Lazy Easter Weekend

It's Easter Weekend, which for Irish people means four days of sitting around in slubby clothes and watching Easter Parade all to the soundtrack of mouths busily slurping and chomping away on Cadburys Eggs.  The word for Easter weekend amongst the vast majority of non-practising Catholics and atheists in the country is 'lackadaisical'.  I want to be slubby on the couch with a slouchy cardi - but then the siren call of gin and the promise of mischief on a Bank Holiday Sunday approaches...  Dress up or dress down?  It's the kind of question that just makes me want to burrow down even further into the duvet.  No shenanigans for me, thanks.

That was, until I saw the new range from purveyors of kitsch cuteness, Heidi Seeker. Trompe L'oeil biker and blazer cardis.  The sartorial equivalent of an Easter Egg.  Tasty and sweet (with a little bit of guilt for loving it so much thrown in).



I don't shop at Heidi Seeker very often because their inventory is so cloyingly bright and anime-style cute that I often come away from the website feeling as if I've rolled around in a giant vat of candy floss and hello kitty dolls and been spat out somewhere in the Harajuku district, feeling very disoriented and in need of an accessory detox. Yep, I'm a cynical bitch.  All that cutesy-pie stuff - I'm not condemning it or anything, it's just not for me.

Saying that, Heidi Seeker do have a great eye for creative details to hook you in. The trompe l'oeil biker cardi comes with a pot luck of badges for the lapels and an option to customise the back - how very Grease.

Fi Lo (the dj, not the pastry)

This is Fiona. She's one smart lady. Fiona is one of those multi-tasking legends that intimidates me by working two jobs, formulating sets, booking holidays and being a great mother in the time that it would normally take me to make and eat a piece of toast.  Quickly.  She's a go-getter, There is no other word.

I took a few photos of Fiona, who gigs under the name of DJ Fi Lo before one of her sets a few weeks ago. I'm only getting around to doing it now, which just goes to show that if I was anything like Fiona I'd have them up by now. Oh well.



Rocking a McQueen-esque dress.  Not the slightly scary screens in the top right corner.  There were silhouettes of naked ladies bouncing around like a Bond film opening sequence on acid, which hypnotised (and occasionally scared) me to no end...

The set was a mix of mash-ups, house and chart, and was funky as fuck (ahem).  Midway through the night a girl came in wearing a dress made entirely of playing cards.  I really wish I'd saved the picture now.  Even her little top hat was made out of cards.  Oh well.  Another time maybe...

Timetabling

As a barely employed single woman, I take it for granted that I have to get a job. Long gone are the days when an unmarried woman of twenty-two who has parents of reasonable means could lounge around on a chaise and smoke cigarettes endlessly (in a slim, black cigarette holder a la Breakfast at Tiffany's, natch), waiting for a suitor to call. The days of the Lady of Leisure are dead and gone. They've gone the way of the Mitford sisters, fur as a not just accepted but essential accessory and an era when fascism was fashionable.

However, since I'm a lady at my leisure, I think it's wise to impart upon those with real lives how the new Lady of Leisure (I would think up a good acronym but LOL has unfortunately been hijacked by instant messaging) spends her days.

11am. Wake up. Realise it's still technically morning so go back to sleep. 1pm. This it the point at which most people turn on TV3 for an Oprah/Ellen double bill. Since I don't own a tv and can hear the rumbles in my stomach I call my aunt and ask her if she wants to buy my lunch. If she says no I go stand outside her office, rub my stomach and shriek until she comes out and buys me some fishcakes.

2pm - 4pm. A healthy body is essential, so after my one meal of the day I get the heart rate up by going into Brown Thomas and calculating how many weeks of dole money it would take to buy THAT dress. Repeat with the shoe lounge and handbag area. Leave with ten years shaved off my life from minor heart attack brought on by thinking about an already overstretched credit card limit.

4pm - 5pm. Go to the public library on Grand Parade and request approximately twelve million books. 5.30pm. Home. Call my mother and tell her that I lost my glasses again. While she lectures me on being responsible for my possessions I pop the phone on mute and make a cup of tea.

7pm. Time to do some writing. I'll just go on Facebook for a little while while I find my inspiration... 9pm. Hmm. An ex boyfriend is no longer listed as 'single'. This needs further investigation. I'll start writing in two minutes.

4am. Ok, I really must start writing now. No more procrastination.

4.05am. Sleep.

Links I Love 2

Some inspirational links...

The BF should take note here.

Sixties and Seventies hair pics, iconic women and pin-ups that are apparently never ending.  Note to self - buy hot rollers and gallons of hairspray.

I usually go to London for Arsenal matches and stopovers.  Emirates no longer - I'm going to Kensington Palace!  Must have a look at the fares on Ryanair very, very soon.

Some samples of my work (cuz I'm like a real journalist and like, write about fashion and stuff)

The launch of Cork Fashion Week (getting very excited about this, really looking forward to covering some events for the Cork Indo - fingers crossed!) 

The BT Cork Spring /Summer preview

And one blatant plug for some friends...

The boyfriend is a stand up. A stand up guy that is! That's a terrible joke and he won't be impressed when he sees this. Er, anyway, the boyfriend is a stand up... comic and he and my pseudo step-cousin Brendan and a host of others have made a sitcom pilot to be screened in The Pavilion. 10 euro entrance fee - all of it is going to charidee!

Changeable Weather

So, it's spring and the weather goes from sun so bright I wake up with spots dancing in front of my eyes (really should get blackout blinds) to torrential rain in a matter of minutes.  This makes dressing for the day even much more of an arduous process.

But then again, sometimes it's nice just to throw on a few classic basics in uncomplicated colours, like Converse, jeans, a Breton striped top and a nice mac, sit down on a bench, soak in the sun and let the world pass by - until it starts to rain again that is.

Ray Ban Wayfarers, mac - Uniqlo, red cardigan - American Apparel, black cardigan - Agnes b, striped tee - Topshop, jeans - Topshop.

Things are just better when they're symmetrical, aren't they?

I'll never apologise for loving Converse, although there are so many reasons why I should (poor arch support notwithstanding). 

The view from my vista.

The Fear

It's always nice to be woken up to find yourself invited to a social happening. A movie, gigs, the beach... the permutations are endless. However, it's a sign of the economic times that for every text message I get inviting me to a gig I get another one inviting me to an event in a totally different country and wouldn't I like to move there altogether?

Alright, friends, you want me to leave the country. I get the picture. Thanks a bunch. In the past month alone I have been invited to New York and London (and, inexplicably, Tokyo), but, through the fatal combination of inertia and a paralysing fear of change, I find myself unable to leave. We daydream endlessly, but all we seem to do is play a weird cyclical game of Chinese Whispers, where we start out in Sydney and end up in Beirut, then decide that it's too confusing and that we should just stay where we are.

I would love to go to New York or London (The main incentives remain a subterranean train system and the ability to buy cheap food from a tiny silver cart on the street), stay there for a year or two and return with a richer life experience and hopefully, a nice fat wallet. My friends, generally speaking, are all the same.

Most of us have been traumatised by the economic goings-on of the past year and have been working very hard. So hard in fact, that if we even get the slightest sniff of a better job prospect that we cling to it for dear life like a limpet to a slippery rock in a hurricane. What if we left, then came home to find that every job in Ireland had evaporated and we were due to die alone (and poor) because we made the foolish step of emigrating?

If we as a nation are emerging from a recession hangover, then people of my generation all have the Fear. For the uninitiated, the Fear is the paralysing anxiety that usually accompanies a queasy stomach and an inability to remember what happened the night before.

Unfortunately for us, we remember all too clearly what insalubrious happenings we were subject to. Ironically, it is the past that is holding us back from barrelling into the future head-first, and any other country that might hold a different future for us.

I got Lark on my Go Kart

Ahhh. This is the last Cheap & Nasty post to grace these pages. Mmm, cathartic. Doers anyone think that this is prophetic by the way? I wrote it in June of '09.

Like OMG BFF *falls down dead*

Dazed Digital bills Charlie White's animated collab effort OMG BFF LOL, as 'slightly disturbing'. And it, like, totes is (ahem). What's most disturbing, apart from the delightful responses that it has been getting on Youtube (example - 'what the fuck i type in lol on youtube and this comes up theres nothink funny about this'. Groan...), is the fact that it holds up a mirror to people and their shopping habits - and you really won't like what you see.




There's a lot to be said about art that has a global message, but does anyone think that the theme of consumerism as an inherently Evil or Wrong thing is a bit, well, overdone? It is true that life, and thus shopping apparently, is a merry-go-round of wanting, getting, wanting again... until what? There's no end! Sound the Doomsday alarm! Our lives are meaningless!

Don't mind me. I spent a lorra money today on clothes that I can't afford, so this just makes me feel truly awful. I must have NO soul.

On a more vacuous note, is it just me or does OMG BFF LOL remind you of every single episode of Saved by the Bell where Lisa Turtle (aka Lark Voorhies) spends way too much money on her credit card, times a million. Although if I'd been in this Always ad, I'd probably try to shop away the pain too.



"You mean I can wear them with shorts?!?"

Might as well get it over with...

... and import my older posts and just delete the old blog altogether. Out with the old, in the the new. That's how it goes, isn't it? Let's hope so. Since this post from last October (I think) I've since bought Nina Chakrabarti's book and it is amazing . Amazing. I might buy another copy. One to keep pristine. The other one to look at and doodle in on rainy days.

Nina Chakrabarti's line drawings straddle the line between whimsical and intense and incredbly fun. Her series of fashion sketches that come with the Sunday Times Style supplement always manage to while away a few minutes of doodling fun, but the results always stick in the mind for much longer.





The above pages are from her book My Wonderful World of Fashion, which I ordered not two minutes ago while waiting for my Dad to finish watching the tv (Oceans Twelve, I ask you) so I can see Dawn of the Dead. I'm already slavering in anticipation. That or I might have fashion rabies. Her designs, tips and suggestions are a million miles away from the likes of Trinny and Susannah, which is definitely a place where I want to be. And she positively encourages you to go mad with the ol' felt tips. It's a good thing.

The bottom picture is taken from a spread from the inaugural issue of I Want You Magazine, which is available in toto online and as part of a limited print run. The spread, which can be seen here, reminds me of the Mexican Day of the Dead iconography... but that might just be because I have Dawn of the Dead on the brain. Eerie and amazing. The work here marries perfectly my love of fashion and also of squiggling elaborate moustaches on the women from the Littlewoods catalogue, although I think i'll leave the intricate and carefully-thought pen and ink work to Chakrabarti herself...

Another bad boy pulled from the ranks

This is another of my favourite old posts culled from the old blog (to be deleted very very soon) published on Karl Lagerfeld's birthday last year.  Thats 09/09/09.  Spooky...

Happy Birthday Karl Lagerfeld, er, Lagerfeldt

To quote the big K himself:

“I hate birthdays, ... It's more like a new starting point in New York. For me, it's an evolution. I don't celebrate the past. I like the present and tomorrow.”

Above are links for the curious mid 90's doc "Karl Lagerfeld Is Never Happy Anyway", which must have the worst soundtrack of all time. The audio for the last part is disabled, ostensibly because of copyright, but we all know that it's really disabled because the world would be a much crueler place if it was not. Plus there are subtitles for those short on brain and/or German language skills. We all know what happens in the end anyway; he loses a pile of weight, becomes the voice of Fabu in the new Totally Spies film and also becomes the subject of the fantastic 'Lagerfeld Confidential'.

Happy Evolution Sir Lagerfeld.

Lady Cops!

Here's a post I really should have put up earlier from this month's Paris Vogue.

Once upon a time I actually had reasonable French but all my parlez-vousisms have dribbled out of my ears and I just buy French Vogue to look at the pretty pictures and to look quizzically at the Antonia Fraser interview her life with Harold Pinter. I really wish I knew what she was saying.

French Vogue reminds me of Playboy. Playboy from the 50's and 60's, not spreadeagled plasticky smooth women. Sometimes you think that Vogue is all editorial, then you get hit with a treatise on the motivations behind working the camouflage print or that Antonia Fraser interview. It's a bit like opening an old copy of Playboy and seeing a short story by Nabokov or an interview with Malcolm X. It's weird and incongruous and totally cool.

Speaking of weird and incongruous and totally cool, there are my favourite pages from the Lady Cops spread starring Brooke Shields and shot by Bruce Weber. Salty goodness.







The scans for the whole shoot can be found here.