If Hitler Had Been a Hippy...

If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be

This is the name of an exhibition currently at the White Cube in Mayfair, displaying the work of Jake & Dinos Chapman... and Hitler.

I loved the name of the exhibition and it was certainly very interesting, although strangely eery to see Adolf Hitler's work and signature right in front of me. There was certainly no glimpse of the terrible acts he would commit in these bland, unobjectionable watercolours.


In another part of the exhibition is a recreation of the burned work 'Hell' by Jake & Dinos Chapman, this time entitled 'Fucking Hell', which contains miniature sculptures of Nazis and holocaust victims. It is accompanied by this poem:

HELL hath no fury
Like a chapman spurned,
So come see the second
'Cos the first one burned.

It's full of gruesome mutilated bodies, but the most powerful image for me was one of a mass of dead bodies surrounded by mini soldiers with swastikas around their arms, and Hitler (or some other Nazi) looking on, standing in front of an easel. He is painting a watercolour of a house.

Some people may morally object to the fact that the artists paid upwards of £100,000 for Hitler's original work, and plan to sell it for a whole lot more. I am not sure what I think about this but I found it extremely worthwhile and thought-provoking and would recommend a visit. It also made me muse on the moral issue of enjoying the work of bad people; Wagner for example, a Nazi sympathiser made great music, but should we be enjoying it? I know it's not directly related because Hitler's art can in no way be seen as exceptional (although I'm not sure I could do it..) but it's an interesting discussion to have.

Satin Super Sexy Skirt

What happened to Topshop? Did someone invade TS HQ and perform a lobotomy on every member of staff? I thought I was the only one to go overboard on alliteration, and since when have skirts from Topshop been so hideously appropriately priced?


Well... they must be doing something right, because it's all sold out!

And yes, I have begun to succumb to my desire for a red skirt to match my red flower print top... I predict a purchase.

Matchy Matchy

For some reason, matchy matchy dressing, be it a perfectly colour co-ordinated outfit or a girl look top to toe, has been relegated to the ranks of the unfashionable. 'Cool' peeps are constantly feeling the desire to de-prettify an outfit, or create some funky colour/pattern clashes. This school of thought is certainly more attainable than the finely tuned matchy matchy look, which requires an extremely extensive wardrobe. For that reason, I have often had no choice but to break the traditional fashion rules such as no 'brown with black', and it's naturally so much better to purposefully, stylishly break these rules.

However I am always much more awe-struck by perfectly styled outfits, as I previously featured in my post on the film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg than the admittedly fabulous eclectic mix featured by characters such as Carrie Bradshaw, of Sex and the City. Perhaps it is the lack of attainability that I have already mentioned; yesterday when I wore my new top with a red flower print, red buttons and red belt it looked perfectly fine with jeans, but I was aching to add a red pencil skirt and cardigan, two items I have no need for apart from completing this one outfit.

Anyway, all this is of course simply a matter of individual taste. But it can be an issue for those with the same opinion as me, when most of the modern inspiration around in the form of magazines, films and other media does not conform to the matchy matchy standards which I crave. For this reason, I warmly welcomed the arrival of sometimes funny, sometimes not TV programme Pushing Daisies. Not only is it all filmed in a delightfully bright, slightly retro way, but the outfits of Chuck and the other female characters are hugely entertaining, and fabulously matchy matchy.

The love of the cinematography on Pushing Daisies is in fact so great, that there is a website devoted to thousands of screencaps per episode. There is such a huge amount of screencaps that it was impossible to find the shots of Chuck's best outfits, so I sort of cheated and picked my favourites off other sources, such as the fashion spot forum and pushing daisies blogs. Sorry!

And finally, some wallpaper matching action highly reminiscent of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg going on with my favourite character, the lovely Olive.

Sporting Beauties

I have never particularly enjoyed watching sport, finding it extremely dull. Playing can be great, but watching others do so? However I have spent a fair amount of time watching Wimbledon/Roland Garros due to a family which loves tennis very much. When I read an article likening Roger Federer's tennis playing to art, I began to think: can sport too be beautiful?

After all, one of my interests as mentioned on my blog profile is 'finding beauty in everything'. So far I have documented my discovery of beauty in clothes, films, books, contact lenses and shea butter. But I'm sorry, I simply cannot see beauty in sport.

Sportsmen, on the other hand...

Hello @ 10:38

This is what I love about this, I used to write my night-time thoughts down on paper then throw them away... this is so much more entertaining for everyone else.

-I've been going to sleep far too late recently. Tonight I aim for lights out at 11. That's not going to happen and tomorrow I'm going to feel it.

-I'm wondering if anyone will take 'pretty face' to mean incredibly vain. Honestly, it was intended in a completely ironic way.

-It's bizarre how people think they 'know' you on the internet. For example: the distress over Style Byte's disappearance. Someone commented that they love how I'm down to earth and honest. Thank you! But seriously where do you see that? I know someone who had a blog for a few months and had an incredibly huge following for a brief period, familiar faces really seemed to like her although she can actually be quite a nasty person sometimes.

-I thought of a great quirk and I knew I would: I haven't eaten chocolate for nearly 2 years, as a test of will-power at first. Now I can't, it's some sort of mental block.

-Do I not suit nautical or am I just unlucky so far with this lovely trend? Hmm... shall write about this in more detail I think.

-Strangely, I've had no caffeine today but I feel wide-awake. Wait, is Diet Coke caffeine free? I never have Diet Coke but I did today. Hmmm.

Was this my least coherent post so far? Or were my 'excited' posts even worse???

A Life Outside Blogging?

Some recent stuff such as a comment linking to a goodbye post on Faking Good Breeding (God that name is AWESOME!) has made me wonder exactly how dedicated one must be to have a blog. I don't know anyone IRL who has kept one up, citing a busy lifestyle as the reason most times.

I post fairly frequently, although you can see that the amount of my posts in the (very short so far) lifespan of my blog has been reduced from a crazy 4 to a more subdude 1 or 2 a day. The reason for my mad activity in the first couple of days was simply boredom... I was procrastinating about revision. I do find I get more 'inspiration' when I have a reason to procrastinate.

However I don't think the posting is very much of the reason that people find blogging time-consuming. Surely it is the commenting on other blogs, the reading of them, the photo taking, and also very likely the dealing with advertising, e-mails and moderating comments when they start to get nasty.

And I have to say, I am lucky enough not to have to deal with the last three duties and I find that I was reading and commenting (anonymously) before I started this blog, and the photo-taking is actually one of the thing I love about it. I never used to take photos before but now I'm finding myself enjoying it hugely, even with my shitty old digital camera.

So I suppose what I'm saying is that right now, I'm finding blogging a pleasure which is not reducing my happiness in other areas of my life; it never takes more than 20 minutes a day, and then little 2 minute slots whenever I'm free to read and comment. I'm not sure what I'm doing right, maybe it's just because I'm new and then I'll have to keep up starting new blogs every month to maintain this contentedness. Actually, no I won't... but I will say thank-you to all the lovely people who have written lovely comments and all. Now I'm going to leave before I get unbearably soppy, to have a life I presume.

How to Shop

OK, so we've established that there are those items which, whilst left unworn for a while, can still become well-used parts of our wardrobes. However there's no guarantee of this, and I still have many more pieces I don't wear, than rediscovered ones.

This made me realise how hard it actually is to shop, how many different ways there are of going about it, and how there are problems with all of them.

Take list-making for example. I have done this in the past, but it never works for me. I can NEVER find exactly what I'm looking for and will always find it once I've stopped looking. All my well-worn basics, bar jeans, were spur-of-the-moment buys which turned out to be very useful later.

The other type of shopping is far more fun; going out there with no idea of what you want and picking up whatever you fall in love with. But this is a major problem when (true example here) you fall in love with a dress, maybe discounted but still not hugely cheap. You can't bear to leave it, although you know you have nowhere to wear it. Fast forward six months and it hasn't been worn outside the home.

Is this the charm of shopping, the unexpected element, or are there things to do that can avoid it? I truely don't know, but I'm posing the question anyway.

For example, you can use the rule of '3 different outfits, 3 different occasions' before buying something, or the one I've been trying to employ as much as possible: 'is it entirely perfect in every way?'. But these 'rules' are SO difficult to stick to, and can also mean missing out on real gems.

The Shopping Experience

Many people love Primark. Admittedly, it does feature some fairly nice pieces, but in truth, I have gone there once (buying t-shirts for a camping trip) and have never been tempted to go again, however many 'gems' people have told me are from Primark.

Even going up a couple of steps to Topshop, I rarely buy anything other than accessories. The Oxford Circus branch I frequent most is just too frantic and I often forget to wear the right clothes required to have a trying on session in a less busy corner, because the queues for the changing rooms are just too long. In fact, most visits to Oxford Street result in a drained, tired feeling, leaving me unable to enjoy my new purchases as much as I should.

The alternative, however is even worse: suburban shopping centres. I do tend to visit my local shopping centre fairly frequently, however it is unusual for me to find something special there and my shopping centre purchases are pretty much limited to essentials; toiletries, stationary, underwear etc.

The reason for this is unlikely to be choice; I am sure that any shopping centre has a similar selection of clothes to one on Oxford Street. For me, it is the atmosphere. Surrounded by unispirational people, the clothes laid out in a boring, uninspirational way, I never seem to get the same buzz of ideas (ooh, this skirt would look great with this top...).

Perhaps this is just me being lazy; I am not great at vintage shopping or 'thrifting', finding it too much like hard work in London's saturated market. In fact, my best vintage buys, thinking about it, all tend to be garments I saw on a mannequin in a shop window, or displayed prominently.

How highly do you rank the shopping experience as a factor when shopping? I have been left fairly convinced of its importance to me, which leaves me with the question: what is a good shopping experience? The place always called to mind for me is Selfridges. I view Selfridges in a similar way, I think, to the character of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's views Tiffany's - it is that place where I can't imagine anything bad happening. So what if 90% of its stock is out of my fiscal reach? For me, a huge part of shopping is not the acquisition of goods, it is the feeling and experience, and for that reason I will always prefer to spend a few extra pennies...pounds...hundreds! on an overall more enjoyable trip.

To stress my point: yesterday, after a particularly weary and depressing shopping experience, having come out with nothing but gifts for other people and a book, I went to Selfridges. Immediately, I saw a very pretty top, so went to the changing rooms, where there were no queues, tried it on. When I decided it was the wrong size, the shop assistant passed me another. Once I had decided that I liked it, I was free to wander around, leaving the boundaries of the shop where I had picked up.

Upon paying for my top, the kind man at the till (okay... it was probably a mistake, but it still makes me feel that he was kind) gave me 30% off of my purchase. I'm not sure if morally I should have notified him of his mistake, but in my mind, this sort of thing is part and parcel of a happy shopping experience.

When retail therapy isn't an option...

Buying something pretty does help lift one's spirits, but it can work out pretty expensive and short-lived. Trying to think about what makes me feel chipper but doesn't cost anything has made me come up with the following things:

-Painting my nails! I just fixed my nails and painted them that lovely warm pink colour. The gold was starting to look a little grubby.

-Watching escape TV. The problem with this is that an hour is gone and there's still a ton of things left undone. But tonight I shall make an exception.

-Tea. Yep, it does work. I like mine with honey.

-Lovely phone conversations with lovely friends. Hmm, no time for this tonight sadly, but it works wonders.

-Making plans. Keeping busy can only be a temporary distraction, but no more temporary than tea or escape TV.

-Showers, not baths. I was beginning to sound all generic so I decided to mix it all up. Baths make me feel gloomy for some reason... I much prefer a quick shower.

I can't think of anything else! Any suggestions???

Case in Point

A few days ago I wrote about Mary-Sues, and a litmus test to identify them. Today, reverting to procrastination mode I was looking through old documents and found a story I wrote at the age of 9. The first paragraph should totally be some kind of Mary Sue benchmark, no?

Jennifeare, the evil, female and human shaped daemon sneered as the beautiful baby Princess Amandae of Sparkle Land was passed into Queen Zola’s hands. Little did the happy Queen know that her child was cursed a dreadful curse. A curse that only Princess Amandae could overcome. Of course, Jennifeare knew that the baby would never want to overcome the curse. That was simply because the curse was a stolen heart. And without her heart, well, Amandae would never have a reason to want one. Unless she met the person, of course. But he was dead, wasn’t he? Yes. And soon, When King Marcus and Queen Zola were dead; their heir would be Amandae, easily defeated without a husband. Then, oh, the wonders of it all! The daemons would return to the land they had been banished from long before. But the best part had to be being honoured by Daemon King Ravlan! Jennifeare just couldn’t wait.

Golden Girl

Which factors do you take into consideration when you get dressed? Pure practicality? An interesting sillhouette? Flattering cuts? For day to day dressing, I like to take all these factors into account, but when I want to look special, I use colour.

I have little regard for matching shades, however it gives me great pleasure to be dressed top to toe in varying shades of the same colour, although most of the time the size of my wardrobe means it can be difficult.

Recently, I have been particularly drawn to pinks, blues, blacks and greys. However upon seeing this photo on the Sartorialist, my obsession with metallics returned:

I like dressing in metallics, more specifically gold. I have no shortage of gold accessories. Today, I am wearing gold nails, courtesy of Barry M nail polish, and a gold necklace. I have gold socks, gold shoes, gold earrings, gold eyeshadow. I even have a gold dress, but this is very dressy so I have only had one suitable occasion to wear it.

I am sure that tomorrow I will have a different desire, but right now I would really love a gold jacket, or a skirt like the one in the picture. Due to the fact that gold is quite a wintery colour, I will have to leave this particular shade aside for now. After all, gold looks terrible with my pale legs.

!!!

I've had braces for a couple of months now, pretty late I know but it takes a while on the NHS.
Being an especially vain person, I got myself all het up about how ridiculous I would look with braces... a nice outfit completely spoiled the minute I smile.

And it's true, I do smile properly a lot less.

But mostly I was worried about the time coming when I no longer have to wear uniform, and still having braces! If the average prediction I had set of 18-24 months was right, then this would be the case and it's what terrified me to the very core (as well as looking like Ugly Betty; I have been wearing contacts a lot more lately...) Even worse, I have not been able to ask my orthodontist how long I'll have them on, due to him complaining several times, UTENSILS IN MY MOUTH, about other patients who are constantly asking when their braces are going to come off. Isn't it just so annoying when people say stuff to you and you physically cannot reply?

To alleviate the suffering, I had a rather helpful desktop background; a picture of my teeth pre-braces, enlarged. It did comfort me somewhat, but not as much as yesterday, when I was finally told to expect to be braceless by Christmas! How fantastic?!

Obviously, utensils in my mouth, I could not express my joy, but now I can. My teeth are straightening out superfast, and to top it all off, orthodontist said that my teeth are a lovely shape and colour; that I would be the perfect tooth model once they were fixed. Best compliment I could have asked for! I've always wanted to be a tooth model almost as much as a hand model!!!

The Original Fictional Mary-Sue Litmus Test

I've always found this absolutely hilarious. There are plenty of slight variations on the test, however the one I linked is pretty comprehensive.

A Mary-Sue is basically a character created who fulfills the secret wishes and desires of its writer, in such a way that the character is unbelievably flawless and filled with clichés. Or, if the character has flaws, they are often shared with their inventor and are miraculously overcome in the course of the story.

I think I find it so funny because each question identifies so strongly with the 123504196 teenage fiction books I read when I was about 9, about kids who move to a new school, make no friends but then get transported to this fabulous world where they make a lot of friends and save a lot of people, or something along those lines.

Someone's version (courtesy of Google Images) of an Anti Mary-Sue. Yes, she is spectacularly normal, for a witch, but I don't think you can actually have magical powers without being levitated to slight Mary-Sue status. I can't imagine a single person who doesn't want to be magic, so there's got to be some wish fulfillment involved here, no?

RIP Darling Bee

Remember that bee I used as a model in my little shoot a couple of posts back? He died :(

Don't ask me how I know he's male, or even a bee (because he may be a wasp, I'm not completely sure). In fact, I wasn't completely sure that he was dead; I thought he was just napping (maybe he had a little dizzy spell after starving himself to look good in the shoot?).

I took a couple more photos of Bee which I wasn't going to post:



And here he is, placed on a sheet of blue because that is where all Bees belong; in the sky. I shall presently move him to his final resting place, but this can act as a commemoration of Darling Bee.

Maybe the pressures of fame just got too much?

Invocation of the Muse

Inspiration is an elusive, entirely incomprehensible thing, inspiring hundreds of different questions. Where do we get our inspiration for what to wear every day, how we want to look like? Is there such thing as true originality?

I haven't written a blog post for 2 days now, I haven't been able to think of anything worthwhile saying, apart from some musings on the shapes contact lenses can take. But I did write 3153 word story in an hour last night, and then I couldn't sleep. I got a couple of hours rest between 2:30 and 4:30 AM and then a few more hours from 5:30 to about 9:00.

Whilst I was awake, I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open, but the only thing that would take my mind off the pain in my stomach was writing. Obviously everything I wrote was rambling 'Dear Diary' style rubbish, but it helped!

This has made me think a while about what creates inspiration, what stifles creativity? I read an article recently which said that many writers believe they should entirely refrain from reading any modern literature, because it would lead to copycat writing.

Did my minute blogging break make me write down this story, when I haven't written one for months? Does that mean that blogging, despite its sometimes mundane nature actually does keep our writing minds in practice?

I don't know the answers but I found this an interesting topic to muse on.

Night-time Blogger?

Dear Reader,

I'm not sure if you exist or not, or if you do whether you tend to frequent my blog on a regular (i.e the past couple of days) basis. And even if you are part of my avid fanbase, I'm not convinced you will have paid particular notice to the times my posts were published.

But, if you do exist, and visit me on a regular basis, and have the comprehension levels of a hawk (does that make sense? It makes sense..) you may have noticed that my blog posts come up at rather erratic hours.

Don't worry, I haven't become obsessed to the level that I wake up at 3AM to write down my fantastic blog idea (yet).

It's actually this pretty fantastic invention on Blogger where you can post in the future! Truly awesome, I think you'll agree and very nifty when you've got some spare time on your hands but don't want to seem like a complete freak with spare time on their hands.

So, in effect, I can see in the future right now...

See what I did with the timing here? Cool, right???

What type of blog are YOU?

Don't those facebook applications which come up every 5 seconds piss you off too? I have to give them credit; it was an ingenious idea to make you have to invite x number of friends before finding out your results, but at the same time incredibly irritating!

So... you may have gathered by now that this post isn't one of these lame-o quizzes, just some general musing about what kind of blog I see this is, and all the different types of blogs I have come across.

Let's start with the first, the anony-blog. This post first came to my mind when I read LLG's announcement that she will cease all fashion posts on her current blog. Very sad. It seems to me that ALL anony-bloggers are destined to be outed at some point; all the ones i have come across, anyway.

And then there's the mayjah bloggers; the ones who loads of people know by face and get invited to all sorts of mayjah blogging events. Flying Saucer, Fashion is Spinach etc. There are even bloggers like Susie Bubble and The Sartorialist who are of such mayjah importance that they HOST said events.

These examples are of course only fashion blogs. One of anony-blogger turned mayjah is Girl With a One Track Mind, whose outing even make it into the NEWSPAPERS. The real kind, made of PAPER.

For now, I shall not worry my pretty little face about what I want to be (not that I am suggesting that I have the talent or anything to become of such international importance as those who actually have their own domain). It is something that needs to be thought about though... perhaps posts such as my previous, which although fiction is still quite a personal thing, the marginally more tongue-in-cheek and the ones where I make myself easily identifiable through outfit photos do not sit well next to each other conventionally. I'm hoping that by ignoring the needs for a certain 'type' of blog and posting whatever shit I can think up I can avoid that question... What type of blog are YOU?

Pretty Faces - Help in Races?

Wow, brand new shiny blog! Me, procrastinating? Only slightly...

I've been reading blogs for a while, mainly fashion, a few lifestyle and I have quite a few on my daily blogroll. In my mind, they aren't categorised into the content of the blog, but how often it updates; the ones which update daily I love and admire, the rarely updated ones I just forget and those terrible few, with fantastic posts being published at a steady rate before slowly trickling into a rare treat are the ones I hate the most.

Now I cannot predict at all how often I will post so for now, I'm not going to worry too much about linkage love and gaining a following. I just wanted somewhere where I could log all my creative conquests to look back on and laugh fondly. I don't want to try and be anonymous, so it's probably best not having to worry about who's reading this. Having said that, don't expect anything too exciting, really I'm quite a closet geek.

So, maybe I should explain the TERRIBLE title and what this blog's going to be about. Basically, anything I find beautiful, which I myself have created or otherwise, I shall document here. Books, cards, clothes...

It's gonna be fun!

xxx