Get yo' swag on

Was Santa good to you this year?  I must have been a good girl, because I got a mighty sack of Christmas swag, mostly in the form of some excellent fashion books.  To be honest, I could have done with a sack of coal too because It. Is. Freezing.

Here's what I got book-wise, in no particular order.

Blow by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow by Detmar Blow.  This biography of the famed and much mourned super-stylist purports to be her definitive biography.  But really, it's not.  It's not particularly well-written and her husband goes into too much detail in some places (he paints Alexander McQueen as an egocentric, cruel megalomaniac) and not enough in others (Blow's heroin use and both his and her extramarital affairs are casually touched on or barely acknowledged).  It's distinctly unbalanced, but I feel as if I know Blow a bit better after reading it.

The Look: Adventures in Rock and Pop Fashion by Paul Gorman.  From Elvis to Gwen Stefani, this book charts the intermingling of fashion and music.  Where the musos bought their clothes, what the trends meant and what people thought of them at the time - it's a supremely interesting read.  And there's introductions and forewards by Paul Smith AND Malcolm MacLaren.  AND a free CD.

Style Wars by Peter York.  Published in 1980, this book is now sadly out of print.  If you're a fan of subculture, then buy it second hand on Amazon.  I got a nice clean ex-library copy.  Reading about the different style tribes in the 80's and thinking about how radically different the world is now after only thirty years is a bit of a mind-melt.  A good mind-melt.  Chapter on Sloane Rangers = Hilarious.

A photo from Take Ivy.  Gotta love those preppy boys.

Take Ivy by Teruyoshi Hayashida.  Loads and loads and LOADS of iconic pictures of preppy men (and a few women) at Ivy League universities.  All of the photos were taken in the early sixties, so it's collegiate cool at it's most distilled, before Woodstock and Women's Lib changed the face of the common college uniform.

Face Hunter by Yvan Rodic.  Enough said.

The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genius and Glorious Excess in 1970's Paris by Alicia Drake.  I cannot wait to get my teeth into this book, which tells the story of the friendship and rivalry between Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld before they achieved their godlike statuses.  It's reassuringly thick, which is always a good thing when it comes to non fiction.  More pages equal more juicy details.

Knitting Masterpieces via etsy - buy it!

Knitting Masterpieces by Ruth Herring.  This (also out of print) knitting book shows you have to make jumpers with some of art's greatest works emblazoned across the front.  I will not rest until I figure out how to knit a Mona Lisa sweater.  It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine.

Style and the Man: How and Where to Buy the Best Men's Clothing by Alan Flusser.  Everything a person could possibly want to know about how to buy a suit, how to wear a suit, the best proportions to suit a man's figure, how to tie a cravat - basically every GQ fashion article ever written that never actually appeared in GQ.  I'll be passing it on to the boyfriend according.

Great Fashion Designs of the Sixties: Paper Dolls in Full Colour: 32 Haute Couture Costumes by Courreges, Balmain, Saint-Laurent, and Others by Tom Tierney.  Sixties.  Paper.  Dolls.  Marrying my love of sixties fashion and cutting shapes out of paper.  The words 'childish glee' were made for this book

A plate from Portrait in a Velvet Dress - a beautifully composed and considered shot

Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress: Frida's Wardrobe by Carlos Phillips Olmed and Magdalena Rozenzweig.  Many people love the art of Frida Kahlo, but equally fascinating was her attitude to clothing.  This book is full of pictures of her flamboyant outfits (found in a trunk in a disused bathroom in her house, still smelling of her cigarettes) and essays about the artist's relationship and attitudes towards her wardrobe.

Coco Chanel:  The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie.  Coco Chanel was so protective of her own life story that it seems that there will never be a totally truthful and authoritative biography written on her.  Justine Picardie grapples admirably with what she has to work with and the book is printed on gorgeous glossy paper with some seriously great, insightful images.

It's going to take me a while to get though these.  Wish me luck.  Did you get anything nice for Christmas?  Got any fashion-type reads that you fancy sharing?

And the winner is...

Hello all. I hope that you had an excellent Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/ Festivus/Whatever and that all your wild gift dreams came true. I got a mighty haul of fashion-type books. More on that later.

Here is what happened at the Licentiate household this festive season.

1. The water was cut off.
2. Then the pipes in the bathroom burst. So, on the upside, we had water. It was just leaking through the light fixtures and onto the kitchen floor.
3. Then I got food poisoning. On Christmas Eve.
4.  So Christmas was spent in bed and in dire need of a shower.

Anyway, enough about me.  How was your Christmas?  Not too stressful, I hope.

It's a less then smooth segue from food poisoning to the giveaway I held last month, which ended on Christmas Eve.  The winner, chosen my my sister from a lot of tiny pieces of paper in a bowl is Zoe of Vagabond Language.  Check out her blog - it's very interesting indeed!

Major congrats to Zoe and all who entered!

Licentiate Column 23/12/10

OK, deep breaths. We’ve nearly got through it.  The festive season is upon us.  It’s almost over.  All the legwork has been done, the presents have been bought and distributed, champagne has been put in the icebox (and in my house, for some reason, the vegetable crisper) in anticipation of the stroke of twelve on New Years Eve.  You can do it.  We’re on the home stretch now.
The last column covered the problem of clothing as Christmas presents, the one before that, the problem of dressing for the wintry weather, the one before that, the problem of dressing for Christmas parties.  Sometimes I wish that Christmas was three months long just so I could write about how problematic a combination Christmas and my clothing is, not least how hard it is to fit into my impulse-buy leather pants after yet another mince pie too many.

Yep, I’m a Scrooge.  At the very least, I am an amped-up modern Scrooge, like Bill Murray in 80’s tacktastic remake, ‘Scrooged’, where he plays a bepermed television executive who eventually learns the error of his ways... or at least I think he does.  I was definitely not paying attention.

I don’t hate Christmas - I love it.  I love seeing my family and reuniting with homeward bound friends, I love giving (and receiving) presents, I love that it’s an excuse to eat as much breaded, deep fried brie as you can physically handle while glued to a Judy Garland marathon.  All of these activities are best undertaken wearing a ratty, too-big t-shirt of your dads and a pair or droopy treggings (bonus points for fashioning a little red Snuggie into a cape, extra bonus points for going to the pub in such an ensemble).

Christmas and New Years are times to be comfortable.  That’s my problem.  I know that, once the 6th of January has come and gone and a million Christmas trees are slowly turning brown after being shunted in a million back yards, I will have to put on the skinny jeans again.  And when I realise that the skinny jeans won’t go past my kneecaps, the party really will be over.  It’s not for nothing that the average weight gain over the Christmas period is seven pounds.

And then, the New Years resolutions.  The juice fasts.  The pilates.  The expensive gym memberships.  The rice cakes, an endless stream of them, all masticated methodically in order to fit back into those impossible jeans again.  First the binge, then the purge.  It’s a cliche to call it a vicious cycle, but it really is vicious; it’s a snarling beast that wakes you up every day at 6am to go for a jog before work and forces you at gunpoint to put down that Galaxy Caramel - now.

All the same, humans have a short memory and are remarkably resilient creatures (or incredible masochists).  We put ourselves through this torture because we know we’ll get to do it all again in a matter of months; and we love it.   If that seven pounds doesn’t slide off so easily and the jeans remain a bit tight, so what?  That’s what the January sales are for.

LICENTIATE FESTIVE NOTICE!   There will be no column next week.  The next Licentiate column goes up on the 7th of January, so stay tuned.  From the second of January, there will be some very special posts from very special Irish bloggers - more on that in the New Years.  
As you may know, this humble blog has been listed as one of Ireland's most influential fashion blogs!  You can vote for me by clicking on the link, finding my blog (I'm number 42) and clicking the vote button.  Thanks so much to everyone who has supported my blog so far, all you comments and emails are much appreciated.  HUG!
P.S And if you're not going to vote for me, please vote for one of the other superb Irish blogs out there, who are all super nice, very talented and equally deserving of your vote.

Licentiate Column 16/12/10

Christmas shopping is hard. I don’t just mean the physical act of shopping, which is a test of endurance dreamed up by a wrathful god who makes a daily habit of getting up on the wrong side of the bed each morning. I’m talking about the preamble. The wracking of brains to come up with the perfect gift and the sifting through endless websites and gift guides. The pressure to be thought of as the most thoughtful (and cunningly frugal) gift-giver on the planet.


Sometimes the brain get so wracked it starts to resemble a plate of grated cheddar cheese. Combine that with the over-sifted gift ideas and your plan is now starting to resemble the ingredients for a nice savoury scone as opposed to the perfect shopping trip.

The worst Christmas gifts are invariably the clothes. The very nature of buying clothes for another person is illogical and deeply flawed,so it comes to pass that only the very smartest or foolhardy will buy such things.

This goes for all items of clothing, no matter how large or small. Want to buy your significant other a tie? Think you know him that well, do you? Don’t say I didn’t warn you. There is no accounting for taste, so you may find that your choice of an ironic burgundy kipper tie will find you out in the cold this festive season. Think that you’re dodging a bullet by buying a plain tie? Then think again; the plain tie marks you out as a thoughtless gift giver. The tao of ties dictates that the busier the pattern, the more thought you evidently put into buying it.

On the gender flip side, we have the glutinous minefield that is lingerie. Like Father Ted, many men will get lost somewhere in Debenhams on Christmas Eve and be spat back out into homewares sometime before Valentines Day. The lingerie section is the Bermuda triangle for confused and indecisive men everywhere.

Bra and knicker sets are a perfect example of the ‘smart or foolhardy’ customer dichotomy. A person will either know their significant others cup size and preference for lace over leather, resulting in a very merry (triple) Xmas or they don’t. They make an ill-advised stab in the dark, which is exactly what will happen once the significant other unwraps a red rubber and latex creation that Lady Gaga would find just a tad too risque.

Maybe the worst thing about Christmas shopping isn’t the preamble. Maybe, just maybe, the worst thing about Christmas shopping is the fact that we have to do it at all. We’re all adults here. We know that Christmas is ostensibly about Jesus and not about rampant, Godzilla-like consumerism. We buy presents to show the people in our lives that we care about them. Why do we insist on expressing that love with ill-fitting, badly chosen garments that are going to be on sale anyway in a matter if weeks? Is that truly the measure of care that we take for other people?

This year, my mother offered to knit me a jumper of my choosing. While this gesture doesn’t cost the earth, it’s still infinitely better than an expensive shop bought, machine-made offering in colours I don’t like with too-long sleeves. When it comes to Christmas and clothes, it’s the thought that counts. And if you get stuck, a book token will do nicely.

A Christmas Wishlist

I'm so sorry,  I couldn't help it.  The spirit moved me and I said the C word on the blog.  That C word is Christmas, mind you, not what Charlotte for Sex and the City would primly call 'see-you-next-Tuesday'. Now that I've drawn attention to that, I have to warn you that there is ONE pic that might possibly be NSFW, but it's of an item of clothing, so it would depend on how easily offended you are.  Here's the list.  Check it twice if you must.

Clothes and Stuff

Siouxsie Sioux lookin' fierce

This epic t-shirt (to wear to job interviews and family christenings, obviously). Click here to read a totally interesting and absorbing series of posts about the evolution of the Tits t-shirt, brought to the masses by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm MacLaren.

 - Black yarn

 - White yarn

 - Big ol' knitting needles

 - Loose rhinestones

 - Lengths of chain

Ingredients for a top secret craft project - and by 'top secret' I mean glaringly obvious (it's a jumper).  The closest approximation I can find is on this stylish lady on Chictopia .  And it's handmade too.  It must be fate.  I'd like to make something a little bit like this, but sparkly.

On a side note for fellow Irish bloggers; were you forced to learn knitting in primary school?  I learned (and I say that in the loosest sense possible) knitting, sewing and crochet at the Presentation Primary and conveniently forgot my knitting needles and crochet hooks for about three years running.

It might just be me, but making things is so much better than just buying the finished article.  A mountain of studs to gussy up my biker jacket a la Burberry would be mighty useful too.

Books, books and more books...

Allure by Diana Vreeland - The out-of-print masterpiece has been reissued with an introduction by Marc Jacobs.  Possibly the funniest, wittiest writer of fashion ever.  Vreeland, that is, not Marc Jacobs.
The Mode in Furs by R. Turner Wilcox - So I can understand a bit more about fur and where the hell the idea of wearing an animal comes from.
Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress by Denise Rosenzweig - A peek into the wardrobe of amazing, flamboyant artist Frida Kahlo, who took up a big part of my Halloween post with her scarves, braids and traditional Mexican clothing.

Film Flickers

Totally unattainable

I've got a Mac G4, I've had it for five years and it still works great.  But it's a little bit knackered now and I need something that has more memory and runs a little bit quicker.  It also weighs a ton.  A new Mac Air would do the trick nicely.  So light, you can barely see it.  Just like Kate Moss.  Anonymous donors, start queueing here.

And...

World peace.  Not too much to ask, is it?