The other day I walked by a lottery outlet and for some reason I felt lucky, so I bought a ticket. I limited myself to $5 and picked a draw that had a poster with the word “millions” in the prize money description. I tucked the ticket away in my wallet and started to dream about what I’d do with my winnings.
Fancy overpriced Lamborghini type car for my sister that I think is a total waste of money but that I’d give her anyway because I’m nice and I know she loves dreaming about overpriced cars
3.
Bigger house with a yard to accommodate all the puppies I would get. Like about 50 puppies
The morning of the draw, I was sure I was going to win. I even tweeted about it, and we all know that tweeting things makes them true. When I checked my ticket later on, I found that I had indeed won.
Unfortunately I’m not the squazillionaire I thought I would be. I won $11.85, which after my $5 investment, was a net return of $6.85. Not quite enough for me to retire to Paris tomorrow and shop every day at Colette, but it’s not a bad start. You know, glass half full and all that stuff.
I’m back from my adventures! Are you happy to see me? I got married, I flew to Europe, I climbed the Eiffel Tower, I saw hundreds of paintings in hundreds of museums, I drove through the Alps in a thunderstorm, I got lost many times in five major European cities, I shopped at Zara in all five of said cities, I swam in the Mediterranean, I avoided sunburn and pickpocketing and I ate at least one croissant every single day. And now I’m back in Sydney, six suitcases full of stuff and one husband richer.
It’s been a challenge going from adventure mode to sitting-in-a-chair-working-12-hour-days mode and I must admit, I’ve been a grumpy camper. I’ve been the sort of camper whose camping trip has been rained out. The sort of camper who is stuck inside a leaky one-person tent that she can’t stand up in and all her socks are wet and she can’t start a fire so all she’s been eating are cold cans of spaghetti and all she’s been doing is sulking and wondering if she’ll be eaten by a bear soon. Going back to work after holidaying in Europe is like eating cold cans of spaghetti in the rain and then getting eaten by a bear.
There’s one consolation that makes going back to work a little bit better: getting to be creative with my work wardrobe. Of course that creativity has to exist within the confines of a corporate environment where the boring, sometimes ill-fitting pin striped suit is king, but I try to live by the sage advice given to me by a very successful businesswoman: you’re not a man, so there’s no need to dress like one.
Carefully following that advice, I’ve put together a wardrobe full of bright, feminine dresses and silk blouses, skirts in different styles and shapes and colourful bags, belts and shoes that will set me apart from all the other worker bees. I was just starting to run out of creative ways to avoid wearing a suit when this editorial in the Australian Financial Review Magazine came along. It made me hop around the office in excitement because I had found my new inspiration.
Of course he’s checking her out. She’s wearing Prada.
We’ve just moved house and I feel like I’ve been cut loose in a vast and lonely ocean, without internet at home for up to eight business days. Eight.
I asked the call centre guy from our internet provider if it was still the stone age, and if his favourite lunch hour pastime was to go hunting with wooden clubs for sabre-toothed tigers. I asked him if he and his colleagues wear fur loincloths, brush their teeth with twigs and worry about pterodactyls stealing their babies. Danger of pterodactyl-related kidnappings. Now that’s a good reason for an eight day delay to hook up internet service. He didn’t laugh. I guess in the stone age they’re not used to people as hilarious as I am.
Anyway, since I can’t upload photos from a phone, here are some cool links, fashion and otherwise, to keep you going until my technological travails are over.
1.
Alber Elbaz. I heart him. His English is impeccable, but I love the poetic, accidental beauty that happens when someone is speaking English as their second language.
2.
Die Antwoord, all up in the interwebs. The characters from Gummo grow up and become freakish South African electronica rappers. Be disturbed. Be amazed. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that I think there’s something catchy about these guys’ music.
3.
Why does everyone (like Jane and Rumi) have Miu Miu satin platforms except me? I think Mrs. Prada should send a pair to me. I like the naked people pattern best, although I’m not sure if it exists in shoe form. I’d definitely say nice things about the shoes, and it wouldn’t even be because I got them for free.
4.
Here’s a lovely little article about Mrs. Prada written by Tim Blanks whom I saw in the flesh at the Anna & Boy fashion show at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week. People, I almost died from the excitement. What amazes me about Mrs. Prada is that in her unrelenting quest to find something new, she always turns out collections that are uniquely and recogniseably Prada.
This morning I woke up to a laptop being plonked on my stomach. As I groggily opened my eyes, I heard the romantic words, “if you love me, you’ll buy me this.”
People, let me share with you what was on the screen:
As I’m sure a lot of you know, Alexander McQueen passed away on Thursday. It’s hard to think of anything to say that would come close to capturing even a part of his greatness. But maybe that’s the thing: people as talented as Alexander McQueen can’t be captured. Not by words, and unfortunately for us, not even by life.
Bear with me for a moment while I tell a story that’s not exactly fashion-related, but that I’m sure I can trickily spin to have a fashion angle.
A powerful higher-up type, sitting in his office on the 33rd floor of a very high, very sparkly glass building, looked out his window one morning to see the usual view of the Sydney Harbour and the hotels and parks that line its shores. Boats dotted the gold dusted water and the sky was the kind of blue that makes your eyes thirsty. Moored in front of the Park Hyatt Hotel, he saw a massive white yacht that clearly belonged to someone who was quite a lot more comfortable in this life than the rest of us. He knew that people who are that comfortable make good clients, and so he decided to try to make contact with this person. Kind of like when aliens visit earth, but not scary.
Being a powerful higher-up type, he had at his fingertips a resource of eager minions waiting, wide-eyed and excited to boot lick, compliment his tie and do his bidding. He enlisted their help to find out the name of this comfortable person, and to buy the person a fancy bottle of wine. The minions did their work well and the wine was sent to the boat with this accompanying note:
Welcome to Sydney, Mr. Comfortable Person.
I looked out my window this morning and saw your boat. I wanted to thank you for improving my view. If you need anything while you’re in Sydney, please feel free to give me a call.
Enclosed is some fancy wine to help you be more fancy on your fancy boat.
Mr. Comfortable Person called the powerful higher up type later that day to thank him for the fancy wine and to invite him for dinner. Mr. Comfortable Person lives overseas and already has his own powerful higher-up type so our protagonist didn’t get a client out of it, but he got a nice dinner, a new friend, a way into the world of more similarly comfortable people and a good story.
So what can we learn from this story of clever gift-giving?
Lesson 1
You need to give before you can expect to take. Post about Candace Ang jewellery on your blog and she may send you a feathery necklace. Or not. Probably not, because she doesn’t know who you are. But if you’re kind and you offer someone something you think they will like, good things will probably come to you.
Lesson 2
Be brave and take risks. Be brave in the clothes you put on in the morning, (there’s the fashion angle I promised. Flimsy, I know), be brave in saying what’s on your mind even when you know people will disagree and be brave in doing something that scares you every day. Pet a big hairy spider that you’re pretty sure isn’t poisonous, but that you’re pretty sure will bite you. Call up an editor at Vogue and tell them why they need to let you write for them. Say that you like Taylor Swift even though everyone who’s anyone seems to think she’s a vanilla, all-American bore-factory.
Lesson 3
Be creative. Lots of people in the world think they’re too important for the likes of you.
But if you do something different that catches their attention, they’ll probably give you a bit of their busy important time.
What do you have to lose anyway? The price of a bottle of wine? When you’re a powerful higher-up, or when you’re just you, the price of a bottle of wine is a mere drop in your ocean of fancy possibilities.
OK, so this is a little late, but I’m a procrastinator by nature, and I never make resolutions that go against my nature. For example, being short is against my nature, so I would never resolve to stop wearing heels. I actually wasn’t going to do a New Year’s resolutions post; I was going to let the date float by unnoticed, but I started to feel left out because all the blogs I read are doing New Year’s resolution posts, just like how in January of every year, all the magazines waste paper on giant horoscope articles, (which I can’t stand by the way. Don’t give me that voodoo about being lucky in love or money this year because the gravitational pull of Venus is giving me a bad hair day. I’ll make my own luck, thank you).
Without further ranting and ado, here are my resolutions:
Instead of yelling at the Boyfriend for things that aren’t his fault, go to yoga to cure grumpiness.
Stop biting nails. For real this time. This has proven to be much harder than giving up smoking was all those years ago.
Stop obsessing over to do lists so much that I add things I’ve already done to my lists just so I can have the satisfaction of crossing them out. It’s kind of weird. People are going to think I’m weird.
Try to get into the whole vintage / thrift store shopping thing, (mostly in an effort to save money because my wedding dress, although beautiful, will not be cheap). Other people can do it so well; surely I can learn to get over the stinkiness and rummage with the best of them.
Curl up in my comfy chair and read books more often.
Make a renewed effort not to look like a suit every day at work. That means more dresses, big necklaces and shoes that are hard to walk in.
Pet strange dogs, as long as they don’t look bitey.
Stop procrastinating.
Stop trying to change things about myself that are fundamental to my essence as a human. I’d be a withered, directionless soul without my precious procrastination.
Forget about #3. Who cares if anyone thinks I’m weird? I love crossing things off lists.
Happy New Year everyone! I know that life can be frequently lame, but I hope this year, the awesome outweighs the lame by, like, a ton. 2010 = a ton of awesome.
Since life is rudely interfering with my ability to do a proper post this week, I thought I’d share some SNL shorts that make my day as sparkly as vampire skin.
YouTube is determined to make me cry with the words “ebedding disabled by request.” I guess you’ll have to go to the video for my favourite Christmas song EVER the old fashioned way: Dick in a Box
And now for something that starts out pretty hilarious, and ends up pretty weird. Sorry about the different sizes. I’m not much of a technical genius.
She looks like a severe, gothic Brigitte Bardot. Her lips are plump and pillowy and her face looks like it’s been carved from marble. She’s got heavenly high cheekbones that make deep, brooding hollows in her cheeks. She’s a size 4 high fashion model, rather than the typical size 2 or 0, and she wants to lose weight.
Fashion industry folk use Lara Stone to prove that the industry does employ “bigger” girls, and poor Lara is tired of being singled out as “the fat one,” so she’s going to slim down by doing Pilates and going running.
And now I will pause to dramatically sigh and roll my eyes.
If everyone wasn’t making such a stink about Lara being bigger, then I certainly wouldn’t have noticed. When you’re 5′10″, there’s not a massive difference between a size 4 and a size 2.
If designers were to get together and slowly begin sneaking up the sizes of their samples, and the agencies started pedalling slightly bigger girls, I bet no one would even notice. It’s all about perception, and those who control the world of fashion know they have the power to change our perception.
Instead of models being worried that they don’t fit in with the skinny crew that dominates, the skinny crew should be worried that their weird shoulder blade wings are distracting from the designs, to the detriment of the designers’ work. I was sifting through the photos of Marc Jacobs’ resort collection online the other day and what struck me was not how lovely the clothes were (although they were lovely), but how knobbly the knees of the models were.
The world of fashion is supposed to be an escape into the beautiful. Everything about it should inspire wistful sighs and longing stares. Don’t ruin the fantasy by showing me a teenager who only consumes diet coke and tomatoes. I’m all for youth being part of the dream, but I should see beauty in these girls, not want to hand them a Kit-Kat and give them a hug.
Instead of being worried about being “the fat one,” maybe Lara should be excited about being the first one. The first size 4, bigger girl to make it. The first, hopefully, of many.
“I love a woman to look like a boy during the day, and be a sex bitch at night.”
So said Hussein Chalayan during a style.com interview about his new collaboration with J Brand denim. Chalayan talks about jeans being a woman’s wild card, a wardrobe staple that can take you from daytime to evening, something you can pull on with a pair of heels that will make you look and feel fabulous, even when you feel more like a bitch than a sex bitch.
The right jeans can be magic. They lift, they tuck, they disguise. They’re plastic surgery without the knife and the $10,000 price tag. Their beauty is in the thickness of the fabric, the sometimes added stretch, the wash and strategically leg-slimmingly faded and distressed fabric.
So why now, when we have this relatively inexpensive tool to make us look and feel better, are women suddenly embracing the scourge of the leggings jeans? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, simply have a quick look in the window of Supre on George St. or online at TopShop, or in just about any trendy high street store. You’ll see them there in all their icky glory, the cheap textured-to-look-like denim stretch fabric painted on the legs of mannequins, the gold stitching down the seams glittering in the window spotlights. Other features include faux pockets, pointless belt loops and flies with no zippers.
You’ll also see them walking down the street, tucked into boots for winter, under tunic tops and horrifyingly, worn with short tight tops. This season I have seen enough asses straining to be free of the too-small, too-tight leggings jeans that I’ve developed a twitch in my left eye. I’ve seen skin showing through the thin fabric, I’ve seen floral underpants and, shock! horror! etc! I’ve even seen g-strings. If you take nothing else away from reading this, perhaps we could all learn to take a cursory glance at our backsides in the mirror to make sure we’re not going to step out of the house and assault the eyes of strangers with too much ass. And ladies, any public butt sightings constitute too much ass.
If I haven’t convinced you yet, I have two words: knee cellulite. Leggings jeans are a great equaliser in that they make almost everyone who wears them look like she has knee cellulite, whether she actually has it or not. There’s something about the way light hits the stretch fabric that makes leggings jeans emphasise existing and even manufacture new flaws.
I call for a good old fashioned prohibition against leggings jeans. This trend was belched straight up from the guts of hell, and it’s best we avert our eyes until it’s over, lest we all turn to stone or something.
