench coat in the perfect shade of tobacco brown.
2. A plain black swimsuit with thin straps, low scoop back and a high leg. 
3. A leather backpack  Coach Legacy Duffle instead!
4. The perfect hat
5. An oversized smock dress, long-ish, like maybe calf length, with pockets and a boat neck in a nice neutral brown colour.
 

It's not often that I reflect on my shopping list before I've actually purchased anything, but there are few things I wanted to mull over. Firstly, I read this article on Into the Gloss by ex-WWD writer and current Into the Gloss Associate Editor Alessandra Codinha defending her decision to wear one-piece swimsuits. As a fan of the one-piece myself I have to agree with everything that she says. I am reasonably self-confident in my body, flaws and all, and that really has nothing to do with my love for the figure-hugging, full-coverage maillot. For me it is always - has always - been about glamour. I love that streamlined silhouette of a black one-piece, the kind of classic, no-nonsense sensuality of someone who knows who they are. Someone like Elizabeth Taylor, or Bo Derek, or even Farrah Fawcett with all those blown-out curls and that million-dollar Playboy smile. I haven't changed my desire to get a one-piece swimsuit, in fact, quite the contrary. Reading this article has only made me want one even more. 

Secondly, I think I'm re-thinking my desire for a backpack. I still like them objectively, and I still think that if the right one comes along (probably vintage) then I would snap it up without hesitation, but at the moment a different kind of bag is holding court over my imagination. The Coach Legacy Duffle - I think in navy blue!! The colour is so rich and intense, and I think it would look beautiful against the neutral shades of brown and khaki in my wardrobe - is the one. As I mused recently, it would make the most perfect travel bag, just the right size for everyday. The only problem - as far as bags go I've got a pretty complete collection. I don't really need another bag. So I'm going to cross off the backpack and add the Coach bag, and also sell a few of my existing bags in order to make room for another. One in, one out. That's only fair!

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cinematic style - Gwyneth Paltrow in Possession



Look, I'm not going to say that this is where Claire Waight-Keller got her inspiration from, but come on.. Look at the coats! The quilting! the turtleneck sweaters! That washed-out colour palette! It's like the perfect realisation of Stella McCartney's no-nonsense minimalism, Gwyneth's own polished New Yawker gladrags (although she does play a Brit in this film) with a dash of early 00s academia (that corduroy trouser suit, be still my beating heart!) thrown in for good measure. Possession is another one of my favourite books that was made into a movie that kind of went under the radar. Maybe because it's not very good? I don't know. I like it. It has impeccable, perfect casting - with the exception of Aaron Eckhart, I love you, man, but you're way too good looking to play Roland, sorry - and a really beautiful way with the camera. It's a lovely film to look at, costumes and all, and that to me makes it an enjoyable film.

When I say it has impeccable casting, I really mean it. Gwyneth Paltrow is perfect for this role, even if she's a prettier version of Maud than what the books represents. Maud's feminist, "eats men for breakfast" froideur is exactly how I've always seen Gwyneth. She has an icy exterior always, even when she's rapping Gangsta Gangsta. And there's this one bit in Possession that I've always loved,  when Fergus is taunting Maud, who keeps her honey-coloured ramparts wrapped up in a turban, paraphrasing that lovely Yeats poem, "who could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair?" Look at Gwyneth's hair and tell me that it's not her best feature. They didn't have turbans in this adaptation (god, I'm just picking it apart now aren't I!) but they did keep it pulled back, oil-slick straight in a bun at all times, until that delicious moment when she lets it all tumble down...

The style in this movie is just all good. Roland's costumes are suitably "I read English at Oxford", with elbow-patch jackets and even more turtlenecks. Even the 19th century get up of Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle are well done. But it's Gwyneth's looks that take the cake. I'm never going to get over those oversized coats - a different one for every scene, if you've got it, flaunt it, you know - that she wraps around herself against the bitter Yorkshire chill. I love that colour scheme: oatmeals and tweeds and ice greys and chambray blue pyjama sets. I love that Anne Klein minimalism, the sweaters with the thin tie at the true waist and the bootleg pants (bootleg pants! those were the days!). It's all so chic! It's all so CBK (and wouldn't Gwyneth make the most perfect CBK if they ever made a movie about her life?), which is totally fine because she was amazing, and her style was amazing, and it inspired a generation to be better than the gap and dream big and wear exclusively camel-coloured turtlenecks everyday for the rest of their lives. As I contemplate doing an honours year I've been reading and watching things that remind me of academia. I know that continuing education is not going to look like this but, oh, wouldn't it be fantastic if it did!

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the ideal



Isn't this how we all want to dress? Isn't this exactly the kind of girl we picture in our mind when we stand in front of the wardrobe, head cocked to one side, the base of our foot resting against the side of one calf as we contemplate the sad-looking threads that hang up on wooden coathangers? Isn't that exactly the kind of blue shirt - definitely 'borrowed from the boyfriend', big enough to flare out at the back, with pockets to hang sunglasses from and drop your phone in and starch-crisp cuffs - that we search for through an endless ream of stores? Isn't that exactly the kind of anklet - gold and glam and all of that good stuff - that we dream of slipping around our feet every day for a touch of modern insouciance? Aren't those exactly the kind of red ballet flats that you seem to spend the whole of your life looking for, round-toed but not too round-toed, flat but with the perfect amount of arch, with a high back and a low side-cut and oh, don't even get me started on that lipstick hue?

If I lived in New York I would dress just like this.

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escape


When we pulled up in front of the house it was dark, and it was cold, and we were tired. We had been driving all day, not because it was a particularly great distance, but because we had made so many stop-offs on the way - a chateau here, a market there, a lemonade stall by the side of the road... Anything would do. It was summer, it was France and it was hot. Didn't we have to sight-see, eat and drink? It's only natural.

So the next morning when the sun rose high over the hills we opened the shutters and saw everything. Saw the view of the seine, stretching out languid as a teenager before us, saw the town, just a few smatterings of ochre-hued roofs dotting the greenery here and there. And we saw chocolate cake. Triple-layered, tall and proud, filled with raspberries and chocolate buttercream, sitting on the kitchen bench like some kind of gift from the Gods. It turned out it was just a gift from the owners of the house, welcoming us to our stay and wishing us a pleasant journey, but my goodness, did it seem like something otherworldly that morning. We stood in front of it. We admired it. And we ate it. Literally, stood around the cake, forks moving with a vicious, competitive energy that knew no bounds, hand-to-mouth. It was delicious. It was shocking. Like fresh raspberries the size of a thumbnail from a marketplace in Provins, like going to sleep in darkness and cold and mist and waking up in sunshine and heat and the perfect country cottage house right on the river with a chocolate cake sitting in the middle of the kitchen.

Finding peace in the madness of modern life isn't easy. This isn't about a retreat to the pastoral - even though it may sound like it - this house could have been in the middle of the city and it would have been the same. It wasn't the green and the trees and the river, at least, it wasn't all about that. It was the wooden floors, the hand-stitched quilts, the wide windows, tea, books, crusty white bread with fresh butter. A week in a house with no TV and no computer was less about how to waste time than it was about how to spend time, and that is the tale of true escape. Distance, comfort and cake.

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Legacy



There's something kind of special about this bag. It's so simple - Coach???? Really?? - and it harkens back to the a retro, 1970s world of flared jeans and tucked in shirts. This is the kind of bag that you would pair with Equipment and double denim, or smock tops and tapered trousers. I remember being charmed by this when I first saw it pop up on Hanneli's blog last year. She always looks like she might have stepped out of a Charlies Angels' set or something, and here is no different. White on white, ankle boots, one lovely silver bracelet and that bag. It really does grow on you, doesn't it? I love its simplicity. I love that practical shape and no-nonsense design. I love that beautiful, glossy leather. I love the colour of that rich cognac brown (but I'm also partial to the rich navy blue!). I love that my style advisor friends have given it the go-ahead, all with the same thought process that I was going through myself (so retro! so New York! So Jackie Kennedy crossing the street!!!). If I do end up getting it, I'll probably have to sell my Chloe Marcie crossbody - one in, one out. I can see this being a pretty good travel bag, which my Chloe currently fulfils. Imagine... a Parisian breakfast of croissant and chocolat at some cafe in the dead of winter, with this bag slung nonchalant across the back of the chair. Sounds good, hey?

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sand


This is never going to get old. Ever. Not when it fuels the dreams of a house near a beach - not a beach house, more of a beach home - with lots of light and a log fireplace (this could only ever be in England, right?). Of old photographs taped up on the walls and walks in the wind and a place to call your own that you can fill with your mess, and your things, and your stuff and have tea and biscuits after it all. I've always loved homes that aren't perfectly neat and tidy, because I'm not perfectly neat and tidy. I think that Margaret Howell is my kind of label, but because it's so hard to find in Australia I'll just have to wait till next year when I can check it out for myself in London. Dreams of a sand-coloured parka and a wardrobe of Joan-worthy separates are more than enough for now.

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