Taking a chance on pants

Not long ago I experienced the unparalleled joy of visiting EIGHT, yes EIGHT op shops in the one morning. This journey was not as lucrative as it might sound, as I only ended up purchasing a woven bag (most likely from Papua New Guinea originally) for $8, and some Amco pants for $1, plus the usual sewing patterns which hardly even need mentioning (I must count my sewing patterns one day. That's priority #943 on my list of things to do). The pants were too short, not that you can tell that from this picture here where I'm trying to do a typical 70s style pose (note the wood panelling in the background... perfect for this shot, and just something I happened to have lying around .. or more to the point, my family home doesn't exactly boast up-to-the-minute decor). They would have looked chic-lady-who-runs-a-safari-company perfect with heels if they had been just a few centimetres longer. Damn those short people who give their stuff to op shops! The pants have since caused me no end of puzzlement as to how to make them wearable, but are currently pinned and waiting for me to take to them with the sewing machine so that I can wear them while it's still vaguely warm, as I think socks would ruin the sort of styling that I have in mind. So anyway, the reason I was doing this pose where you can see my behind is that I was sure I could find an Amco ad or some 70s ad which shows the butt of a girl wearing jeans, but when I googled Amco I could only find this other picture, which is indeed very 70s but not quite what I was looking for. Oh well, a little compromise doesn't hurt sometimes.

My little ray of sunshine

Apparently it's 31 degrees today, but as I'm obliged to be at a computer indoors, I wouldn't know. At least I can take heart in knowing that SOME of us are enjoying the nice weather.
This is Suki in one of her favourite patches of sunshine... I think dictionaries should consider removing their explanation under 'contentment' and publishing this picture there instead.

March magic

I've been able to get to quite a few op shops this month, and while I'm trying to show off some of my finds in a bit of an arty way (read 'fiddling around with camera settings and striking silly poses in my hallway while I should be doing zillions of more important things'), some things are better left simple. As usual, plenty of old sewing patterns have made their way into my possession, and I also found this beautiful silk scarf with a big print of an apple... or maybe a cherry.. whatever, it's gorgeous, and a bargain at $1.50!

Akha do do do...

Anyone who knows me is well aware that I have something of a penchant for all things ethnic.

I may have even touched briefly upon this in a previous post. So of course when I spotted a handmade Akha jacket at a market in Laos for only $18 (or thereabouts, depending on the value of the relatively worthless Lao kip) I was rendered powerless and handed over the cash to the hilltribe lady who probably went home and did a little jig of joy knowing she'd swindled me out of my hard-earned cash (seeing as prices in Lao are so low, she was probably amazed I'd spend that much on a jacket).

Meanwhile, I went straight back to my guesthouse room (well, after dessert anyway) and into raptures over my bargain purchase... this jacket is (as far as I can tell) hand stitched, and was probably made from organic, handspun, handwoven and hand-dyed cotton. It's all decorated by hand too, with embroidery, pom poms and applique in lots of colours (which are no doubt synthetic materials, but never mind) and even cowrie shells sewn on.
The creativity and amount of time this would have taken just blows me away, however it looked a bit too 'ethnic' even for me to wear just as it was, even though it fitted. So back at home I dug out some scraps of black silk and made fake lapels, and now it's a bit like a tux... a tux that you'd wear to a hilltribe wedding maybe? I've accessorised with a cowrie shell neklace that I think I was given as a present by a lovely friend who knows I'm much more into this sort of stuff than diamonds and pearls!

Yes, we scan

I bought a scanner in about November last year, at about the same time that I decided I needed a website (the less said about that at the moment, the better.. stoopid technology!).
I was going to need the scanner so that I could scan and upload onto my website all the magazine work I've done and of course am GOING to do in the future when I am a really famous.. um.. well anyway I just know I'll need it. And it's black and shiny and professional looking, and can do faxing and photocopying as well (although as my mum pointed out, it can't yet vacuum the house, so it's not that useful. Whether an appliance can vacuum the house is how my mother measures the appliance's usefulness). Who knows why I was in such a rush to buy the thing though, because until today that very same scanner has sat in a box in my room, unopened and useless except as something for Suki to rub her head on (which, admittedly, she has enjoyed, so it looks like my $300 has paid for itself already).
Anyway, the scanner has finally seen the light of day and is sitting next to me enjoying its freedom as I type.

I haven't actually scanned anything on my new toy yet, but here's some stuff I prepared earlier thanks to a scanner at a very patient relative's place... both pages from Vogue Nippon from many years ago. I am going to be ALL OVER SCANNING in the very near future. I also worked out how to crop photos on the computer yesterday so all in all it's been quite an educational week. In fact I'm slightly worried about my brain overheating with all the work it's been doing.

Entering the realms of the tech-savvy

I finally found a place in my house where the light is flattering and for some reason makes me look like I'm in an art gallery or somewhere slightly trendy. Of course, the space is about 50 square centimetres in total, which makes for somewhat cramped conditions and means I can't do full length shots, but seeing as I only yesterday worked out how to crop photos on my computer (and that was by accident) I'm sure this problem will work itself out. Now if only I could work out how to actually make text and photos go where I want them to on this blog, I'd be happy. Anyway, now that I've found this space and got slightly more tech savvy (very, very slightly) I'm going to start putting up shots of my remade garments, which probably make up about 70% of my wardrobe, although a lot have really only had hems altered, which doesn't really count if you ask me. This singlet is just a normal Bonds tightie whitie, but I've sewn on a big patch of embroidery from a kimono (or probably an obi, but I did it something like 8 years ago, so I don't remember exactly). Of course when I did it, I didn't think about washing the singlet, and then the dye went everywhere because kimono fabric is not meant to be washed, but I kind of like the faded look and the random dye all over the singlet because I like things to look worn in. Well, some things anyway. Not underwear. But you get my drift.

I'm always on the lookout for stuff at op shops and last year I scored this haul of a mottled brown cardigan (that is either hideous or hippy-chic, I'm yet to decide), old-lady grey woolly jacket with shoulder pads, evening gloves, a little pursey thing (I find pursey things hard to resist), a cummerbund belt, a very heavy metal belt buckle in the shape of a bow which I'm yet to work out what to do with, and some lovely Golden Hands books which are something akin to the Bible to me. I'll do a separate post about the gloves later, but I thought I'd show you what a bit of nipping and tucking can do for a grandma garment (ie the grey jacket). Of course, foolishly, I did not take a "before" photo, but you can trust me when I say the jacket really did not look the greatest before I took a needle and thread to it and turned what was essentially a cardigan with shoulder pads into a fitted jacket with (fake) lapels. Now it looks like this, which I hope you would agree is a lot better. I don't think I look like a grandma, at least. Maybe a very young grandma who likes to stand around in her own hallway taking self-portraits instead of baking cookies and knitting bedsocks?

Birthday girls

Look how cute my cat Suki is (and ignore the mess of my bedroom in the background). Tomorrow it will be 17 years since I got her, because I got her for my birthday in 1993 when she was about one year old (she was from a shelter so we don't know her real birthday). That makes her about 18 now, or about, um, 200 years old or something in cat years. But she still gets mistaken for a kitten! She must take after her mum (that's me... yes I'm trying to allude to the fact that having been blessed with Asian genes, people rarely think I'm my real age. Of course one of the other "blessings" that come with the particular Asian genes that I got is a complete lack of rack, which may actually be the reason people think I have not yet reached puberty.)

I used to keep a glass of water beside my bed in case I got thirsty in the night, until I heard a lapping sound and realised Suki was drinking from it... so now she has her own little dish there and I have to keep a bottle of water on the floor next to the bed for myself.

And in case there was any doubt in your mind after that admission, yes, I'm single.

... anyway, happy birthday me, and happy birthday to my sweet little chunky cat!

Out of the closet

The hail storm I mentioned the other day caused SERIOUS damage in the area where I live, with windows of houses and cars broken, plants completely shredded etc. I also had to rescue boxes of schtuff from the garage cupboard, which was being leaked on via a hole in the garage roof. It made a nice excuse to revisit some old friends though, in the form of fashion tomes and lookbooks (what, you didn't think I keep my REAL friends in my garage cupboard, did you?!) which admittedly I used to know back to front and therefore probably more intimately than my actual friends... not working at a magazine any more, I wonder if the lookbooks are still a big deal or if everyone just looks stuff up on the internet. Anyway, these were always just getting thrown out at the end of each season and I couldn't bear to see them go when the collections had been so beautiful. Actually I could do a whole blog just on what stuff the magazine or Japanese in general throw out which I rescued... and I may just do that one day when I'm not meant to be doing a zillion other things.
Also out of the closet are some fashion reference books that I shipped back from Japan but just won't fit in the house.... that's what comes of having about 100 pairs of earrings and 70 pairs of shoes... there's not much room for everything else.

However, there's always room for op shop goodness. Here's what I found today at two different op shops - a wool scarf ($1.50), a terracotta plant pot with a silver glaze pattern ($1... well actually I'm not sure if it is a plant pot but can't work out what else it could be?), plus two pairs of tights for $3 each. Which is fine, even when you're on a TIGHT budget. Get it?? See what I did there?

Sweat about me?

In the lead-up to fashion week in Melbourne, when style queens and princesses are wearing their manicured fingers to the bone as they forage through their wardrobes for the perfect ensemble to sport while sipping champagne post-catwalk show, one has to wonder whether their choices will impress members of the opposite sex. How many minutes, hours, days, weeks, do women spend purchasing, preening, and praying, only to have their efforts ignored, unnoticed, or unappreciated by straight men? Not that I'm saying we should doll ourselves up for the exclusive purpose of appealing to the opposite sex, but there are many times when this is perhaps foremost in our minds. Sometimes to the detriment of our sanity.
The strange thing is that the only times men have tried to pick me up, (and I can count those times on less than one hand, probably due to my infamous 'look of death' which seems to scare men away) I've been looking my absolute worst. Or at least what I and any sane female would consider to be my absolute worst. These times were:
1. After a gym session, with a red, sweaty face, hair plastered to my head, in unflattering and stinky training gear.
2. On an overnight train in Italy in the middle of summer, after I'd been walking around all day and sweating like a pig (except apparently pigs don't sweat). Again, probably stinky. The guy was wearing grey slip-on shoes with zippers though, so he obviously had questionable taste to begin with.
3. Outside a bank on a freeway that runs through the middle of nowhere (ie, just down the road from where I work). I had no makeup on and was in jeans and sneakers. I'm pretty sure that the wolf whistle from the truckies was therefore completely unwarranted. I do also realise that truckies will whistle at anything even remotely resembling the female form, so this instance perhaps doesn't really count.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I don't have any pictures that illustrate this unattractiveness, but you get the picture. Basically, I LOOKED LIKE CRAP.
This leads me to my question: do men really prefer the natural look? (And the oh-so-natural smell of sweat, rather than expensive fragrance?) Are expensive lotions, the latest fashions, beauty treatments and diets all just a complete waste of time, effort and cash? Should we really just concentrate on wearing our ugliest outfits, accessorised with flat hair, oily skin and the enchanting parfum-de-perspiration if grabbing a guy's attention is our purpose? I smell a great idea for a reality show... or is that just the sweat working its magic?

Fashion Fatigue

It appears that fashion is not having a moment. Although I haven't seen all the overseas collections yet (via Style.com I mean!) there has been very little that I've felt compelled to 'add to my lookbook'. It looks like we're set for a very safe season basically revolving around beige, grey and other neutral tones, with little in the way of interesting embellishment or new silhouettes as most designers play it safe by reworking their hits from past collections. There's also a worrying amount of fur (although the fur at Chanel was fake... maybe this was to compensate for REAL ICEBERGS being brought in especially for the show. Heard of carbon footprints, Karl!?) While this is kind on my wallet as it means I won't feel like buying much in the way of clothing (not that I have an account with Gucci or anything anyway), it also leaves me feeling a bit flat and in need of inspiration. I don't do neutral at the best of times so it looks like I'll be forging my own fashion footpath rather than trying to follow the flock. I'm a bit confused though, because Australia is actually only up to AW09 by international standards, so maybe, as we escaped the GFC, we will also escape the GFE... Global Fashion Ennui.

(Later): When I wrote this post I had not yet viewed the Jean Paul Gaultier show. I'm usually not a big fan, but I must be obsessed with legwear or something at the moment. Wouldn't you be if your socks could look like this? They look like the work of some seriously creative (or bored) Bavarian hausfrau who was commissioned to create legwear for a giraffe. Actually, I'm sure that was the design brief that Monsieur Gaultier issued to his knitwits.

Sasha Pivovarova closed the show, and while I will not be wandering around pant-less (disappointing, I know), I do love this look for all its ethnic influences, although I'm not so hot about the fur on the backpack, if it's real, and the opium pipe or whatever that is is not high on my list of accessories either. Bizarre that I just had a conversation with my dad last night about opium and found out that my grandfather used to smoke it!

All hail YSL!

A few months ago I bought some sandals at an op shop. Nothing strange about that, I hear you say, especially as practically all my shoes (and in fact clothes, accessories etc) come from op shops. But these were not just any old shoes. They were YVES SAINT LAURENT sandals... I was very proud of myself for spotting them - the label is not exactly ostentatious, but they still stood out to me because of their quality.

Pity that they were a size too big for me, but I bought them anyway (as if I could pass up YSL for $7!). They've been languishing in my wardrobe for over a year, unworn while I waited in vain for my feet to grow.

Then the other night I had an epiphany, sparked by what I cannot say as I was tucked up in my cosy bed, nearly asleep when I was struck with the brilliant idea to wrap thick twine around the straps, thereby making the sandals a nice snug fit on my little footsies. Genius, I know. What was even more genius was the fact that I had bought the twine several months ago (also from an op shop of course) so I didn't have to go looking for it.

The result of this unsurpassed intellectual brilliance is revealed below, but just as an aside, Melbourne had a freak hail storm yesterday - in the morning I took this sunny picture of the sandals.

By late afternoon, the ground in the back yard looked like this - leaves and hail were just in a blanket across the garden. So it was not sandals, but gumboots that I should have been having epiphanies about.

Anyway, here are the sandals, shot on a scarf that was a present from Nepal but looks vaguely African and therefore complements the somewhat tribal look of the sandals.

Stocking up on style

In a perfect example of the stars aligning, me having ESP, or some other amazing interplanetary forces connecting, my desire for Swedish Hasbeens as illustrated a few days ago was made all the stronger when I spotted these tights by Prada (pic thanks to Style.com). Whether they know it or not, these tights were practically MADE for wearing with Swedish Hasbeens, don't you think?

I'm wondering whether I can replicate the fabulousness by stitching a plait made from cord or something on to the front (or even the back?) of some of my tights... seeing as it's 28 degrees C today it's not really something that requires immediate investigation but this is definitely a look that I'm planning to trot out this winter.

PS ... I'm in love...

Here's something else to distract you, if you're into making cool stuff out of crap like I am.

I am in awe of this site ( psimadethis.com )and if I had a spare 5 seconds away from a computer I would be trying practically every idea they have published. Not only are the ideas cool, I love their photo skills and layout and gorgeous collages!

Smooth operator

In another short post - how amazing is this album cover? I haven't been able to find out who designed the dress, but I will be attempting to make one for myself very soon. And then I'll have to go on holiday to the northern hemisphere because by that time it will be too cold to wear anything backless here. It will be a sacrifice, but I'll do it. Not so sure about the roses in the hair though, they sort of remind me a bit of some not-so-great millinery ideas from the bargain bin at Lincraft. But all in all, if I were 50 and looked like this, I would not be complaining. (Yes, Sade's 50, apparently? And yes, that makes me feel old).

Clogs rock

I can't remember how I stumbled on this brand, but Swedish Hasbeens rock. And they will be mine one day.
And on that day, I will also work out why only half the image shows up on this post. Sorry for my ineptness, but if you search Google images for Swedish Hasbeens you will find many, many beautiful images of these beautiful shoes.

That's all.