feel like smiling

princess leia

Picked up a dress/cardigan/skirt over the weekend. I saw it on the model styled with a belt and bought it without trying on because the store was closing in 5 minutes. I still haven't managed to recreate the way it was styled, but found lots of other ways!

I've no idea why I just spent 10 minutes cropping my face out of all of these. I doubt anyone reads this (though I have love for those that do!) and if people do, they either have no idea who I am and don't care, or they are reading this because they know who I am. 

Hello.

More Hwimzee

Another image post, and word of the day. 

NB: Now actually a rant and image post because the word of the day did not go as smoothly as one would have hoped. 

whim⋅sy

  [hwim-zee, wim-] 

–noun, plural -sies.

1.	capricious humor or disposition; extravagant, fanciful, or excessively playful expression: a play with lots of whimsy.

2.	an odd or fanciful notion.

3.	anything odd or fanciful; a product of playful or capricious fancy: a whimsy from an otherwise thoughtful writer.

Let's talk about this definition for one second. 

Putting aside for the moment that the 'h' is in fact silent and so if you go around pronouncing it 'hwimzee' you are going to sound Victor Krum inarticulately lusting after Hermione, I have some serious problems with this definition.

Firstly, and indeed lastly, it is flat out wrong. That is not what whimsy means. Odd or fanciful? Excessively playful? Extravagant? I suspect capricious is meant badly as well, as the dictionary says it means 'erratic'. Why this attack on whimsy at a time when we need more whimsy?

This place in history is whimsy starved. In the evening, just after the sun sets, strange thoughts come into our heads, and, afraid, we think of other things like schedules and lists. Sometimes in the witching hour we awake - not often, perhaps just a handful of times in a lifetime - and think of a different world and believe, in that dark hour before dawn, that we could make it so. This is whimsy. 

I also have to take issue with whimsy being diametrically opposed to thoughtfulness in the not-very-helpful example sentence. Maybe to dictionary writers who wear bow ties and whose skin is the same grey colour as their hair, whimsy cannot co-exist with thoughtfulness, but for the rest of us, it can and it should. 

This, my friends, is whimsy - Nightingale.

So fuck off, dictionary, Keats and I think you are a loser.

Noorda Worry in the World

I swear I never even used to make puns (terrible or otherwise) until titling posts. I just hope it doesn't spill over into other areas. Maybe I should stop apologising for it and embrace the atrocious punning. 

Really liking Kim Noorda's hair this season. It's a less tacky take on Pip Edward's two-tone white trash tresses. Drew Barrymore one-upped her anyway at the Emmy's with the black ends, so that's all passe now as far as I'm concerned. But back to Kim, who is looking just lovely and making me wonder if I can get my hair to do that. 

Behold. 

From style.com, twenty8twelve and burberry prorsum respectively.

I'm too alive right now...

This is old news now, a 2006 book, and I don't even own it.

'The Next Big Thing - A Short Story About the Creative Process"

It is authored by Aesop Rock and illustrated by Jeremy Fish. His website here is full of some weird drawings. So if you like the unexpected and the absurd, check it out here. 

All I know about the creative process is that I don't know much. Creativity is being increasingly commodified, and to put it bluntly, if this goes too much further we are all screwed. Think Farenheit 911, think the Time Machine. 

So there are no flowers in this book, no goddesses of creativity, and no three muses. Nuh uh. There are skulls, pigs, nice hats, hotdogs and pin up girls, which to me seems to have a lot more to do with my own experience of creativity. 

A secret you and me house

A tree house, a free house,

A secret you and me house,

A high up in the leafy branches

Cozy as can be house.

A street house,

Be sure and wipe your feet house

Is not my kind of house at all -

Let's go live in a tree house.

- Shel Silverstein

In winter I went on a holiday to a treehouse. I've always been a tree lover, so it was a dream come true. Everywhere is lovely wood, with driftwood art installations and sketches from the artist who used to live there. The house is built on stilts on the top of the highest cliff in the area. The balcony is in the treetops, and the backyard is a national park. I'm hoping to go back this summer, because apparently you can sleep out on the balcony then, and look at the stars. 

Courts of the Sun

Got distracted by the rooftops in these photos by Meisel taken in 2000. Very distracted. My taste in interior design fluctuates between natural minimalism (modernist decor, natural accents like stone and wood) and balls out crazy antique-gatherer-sparkles-collector-intricacy. Obviously the former would be more livable but then a see a house like the one in this shoot and think that that is so much more of a home than most homes I've been in. Though form the other photos in the shoot, I suspect it is a temple or a spiritual retreat in Asia somewhere. 

Just imagine what the sparkled/mirrored room would be like at night, with candles. 

Butt that's a lie!

Apologies for the title. I clearly haven't learnt my lesson about making bad puns. And if you are waiting for the day when I do, I wouldn't hold your breath.

I don't hate what Sienna Miller is wearing here. Fashion blogs are knocking it, but I think she makes it kind of fierce. Okay, I admit she used to dress like an idiot, with leather string around the bottom of her jeans and so forth, and yes, she does suffer from comparisons to Kate (yes, suffer, because no one compares favourably). Also she is a flagrant 'other woman' and so deserving of the spite of the female species (cheating is bad, yada yada yada). Those topless photos weren't exactly classy, but each to their own life. 

Anyway, the moral of this rant is that I don't think she's a total fool, and this pantsuit confirms it.

But then she said that the GI Joe promo poster features her butt. Her real butt. I'm not sure is she's actually seen this poster, but here it is:

That may be someone's real butt, but it's not hers. Next she'll be telling us those are her real boobs, despite they fact that they were clearly drawn by an oversexed man-child with a fondness for anime. 

In this age of digital interference with images I think it is highly irresponsible to set up those pretend images as the standard so explicitly. So Sienna, unless you are willing to put in the hard yards with a Crispy Chicken Deluxe Burger for afternoon tea each day, then shush. 

leather rhinocerous

I went to Melbourne. Fell in love a little bit. With Dali, and with shoes, and with silk dresses. Laughed out loud many times in the Dali exhibition, much to the irritation of the schoolteachers trying to impart a but of culture to their hairsprayed, farting, shrieking charges. Well I’m sorry, but there is no way that a skull sodomising a piano isn’t funny, no matter how old or how educated you are. 

My new job is going awesomely, thanks very much for asking, GOD, why so rude? I won't lie, I'm enjoying wearing pure wool pants and cotton/viscose shirts. I'm a sucker for gorgeous fabrics but they don't fit in too well with my lifestyle since I like to lounge around a lot...(read: I'm very lazy) as a result I own a lot of cashmere jumpers covered in pills. Ohhh, little tip, ebay is great for luxury fabrics because people tend to buy things based on how they look on ebay, not how they feel. As a result, plain and boring garments of the highest quality can be a bargain.

Didn’t take the camera in Melbourne which was a good thing, because it is an excessively photogenic city and I would have been pointing and shooting and wildly abusing the ‘Auto’ setting. The food was excellent, the boy ate duck and kangaroo for the first time (on different nights, I promise), watched the light show during dinner at South Bank, went to hole-in-the-wall fancy-pants posh place tucked in a laneway and ordered a side of fries with the $$$ meals. Just ask if you want to know where to get some cracker chestnut chocolate mouse with spiced wine pear and a hazelnut cigar. Gorged on Mexican on Chapel Street, got takeaway churros, ordered room service because we could. Damn straight. 

For some reason the boy bought three hats (though if he had a blog he would be writing "For some reason the girl bought three pairs of shoes") and he looks like the hardest, meanest criminal in his new slouchy beanies. "It's been emotional", I said to him, and he had no idea what I was talking about until I said it in a scouse accent. And if you don't know where that line is from then your cultural education is sorely lacking. 

You've got the blues in your shoes and you stockings

Im starting a new job on Monday. I've had less than a weeks notice on this and the dress code is 'smart busniess' which is ususally code for 'black and boring'. This presents a problem, because although a large amount of my wardrobe is black, it is because I have a penchant for black heels, and most of those heels are of heights not appropriate for wearing to work unless you work in a strip joint.

But I see this job as a great opportunity to invest in a quality black pantsuit. 'Oh, and you know what would be a great idea', I thought to myself, 'I should go on style.com and have a look at suit styles on the runway and see what kind of thing I like.' I foresaw a couple of flaws in this plan...namely that I probably can't even afford high-street "interpretations" let alone the real thing. What I did not foresee was that I was about to be completely and utterly sidetracked.

Oooooo, the pretty shoes.

In the end, the Dior shoes were definitely my favourite...lingerie inspired heels was always going to be a stretch but oh, Galliano, you are a magician. The hats were also blow-your-mind incredible and I would happily wear any one of them.

Elie Saab put all his models in the same white shoes which matched the all white (and variations on that theme) clothes...nice shoes, I won't deny, but they don't blow my mind.

Jean Paul Gaultier had a few interesting shoes, but his use of clear plastic and his invention of 'boots that are also pants' (patoots? boo-ants?) was disconcerting and detracted from what was otherwise an incredible collection.

Valentino was apparantly very inspired by Prada's fan detailing from earlier this year, and I do prefer his interpretation of it. It's definitely more wearable. Both the feathers and the fan are going to be hard for high-street stores to rip off, not that they won't have a good crack at it.

The gowns at Armani stole the show but the shoes were actually lovely up close. Usually they were obscured by gorgeous blue, black and eggshell coloured gowns dripping with beading and detailing, but here's a pair that mananged to peek out, and I must say I love the use of plastic (Gaultier take note!).

Chanel confused me. Booties and kitten heels and tiny straps that seemed more at place on a 90s runway than now. Also, do I sopt the use of a bedazzler? Okay, they are pretty, but I wouldn't even wear any of these, the stacked heel has been so firmly implanted in my subconscious.

There weren't detail shots from Lacroix and Givenchy which is probably a good thing. I love how haute couture season coincides with not having any more exams!