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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the start of things

'I remember the rain - how it hammered day and night against the windowpanes; how my grandmother left a hay bale outside the back door to act as a dam; how Mrs Maddox came to us for buckets when her porch began leaking... My grandfather's hair plastered itself down over his forehead, like weed. And I remember how, by Valentine's Day, the heaving ewes were huddled in the barn, the Brych finally burst her banks, and the mud came. Mud - such a small word. It looks weak, bashful, what harm can three letters do? The answer is more than you think. That mud was the start of things.' 

Susan Fletcher, Eve Green

vanessa jackman

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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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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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moderne

'Her manner is shy, but casual and friendly, and her gamine face crinkles easily into an attractive, rather secret smile. She wore a simple black sweater and gray skirt; if she is a vain girl the only indication of it was her high-heeled shoes, which were of elegantly worked light gray leather... She is sincere and helpful, but questions that are pompous or elaborate, or about personal life, or that might be interpreted as challenging her work, are liable to elicit only a simple “oui” or “non,” or “je ne sais pas—je ne sais pas du tout”—and then an amused, disconcerting smile.' 

On Francoise Sagan's style, The Paris Review Art of Fiction No. 15

la garconne

La Garconne Moderne is the epitome of how I wished I dressed. Therein lies the slight - and yes, slightly upsetting - distinction, in that even though in my head I look like this as I go about my daily chores it all ends up a bit scruffier due to my general inability to look put together. Such is life. As it is the quarterly look books that are posited unceremoniously into my inbox provide me with endless sartorial inspiration. A pair of straight leg jeans and a turtleneck here, a tunic and a barette there, there's something about the way these ensembles - inspired by thoughtful, understated icons like Joan Didion - speak for themselves, just loud enough to be noticed by those who are truly looking for them. Style that is secretive in its elegance and distinction, that conceals much - the body, the insecurities, the price tags - but that still has that certain something the French like to call je ne sais quoi. Every season La Garconne Moderne has it, and I want it, oh so badly.

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all white

garance dore

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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cinematic style - Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile

screencaps

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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quiet time

kinfolk one and two

For the next few weeks I'm going to be based in the country in a cosy little cottage just right for one. I'm hoping that escaping the city will help me to write my thesis and to get away from the craziness of my life at the moment. I need to really devote myself to university and to my work and I think this is the best way to do it. Updates here will be a bit infrequent but hopefully I can make quality over quantity with some pictures of the beautiful Australian countryside where I will be living. It's one of my favourite places in the world for its sheer, overwhelming, heart-warming quiet and stillness. I love that.

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