the last first

“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package, I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

Joan Didion, commencement address at the University of California, 1975




Today was the last first day of semester I'm ever going to have. Sure, that's what I thought last year, but I really mean it this time. Last year I wasn't ready. But this year it's different. The end feels right. Thankfully, it's not quite yet. There's books on hong kong to read and a thesis to write, but I can see it somewhere in the future, and it's scary, yes, and stressful, god yes, but it's also, in some manic, frustrating kind of way, exciting. I think that's how the last first day should feel. The feeling that life, such as it is, such as it may ever be, is hovering right around the corner. And the only thing that that lies in between are the last few months of student freedom, of breakfasts at 11 am, ink-stained fingertips and days spent lost in the library.

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the ear



Cassi Van Den Dungen for Ryan Storer

I'm still in love with fashion's current obsession with the ear. I've been permanently attached to my matching set of BRVTVS vectis earrings and delicate little cuff, but right now I have my eye on a little duo of refined bling by Ryan Storer. There's something to so wonderful about the way his pieces contrast technical ingenuity (I've tried on those ear cuffs and the way they hook to your ear is fantastic) with a real sense of ceremony. Out of all the four corners of the jewellery world the earring is the one that fells the most special as you clip it/fix it on. The dream scenario would be sitting at a dresser, hair curled over one shoulder, leaning ever so slightly forward to catch the right angle in the mirror. But even the way I do it - harried and rushed in the front seat of the car, window shade hanging down - does the trick. It's a small touch of elegance that is often overlooked, and one that I'm looking to add to slick all-black COS ensembles for the few evenings out I have planned before the thesis lockdown really begins.

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what a lot of parties

"'Oh Nina, what a lot of parties.' (... masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity … Those vile bodies...)"

Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies




Paris Hilton by Sofia Coppola in Elle July 2013

 We all seem to be drawn to star quality - the brightness and the ebullience that makes famous people so famous - like moths to a flame. We pore over the pages of gossip magazines and discuss celebrities with our friends with a very real sense of investment into their lives. Some more than others, yes, but it's something we have programmed into our DNA since we first tore out that Leonardo DiCaprio poster from Dolly magazine, or we played our 'mysterious girl' single so many times we wore it out. It's heartening - endearing even - to realise that even the loftiest of lofty idols is capable of being starstruck. Sofia Coppola, the girl crush to end all girl crushes, bought up in the foothills of Hollywood and never short on celebrity acquaintances, is as drawn to star quality as the rest of us. It's pretty clear from this spread on Paris Hilton in the July issue of Elle US. The socialite, dolled up in tasteful makeup, canoodling her dog beneath baroque chandeliers and mirrored bedheads, is a slightly toned-down version of herself, but still radiating that sense of celebrity and persona and money which is really what we talk about when we talk about fame.

 Sofia understands - as F.Scott Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh understood before her - that what draws us to stars (talent or no, Paris Hilton is certainly a star) is not actually the looks or the love but the lifestyle. When we see a celebrity we don't ever really see the movies they have been in or the model they're sleeping with but the parties, what a lot of parties, that they call meaningless but to us, mere humans, seem like everything. When people pose the question 'why is Kim Kardashian famous for doing nothing' they are slightly missing the point. What she 'does' is live a moneyed lifestyle that speaks of everything that money can bring. It doesn't have to be Kim K. Pick your poison. But I've seen enough Gossip Girl to know that now, more than ever, we are as closely aligned to the celebrity-obsessed, stargazing society of the 1920s as we ever were. We dream in technicolour, we look in repetition and we long for carelessness. All of Sofia's movies have, in some way or another, dealt with this central conceit of being young and beautiful and so very, very rich. Perhaps because she is part of that world she always treats her characters if not through a rose-coloured lens then at least without judgement. Don't ask me whether that's a good or a bad thing, I love her too much to be able to answer. But I know that I can't wait to see The Bling Ring because I, like every other warm-blooded human being just cannot get enough of that foul dust that floats in the wake of dreams.

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so fine

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

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse


Vogue Australia August 2013 - Sofia Coppola


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

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longing to stray


I always get to this point in the year when that awesome, terrifying tug at the pit of my stomach kicks in. My feet start to itch and my mind starts to race and I start thinking about thing to see and do and eat and see in places so far from sydney, australia. If you scrolled back through my archives you'd find a similar post to this every year, in about july-august, without fail. It's when it's cold and quiet and there's nothing to do but dream. This year there is actually plenty to do; there's a thesis to write and friends who have been neglected all semester to see and granola to bake and stories to think up and then get down on paper (that's the hard part). But I'm a dreamer. I always have been. I'm a dreamer and a bit of a wanderer. I'm that type of wanderer who takes great delight in leaving but perhaps even more delight in coming home, if only so I can shower people in souvenirs and stories and snapshots of the places I have been. Right now I'm thinking about New York. The last time I was there I had such a good time I almost didn't want to come home. With every subsequent trip I get more comfortable there, in my beautiful Brooklyn neighbourhood with my beautiful Brooklyn friends. I never want to leave them. It feels so right, eating bagels cross-legged on their couch or watching the superbowl as the snow fell softly down. Or, by turns, heading out to conquer the city with Rachel in the infancy of our friendship, laughing out loud at ridiculous waitresses and the cold and $2 tim tams and the promise of pizza. New York is a city for when you're young, and for peaches and warm subway air and being twenty-two. I think I'm ready for you again.

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sunkissed


glassons lookbooks - Petra Collins and Staz Lindes


One of my friends just returned from a trip to the America sunkissed and ebullient and permanently smiling. She couldn't stop talking about the people she met and the things she saw and the donuts and ice creams and cookies that she ate. She was like a walking, talking Glassons lookbook, where the girls grin always in their denim playsuits and anoraks. Girls who just want to have fun. How could you have anything but in their whimsical, don't-take-it-too-seriously clothes? I'm wearing my glassons overalls as I write this and, let's be honest, have rarely worn anything else this winter. There's something about the simplicity and ease of their clothes that makes them instantly wearable and instantly indispensable.  I loved the last Glassons campaign and I love this one just as much. It's a different kind of look - more cali girl babe than rugged winter gal - but it's just what I need in the middle of this cold snap. It's got me dreaming of America again, where everything is bigger and brighter and bolder and where nobody, not even the cities, sleep.

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all white


It's maybe (probably not) (hopefully) (maybe, maybe) going to snow this week in the blue mountains. You know how much I love snow so.... you can imagine I am very excited. Even the whisper of snow, the idea of it, the dream of it, makes me smile. In fact, maybe it's always the dream of snow that makes me smile. You don't get much of it in Australia so you always want more. If it snows this week I might just be the happiest I've been in a very long time. Since, well, I last saw snow.

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polished


I'm getting just that much closer to my dream of owning every colour from the & Other Stories nail polish range. I have a friend travelling to Europe in a few weeks and I've already put her on notice that she will be on courier duty. Who needs online shopping when you have jet-setting mates?

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cinematic style - Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile




Some people don't like Julia Roberts and to those people I ask the question: have you never seen Mona Lisa Smile? Sure she's awful in Eat Pray Love (you just want to slap her) and in My Best Friend's Wedding she's such a bad person you can't even want to be her friend. But I think Julia Roberts get such a bad rap. She's like my actress because I grew up on a steady diet of Notting Hill and Mystic Pizza and Runaway Bride and Pretty Woman and Stepmom. Her corn-fed good looks and shiny hair and perfect skin were some of the defining aspects of my cinematic coming-of-age. Her and Richard Gere = ultimate movie couple of all time. I'll just never get past that laugh. (obviously, we've already had her twice now. I promise this will be the last for a little while!)

I think she is the most endearing in Mona Lisa Smile. Mostly her character in this movie is so real. She has flaws - she lets go of the good guy and takes up with the wrong guy, she can't see past her prejudices and she's naive in a way that she oughtn't to be, not really, she says the wrong thing and sometimes thinks the wrong thing, too. But the difference is that her character is good. She wants to help. She tries. She's the outsider in the establishment at Wellesley and she wants to make a difference. She has stars in her eyes but they're the right stars. She's the Professor Keating for our generation. And I guess in many ways this movie is trying to be Dead Poet's Society for girls. And I think, also, in many ways, it succeeds. The last scene of the movie is as moving a finale of this kind of pedagogy-drama film as I've ever seen. (and trust me, I've seen my fair share. I like coming of age tales, remember?)

Catherine Watson's style is total blue-stocking chic. In fact, this was the kind of blue-stocking chic that the term was invented for. She wears big cardigans and pretty, slightly exotic-looking blouses (She was a renegade, after all) and loafers and massive camel overcoats or tweed macintoshes. It's New England in the winter. It's preppy, university style, done right by someone who's been around the block once or twice. I love so many of the outfits in this film, from the flippy, frothy skirts paired with tight sweaters and flouncy hair, to the way they all seem like naturals on bikes with their paperbag waist trousers and collared shirts. Her hair in this is fantastic. Since I've started wearing my hair half-up, half-down I've become more and more interested in barettes and the like. She's got a stunning array of hair accoutrements in this film, plus she wears it in a way I've been dying to try - high pony tail with side fringe curling down. What a dream to be a Senior on campus taught by someone as inspiring as her. Can you tell I'm not quite ready to be done with university yet?

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p.s I'm taking requests for cinematic style! Leave a comment or get in touch on twitter (@hannahroserose) if you have a movie you think deserves to be featured. I've got a few lined up but always looking for the next wardrobe to fawn over...
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a morning in leura



Mornings in the Blue Mountains are made of this: cold winter light, reading serious books to help for university (and highlighting with non-serious muji pens the colour of sherbert), kicking off your Porselli ballet flats at the first opportunity, drinking your tea almost lying down, using up the last of the produce from a Local Harvest Collective food sack and the overwhelming quiet of a sleepy country town.

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alexa



Sometimes I think I don't really like Alexa's style at all. That she dresses too hipster, too crazy, too short, too 60s, too trendy, too girly, too same-old, too alexa. But then she busts out an outfit like this and I remember that even though she's not my style icon anymore there are moments when we cross over and I would wear every single thing.

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just married



So one of my best friends got married today. Some of you who have been reading for a long time might remember Brooke, a friend I met through blogging, and who used to have a blog herself. Well today she tied the knot in the most light-filled, love-filled, happiest style imaginable. What a dream to be a part of her special day and what a dream to know people who are so in love their lives are already as one. Happily ever after.

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mountains lockdown


I was talking to Rachel and she joked that my mountains lockdown was just like Colin Firth in Love Actually. Well yes. And no. Yes to the solitude and the tea and the big jumpers. No to the hot portugese cleaner and just generally being Colin Firth. I'm not going to lie though, my life has become one big issue of cabin porn lately.

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do you remember?


Photos from fashion week - remember that?? - way, way, way back when. What a week of highs and lows, of too many glasses of red wine and too many run-throughs and too many polaroid films and too many laughs because that's how we roll, we don't take it too seriously and we don't mind taking a breather, taking a pause, and taking stock of the week that was about three months later. Whoops. Working with these two has always been a bit of a dream, and at least for that week we could see each other every day and sing adele at the top of our lungs and pretend that it could always be this good.

All photos by Rachel Kara // Talisa hard at work in our beautiful room at The Cambridge Hotel, thank you! // Those perfect Surry Hills streets // Talisa, Estelle and me walking back from the Karla Spetic show // Breakfast at Mr Mo our fashion week regular // Rachel in the reflection // Estelle's amazing jewellery from her eponymous label, Estelle Deve // Lunch at The Foundry // I spy Laura at Christopher Esber // An incredible spread at Baccomatto Osteria, one of my favourite meals of the week // Keep it real

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bluestocking chic


An Education // source

I am in the throes of my 'mountain lockdown' as Stephanie from I Love Mr Mittens termed it, and I've been thinking about study style. Sure, I've been doing some actual study around all this thinking, but in my downtime (mostly as I lay in bed and dread having to get out of the warmth into the cold, cold kitchen where the table is) I've been musing on matters of what I have decided to term 'bluestocking chic'. You know, intellectual style. That distinctly retro, 1960s university gal look that brands like A.P.C and Thomsen have made their own. It's all Carey Mulligan in An Education - cropped cigarette trousers, fuzzy angora sweaters and white shoes before labour day. It's Anna Karina with the bouffed up hair and a tartan coat. It's Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face, the most beautiful book-seller in the world, resplendent in frumpy tweed and turtleneck sweaters. It's not really suited to my body type - the reed thin girls with long legs and straight hair work this look like it's nobody's business - but I admire it anyway. I tweak it so that it fits better on me. Maybe the sweaters aren't so slim cut, maybe I take my jeans with a side of distress. But I think that as a university student with my nose stuck in the books in the middle of the cold, cold country I'm pretty much the definition of bluestocking chic, whichever way you want to look at it. 

Bluestocking chic three ways

one


two


three


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ps. I did a little q&a with Kate from Modette blog, see it here!
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