to pack and wear; v2.0

 

Whoever said it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive surely knew a thing or two about packing lists. I live for them. I scribble them down on everything to hand - the end papers of books, napkins, the backs of receipts - and find them weeks, months later, only to scribble them out and start again. A list I wrote last week could be completely, hopelessly wrong by today. For me, the joy of travel has always been partially shrouded by the inane thrill of planning. I gather tips and recommendations, I buy a map and plot walking routes out with green pen, I email everyone I know who lives even remotely near where I am going and beg them to meet me for tea/cake/talks, and I write tens/hundreds/thousands of packing lists, just like joan (always like joan). Writing packing lists makes me giddy. It makes me light-headed with excitement the way that, say, mundane tasks like applying for travel money cards and buying thermal underwear doesn't.

Like last time, this trip is going to be different. It's a trip to travel light on, for sure. I travelled light last year - well, light for me - and then was confronted with the horror of completely exceeding the confines of my suitcase in London (I coudn't close it for love or money, even with me and my friend sitting on the lid) that I had to buy a new suitcase from a greasy-fingered man behind Leicester Square for the price of a weeks worth of meals at Ottolenghi. Never again. Everyone laughed at me and said I brought a too-small suitcase but I knew the truth. I didn't pack truly light. But I am going to this year. This trip - to Denver and New York and Vancouver! Still taking any tips and recommendations if you have them, comment or email me - is going to be a bit of everything. A bit of work, a bit of snow, a bit of fun, a bit of new, a bit of old, a bit of all that good stuff that makes travel so intoxicating, so enthralling; that glorious mish-mash of the familiar and the foreign that makes you go, yes, I could do this, everyday for the rest of my life. I'm taking one coat (the BEST coat). I'm taking my trusty Benah pouch. I'm taking porsellis (even in New York winters I'm a slave to ballet flats. There will be boots too, don't worry). I'm taking lip balm and hand cream. And, at this stage, I'm taking one sweater. That will probably change, but oh, this sweater is a good one. Hope, grand, so grand, with a turtleneck you want to hide your face in and a long, thigh-skimming hemline and a thick, stocking-stitch knit that your mum sniffs at ('I could have knitted that for you,' I imagine her saying), from My Chameleon, where all the good, grand stuff comes from, and just begging to be taken to some proper cold weather.

Chances are by next week I will have rethought my whole 'Merica Winter 2K14 wardrobe, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I won't. I'm taking the sweater to Tasmania this weekend for a road test (summer in the city means 18 degrees, my dream) and I'm pretty sure that it's going to pass with flying colours. The best bit? It's so versatile and so much of a cosy, multi-tasking hero piece all you need to go with it is a few pieces of delicate jewellery and rosy lips. Packing light is going to be a cinch this time. I swear.

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winter favourites

Grown Alchemist hand cream // I Love Mr Mittens popeye beanie // Porselli ballet flats from My Chameleon // Ray Ban clubmasters from Vision Direct // Serge Lutens Five O'Clock au Gingembre and BRVTVS small three bar and two bar ear cuffs

When I was in Tasmania I lived on a steady diet of these little things. A beanie to keep my head warm, sunglasses to shield my eyes, a spicy fragrance and rich handcream and a few little bits of gold for a touch of glamour. Sydney has well and truly bid farewell to winter and is ringing in the warmer months shamelessly. I've even seen a few lucky people eating mangoes at uni. But, true to form, I'm going to cling to the last vestiges of winter while I still can. Farewell cold weather, I knew thee well.

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found

1-2, 5, 7 - pages from MUJI Found, 3 - Byredo Perfume Dispenser, 4 - TOME tunic from My Chameleon, 6 - Celine Aviators, 8 - Dieppa Restrepo loafers from My Chameleon and Porselli ballet flats

 

This book is one of my favourite buys from Tokyo. I picked it up from the MUJI flagship store in Marounouchi (the one with a restaurant, oh be still my heart!) but only got the chance to have a proper flick through it once I got back to Sydney. "Rather than just making things, MUJI has always taken the stance of "searching and finding" a lifestyle," the first page says. "We search throughout the world for items that have long been used in daily life without ever going out of fashion, improve on them a little to fit changing lifestyles, culture and customs and reproduce them at a reasonable price." I have always loved Muji's retail philosophy, but this book has really reinforced all the conceptions that I had about the brand. Filled with low-fi, analogue images of everything from bamboo chopsticks and plastic wrapping from China to naan bread dishes from India and - my favourite section, of course - the classical beauty of Paris ("France is always a model for Japan, in fact, it is a model for the world"), the book celebrates everyday life as it is distilled in the objects that litter our existence. It is minimal and simple, a fete of paper napkins and handwriting as well as hand-embroidery and the particular elegance of Parisian streets. Of Paris, the book says "Streets of stone, bridges of stone. A city created to never change". 

 

The idea has struck me recently as I unpacked my bags and set about resuming Sydney life. I have long searched for a wardrobe that is built to last, created to never change. As I add - and subtract - from the bits and pieces hanging up, folded down, stacked in boxes and piled in their dustbags above and below, I have always been moving slowly yet steadily towards that end goal. Some of the items that I have found along the way are odd - yellow suede ballet flats, flashy aviators with a horn trim - but that is all part of the fun. Style is as much about the idiosyncrasies and the outliers as it is about the standard. I think what I love most is how comfortable I am about my standard now. I know instantly, sensorily, the first touch of a murky brown cotton twill tunic, the first feel of my toes in a pair of loafers, the first sight of those Parisian streets. It has something to do with growing up, I think, but also to do with where I am in my life at the moment. I know what I'm doing. And that, inextricably, yet undeniably, helps with what I'm wearing.

X

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maximum

My first pair of ballet flats were the kind you actually needed. They were tiny, smaller than my hands are now, little shoes for little feet to go with little leotards and little tights. They were baby pink. I was baby pink. I was joining the ranks of little girls the world round and taking my first ballet class. I have vague recollections of getting those shoes - softer than the softest puppy dog, softer than my mum's pillow in winter - from a ballet shop in Randwick, where you got to sit on a high chair like a real princess and find the shoe that fits. But really, it was never about the shoe. It was always about the tutu (I was five years old! what do you think). I'd like to think that I loved ballet flats from the start, that it was enduring, passionate, overwhelming love but to be truthful I never really started loving ballet flats until I owned my first pair of Porsellis. 

Some things just never sink in until you're older. I recently mused on the fact that for the first 10 years that I watched Sound of Music I never really realised that the bad guys were Nazis and this was all set in the midst of the third reich and in the lead up to world war two. I honestly thought that Herr Zeller was someone who didn't want the family Von Trapp to win the singing competition, and they were chasing after them to take back their trophy. Trophies are very important to five years old. Of course the whole kefuffle would be about a trophy - who would want that take away from them? I'd climb every mountain to ensure that it wasn't, that's for sure. Well, now that I'm older (and wiser, with someone telling me what to do) I know a few things. I know what happens at the end of the Sound of Music, I know that you have to follow a skincare routine, and I know that investing in quality really does make a difference. Which is why, when I was in Milan, I snapped up a few pairs of Porselli ballet flats (my favourites) to add to my collection. Ever since I eschewed heels altogether a few years ago (another grown up thing, or maybe a childish thing I've claimed as a grown up?) ballet flats have become the cornerstone of my style. I wear them in summer and winter, and they are the perfect foil for university, work and weekends. Like beloved sandals in summertime, ballet flats are indispensable because they completely, wholly embody that feeling of relaxed, effortless comfort that I actively search out in all aspects of my life. As Lindsay summed up in a recent post, style is about so much more than the sartorial, it is about discovering how it is that we want to live our lives. Well, I want to live mine in simplicity and comfort and ease and - as for me this follows unquestionably, inevitably, without any shred of a doubt - contentedly. So thank you to Porselli for allowing me to do that.

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ps. I recently found out that my favourite online store My Chameleon will be stocking Porselli very soon. This is exciting news for fans like me who lament over how difficult it is to get hold of them. I really cannot wait!

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uniform

Weather permitting I've been pretty much wearing a variation on this outfit everyday; the best ever breton, the best ever cigarette pants, the best ever ballet flats and lashings and lashings of the best ever cashmere. I'm off to Austria now (via Ravenna and Padua) so I don't think that ballet flats will be on the menu anymore, but them bretons are staying, warm and comforting little things that they are. Oh I hope I get some snow!!!

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ciao, milano!

After leaving Como and on the way to Florence we had a brief stop in Milan for brunch, cappucino and sight-seeing. We managed to snag a park right next to the Duomo and the galleria, so we soaked up those beautiful stained glass windows and amazing expanse of vaulted glass and iron light (it doesn't get more 19th century than a glass covered shopping arcade!) greedily. After that was more hot chocolate and then the Scala to pay homage to my favourite Ballerina brand; Porselli. We stumbled in as night had fallen, red-nosed and chilled to the bone, and were greeted by two Italian grand dames who didn't speak a word of English (and us vice versa!) gesturing wildly and pronouncing "Bella" at everything shoe we tried on. After some mishaps with describing sizes and colours (sign language, as always, is our friend), we were dragged into the store room and up the ladder to pull down the pairs we wanted ourselves. It doesn't get much better than that! For a brief second I had some kind of out of body experience, like this is what it must feel like to be Audrey Hepburn or Brigitte Bardot, surrounded by people and at least 10 pairs of shoes on a chesterfield lounge next to La Scala. 

Porselli ballet flats are my absolute favourites; they're handmade by the Porselli company (founded in the early 1900s by Mr Porselli, of course) in Italy and their location right next to Milan's grand theatre casts them as the pointe shoe maker par excellence for the city's limber ballerinas. Not being a ballerina myself - try though I did! - I come for the ballet flats, which are soft and supple, long in the toe box and high on the sides (to avoid buckling and toe cleavage, two of my least favourite things in ballet flats), completed with a grosgrain trim with smooth leather or the softest, simplest brushed nubuck. These shoes are perfect. They are as light as a cloud and so chic. They're so difficult to get your hands on - hence the need for pilgrimages! - but if you're lucky enough to have an A.P.C store nearby you can pick up a pair from their collaboration with the french brand (thought at slightly elevated prices). The best, though, will always be a trip to the store itself, slipping out of your shoes, your coat, your beanie and scarf, and onto that red carpet, where a line of ballet flats will be laid out for you and for a moment you can feel just like Brigitte.

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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

1-2, 5-6 by me, featuring my 3.1 Phillip Lim 31 Hour Day Bag, Michael Kors watch, Dieppa Restrepo loafers from My Chameleon and Benah Limits Cuffs in Brushed Gold // 3 // 4 // 6 // 7

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.

X

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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la delicatesse

screencaps of "La Delicatesse" from here, Alexa by Vanessa, all other photos by me.


I've been a tomboy most of my life. I was the girl with the hair cropped close and the bruise-strewn knees digging holes in the garden with the boys. I was the girl who volunteered to play the boy in the talent quest dance to "Coco Jumbo". I was the girl in overalls and converse, zooming down steep Paddington hills on a Razor scooter. My mum tried and tried again to get me in dresses - even a skirt would do! - but it was cargo pants and pool sliders and baseball tees that dominated my pre-teen wardrobe. Even now with a wardrobe full of fitted jersey midi skirts and sweeping floor-length numbers in silks and crepe de chines I think that my style is not particularly "girly" or "cute". Hovering in that casual, comfortable, non-descript territory somewhere between the femininity of, say, Lover and the unashamed high-flying vampiness of Dion Lee, to paraphrase Maya Singer. It's just basic. Bassike, even. I don't like bells and whistles, I don't like anything too fitted or girly. I don't like anything that draws too much attention to me. I prefer simple fabrics, plain prints and a wide cut. It's not particularly masculine - except when I suit up, at which point it is, obviously, unavoidable - it's almost unisex. A lot of the clothes I wear could be worn by guys. And some of them are menswear. I'm not sure if that means anything, it just is.

But recently I've felt the touch of delicate things hover over my wardrobe. Two little lace bra-lets from two different cities which are so feminine they almost make me blush. A beautiful pair of Carven ballet flats with a bow-back - not something I would ever really look at twice, but they are slowly coming to take place in my wardrobe as one of the prettiest things I own. With some plain trousers and a breton top I could almost pass for a parisienne - or is that wishful thinking? Brand new, fresh as anything flowers that I picked up a coupe of days ago and which are brightening up my room. And the delicate remnants of my trip away - stolen bottles of C.O Bigelow toiletries which smell like Lavender and Peppermint and are so tiny they almost begged to be secreted in a handbag and whisked away to Sydney. And the packaging on this chocolate - some of the best in the world - is that kind of delicacy that only the French can make work. Small, insignificant, unobtrusive things that have been making a world of difference recently. They - all of them - are enough to raise a smile on my face despite being weighed down with work and life at the moment.

I saw a movie at the French Film Festival last night - it's kind of a tradition in my family (my mum goes to every film, and loves it!), I recommend it to anyone looking for a lovely night out. It was called "La Delicatesse" and it starred the pixie herself, Audrey Tautou. I love the storyline - love and loss and all things in between - but I was immediately grasped by Nathalie's simple, delicate wardrobe. She wore plenty of printed dressed with bow-ties on the waist, several incredible colour-blocked, lace-insert, sheer-panelled, cable knit sweaters and tapered trousers with raised-heel ballet flats, and three spectacular coats. One was a navy blue duffel coat, oversized and with the perfect Paddington-Bear toggles, one was the grey military-style number above and the third was the archetypal, cliched trench coat, which she wore in the pivotal end-scene of the film, and which could not have been more fantastic. It's nothing new - it was french, parisian style through and through. But I was struck by how lovely it all looked. Lovely like Alexa Chung with tousled hair and a fitted pencil skirt. Lovely like a girl wearing Salvatore Ferragamo flats and a babydoll mini. Lovely like having a touch of something delicate in a simple outfit. Today I wore a breton top and navy blue pants and my Carven shoes and it all felt so good. I'm not girly - not at all, not one bit. My inner child, who climbs a tree and scrapes a knee, whose dress has got a tear, was railing against the delicacy, the pants that need to be ironed, the shoes that need to be scotchguarded, the bag that needs to be conditioned every time I wear it.

But the grown up me couldn't have been more content.

X

ps. Lin from one of my favourite blogs, Out of the Bag, interviewed me and wrote it up in a questionnaire post. If you want to read more of my rambles check it out! Thanks Lin for your kind-hearted lovely words.

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