If my Junior Cert science knowledge serves me well (and it probably doesn't), one of Isaac Newton's laws of physics is, 'for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction'. While this applies in relation to centrifrugal forces, it's also relevant to our everyday lives - and to think we were convinced that it would have no practical application once we left school.
Whatever your political preference, whether left, right or maddeningly, non-commitally dead-centre, we are all rebellious reactionaries. Reactionary dressers, that is.
Like most deep set neuroses, I believe that this starts in early childhood. A child is dressed by his or her parents. They are the dictator of the toddler closet, the holders of the keys to Gap Kids. You will wear those pink corduroy dungarees and you will have this pudding-bowl haircut. You have no choice in the matter.
From a very early age, a person gets a sense that there's a way that you want to dress and a way that you have to dress, and ne'er the twain shall meet.
Both of these things play off each other. The more rigid the uniform, the more expressive and off-the-wall the remainder of your wardrobe will be. This is where Newton comes into the equation. Here's the science bit.
Friend A works in a chain sportwear shop on the high street. He is required to wear Brand X for work, but his distaste for X means that he now buys Brand Y for his days off. In fact, he buys much more Y than he did before he started at work. It's a reaction to the dreaded brand X. Q.E.D.
Friend B is a impossibly polished medical consultant in a large private hospital. When someone sneezes in her presence, she thinks they're making a medical point about Jimmy Choos. She get manicures twice and blowdries thrice weekly because of the sheer wilful need to look professional in front of her influential, much older, mostly male peers. On her off days she goes to Tesco in her pajamas.
In a wider scope, almost all countercultural movements of the twentieth century are reactions to the establishment. The hippie ethos was born out of disgust with the American government and stifling social norms, but the clothing was a calculated counter-attack to these norms. It shocked Johnny Crewcut out of his complacent haze and into a more, er, lycergic one - one that involved bell bottoms and a helluva lot of suede fringing.
For some reason, this is a phenomenon that has only come to maturity within the past hundred years. The Surrealists shocked the world in the earlier part of the century, but part of their shock value was that they looked incredibly respectable, in three-piece suits and soft homburgs. Even then, their clothing was a reaction - a deliberate effort to buck against what was expected of them, which was to outwardly express what deviants they were.
From shoes, to outfits, to social groups, from traditional national dress to battle uniform even to schisms in society at large, all reactions are governed by the actions that precede them. Once you start to notice these reactions, you life may start to take on a Da Vinci Code-esque significance as you count all the coincidences that pop up almost out of nowhere. For me though, there's a straightforward explanation - it's simple fashematics.
Showing posts with label I do work you know.... Show all posts
Showing posts with label I do work you know.... Show all posts
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Licentiate Column 17/02/11 Colour Blocking: A Guide
Colour blocking is a little bit like nuclear fusion. We all have a vague idea of what it is, but only people with specialist knowledge can explain it coherently or know how to work it properly. Colour blocking isn't the driving force behind the most powerful explosive men has ever known, but still, if you make one wrong move, everything is very liable to blow up in your face.
This particular trend has been all over the catwalks and in shops for several seasons now, but it has been hovering around the fringes of decorating, graphic design, home interiors, visual merchandising and art for much, much longer. If someone wants to draw your eye to something, be it a window display or a bathroom wall, colour blocking is one of the most effective ways to do it.
And yet, it is damnably hard to explain in simple, linear terms. I've spent a solid week researching and trying to write synopses, but the only one-line answer to colour blocking that I can come up with is this: If you look like a Fruit Pastille ice pop, then you're doing it right.
Colour blocking should be easy. In it's most basic term, it's the wearing a few contrasting colours in one outfit. Yep, it really should be easy - but it isn't. It's the sartorial equivalent of a sixteen year old trying to unhook his girlfriends bra. The swaggering confidence as the task begins soon turns, first to frustration, then crushing disappointment, insecurity and finally, an unsatisfactory conclusion for everyone involved.
There are a hundred and one simple rules for working colour blocking like a pro, but I only get five hundred words per column. I've wasted two hundred of them already joking about how difficult it is, so I'll just give you the basics. This is the fruit of reading about a hundred articles and embarking on some terrible wardrobe experiments, one of which resulted me going shopping in town resembling a human rubiks cube.
1) Only wear two or three colours at any one time. See rubiks cube statement above.
2) Pretend that you're colour blind. Remember 'blue and green must never be seen'? Rejoice, for the restraining order between cerulean and emerald has been lifted. A detente has been reached and the good news is ringing out all over your wardrobe. Red and pink are similarly jarring bedfellows.
3) The Clash is more than just an band. Red with blue? Yes please! Purple and green? Don't mind if I do! Yellow and teal? Why, I'll have a double portion. Please sir, I want some more!
4) Patterns are not your friends. Red and green is fine, if a little festive. Red and green stripes are a no-no. You're not Bosco, but wear that combo and you'll be sent back in your box. Patterns are generally eye-catching anyway, so they tend to have an America's Next Top Model-worthy fight for attention with contrasting trends. Remember, colour blocking = blocks of colour. That means no patterns allowed. No exceptions.
5) Neutrals are a welcome relief. If your multi-tonal antics are on the verge of inducing seizure, break up the colour party by introducing a neutral shade. Grey works well with cool blues and greens, tan and beige colours can look unexpectedly striking with warm tones. It makes an on-trend twist to all the boring basics.
So now you know the rules. Go forth and block your colours like there's no tomorrow. And if you find yourself looking longingly at stripes, just think to yourself - what would Bosco do?
This particular trend has been all over the catwalks and in shops for several seasons now, but it has been hovering around the fringes of decorating, graphic design, home interiors, visual merchandising and art for much, much longer. If someone wants to draw your eye to something, be it a window display or a bathroom wall, colour blocking is one of the most effective ways to do it.
And yet, it is damnably hard to explain in simple, linear terms. I've spent a solid week researching and trying to write synopses, but the only one-line answer to colour blocking that I can come up with is this: If you look like a Fruit Pastille ice pop, then you're doing it right.
Colour blocking should be easy. In it's most basic term, it's the wearing a few contrasting colours in one outfit. Yep, it really should be easy - but it isn't. It's the sartorial equivalent of a sixteen year old trying to unhook his girlfriends bra. The swaggering confidence as the task begins soon turns, first to frustration, then crushing disappointment, insecurity and finally, an unsatisfactory conclusion for everyone involved.
There are a hundred and one simple rules for working colour blocking like a pro, but I only get five hundred words per column. I've wasted two hundred of them already joking about how difficult it is, so I'll just give you the basics. This is the fruit of reading about a hundred articles and embarking on some terrible wardrobe experiments, one of which resulted me going shopping in town resembling a human rubiks cube.
1) Only wear two or three colours at any one time. See rubiks cube statement above.
2) Pretend that you're colour blind. Remember 'blue and green must never be seen'? Rejoice, for the restraining order between cerulean and emerald has been lifted. A detente has been reached and the good news is ringing out all over your wardrobe. Red and pink are similarly jarring bedfellows.
3) The Clash is more than just an band. Red with blue? Yes please! Purple and green? Don't mind if I do! Yellow and teal? Why, I'll have a double portion. Please sir, I want some more!
4) Patterns are not your friends. Red and green is fine, if a little festive. Red and green stripes are a no-no. You're not Bosco, but wear that combo and you'll be sent back in your box. Patterns are generally eye-catching anyway, so they tend to have an America's Next Top Model-worthy fight for attention with contrasting trends. Remember, colour blocking = blocks of colour. That means no patterns allowed. No exceptions.
5) Neutrals are a welcome relief. If your multi-tonal antics are on the verge of inducing seizure, break up the colour party by introducing a neutral shade. Grey works well with cool blues and greens, tan and beige colours can look unexpectedly striking with warm tones. It makes an on-trend twist to all the boring basics.
So now you know the rules. Go forth and block your colours like there's no tomorrow. And if you find yourself looking longingly at stripes, just think to yourself - what would Bosco do?
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Licentiate Column 13/01/11
I'd like to thank everyone who has voted for me so far as one of Ireland's most influential bloggers . The competition is ending tomorrow at 6pm Irish time, so I'm going to make a final (very annoying) push for more votes. If you've voted before you can vote again (it's every 24 hours). The instructions for voting are on the page. I'm just about creaking into the top ten and I'd love to stay there but I'm neck and neck with another blog - so I really really do need them votes. Click here - I'm number 42!
*Public Service Announcement over - on to this week's column...*
Today I picked up a nice, shiny magazine. You know, the kind of nice, shiny magazine full of nice, shiny clothes with nice, shiny prices. The kind of magazine that issues the most hallowed and anticipated of all biannual supplements (barring Heat Magazine's soul-crushing celebrity swimsuit pull-outs) - the catwalk report.
We'll just call this magazine a generic, vaguely evocative French word. Let's call it Haute. I love Haute because it is cover-to-cover with beautiful people, fairytale settings and clothes you and I can never afford. It is pure escapism. It inhabits a world totally inaccessible and separate to our own, albeit one that we can peer into just by briefly licking our thumbs and flicking a page corner, like a version of Alice and the Looking-Glass for shopping addicts.
Magazines like Haute publish the catwalk reports as a way of imposing themselves into our world. Haute has picked up the Looking Glass and smashed it over Alice's head. It's less assimilation - more indoctrination.
The idea is to pick and choose which aspects of which collection appeal most to you and blend it into your wardrobe; simple things like (a) bold block colours or (b) simple tailoring or (c) a pair of flared jeans. You're not really supposed to wear the catwalk look from head to toe, because if you did, you'd look a bit like (a) a lego brick, (b) an extra from Logan's Run or (c) a Studio 54 reject for whom the party has long since ended.
This season Haute is championing the Luxe Sportswear trend. 'Luxe' does not mean 'luxury', rather 'Luxe Sportswear' means 'Expensive Tracksuits... In Impractical Heels'. Popularised by designer Alexander Wang, Luxe Sportswear has been around for a few seasons and is defined by distressed shrunken leather biker jackets with leggings, oversized t-shirts, lace-up heeled boots and enough grey jersey to swaddle a million coltish-legged prepubescent models. Nothing we haven't seen before.
Luxe Sportswear is perverse; it pairs the practical with the impractical. Waterproof neoprene, traditionally found in wetsuits, is used to construct soft, shell-like bodycon dresses. Joggerbums are worn with towering heels.
The neoprene dresses I can understand. It's an unorthodox material and, because it's such a stiff fabric, it can hold it's shape and produce some unexpectedly beautiful results. The heel and tracksuit pants? Oho no.
Today I saw a woman walking down the street wearing a pair of billowing khaki jersey pants. The cuffs of said pants were tucked into spindly McQueen-esque lace-up heels of the same hue. Her gait was circumspect, possibly because every step she took would inflate a pant leg like a runaway wind sock in a wheezing gale.
Apart from that segue into the risible, Luxe Sportswear is fully representative of it's beloved grey jersey. It's boring.
Even the ringleader of the bland, sorry, grand circus, Alexander Wang, is getting tired of the monsters he has created. He is quoted in interviews, saying "If I see another distressed black leather motorcycle jacket, I'm going to shoot myself in the face".
That's a bit harsh, Mr Wang. Perhaps you should make your weapon a water pistol instead. When the time comes for that fateful splashing, pray that you'll be wearing neoprene.
*Public Service Announcement over - on to this week's column...*
Today I picked up a nice, shiny magazine. You know, the kind of nice, shiny magazine full of nice, shiny clothes with nice, shiny prices. The kind of magazine that issues the most hallowed and anticipated of all biannual supplements (barring Heat Magazine's soul-crushing celebrity swimsuit pull-outs) - the catwalk report.
We'll just call this magazine a generic, vaguely evocative French word. Let's call it Haute. I love Haute because it is cover-to-cover with beautiful people, fairytale settings and clothes you and I can never afford. It is pure escapism. It inhabits a world totally inaccessible and separate to our own, albeit one that we can peer into just by briefly licking our thumbs and flicking a page corner, like a version of Alice and the Looking-Glass for shopping addicts.
Magazines like Haute publish the catwalk reports as a way of imposing themselves into our world. Haute has picked up the Looking Glass and smashed it over Alice's head. It's less assimilation - more indoctrination.
The idea is to pick and choose which aspects of which collection appeal most to you and blend it into your wardrobe; simple things like (a) bold block colours or (b) simple tailoring or (c) a pair of flared jeans. You're not really supposed to wear the catwalk look from head to toe, because if you did, you'd look a bit like (a) a lego brick, (b) an extra from Logan's Run or (c) a Studio 54 reject for whom the party has long since ended.
This season Haute is championing the Luxe Sportswear trend. 'Luxe' does not mean 'luxury', rather 'Luxe Sportswear' means 'Expensive Tracksuits... In Impractical Heels'. Popularised by designer Alexander Wang, Luxe Sportswear has been around for a few seasons and is defined by distressed shrunken leather biker jackets with leggings, oversized t-shirts, lace-up heeled boots and enough grey jersey to swaddle a million coltish-legged prepubescent models. Nothing we haven't seen before.
Luxe Sportswear is perverse; it pairs the practical with the impractical. Waterproof neoprene, traditionally found in wetsuits, is used to construct soft, shell-like bodycon dresses. Joggerbums are worn with towering heels.
The neoprene dresses I can understand. It's an unorthodox material and, because it's such a stiff fabric, it can hold it's shape and produce some unexpectedly beautiful results. The heel and tracksuit pants? Oho no.
Today I saw a woman walking down the street wearing a pair of billowing khaki jersey pants. The cuffs of said pants were tucked into spindly McQueen-esque lace-up heels of the same hue. Her gait was circumspect, possibly because every step she took would inflate a pant leg like a runaway wind sock in a wheezing gale.
Apart from that segue into the risible, Luxe Sportswear is fully representative of it's beloved grey jersey. It's boring.
Even the ringleader of the bland, sorry, grand circus, Alexander Wang, is getting tired of the monsters he has created. He is quoted in interviews, saying "If I see another distressed black leather motorcycle jacket, I'm going to shoot myself in the face".
That's a bit harsh, Mr Wang. Perhaps you should make your weapon a water pistol instead. When the time comes for that fateful splashing, pray that you'll be wearing neoprene.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Licentiate Column 06/01/11
It’s close to midnight on the first of January. As I type this column, the first day of the New Year has drawn to a close. Shops have been shut, roast dinners have been eaten and tins of Roses and Quality Street have been hoovered of all but the most perplexing of sweets (Dark Orange Mocha Nut Crunch, anyone?). If you’re looking for Silent Night, you’ve found it here.
When this column is published, the sales will be well underway and people will understand that the first day of January is a day of silent contemplation - but only if you’re contemplating how to load that half price LCD screen TV onto the roof of your Astra, or of how many people you’re going to knock over to get to the knock-down Carvelas and Prada pumps in BTs.
It is also a time for the silent gathering of strength for negotiating crowds, the silent girding of loins in preparation for any potential punchouts over the last camel coat and silent meditation in order to instill in oneself the cunningness that makes you hide several bras in your size under a pile of coats and pray that they’re still there when you come back from the ATM.
We all know that January Sales shopping is a slog through shops filled, according to a friend of mine, with ‘stuff that we’ve frowned at for the past four months’. The appeal of mediocre clothing is amplified because it’s so cheap; we pick up something we’re not sure about and wonder if it would ‘do’ because it’s been marked down from €100 to 50 cents.
And the sad thing about all this is that we know what a bad ideas it is to buy these variously ill-fitting, unsuitable, wrong-sized clothes - but we still do it anyway. Articles materialise all over the popular press advising people on how to tackle the sales correctly. ‘Tackle’ being the operative word; one has to barrel through an oppositional scrum to get to scratchy jumpers with stretched sleeves and misshapen shoulders, a symptom of clothing carelessly tried on and discarded by all the people who came before you.
No sales are regardedly so rabidly as the ones held at the start of the year, and I have a (very) rough idea as to why.
The start of the year is one of renewal. We make resolutions to ourselves. We decide to become fitter, healthier, more motivated. We decide to take tasks upon ourselves that are fundamentally life-changing. We assess that we can change our personalities and literally become other people.
That is why the sales are so popular; we’re not buying for ourselves (which explains why we knowingly make foolish purchases), we are buying for the different version of ourselves that we will become once we complete our resolutions. Normal Sarah would never wear a leotard but Gym Bunny Sarah? She’ll take twelve!
We do this year after year knowing full well of the consequences of an overstuffed wardrobe. We do this out of hope for the future. Buying clothes is just a manifestation of that hope and a speck-like microcosm of New Years celebrations as a whole. Normal Sarah thinks that I should be sceptical. Future Sarah says that maybe, just maybe, all those leotards will come in handy.
When this column is published, the sales will be well underway and people will understand that the first day of January is a day of silent contemplation - but only if you’re contemplating how to load that half price LCD screen TV onto the roof of your Astra, or of how many people you’re going to knock over to get to the knock-down Carvelas and Prada pumps in BTs.
It is also a time for the silent gathering of strength for negotiating crowds, the silent girding of loins in preparation for any potential punchouts over the last camel coat and silent meditation in order to instill in oneself the cunningness that makes you hide several bras in your size under a pile of coats and pray that they’re still there when you come back from the ATM.
We all know that January Sales shopping is a slog through shops filled, according to a friend of mine, with ‘stuff that we’ve frowned at for the past four months’. The appeal of mediocre clothing is amplified because it’s so cheap; we pick up something we’re not sure about and wonder if it would ‘do’ because it’s been marked down from €100 to 50 cents.
And the sad thing about all this is that we know what a bad ideas it is to buy these variously ill-fitting, unsuitable, wrong-sized clothes - but we still do it anyway. Articles materialise all over the popular press advising people on how to tackle the sales correctly. ‘Tackle’ being the operative word; one has to barrel through an oppositional scrum to get to scratchy jumpers with stretched sleeves and misshapen shoulders, a symptom of clothing carelessly tried on and discarded by all the people who came before you.
No sales are regardedly so rabidly as the ones held at the start of the year, and I have a (very) rough idea as to why.
The start of the year is one of renewal. We make resolutions to ourselves. We decide to become fitter, healthier, more motivated. We decide to take tasks upon ourselves that are fundamentally life-changing. We assess that we can change our personalities and literally become other people.
That is why the sales are so popular; we’re not buying for ourselves (which explains why we knowingly make foolish purchases), we are buying for the different version of ourselves that we will become once we complete our resolutions. Normal Sarah would never wear a leotard but Gym Bunny Sarah? She’ll take twelve!
We do this year after year knowing full well of the consequences of an overstuffed wardrobe. We do this out of hope for the future. Buying clothes is just a manifestation of that hope and a speck-like microcosm of New Years celebrations as a whole. Normal Sarah thinks that I should be sceptical. Future Sarah says that maybe, just maybe, all those leotards will come in handy.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Licentiate Column 09/12/10
I’m no Martin King (a blessing in disguise) but I don’t need to switch on the weather forecast to know that it is pretty darn cold outside. Freezing, in fact. If everything isn’t covered in a few feet of virgin snow, then the roads and footpaths are covered in a gleaming membrane of ice, like a mirrored pool of glass.
We Irish are not well equipped for cold weather. We’re used to rain and clouds and mild temperatures. We are not used to spending half an hour gingerly clopping on frozen paths to the shop next door with the careful stride of a dressage pony, just to avoid slipping gracelessly on our behinds in hopelessly impractical shoes.
Worst of all is the total standstill of the country’s transport system, due to a complete lack of snow tyres and grit for the roads. We are just plain ill-prepared. But that’s a story for a different column.
I have no solution to the transport problem (except maybe to recommend investing in shares in salt) but I can help with the clothing issue. Here are a few tips for dressing appropriately for sub-zero weather.
1. Hat, scarves, gloves. All in a colour that suit your skin tone. You’re going to be wearing these all the time, so the general rule is that it’s better that they match your face rather than your outfit, even if your nose is now the colour of a bowl of cranberry sauce. Once you have your hat, scarf and gloves, buy some spares. Donate them to your local SVP, because there are a hell of a lot of freezing homeless people out there who desperately need them.
2. Thermal underwear is your friend. It is no flaky friend either. Thermal underwear is the kind of friend that you can ring up in the middle of the night right after a break-up and moan to ad nauseum without judgement or complaint. Thermal underwear is the kind of friend that will always be there for you. If you want a super-retro look, then go for lumberjack long johns. It’s best to wear these in bed, because going to the bathroom in long johns is the kind of gargantuan task that Bear Grylls would find difficult on a good day. Failing that, thermal tees and leggings can be found at reasonably cheap prices in many of the larger clothing chains. Some thermals also act like full body Spanx, which is no bad thing.
3. Always, always layer your clothing. Layering isn’t a fashion buzzword; in cold weather it’s a vital component of dressing. If you go out in a t-shirt and huge coat, get too hot, then take off your coat, your body will cool down much too fast, making you more susceptible to colds and flu. This would be why I am currently typing with one hand, the other now glued to a Kleenex which, in turn, is glued to my runny nose. Learn from my mistake. Dress in many thin layers, not one huge one.
4. Look to the Scandinavians for inspiration. We’ve already taken our economic cues from Iceland, now we should think about the way they dress. Tailored trousers, warm, thick tights, waterproof boots with sturdy soles, chunky knits and lashings of fur, faux or otherwise are all great options. Up the glamour ante with your hair, jewellery and accessories.
5. Tread very carefully. Full body casts are so last year.
We Irish are not well equipped for cold weather. We’re used to rain and clouds and mild temperatures. We are not used to spending half an hour gingerly clopping on frozen paths to the shop next door with the careful stride of a dressage pony, just to avoid slipping gracelessly on our behinds in hopelessly impractical shoes.
Worst of all is the total standstill of the country’s transport system, due to a complete lack of snow tyres and grit for the roads. We are just plain ill-prepared. But that’s a story for a different column.
I have no solution to the transport problem (except maybe to recommend investing in shares in salt) but I can help with the clothing issue. Here are a few tips for dressing appropriately for sub-zero weather.
1. Hat, scarves, gloves. All in a colour that suit your skin tone. You’re going to be wearing these all the time, so the general rule is that it’s better that they match your face rather than your outfit, even if your nose is now the colour of a bowl of cranberry sauce. Once you have your hat, scarf and gloves, buy some spares. Donate them to your local SVP, because there are a hell of a lot of freezing homeless people out there who desperately need them.
2. Thermal underwear is your friend. It is no flaky friend either. Thermal underwear is the kind of friend that you can ring up in the middle of the night right after a break-up and moan to ad nauseum without judgement or complaint. Thermal underwear is the kind of friend that will always be there for you. If you want a super-retro look, then go for lumberjack long johns. It’s best to wear these in bed, because going to the bathroom in long johns is the kind of gargantuan task that Bear Grylls would find difficult on a good day. Failing that, thermal tees and leggings can be found at reasonably cheap prices in many of the larger clothing chains. Some thermals also act like full body Spanx, which is no bad thing.
3. Always, always layer your clothing. Layering isn’t a fashion buzzword; in cold weather it’s a vital component of dressing. If you go out in a t-shirt and huge coat, get too hot, then take off your coat, your body will cool down much too fast, making you more susceptible to colds and flu. This would be why I am currently typing with one hand, the other now glued to a Kleenex which, in turn, is glued to my runny nose. Learn from my mistake. Dress in many thin layers, not one huge one.
4. Look to the Scandinavians for inspiration. We’ve already taken our economic cues from Iceland, now we should think about the way they dress. Tailored trousers, warm, thick tights, waterproof boots with sturdy soles, chunky knits and lashings of fur, faux or otherwise are all great options. Up the glamour ante with your hair, jewellery and accessories.
5. Tread very carefully. Full body casts are so last year.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Odds and Sods
I've spent this weekend travelling (one and a half hour wait on a freezing platform, thank you Irish Rail) and working while sick, so I'm a little bit burnt out and uninspired. I'm going on an enforced blog hiatus (I'm away from my computer and photos and such) and I'll be back on Thursday, hopefully reinvigorated by some family get togethers, cups of tea and plates of shortbread. Ok, ok, I'm going to stop moaning... now. Here's a few bits that are looking mighty good to feverish ol' me at the moment.
My new shoes. They are fakey fake fake Miu Mius but they rock my socks. Incidentally, I should probably think about wearing socks with them. My toes are still sore from the last time I wore them out.
Conor Walton is my favorite Irish artist. His still lives are amazing, done in the style of the Dutch Masters - exploring similar themes using modern, everyday objects. Sinister, sexy, funny, amazing. He'll be giving a lecture on the aforementioned Dutch Masters in the National Gallery on December 14th. He has stopped painting and taking commissions for the time being due to a personal matter (my mom is on his mailing list, feverishly waiting to snatch up a still life) so this will be a rare opportunity to interact with a great artist.
Have a great week everyone. Hope it's a festive one!
This is my favorite Christmas song. When the horns come in...
 |
My new shoes. They are fakey fake fake Miu Mius but they rock my socks. Incidentally, I should probably think about wearing socks with them. My toes are still sore from the last time I wore them out.
 |
| It's the End of the World as We Know It |
Conor Walton is my favorite Irish artist. His still lives are amazing, done in the style of the Dutch Masters - exploring similar themes using modern, everyday objects. Sinister, sexy, funny, amazing. He'll be giving a lecture on the aforementioned Dutch Masters in the National Gallery on December 14th. He has stopped painting and taking commissions for the time being due to a personal matter (my mom is on his mailing list, feverishly waiting to snatch up a still life) so this will be a rare opportunity to interact with a great artist.
Have a great week everyone. Hope it's a festive one!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Licentiate Column 02/12/10
If there's one thing that a recession is good for, it's separating the wheat from the chaff. The positive from the negative. The naysayers and apocalypse invokers from the Plucky Pollyannas. The... well, you get my drift.
Since the introduction of the government's four year plan, I have heard nothing but pronouncements that the country is doomed and declarations of intent to move far, far away from this aforementioned doom-addled island and towards a land with slightly more milk and honey (or jobs in IT, accounting and the media).
This is an unremarkable, yet unwelcome side effect of the Irish recession. The Irish diaspora stretches back for almost two hundred years. It is not surprising. Both the positive and the negative people evaluate their lives and feel that they have to move on.
What is surprising is the ability of this negativity to consume a person, to the extent that it affects the lives of people around you.
As a fashion writer, it's not my place to comment on the four year plan with even one iota of authority (even though there are others who know much less than me who are willing to give their two cents). This column is supposed to be full of jokes, off-the-cuff comments and observations about the shopping habits of the average women. Yet, somehow, I managed to visibly offend several people when I revealed to them that I was NOT going to tackle the four year plan/the budget/social welfare cuts/Brian Cowen's jamjar specs.
On revealing publicly that I would not be writing about these issues, I was immediately asked why by a petite brunette with an appropriately pointy nose. "Because it's a fashion column," I said. "It has nothing to do with politics. Why should I devote the column to scaremongering about rent relief when I should be devoting it to scaremongering about huge credit card bills brought on by online shopping sprees? What do you want me to do - critique Brian Cowen's three-button suits (and a side note to an Taoiseach; I'd go double breasted if I were you - your chest is less Biffo, more barrel) and Brian Lenihans droopy, sad sack side parting?"
"Ugh. You are so shallow" this particular harridan rasped as she retreated back in the shadows, no doubt to suck the will to live out of another person who had the gall to be thinking about pretty flowers or teddybears.
To this women, I give you this message. I may well be shallower than a fresh puddle after fifteen minutes of drizzle, but fashion is not. While it may not be as profound as a Shakespearean couplet uttered from the mouth of Mother Teresa, it has it's place in the world, just like this column has a place in this paper.
Fashion is the most universal mode of self expression. Fashion tells people who you are. Fashion is an industry. Fashion utilises techniques that have been honed for hundred of years. Some fashion is equal to great art, except fashion is for everyone and not just those who understand it. Fashion is tied in to sex, power, jobs, money, cachet and life-changing events (think marriages and funerals). Fashion is even tied to politics in a Gordian knot that Alexander the Great would find hard to cut through. It runs parallel to all things, not in second place.
I may be shallow, but I am not shallow for refusing to express my opinion on the IMF situation in this paper. There are others who do so more eloquently and logically within these pages. They have a place and I do too; in the Health and Beauty section, talking about shoes. That's the way it's going to stay.
Since the introduction of the government's four year plan, I have heard nothing but pronouncements that the country is doomed and declarations of intent to move far, far away from this aforementioned doom-addled island and towards a land with slightly more milk and honey (or jobs in IT, accounting and the media).
This is an unremarkable, yet unwelcome side effect of the Irish recession. The Irish diaspora stretches back for almost two hundred years. It is not surprising. Both the positive and the negative people evaluate their lives and feel that they have to move on.
What is surprising is the ability of this negativity to consume a person, to the extent that it affects the lives of people around you.
As a fashion writer, it's not my place to comment on the four year plan with even one iota of authority (even though there are others who know much less than me who are willing to give their two cents). This column is supposed to be full of jokes, off-the-cuff comments and observations about the shopping habits of the average women. Yet, somehow, I managed to visibly offend several people when I revealed to them that I was NOT going to tackle the four year plan/the budget/social welfare cuts/Brian Cowen's jamjar specs.
On revealing publicly that I would not be writing about these issues, I was immediately asked why by a petite brunette with an appropriately pointy nose. "Because it's a fashion column," I said. "It has nothing to do with politics. Why should I devote the column to scaremongering about rent relief when I should be devoting it to scaremongering about huge credit card bills brought on by online shopping sprees? What do you want me to do - critique Brian Cowen's three-button suits (and a side note to an Taoiseach; I'd go double breasted if I were you - your chest is less Biffo, more barrel) and Brian Lenihans droopy, sad sack side parting?"
"Ugh. You are so shallow" this particular harridan rasped as she retreated back in the shadows, no doubt to suck the will to live out of another person who had the gall to be thinking about pretty flowers or teddybears.
To this women, I give you this message. I may well be shallower than a fresh puddle after fifteen minutes of drizzle, but fashion is not. While it may not be as profound as a Shakespearean couplet uttered from the mouth of Mother Teresa, it has it's place in the world, just like this column has a place in this paper.
Fashion is the most universal mode of self expression. Fashion tells people who you are. Fashion is an industry. Fashion utilises techniques that have been honed for hundred of years. Some fashion is equal to great art, except fashion is for everyone and not just those who understand it. Fashion is tied in to sex, power, jobs, money, cachet and life-changing events (think marriages and funerals). Fashion is even tied to politics in a Gordian knot that Alexander the Great would find hard to cut through. It runs parallel to all things, not in second place.
I may be shallow, but I am not shallow for refusing to express my opinion on the IMF situation in this paper. There are others who do so more eloquently and logically within these pages. They have a place and I do too; in the Health and Beauty section, talking about shoes. That's the way it's going to stay.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Licentiate Column 25/11/10
I have a terrible secret to reveal. So terrible, I'm not quite sure that I should tell you what it is. But then again, if I didn't, this column would end right here, at the end of this sentence. And we don't want that now, do we? Perhaps you shouldn't answer that question.
My disappointingly non-secret secret is this; I have never been a guest at a Christmas party.
This isn't due to unpopularity (or so everyone keeps telling me as they slink off into the distance with the whisper of mistletoe and transgression ever-hanging in the air). This is due to my choice of work. For years I was a bartender, which means that I doled out the drinks at corporate do's, mixed Long Island Iced Teas on St Stephens Night and popped champagne corks at ten to midnight on New Year's Eve. There's no time for Christmas parties for people working in the hospitality sector - we got our party in February. The Christmas crackers had gone remarkably stale by that point.
Writing from home poses it's own party problem. There is no office, so there's no people. There's no people, so there is no party to go to. There's no party to go to, so I sit at home in my pajamas happily guzzling that bottle of Advocaat I found under the sink and watching the wizard of Oz.
This year marks the difference. This year will be my first as a CPG (Christmas Party Goer). The CPG is a different creature from your average party goer. Casual is out, the trousers are off and anything vaguely resembling tinsel is more in than Hugh Grant at a sorority gathering.
Here are a few pointers for the average CPG searching for the outfit of her dreams.
1) Go sparkly - but not too sparkly. Sequins are great. High shine, foil-backed fabric dresses are also great. Rhinestones are totally fabulous and criminally underused. Just don't wear them all at the same time, lest you become known as your local magpie fancier.
2) Your hemline is directly proportionate to how bright your frock is. Wearing an LBD? Then feel free to have your bum cleft exposed. Tis the season for more than just eggnog, you know. If your chosen party dress is a cerise-pink abomination with a smattering of precious gems and a not-so-subtle hint of 18th century parquetry, then by all means cover up the shoulders and thighs. The same goes for hair. The more ostentatious the dress, the more subdued the hairstyle. You want to look like you're having a Merry Christmas, not like you're auditioning for the inaugural cover of 'Playboy: The Toyland Edition'.
3) Always carry a tube of bright or dark lipstick for awkward mistletoe situations. Slick about half an inch on, then give that horrible, twig-dangling sleaze from HR the snog of his life. That'll teach 'im.
4) If you just KNOW that you're going to get mercilessly drunk, then wear an atrocious outfit to soften the blow with office gossips the next day.
Example: "Did you hear about Sinead eating twelve mince pies and vomiting on the karaeoke machine?"
"Who cares about that? Did. You. See. What. She. Was. Wearing?"
P.S Scroll down to the next post for a great giveaway. You can now 'like' The Licentiate on facebook , so if you do like this blog, don't be afraid to show your support and click here!
My disappointingly non-secret secret is this; I have never been a guest at a Christmas party.
This isn't due to unpopularity (or so everyone keeps telling me as they slink off into the distance with the whisper of mistletoe and transgression ever-hanging in the air). This is due to my choice of work. For years I was a bartender, which means that I doled out the drinks at corporate do's, mixed Long Island Iced Teas on St Stephens Night and popped champagne corks at ten to midnight on New Year's Eve. There's no time for Christmas parties for people working in the hospitality sector - we got our party in February. The Christmas crackers had gone remarkably stale by that point.
Writing from home poses it's own party problem. There is no office, so there's no people. There's no people, so there is no party to go to. There's no party to go to, so I sit at home in my pajamas happily guzzling that bottle of Advocaat I found under the sink and watching the wizard of Oz.
This year marks the difference. This year will be my first as a CPG (Christmas Party Goer). The CPG is a different creature from your average party goer. Casual is out, the trousers are off and anything vaguely resembling tinsel is more in than Hugh Grant at a sorority gathering.
Here are a few pointers for the average CPG searching for the outfit of her dreams.
1) Go sparkly - but not too sparkly. Sequins are great. High shine, foil-backed fabric dresses are also great. Rhinestones are totally fabulous and criminally underused. Just don't wear them all at the same time, lest you become known as your local magpie fancier.
2) Your hemline is directly proportionate to how bright your frock is. Wearing an LBD? Then feel free to have your bum cleft exposed. Tis the season for more than just eggnog, you know. If your chosen party dress is a cerise-pink abomination with a smattering of precious gems and a not-so-subtle hint of 18th century parquetry, then by all means cover up the shoulders and thighs. The same goes for hair. The more ostentatious the dress, the more subdued the hairstyle. You want to look like you're having a Merry Christmas, not like you're auditioning for the inaugural cover of 'Playboy: The Toyland Edition'.
3) Always carry a tube of bright or dark lipstick for awkward mistletoe situations. Slick about half an inch on, then give that horrible, twig-dangling sleaze from HR the snog of his life. That'll teach 'im.
4) If you just KNOW that you're going to get mercilessly drunk, then wear an atrocious outfit to soften the blow with office gossips the next day.
Example: "Did you hear about Sinead eating twelve mince pies and vomiting on the karaeoke machine?"
"Who cares about that? Did. You. See. What. She. Was. Wearing?"
P.S Scroll down to the next post for a great giveaway. You can now 'like' The Licentiate on facebook , so if you do like this blog, don't be afraid to show your support and click here!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Licentiate Column 11/11/10
If you’re up to date on what’s happening on the high street, you will know all about the new collaboration between high street behemoths H&M and the impossibly chic Lanvin, a designer label whose elaborate hand-painted t-shirts often run in excess of five hundred euros. To many people, this sounds like a dream come true, so the story of this collaboration will be written in a fairytale fashion that Charles Perrault (much more stylish and parfait than those uncouth Grimm Brothers) should be proud of.
Once upon a time there was a very lonely shop. This shop should not have been lonely, for it had all the customers that it could dream of, clogging up it’s dressing rooms and buying inexpensive snoods en masse. This shop was also magical, for it somehow managed to manufacture massive amounts of on-trend stock and sell at bottom dollar prices without any major human rights violations on the part of it’s factory workers in third-world countries.
What this store needed was a partner. Oh, it had had flings before, with all the right people. Stella MacCartney, Karl Lagerfeld, Victor and Rolf, Sonia Rykiel... the list went on. This store blazed a trail in sartorial lovers, all different, all special, all extremely productive. The fruits of these labours were gobbled up greedily by the customers, but such delights were not enough. Now, with such affairs concluded, the shop was not only forlorn, but faced with greedy, happy faces all in anticipation of the next scandalous partnership, like a woman who has just picked up a copy of Hello with Cheryl Cole on the cover.
What this shop needed was a fairy godmother. And, thus, Alber Elbaz, head of H&M, appeared in a flash of tulle and couture. “Worry not!” Alber exclaimed. Together we shall make a partnership the like of which no customer has ever seen. We shall have exaggerated florals, acid brights, designer tailoring, distinctive silhouettes and more cocktail dresses than you could shake a Christmas party at!” And together, the lonely shop and Lanvin joined hands and lived happily ever after. All the customers got their designer dresses at high street prices and they lived happily ever after too...
And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
What’s interesting about fairy tales isn’t what you are told, but what the storytellers choose to omit. The lonely shop (that’s H&M for those who haven’t quite cottoned on) wants to push up profits while Lanvin probably wants to introduce young customers to the heady thrill of designer buying, making them more likely to pick Lanvin in the future. Not all the customers will get their cheap designer dresses and many will go home unhappy.
There are three reasons for this (three being the best number for any fairytale gone wrong).
1) The collaboration is only coming to 200 selected stores, one of which is in Ireland.
2) If you manage to get past the queue and elaborate wristband system H&M have devised, you will only be allowed to buy one piece of clothing.
3) Having found the dress of your dreams, you peer at the pricetag. It will probably cost two hundred euros, one hundred and fifty if you’re lucky.
Designer at high street prices? I think not. The fairytale has well and truly ended.
Once upon a time there was a very lonely shop. This shop should not have been lonely, for it had all the customers that it could dream of, clogging up it’s dressing rooms and buying inexpensive snoods en masse. This shop was also magical, for it somehow managed to manufacture massive amounts of on-trend stock and sell at bottom dollar prices without any major human rights violations on the part of it’s factory workers in third-world countries.
What this store needed was a partner. Oh, it had had flings before, with all the right people. Stella MacCartney, Karl Lagerfeld, Victor and Rolf, Sonia Rykiel... the list went on. This store blazed a trail in sartorial lovers, all different, all special, all extremely productive. The fruits of these labours were gobbled up greedily by the customers, but such delights were not enough. Now, with such affairs concluded, the shop was not only forlorn, but faced with greedy, happy faces all in anticipation of the next scandalous partnership, like a woman who has just picked up a copy of Hello with Cheryl Cole on the cover.
What this shop needed was a fairy godmother. And, thus, Alber Elbaz, head of H&M, appeared in a flash of tulle and couture. “Worry not!” Alber exclaimed. Together we shall make a partnership the like of which no customer has ever seen. We shall have exaggerated florals, acid brights, designer tailoring, distinctive silhouettes and more cocktail dresses than you could shake a Christmas party at!” And together, the lonely shop and Lanvin joined hands and lived happily ever after. All the customers got their designer dresses at high street prices and they lived happily ever after too...
And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
What’s interesting about fairy tales isn’t what you are told, but what the storytellers choose to omit. The lonely shop (that’s H&M for those who haven’t quite cottoned on) wants to push up profits while Lanvin probably wants to introduce young customers to the heady thrill of designer buying, making them more likely to pick Lanvin in the future. Not all the customers will get their cheap designer dresses and many will go home unhappy.
There are three reasons for this (three being the best number for any fairytale gone wrong).
1) The collaboration is only coming to 200 selected stores, one of which is in Ireland.
2) If you manage to get past the queue and elaborate wristband system H&M have devised, you will only be allowed to buy one piece of clothing.
3) Having found the dress of your dreams, you peer at the pricetag. It will probably cost two hundred euros, one hundred and fifty if you’re lucky.
Designer at high street prices? I think not. The fairytale has well and truly ended.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Licentiate Column 04/11/09
You'll be hard pressed to find a word-heavy article about minimalism. There isn't any clear cut reason for such a linguistic drought, but it might have something to do with the fact that the trend is just so, er, minimal that there's really not much to say about it. It could have something to do with the fact that it's just so devoid of detail and, ironically, fuzzy around the edges that no-one really seems to know what it is.
Minimalism has it's roots in art and architecture, which is appropriate for such a simple, but complicated, idea. Predictably, it means stripping down something (in this case, clothing) to it's most fundamental elements. Minimalist clothing isn't fussy. Imagine minimalist clothing and you'll think of Audrey Hepburn's iconic LBD and cocoon coat in Breakfast at Tiffany's or Ali McGraw clomping morosely through a snow-filled quad of some non-distinct Ivy League university.
A minimalist coat, a coat devoid of fripperies, is not a coat with vital bits missing - the sleeve ripped out or a collar carelessly forgotten. Instead, the minimalist is obsessed with clean lines. That means no ruffles, no pleats and no exposed zips or buttons. Everything should be as straight and up-and-down as possible. This is unfortunate for women, because as we well know, women are not 'straight, up-and-down' kinds of creatures. We have curves and folds. We loop, we undulate. We are inconveniently complicated. We are squiggly shapes mercilessly hammered into a square, sharp cornered hole.
>
> Fashion designers seem to have forgotten, while drawing inspiration from art and architecture, that people are not inert objects. A blank canvas doesn't have breasts or hips to ruin the perfect, minimalist straight line. A building doesn't have to run for the bus only to discover that, after two minutes of movement, the hem of the chic Hepburn-ish cocoon coat is now around it's armpits.
>
> Minimalism, in it's original incarnations, called for the lithe-rail thin physique of a fourteen year-old boy who has recently completed a growth spurt. Simple sixties boxy suit jackets teamed with matching minis hung best on narrow, less well endowed physiques. Thin, vertically ribbed knit jumpers grew unnecessary and ungainly ripples when pulled across any chest larger than an A cup. If anything, minimalism was the trend that taught women to be ashamed of their cleavage.
>
> The nineties revival was no different. Only this time around, 'minimalism' also meant 'wear even less clothes'. Most people will remember the stir that Kate Moss caused modelling sheer, wire-thin strapped, mons veneris short sheath dresses for Calvin Klein. This started an offshoot trend for barely-there frocks, which in turn resulted in the simultaneous cricking of necks in males every time there was a stiff breeze.
This years Autumn/Winter trend is slightly different. Designers have realised the economic power of creating a look that actually suits real women. Minimalism still retains it's pared-down aesthetic, but is slightly softer around the edges and nipped in at the waist, made lovingly with luxe fabrics and in rich neutral tones, like the clothing equivalent of a Marks and Spencers dessert ad.
Ironically though, in order to properly subscribe to minimalism, you'll have to buy a whole new wardrobe. Unfortunately, there's a catch. When it was affordable, minimalism didn't suit us. Now that it miraculously suits the average woman, its almost totally inaccessible.
We have two options. 1) Marry a Russian ogliarch. 2) Recognise that you're stressing unnecessarily about yet another inaccessible trend for no good reason and carry on living your life as normal, no damage done. Until minimalism become fashionable again in 2030, that is.
Minimalism has it's roots in art and architecture, which is appropriate for such a simple, but complicated, idea. Predictably, it means stripping down something (in this case, clothing) to it's most fundamental elements. Minimalist clothing isn't fussy. Imagine minimalist clothing and you'll think of Audrey Hepburn's iconic LBD and cocoon coat in Breakfast at Tiffany's or Ali McGraw clomping morosely through a snow-filled quad of some non-distinct Ivy League university.
A minimalist coat, a coat devoid of fripperies, is not a coat with vital bits missing - the sleeve ripped out or a collar carelessly forgotten. Instead, the minimalist is obsessed with clean lines. That means no ruffles, no pleats and no exposed zips or buttons. Everything should be as straight and up-and-down as possible. This is unfortunate for women, because as we well know, women are not 'straight, up-and-down' kinds of creatures. We have curves and folds. We loop, we undulate. We are inconveniently complicated. We are squiggly shapes mercilessly hammered into a square, sharp cornered hole.
>
> Fashion designers seem to have forgotten, while drawing inspiration from art and architecture, that people are not inert objects. A blank canvas doesn't have breasts or hips to ruin the perfect, minimalist straight line. A building doesn't have to run for the bus only to discover that, after two minutes of movement, the hem of the chic Hepburn-ish cocoon coat is now around it's armpits.
>
> Minimalism, in it's original incarnations, called for the lithe-rail thin physique of a fourteen year-old boy who has recently completed a growth spurt. Simple sixties boxy suit jackets teamed with matching minis hung best on narrow, less well endowed physiques. Thin, vertically ribbed knit jumpers grew unnecessary and ungainly ripples when pulled across any chest larger than an A cup. If anything, minimalism was the trend that taught women to be ashamed of their cleavage.
>
> The nineties revival was no different. Only this time around, 'minimalism' also meant 'wear even less clothes'. Most people will remember the stir that Kate Moss caused modelling sheer, wire-thin strapped, mons veneris short sheath dresses for Calvin Klein. This started an offshoot trend for barely-there frocks, which in turn resulted in the simultaneous cricking of necks in males every time there was a stiff breeze.
This years Autumn/Winter trend is slightly different. Designers have realised the economic power of creating a look that actually suits real women. Minimalism still retains it's pared-down aesthetic, but is slightly softer around the edges and nipped in at the waist, made lovingly with luxe fabrics and in rich neutral tones, like the clothing equivalent of a Marks and Spencers dessert ad.
Ironically though, in order to properly subscribe to minimalism, you'll have to buy a whole new wardrobe. Unfortunately, there's a catch. When it was affordable, minimalism didn't suit us. Now that it miraculously suits the average woman, its almost totally inaccessible.
We have two options. 1) Marry a Russian ogliarch. 2) Recognise that you're stressing unnecessarily about yet another inaccessible trend for no good reason and carry on living your life as normal, no damage done. Until minimalism become fashionable again in 2030, that is.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Licentiate Column 28/10/10
I have a problem with Hallowe'en dressing. Actually no, I don't have a problem with the dressing up itself. Thinking up a character is fun. Sewing, constructing and arranging a costume is also fun. Even just wandering into a costume shop and having a pervy window shop is fun. Getting out into the crisp, chilly Hallowe'en night to discover that you are the only female Einstein in a horde of Playboy bunnies - that is not fun. That I have a problem with.
If you've seen Tina Fey-scripted comedy Mean Girls (and if you're under thirty-five and dress up every Hallowe'en than you almost definitely have) you'll feel a twang of recognition when Lindsay Lohan says, blissfully oblivious to the fact that her life would turn into some sort of eternal Ghost Train, that "Hallowe'en is the one night a year when girls can dress like total sluts and no other girls can say anything about it".
There's no point in deriding girls who want to dress up in their underwear because that's their prerogative. It's Hallowe'en, so it's a-ok. Some sexy costumes (like 60's era Catwoman, for example) look, well, they look hot. Very hot. And very cool - it's near impossible to pull off hot and cool at the same time. Some women feel liberated by slipping on something alluring that they would never normally dream of wearing, even inside the bedroom. Deliverance from the shackles of sexual oppression and added shock factor? Why, that may just be the perfect costume, in my humble opinion.
The problem is the sheer lack of imagination that is displayed by wandering into a costume shop and buying a costume in a squeaky plastic bag. Surely that sucks all the fun out of the one day a year where adults are fully justified in acting like children, albeit children who get to drink alcohol, stay out all night and then shriek loudly outside my apartment window on their way home (come to think of it, that's probably an accurate description of the children who haunt my neighbourhood). Why buy a mass-produced costume when Hallowe'en is such a personal event? You could dress like anyone in the world, alive or dead, real or imaginary. Why waste that on being one of fifty sexy policewoman, like a page in a Where's Wally book gone dreadfully, dreadfully wrong?
The options for women who want to buy and not make costumes are thin on the ground for those who have the singular criteria of not baring their arse. These costumes often bear the moniker 'sexy' but in truth it's not - you'll never see a sexy leprechaun in FHM or Playboy. Polyester cut-out jumpsuits aren't really that sexy for anyone but hormonal pubescents. Costume distributors seem to think that anything can be sexy across the spectrum from animal to vegetable - literally.
While online I found a sexy straightjacket (sans trousers), a sexy Smurfette (with a jaunty-looking silly hat), a sexy Martini (with olives as bra cups, but of course), a sexy coral fish (ok...), sexy Ms Potato Head (slightly disturbing) and a sexy Elmo, which, if anything looked like a tiny fur jacket made from a freshly-skinned Muppet.
Maybe we're all missing the point here. The spirit of Christmas isn't in the presents, just as the spirit of Hallowe'en isn't in the costumes. The true essence of Hallowe'en is the food, the tremendous glops of candied popcorn, jellies, chocolate coins and hallmarks of general overindulgence - yet another good reason to forgo the sexiness and just be another version of yourself at Hallowe'en.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Licentiate Column 21/10/10
A woman's experiences with camel in all it's permutations are usually interesting. It's close enough to beige to be neither exhilaratingly good or mood-shrivellingly bad, but it's far enough away from that perennially tedious shade to be just the right side of interesting. Yes, 'interesting' is definitely the word.
Like many girls of my generation, the first time that I saw a camel coat was a particularly sharp Jil Sander number on my mother as a toddler (I was the toddler, not my mother. Camel may be interesting but it isn't powerful enough to implicate time travel). I remember thinking even then just how impossibly grown-up the long, double-breasted overcoat was - how the shape precisely delineated just how much of an adult my mother was, and still is, in my eyes. It was a world away from the one that I inhabited. I wondered when I would be the grown-up lady with the grown-up coat. I'm still waiting.
The second experience with camels was riding one by the ancient pyramids in Giza last year. As the slurping behemoth bobbed and juddered around unfenced tombs of the pyramid's foremen and architects, little more than holes in the ground, I got the same feeling that I did when looking upon my mother's camel coat for the first time. I was just not ready for the experience.
Even though the style reports tell you otherwise, a camel coat is not just for this season; it's for life. The moment you become an adult is not when you turn 18 and legally ged drunk on lager shandies, it's when you buy on of these babies. Unlike an actual camel though, a camel coat will not cost you money in food and stable fees. A camel coat will not earn you extra pocket money charging passing tourists for joy rides and it will definitely not spit on you when the going gets tough (but I promise nothing).
In fact, most camel coats aren't actually made of camel hair but synthetic fibres that are dyed a uniformly dromedary hue. "Oh good", I hear you sigh, "No animal has been harmed in the making of my new car coat from Oasis". Bless you, for you are incredibly misinformed (but fair dues for worrying about whether your clothes are ethically sourced or not). Besides wool, camel hair has to be the kindest of all animal fibres, collected from the two humped Bactrian camel and not my stinky Egyptian friend. The best to be had is casually collected of the animals neck and flanks as it falls off during moulting, thus making camel hair harvesting the easiest job since the Arctic got it's first weatherman.
Many people accuse camel of being nothing but a another word for the dreaded beige. For future reference, real camel is actually a shade of brown. It's darker than beige, with a golden, honeyed tone. Camel hair also has thermobaric properties that NASA would be proud to develop, enabling the wearer to stay warm in Peruvian mountain snow and cool in desert climes (or just on a windy December day waliking down Patrick Street, if that's what you prefer). See what I mean about camel being interesting? You can accuse it of being scarily grown-up or a bastardised beige, but it'll never be boring.
Like many girls of my generation, the first time that I saw a camel coat was a particularly sharp Jil Sander number on my mother as a toddler (I was the toddler, not my mother. Camel may be interesting but it isn't powerful enough to implicate time travel). I remember thinking even then just how impossibly grown-up the long, double-breasted overcoat was - how the shape precisely delineated just how much of an adult my mother was, and still is, in my eyes. It was a world away from the one that I inhabited. I wondered when I would be the grown-up lady with the grown-up coat. I'm still waiting.
The second experience with camels was riding one by the ancient pyramids in Giza last year. As the slurping behemoth bobbed and juddered around unfenced tombs of the pyramid's foremen and architects, little more than holes in the ground, I got the same feeling that I did when looking upon my mother's camel coat for the first time. I was just not ready for the experience.
Even though the style reports tell you otherwise, a camel coat is not just for this season; it's for life. The moment you become an adult is not when you turn 18 and legally ged drunk on lager shandies, it's when you buy on of these babies. Unlike an actual camel though, a camel coat will not cost you money in food and stable fees. A camel coat will not earn you extra pocket money charging passing tourists for joy rides and it will definitely not spit on you when the going gets tough (but I promise nothing).
In fact, most camel coats aren't actually made of camel hair but synthetic fibres that are dyed a uniformly dromedary hue. "Oh good", I hear you sigh, "No animal has been harmed in the making of my new car coat from Oasis". Bless you, for you are incredibly misinformed (but fair dues for worrying about whether your clothes are ethically sourced or not). Besides wool, camel hair has to be the kindest of all animal fibres, collected from the two humped Bactrian camel and not my stinky Egyptian friend. The best to be had is casually collected of the animals neck and flanks as it falls off during moulting, thus making camel hair harvesting the easiest job since the Arctic got it's first weatherman.
Many people accuse camel of being nothing but a another word for the dreaded beige. For future reference, real camel is actually a shade of brown. It's darker than beige, with a golden, honeyed tone. Camel hair also has thermobaric properties that NASA would be proud to develop, enabling the wearer to stay warm in Peruvian mountain snow and cool in desert climes (or just on a windy December day waliking down Patrick Street, if that's what you prefer). See what I mean about camel being interesting? You can accuse it of being scarily grown-up or a bastardised beige, but it'll never be boring.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Licentiate Column 14/10/10
 |
| Getting my makeup done by the L'Oreal make up lady, who managed to apply liquid eyeliner ON A SWAYING BUS. This is a life skill which I have yet to learn. |
As the weather goes from summery drizzle to an intensely dirgelike autumn downpour, I, like many people, get the itch. This is not the kind of itch than can be remedied by furtive trips to the GP and extortionately priced creams. This is the kind of urge that compells you to make a drastic change. Open your mind! Save the world! Become a better person!
The itch for change, for transfomation is so overwhelming that it’s all you can do not to spontaneously combust and emerge from a blackened chrysalis with the overall demeanour (and unnervingly smooth appearance) of Angelina Jolie. You want to become a better person. Not necessarily a better version of yourself, mind. My dreams of improvement never actually involve improving on the admittedly shaky framework that is me. It somehow involves Normal Sarah becoming a totally different, new and improved person, much like the endless parade of actors portraying Nick Tilsley on Coronation Street.
It’s at times of identity crises such as this that I do what any sane woman would do. I don’t actually do any of the things that I plan on doing, like going to Pilates, reading Bertrand Russell, alphabetising my closet or putting the fine tuning on a skincare regime. I reach for the hairdye.
Last week I went from a mousy brown to a pleasantly artifical looking carroty red that would make Peg Bundy nod with approval. Do you ever feel (somewhat inexplicably) as if you would somehow become much thinner, taller and sassier once that towel wrapped around your ‘do is whipped off? I was suitably shocked and perturbed to find out that, after slopping a squeezy bottle of gunk on my head, I was still me. With red hair.
As disappointment rang in my ears (that could have been a side-effect from the dye) I popped down to the Oasis Fashion Bus which had trundled in to town to celebrate, appropriately, the total makeover of the Patrick Street store. Inside, I was greeted by Style Wars winner David Greene, who took me through all the fashion-forward choices for this season.
I asked him what would suit me, a very short, hourglass-ish, non-model. David showed me a nice, lace panelled midi skirt and a flapper dress that should skim over the hips. I’m not sure of the significance of the hip skimming, but he certainly seemed to know what he was talking about. There was a pause and he said, ‘You know, you’re not that short. You’re probably not as short as you think you are’, a fact that, now realised, still shocks me. I always thought that I was a titch. Apparently not.
 |
| "Listen Sarah, I know you think you're tiny, but it's just the camera angle" |
I get home and measure myself, and he’s right. I’m just half an inch off the average height for women. As it turns out I barely know what I actually look like, let alone have the capacity to accurately imagine myself after a makeover. To others, my flaws are probably not as exaggerated as they are to me. People don’t see me through a warped lens as I (and many women) do. They just see me. With red hair.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Licentiate Column 30/09/10
Did you ever hear the saying, ‘It never rains but it pours’ or ‘bad things come in threes’? This week, my triple downpour has been doctor, dentist and emergency room, which has literally left a bad taste in my mouth and been a real pain in the, er, chest, not not mention a yawning chasm in the wallet.
It’s easy for life to get on top of you and September is by far the worst month to feel that way. We feel the turning of the seasons and change our lives to follow suit, from going back to college in a new city, seeing children go back to school, or even something as simple as choosing a new winter coat.
The phenomenon of stressing over your wardrobe when you have far weightier things to think about can be neatly categorised under ‘displacement’ - the transferring of worry to less serious things.
But the opposite - when fashion and keeping up with the Joneses is too much to bear, when the sight of just one more shearling aviator jacket makes you want to assassinate Kate Moss from high atop a book depository, well, that has a name too. It’s called fashion fatigue.
As someone who thinks about fashion in the same way that my boyfriend talks about Tottenham Hotspur (in hushed, reverent tones with an emphasis on season-by-season plays - although I must admit that, mercifully, Peter Crouch plays a much bigger part in his talk than Abbey Clancy does in mine) fashion is more than a hobby; it’s an obsession.
Not even my greedy little mind is prepared for the deluge that is fashion month. Now anyone with even a passing interest is expected to know the contents of every catwalk show. Imagine watching your favourite football team play six matches a day for a month and having to watch every single one because there may be a test afterwards. You are now about halfway to understanding fashion fatigue.
When there’s so much to absorb, hobbies can become more like obligations. Add that to a life that is already fraught with social and familial commitments with a sprinkling of financial strain and an emergency room visit and you have a recipe for a straw that would break the back of the hardiest dromedary.
I’ve spent the past few days alternating between watching interminable fashion shows intently and praying that a model tips and falls out of her shoes just to break the monotony of watching skinny girls with nice clothes walk up and down. The action seems utterly pointless. I feel as if I am going mad when I should be outside frolicking in the park with river-blindness stricken orphans from Malawi. Something, anything, to distract me from what by now seems like a more hollow pursuit than preparing a truckload of Hallowe’en pumpkins.
I started with a few glib sayings and I’ll end with another - ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. Only the very brave or the very smart realise when an interest is no longer working for them and decide not to carry it any further. Fashion is no different.
As for me, I’m sticking around, but I enthusiastically salute the defectors. They have the brains to realise that, even though fashion is an ever-turning wheel, it’s still easy to hop back on when it's more convenient.
It’s easy for life to get on top of you and September is by far the worst month to feel that way. We feel the turning of the seasons and change our lives to follow suit, from going back to college in a new city, seeing children go back to school, or even something as simple as choosing a new winter coat.
The phenomenon of stressing over your wardrobe when you have far weightier things to think about can be neatly categorised under ‘displacement’ - the transferring of worry to less serious things.
But the opposite - when fashion and keeping up with the Joneses is too much to bear, when the sight of just one more shearling aviator jacket makes you want to assassinate Kate Moss from high atop a book depository, well, that has a name too. It’s called fashion fatigue.
As someone who thinks about fashion in the same way that my boyfriend talks about Tottenham Hotspur (in hushed, reverent tones with an emphasis on season-by-season plays - although I must admit that, mercifully, Peter Crouch plays a much bigger part in his talk than Abbey Clancy does in mine) fashion is more than a hobby; it’s an obsession.
Not even my greedy little mind is prepared for the deluge that is fashion month. Now anyone with even a passing interest is expected to know the contents of every catwalk show. Imagine watching your favourite football team play six matches a day for a month and having to watch every single one because there may be a test afterwards. You are now about halfway to understanding fashion fatigue.
When there’s so much to absorb, hobbies can become more like obligations. Add that to a life that is already fraught with social and familial commitments with a sprinkling of financial strain and an emergency room visit and you have a recipe for a straw that would break the back of the hardiest dromedary.
I’ve spent the past few days alternating between watching interminable fashion shows intently and praying that a model tips and falls out of her shoes just to break the monotony of watching skinny girls with nice clothes walk up and down. The action seems utterly pointless. I feel as if I am going mad when I should be outside frolicking in the park with river-blindness stricken orphans from Malawi. Something, anything, to distract me from what by now seems like a more hollow pursuit than preparing a truckload of Hallowe’en pumpkins.
I started with a few glib sayings and I’ll end with another - ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. Only the very brave or the very smart realise when an interest is no longer working for them and decide not to carry it any further. Fashion is no different.
As for me, I’m sticking around, but I enthusiastically salute the defectors. They have the brains to realise that, even though fashion is an ever-turning wheel, it’s still easy to hop back on when it's more convenient.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Licentiate Column 23/09/10
It’s commonly thought that the world of fashion is a closed shop. Or at least it was up until 2007 or so, when blogging started to gain a foothold in the hearts and minds of fashion PRs. Fashion houses started to realise that they could get reams of free publicity and add to their cachet of cool by sending off new items to bloggers, who would style, shoot and publicise their wares, totally gratis and with a minimum of effort for said fashion house.
Blogging has been a phenomenon that has shaped and democratised the world of fashion beyond all expectations. Now, fashion shows can be streamed online, literally bringing New York to your home (and you don’t even have to change out of your PJs, let alone try to figure out the complicated subway system).
One of the happier effects of the trickle-down effect of blog influence is the willingness to offer bloggers a coveted media pass to various events, the Big Daddy being a Fashion Week. There are four main fashion weeks, which take place consecutively, twice a year, in New York, London, Milan and Paris. Yours truly was lucky enough to snag a pass to London Fashion Week.
Five years ago, you would have had to wait until next March to see pictures taken the year before. Now it’s instant. The media is saturated. And yet, fashion is still a closed shop. By that I don’t mean that it’s elitist, or populated by superficial and shallow people (even though it is, to an extent). I mean that Fashion Week is literally like wandering around a shop where the tills are closed. You can touch, but you can’t buy.
A bit more explaining is necessary. London Fashion Week is a double-edged blade. The first blow is dealt by an endless litany of fashion shows that drug the mind with images of so many beautiful girls wearing beautiful clothes, all strutting through the mind’s eye (or conversely, if they fall over in eleven-inch heels, on the cover of The Sun).
The second blade, the fatal blow is the Exhibition. Stalls, manned in some cases by the designers themselves, are weighed down with luxury goods, which you are encouraged to poke, prod and take pictures of. Everything is beautiful and there are no distasteful things such as price tags to distract you from your aesthetic overload. And yet, I felt as if I was window shopping. Every time a PR came over and asked if they could help, I would nervously trill, “Just looking!”, as if they were trying to foist a massive, unwise, financially crippling sale upon me and then scuttle away like a crab with a bad credit rating.
This would inevitably result in odd looks. After hearing too many of my protestations, one woman said to me, “We know you’re just looking. We’re all looking”.
It was humiliating at the time, but on reflection it makes sense. The Exhibition is a great leveller. From Vogue editor to blogger alike; in the closed shop of fashion, at least all of us are window shopping.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Licentiate Column 19/09/10
If there ever was a decade for demoralising experiences, then your twenties would be it. It’s not the worst decade of your life per se, but when you’re a teenager everything is so desperately unfair that you have no personal standards to be eroded. By the time you get into your thirties disappointment is too deeply ingrained in the tapestry of your life for you to feel self-righteous or hard done by just because your jeans no longer fit (so my mother, disturbingly, assures me).
In your twenties banana skins are presented, much like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as beguiling opportunities that actually make you fall flat on your face. The twenties is the time for auditioning for X-Factor and realising that you have the singing voice of John McCririck, getting your heart truly broken (don’t worry, that means you’re doing it right) and sobbing in various changing rooms because a pair of skinnies in your size refuses to be buttoned despite cajoling and midsection torture that goes against everything the various Geneva Conventions stand for.
I had such an experience yesterday when my mother came to Cork for a visit and offered to buy me a pair of jeans. I happily tootled into my favourite high street shop and tried on a pair of olive skinny jeans in a size ten. I say ‘tried on’, but those two little words do zero justice to the gargantuan amount of effort exerted just to get the rigid denim past my knees. It was the Kilimanjaro of jeans.
I was devastated only in the way that an shallow person like myself can be. No-one likes to go up a dress size, so I refused to go up to a twelve and skulked out of that shop into another one across the road, where I tried on a pair of jeans in a ten. I looked like a street urchin in a Charlie Chaplin film. I was adrift in a baggy denim sea. I took one step forward, and the jeans fell down, puddling around my ankles as if I’d had an indigo accident. I sized down to an eight and miraculously, the waistband settled with nary a muffin top to be spied.
And so, an experiment was undertaken. I measured my waist with tape to confirm that I was indeed a size ten, and went on a trek around fifteen high-street retailers to try on fifteen pairs of size ten jeans in a straight-leg cut. Only a third of the shops had true-to-size labels. Some chains were incredibly generous with the tailoring, particularly American brands, while other, slightly more ‘budget’ shops (no prizes for guessing which, Sherlock) were evidently skimping on material, so that any pair of jeans I tried on made my stomach look like a sausage roll making a break for the border.
Now that you’ve found out that the perfect ten doesn’t exist, what do you do? Size up or down? To tell the truth, it doesn’t really matter. Eight, ten or twelve; you’ll still be the same size. And If you feel demoralised, just do what I do and cut the tags off. Problem solved.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
London Calling; fashion-wise tourism
As you may know, I'm heading to London for a few days and, through the miraculous majesty of scheduled posts, I'll be putting up the column as usual on Thursday, as well as a couple of posts from some special guests.
Here's a few things on the itinerary.
1) The Enchanted Palace exhibition in Kensington Palace. This combines my love of dresses and snooping around stately homes (and by extension, other people's lives) perfectly. Several designers, including Boudicca, Vivienne Westwood and Stephen Jones have taken over a part of the palace and transformed it according to their vision and a tale of one of the seven princess who lived in Kensington Palace at one stage or another.
2) The Fashion market on Portobello Road - If you're shopping for clothing, then your best bet is to hit the Market on a Saturday morning and focus a heavy sartorial assault on the Westway, which is where all the young designers and vintage dealers hang out on their weekends. You'll know that you're there if you see a massive concrete motorway flyover. Mmm, scenic. This would also be the best time to bellow the song 'Portobello Road' from Bedknobs and Broomsticks at the top of your lungs. Which I plan on doing.
Ah, sweet memories. Although Portobello Market has over 2,000 stalls, I'm fairly sure that they don't have an occult bookseller (though that would be pretty great. An impromptu multicultural dance-off would also be sweet).
3) RD Franks
Five minutes walk from Oxford Circus lies possibly the best and most comprehensive fashion newsagent I've ever been in. That doesn't say much, but if you're looking for anything hard to get, from Jalouse (must get a subscription one of these days...) to obscure trend forecasting mags, then this is the place for you.
4) London Fashion Week (cue a massive and incredibly uncool and unprofessional 'SQUEEEE!'). My press application came through today (massive thanks to Fiona for recommending that I apply), so I'll be spending the best part of Friday wandering around the exhibitions at Somerset House and doing some Licentiate reportage for The Cork Independent and this blog. Any London bloggers reading this who fancy meeting up for a coffee drop me a line. I do love meeting new peoples, so's I do.
I'll be in London as you're reading this, but if you have any secret hidey-holes or must-go places food (especially food), shopping or bar-wise, let me know!
Here's a few things on the itinerary.
1) The Enchanted Palace exhibition in Kensington Palace. This combines my love of dresses and snooping around stately homes (and by extension, other people's lives) perfectly. Several designers, including Boudicca, Vivienne Westwood and Stephen Jones have taken over a part of the palace and transformed it according to their vision and a tale of one of the seven princess who lived in Kensington Palace at one stage or another.
2) The Fashion market on Portobello Road - If you're shopping for clothing, then your best bet is to hit the Market on a Saturday morning and focus a heavy sartorial assault on the Westway, which is where all the young designers and vintage dealers hang out on their weekends. You'll know that you're there if you see a massive concrete motorway flyover. Mmm, scenic. This would also be the best time to bellow the song 'Portobello Road' from Bedknobs and Broomsticks at the top of your lungs. Which I plan on doing.
Ah, sweet memories. Although Portobello Market has over 2,000 stalls, I'm fairly sure that they don't have an occult bookseller (though that would be pretty great. An impromptu multicultural dance-off would also be sweet).
3) RD Franks
Five minutes walk from Oxford Circus lies possibly the best and most comprehensive fashion newsagent I've ever been in. That doesn't say much, but if you're looking for anything hard to get, from Jalouse (must get a subscription one of these days...) to obscure trend forecasting mags, then this is the place for you.
4) London Fashion Week (cue a massive and incredibly uncool and unprofessional 'SQUEEEE!'). My press application came through today (massive thanks to Fiona for recommending that I apply), so I'll be spending the best part of Friday wandering around the exhibitions at Somerset House and doing some Licentiate reportage for The Cork Independent and this blog. Any London bloggers reading this who fancy meeting up for a coffee drop me a line. I do love meeting new peoples, so's I do.
I'll be in London as you're reading this, but if you have any secret hidey-holes or must-go places food (especially food), shopping or bar-wise, let me know!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Licentiate column 09/09/10
I was determined to get that bag. It was black and tan satchel (such a now combo, horrible historical implications notwithstanding) with a briefcase handle and boxy detailing. It lived in the front window of the charity shop I would often pass from my home on the walk to and from town. It taunted me from the window from it’s vintage covetability.
“Buy me”, it said. “I’m such a tart. I’ll go with all your outfits”. Totally ignoring the fact that a talking handbag was an unusual occurrence, I took its word for granted and went to the charity shop early, in order to be the first to get my mitts on it. Only to find a queue of like-minded women who had also been on speaking terms with my bag. Apparently it was a tart, after all.
There’s a common misconception that fashion obsession is some kind of fabulous disorder for people with impossibly glamourous lifestyles. In fact, fashion fans are as fanatical, cultish and partial to nerdish scrutiny and discussion as hardcore Star Wars fans or members of the Bieber Army and, with the popularisation of fashion blogs, spend more time in front of a computer screen than the average World of Warcraft gamer.
Take, for example, the recent announcement that revered fashion house Lanvin would be doing a collaboration with high street giant, H&M.
The lead up to this announcement included several teaser videos of a man and a woman, their faces hidden in shade like anonymous guests on The Jeremy Kyle Show, talking about the implications of style, a tactic which whipped fashion fans all over the world into a frenzy of hype. When it was finally revealed than the man and the women were not collaborators but red herrings, thrown into the mix to add to the mystique, H&M’s tactics were applauded (and rightly so) as genius.
Designer and high street stores alike have tapped into the love of fashion and social networking. if you generate enough hype with inventive advertising, exclusive collaborations and exciting design, then bloggers will do much of the online legwork by advertising through positive posting and public declarations on Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Networked Blogs or any other of the ocean of sharing sites that currently exists in the ether.
In a way the internet has not only democratised fashion and opened up a whole new world of information for those who see fashion as a serious interest and not just a way to get into debt. It has forced retailers to up their game. The high street must produce better designs for cheaper prices, or the consumer will go elsewhere. The cachet to clothing is its exclusivity, which is why vintage sellers are making out like bandits with overpriced goods, just because they might not be available anywhere else.
Likewise, high-street/designer collaborations inspire all night camp-outs and riot re-enactments that imagine what Altamont would have been like if populated entirely by post-pubescent girls and young women clubbing away with their clutch purses.
I bought the bag, by the way. The women in front of me baulked at the price tag and left. That's the problem with fashion obsession; you might get the bag that no-one else has, but there's a distinct possibility that you might end up living out of it.
“Buy me”, it said. “I’m such a tart. I’ll go with all your outfits”. Totally ignoring the fact that a talking handbag was an unusual occurrence, I took its word for granted and went to the charity shop early, in order to be the first to get my mitts on it. Only to find a queue of like-minded women who had also been on speaking terms with my bag. Apparently it was a tart, after all.
There’s a common misconception that fashion obsession is some kind of fabulous disorder for people with impossibly glamourous lifestyles. In fact, fashion fans are as fanatical, cultish and partial to nerdish scrutiny and discussion as hardcore Star Wars fans or members of the Bieber Army and, with the popularisation of fashion blogs, spend more time in front of a computer screen than the average World of Warcraft gamer.
Take, for example, the recent announcement that revered fashion house Lanvin would be doing a collaboration with high street giant, H&M.
The lead up to this announcement included several teaser videos of a man and a woman, their faces hidden in shade like anonymous guests on The Jeremy Kyle Show, talking about the implications of style, a tactic which whipped fashion fans all over the world into a frenzy of hype. When it was finally revealed than the man and the women were not collaborators but red herrings, thrown into the mix to add to the mystique, H&M’s tactics were applauded (and rightly so) as genius.
Designer and high street stores alike have tapped into the love of fashion and social networking. if you generate enough hype with inventive advertising, exclusive collaborations and exciting design, then bloggers will do much of the online legwork by advertising through positive posting and public declarations on Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Networked Blogs or any other of the ocean of sharing sites that currently exists in the ether.
In a way the internet has not only democratised fashion and opened up a whole new world of information for those who see fashion as a serious interest and not just a way to get into debt. It has forced retailers to up their game. The high street must produce better designs for cheaper prices, or the consumer will go elsewhere. The cachet to clothing is its exclusivity, which is why vintage sellers are making out like bandits with overpriced goods, just because they might not be available anywhere else.
Likewise, high-street/designer collaborations inspire all night camp-outs and riot re-enactments that imagine what Altamont would have been like if populated entirely by post-pubescent girls and young women clubbing away with their clutch purses.
I bought the bag, by the way. The women in front of me baulked at the price tag and left. That's the problem with fashion obsession; you might get the bag that no-one else has, but there's a distinct possibility that you might end up living out of it.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Licentiate Column 02/09/10
Every Thursday, I will be publishing the Licentiate column, which you can also read in the Cork Independent. This is a regular series and leads on from the blog, so I hope that you enjoy it!
There’s a recent epidemic that has been plaguing young women all over Cork City. It’s not contagious, but it is dangerous. The main symptoms include incredible lethargy and arms stretched out like an overmasticated leaf of chewing gum. The cause of this as-yet-unnamed condition is obvious. Women have been taking too much on and have been trying to drag a copious amount of September issues back home from the newsagent, testing their sanity and stretching their forearms with more tenacity than the medieval rack.
September Issues are no laughing matter. This is the time when many women begin planning their winter wardrobes with the precision and obsession of serial killers. Which, coat, which cut, what colour are all questions that have to be asked before the first bronzed leaf falls off a tree in the People’s Park and the first pair of woolly opaque tights are grudgingly pulled on. Women put incredible amounts of pressure on themselves to formulate a seasonally transitional range of outfits, then find out to their despair that no-one else has noticed because they’re also too busy looking at their shoes and thinking ‘Hmm, heeled lace-up boots this season’?
This leads people to pick up every September edition of every fashion magazine that they ever bought, no matter how casual or negligible the frequency. Why? Because these periodicals hold the key to the sacred winter trends (the word ‘trends’ should be said in a reverent voice reserved only for rabid followers of the Pope or Justin Bieber). I had the incredibly unpleasant experience of picking up seven magazines in Eason’s yesterday. I would have bought more, but POP and French Vogue weren’t in yet (for that I thank a higher power much wiser than I). They weighed a ton. I needed a mini forklift to get them to the counter and the woman serving me had to divide them into three piles, then double bag. There was a very real probability that the bottom could literally fall out of my fashion life.
On the way home the loaf of Schull that I had bought earlier bounced out of my hands and rolled ahead of me jauntily, goading me on at how fast it could go because it didn’t have to lug about a bushel of Vogues. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was this; I could not stand to pick up the bread, because that meant that I might have to put the magazines on the ground. I just could not do it. I had to stand forlornly by my bread until someone infinitely more practical picked it up for me. Take it from me, when you’d rather read magazines than eat, you have a problem to be concerned about.
It was worth it though. When I got home I was plunged into fashion sensory overload redolent of a Victorian opium den. The sights more than made up for the lack of sound, smell or taste. For all the slating that magazines receive in terms of body fascism or unreachably aspirational prices, there is no denying the seductiveness and tactility of the paper, or the knowledge that you are in possession of an ever-widening window into another world. It’s yours and you get to keep it, this small sliver of a fantasy world where everyone is fashionable, fabulous and fits neatly in with everyone else. Maybe the overstretched arms are worth it.
There’s a recent epidemic that has been plaguing young women all over Cork City. It’s not contagious, but it is dangerous. The main symptoms include incredible lethargy and arms stretched out like an overmasticated leaf of chewing gum. The cause of this as-yet-unnamed condition is obvious. Women have been taking too much on and have been trying to drag a copious amount of September issues back home from the newsagent, testing their sanity and stretching their forearms with more tenacity than the medieval rack.
September Issues are no laughing matter. This is the time when many women begin planning their winter wardrobes with the precision and obsession of serial killers. Which, coat, which cut, what colour are all questions that have to be asked before the first bronzed leaf falls off a tree in the People’s Park and the first pair of woolly opaque tights are grudgingly pulled on. Women put incredible amounts of pressure on themselves to formulate a seasonally transitional range of outfits, then find out to their despair that no-one else has noticed because they’re also too busy looking at their shoes and thinking ‘Hmm, heeled lace-up boots this season’?
This leads people to pick up every September edition of every fashion magazine that they ever bought, no matter how casual or negligible the frequency. Why? Because these periodicals hold the key to the sacred winter trends (the word ‘trends’ should be said in a reverent voice reserved only for rabid followers of the Pope or Justin Bieber). I had the incredibly unpleasant experience of picking up seven magazines in Eason’s yesterday. I would have bought more, but POP and French Vogue weren’t in yet (for that I thank a higher power much wiser than I). They weighed a ton. I needed a mini forklift to get them to the counter and the woman serving me had to divide them into three piles, then double bag. There was a very real probability that the bottom could literally fall out of my fashion life.
On the way home the loaf of Schull that I had bought earlier bounced out of my hands and rolled ahead of me jauntily, goading me on at how fast it could go because it didn’t have to lug about a bushel of Vogues. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was this; I could not stand to pick up the bread, because that meant that I might have to put the magazines on the ground. I just could not do it. I had to stand forlornly by my bread until someone infinitely more practical picked it up for me. Take it from me, when you’d rather read magazines than eat, you have a problem to be concerned about.
It was worth it though. When I got home I was plunged into fashion sensory overload redolent of a Victorian opium den. The sights more than made up for the lack of sound, smell or taste. For all the slating that magazines receive in terms of body fascism or unreachably aspirational prices, there is no denying the seductiveness and tactility of the paper, or the knowledge that you are in possession of an ever-widening window into another world. It’s yours and you get to keep it, this small sliver of a fantasy world where everyone is fashionable, fabulous and fits neatly in with everyone else. Maybe the overstretched arms are worth it.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
A massive roundup (with bonus giveaway section!)
I've been pretty much incommunicado due to travel and 'fat finger' syndrome from eating too many of my sister's delish cookies, cakes and brownies from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. That, and I'm spending the next week in the hometown, clearing out my old room and attending the excuse for drinking on the street that is this monstrosity.
So, here are a few things I missed in the past week or so.
The trailer for The Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman and a hell of a lot of Rodarte costumes. It's got high fashion, psychological intrigue and slightly gross bird transmogrification going on, so something for everyone...
Speaking of birds, Cheap Monday have gone for an 'oil-on-water' look at Stockholm Fashion week. I'm not a massive fan of the jeans on the catwalk, but the cuts are great and the tops are a perfect mix of sheer and slouchy. Mostly, I just want to know where I can get those plazmoid boots. Waterproof and I have to force myself to wear matching socks? Excellent. (Fashion Gone Rogue)
New favourite editorials ; Josephine de la Baume gets sacrelicious for Oyster, German Vogue's massive triumvirate trend spread and Cintia Dicker having a modern West Side Story moment for Marie Claire France.
Moschino - one of my absolute, all-time, top 5 favourite labels, cross my heart and hope to die (exhale... phew) has collaborated with Gabriele Muccino on a short film, titled Senzo Tempo. And it's only beautiful.
You can throw a load of blood diamonds at Naomi Campbell via Super Fashion Stars. Unfortunately, it's just a flash game and not real life.
SUPER DUPER BONUS GIVEAWAY SECTION!!
Ok, less of that. Typing in caps makes me feel like I've just climbed a hill.
1) The lovely Ms LolaDee of Things I Fell in Love With Today is hosting a giveaway of her incredibly cute handmade accessories for her 300th commenter. Just go to http://www.loladee.com/ and leave a comment. It's that easy.
2) If you happen to be in Cork, the Lewis Glucksman Gallery is giving away free posters from the Mixtapes exhibition to all it's twitter followers today. There's three designs - I really want to get a hand on the Linder Sterling punk ladies poster - don't suppose anyone wants to pick one up for me?
3) I'm a big fan of Nina Chakrabharti and her whimsical illustrations and have blogged about her amazing book, My Wonderful World of Fashion before. You can win a signed illustration and a copy of the book just by displaying your best colouring efforts here.
P.S You can read my newest Licentiate column, only in The Cork Independent, out today! It's about leggings - they're not trousers, so cover your shame.
So, here are a few things I missed in the past week or so.
The trailer for The Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman and a hell of a lot of Rodarte costumes. It's got high fashion, psychological intrigue and slightly gross bird transmogrification going on, so something for everyone...
Speaking of birds, Cheap Monday have gone for an 'oil-on-water' look at Stockholm Fashion week. I'm not a massive fan of the jeans on the catwalk, but the cuts are great and the tops are a perfect mix of sheer and slouchy. Mostly, I just want to know where I can get those plazmoid boots. Waterproof and I have to force myself to wear matching socks? Excellent. (Fashion Gone Rogue)
New favourite editorials ; Josephine de la Baume gets sacrelicious for Oyster, German Vogue's massive triumvirate trend spread and Cintia Dicker having a modern West Side Story moment for Marie Claire France.
Moschino - one of my absolute, all-time, top 5 favourite labels, cross my heart and hope to die (exhale... phew) has collaborated with Gabriele Muccino on a short film, titled Senzo Tempo. And it's only beautiful.
You can throw a load of blood diamonds at Naomi Campbell via Super Fashion Stars. Unfortunately, it's just a flash game and not real life.
SUPER DUPER BONUS GIVEAWAY SECTION!!
Ok, less of that. Typing in caps makes me feel like I've just climbed a hill.
1) The lovely Ms LolaDee of Things I Fell in Love With Today is hosting a giveaway of her incredibly cute handmade accessories for her 300th commenter. Just go to http://www.loladee.com/ and leave a comment. It's that easy.
2) If you happen to be in Cork, the Lewis Glucksman Gallery is giving away free posters from the Mixtapes exhibition to all it's twitter followers today. There's three designs - I really want to get a hand on the Linder Sterling punk ladies poster - don't suppose anyone wants to pick one up for me?
3) I'm a big fan of Nina Chakrabharti and her whimsical illustrations and have blogged about her amazing book, My Wonderful World of Fashion before. You can win a signed illustration and a copy of the book just by displaying your best colouring efforts here.
P.S You can read my newest Licentiate column, only in The Cork Independent, out today! It's about leggings - they're not trousers, so cover your shame.
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