Boys Watch the Girls While the Girls Watch the Boys Who Watch the Girls Go By…

It’s occurred to me, looking through the archives of this blog, that there’s an awful lot about the ladies – but almost nothing at all about the gentlemen - a sore oversight on my part, which I will seek to redress in this here post.

Perhaps one of the reasons why I haven’t written much this year about men’s style is that I always thought that men’s style was much more straightforward than women’s. On account of the absence of breasts, hips and thighs, I’ve always held a firm belief that men have a much easier time dressing themselves – i.e., put on a pair of decent jeans, a button down, and a jacket, and you’re ready to rock the kazbar.

However, recent and close observation of the males in my life has lead me to conclude that men can be just as fabulous, if not more so, than us ladies. (Recently there has also been a lot of close – cough- ‘observation’ - of males who are not in my life, more’s the pity, at gigs and on sidewalks, but that’s a homily for another time).

I think we don’t notice male style dilemmas as they are played out on a more subtle level than female ones. As mentioned above, the fact that there are simply less shapes and styles of clothes for men to choose from means that there’s going to be less plurality in male dressing – it’s hard to break away from the pants and shirts model when it’s socially unacceptable to wear anything else. However, within, and perhaps because of, these confines, there are some spectacularly stylish men whom I feel it is my duty to valorise on this humble blog.

I ought to start with the inspiration for this post. On Saturday, Rosie Bon Jovie and I had the immense privilege and pleasure of listening to a brilliant indie-rock-folk band, The 45, at Ainslie Hall. The lead singer of said band, apart from having a voice like Nick Cave and the lyrical talents of Geoff Buckly, was a brilliantly stylish man, a light on the hill to which all of you gentlemen out there should aspire. Aside from a brilliantly scuffed pair of workboots and authentically worn-in jeans, this young rocker had perfected the waistcoat-shirt-tie-hat combo. This is territory where many have strayed and failed spectacularly, particularly in the first year of an arts degree at university. Proving that old fashion maxim about wearing your clothes rather than letting them wear you, this muso demonstrated that what I had once dismissed as wankwear can, and is, fabulously stylish when it’s done with a sense of integrity and reality – with a sense of owning the clothes rather than the clothes owning you.

My fabulously stylish friends, Jordan Hawthorne and Brody Leon, demonstrate, in their different approaches to style, that there are many ways for men to be fabulous on a tighter than tight shoestring budget. Jordan Hawthorne’s approach is to focus on quality accessories. Although Jordan looks similar whenever I see him, he always looks good, on account of having a capsule wardrobe of jeans and a few shirts coupled with brilliant accessories. Of note are his choice in glasses frames – which are always just noticeable enough to make you comment, but not so outrageous as to make him a laughing stock – and his signature satchel. I covet this satchel, not only for its innate beauty and practicality, but because of its quality and the feeling that it gives of being timeless. Which makes sense, given that Jordan picked up this particular piece of fabulousness in the middle east, during a year overseas. Again, like the abovementioned rocker, Jordan’s style works because, in addition to being well thought out and classically well accessorised, it is all his own, and speaks to his interests and his experiences.

In contrast to Jordan Hawthorne’s understated style, Brody Leon encapsulates all that is good about flamboyant-old school-vintage-student-chic. His endless and cheerful parade of tweed jackets always brighten the ANU campus. Never one to shy away from more flamboyant vintage numbers, Brody has numerous fabulous pieces, the highlight of which is his tuxedo jacket with tails – an authentic twenties number, I believe, and a piece which those not endowed with natural style would be swamped by. I have also heard tell that Brody Leon has come into possession of a particular pair of red Cuban heels…having not seen them with my own eyes I cannot pass judgement, but I’m sure they are as stylish as everything else in Brody’s wardrobe.

There are so many other stylish men that I know, I could go on for ages. I haven’t touched on Jimmy Henry’s board short collection, or Pete Morrisey’s burgundy velvet 70s blazer, or Hugo Kirkham’s leather jacket. If I had to draw a common thread that unites all these fabulously stylish men together, however, it would be their sense of stylistic integrity – of staying true to what they know is fabulous. Something which, in spite of my earlier reticence, is worth an honourable mention on this blog.

I Love the Smell of Inspiration in the Monring

I won’t bore you with reasons why I haven’t been giving you the love and attention you and I both know you deserve…ok, I’ll give you some hints…

New house, dramas with new house and their resolution forthwith, 120 undergraduate essays and another 60 still to come, trips to Ikea, Goublburn, Queanbeyan, gardening, breakup with J-man, thesis, tutoring and counselling the kiddies, library fines, an early quarter- life ‘what-the-fuck-am-I-doing’ crisis, and a kicking housewarming.

Don’t you feel exhausted reading all that??? I do too, and I actually did it all!

So, I’m one busy lizzie, as you can see. And, as happens to the best of us, this busyness has left me feeling rather drained, in every way that a body can be. This, of course, extends to the sartorial. I’ve actually fantasised about coming to university in track pants. THE HORROR.

Which got me to thinking – how does one go about recharging one’s batteries – sartorially and spiritually? To who, where and what can one turn for inspiration when that creative kick up the pants is sorely needed?

Any newsstand would have you believe that inspiration, at least in a sartorial sense, comes from buying the latest Mari Claire and gallivanting off to DFO, backed by a cavalry of credit cards at the ready. Of course, being the recesisionista that I am, and also encountering the budgetary challenges of heating bills, this is not an option. Also, to be perfectly honest, I’ve never really been that inspired by fashion magazines. Firstly, they’ve got that styled-within-an-inch-of-their-life ethos, which is hard to put into practice, especially when the clock’s ticking and the hope of finding an available car park at uni is drawing ever closer to a snowballs’ in hell. Secondly, the whole disposable fashion thing raises numerous issues for me, in terms of the social and environmental implications – not to mention the storage ones! And finally, as I’ve said before on this blog, I don’t understand why we would all want to look the same, because then we’d get tired of looking at each other.

So, inspiration from fashion magazines; do not want.

Of course, one could argue that one draws inspiration from The Fabulous – those we admire and get all jelly-in-the-belly thinking about. The fabulous are not confined to the current flavours of the month – rather, they can be from any era, real or imagined, lauded or lampooned for their style. My personal list is too long and varied to go into here, but needless to say, it spans the known history of the world. But back to the point - dressing as a Fleetwood Mac era Stevie Nicks at my housewarming certainly got my creative juices flowing. There’s something mystical about taking on the mantle of another – of borrowing some of their shine – that can boost you even in the most trying of circumstances. Perhaps this is why ‘important’ people wear uniforms, or have ridged dress norms – it’s the hope that in dressing like a judge, a doctor, a rock star, or a politician, one might actually find oneself feeling like one. The same goes for dressing like The Fabulous – in times of inspirational crisis, it’s nice to borrow someone else’s shine for a while, especially when circumstances make it hard to be glossy in your own right.

However, borrowing someone else’s fabulousness can only last so long. It’s like a quick sugar hit – it keeps you ticking over, but eventually you have to take in something more sustaining. It occurred to me this morning, over my low GI nutritionally sounds breakfast of rye tost with tahini and honey, it’s the people we love that are the daily bread which both sustains and inspires me. How would we be creative with our style if there weren’t people at our breakfast tables, ready with the compliments and suggestions that stoke the fire of our sartorial inspiration? How would we continue to be enthusiastic teachers if we didn’t know our student were learning – if we didn’t have to read and grade their essays? And, most importantly dear readers, how would we continue to write if not for the gentle, and not so gentle, nudgings and naggings of our nearest and dearest? And, in a life full of dear ones, inspiration, sartorial or otherwise, is never too far away.

Revere, Not Fear

This Thursday, ten am, I teach my first tutorial. This is a moment that, as many of you will no doubt know, I have been looking forward to for quite some time. So, understandably, my chief concern is:


WHAT TO WEAR????

A part of me….heck, no, actually all of me, loves wardrobe firsts. Scientists say that scent is the most evocative sense of all – and, as a fragrance devotee, I certainly don’t underestimate the significance of the olfactory. Perhaps I’m a few steps up the evolutionary ladder, however, because for me, the sartorial is the sense that is most evocative of a particular time, place and moment. Whether it’s first dates, first days of school or uni, or the first time I saw the Sex and the City movie, the outfit I wore is encoded with more sensory memories than anything else associated with the event. Indeed, no matter how hard I try, my navy silk Saba frock will always and forevermore be known in my head and in my heart as The Lifeguard Dress – but perhaps that’s a story for another time. Likewise, yellow and green ribbons always evoke my first day of kindergarten, just as black cardigans bring to mind my first day at uni and the lovely German exchange student who chivalrously returned it to me after I’d abandoned it in my haste to leave the lecture theatre and have a cry in the ladies from COMPLETE NERVOUS EXHAUSTION – again, story for another time. I think perhaps you are getting the idea though – for me, clothes are the defining sense-memory of important events in my life.

For this reason, I’m understandably a little bit hung up about what to wear this Thurs, as my first ever teaching gig will no doubt rank as a keynote day in my life. Professionally, it’s the first actual step down the actual path of what I actually want to do with my actual life in the actual world of actual work. Personally, it’s an important marker of growing up – that the university trusts me, perhaps erroneously, with the little kiddies because they think the munchkins might be able to do some good learning with me. Little old me! Shucks.

Also, as was pointed out to me during a training session last week, we’re in the front line, the trenches (I’m direct quoting, not elaborating), with the students, in the battlefield that is the Australian National University (the bit about the battlefield was an elaboration on my part but it’s nonetheless fitting to extend the metaphor, don’t you think?). According to our instructor, our role as intellectual capitalists, extracting the most brain labour out of the student masses (switching to Marxist metaphors now) means that tutors need to inspire FEAR in their students – not a lot, but enough to keep them one step ahead of a boot up the backside.

Pedagalogicaly, this whole fear thing doesn’t sit too well with me. Yes, I want my students to take me seriously and do as I ask, to get their essays in on time (HA) and to be interested and engaged in the course materials (HA. HAHA. HA). But I’m not necessarily comfortable with deliberately making them afraid of me. After all, as we are continually told, we are their first point of contact with the university – an institution that is scary and alienating enough as it is, never mind my pathetic attempts to instil fear in my students.

It was over a slightly burnt but nonetheless elegant supper (caramelized onion tart and salad) with MiMi Goss that we hit upon the strategy I will employ in my tutorials. Rather than getting the kids to FEAR me, I will instead be aiming to have them REVERE me. Aside from being a nice little rhyme, replacing the fear with revere fits much more nicely with my attitude to teaching. Instead of making the students scared of what I might do if they don’t comply with my direction, I shall instead compel them down the path of good behaviour, critical engagement with the literature, and punctual submission of essays with my own fabulousness as the primary motivator.

When I look back over my little life, it’s the teachers who I’ve wanted to be like, who I’ve admired, worshiped – whom I have revered - that I’ve learnt the most from. All I can remember about the teachers I was afraid of was that I was that I was afraid of them – not the knowledge that they imparted.

So, having worked out my preferred pedagological position from a veritable Karma Sutra of positional options, all that remains is to find the perfect outfit - the outfit that inspires reverence, rathe than fear, indifference, or, worst of all, giggles.

Trouble is, every person has a different take on what this outfit should be. MiMi suggests curve hugging glamour, with clever accessoriation: Sookie Compton and Tara Samson, my new housemates, suggests kooky colour and layers respectively, for reasons of approachability and practicality. Zsuzannah Verona thinks that black and neutrals are a bad idea, and give off an impression of being a part of the staid academy rather than someone forging a new path: Kitty Gilfeather, on the other hand, thinks that black and white with lots of interesting texture and great jewellery sends the message that I’m to be respected as well as liked.

So much good advice, from so many trusted sources, makes for one confused prospective tutor.

Thus, it is in the spirit of collaborative sharing of knowledge and insight that I open the question to you, dear reader. On this most important day in my life – what should I, and should I not, wear?

A Tale of Two Cities and A Capital Idea

From St Kilda to Kings Cross is thirteen hours on a bus
I pressed my face against the glass and watched the white lines rushing past
And all around me felt like all inside me
And my body left me and my soul went running

Have you ever seen Kings Cross when the rain is falling soft?
I came in on the evening bus, form Oxford Street i cut across
And if the rain dont fall too hard everything shines
Just like a postcard
Everything goes on just the same
Fair-weather friends are the hungriest friends
I keep my mouth well shut, i cross their open hands

I want to see the sun go down from St Kilda esplanade
Where the beach needs reconstruction, where the palm trees have it hard
I'd give you all of Sydney harbour (all that land, all that water)
For that one sweet promenade – Paul Kelly, ‘From St Kilda to King’s Cross’.

Take a Canberra girl. Add a little money; a few couches to surf on; cheap air and bus fares to Melbourne and Sydney respectively; and a couple of free weekends.

Canberrans, newly minted and old guard, will be familiar with what happens next: the Canberra girl returns home star struck by the proverbial temptations – sartorial, culinary, cultural – that Australia’s two biggest smokes have to offer, like the little girl enamoured by the grown ups’ closet.

Being too cool for school – a character flaw I have to deal with it as best I can – I thought I’d afforded myself complete and un-breachable immunity from seduction by the splendour of the cities. Having rejected, mid way through my degree, the notion that Melburnians are cooler and Sydneysiders more fun than dull, cold Canberran’s, I held a rather smug certainty that anything the two cosmopolitan powers of Australian style could whip out, I could unearth some hidden Canberra gems that would be harder, better, stronger, faster – stylistically speaking – and all the more chick for being unexpected.

I guess I hadn’t heard the saying pride comes before a fall.

As this blog will demonstrate, I’ve come home with a rather bad case of the star-strucks.

Marvellous Melbourne

Having only been to Melbourne once in my life – for a day when I was eleven, with the parentals and the siblings, tres uncool – I was constantly met with blank stares at parties when this fact came out. My dirty little secret scandalised many – how can one possibly write about style in Australia without having visited its birthplace? Of course, this got my ire up, and I furiously resisted the notion that Melbourne had much more to offer in the style stakes than any other metropolis in the southern hemisphere. I think I deliberately developed a minor aversion to the place on account of SOME – not all - people from Melbourne endlessly disparaging the goods of our nations’ capital – our coffee, our food, our style.

It was only the kind offer of a place to rest our weary heads from the dear Miss Bennett, and the enthusiasm of my main squeeze, J-Man, that prompted me to hop onto ‘what if’ and book some flights for a winter getaway. Packing was a challenge – having heard tell of the uber cool Melbourne fashion pack, I was quaking, under my coat of bravado, in my black leather knee length boots. I decided to take as many options as my classic pre-rebranding country road overnighter could hold. This involved several vintage dresses, a lot of black, and plenty of stretch jersey for its magical crease resistant properties. I was terrified – for, as anyone who has had to move to a new environment knows, big fish from little ponds tend to get eaten alive when they hop on into the roaring stream of life.

Instead, Melbourne and I took one look at each other and fell hopelessly in love. Or at least, we decided we simply had to jump each other then and there. Melbourne is a city after my own heart – it wears its style on its sleave, its lapel, in the seam of a stocking or the heel of a boot. Because of this, Melbourne, or at least the areas of St Kilda, Fitzroy and Carleton that I came to know, is quite relaxed. It knows who it is and as such, has nothing to prove to you. If you take that same attitude to clothing and to life, as I do, you are one of the fold and welcomed to style’s bosom with no further vetting required.

Being someone who feels that a conversation isn’t complete if there hasn’t been something said about clothes or accessories, the casual way that Melburnians have of talking about clothes made me feel right at home. Shocked and delighted was this Canberran to lean that Melburnians actually…
Stop.
You.
On.
The.
Street.
…to talk to you about what you’re wearing, who designed it, how fabulous it was. Needless to say, when a grand dame of the Melbourne style set, wearing the most incredible fuchsia fascinator, stopped me to compliment me on the skirt that I’d made and was wearing during a mid morning wander, I felt like I’d arrived - and that I was, oh, only about ten foot tall.

The thing with Melbourne, as I surmised from my sojourn to the City Museum with J-Man and friends, was that Melbourne was the planned pregnancy after the bastard child that is/was Sydney. No offence to Sydney peeps – I’m coming to valorising your fair city in a few paragraphs – Sydney has always been a shambles. Never really thought about other than a quick and dirty route to eliminate Britannia’s refuse, it grew up never knowing who it was – without order, in anarchistic clusters around the jagged coastline and gash of a river. No-one wanted Sydney, and, consequentially, it grew up with a desperate need to be wanted. Melbourne, on the other hand, was the much loved and wanted child – its conception was carefully planned at a time when there was enough money and know-how to make this one work out well, after the mistakes of last time became evident. Thought was given to the future of the colony’s second legitimate child – streets and suburbs planned in advance, on a grid designed to maximise the fledgling city’s sociability and prosperity decades, centuries, into the future. Just as its shambolic origins influence the Sydney we know and love or loathe today, the planned, considered nature of Melbourne’s origin is evident in the relaxed self assurance with which the city carries itself. Melbourne has nothing to prove, because it has always known its worth.

And it shows in its style. Not to repeat the cliché that weary Canberrans hear all the time, but people in Melbourne dress in a way that’s all their own. Whilst there are trends – in particular, the skinny jeans/rocker hair/bomber jacket look for the lads – there’s a sense that anything you wear is fabulous so long as you look like you in it. Of particular note was the way that Melbourne women are unafraid to embrace both neutrals and colours – see earlier post – as well as vintage and modern pieces – again, see earlier posts. Prints also featured heavily, along with chunky hand knits – a necessity in a city whose mercury drops almost as low as Canberra’s. There also seems to be an aversion to dressing entirely in mass market labels – hence the proliferation of markets, one-off shops that sell local and imported designs, and vintage stores.

Another element of Melbourne style that I feel deserves note here, and became all the more apparent after my adventures in Sydney, is that Melbourne women and men seem much more comfortable with their bodies. People of all shapes and sizes were dressed beautifully, and with an eye to clothes that flatter, flaunt and fit. Perhaps this stems from the preference for one-off shops rather than the chain stores, whose sizing provision leaves much to be desired. The Melbourne gal seems to be much happier in her body – whether it be curvy, tall, short, or straight up and down. Not to say that there aren’t people in Melbourne who battle with body image – I’m sure there are – but they just seemed to be better equipped to dress the body in a way that is sexy and stylish, which, I have no doubt, provides an instant boost of much needed confidence. As a curvy women, I have never felt more comfortable with my figure as I did in Melbourne, because everybody else was embracing and working with what they had too.

The Melbourne experience is not all roses, however. I was concerned at several points that it appears to be the fashion for young Melburnian women to wear one side of their hair almost completely shaved, and the other side quite long. This, I feel, is taking the individual approach to style a little too far. Expressing yourself is a grand thing, but you’re also wearing your hair in such an ugly way that it hurts my eyes and causes me to vom a little in my mouth. No offense but it’s true. And as for those coffees I’d heard so much about…well, they were good, but I still think the Gods are better…

Splendid Sydney

The weekend after my Melbourne sojourn, my dear friend Clementine Kemp and I hopped on a Murray’s coach at the unglamorous hour of 8am on a Saturday in order to spend the weekend with our friend Kitty Gillfeather. Kitty’s older sister’s apartment in Neutral Bay was free for the weekend, and, given that bus fares were super cheap with it being a recession and all, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I must confess here that my relationship to Sydney is a rather complex one. I spent my childhood there – we moved to Canberra when I started high school – and, like anywhere that you spent your childhood, pleasure and pain indelibly colour your perception of the place. Coupled with this was the fact that the part of Sydney my family and I lived in – St Clair, a part of larger Penrith – has a tenuous relationship to the rest of Sydney. Some Sydney purists say that anything further inland then Parramatta can’t be truly described as Sydney – and they are entitled to their opinion. However, the people I grew up with, myself included, always felt ourselves to be a part of the city, even though the tip of the Nepean river we inhabited was an hour away in light traffic from the iconic harbour. I think my test for whether you are, or have been, a true citizen of Sydney is a simple one. Go to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, find Brett Whitely’s ‘The Balcony 2’, and look at it, really carefully, for five minutes. If you have tears in the inner corner of your eyes, or a lump in your throat like a stuck chunk of panne di casa, you’re Sydney through and through. I’m one such person, and Sydney will always have a very special place in my heart.

However, as I mentioned above, Sydney does have some issues of insecurity which I just can’t bring myself to ignore, despite my love for the place. It’s louder, brasher, and sexier than Melbourne, its younger sibling, and I think that this stems from a desperate desire to be seen, heard and acknowledged, rather than from a place of confidence. Somewhat paradoxically, there’s also the tendency to try and fit in as much as possible – hence the proliferation of chain stores and the sad absence of the little one-off shops I love so much. Walking along the busy streets of Sydney, I recalled the Groove Armada lyrics that were the anthem of my high school years: if everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other. Everybody looked the same, and I got tired of looking.

That’s not to say that there weren’t some wonderfully stylish people in Sydney – mostly the lovely Kitty’s gorgeous sisters - and wonderfully stylish places to shop – Paddington markets get a most honourable mention here. What stood out conspicuously for me, though, and was epitomised by our night out at the town, was the tendency of the ladies of Sydney to be (how can I say this without sounding prudish?) a little underdressed. Not in terms of formality, in terms of quantity of fabric! Fifteen centimetres does not a skirt make, ladies. Clementine, Kitty and I weren’t hitting the Cross – indeed, our watering holes of choice were amongst the most well regarded and popular in the city – but some other women didn’t quite get that memo as they were well and truly dressed for a hard night’s work. If you get my drift.

I’m a huge proponent of celebrating the body that you have, whatever its size or shape, and in not hiding away bodies or body parts that are not considered attractive or sexual at this particular point in history. But what is celebratory about squeezing Rubens-esque thighs into a skirt three sizes too small? Or wearing a bra that converts an ample bosom into four bizarre mounds of misshapen fat? One such young patron of a fashionable nightspot was dressed thus. She had the potential to be a very attractive woman, the sort who would have been an artists model two hundred years ago. It seemed, though, that the prevailing norms of Sydney style – ie show as much as you can while you can (and even then for ten years afterwards) – had got the better of her. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened had we transplanted her to Melbourne, and steeped her in the celebratory, individualistic style ethic that was evident in every fibre of that city. Perhaps she would have found herself felling more comfortable straying from the high street chain store look – and they tyranny of high street chain store sizing – and embracing her beautiful curves in a way that made her look as fabulous as she was, rather than like a doughier, spilling out-over-the-edges version of the Sydney cookie cutter girl.

Homeward Bound

As I journeyed home with many thoughts in my head – top of the list being how I had managed to drink that much without repurcussions – I got to thinking about Canberra’s style. If Sydney is the bastard child with an insecurity complex, and Melbourne’s lead the charmed life that gives it the licence to be whoever it wants to be, what could I say about our fair capital? The youngest sibling, by far, and not yet past the stage of pulling at the skirts of her two older sisters, as my shameful degree of star-struckness illustrates. Canberra is developing a look that is its own – one that I think is informed by a conflation of the student chick of the universities and the crisp, slick quality that the best of the public service provides. However, it’s still a long way from making its debut and coming out on the public with a definitive statement of who she is. And it occurred to me, some time as we were driving parallel to Lake George with the wind turbines white against the purple storm clouds, that that’s ok. We’re a new city, without the sense of history that informs Melbourne or Sydney’s styles, which gives us a playfulness, a naivety, and an innocence, which we shouldn’t try to grow out of too quickly. We can borrow our older sisters’ heels and lippy, for it’s fun to play dress ups, but not be too quick to be either one of them, and wait for our own time to come. A capital idea even if I do say so myself.

Purple Prose for a Purple Jacket

It can strike at the most unexpected times.

Walking home from a late night movie, the stars twinkling in the sky, a cool breeze lifting your hair and leaves crunching underfoot. You see it - in a shop window. That purple velvet blazer-cut jacket you’ve been waiting your entire life for.

You edge closer to the shop window – it’s night-time, the shop is closed. You press your face to the glass to get a closer look at the object of lust. Your breath makes a cloud of condensation on the cold pane of glass.

Days pass. Life conspires to keep you apart – meetings with academic supervisors, classes to attend, work – and you fill the time pining after your love, torturing yourself with thoughts of how it’ll never work. The jacket is too impossibly perfect for the likes of you.

But what if – what if – it did work? You allow yourself – reluctantly at first, but the fantasy gathers its own momentum - to imagine the life that you and the blazer will share. The smart casual functions. The trips overseas. The late night rendezvous. The boots, the bags, the dresses.

You imagine your future together. It is fabulous.

You work up the courage to approach the shop and try on the object of your affections. Your soul is in agony – will it, won’t it, love me back? You take it off the hanger. The moment on consummation approaches. The velvet caresses your fingertips, the shade of purple enticing you. You slip it on.

And that’s when it all goes hopelessly pear shaped.

It slumps around your shoulders. Its buttons are wrong. The sleeves are too short. Its too hot. It makes you look like Austen Powers.

Your castle in the air has been blown apart by hurricane of hideousness. How can something so right, that works so intuitively with your innermost sartorial desires, be so…wrong? Is it me? Is it the jacket? Is it both of us? Is the timing wrong?

You take off the blazer. You put it back on its hanger. Your hand lingers on the velvet, a parting caress, but the magic has gone. You walk out of the shop without a backwards glance, and you banish those evil questions from your mind.

Because there are plenty more jackets in the world, which will repay the love that you expend in equal measure. It’s not this one. But there are plenty of jackets in the world that will love you back – and will worship you exactly as you are. And it’s worth holding out for exactly that.

A Manifesto For Recessionistas: The People’s Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution.

A friend of mine from college – lets call him Captain Burns - supplemented the minimum wage he earn as a burger-flipper at Maccas by pirating. DVD’s, CD’s, anything you wanted burnt, slashed, or ripped in breach of copyright, could be supplied by Captain Burns with a couple of day’s notice and an extra large parcel of hot chips with chicken salt – the standard fare of modern day Pirates, I was lead to believe. Confronting the captain one day with my ethical reservations about the stack of pirated CD’s he’s burnt for me, Captain Burns turned my newly minted lefie politics against me:

Captain Burns (munching on soggy chicken salt chip): ‘Peg-Leg you’re a socialist, aren’t you? And you think that capitalism is wrong, morally, socially, and spiritually?’

Peggy (accepting offered chip from packet): ‘Of course’

Captain Burns (washing chip down with bourbon and cola, sneakily hidden in regular cola bottle so as to escape detection): ‘Well, it’s simple really. The capitalist social structure commercialises resources – ie music – when music should be free - for and of the people. All I’m doing is giving these resources back to the people who rightly own them. Redistributing the wealth of the state, if you will. And I will. Now, how about some Smashing Pumpkins to go with your Cranberries?’

Peggy (worries about morality of cd’s negated): ‘Yes please!’

Clearly, I was into 90s revival before it was cool.

Years after the fact though, my friend’s rather cynical interpretation of adolescent socialism sticks in my mind, as an example of how we should always look for ways of making our everyday lives less indebted to the capitalist system. In light of the fact that capitalism as we know it is crumbling, or at least flaking at the corners, perhaps it’s time to revolutionise and adopt a utopian position of a new sartorially socialist state…

What’s Mine Is Yours, What’s Yours Is Mine: Here’s a simple five stage plan for implementing your very own Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution.

Stage One of Implementation: Buy clothes. See prior posts for handy hints on this, but I think that if you like clothes enough to bother with this blog, you’ve probably fairly well along with stage one. Moving right along to…

Stage Two of Implementation: Wear clothes. Again, see prior posts, but I think you’ve got that bit worked out too…

Stage Three of Implementation: Decide you don’t like clothes on you. Whether it’s because you put on/loose weight, or change your hair colour, or decide that it’s time to grow up and get an office job and abandon your cowboy boots and floral dresses look (it’s never time for that in my book but if you’re comfortable with that then go right ahead). It’s a fact that for many reasons, happy and sad, we sometimes have to get rid of clothes. Putting aside the emotionality of the decision, you are now faced with the dilemma of what to do with them: rubbish bin, Vinnies bin, or…

Stage Four of Implementation: Share your clothes with various friends and admirers. Seems like a simple enough idea, right? You bought the dress, you wore the dress, you’re over the dress and it’s time to move on, you give the dress to your friend.

Surprisingly enough, it took me a good several years to cotton onto this. Whilst I could never bring myself to throw perfectly wearable clothes in the bin, I still didn’t think there were many other options than Vinnies for my cast-offs. Until my dear friends MiMi Goss and Rosie Bon Jovi gave me bundles of their respective hand-me-downs. Being of a larger size, I’d never really received hand me downs from fabulously stylish friends before – but having done so, I found that my wardrobe was reaping the benefits. MiMi Goss had undergone a change in aesthetic, moving from boho to refined chick one summer, and generously put her florals and paisleys out to pasture in my welcoming closet. Rosie Bon Jovi, being of a similar size but different colouring to me, found that some of her most flattering dresses didn’t do her beautiful hazel eyes justice – but they would work a treat with my brown ones. Thus, the path to the glorious revolution was lit for me by these venerated prophets of style. I consequentially did my half yearly wardrobe cull with a new ‘friends’ pile along with my standard ‘bin’, ‘vinnies’, and ‘mending’.

Like all socialist projects, though, there is potential for calamity in undertaking a Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution. As you’re swapping and casting off clothes amongst your friends, there’s a lot at stake. Here are a few guidelines to give you an idea of what can go wrong, and ways around these problems to ensure that your revolution is most glorious. Not that I’ve ever encountered any problems, but, being the responsible revolutionary I am, I can’t help but feel compelled to warn my comrades of potential threats.

• Always, always, always have an open door policy when receiving shared clothes. And, always always always don’t expect to be able to ask for clothes that you’ve given away to come back. Paradoxical though this may seem, if both parties have these expectations at the beginning of the arrangement, things will go smoothly. If you are the recipient of a bundle, you should make sure that the original owner of the clothes knows that they are welcome to ask for the clothes back if they change their mind. See, that’s the beauty of sharing. If you give something which you later realise is fabulous to vinnies, you can’t exactly ask for it back…so there goes that fabulous denim jacket and French navy wrap dress I threw out in a fit of pique two years ago. Whereas if I’d given them to a friend, there may be a slim possibility of getting them back. Although, I would caution against giving clothes away with the idea that you may be able to recall them in any situation other than a dire one. When you give clothes that you’re out of love with away, you need to fully expect that the recipient will fall IN love with them, and may not want to relinquish. Or she may have modified it, or damaged it, or passed it on to another friend. It may be a little bit tricky negotiating at first, but it’s well worth establishing this understanding before you share clothes.

• Be open to the idea that people will not like what you want to give them – and let them know that it’s okay if they don’t want to use a particular garment, and that you won’t be offended. Likewise, if you are a recipient, be honest about what you would and would not like to take – tactfully, of course, but honestly. After all, if you don’t want to use it, maybe another friend of the giver’s might like it.

• Tell the recipient of your clothes about any ‘issues’ the particular garment has. For instance, if you are giving your friend a skirt that rides up, tell her about it. Forewarned is forearmed, and she will thank you for it when she realises you’ve saved her from the dreaded crotch creep – you know, that thing that happens when you get dressed, run for the bus, then realise as you’re walking through the interchange that there’s a strange creeping going on about your nether regions – that’s the crotch creep. The recipient may happily take the garment with ‘issues’ – perhaps she may know a trick to fix gaping buttons, or sticky zips – or she may gracefully decline. Either way, full disclosure is necessary.

• Lastly, and most importantly, never swap anything that comes with an ‘eeewww’. By this I mean any garment that is just a bit gross. Imagine you were a friend of Ms Lweinski’s in the mid 90s. She gave you this neat little navy shift dress that she’d got too porky for. You wear the navy dress about town, and grow to love it. And then you realise that the very dress you’ve now taken under your wing as your own has a history that is rather infamous, icky, and just a wee bit sticky…I don’t think you’d feel too good, to put it mildly. That’s why it’s a bad idea to swap or share any item of clothing that has come into contact with nefarious bodily fluids. Even if it has been thoroughly cleaned, you don’t want your friend to show up at a party wearing your old Vomity Veronika Maine.

Comrades, there you have it. Most great revolutions are born out of the suffering of the people, and the Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution is no different. In times of financial difficulty, the solidarity of Recessionistas is our style’s greatest strength. Swap with your sisters in style and viva la revolution!

The Area

A few weeks ago in the David Jones change rooms, I was eavesdropping whilst I had my head stuck through the armhole of a particularly confusing dress. The conversation went something like this.

Customer (to salesgirl): Excuse me, but can you give me a bit of an opinion on this dress? I’m just not sure…

Salesgirl: Well, I think it looks great. It really brings in your waist and your legs look fantastic.

Customer: Yes, I know, but it’s just my upper arms. It’s The Area, you know?

Salesgirl: Ah, yes, The Area. We’ve all got one. Honestly, it really doesn’t look that bad. But if it bothers you, would you like to try the dress on with a cardi for a bit of extra coverage?...

The salesgirl and the customer continued to trade musings on their various Areas while I wrestled various bits of myself into the corresponding parts of the dress. Although the rather complicated frock was occupying a lot of mental energy, I couldn’t help but be enthralled in the areas that these women were listing – body parts I would never have even thought could be a problem, apparently, were. Whilst I was buttoning up, thinking how silly it all was – I mean, who would be upset about their shoulder blades, honestly – it occurred to me that the salesgirl and the customer had touched upon a peculiar and pernicious truth. No matter how beautiful a woman is, no matter how confident and flatteringly dressed, there will always be The Area – the part of one’s body one simply cannot stand.

Our beauty culture is built upon the premise that women – and, increasingly, men – always have to be working on changing something about themselves. Even if you go the whole hog – the botox, the lipo, the nipping, the tucking – our beauty culture increases the magnification on the lens through which we look at the body so that things which we weren’t aware of before are suddenly bought into focus. I’ll never forget, a few years ago, reading an article about shoe-crazed Manhattanites having surgery to reduce their ‘toe cleavage’. That’s right folks, toes ain’t just toes anymore – there’s good and bad toes, bad toes having a crease of skin between your big toe and the next toe along, creating a line similar to a busty woman’s cleavage. Anyway, thinking that was a load of bollocks, I promptly went out shoe shopping. Lo and behold, when I tried on a pair of darling red patent pumps, I had the dreaded toe cleavage. The salesgirl commiserated with me, and suggested I wear them with socks.

Of course, I bought them, and I still wear them to this day, toe cleavage and all, without the coverage of a sock (which would look daft anyway). But, for a moment, I got to feeling that perhaps I should get something done about my toes because they’re just not right. I got suckered in, momentarily, to one of the most ridiculous myths our beauty culture has created.

Not to blow my own horn, but I’m a sociologist – I study this sort of thing – and most days I think I’m pretty good at being a critical reader of the messages our culture constructs. I’m steeped in literature that is critical of the demands women are coerced into placing on themselves. Yet the messages are so pervasive that, even as I’m laughing at them and deconstructing them with my sociologist’s cap on, I still look at my toes – or my breasts or my ankles, or my ears – in a slightly different way than I did before. Every time, it’s an intellectual and emotional fight to remind myself that my body is fine as it is.

It’s a fight that I’m not alone in, as the conversation I overheard in the change room illustrates. Be honest – you probably fight a similar battle most days too. Indeed, in the UK, fighting with one’s Area is the subject of the reality TV phenomena of the makeover show – Trinny and Susannah, and Gok Wan, have made careers out of working with women in their battle with The Area(s). How good these shows actually are for women’s self esteem is a discussion for another post. What is pertinent about these televisual forays into women’s deepest insecurities, however, is that there’s a market for watching women struggle with, and eventually accept, their bodies, their Areas, as they are. Anyone who has done first year film studies knows that we like to live out our fantasies, the lives we can only imagine for ourselves, though what goes on on-screen. I think the most useful thing we can take away from these shows is how very much we are fighting, and how very much we want to win the war.

As alluded to above, for all the talk that I talk, I still can’t always walk the confident walk. I don’t think I have developed the secret weapon that will, once and for all, end all the battles we fight with ourselves over Areas which are more imagined than real. If I do find that secret weapon, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, though, we can take comfort in the fact that this is something we’re all fighting. As I finally arranged myself into the rather confusing frock, with a bit of help from the salesgirl, we both looked in the mirror.

‘It’s my knees,’ I said, ‘they’re my Area.’

‘They’re mine too,’ she said, ‘but you know, if you hadn’t of told me, I wouldn’t have known.’

Sometimes, all you need to vanish an Area is for someone to be your mirror, and to let you see more clearly through their eyes.

A Manifesto for Recessionistas: Trannies in the Closet

One of the great tragedies of my life is that I can’t buy as many clothes as I would like. In financial, ethical and spatial terms – my closet is groaning - I have to think very hard before I’m willing to make a purchase.

As the mornings in out delightful nation’s capital crisp up, and the leaves start turning, chain stores and boutiques begin rolling out the new season’s stock. I’m sure that every fashionista looks forward to seasonal change over as much as I do – it’s like the beginning of the fashion footy season, working out which styles have been pensioned off to the backbench and assessing the merits of the upcoming stars. Financially, though, all these new goodies artfully displayed in shop windows can be rather a hazard to those of us on a budgetary shoestring.

Enter the Trannie. Now, I’m not referring to a transvestite or a transsexual – although I feel that both of these social groups have significant aesthetic contributions to fashion and our understandings of gender. But that’s a homily for another time.

What I mean by Trannie is a Trans-Seasonal-Wonder. It’s a little trick I discovered a few years ago and it’s made my life so much more fabulous. Some pieces of clothing, with careful styling, can cross seasonal boundaries with the right accessorisation, effectively doubling the amount of times you will wear them with a little bit of careful planning. When you start to think in Trannie terms, it makes sense to purchase that lovely summery frock – because you know that you’ll be wearing it right into May and starting again in August. Likewise, you’ll be able to assess what you need to buy this season in a more rational light – being aware, for instance, that that woolly long sleeved dress at three hundred dollars isn’t going to give you much of a return on the purchase price unless you are planning to wear it every other day from May-August. But that short sleeved Galaxy dress on the hander next to it will certainly earn its keep in your closet.

To illustrate this point, I’m offering some seasonal descriptions of Trannie dressing, to show how the same dress can be worn throughout the better part of the year. For arguments’ sake, I’m specifically thinking of a rather brilliant yellow and orange sixties-print cotton wrap dress that the ever-amazing MiMi Goss passed on to me. It’s the quintessential summer dress – cheerful and floaty – which just serves to illustrate my point all the better: that even the most ‘seasonal’ of clothes can be reworked in such a way as to give them multiple possibilities.

On a forty degree January day…I would wear the dress completely by itself, with a pretty red bra underneath so that I could wrap the front more loosely. If you’re going to bra flash, at least be self-aware here and make the bra a part of the outfit’s aesthetic. A narrow eighties gold stretchy belt highlights the waist, without being so thick and so tight as to impair air circulation around the waist. Big gold accessories – oversize earings, layers of bangles, a few rings, gold Melissa tote – draw attention away from the body, which can look a bit bloated and engorged when the dress isn’t held in by a wide waist. But when temperatures are so hot you can cook an egg on your front step, it’s time to take a more relaxed approach to your body. People won’t notice your upper arms or other parts you prefer to keep hidden if you look cool and chick in the heat, and if you employ some clever visual tricks to move the eye away from the parts you don’t like. Flat leather Jesus-type sandals with cute tooled-leather detailing is my footwear of choice – heels are unthinkable with my propensity to swollen feet. Massive square shades and a dash of sandalwood essential oil complete the look – regular perfume, in this heat, reacts badly with my skin and the floral fragrances I tend to favour can become overpowering in the heat.

On a twenty eight degree February day…not quite hot enough to justify exposing my flabby upper arms, so it’s time for a little cap sleeved cotton cardi and a wide belt in a similar colour to the cardi to pull it all in and give that flattering wasp-waist look – wrapping the dress as tightly as possible helps here too, and makes the fullness of the skirt more apparent. Because it’s a bit cooler, the wide belt won’t be an issue, particularly if it’s leather, and the cardi will provide some welcome coverage. A nifty pair of heels lengthens the leg line and gives a lovely curve to my ankles. A quick stroke of some shimmering body crème of highlighter along the front of my legs highlights the summer colour my skin’s picked up. A neat Glomesh purse adds to the retro-styled feel and, if I had the time, I’d put some soft waves through my hair. A dangly necklace that draws attention to some fairly spectacular cleavage – generated by the tight wrapping and wide belt – and draws the eye in towards the parts of the body I want to show off. As it’s still quite warm, I’d finish with a spritz of something light and summery. As a child of the nineties, Tommy Girl is the clear winner for me, but something else light and sweet would also do a treat – Clinique Happy or L’eau de Issy would work nicely too.

On a nineteen degree April day…I need a little bit more warmth. In come the black opaque stockings and boots. Keeping the stockings and boots in the same shade – black, most usually for me – helps make your legs look long and slender. Choose boots that hug your ankles, further showing off the loveliness of your legs. A burnt orange silk camisole – technically it’s sleepwear, but who cares when it’s so pretty – under the dress adds an extra layer of warmth without too much bulk. A long sleeved cardi – probably not in wool, the sun’s still shining after all – held into the waist with a wide belt adds warmth, covers my arms, and again creates that wasp-waist which is so appealing. On days like today, it’s my great pleasure to raid my scarf collection – as I have a rather long neck, scarves look lovely on me, and also have the advantage of breaking up the large expanse of my chest area – I choose a pretty silk one and wrap it several times, as a full pashmina would probably be overkill. A cute pair of suedette gloves is a must, as someone who suffers from cold hands. Finally, jewellery. As I’m wearing a scarf a necklace would be lost, so some fun earrings and a funky brooch pinned to my scarf is the bling of choice. A large red leather tote harmonizes with the autumnal hues in the landscape. Perfume comes into its own in autumn – the cooler temperatures make it easier to wear on the skin, so feel free to wear whatever suits your mood on the day.

On a ten degree June day…now here is where you really have to pull out all the layering stops and rug up. Start with a couple of pairs of tights – to keep it interesting, layer an open lace or net tight over a solid opaque stocking, in the same colour for a textured effect or go for contrast – eg red opaque stocking, grey macro-nets. It’s up to you how much attention you draw to your legs – but I’d be inclined to go bold as we all need a bit of a boost in winter. Boots with a thick pair of woolly socks to keep your toes tosty warm also helps. Then it’s time for your top half – layer a long sleeved scoop-neck tee shirt under the dress. My layering items of preference are usually fine gauge wool or silk/cotton blends because they’re comfortable to wear, warm, and don’t add bulk. You can then add a cardigan over the top and belt the whole thing together if the cardigan is fine gauge, or, if it’s chunky, I’d be inclined to belt the dress only and leave it open. This is the perfect weather for scarves, so embrace it and bundle up – you can wear more than one scarf twisted together to give extra warmth and a bit of a colour burst too. Gloves, again, come into their own here – I’d leave the suedette ones at home though in preference for fine cashmere or leather, which will keep your fingers warmer. Finally, a coat should top the ensemble off. I have several coats of varying weights, and I find that, as many building are heated in the winter, a super-bulky coat can be a pain to lugg about the office or the library when you don’t need it – depending on what you have on in your day, it might actually be better to go for a lighter, more transportable coat than that super-bulky number appropriate for the arcitc. As there’s a lot of layering going on already, I’d keep the jewellery and the bag simple – perhaps a brooch on your coat lapel and that red leather tote that’s got a nice clean line.

As you can see, layering is the key to the Trannie look – dresses with cardigans, skirts with tights and boots, polo necks under summer tops – which means that the Trannie aesthetic finds its spiritual home with those of us who embrace the more bohemian look and lifestyle - a shout out to all my perpetual students while I’m here. Having said that though, I firmly believe that Trannie-ism is for everybody, versatility being its defining characteristic. If you’re an office worker, like my dear friends Clementine Kemp and Kitty Gilfeather, and MiMi Goss, the Trannie can work just as well for you too. In professional situations, clean lines and layering under your outer clothes rather than over, keeps you looking sharp while making the most of your existing wardrobe. So, for instance, if you want to extend the life of that gorgeous Veronika Maine summer office dress, pop a fine-gauge wool polo neck underneath for extra warmth, along with a pair of opaque stockings and some boots. With a couple of tweaks, you’ve just doubled the wear you’ll get out of that dress. Indeed, if you encounter some really chilly weather, you can further layer with a neat cardigan – again, in a fine gauge knit to keep the look professional – over the dress/polo neck combination, and hold the whole thing together with a wide belt. So long as you keep everything in fine gauge, you’ll look fabulous and keep warm. Come spring and summer, you’ll gradually be able to remove your layers, and enjoy another season of wearing that little shift dress or that floaty frock. Because, let’s face it, we’ve all got a bit of Trannie in our closet, and there’s not time like the present to bring it out...

Loving to Hate but Hating to Love

Vintage.

It’s a term I love to hate and hate to love. Being one of the most influential and prolific terms banded about in popular and highbrow writing on fashion, I feel that it deserves a blog post in its own right.

As generations to come look back on all these crazy things we’ve worn and are wearing in the naughties, the aesthetic which will be most enduringly associated with us will be the vintage look. Of course, there is nothing new in fashion borrowing looks from the past, re-imagining a particular period in history in a new time and a new place. Take, for instance, the ‘grecian’ styles popularised in the regency period – all those lovely, cottony, jane-austeny frocks were modelled on what was imagined and understood to be the ‘classical’ mode of dress.

What makes our modern notion of ‘vintage’ radically different is that it’s not referencing a single style or era, like the neo-classical look of the regency period. Rather, it is the idea that anything old – from any era – is fair game, fashion wise. ‘Vintage’ looks, as we know them now, borrow stylistically from every decade of the 20th century, and take some flavours from earlier still. It’s all a bit of a hodge podge, one that can result in some rather baffling looks. Just see Alana Hill for a pictorial representation. Girlfriend sooooooo went through granny’s closet after one too many disco biscuits, let me tell you…

The other interesting thing in the way that we do ‘vintage’ nowadays is the privileging of ‘authentic’ vintage over ‘reproduced’ vintage – at lest if you are a TRUE fashionista (whatever that is supposed to mean) you are not supposed to wear reproduction pieces from Diva, but unearth them from flea markets, preferably in Paris or Portobello. Of course, if your travels tend to take you more to Penrith than the aforementioned ‘P’ destinations, you may have a problem with this. Historically, this penchant for the genuine article is something quite unique. Whenever any trend in the past has referenced another period, it has almost always done so on its own terms – ie by remaking and remodelling new versions of old looks, rather than actually ferreting about finding the old and crusty relics in their original format. Perhaps the popularity of ‘real’ vintage is a response to our throwaway culture – that, because mass produced goods are so widely available, we value the unique, the old, and the unusual.

As anybody who has read any previous post on this blog knows, I will always be a champion of all things daring. And vintage, worn well, is often is just that. However, I feel that we’ve forgotten something very important in our quest for all things authentically vintage…that sometimes things from the past should stay there for very good reasons. SOME THINGS ARE HIDEOUS AND SHOULD BE FORGOTTEN. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s okay to wear it, even if the lens that fashion is looking through is framed by a pair of vintage ray-bans. Case in point: at a terribly groovy house party last year, a terribly groovy young man was wearing a terribly groovy ‘vintage’ Kathy Day-Knight jumper. With appliqué koala and eucalyptus leaf detail and authentic moth holes. Need I say any more?

I think the prevalence of hideous vintage blunders like Koala Boy indicates a very real truth about vintage, particularly the quest for authentic vintage: that it’s really challenging to find good stuff. Aside from raiding the wardrobes of relations, which have yielded some wonderful finds, in particular mama-k’s glomesh bags and a couple of romantic eighties wonders, I have very few vintage pieces in my wardrobe. Of note is a fantastic rust-coloured seventies shirtwaist with a charming mini maple leaf print, courtesy of my fabulous friend MiMi Goss who unearthed it at a local boutique’s closing down sale, as well as the fantastic blue enamel choker I found one day at Landspeed in amongst all the dross.

My wardrobe’s paucity of vintage is not for want of trying. It’s simply because, if you’re after truly fabulous vintage, you have to look long, and you have to look hard. There’s an awful lot of wallpaper coloured mui-muis and very few rust coloured shirtwaists in the world, more’s the pity. Although it does make sense when you think about it. When you’re looking at an antique or vintage clothing store, you’re looking at a random sample of the clothes that people wore twenty, thirty and forty years ago. If you took a similar sample of what people on the street are wearing today, and time capsuled it, you would find a similar ratio of chaff to wheat that you find in most op shops or vintage stores. Therein lies the reason why the quest for the perfect vintage dress/bag/coat is rather akin to that for the holy grail – long, arduous, and with no guarantee of a reward at the end.

To a certain extent, this just makes it even more wonderful when you unearth a gem. But it can also be incredibly frustrating – if you love the idea of wearing authentic vintage, for the stylistic cache it carries as well as for the environmental benefits of recycling, it’s hard not to get disheartened by the amount of crap that is out there. If you tend to be of the curvier persuasion, this problem tends to be exacerbated. Due to the fact that we’re better nourished and/or larger than our female ancestors, be prepared for vintage clothing to be in a narrower size range. Another factor going against the larger sized fashionista is that vintage clothes, particularly vintage clothes from the fifties, are so wonderfully flattering on a curvy figure that those rare larger sized pieces in good condition are either a) handed down to grateful granddaughters who should thank their lucky stars and their mamas for what they gave them or b) are snaffled up by the dedicated vintage shopper or merchant. Tough but true. A final word on vintage sizing: clothing was often fitted quite different in eras gone by. Even up to the nineteen seventies, it was common practice for women to wear restrictive girdles, and clothing, even that designed for curvier women, operated from the assumption that the waist would be nipped in and supported by a tight girdle. Breathing and eating being two important and pleasurable bodily experiences, I think it best not to attempt to recreate the girdled waist at home, don’t you?

What all of the above means for the curvier vintage fashionista is that she’s just going to get a bit more creative. For instance, I very rarely expect to find clothes that fit my size fourteen frame, or shoes to fit my size ten feet. Even when I do find clothes that fit my body, they are often too short, particularly in the arms – we often forget that women were not only smaller, but also shorter in the past than they are now. What I can do, though, is get the vintage look through non-sized accessories – costume jewellery, bags, hats, scarves, and sometimes coats – or take a vintage piece that I adore, but doesn’t fit, and customise it. A longer vintage dress can often have enough fabric to cut a simple skirt. That requires some skill with the sewing machine, and some confidence in drafting a pattern, but even the most undomesticated of the female species can and should be able to sew on a button, right? So, if that’s you, and you find a wonderful vintage garment with fabulous buttons, snip them off the vintage piece and replace the existing buttons on a cardigan or a coat with the vintage ones.

The other thing to be aware of is that, although authentic vintage is wonderful for so many reasons, there’s actually no shame in fauxing it. Just so long as the fauxing is done well – ie, you choose pieces that look genuine – no one will be any the wiser. This can also be a more cost effective way of doing vintage if you’re on a budget, as most of the chain jewellery stores stock vintage-style pieces at pocket-money prices. A word of advice though – if you are fauxing it, embrace the fact that the most successful faux vintage pieces will be more aligned with the kitsch rather than the classic. For instance, don’t try and faux vintage diamonds, pearls and other precious stones – the poor workmanship will be obvious and will give the game away. Instead, faux it up all the way to town when it comes to imitation enamel, Bakelite plastic, gold or silver tone jewellery and no-one will know that that fantastic red flower ring which is so mid century is actually $9.95 from Diva.

One final word of advice on vintage. I said above that I loved to hate and hated to love it. That’s because, when styled well, vintage fashion is brilliant and will set you apart from the pack, but, when styled badly, it looks like what it is at the very heart of the matter – old clothes. Some of you may beg to differ, but my attitude to wearing vintage – either genuine or faux – is to pastiche, and not to parrot, a particular era or feel. There’s something quite sad in seeing someone who looks like they time travelled walking down the street. Again, it’s a lack of creativity – to parrot the look of another era is to negate one’s own creativity. Rather, what is fantastic is when you see vintage items pastiche into a look that is completely the wearer’s own – so, for instance, a vintage dress, contrasted with uber modern but stylistically sympathetic Melissa heels, and a bold colourful bag, looks fantastic because we can see that the wearer has put their stamp on the outfit. And that’s when I can say, without reservation or qualification, that I love vintage.

A Manifesto for Recessionistas: Painting the Town Red.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the best buys, clothing wise, are neutrals you can supposedly wear with everything. According to any piece I’ve read about financially sensible dressing for the cash-strapped, you ought to pick one or two neutrals – say, beige/black, navy/grey, chocolate/cream – and build your entire wardrobe from pieces in these colours, the idea being that you’ll wear an individual item more if it’s in a colour that goes with everything else in your wardrobe.

Well, that’s how it works in theory anyway.

Here’s how it goes in practice: you decide on the above mentioned combination of neutrals. You buy a white shirt, a black skirt, a beige bag and a charcoal sweater. You go home feeling smug, elegant and austere. A week later you are so bored that eating your own head sounds like fun and, like a yo-yo dieter, you race out to buy the first thing you see made from pink polyester with a sequin trim. And faux fur. With feather detailing.

Does this sound as tragic to you as it does to me? I hope so. Nothing upsets me more than the idea that colour, and colourful clothes, are the country bumpkin cousins to the cool and sophisticated neutrals. Not that I don’t like neutrals – far from it. It’s the idea that, if your finances are precarious, you should cut out colour, which bothers me. Just like someone going on a crash diet and cutting out all carbs, cutting out all colour from your tightly budgeted wardrobe will leave you crabby, irritable, and no better off than when you started out. Likewise, if you wear only colours, your wardrobe will end up bloated and flabby, like you will if you live exclusively on pasta.

Neither situation is where we want to end up in these financially troubled times. What we want is a happy medium, and here are my tips for how to achieve that…

Painting The Town Red: when the global economy is in the red, nothing speaks more about your fabulousness than colour – so paint the town red. By some sort of strange symbiotic inversion, the abovementioned tendency for people to choose neutrals in times of economic trouble actually means that adorning yourself with colour makes you look more Recessionista Regal and less Depression Drab. Wearing, say, a pair of red shoes instead of a pair of black ones conveys the message that you have enough money to not care that your shoes aren’t a ‘neutral’ that will ‘go with everything’. Even if those red flats are the only decent shoes you own this season, they won’t look like they were bought with that mindset, like their black or tan cousins would. Red flats, for their very supposed impracticality, suggest that you have dozens of shoes and bought these ones for purely aesthetic reasons, whereas black or tan flats look like you brought them for primarily practical reasons.

Same goes for all the other ‘big ticket’ items in your wardrobe – coats, dresses, boots, everyday bags, skirt and pants. In fact, the more money you spend on an item, and the more you wear it, the more I’d be inclined to argue that it should be brought in a colour, rather than a neutral. It’s all about tricking people to think you are on a bigger budget than you actually are by a few careful manipulations – or, rather, making your clothes look so fabulous that people wouldn’t think that money was a consideration in their purchase. Perhaps this is quite materialistic, and I’m happy to wear that title to a certain extent, but it’s quite nice when people mistake the pauper student for the well paid professional and vice versa.

There are some sage words I’d like to impart about colours, however. As fabulous as dressing colourfully can be, it can also go horribly wrong when you don’t think it through properly. The primary consideration here should, of course and at all times, be about what colours you actually like. If you hate pink, there is no point wearing it, even if makes look a vision of loveliness. It’s also worth pointing out here that certain colours work better on certain complexions – but that, within limits, you can change your complexion with a bit of tweaking. For instance, I don’t look at all good in yellow without my make up on – but with a bit of peachy blush it makes me look and feel great in the summertime, especially if I’ve picked up a bit of a tan.

Fashion gurus – Tinny and Susannah, I’m taking to you here – often delight in grouping people’s complexions into colour categories and prescribing a list of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ colours. I wouldn’t set any stock in these at all. Aside from the fact that no description of a colouring ‘type’ matches what I look like naturally - pale skin, rosy cheeks, dark blonde hair and almost black eyes, if you were wondering, although the hair colour is a law onto itself – they fail to take into account the fact that we can tweak our complexions with make up and that different textures and fabrics can make the exact same shade look totally different. Peach is hideous on me when it’s in a heavy block of fabric, but in sheers it’s lovely. I’m sure you’ve found similar.

So now that we’ve chucked the rules about who can wear what colours out the window, how are we to go about picking what colours work for us? The simple answer, my friends, is a tale of trial, error, and the triumph of instinct over instruction. Try clothes on. Hold colours up to your face. Choose colours you like – there’s probably a good reason why you’re drawn to particular colours, and you shouldn’t fight the feeling. I had an inexplicable attraction to acid green in my early adolescence. When I finally got to wear some, in the form of my very first pashmina, the inexplicable attraction became apparent – it’s one of the best shades for my mixed-up colouring.

Once you let yourself loose to experiment with colour, you’ll gradually find yourself noticing some trends in what looks good on you, and it’s from here that you should go about establishing what ‘does’ and ‘doesn’t’ suit you. In my case, I find that I suit mid-to-bright strength colours, with an emphasis on all the berry tones – the reds, the pinks, and the purples, along with yellows, greens, and greeny blues. You’ll probably find something completely different and idiosyncratic to suit the undoubtedly lovely colouring that the goddess gave you too, so don’t panic if nothing seems to work at first.

And here’s where you really start to feel the hip pocket benefits: once you’ve worked out what colours you look good in, like, and will wear, you can buy those big ticket items in outrageous colours with clarity and confidence that you will actually wear them and look fabulous. Furthermore, you’ll be able to coordinate the colour palette of your wardrobe with much more freshness and vitality than if you had a monochromatic closet. Once you’ve opened your eyes to colour and refined your sense of colour awareness, you’ll realise that colours work brilliantly in the most unexpected partnerships – my favourite combinations, the ones that draw the most compliments, are the ones that you never really see anywhere else – thus eliminating the worry about whether or not that acid green coat will work with your mulberry coloured skirt (it will). Having a closet full of colours, you quickly realise that ‘matching’ isn’t as important as we’ve been taught to believe – because that amazing green bag not only has good feng suei, but goes with everything on account of its merits as a stand alone piece. When your pieces are beautiful enough in their own right, who cares if your bag matches your shoes which match your dress which matches your scarf and coat?

The other thing about colour that makes it fabulous for the budget conscious Recessionista? It lifts your mood like nothing else can, and, in troubled economic times, when every front page of newspaper brings more bad news, we could all use a bit of a lift. Before you pop a Prozac, try popping on a purple dress, and feel the difference – I promise you you’ll almost always feel better immediately. Embrace the rainbow, and no one will be any the wiser that your pot of gold at the end of it is on the smaller side.

LBD vs Let's Be Different

I have a confession to make.

Not only do I regularly go panty-less, I don't like little black dresses.

Let me tell you the story of me and the Little Black Dress. I bought my first LBD the week before my twenty first birthday. It is the archetypal little black cocktail dress - sleeveless, with wide set shoulder straps, a ‘v’ neckline, shaped waist and tulip skirt that finished just above the knee. Silk, no embellishments, on sale, perfect fit. I thought I'd found the fashion pot of (black) gold at the end of the rainbow. I anticipated that I would wear it constantly.

A funny thing happened, though, when I put it on before going out for dinner on my birthday. Rather than feel elegant, timeless and sophisticated - what I'd hoped to feel on my 21st - I felt flat. Uninspired. Boring. I tried in vain to jolly myself into the party mood, but couldn't. I simply didn't feel like me. Or, rather, I felt like me, but on mute.

I had a hunch this might have something to do with the dress. Everything else about the evening was perfect. In the interests of being a benevolent wardrobe dictator, however, I decided to give the dress a couple more chances to prove itself. Both times it failed miserably - again, I had that curious mute feeling I'd had at my birthday. Something was definitely amiss with that LBD. Months of puzzling over the problem of the LBD later, I came up with the reason why I never felt quite as fabulous as I normally do when wearing that LBD. Finally, it dawned on me and all the pieces fell into place.

As I said in my first post, writers write, sculptors sculpt, but as fashionistas, we wear our art. Being the ultimate fashion cliché, my LBD was blocking my ability to express myself clearly. Try and imagine how Iain McEwan would have felt if he ended 'Atonement' with something as trite as 'better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all'. Or Donna Tart's 'The Secret History' finished with the words 'boys will be boys'. I admit to taking some liberties here, but I can't imagine that Iain and Donna would feel particularly great about those words on the last page of their novels. In fact, I think they'd feel like they'd copped out - that they'd resorted to a cliché when they could have expected something more original, more creative, more fabulous, of themselves. That's exactly how I felt about the LBD - that I'd failed to express myself completely because I threw in the creative towel and resorted to the hackneyed and the cliché.

Like all great clichés, the LBD was initially a stroke of creative genius. When the LBD-bomb was first dropped by Coco Chanel in the 1920s, it was nothing short of a revolution. It 'freed' women from having to worry so much what to wear to the numerous social occasions a gal-about-town would be - and still is - expected to go to. An LBD, back when it was a fresh new concept, would have said a lot about the wearer; about how modern, how carefree, how liberated and devil-may-care she was.

The trouble with the LBD now, though, is that it's become a fallback position women adopt when they don't feel confident enough in their creativity, in their own look, to wear something truly fantastic and truly expressive of themselves. It's fashion's missionary. And because it's been so heavily promoted, and reincarnated in every decade since the 1920s, there are just so darn many of them around that to wear an LBD actually makes you pretty much a part of the fashion wallpaper. Dull, dreary, black wallpaper, that is.

This isn't to malign the black dress in general - indeed, I have a couple of other black dresses, both jersey, one clingy and the other floaty, which I love. In both cases, though, the black dresses I love have something a bit different going on - one of them is a print, the other has a daring and unique v-back construction. Both of them have something that sets them apart from the pack. My critique of the LBD is restricted to the heavily promoted 'classic' version - see the description of mine above, or the Portmans window next time you're in a shopping mall. It's the cliché of the black cocktail length dress in a plain fabric with minimal detailing that my vitriol is reserved for.

For me, the fatal flaw of the LBD concept, aside from being overused to the point of cliché, is the idea that a single dress can reflect how you feel at a cocktail party with your girlfriends, on a romantic date, at a work dinner or at a family wedding. All of those events, for me, have a different emotional tone – joy, excitement, loyalty and dread respectively. For all its supposed universality, the LBD doesn't resonate with all of these tones. Before defenders of the LBD will bring out the accessory defense - you can change the tone of the outfit with accessorisation - this in and of itself reflects a sad truth about the LBD: at its very best it's merely a blank canvas for fabulous accessories. Think about the LBD Audrey Hepburn wore in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany's’. Now take away the necklace and the cigarette holder. What have you got left? Not a whole lot of fabulous, that's for sure.

My clothes ought - no, need - to be more than blank canvases, just as a writer needs his or her words to be more than just text on a page. Whilst it's necessary to have some pieces in your wardrobe that whisper rather than shout ‘fabulous’ from the rooftops, I feel that the LBD doesn’t even belong in the category of whisperers. Every piece in your wardrobe - even if it's a workhorse item like jeans or a black vee neck - must be more than just a blank canvas, and must have something to say. Most of us don't have the money, or hanging space, for clothes that don't say anything at all, and can ill afford to surrender our individuality to clichés in an increasingly homogenized world.

Throwing down a gauntlet, I challenge you, dear reader, to abandon the LBD. Instead, Let's Be Different. To wrangle some ee cummings here, I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

So Let's Be Different.

Panty Problems: Just Say No

For such a teeny tiny garment, the humble panty is responsible for a great many of my fashion vexations. It’s like the pea under the mattress in that much loved fairytale, the Princess and the Pea. Hidden from the naked eye, small in size and seemingly harmless, panties nonetheless have a knock on effect on the rest of your outfit, and on the way that you feel. I would go so far as to compare panty problems with other foibles of modern life, such as locking yourself out of the house, leaving your ipod on the bus, or bumping into an ex in your trackies. The impact of a panty problem is implicitly acknowledged in those handed-down womanly phrases – of course you’d be upset if your knickers were in a knot. Likewise, a change of panties can change your outlook on a situation, hence mama-k’s oft-uttered aphorism: ‘put your big girl panties on a deal with it’. An eternal truth if ever there was one.

There are many reasons why the humble panty is so important. For starters, it is the piece of clothing that is – literally – closest to the body, and, to get all fashion-theory on your, blurs the boundary between the body and clothing, between the public and the private, more than anything else that we wear. All clothing blurs these boundaries to some extent, but it’s the proximity of the panty to that last great bodily taboo – the vagina – that locates a particular cultural significance in the panty. Our culture is fascinated by panties – even those asexual butt condoms in Bridget Jones’s Diary goad Daniel Cleaver’s desire. Ever wondered why an inept bloke, when getting a little bit ‘textual’ with you, never asks about your socks or your scarf? It’s because, due to their physical proximity to a taboo area, panties are loaded with social and sexual significance. Who knew a little scrap of poly-cotton could say so much?

On a less theoretical note, panties are the ‘foundation’ upon which the rest of an outfit is constructed. Anyone who wears jersey – and you all should, it’s a much maligned fabric – will know this. Panties that cut into your rear, ride up or down, have a texture that shows through the fabric of your outer garments, and are too dark or light, are the downfall of many otherwise excellent outfits. Even the much touted solutions to these underwear problems – the thong and the support knickers – have their own issues. Thongs are just as bad, in fact worse, than the garden variety bikini brief in terms of cutting into the fat that most healthy women have deposited around the hip area, and make even the most pert of bottoms look as though they’re meeeeeeelting down your thighs.

Briefly, I thought that support knickers would solve all of my underwear problems. They were smooth and seamless, and gave an extra couple of inches of lift in the cheek area which looked very well under a slinky dress…until I caught a glimpse of what was going on above and below the elastic line of the knickers. The beguiling thing about the support panty is the promise that it can vanish a portion of your flesh. NOT TRUE. It just moves it elsewhere. Like burying toxic waste underground, you’re just redispersing the problem, rather than vanishing it. In the case of support knickers, attractive and proportional flesh is redispersed into a spare tire around your waist where the top of the support panty ends, and two matching mini tyres around your thighs where the support panty begins. About as sex-ay as…well, that particular spelling of sexy.

At my wit’s end one day, having gone through my entire panty drawer trying to find something that wouldn’t pull, pucker, roll or otherwise interfere with my fablousness, I did a very brave thing. I abandoned the quest for the holy grail and went without panties. It felt a little strange at first, I will admit. But by the end of the day I was sold on the no-panty concept. I felt free, easy, and more than a wee bit breezy. There was no going back.

Initially, I thought I was alone in this deviant panty-ditching. I kept it on the hush, commiserating with other girlfriends over their panty problems even though I’d secretly found the ultimate solution. Until one lunchtime, over ham and cheese croissants with my lovelies Kitty Gillfeather and Clementine Kemp, I blurted out the truth:

That I wasn’t wearing panties. And hadn’t been for some time.

Clementine was aghast – but, to my great surprise, Kitty announced that she wasn’t wearing any either. After much giggling and strange looks from neighbouring tables, it turned out that Kitty and I had arrived at a similar conclusion – panty problems far outweighed panty benefits, and thus the panty concept should be ditched. Problem Panties: Just Say No was the slogan we adopted. Numerous other discussions with gal pals resulted in a wider-than-expected array of panty problems and panty solutions. Some went with the no-panty option only if they were wearing pantyhose. Others resorted to a nude coloured spandex slip to resolve the problem of bulges created by the favoured cotton bikini brief. More, still, were scandalised, and slightly intrigued, by the fact that you could actually do away with the panties and their associated problems, and the world wouldn’t end.

Of course, I am loathe to hand down any sartorial dictates on this page. If you want to wear panties, thongs, support briefs or good ol’ fashioned bloomers, then I will support your right to wear whatever you want, sister. I just think it’s worth mentioning the possibility of going free range. After all, if feminism is about ‘choice’ in this day and age, it can’t hurt to add free-and-breezy to the bikini, thong, or French knicker option, can it?

I will add one caveat to this post, however. There are times and places where panties have literally saved my ass – pardon the pun – and caused me, the most impassioned advocate of the free-and-breezy, to acknowledge that there is a season for all things, including panties. To put it more succinctly: when you’ve stood waiting to cross a busy road in Fyshwick on a breezy summer’s day, and your charming floaty skirt has been blown over your head in a particularly strong gust of wind, you will truly come to know the value of that little scarp of poly cotton. As will passing motorists. Arguably….

A Manifesto for Recessionistas: Be A Gatherer, Not A Hunter.

I think it’s only appropriate, with the endless talk of the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) and its impact on the garment industry, to devote a series of entries to the phenomenon of the Recessionista. Recessionista, of course, being a play on the term Fashionista – ie when you plonk a Fashionista in the middle of a recession you get a hybrid species of thrifty stylist – a Recessionista.

I have a confession to make. I’ve been a Recessionista all my styling life. Being a student for - well, forever, having gone straight from high school to university and now staying on for a PhD – means that I’ve never been able to dress without one eye on some fairly tight budgetary constraints. I viewed these constraints with contempt in my first three years at university – but in my third year, I began to see them as an advantage. Working within one’s means, rather than spending beyond them, can yield even more fabulous fashion results than a platinum AMEX card and a sugar daddy.

The fashion world has cottoned on to the need for thrift in the shadow of the GFC. Articles in various fashion rags spruk the benefits of ‘investment dressing’, usually with a focus on spending money on the basics and whittling down one’s wardrobe to an (ahem) ‘austere’ black and grey palette, in the simplest of shapes.

Whittling down and dispensing with fripperies has its merits. However, now is not the time for self expression and creativity to be the metaphorical babies thrown out with the bathwater. In fact, let these hard economic times flex your creativity and fabulousness, which, in times of plenty, can atrophy like a muscle choked by the fat of easy available credit and the fiscal licence to shop and dress impudently.

Here, from me to you, is the first of my top tips for being the ultimate Recessionista, inspired by years of fashion on a budget. Use them wisely, and stay fabulous, even when everyone around you is clamouring for the demure and the drab.

Be A Gatherer, Not A Hunter: as much as biological essentialism appals me as a sociologist, it’s possibly an apt metaphor for the way that a Recessionista needs to go about building her wardrobe. Women, for whatever reason, tend to have innate ‘gathering’ skills – and there is never a better time than a recession to use them.

Being a fashion gatherer means revolutionising the way that you shop. Let me tell you a tale of two friends, Gatherer Gertrude and Hunter Hermionie:

Gatherer Gertrude has a hot date at Sage on the weekend with Gorgeous Gareth. She’s a bit nervous – isn’t everybody before a date? – but refuses to run out to The Canberra Centre as soon as Gorgeous Gareth has made the reservation. In fact, it’s her off pay week, and she’s got $200 to last till next Thursday after she’s put petrol in the car. Even if work wasn’t so frantic, a shopping spree would still be out of the question. Instead, she takes a look in her wardrobe (and under her bed, and in the laundry hamper, and at the bottom of the pile of stuff that the cat was making a nest on…) to see what she’s got put aside for such an occasion. Sure enough, there’s a cournicopia of dresses, skirt and tops to choose from, because Gatherer Gertrude picks up bits and pieces she likes as she sees them and when she can afford them. Her friend, Hunter Hermionie, thinks it’s foolish for Gatherer Gertrude to ‘fritter away’ her meagre salary on whimsies she spies at market stalls and in kooky little boutiques - but more about Hunter Hermionie later. Gatherer Gertrude finds – wedged behind the column heater, of all places - a cute beaded top that she bought during a Sunday wander along Lonsdale Street last month. Silk, with a cute bow detail, she had no idea what she would wear it to at the time but she liked it and it was on special so why not buy it?. The bead detail lends itself to a more sedate pairing on the bottom half – in comes that pleated Country Road skirt she bought at a sample sale in first year. It’s a strange colour – a dull apple green – but it was forty dollars at the time and she liked it, so she’d bought it and been surprised at how much she’d worn it in the years since. Throwing on a belt she’d picked up at the post clearance sales – wide, black patent – and puling the whole thing together with her mum’s old Glomesh clutch, all that remained was for her to wander around the Gorman house markets on Saturday morning, picking up a fabulous pair of earings which offset the green of the skirt nicely. After lunching with Mummykins in Manuka, Gatherer Gertrude walked past Lyn & Barrett and happened to notice that Pleasure State was on sale – because she hadn’t had to rush out and buy a whole new outfit, she could justify putting that bargain lacy bra and pants set on her credit card – she could have $75 hanging over her head this month. As the evening rolled around, Gatherer Gertrude was feeling sexy and fabulous from the skin out. Gorgeous Gareth noticed she was glowing. Gatherer Gerturde was flattered when several heads – male and female – turned as she sasheyed through the restaurant to their table. Gatherer Gerturde didn’t like to blow her own horn, but she had to admit, she could understand why – she looked pretty damned foxy, shining like a star amoungst all the staid black cocktail dresses and skinny jean/glittery top combos other clotheshorses were wearing. And she’d done it without too much hassle and debt. She felt fantastic the whole night, her good mood rubbing off on Gorgeous Gareth. Without getting MA 15+ on you, they had the perfect ending to the perfect evening, and Gorgeous Gareth most certainly appreciated Gatherer Gertrude’s special purchases.

Hunter Hermione, unlike her dear friend Gatherer Gertrude, doesn’t like to spend money on clothes when there’s no clear purpose. Hunter Hermione doesn’t understand how Gatherer Gertrude can throw so much money away on clothes – it seems like Gatherer Gertrude buys something every other week! Anyway, Hunky Hank has asked Hunter Hermione out to Ottoman on Friday night. Hunky Hank calls to confirm this on Monday. Hunter Hermione checks her bank balance as soon as Hunky Hank has hung up – as it’s off pay week, she’s only got $200 left after she’s put petrol in the car for the week. Unfortunately, there’s nothing she feels really excited about wearing in her functional black-and-gray wardrobe – nothing that would do for such an expensive night out at any rate. Steeling her resolve, Hunter Hermione decides that this is a job for her credit card. This was okay. She’s normally so restrained, she thinks that she will be able to justify putting a new frock and maybe some shoes on her Visa. Work was a bitch that week so Hunter Hermione didn’t have a chance to get a look in at the shops till her lunch break on Thursday. Armed with her credit card, she hits The Canberra Centre running on Thursday lunchtime. Hungry, tired and with sore feet, she does scans of all the stores that she normally likes. She sees a sensible black frock, nothing special but still nice enough, in the window of Saba but it’s $320. More than she wants to spend, she’d have to Visa it…time being limited, she power walks to DJ’s and is underwhelmed there too. Everything is out of budget, and the one dress she did like was not available in her size, and wouldn’t be coming in again until the following week. The sands of her lunch hour rapidly dwindling through the hourglass, Hunter Hermione hightails it back to Saba, throws the black frock on over her work blouse and skirt – yep, zip does up – and puts it on the visa. The sales assistant, noticing that Hunter Hermione is a little flustered and distracted, suggests she pick up a tangerine belt to brighten the otherwise plain dress. Hunter Hermione agrees, because there’s nothing else she has in her cupboard to brighten up the outfit – another hundred dollars later, she’s out of the store, with debt on her credit card and a sinking feeling that she’s going to look as bland as a bowl of mashed potato on Friday night. Friday night rolls around and Hunter Hermione feels as uninspiring as she looks. The dress is alright, but it’s a bit loose around the bust and she’s had to pad it out with chicken fillets. The belt, a pretty colour in its own right, is swamped by the overwhelming blackness of the outfit and looks just plain silly. Hunter Hermione only has two bags, subscribing to the ‘investment dressing’ view which states that you should buy less and of greater quality. Faced with the choice between a black Oroton tote and a Country Road hobo in beige, Hunter Hermione opts for the Oroton. The bag is too large for the outfit and swamps the dress, which just adds to Hunter Hermione’s feeling that this outfit isn’t working. But too late, Hunky Hank is knocking at the door and she has to go. Hunky Hank wonders what he’s done wrong – Hunter Hermione is in a filthy mood and he can’t work out why. At the restaurant, three other women are wearing the same dress as Hunter Hermione. She has never felt less fabulous in her whole life, and wishes that she hadn’t talked herself out of buying that red silk dress Gatherer Gertrude had spied for her during the post Christmas sales. Hunter Hermione’s mood doesn’t pick at all, and by desert, she’s wishing that she was at home, in her sensible Peter Alexander stripy Pyjamas, eating her weight in hazelnut gelato. Which is exactly where she is an hour after the desert course, Hunky Hank having decided that Hunter Hermione must be tired and needs to have a good night of undisturbed rest in her own bed.

Now this is all a teensy bit exaggerated – but I’m sure you get the picture. The budget conscious Recessionista should always take up a bargain where and when she sees it, if she can afford it. There’s a lot to be said for taking a ‘store cupboard’ approach to your wardrobe – gathering fashion’s nuts and berries and storing them away for a fruitless season. Like my grandmother who Vacoloa-ed summer peaches and apricots, I like to think of the little things that we buy when we see them – a pretty dress on sale, an antique broach – as building a bountiful wardrobe so that when we do have that special dinner, or that important presentation, or that spring wedding, to go to, we can pull together a stunning outfit with minimal effort and minimal cost. That way, when you’re asked where you got your fabulous outfit on the way to the ladies, you can utter the line that all true fashionistas aspire to utter:

‘oh this? I’ve had it for years, it’s fabulous isn’t it?’

Proving that, not only are you chic, but you are timeless and effortless as well. And that’s not half bad for something you found behind the column heater.

Because We Live Our Lives In It

There’s a scene I love in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. A team of stylists, under the eagle eye of editor Miranda Priestly, are putting together an outfit for the latest edition of Glamour Magazine. Andi Sachs, the protagonist and supposed heroine of the story, snickers at the gravity the assorted fashionistas and their assistants afford the situation. Because she’s ‘above’ fashion. Miranda, catching onto Andi’s contempt for fashion, gives her the passive-aggressive upbraiding of the century, culminating in saying that fashion is important ‘because we live our lives in it’.

Although I would hope that noone reading this blog takes their look, or themselves, as seriously as Miranda Priestly does, I can’t stand by her more. No culture in human history could be described as free of fashion. Even when we try to ignore it, or downplay its influence in our lives, like Andi in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, we can’t escape the fact that our very decision to NOT be ‘fashionable’ is, in fact, buying into a certain counter-cultural aesthetic – a fashion - that exists only because fashion does.

This blog is about celebrating the way that we live our lives in fashion. By fashion, I do not mean what is in fashion at the moment – what I mean by fashion is the way that we express ourselves through the clothes that we wear. The way that it can allow us to be a pirate princess, an earth mother, or Sophia Loren, all in the space of a day. The way that it communicates who we are, who we belong to, and who we wish to be, through the placement of a button or the shape of a heel. A fellow fashionista once said to me that whilst other people paint, compose music, sculpt or write, we wear our art every single day. That isn’t to say that we are always spot on and impeccable – I for one am most certainly not – or that every outfit could be described as art. But it is about realising and celebrating that every day, when we get dressed, we have an opportunity to create.

I don’t mean for this blog to be an exposition into the ‘rules’ of fashion – in fact, I will rail against the notion that fashion has rules in a post appearing here shortly. What I mean for it to be is a place where I can share with you my thoughts and experiences with ‘wearing art’, and where you, hopefully, will feel comfortable with sharing your experiences too.

Stay Fabulous,

Peggy Entwhistle

P.S. One final note before we truly get started – you may recognise yourself or things that you have said at points in these blog posts. You’ll know who you are, but, for the sake of keeping your identity a secret (like a fashion superhero!) I will have given you a pseudonym. Likewise, my true identity is pseudonemically shrouded, although if you’ve arrived here through a facebook post it’s likely my cover’s been blown! Nonetheless, let the guessing games begin….