Odd Ends

(picture from Le Portillon)

I'm in a weird sort of mood right now, as far as dressing myself goes. Having all but lived in and out of three skirts for the last month or so (white broderie anglaise, green ditto, black bell-shaped), I think I've reached skirt saturation point right about now. Despite the fact that skirts are more or less the airiest. comfiest things to be in right now, I've spent most of the weekend onwards in a red-and-white striped boys' shirt tucked into a pair of black straight-leg jeans. I'm also feeling oddly colourless- practically every item of clothing that comes out of the cupboard now is black, grey, cream or olive green. And I'm really feeling like wearing jeans- a mood that hasn't struck me in what seems like years, because I am of the opinion that they make my bum look huge. Odd, the problems a big fat shirt can solve. I don't even care that I got the fidgets in class and pulled off one of its buttons. Oddly, the desire for mutedness does not extend to other parts of my toilette - my shoes inevitably have some frippery or other on them*, the only sneakers I've got are a nice flaming crimson, and the urge to put funny things in my hair is growing day by day. I may just do it, considering that my last foray into that department wasn't met with too much pointing and laughing. A mere headscarf isn't that problematic anyway..
*yesterday they were half-stuck with green felt flowers. Why half, you might ask. The answer is, my mum's friend's new puppy chewed the other half off and proceeded to slobber all over my legs in the process. Today's mad flatprint is three blobs of colour on the toe of each black shoe, in the shape of chicks.

R.I.P. Isabella, We Salute You

I just found out, off Vogue UK, that Isabella Blow died of ovarian cancer this Sunday at the age of forty-eight. The news is startling, to say the least of it. To those who don't know, she was fashion director at Tatler magazine and possibly the greatest fashion talent scout of modern times: among the people she discovered/gave a break to as rookies were Alexander McQueen, Sophie Dahl, Stella Tennant and Hussein Chalayan, and she was possibly most famous for her signature look which consisted of a hat and red lipstick. I don't think I've ever seen a photograph of her bareheaded- she wore little, whimsical hats all through the 90s (Philip Treacy was one of her discoveries too- the hats she favoured were mostly by him), before the fashion gods decided headgear was a good way to go for a look, and kept working right till the end. And I honestly have nothing to say, other than that I am going to dig out the coolest-looking approximation of a hat anywhere in my possession, and take it off in tribute to her. Failing that, I'll wear a turban. And if there is such a place as heaven, she's probably up there trying to make her halo into a hat shape.
It's hard to realise that so many of the figures we love to talk about and look at, our icons really, are in fact mortal. Including Carine Roitfeld, Anna Piaggi et al. Slightly odd in a world where everyone is or seems beautiful and indestructible.

The Wolf's At The Door

(thanks to Carissa for reminding me of Mr Wolf. Pictures courtesy of wikipedia)

I'm not a person who takes to new musicians all that easily. The better part of my iTunes playlist is firmly mired in c. 1995 and a piano rendition of Rossini's William Tell Overture, and somehow it's easiest to keep returning to those when I have nothing else to listen to. And there are only two ways I end up giving new stuff any sort of chance with my tympanum:
a) A friend shaking mp3s in my face going "you have to listen to this!", to which request I usually acquiesce fast enough unless it's metal, which (sorry to any metal fans reading this) I absolutely can't stomach.
b) Something popping up on Pandora, which is my Internet radio service of choice, which throws artistes at you one song at a time. The good part about that is you can give things a thumbs down and not have them play again if you don't like them.
This turned up via the latter method. I'd fallen in love with The Magic Position before I even heard the chap's voice, and given how much I loved the daft, kiddish beginning I wouldn't have cared if he'd sounded like a dyspeptic gorilla. And then, after reading Carissa on the subject of Mr Wolf, I hunted for more of his stuff off the net and found three songs, all of which were, putting it mildly, excellent. Musical loves have been based on less. And (important for a girl fashaholic) it doesn't hurt at all that he's cute and has hair just the colour I would like mine to be if hair dye wasn't one of my mortal fears. His look, in a weird way, matches his music (or at least what I've heard of it)- though reviews seem to say his earlier stuff wasn't as happy-sounding. In any event, it can't have been all that depressing if he's got a hula hoop (I want one) in his hand on the cover of his first album, even if it is called Lycanthropy (that always reminds me of Remus Lupin, who is heartbreaking every time he pops up on the page. I sincerely hope he doesn't get killed off in Deathly Hallows- if that happens, I will cry). If this boy puts out a metal album, I might even give it a chance.

To Post Or Not To Post, That Is The Question

I'm probably going to be deprived of Internet access over the weekend and am feeling slightly cranky, having been subjected to thirty-degree heat, barmy old coots of teachers, annoying diva-like former friends who don't seem to remember that my name isn't sweetie, sweets or some corruption of that word (I can forgive your using that if- as is the case with most of the people who read this blog- you don't know what my name is), and the stark staring fact that I'm all out of clean clothes and was forced, as a result, to wear a frilly-looking white peasant top, camisole and skirt to class today, as opposed to the neat jacket, white shirt and trousers I would've liked to have on. Because here comes the confession: I'm really not that fashionable. Uneven terrain, extremely short get-ready periods and nasty heat, along with the moral brigade's objections to short skirts*, shorts and anything strappy** make life as a well-dressed college student, if you wanted to be one, an impossibility. Or maybe it just means I'm a fashion schizophrenic: my appearance might tell the casual observer I want to be Anita Pallenberg, while in actual fact whatever being in my head decides the things I like and dislike would rather have me look like Katherine Hepburn (not to knock Anita Pallenberg, but I just don't feel very rock n' roll right now. If I ever did). And it changes from day to day, and sometimes the idea of wearing yellow when what I really want to wear is grey, makes my fingers itch to get the offending garment off.
Does anyone else ever experience that? Fashion split personality, I mean.

*'short' here meaning anything that allows someone to see your knees, or the general region thereof (if it's a below-the-knee skirt). I am well and truly tired of having sluttily dressed wannabe Goths (going by the amount of eye makeup they have on at any given point in time, though maybe true Goths would be friendlier with fabric) telling me they love my 'miniskirts'- not one of which, except for the few that I keep to lounge around in, ends anywhere above my kneecaps. **and yet tight, low-necked tops, which have a far higher slut factor than my poor little camisoles, are ok to wear in the classroom.Where's the justice in this, I ask?

Polishing Up

My relationship with makeup is a contentious one, or at least it would be if I actually had one. I hardly ever indulged in the Mummy's-dressing-table type shehanigans, which was why she was more than a bit surprised when I bought my first pot of black nail varnish at eleven*. It's about the only variety of cosmetic I buy on a regular basis other than lip balm, the reasons wherefore are a bit of a long, dull story.
I'm not sure exactly how the nail varnish craze caught on among us tweens, but the only thing I can be absolutely sure of was that my school's strict no-makeup policy had quite a bit to do with it- all that forbidden fruit logic and so on. No matter- we just painted our toenails instead of our fingernails, and as for those I'm fairly sure acetone suppliers had an excellent time of it, what with all the goop we had to clean up and take off before going to school. As most good tweens across the world today seem to do, we favoured the sparkly, but for some reason red and pink- probably because they were seen as 'mummy colours'- were banned from use (I quite liked red sparkly polish, but given that not being a total social outcast in those days was dependent on not wearing naff things, I behaved as a good little sheep should and went right along)- and once my lot got tired of wearing plain blocks of colour, we began experimenting with nail spots and stripes and flowers- some of which required work with very thinbrushes that were subsequently ruined because the varnish dried onthe brushes. The freaky part? People actually volunteered to do it- spend hours painting each other's nails, I mean. They were short nails too, because school insisted on that**- but they still took ages to dry. And then we reached the eighth grade and- heaven knows how- nail colouring was consigned to the trend dustbin. We were supposed to be more grownup, so about five bottles of half-used nail paint in my possession were doomed to uncooldom, and I was an expert on how fast they dried and how long they lasted and just how to mix colours, and the knowledge was pretty much useless***. I still buy the pots now, though- mainly because I like to see them sitting on the shelf and they're the only vaguely girlie things around- I don't own so much as a kohl pencil (standard Indian college girl fare, as far as makeup goes). And lately I've been getting the urge to break out the sparkly silver polish again, only my twenty-two-year-old feet aren't anywhere near as pretty as my thirteen-year-old ones (Queen Michelle, you were right about the sun exposure. If I wanted to look at a living example of sun damage, all I need to do is look down.). And no neon on my nails, I don't care what Nu Rave thinks.

*those were the good old days when the word Goth didn't exist in my vocabulary (actually, it did- Germans in Asterix) and hipsters were trousers, not people.
**I've never been able to get over the conviction that long nails are dirty. I end up reaching for the clippers every time I get to see the edges of my nails over the tops of my fingers.
***My mum was quite relieved, though- she hated my nail paint. But the bottles that remained did get put to good use- every time I got given babysitting duties for my then two-year-old niece, I simply put a coat of colour on her nails (it didn't take much time since they were so tiny) and told her to sit still with her hands out till they dried. It made a nice change from chasing her to make sure she didn't break her neck or anything else in the house.

Post 37 (Because I'm Tired of Trying and Failing Miserably At Thinking Up Catchy Post Titles)

Once I found some pretty shoes
With lovely pointy toes
They came in pairs made up of twos
Stuck under two big bows

The bows were sparkly green and blue
And silver stuck on grey
With what might just have been cheap glue
On bits of faux suede

Yet here's the rub, they were on sale
To leave them I was loath
So I was smart, did what was best
And simply bought them both.
_______________________
I should probably just end this with a link to T Rex, who writes much better rhymes than the one above.

Nooooooooooo!

Nonsense on Stilettos doesn't normally do news. Rambling does just fine for me most days, but this is a bit of a shock. I get the concept of employer comes first and all, but Dior has (I should've used past tense, what with Hedi Slimane quitting) some of the best talent in the contemporary fashion world working for it- what do they gain by getting rid of them? At least Kris van Assche sounds like a somewhat competent replacement for Slimane, but I'm having serious trouble visualising a successor to Galliano. Besides, as fashionologie says, it's just a Page Six rumour.