Yesterday I went job-browsing. Instead of a job, a 30% discount on denim at GAP caught my eye.
I haven’t spent money on myself in a while. Simply all the money I can afford to spend has gone on gifts for other people (which is why I was looking for a job). But my mind was also fixated on a denim waistcoat, having got over and moved on, for now, from my winter obsession with a fur gilet. Luckily for my bank balance, this cool concept almost always looks horrible in person, on person.
But the waistcoat I spied on a mannequin was perfect. And it felt so Spring-like, which seemed so apt considering it is March tomorrow and this would be the first non-woolen top I would have bought in what feels like years, but is actually months. It doesn't matter that I have already spent all the money I can afford for the rest of spring on what is essentially the least useful item of clothing possible, because it is an item of clothing which is perfect for spring.
Saturday, 27 February 2010
I found this video posted Phoebe, stylish and deservedly successful writer of the blog Lady Melbourne, really interesting.
As a long-term blogger, I nevertheless do not have a very wide audience. The reason I have always attributed is that I don't make enough of an effort to advertise, comment etc. This is of course true, and when I do make that effort my readership does creep up, but I have never even at the height of my effort become 'famous'. Watching this video was like an illumination for me. I do everything I could possibly do wrong: irregular posting schedule, lack of consistency in content, uncontrollable word count; I don't know what the hell I am doing.
Don't get me wrong, I am completely and utterly not complaining about my blog. I don't want a famous blog, because I want to maintain anonymity which is much easier when no-one you know knows this blog exists.
But there is something about the way I write here which is reflected in the way I live my life. Partly, that is worrying. Not being able to figure out your feelings, your direction, not being able to come to a succinct conclusion of what you want to do next are all the nots which fill my existence.
Then I remember that nothing, even a negative not, has to be a bad thing. A friend asked me on Wednesday what my political and idealistic views were, and was taken aback when I said I didn't know. Apparently, as I work hard that means I must know. Have I not thought about it?
Actually, the reason I don't know is exactly the reverse. I think about it too much. And then I find myself finding holes in the idea of democracy, free will and all the other great things which are the opposite of those nasty things but never seem to quite work when put into practice. I find myself finding holes in my plans for what to eat for dinner and then I have a really hard time choosing between vegetarian sausages and sweet potato falafels so I choose both (true story).
I went to a lecture on 'irony' a few days ago. The lecturer's conclusion is that great irony, in fact, great fiction, makes you lose your bearings, leaves you confused and unsure of your previous convictions. Re-assessing your decisions and coming to a thousand different conclusions are what make literature so great.
I extend that effect of literature to life. That's my excuse for the mish-mash of these writings, in particular this post which reads like a tick-box of all the things not to do to have a successful blog. But that's alright.
Although I don't keep a diary, when I want to write and I can't, writing about myself is the easiest way to get the pen moving (being self-centred being the only universal human quality). Other times, tense and emotional feelings which keep you up all night as they swirl in your head seem to be released when poured onto paper.
That's not what I put on this blog. That sort of writing is handwritten in a scrawl I sincerely hope is totally indecipherable, in a notebook amongst hundreds of other completely impersonal writings. While I rarely go back to anything I wrote, sometimes a line or maybe two stick in my head. Maybe they seem applicable to more than just the situation occupying my mind at the time. Maybe they sound more sincere than the melodramatic emotionally overwrought outpourings surrounding them. Or maybe I just like the way they sound.
Today, this line stuck with me:
I hope it is not immortal because I cannot kill it.
Immediately followed by the recollection of this photo I took outside a mosque last week. I wasn't writing about Satan at all. But I think they work together anyway.
Mark Fast's fashion show employed a mix of 'plus size' and 'regular' models (both in inverted commas as neither terms would be applicable to either groups of models anywhere other than in fashion). I am sure no-one would argue that in itself, this is a great idea, the way to go, fashion for real human beings, a varied representation, healthy body image blah blah blah.
But this:
Which can look like this:
Is a travesty.
It completely negates the idea that you don't have to be stick-thin to look good in clothes. The dresses are hideously unflattering, the wrong size. The gorgeous Crystal Renn looks terminally ill. Counter-productive, much?
Whenever I come back from Turkey (which is quite a few times as I am partly Turkish) my suitcase is always several kilos heavier than when I arrived. One of the reasons for this is because pashminas are soft, jewellery sparkles and it's all cheaper. But one of my favourite things about the city is my aunt's dress shop, more specifically, the top floor of my aunt's shop which is filled with cupboards and cardboard boxes of old dresses. I always seem to find something new, be it because I am taller, slimmer, fatter, fancier...
I fell in love with the label on this one, 'though the dress was far too big
It's like an Aladdin's cave in there. I love it. The only pain comes from the fact that I have nowhere to wear approximately 97% of it. Actually, 100% of it, but 3% of the time I can't resist taking something anyway.
Leopard print satin, brocade, sequins.
With the pretext of an animal costume party, I managed to find an excuse to take away this gorgeous chiffon dress with bee and insect illustrations.
But at the last minute, I decided I needed the sequin dress too. And since it's brown, I borrowed a huge fake fur coat and a bear hat and the sequin dress becomes an evident requirement for a bear costume. Don't you think?
Oops, I forgot to mention I'd be away for a while last week! That is really definitely the sign of a bad blogger. I went on holiday to Istanbul on Saturday and was busy, busy all of Friday.
I am now typing this on my laptop the first night I have had alone since we got here. I have loads of photos to share with you which are all fabulously stylish, which will probably feel like a huge digression because for once I will not be digressing from the topic of style. However those will have to wait until Sunday because the laptop does not have a place in which I can insert the memory card and I left the lead for the camera at home.
For now, I have a webcam! Which I do not have on my home PC. So I trieed to get you some photos and videos of Istanbul by night, for which I suspended the laptop out of the window. I hope maybe that makes me a more dedicated, if not better blogger. But at the end of the day, I failed miserably, so that probably just makes me stupid...
Today's been nice. I was feeling well enough to go to school for the first time in a couple of days. I had a nice hot camomile tea on the bus there and my tongue didn't get burnt and I wasn't late. I got to go home early and sleep on the bus, and my friend wasn't cruel enough not to wake me up. That bit made me want to cry, and I'm not completely sure why.
I turned the kettle on, put a teabag in a cup, got the soya milk out, broke off a piece of biscuit and laid it on a piece of kitchen paper. Then I got distracted and started to play the piano for the first time in years and years. An hour later I realised that all my tea stuff was still out.
Strange but nice day.
I just read on a news website that designer Lee Alexander McQueen has died! My first reaction was 'oh no!'. McQueen has always been one of the clothes designers I love. He gets dark, interesting, flattering and beautiful just right. It's all very sad.
This week my life has been consumed by another late TV show discovery. I don't feel so bad about this one as I know it's a one-off series and therefore won't be a regular fixture in my already over-flowing life/TV schedule/same thing.
It's Harper's Island. I am actually ridiculously late on this one, as it showed in the US in April and then in the UK in September when all my friends watched it. And it was basically made for me with my insatiable appetite for murder mysteries, be they online and interactive, CSI episodes or Agatha Christie novels. Only last Sunday I noticed that episode 3 was on so caught up on episode 1 and 2 online and subsequently overtook the TV with episodes 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 (sleeping and working very little in between).
I wore them today, and because they are so baggy there was room for leggings underneath and, my, was it a revelation not to feel the wind on your legs. To position your legs whichever way and be comfortable.
I rarely dress unusually enough to elicit comments, but today I got three trouser compliments, one mistaken 'nice skirt' and the obligatory male '...interesting trousers'.
