Style Bubble

Trying Too Hard

After a week or so of watching my back in what I wear to work in my new working environment and adjusting to a creative, relaxed and fashionable atmosphere, the Susie skin is finally emerging and I'm feeling more at ease.  By 'watching my back', I've been very subdued in my style (so much so that Style Bubble Daily Wear has been suffering a bit...sorry!), keen to concentrate on the job at hand and not let any 'loudness' in what I'm wearing detract from my role affirmation.

Well, it's the weekend and Disneyrollergirl has started the 'Trying too Hard' campaign which I'm fully onboard for after a week of feeling small and feeble.  I've always had problems with the negative connontations associated with the term 'trying too hard' and also have had my suspicions about that oh-so-popular style chant...'effortless'.  They're problematic for reasons that I won't go on about AGAIN because repetition is tiresome. 

Disneyrollergirl touched upon the tough economic climate that Western Europe and North America are cruising into and in these times of fearing, worrying and second-guessing, it's probably the best time to nurture a 'trying too hard' attitude.  I'm supposed to be seriously delving into why high fashion is thriving despite the economic downturn for an article but my own initial action had to be looking to my own wardrobe and 'trying too hard' in my own way and having oodles of fun whilst doing so because fun is still fundamentally the key thing that will survive monetary crashes.  Whatever happens, fun will defeat all... and I guess that goes some way to answering why people will still spend millions on fashion, to pretend that the shit isn't going on around them.

The critics and nay-sayers will always exist and fight for 'effortless', but this is my reverse reaction to the tough times ahead...

'Black, white, black, white, if I veer off course, it would be mighty tragic...' - Anthony Vaccarello headpiece, Ulrika Sandstrom blouse, vintage elastic harlequin skirt, Sock Dreams black and white striped stockings, Moschino Cheap is Chic black ankle boots

'Think Pink!  Think Scarlet!  Think Fuschia!  Think Berry!' - American Apparel pink headband, vintage Versace pink, red and orange dress, Topshop Unique pink pinafore, Bebaroque fringed pink tights, Miu Miu pink platforms

'Granny throws a fit and throws on some Balenciaga and paint on her dress....' - Vintage Hermes headscarf and vintage scarf as belt, oversized blue chain necklace worn as belt, paint splattered Vivienne Westwood corset dress, Balenciaga biker jacket, Falke scarlet tights, Rupert Sanderson sandals

'I don't want to see how many floral patterns I've put on...' - Vintage rose-print bed jacket, tiered floral print chiffon dress from Hong Kong, vintage floral strapless dress worn as skirt, Celeste Stein floral tights, Pierre Hardy x Louise Goldin ankle boots

'The crow just landed on my head and there was nothing to do but to let it stay...' - Beddug black crow headband, Label velvet printed caped dress, vintage Calvin Klein long chiffon dress, white felt ruffle worn around waist, tied with vintage black leather plaited belt, Bronx black cut-out ankle boots

'Texture upon texture!  Look, touch it all!  Isn't it marv?' - Vintage black fringe jacket, vintage tea stained lace collar, vintage square print skirt worn as top, vintage zig-zag print skirt, vintage black sequin skirt, American Apparel cracked black lame leggings, Topshop black patent strappy platforms, vintage fur-trimmed leather gloves, raw silk necklace worn around head

   

London, London, London

Did anyone who received this London Fashion Week roundup newsletter cringe a little at the summary of quotes page...

I'm all for the positivity for London Fashion Week but the phrase 'laying it on a bit thick' comes to mind... it's almost like there's this DIRE need to strongly justify LFW but for me, something like this has the effect of reaffirming the general consensus, which is that LFW is the poor relation to Paris/Milan with the lashings and lashings of VIP quotes...  not a personal opinion of mine but things like this don't help the cause, in my opinion...

Shameful Shade of Pink

Gutted after finding out a pizza place we wanted to try out was closed, the boyf and I sauntered up Berwick Street towards Oxford Street, wanting to seek solace in Beard Papa's instead...

We walk past one of those non-descript, supremely cheesy/cheap clothing stores that litters the crap end of Oxford Street...

Me: Ok, is it me or is that pink dress in the window looking really nice....

Boyf: I'm thirsty, I need a drink....

Me: Seriously... those different layers of ruffles... that shade of pink... dear lord... I think I'm rather liking it...

Boyf: Ok, but if we're gonna go in there, it has to be a fast and sharp operation...

Me: Ok...we're going in, we're going in, oh dear lord, there's a guy fixing computers and mobile phones there...

Boyf: Don't lose sight of the target!  Pink dress, pay, get out and then thirst quenching...

Me: Ok, ok ok *spots pink dress immediately*.  Ah...it comes in blue as well...

Boyf: Blue looks cheap.  Pink is better.

Me: Ok, ok, ok... oh my god, it's £7!  That's disgusting...

Boyf: The till is up there...

Me: *Wide eyed* The jewellery is £1 a piece or 7 pieces for £6... wow, this is very very mint (Susie Bubble language for 'It's so bad, it's cool...')...

Boyf: Pay!

Me: Wow... I haven't paid for a dress with cash in a while...

Boyf: Let's get out through the back door. 

*We leave through the suspicous looking side door at the back*

Boyf: I think I could smell 'cheap' back there...

Me: I feel really really dirty... let's go to Beard Papa's and stuff ourselves with cream puffs just to go completely mental...

(Yes, I am REALLY rinsing the new Pierre Hardy x Louise Goldin ankle boots...) 

Crewsing through a lot...

I don't really know what to say about Andrea Crews in that IT is hard to define....what DOESN'T this French active creative collective do?  I say collective because Andrea Crews is a culminative effort with Maroussia Rebecq being the founder.  I say active creative because they mix it up fashion, art, music and a lot of fun, all the while, working with humanitarian projects, schools and communities to send out their message.  What is the message?  It's something that probably doesn't sound very to us but when Rebecq started in 1999 to recycle clothing to reinterpret them, Andrea Crews, the label was one of the first to really get the idea of 'post vintage' out there.  She dramatically changes the raw materials so that in the end, they are beyond recognition...

She has taken her recycle and remake workshops all over the world...      

If you plough through her biography and ideas, you get such a multi-faceted idea of what Andrea Crews is all about that you might end up confusing yourself.  The confusion continues as you check out all the galleries in the different sections of her site; fashion, art and activism...

If you're a Parisian you might have seen her latest project a month ago at Colette when she participated in a SWAP project with art collective Item Idem.  Hintmag and Playlust also got involved in the shenanigans.  The thing that really strikes me about what Andrea Crews does, and also what another Parisian designer Sakina M'Sa did with her 'L'Etoffe des Heroines' project (which Georgina of Da Scaree Fash Post alerted me to...) are the genuine motives behind it.  Labels like Noki which have a similar concept to Andrea Crews, are on the London Fashion Week schedule and their main concern is 'fashion' whereas Andrea Crews just wants to get the idea of recycling clothes and reusing stuff into the public consciousness, which though is an idea that we have all known about for years, hasn't REALLY taken off in the way that it should.

Her e-shop offers up a choice selection of what Andrea Crews does.  Clothing wise, it is her TWIST range which seems to have yielded the best results for me... making tops that are vintage fabricated but contemporary in appearance.  The onesies are also a good bet though and the floral one with the dropped crotch pants (you say MC Hammer/Aladdin, I say dropped crotch... what can I say...I'm a classy kinda gal...) is surprisingly getting my vote.

The jumpers are all jumbled up/messed up and some of them have a face on them... me like....

The e-shop might strike some as a bit 'fluokids' (that NR term is not popping up because it's just appallingly dated and irrelevant...) but hunt through and these leather collars, belts and braces would surely take anyone's fancy. 

Vintage shoes get a revamp which prompts me to think about buying some mouldy old vintage pumps and doing something to them, for the sake of them being so cheap to acquire in the first place.  'Vintage' doesn't always mean 'sacred' and you're not necessarily going to be 'destroying' something if you jazz up a vintage piece.

So ok, the accessories do get a bit 'I'm posing for Super Super magazine' but as always, the surrounding context just needs to be tweaked to get these working.   

AW looking SS

No wonder seasons are becoming rather pointless in fashion when AW08 clothing is being used in shoots like these and comes off looking....very spring summer.  The bright Brooklyn sunshine flooded to the advantage of the clothes in this Coutorture.com produced editorial: 'Summer in the City'.  Karen Walker and Catherine Holstein bright yellow and vibrant navy (didn't think the colour could look this vivid...) basically pops against the backgrounds. 

What started as a fashion blog one-stop-drop aggregator has now turned into a site that is producing their own content and as more and more sites are upping their game, I think it's safe to say that fashion editorials online are going full steam ahead and my surfing hours are probably going to fast become eye-candy filled.          

The images were wonderfully shot by Robert Christian Malmberg which led me to even more eye candy, especially in his Conceptual portfolio...

Shop Curiously

If I didn't follow up on my curiosity trails, I think I might go to the graves with about a gazillion question and it seems in online fashion, those trails are growing by the day.  Are the sites down or up?  Are they live?  What is this weird holding page that I'm on?  It's all very 'Ta-da!' when whatever site is finallyu unveiled.  So the big 'ta-da' came for Shop Curious which I wondered about a while ago and whilst I'm not blown away or yanking out my credit card, it does healthily contribute to what Shop Curious call the shopping equivalent of 'slow food'.  As in carefully saving up for beautiful things as a backlash against the fast-paced consumer frenzy.  The selection of vintage clothes and accessories and some contemporary items isn't exactly entirely to my taste but still, these items jump out at me. 

Perhaps as I grow up a bit, I will slowly advance into being able to digest this 'slow food'.  Right now my mindset is such that I feel like I can get similar items for a lot less, not to take away anything from Shop Curious' ethos which is a postive one.  Their shop blog is also a well-written one that isn't purely about product placement but seems to want to bring out intelligent discussion too.

They are also feeding my feather obsession with their belts, hats and headbands which are a little more affordable...

Let go, so let go...

>>I do find it a bit odd how many people are commenting here hoping to find the answer to the 'Where is Style Bytes?' mystery from myself and I know I'm probably contributing to the 'Where is she?!?' hype and furor by posting this but I did have some two cents to say...

From my initial post and ensuing posts from Lady Coveted and countless other blogs/forums etc, a discussion that sort of borders on being scarily stalkerish has resulted, involving Facebook/MySpace/Phiary (haven't a clue what the hell that is...) and even in-person tracking.  It seems from these sources that Agathe is perfectly well and alive and out and about.

However, her blog has now gone offline and from the error message, it seems that Agathe herself has purposely done that to actively take her blog down.  Which confirms what I suspected all along, and it is that Agathe, for some reason no longer wants to blog anymore and it is her decision not to give an explanation why. 

So I think if that is the case, then I'm just going to let her be.  Whilst I miss her posts dearly, I'm not about to hunt her down and demand WHY she isn't blogging anymore.  She isn't obliged to give any explanation.  If she started Style Bytes voluntarily, she has every right to take it down too.  I can't say it's something I'd do myself especially without an explanation but nonetheless, I respect her decision.    

I do silently ponder if I ever went AWOL for a month, what would happen but I'm guessing it wouldn't get to this stage of online social network hunting madness that's going on...

Clippety Clip Clip Low

Some things are just not meant for doing the dishes in and this slinky dress, which I bought in a charity shop as part of my self imposed 'Under-a-tenner' outfit rule, is it.  As nice the silky pleats are, the loose shape does make the thing I grab when I'm lounging at home.  But then it gets in the way of domestic goddess-ing work...aka the washing up.  It's just too goddamn slinky.  So I took some funny hair clips which have never actually been in my hair to clip up the sleeves and lo and behold, a cheap trick of shifting the dress about is born.... 

Oh dear lord, did I just write a paragraph about washing-up and fastening sleeves up with hair clips?  I'm feeling myself sinking into a real Carrie Bradshaw 'sock drawer' article low (nope, haven't seen the bloody film yet... but I am praying to make PR's STOP emailing me pointless SATC movie related products/trends....).    

Get cutting...

Let's just suspend the 'Oh but can we wear this' question and just get stuck right into the wave of fashion graduate shows that are now underway.  At the Central St. Martins BA show, Alithia-Spuri Zampetti won the first prize of the L'Oréal Professionnel Award 2008 and though I don't usually agree with the first prize winners, I have to say that Zampetti's laser-cut out pieces have blown me away into a land where precision and detailing trumps all. 

The cut-outs could so easily look superfluous and used merely to demonstrate technical skill as opposed to collection cohesion.  However, with the sheer shirts and simple black pencil skirts, together they balance each other out and places these fantastically precise illustrated, cut-out oversized collars and sleeves in a context that befits them.  I'm not sure what materials the cut-outs are made out of, though it would be even more supremely impressive if she used a robust fabric, instead of the more predictable fash-student-y cardboard/paper (though I'm about to embark on a paper garment project so maybe I shouldn't be nay-saying so soon...) .

Hmm...salty...

The few times that I have dabbled with vegetable/natural dyes have had varying degrees of success.  I find that mild mannered ingredients like tea seem to get the best results.  Tea also erases the possibility of strange odours so in the past i have done many a PG Tip experimentation.  I also plan on delving into Tea Pigs range of teabags to see what different palettes can be achieved through tea dyeing.

But the natural dye thing has evolved and thrown up another suggestion which is salt baking garments.  Kean Etro got me thinking with his AW08-9 menwear Harvest Style collection that featured techniques such as coffee dyeing, blueberry baking and salt baking...

Looking at the instructions below, it does seem like a chicken or a duck could benefit from salt baking (delish...) but apparently putting some white cotton in gets you some burnt effects that I used to see in the likes of Robert Cary Williams' clothes...

Still, looking like the least messiest (aka the least likely to fuck up...) out of the three Etro 'au natural' techniques means that I've got to get me some white cotton dresses, tops and skirts to see what sort of results I yield...

Ingredients: 1 white 100% cotton Etro shirt (or just any other cotton shirt...), 6 kg. coarse cooking salt.

Preparation: Pour coarse cooking salt into an ovenproof baking dish to form a 1 cm. thick layer. Fold the white shirt as you normally do (to put it away in a drawer) and place it on top of the salt layer in the baking dish.

Completely cover the shirt with coarse cooking salt. Bake in the oven at a temperature of 180° C (approx. 350° F) for about 40 minutes. Afterwards, remove the baking dish from the oven. Remove all the salt from the shirt and carefully hang the shirt on a hanger to let it cool.

Et voila.... a burnt sort of effect on the shirt that will supposedly look cool or something to that effect...