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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in the kitchen

freunde von freunden

The first time I went to the Nordic Bakery I didn't care about cinnamon buns or prawn sandwiches or elderflower tea. I was meeting Stevie for the first time and was so excited and so cold and (so) late. Happily, so was she, and we spent a couple of hours chatting about nothing and keeping warm. I remember Stevie tried to get a sneaky picture of the girls in their aprons (and cos she loves a good pinnie) because they were just that cool. Seeing these pictures of chef Soli Zardosht in London brings it all back. This is how all aprons ought to look if they possibly can. Thick straps, low armholes, big pockets, and a slip-into-it pinafore quality. I'm a messy cook - aren't we all? - and I need an apron. I need an apron to keep a tea towel in, to protect my clothes, to wipe my hands on when they're sticky with the residue of peach juice or tomatoes or olive oil, to leave on when you have to dash down the road to buy more golden syrup, to let the straps slip comfortably off your shoulder. But I want an apron because they're just that cool.

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Uniform (2)

Maybe it's the sudden cold snap that we've had, but I've rediscovered my overalls, in a big way. I put them to the side for a little bit once I fell (truly, madly) deeply in love with birkenstocks, and feared that pairing the two together might be somewhat of an unforgiveable fashion faux pas. Not that I care about things like that, but... well there are only so many questioning stares that a gal can take. But over the weekend, as the chill creeped in - over blankets and through thin cardigans - I realised that what I really wanted to wear was something all in one, with deep pockets and thick straps and a bracing, reassuring sturdiness. I curled up in my parent's bed, electric blanket set to HIGH, and read books and drank tea and furled and unfurled my toes and played with my hair and thought about painting my nails. A few times I had visitors, they came with cake and left with none, and I sat cross-legged on an armchair, plotting international trips and gossiping. Overalls are so comfortable, so effortless, so easy, in all situations. They are made for the weekend. And that is what we really talk about when we talk about overalls. 

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cinematic style - Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain

screencaps

So you know how you know who your first crush was? The one whose poster you plastered all over your walls, the one you fell asleep looking at, the one you secretly (or not so secretly) planned to marry. 'My future husband' you would say. It almost doesn't matter who it is. It could be Leo, it could be a Backstreet Boy, it could be Seth Cohen (a thousand teenage girls of the noughties sigh). Well, for me, that first crush, last crush, always crush was Jake Gyllenhaal. Oh Jake. You have no idea how bad it gets. I wish I knew how to quit you. Not even when my friends tell me that his eyes are too close together (on the weekend, while in an absolute dive bar, my oldest bud said to me 'look I'm not saying that if he took his clothes off in front of me I'd say no, but seriously, on a scale of one to cyclops he's like a 7, maybe 7.5'). Not ever. I have loved him since Donnie Darko. I saw Prince of Persia three times in the cinema. And don't even get me started on Love and Other Drugs...

I remember seeing Brokeback Mountain. I remember falling in love. I remember double denim. I remember crying so hard I thought people might ask me to leave. At the 2006 Oscars I remember wanting so bad for Brokeback to win the best picture award. I remember feeling gutted when it didn't. But there was Heath and Michelle (in that dress!) and Ang's speech and Jake being hilarious. My sixteen year old self wondered how such a beautiful, haunting, overwhelming film could miss out on the top honour. A slave to awards shows even then, I had not yet realised how political they could be. I still had stars in my eyes. I'm lucky that that first realisation didn't kill the whole enterprise. I laughed along with the rest of them at 36mafia 1, Scorsese 0. I hoped, rather than knew, Ang Lee's (and Heath's and Jake's) time would come. I remember crying like a baby when Heath died, thinking the whole time of this.

What's so good about this wardrobe? it's the cowboy thing, firstly. I've always been drawn to a good felt hat and have recently adopted double denim as my unofficial wardrobe of spring. Shearling I know well. But what I am drawn to at the moment is the whole 70s vibe. I have recently watched a few movies set in the 70s (Rush, Jobs), and god, it was a sexy era. The open shirts, the tight jeans, the big belts, the big hair.  Men looked masculine. They acted masculine too - rode horses, smoked cigarettes, punched things - but most of all they looked the part in their denim and shearling and shirts. I think the normalcy of the wardrobe in this does much to advance character development. The torment of the Ennis and Jack is only heightened by their relative anonymity. They look the part, they just can't act it. That tension between reality and fiction, the tension of living a lie, is always the major theme I take away from the film. I think the costumes express that tension so, so admirably.

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much too hot for me

It's much too hot for jeans today but I literally cannot stop wearing blue denim and black birkenstocks. It's just easy. I handed in my full draft to my supervisor yesterday and now I have a day of grace before I get the comments back and have to hit the ground running. So, naturally, instead of doing any of the million things I have stacked up in my mental to-do list, I read in bed all morning and drank ice-cold water through a straw. I'm not great in the heat, but on days like this I don't mind it, not at all.

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easy like sunday morning

dazed digital

Yes, I have shamelessly stolen Lin's idea. But when I clicked through to see the collection from her blog and saw the tagline 'easy like sunday morning' I couldn't help but post this, on an easy sunday morning. Easy in the sense that I got up early, made myself a bagel and a cup of tea and ate them while nose-deep in Stephen Fry's biography, dappled light streaming in, promising what I'm sure is going to be a scorcher of a spring day. I do have a lot of work to do, but I know I will get to that later. For now, this sunday is easy. I've always loved that line. It speaks to the poetical simplicity of songwriting, that quality that we call 'lyrical', of course. There are people for whom that kind of artful ease comes so naturally. I remember reading a review of Crazy Heart by Roger Ebert, where he spoke about that line, that great, great line, that bit where Jean walks into Bad's seedy motel room and he says, 'I want to talk about how bad you make this room look.' What a line. What a perfect, perfect country song line, with all of its open-handedness and simple sophistication. I like that. I like things that are obvious, almost self-evident, without being any less elegant. 

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the dream

serpentsea

This is everything. Overalls and stripes and the big blue sea. (and this girl has a pretty ace collection of chanel nail polish, too). This is pretty much THE thing I'm going to do this summer (#12).

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cinematic style - Anne Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs

screencaps

So I'm not a particularly huge fan of Anne Hathaway - I'm not a hatha-hater, but I just wouldn't see a movie because she's in it, in the way I would for, say, Carey Mulligan or Natalie Portman - and, let's be honest, I definitely didn't see this movie for Anne Hathaway. I saw it for Jake. Always Jake. But right now I'm in the throes of a 90s revival so big it threatens to take over my wardrobe (cami slip dress: check, birkenstocks: check, overalls: check check check) and I can't help but fall in love with the grungey, grown-up my-so-called-life-y style that Annie is wearing in this film. (or not wearing, when it comes down to it). 

I just finished reading the new J.K Rowling book - the one she wrote under a pseudonym - and there's a bit in it where the main character Cormoran Strike describes the apartment of model Ciara Porter as messy and girlish, like the apartment of a teenager left unsupervised. That's how I see anne hathaway's wardrobe in this movie. She's living that dream of adolescents the world round: nobody to tell me what to do. That's why in some sense her ludicrously lovely apartment (struggling artist she is not, judging by that sprawling warehouse space, but then movies never accurately represent socioeconomic realities when it comes to living space, do they?), is endearing and charming in its messiness, and her wardrobe, which is legitimately the kind of stuff Angela Chase used to run around in works, even though she's a grown-up woman with grown-up responsibilities. Maybe that was also a little bit of the 90s - when overalls were the hippest thing since slice bread and tartan shirts with tights with rips in them were trendy. So many of those 90s trends are, in some sense, ageless. Women of all ages run around in pared-back CBK minimalism and look fantastic - even the super youthful Ashley Olsen, or perhaps especially her - and I think the reverse is true for this grungey style, to a point. It's a youthful look but it's one that seems to work across ages. You could take elements of this look and wear them at 15, 35, 55 and 85 ('Fabulous at Every Age!'). 

Maybe it's the sartorial mood I'm drawn to at the moment. I have started to seek out clothes that appeal to my tactile senses - I want soft denim shirts, thick knitted sweaters, the nubby worn-in patches on flannel shirts, the ease of slipping into a pair of overalls, the sheer comfiness of those german sandals. That's a 90s thing, too. And I look at Anne Hathaway's wardrobe in this movie and I see just that: silky chinese dressing gowns, pin-tucked broderie anglaise, the ridges of burgundy corduroy (!!!) and the classic feel of a woolen camel coat.

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