Oh, Dear.

It's been more than a little surprising to learn that Paolo Melim Andersson is leaving Chloé, after just three seasons on the job, and more surprising still because it really wasn't a badly done job at all, as far as these things go. Designers have been sacked in much shorter time spans earlier (Alessandra Facchinetti at Gucci, for starters), but this is slightly saddening because I actually liked his version of the Chloé girl- not nearly as sugary as the Philo version and a lot stompier, but still quite recognisably a girl. Now that Hannah McGibbon, a Philo-era team member, is going to take charge of the ship, I suppose we'll just have to wait and watch...and hope that no one else whose work I admire gets the fashion version of the pink slip...

Of Streetstyle Girl Crushes

I'm not exactly the first person in the blogosphere to have one, and I haven't shown half the dedication of Dreamecho or Fashion Nation when it came to sleuthing out the identities of theirs ( Rei Shito and Louise The Red-Haired Girl* respectively, whom I also have a giant style crush on)- also it's kind of unnecessary in this case, but I can never fail to love Yasmin Sewell**, not only for wearing her clothes so amazingly, but also (and more importantly) because she looks so bloody happy just to be there, being herself. Which is part of the point of clothes, really, if they help you do just that..

*at least that's what I call her. No surname=me inventing description.

**pictures above by the Sartorialist. Turns out she's left Brown's and is setting up a consultancy. It does sound good..

Leave Of Absence

Just a quick note to let the world at large know I won't be anywhere near a computer this weekend or Monday, and haven't had half the time I'd like to answer comments. Posting will hopefully resume on Tuesday, so I'll just be an absentee blogger till then.

Oh, and while I'm at it, I'd like to wish Style Bubble a very happy second birthday (a full day in advance, but it can't be helped- sorry Susie!).

A very tired

Blue Floppy Hat

Old Hat (Or Bow), But Still...

I wonder if I'm the only one who gets the impression that this:

looks a lot like this:

Or maybe it's just the dark dress and red bow (though methinks anime Kiki's red bow is cuter...and I'm also slightly stupefied to discover that Kirsten Dunst actually did the voiceover for Kiki in the Kiki's Delivery Service English dub!).
Images from Style Bubble and wikipedia .

In Which I Get All Sniffy

I've never been much of a girl for what I call 'done-upness'. Despite the fact that the name of my blog features them, I've never yet met a stiletto I liked, and pencil skirts can sometimes be a pain in the arse for anyone who, like me, likes to take her stairs two at a time without getting scared that something will rip*. However, my general apathy towards old-school beauty rituals is rather lost when it comes to perfume.
Nine perfumes out of ten (probably more, if I were to be honest), smell more or less the same. And it doesn't help anyone's case that they just get sold so much, to the point that they become more easily identifiable by their ad campaigns/endorsers, than their topnotes. One shiny glass bottle after another, it's so easy to get bored...except with a very tiny handful of perfumes that, for me, seemed to work just fine. The first among these was (no surprises, if you looked at the picture above) Anaïs Anaïs. I got my first bottle when I was thirteen, when the kick of owning it came as much from the fact that this was one bit of frippery I could get away with wearing to school because it didn't count as makeup, as from the smell itself (which was amazing...I may just have a weird nose, because more often than not, Anaïs Anaïs smelled more than a little like wet dust to me- a pretty awesome smell if I say so myself), and the bottle- I loved its old-fashioned look. There's never been anything quite like it- it was my first experience with scent of any kind, and too many of the so-called 'fresh, floral' scents I sniff on occasion are just so...generic in comparison to it). I don't use perfume quite as often now (bad experiences with a broken bottle had something to do with that), though I did briefly try Miss Dior Chérie, which smelled like toffee pudding, and Lanvin's Vetyver (I didn't know it was a guy's perfume! But I do like vetiver..) but nothing quite matches up to it.

*this doesn't mean that I don't wear them. I just like my clothes with a bit of room to maneouevre around in, that's all.
Image from www.johnlewis.com

Wednesday Addams Might Have Approved.

Nightmares Sleeping Beauty Cover 19

Frenemies

Deep Sea Tickle Monster

On the surface of it, Camilla d'Errico's work is cute. In fact, it looks adorable, and my first thoughts on seeing it were of manga girls, with a hint of Cezanne, if Cezanne ever attempted to draw manga (which is not surprising, considering the fact that she's actually done the artwork for several comics). Her paintings are of girls, always cute ones, more often than not with an animal/monster friend in the frame- seemingly sweet things. But on a slightly closer look, the watercolour cuteness can turn out to be a little spooky, verging on grotesque at times, and I can't help feeling that if one of these were ever to hang on my wall, I'd have trouble taking my eyes off it- proof that cuteness can be compelling isn't something that one sees that often. It's a very far cry from the expected reactions that 'girly' art is supposed to evoke, and for that very reason I must say I'm rather hooked, and more than a little sorry that I won't get to go to any of her shows this year...lucky people living in California can go to her first solo show at the Copro Nason gallery in Santa Monica or to Comic-Con in San Diego this July.
If you feel like looking at more of Camilla's work, I'd suggest going to her site or MySpace, as well as to her online store. And here's an interview with the artist about the experience of working on Nightmares and Fairytales.
All images from http://www.camilladerrico.com, used with the artist's permission and for illustrative purposes only.

"beautiful fish-eyed women who wear alta on the soles of their feet. "

At least that's what commentator #44 on this post over at The Sartorialist, thinks my city is full of*. (they can't have meant any offence, but cliché, much? And - fish-eyed? Again, I know they wouldn't have meant it that way, but I'm getting a slight fit of giggles remembering fish market trips)

I'm still a little stunned by the fact that The Sartorialist is actually going to be here, in this country, by the middle of this month, not to mention wondering what kinds of things are going to end up on the blog from the trip and where exactly he's going to be taking pictures (this might be narrow-minded of me, but I really don't want to see more images of 'exotic India', and certainly not on a blog as good as that one). And overall, it's one big w00t at the very idea...even if most of the things I see people wearing on the street here generally verge between nondescrepit and horrendous (someone get APC and Topshop over here, STAT).

*And just for reference, alta is pigment- used, as the line says, to paint feet red. I'm not sure what it's made of exactly, but it is most definitely not a part of standard decoration for Bengali women. Not unless there's a major festival on, anyway.