Easter Weekend

Sweet sweet sugar, we had the best long weekend.  I guess because Easter comes after such a long stretch with no holidays, and because it's finally sunny, it's such a welcome break.  Karl and I went to visit my parents on Quadra, and I guess I still kind of think of that as home, even though I've been living in Vancouver for a dozen years. 

Skunk cabbages are one of my favorite plants; true harbingers of spring.  The smell: fresh, soapy, tangy.  The squeaky leaves, the waxy yellow hood.

Angry little fellow.  I moved his oyster!

 Sunshine at Crescent Channel, perfect oyster picking weather!

Home.

Hazel.  Hazelnuts, Hazelkins, Hazey, Bubbles.

We had such a good time: massages, pets, amazing food, naps, walks, gossip, crossword puzzles and Scrabble.  Part of us just wants to live there, but not the logical part.  We can't leave our jobs, everything we have in Vancouver, but we'd prefer to be on Quadra just about every spare moment we have.

Karl at the lake.

Fashion on the TeeVee

When I was a youngster I used to LOVE watching Fashion Television with Jeanne Beker, even though I thought she was a bit of a freak, and Fashion File with Tim Blanks, and CNN Style with Elsa Klensch when we eventually had cable.  Those shows were pretty much the only access I had to current fashion, with the exception of Vogue magazines which I bought with my allowance at the Heriot Bay Store from grade five onward.  I liked that they featured all the big international designers as well as lesser known ones, and had stories on models and like, shopping in Milan...  Occasionally one of my parents would watch with me, but it was pretty much the rule that I got control of the TV at seven on Saturdays to watch FT.

Then when I was in school there were years that I didn't have cable, and I was so immersed in everything fashion that I didn't need those programs.  Now when I catch one by chance, it makes me kind of nostalgic - that music on FT has been updated, Tim Blanks in gone, and I don't think CNN even has a style show any more.  But in this interwebby world, who really needs fashion on TV?  Most of the time when I happen to see one of those shows, it's a rerun (how totally pointless is that?) and even when

 it's "new" it's a few months old.  Or it a feature on Victoria's Secret, or Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, or worst of all: Christian Audiger's crapfest known as Ed Hardy.  Lordy, that is SO NOT fashion.  Please don't call him a designer!  But my point is, when you can get up-to-the-second twitter from the shows, or see pictures online immediately, and when the Sartorialist et al. are pointing out that the people on the street are just as hot, and every blogger has an opinion or ten, why bother with a TV show?  Fashion Television has a website (I'm sure they all do), but who really needs it, with everything else out there?  I did appreciate their coverage of Toronto Fashion Week, but I guess you need the Fashion Television Channel on your cable package to get any current coverage of it on TV.

Christian Audiger and models at the launch of his pet wear line.  Being interviewed for Fashion TV.

I love lavender

My alter ego needs these shoes.  She has piles of money and thinks nothing of shelling out $650 for a pair of lavender suede Sergio Rossi platforms.  Or better yet, she never mocks and is so good that strangers just buy her expensive shoes because she deserves them.  How's that?  Wouldn't the world be a sweet and happy place if our good deeds were rewarded with new shoes instead of going largely unnoticed?

Pretty Underthings

I wish I was one of those girls, ladies actually, who always wear impeccable, matching lingerie.  I'm such a scrub in that department.  My rules are basically clean and comfortable.  They don't match, don't titillate, aren't be-ribboned and bowed, and don't cost any more that absolutely necessary.

In a perfect world I'd have scented drawers full of scented drawers.  Frilly sets, fancy contraptions, lacy racy bits that need to be carefully hand washed rather than chucked in the machine.  Silk rather than cotton.  A bra for every panty, not just a couple in very heavy rotation until they kick the bucket.

Then maybe I'd spend more time lounging about in them, in soft lighting, just waiting for a photogenic moment.

Can it be summer now? (part deux)

all pics from foto decadent

Can it be summer now?

all pics from foto decadent

Shoe Feature

When I look at other bloggers outfit posts, I often feel like I can't see the details of the shoes well enough.  Some are very shoe conscious (Karla, Rumi etc.) but I feel like shoes are pretty important and don't always get the coverage they deserve.  So I took a bunch of pictures of some of my shoes and maybe I'll feature them once and a while if I don't think they are showing up in my pictures.  I have little feet, maybe they just get lost...

These are from Old Navy, of all places, and they were on sale last year for something loopy like eight bucks.  Yes please.  I like a little extra height, and they don't hurt too badly so I can wear them at work if I have another pair to swap off with when I'm in the workshop.  Which is where this photo was taken.  Hence the fluorescent lighting and drafting table.

Fall 2009 RTW (this is it, promise)

Now these looks I could do, don't you think?  So lovely, so thrift-interpretable.  I mean, the Fair Isle knits, the two-tone purple, the zippered blazer, the effortless mixing.  I'd do without the socks; it's cute on the runway but I'd look about four feet tall.


These outfits inspire me to put some pretty, crafty embellishments on old camis.  Just when I though I could purge my wardrobe of second hand lingerie.  So bad, yet so good.

Just a little girl in the corn patch...

No matter what profession you're in, I suppose people ask how you got interested in it and if you always knew you wanted to be a ________.  The romantic mythology for people who work in fashion usually involves a very glamorous mother, hours spent at her knee watching her dress to go out in satin and jewels.  Or maybe it's a grandmother's closet overflowing with couture creations, high heels by the dozen, and stacks of old Vogue magazines.

I grew up in the forest, quite literally.  My mom never wore makeup, shaved anything, wore perfume, or anything satin.  She had a couple of hippie dresses, a pair of leather sandals with a one inch wedge, and aside from a perm or two in the eighties, ignored fashion as much as possible.

She did sew however; work shirts for my dad, pants and skirts for herself, bathrobes, endless items for me and my brother.  So she had a collection of patterns and fab

rics that I loved to paw through, making a mess, admiring the illustrations, picturing outfits for my dolls, myself.  Each year, before school started in September, we would go to town and stop and the fabric store to pick out a pattern and fabric for something new for me.  She taught me which fabrics suited which styles.  (No, a plaid taffeta with gold embroidery might not be practical for overalls.)  I was allowed to help her cut out the pattern, and eventually I learned enough so that I could sew simple clothes with her help, until I got frustrated and passed it off to her, usually with several stray seams needing to be ripped out.  I guess that's where it started.

My other source of childhood inspiration was the Sears catalog.  Hours could be spent pouring over the options.  To me it seemed quite stylish.  I would make one of my friends go through it page by page, playing a game where we would race to point at the one item we wanted most.  My friends only enjoyed doing this with the Wish Book issue, but I could have fantasized about slickers and sweater-dresses, blazers and bikinis.

The Sears catalog also helped out with another favorite pastime: paper dolls.  My mom would make the bodies for me, cut out of a Corn Flakes box, and help draw the clothes that I would colour in.  Then I realized I could cut clothes out of the catalog to fold onto the dolls.  I have a very vivid memory of sitting in the vegetable garden, shaded in between rows of corn, flipping through the big fat summer issue, cutting out the latest in practical warm weather togs.

New Things... Smells good, looks good!

I needed a little pick-me-up the other day, so I splurged on some pretty soap.  I love the packaging; I'm not throwing that box away.  It's by Pacifica, they make all-natural soaps, soy-based candles etc., are fairly reasonably priced ($9 soap), and smell amazing.  This is Tahitian Gardenia and I can't stop inhaling!

The Value Village gods have been smiling on me lately.  The other night I got these amazing suede boots for TEN DOLLARS!  I thought it was a joke.  They are so soft and fit perfectly, can be worn slouchy, folded, or over-the-knee.  I was just reading a "Fall Essentials" list the other day which mentioned super-high boots and laughed to myself - for whom are over-the-knee boots an essential??  But now that I have some I am so into it.  The green tunic is Zara, from VV also.  It's linen, hence the rumpling by evening.  Oh well.

I'm getting a long overdue hair cut on Monday.  Any suggestions?  I love having my haircut.  I also love just going to my hairdresser's.  She's an artist and I always look forward to seeing her new painting and any new specimens she might have displayed.  She collected antique taxidermy and creates surprisingly beautiful little still lives (deaths) with them.  Check out her paintings at kellyhaigh.com.

Sweetness

Picnic skirt

Moshi Moshi top

Matinee Bomber

These are just a few of my favorite looks from local designer Allison Wonderland's Spring-Summer 2009 line.  I love how wearable the pieces are: I can see any of them being great for work or weekend.  She totally designs with women like herself in mind - busy, down-to-earth and a little quirky.  I did an internship with her for a semester years ago and she's an amazingly hard worker and an absolute sweetheart.  For more information on her line and where to buy it, visit her website at www.allisonwonderland.ca.

"I think it is good that books still exist, but they make me sleepy." -Frank Zappa

my current stack

I love to read, but in the short time that I've been doing this blog I have been spending more time on the computer and less time reading.  Books that I have requested at the library are coming in and starting to pile up beside my bed and this makes me feel stressed and guilty.  I don't want the books to think I don't like them!  I do.  I've just been lured away by the siren song of the information super-highway.  Hopefully the novelty will wear off quickly. 

It's kind of my goal, or my average, to read four books a month, and last month I just scraped by with three.  And I have a couple of thick ones waiting, so this month will be even harder.  Honestly, I am that much of a geek that I keep track of the books that I read.  I do find it useful to keep a list though, because if I want to recommend a book, or remember where I read something, I can look it up.  Also, I like to look back at what I've read, because I tend to get into ruts, usually reading mostly fiction by mostly women.  Then I'll make an effort to read more non-fiction and more books written by men.

Recently CBC Radio did their annual Canada Reads debate, where five notable Canadians each pick a book, then pitch it as the book everyone should read.  I made a point of reading them all before the debate and it was interesting to listen to, especially to hear people lobbying for books I really disliked.  The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill won, and I loved that book, but I also loved the book that came in second, The Outlander by Gil Adamson.

I really disliked two of the books, but I find it really difficult not to finish reading a book that I start, even if I know within the first dozen pages that I'm not going to enjoy it.  For some reason I can't just abandon it.  I feel like maybe there's something to be learned from the experience of disliking a book.  Isn't that dumb?

Best. Designer. Ever.

Martin Margiela.  Makes me swoon and makes my brain explode.  I've loved him for years, as much as one can love an anonymous designer.  His clothes, his philosophy, his concepts: can I just BE him, please?

When my husband and I were in Antwerp last fall, ModeMuseum was presenting an exhibition to celebrate 20 years of Maison Martin Margiela, and I was so excited to see it.  Karl's mood was, um, resigned impatience?  But after about two minutes he was pulling me around - "Do you see this?"  "Check out this jacket!"  Such is the power...

 I honestly walked around in a daze for hours, just so overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of all that genius in one place.  I was literally weak in the knees and having heart palpitations.  How dorky, hey?  But maybe I understand religious rapture a little better now.

I don't want to bore you with all of my pictures, but I had to share some of my favorites.  The captions are as they appear in the program.

13.  Spring-Summer 1997 - Sleeveless jacket in raw linen, inspired by the covering of a dress maker's mannequin.  Thanks to the stiffness of the linen, the jacket keeps the original shape of them dummy while it is being worn.

22. Trompe-l'oeil - The 1996 Spring-Summer collection was made up of printed articles of clothing with a very simple cut and produced in fine, flowing fabrics.  Each piece is printed with a photograph of another garment, of which both the cut and the material differ strongly from the skirt, jacket or dress on which the photograph has been printed.

22. Autumn-Winter 2001-2002 - Velvet pressed on a jacket in such a way that a Print of buttons, collar and pockets is created in the velvet.

16. XXXL (Autumn-Winter 2000-2001)  Enlarged leather jacket, size 78.  Enlarged white dinner jacket with satin collar, sloping shoulders and pink powder puff.

Artisanal Collection 4. Spring-Summer 2008 - A plaiting of elastic bands creates a jacket.  Various widths and qualities of elastics are plaited directly on the dummy to make a jacket.  The different types of elastics brings a particular colour to each garment.  Production time: 29 hours

Artisanal Collection 10. Spring-Summer 2008 - Vintage buttons are embroidered on a silk chiffon to create a bit-mapped effect motif.  The front is embroidered with various buttons of mother-of-pearl, metal, plastic to draw a mouth.  Production time: 25 hours

A Doll's Wardrobe 12, Autumn-Winter 1994-1995 - Cardigan knitted in oversize gauge with large snap closures hidden behind faux button front.

I couldn't find the descriptions of the accessories, but this is a recycled fur wig.  Nice, isn't it?

Fall 2009 RTW (still with me?)

Erdem Moralioglu.  I have a hard time remembering his name, but these dresses are seared into my memory.  Not to copy.  For inspiration.  Aren't they delicious?  I adore them and covet them. 

The shoulders on this blue dress make me hyperventilate.  Is that a real medical condition?  Someone should name it.
I feel like maybe in the hysteria of all the option available in tights selection, I may have neglected the super opaque black tights.  Leggings are just not the same.  Love love love these looks, top to bottom.

BLIM

On the weekend I went with a couple of friends to the BLIM Craft Fair at the Cambrian Hall just off Main Street.  It was a beautifully crisp sunny day, one of the first of the year, and we decided this would be a good reason to meet up for some inspirational browsing.

Yes, in fact I do find cupcakes inspiring.  Especially beautiful creations like these from Coco Cakes.  I resisted temptation, but it's only ever temporary.  I should bake some next weekend.  Can't make them this pretty though!

There were lots of vendors selling awesome jewelry.  Basement Sweet, above, had some amazing necklaces that really had me lusting.  Cool combinations of found-looking objects with feather, shells and other organic elements.

The best part about craft fairs in getting ideas for one's own crafts, right?  I always see little sewn things, art cards, jewelry, etc. and think "I could make that."  Or more accurately, "I should try to make that."  So I rarely buy things, though I know lots of people do.  It's wonderful that people support their local crafters, and I would if I had the money to.  What I will buy are things that I know I could never make: pottery, beauty products, music...

See the BLIM website at www.blim.ca for more information on these and other vendors, as well as upcoming events.