Things to Brighten Up A Day Inside

blackandwhite, originally uploaded by torontofotobug.

So. It’s raining. Or it’s insanely humid outside. You want to curl up with a blanket and go back to sleep. Or compulsively refresh your email, dressed in only your underwear and a ‘Britney is My Homegirl’ t-shirt. Things you would never wear outside, or even admit to owning.

You’re bored, kind of miserable and can’t think of anything you want to do.

I have these kinds of days more often than I’d like. Days where I’m tired, lethargic, and the idea of getting dressed fills me with horror.

These are some of the things I do to get out of a rainy day slump.


• Make a children’s birthday cake. Anyone who grew up in Australia in the last few decades should remember the Women’s Weekly Kids Birthday Cake book. Filled with robot cakes, cars, dolls, swimming pools, tigers and rabbits – these are the kind of cakes to which you have to dedicate an entire afternoon. Maybe you want to make a lady beetle? Or a spaceship? My favourite birthday cake as a little kid was a pink mirror, with a white, geisha-like face, and a halved red jellybean for lips.

• Make hair bows. Get a piece of velvet ribbon about two inches (five centimetres) wide. Tie it into a bow. Pin a brooch to the centre of the bow if it looks messy. Use bobby pins to attach it to the side of your head, or if you’re endowed with long locks, to your ponytail.

• Listen to Diana. Read Diana Vreeland’s ‘Why Don’t You?’ articles and follow one of her suggestions to the letter. If you can’t find any practical suggestions (this is quite likely), the lovely Lady Smaggle has made some ‘Why Don’t You?’ lists of her own.

• If it’s raining - go for a walk! Take your umbrella, take off your shoes, and go for a long walk in the rain. Please don’t forget to jump in as many puddles as possible. Possibly paint your toes a shade of shocking pink before you go out and do this.

• Listen to new music. ‘New’ to you might mean Ravi Shankar, Shirley Bassey or Cut Copy. It doesn’t matter.

• Make a castle. This only works if you have cardboard on hand. Draw up walls, cut them out. Attach them together. Make your cardboard castle in any shape you’d like. Paint it, cover it in glitter. Decoupage it with your unpaid electricity bills.

• Construct necklaces out of weird, unexpected things. Little coloured fluffy balls that are ubiquitous in craft shops. Ribbons knotted together. A mess of rhinestones, thread and velvet leaves. Whatever you can find.

• And if none of this works – Pull on a sleeping mask, have a cup of tea and go to bed. Tomorrow will be better.

Today's Outfit is ... Yellow!

Well, I woke up kind of grumpy and unwilling to get dressed, today. I knew I had to drag myself out of bed and go to the markets for food, but frankly, I felt like wearing my pyjamas.

I did eventually manage to wear something not made for sleeping in. And this dress always cheers me up. It's just about the happiest colour in the world, and something about the way the dress hangs on the body is beautiful.

I'm wearing:
• A yellow taffeta 1940's dress, eBay.
• 1930's petticoat (underneath)
• Pewter high heel oxfords, eBay
• 2 faux pearl necklaces, purchased from an ex-theatre sale
• 1 pearl necklace, borrowed-and-never-returned, from my mother
• Pewter chain JAG necklace, Myer
• A rhinestone starburst brooch, inherited from my grandmother's costume jewellery collection.

Here's a detail of the necklaces:

Sunday Obsessional

Images taken from style.com and my folk lover.

The aesthetic bits and pieces that have me salivating this week include:

• Necklaces. Specifically, necklaces that look like your jewellery has become knotted together, and you've just picked up the whole glittering tangle and slung it on. I loved Luella's Spring RTW necklaces, and I have been playing with all of my pearl and rhinestone costume jewellery to try and create variations on this look.

• Headdresses. Oh, I have been looking for a black feather headdress for quite some time. Something like a cross between a Native American princess and something the inimitable Iris Apfel might wear. Sadly, this gorgeous piece by Etsy's Boudoir Queen has been sold.

• Riding breeches. Yes, this is an old look. The high street briefly flirted with the jodhpur look years ago, but I can't get the idea of buying a pair of 1930's riding breeches, and modifying them to fit me, out of my head. I'm a woman possessed - I want to team them with ridiculously tall confectionery-coloured shoes and white tank tops, suspenders and the necklaces I mentioned above. Sigh.

Winter Scents

I don't have a signature scent. The perfumes and fragrances I wear change from day to day. This winter, however, I only wore two fragrances: Marc Jacob's Violet, and Tom Ford's Black Orchid Voile de Fleur. These two perfumes are heady creatures, floral and darkly romantic. I love them.

Marc Jacobs's Violet:




At first I thought this was a grandmotherly fragrance. Musty. It conjured up images of mothballs, lace tablecloths and floral wallpaper. The longer I inhaled the more I sensed something darker, something overripe.

This scent makes me want to wear silk and taffeta. To make a sound with my skirts as I walk, to eat stone fruits and let the juice run down my forearms. It is the perfect scent for plum colours, forest greens, jewel tones, mixed with a touch of modernity to offset Violet's slight mustiness:



In this photograph I'm wearing:

• Fuchsia dress by 'Zara'
• Silk ivory Victorian cape
• Black and white striped wedges
• Newly acquired plum geometric scarf, tied around wrist

Tom Ford's Black Orchid Voile de Fleur:




This is the best scent I've ever worn. It smells like an afternoon spent sitting in an armchair by a blackened fireplace, with lilacs hung to dry from the ceiling. It smells like a woman who still wears black lace lingerie, even in her old age, even while doing mundane things like feeding her cat (or alligator!) and tending to her garden. It is decadent.

I usually wear brighter hues while wearing this fragrance, to counteract the almost overwhelming scent of powder and rot it exudes.



In this photograph I'm wearing:

• Blue polka-dot silk 50's dress
• 70's suede ankle boots
• Newly-acquired cotton scarf with strange pattern
• Salmon-coloured crinoline (not seen)



Songs that suit these fragrances:
Pink Martini - Song of the Black Swan
Cosmo Cosmolino - Odessa Bulgarish

The Opshop Booty, Haul, Stash, Whatever.

After I wrote the last article, I thought I'd better, ahem, practice what I preach, and go opshopping.

Life's hard, isn't it?

I was visiting my parents at the time, out in the-middle-of-nowhere Australia. Well, not quite. But it certainly is isolated country. And that makes for great opshopping. Opshops, charity shops, thrift stores - whatever you want to call them - in the cities are picked clean at any given time, by thrifty hawk-eyed hipsters who scour the racks at the crack of dawn for crazy 80's knitwear and acid-wash jumpsuits. Opshops in small towns, in Australia at least, are still comparatively full of donated treasures.

While the opshops I went to this time around didn't yield anything staggeringly good, I did find a few babydoll nightgowns, a set of red kitchen scales, some crocheted clothes hangers (my friend Chel calls them "nanna hangers". She's a textile artist, so I'm assuming that's a technical term.) And some fantastic scarves. Some of what I found will make its way into my Christmas gifts, but some just won't make it past my wardrobe.

The Christmas Gift Guide For The Terminally Broke

Photographs: My mother's roses, and my first pair of DIY lace leggings.

“They’re big believers in the concept of voluntary simplicity.”
“I gotta use that. Sounds much better than broke.”

Daria

The gift-giving season is scary. Genuinely terrifying. And it’s not just the month-long assault of canned Christmas carols, the rustle of green cellophane, plastic trees and flashing lights. It’s because it’s the time of year when I want to please everyone I know and love – make their eyes light up with glee – on a student budget.

Not exactly easy.

So whether you’re a follower of the Ebenezer Scrooge school of financing options, or just plain broke, here are a couple of ideas for gifts that will not have your bank manager rubbing his hands together and laughing maniacally.

• Make leggings. I’ve looked everywhere for the leggings I want – I envisioned whole stores filled with lace leggings, tights made of stretchy tulle, encrusted with diamantes or sequins, dip-dyed, threaded with ribbon. Crocheted. Whatever. These stores, as far as I can tell, only exist in my imagination. So for Christmas, I started pulling a Queen Michelle and making my own leggings. It’s taken a couple of attempts to get it right, but I’m quite happy with them. It’s a good idea to use a pair of stockings or leggings you already own as a pattern. The stretchy lace cost me about 3 Australian dollars per pair, and about twenty minutes of my time.

• Paint ceramics. A tiny paintbrush, a pot of porcelain paint and a stack of second-hand plates should cost you about ten dollars. Write a poem on them (haiku is probably best, come to think of it). Write a love-letter, or paint the Schrödinger equation. Or just paint little stars if you’re not artistically inclined. Make a plate-sized Pollock.

• Plants. If you see any geraniums about the place (they look like this) nip a bit off the plant. A small bit. About an inch or two long. Pop it in a little pot filled with potting mix. Water it, add a little fertiliser. Give it to a loved one. With the right care, it will slowly get bigger and start blooming. The flowers are gorgeous – and what did it cost, really?


If you don’t feel like making, or growing, there is always the charity shop route. There’s also the junk shop route, but really, the world has enough cheap plastic flotsam floating down its streams. Charity shops are by far the better choice, and with a bit of hunting (and probably a bit of washing or cleaning) you can find a pair of curtains, a cute yellow suitcase, a vintage blouse, magazines from the 1950s, and retro homewares. And if that fails, a truly adventurous I.O.U, some potentially lethal homemade lemon-verbena or rose-flavoured vodka, or a public skinny-dip won't go astray!

Wrist Worms

Sandra Juto is the maker of the most beautifully simple little things I've seen in a while - knitted fingerless gloves that she calls Wrist Worms. Beautifully packaged and perfectly practical, you can bet I'll be picking up a pair - just as soon as the Australian dollar picks up a little too!

The Sunday Obsessional

Images taken from style.com and Gibbous Fashions.


My stylistic obsessions as of this Sunday include:

• Menswear. And I am not talking about the skinny jeans that adorn the flanks of your average hipster. I am talking about tweed blazers (fitted, please!), motorcycle gloves, insignia rings ... and even a fantastic aftershave, either stolen from the bathroom cabinet of one's favourite male acquaintance, or purchased outright.

• Steampunk. I know. I know. But there is something so attractive about tattered lace and the slightest hint of Victoriana. Best mixed with something modern, I think, or even futuristic, like the ubiquitous lame legging, so your peacock feather capelet or velvet opera cloak enjoys centre stage.

• Organza and (second-hand? please? this is my shameless ploy to get you to recycle clothing!) leather. Recently explored by Charles Anastase, this mixture of soft chiffon, tulle and cotton, with leather motorcycle jackets had me drooling. Really. No really, it was embarrassing.

• Tulle pompoms. Does anyone remember making pompoms when they were little? I want to start a DIY project, where I make scarves and neck ruffs out of these fluffy delights.

All I Want For Christmas

Seeing as I am already fully equipped with my two front teeth ...

Today's Outfeet!

Wearing:

• Aqua scarf, purchased for the princely sum of fifty cents from an opshop.
• 1940's lace and tulle dress with pink fabric-covered buttons. eBay.
• Salmon-coloured 50's tulle crinoline, eBay.
• Black 80's oxford flats, eBay.
• Aqua belt, opshop, also about fifty cents. God I'm a tightwad.

Don't you just love the expression? I call it "le stunned mullet chic".

Ways to … Channel the Marchesa Casati in Everyday Life.

• Wear these pearl restraints by Kiki de Montparnasse looped around your wrists, if you have 4k to spare. If you don't, buying strings of faux pearls - or thrifted and inherited pearl necklaces - and wearing them around your wrists could have a gorgeous effect.

• They're not quite diamond leashes, but an inexpensive, wearable DIY version can be achieved by buying some rhinestones by the yard, attaching a D-ring and a clip and ta daaa! Diamante leashes worn as bracelets.

• Don a long black lace dress that trails on the floor and rustles when you walk.

• Black eyeshadow in large rings around your eyes. This is difficult to pull off without looking like a zombie or Robert Smith. Or a zombie Robert Smith.

• Dye your hair a fiery auburn.

• Wear false eyelashes. The Marchesa was reportedly buried in false eyelashes and leopard skin attire. I love these.

And the particularly hardcore may want either:

• The taxidermy jewellery made by lovedtodeath, which will make a nice homage to the Marchesa’s extensive menagerie,

• Or perhaps a tattoo of her Shakespearean epitaph, which reads:

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.

And if all else fails, carrying a copy of her biography is a perfect way to inject a little Casati in anyone’s day.

Wardrobe Remixers To Whom I'd Like to Give A Bunch of Balloons

verhext

This is a woman who can pull off an eye patch. Need I say more? The 50's dress alone earns her points in my book, but all in all she looks gorgeously off-the-wall. And makes me want to take up a life of piracy.




Jean C'est Quoi

In addition to the adorable name, this girl made her own gaiters, looks amazingly cute in this striped jumper dress ... and all while she's struck down with a cold!!

The Most Covetable, Lickable Jewellery In The World

Okay, maybe not lickable. But lately, while I was scouring the internets in the way all good internet addicts do, I came across this girl's BFA thesis work. Holy God. Holy Manolo. It's incredible.

Take a peek.

Why Does Black Suddenly Appear ...

Everytime i'm near a camera?

This is what I wore today to clean out my studio space, look at baby ducklings and eat my weight in chocolate cake.



& I'm wearing:
• 1940's black dress by "Mary Logan"
• Pink polka dot headband, opshopped
• Pink rosette with Diana Vreeland on it, that I made with the power of PVA glue
• Black slouch boots now slathered with titanium white paint, courtesy of my clumsiness
• Faux pearls, second-hand

The Heat and The Humidity

"LIGHT AND FANTASTIC" / MODEL SUVI / JAVIER VALLHONRAT / LUCINDA CHAMBERS / VOGUE UK / FEB 2008
Originally uploaded by fashionaddictdiary

I often see winter fashion discussed everywhere on the internet - and while cashmere and crochet tights appeal to me, we're moving into summer in Australia. I was wondering, what do you wear when the weather is humid, sticky, or just fiercely hot? Are you concerned with style, or do you just wear whatever makes you feel least disgusting?

I am currently relegated to petticoats, vintage bathing suits and leotards. I am contemplating accessorizing these "outfits" with a portable kiddie pool. Or at least a bucket of ice, into which I can bury my head, ostrich-style.