The Redhead

I feel I've been receiving subliminal messages lately to dye my hair red. Tori Amos has a new album out. I've been re-watching Six Feet Under for the hundredth time (okay, maybe seventh) and as infatuated as ever with Clare's Pre-Raphaelite locks. And now I can't stop listening to La Roux (who, it is said, draws inspiration from possibly my favourite redhead of all time, Annie Lennox).



I'm even going to look past the grammatical glitch of her pseudonym (it should be 'La Rousse') in my admiration. Look at her cool threads! :




(pictures via Google - yes, back to Google image-pilfering. Too tired/hands too full to snap anything this week)

If I'm going to shamelessly style-copy with the hair, I may as well go and find myself a cameo pendant to boot..

PS: although something tells me I won't do anything to my hair, and The Bobble will continue its reign..

Topknot

Ooh, more Bobble goodness. I love Stam's topknot, probably needs a whole bunch of hairspray, though. I particularly like the Bobble + Metallica tee combo. It reminds me of something I'd wear out to my mailbox, blinking in the morning sun, only with a pair of Bonds Cottontails in place of the jeans. My neighbours are no doubt sick of seeing my underwear, but Cottontails are so enormous that they are practically shorts, no?

(Image via Le Fashion)

Not exactly practical...

...but during my regular blog perusals I have stumbled upon, among others, these delightful treasures:
all this happiness
clever nettle
Deer Hunter
Esme and The Laneway
fieldguided
le parapluie déteste la pluie
liebemarlene vintage
lost in the forest
The Little House By The Sea
The Vintage Year
Vegan and Vintage.

They're just gorgeous and lots of fun to read, but they make me a little sad for my own lovely vintage and secondhand clothes that are being terribly neglected. Pencil skirts, cute shoes, and anything involving silk, sequins and appliques are up there on my list of Favourite Things to Wear, but they also feature on my new list of Do Not Wear With Small Baby In Tow. And as my small baby spends most of her waking hours (and some of her sleeping ones, too) attached to me, well, you get the picture.

There was one day where I got a chance to wear something nice - Babushka hung out with her doting grandfather while I ventured out for my 6-week postnatal check-up. I wore a pink tweed pencil skirt that somehow fit, but because I felt silly to be dressing up for an occasion that mainly involved hiking said skirt up for my internal (why do they do that only 6 weeks after pushing a small human out? Why?!), and as always I had about 3 seconds in which to clothe myself, it was paired with a t-shirt and thongs. Ah well.

So I'm going to play 'virtual' vintage dress ups (hey, that would be a fun idea - The Sims: Wardrobe Remix. I'd play it! Although I can imagine it getting pretty boring upon realising that there's even less to it that Paris Hilton's day-to-day life. Ouch, retract those claws!). Oh eBay, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

40's dresses in autumnal colours


Black smocks with lace detailing - I wore dresses like this when I was little, I'd wear them now!

(from eBay shop Vintage-With-Heart)

Cute dresses with tiny Liberty-esque blossoms


Strapless floral party dresses (to be worn with a long-sleeved knit underneath and black tights, to subdue the party-ness)

(from eBay shop mama stone vintage)

Obligatory sequins


(from Vintage Glamourpuss)


Fabulous evening bags and clutches



(eBay store Fine Vintage Handbags)

And pretty, pretty heels in jewel-tones



(from eBay shop Floozees Vintage)

Phew! Vintage addiction satiated (for the time being).

Fad Cops

Just stumbled upon this blog, I rather like all the pretty pictures:

La Garçonne Noir

In particular, I think a recent post says what I was sort of trying to say in my last post only much more eloquently (as usual).

It's scary (for me, anyways) to think that things that may be under the radar today could so easily make their way into the spotlight of popular culture and mass consumerism next week. I don't want to sound like a complete lower colon and I am absolutely not a cool person or a trendsetter or anything like that, but here's an example: RayBan Wayfarers. About 5 years ago I lost or broke my pair of sunglasses (I only really have one pair at a time) and had to improvise. Rooting through one of my dad's many boxes of miscellania (full of such delights as childhood wind up toys, Groucho Marx spectacles, kangaroo-scrotum coin purses...) I found two pairs of original Wayfarer knockoffs, one tortoise-shell, one black. Their inherent, Top-Gun cool, the absence of a pricetag and that they were not the bug-eyed, Nicole Ritchie-esque sunnies so en vogue at the time made me pleased to have lost my previous pair. Not long after, Sienna bloody Miller started wearing sunnies of the Wayfarer style. Then kids at uni and work started sporting a new incarnation of knockoffs. And then they began appearing in different colours - red, white, spearmint..
(You know a trend has had its 15 minutes and then died if Mischa Barton is in on it)

This was was all supportable until a fried of mine, a self-confessed, hard-core hipster, pulled me up on it. "Are you only wearing those because they're...in fashion (those last two words dripping with distaste)?" I could have punched him. He, with his purple keffiyeh and skinny jeans. Instead, I fled to the comfort of eBay and found myself an attractive, unassuming pair of retro specs with faux snakeskin-look. And the other day at uni I spied a girl wearing something similar. Gargh!

There are plenty of moments when I wonder why the heck I still bother caring about something as supercilious as fashion. When I think that, realistically given my tree-hugging ways, I should just revert to wearing hand-hewn organic hemp or bamboo creations, regardless of how flattering they may be. Yes, my wardrobe does contain some such items. (I've even got babushka in on the act, having recently procured a few organic garments from Purebaby. But that's another post.)

And then there are moments when I feel like fashion is the most immediately gratifying way of expressing myself. I watched 'The Duchess' the other day (quite liked it) - in it, Georgiana says something about men having so many ways of expressing themselves, whereas women have only their dresses and hats. Not that that is the case today, of course, but women using the way they dress to assert their individuality and creativity is not an entirely new idea, I suppose.

This post is reaching essay proportions. Time to stop. Byeeeeee!

Obsession du jour: Space Age

A snippet of a conversation with a friend this morning goes something like this:
Me "Yo Mark (referring to Mark's planet-covered hoodie), that's a cool hoodie."
Mark: "Thanks."
Me: "I love planets!"
Mark: "Yep, planets are coming in, man."

I'm not really someone who cares a lot as to whether something is 'in' or not (and I passionately detest the use of 'in' as an adjective), but lately I find I actually have the time to care. I know what is meant when one 'Rodarte-ifies' a knitted jumper. I am excited that my giant knitted scarf was finished in time for Missoni's Fall 2009RTW collection. I could recognise a Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton 'Spicy' shoe from a mile away, and it's driving me mad.

I must remedy this, and I'll do so in the only way I know how: find the nerdiest antitheses of fashion that I can think of. Which isn't easy, given that pretty much everything around these days was in fashion at some point or other. It's as though we have arrived at the end of fashion, and the only thing left to do is to try and re-invent everything in new (or as new as is possible) ways.

And so, my current obsession: the Space Age. Next chance I get I will wear my planet t-shirt (which I nicked from the wardrobe of my ex-husband, which he used to wear as a pubescent, bespectacled youth. How's that for nerdy?). I will listen to my Space Age Lounge CD
and watch The Jetsons And I will take my white golf shoes (I think they are golf shoes?) to my trustworthy cobbler and get them re-coloured in silver.

I agree with Mark. Planets are in (even if only for me).