left alone

'How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills you by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...)'

Philip Larkin, Letters to Monica

vogue

Some people found the Stella McCartney show boring. A letdown. Not me. And maybe this quote doesn't quite work but I thought it summed up well how I feel about fashion at the moment and how I feel about Stella McCartney. That sometimes it's nice to be left alone. And that these beliefs of yours - to wear baggy clothes, and simple things, and no make up, as well as to wash the cups and work hard - are yours, habits and convictions formed over years of knowing yourself and becoming comfortable in your skin. It is something of Zoe's letting it settle, of taking a breather. I remember when I used to do Public Speaking the coach used to say how important the pauses were. 'They're almost more important than the speech itself,' he would say. 'Because a pause lets the speech sink in.' Stella McCartney is like one big pause for the whole industry. She doesn't always get it right, but there's something about her conviction that makes up for the mistakes. Left alone, this is the kind of stuff that I would wear all the time. So simple, so clean. So fresh, yes, fresh even in its simplicity. The problem with fashion lies in this innate, ingrained search for the new. How tired that phrase seems, now.

X

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all in one

collage vintage

I'm not going to lie. Fashion month has left me a little bit cold this season. It's not only the shows on the runway. It's the street style too. Normally I get excited for the simplicity of Paris, or I seek out the well-dressed lurkers in the background of the pictures. But this season, no matter how many times I refresh style.com (and trust me, I've been doing it daily), I haven't been able to find much sartorial inspiration. It might be me. It's almost certainly me. But doesn't that still say something? Doesn't the fact that, despite hours spent trawling through street style websites and backstage images, the most inspiring thing you find is a black silk jumpsuit and a washed out red lip say something? I think it does. I just wish I could work out what, exactly.

X

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cinematic style - babes of the 90s

Winona Ryder in Girl Interrupted // Alicia Silverston in Clueless (this is an Alaia!) // Liv Tyler in Empire Records // Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions // Gwyneth Paltrow in Great Expectations

I'm going to a 90s party tonight with all of my best gals. We've known each other since school - some of us since it was actually the 90s - and there's no-one else that I would rather dance the night away with (to the strains of if ya gettin' down, natch). Since my wardrobe is steadily becoming more and more 90s by the day I pretty much didn't even have to make a costume. I'm going to wear overalls, birkenstocks, a tartan shirt tied around my waist and a backwards cap. Grunge goodness.

X

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cinematic style - Natasha Richardson in The Parent Trap

screencaps

So many different things have led to this moment. The release of Diana, for one, which has me thinking about how much the style in this movie referenced that 'Sloane Ranger' put-together-ness - although I guess if you were blonde and upper middle class in the 90s you probably couldn't escape a Diana reference, could you? I read an article about Emma Thompson writing Sense and Sensibility, and how the parts of the sisters was originally intended for Natasha and Joey Richardson (but Ang Lee, genius that he is, insisted that Emma play the role of Elinor, and wasn't that movie just... perfect?) And then, finally, the clincher. I watched Love Actually on the weekend. And I was struck, as I always am now, by Liam Neeson's storyline, and how eerily it foreshadowed real life. Liam Neeson was married to Natasha Richardson, and she passed away after a skiing accident in 2009. All of these things have reminded me both how much I loved Natasha Richardson and how much I loved her in The Parent Trap, a movie I probably watched at weekly intervals between the ages of 8 (I first saw it at my birthday party that year!) and, well.... 22.

I think it's becoming abundantly clear that I am knee-deep in a 90s revival at the moment. I can't stop wearing overalls, and denim shirts, and birkenstocks, and cami dresses, and ray ban sunglasses. But that's a kind of contempo-casual 90s look, the kind of Angela Chase, lip-liner look of the fresh-faced 90s babes of Smash Hits. There's another side of me that revels - has always revelled, really - in the ice-cold, oil-slick city chic of girls like CBK and, of course, her British counterpart, Diana. On the New York side it is a world of corduroy, camel coats and iron-straight hair. For the brit-girls it is maybe just a slick more polished; a veritable smorgasbord of taupe and beige, a-line shift dresses and sensible court shoes. Yes, pantyhose too. That's maybe taking it just a step too far for me.

Natasha's wardrobe in this movie is everything. It is the definition of chic, right down to the smallest touches  - those delicate gold chains that sit at just the right point on her chest bone, her bamboo-handle gucci bag, her slim watch with tobacco-coloured band, the umbrella that perfectly matches her outfit. The first thousand hundred times I watched this movie I never really noticed, maybe because I was more interested in trying to learn that handshake, or crying my eyes out, or wishing beyond anything that I had a secret twin sister. But when I watch it now I can't stop looking at how, well, put together she is. There's no other word for it. Even when she's losing the plot she is still a vision in camel and curlers. Drunk and delirious after her first plane ride in years, she is still absolutely remarkable in an ivory skirt suit with silk blouse and matching trench coat. I mean, who looks like that when they've just stepped off a plane, even in First Class? I think the great thing about the costumes in this movie was that they both played to and played off the stereotypes of that era. Dennis Quaid was almost overly masculine, a laid-back Californian guy in denim blues and chest hair. And Natasha was his opposite, buttoned up (but not uptight), put together (but in an elegant, not controlled way), a British girl with style and class and sophistication. These were stereotypes, but, as is often the case with stereotypes, they were also real life. Dennis Quaid really was that overly masculine, laid-back guy, Natasha Richardson really was that phenomenally chic English Rose. Costume by definition, of course, doesn't require that its actors understand or even believe in its vision. But it certainly helps.

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the trench

celebutopia

Seeing Alexa out and about in a trench coat is like seeing your first boyfriend walking down the street looking so damn good. You know it's been years but you kind of think, why did we ever break up? So Alexa, why did we ever break up? 

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double up

the face // celebutopia // all the pretty birds

So... I got birkenstocks and, as predicted, haven't really taken them off. I've found them to be the easy shoes, the ones you don't have to think about, the ones you slip into last minute as you run out the door, the ones you slip off the second you get home, the ones that get you through a full day at uni (or a half day at cafe). They're a slow-burner - they're like overnight oats - but once you come around to them it becomes pretty clear you might never wear anything else.

X

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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.

X

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the honeymoon period

Definitely still in the thralls of my overall honeymoon period. While in Tasmania I've barely worn anything else, rotating between denim and black twill with a roster of sweaters underneath, a knitted beanie up top and a big coat over it all to combat some of that bass strait chill. Just my kind of weather.

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