Style Bubble

Scrunch This

>> Do you remember those days when a 50p scrunchie made out of some sheeny shiny lame fabric would cheer you up?  No, actually, I don't recall those days and I'm not sure many people did get much joy out of a scrunchie.  With my abundant mane, no flimsy scrunchie is going to secure a ponytail.  However, I did get SOME minor joy out of these hair contraptions, yesterday when in my local chemist (not Boots/Superdrug...an ickle chemist...the type that only sell two types of shampoo and really really old lines of L'Oreal make-up...) when I picked up these black and white heart-cut-out scrunchies for 99p and used them as a solution for keeping these Emma Cook S/S09 ruffle shoes  developed from previous seasons but used from slipping off.  I bought them at the sample sale a few weeks ago, attracted by the copper-y satin and had intended to get some elasticated grosgrain and sew them on as straps.  But then my old friend procrastination struck.  That old chestnut again... 

Oh well, I have the trip for indigestion tablets to thank for these temporary shoe straps that paired with my stripy stockings, faintly remind me of the Ascot scene in My Fair Lady.

 

Hard Tee

>> I spend many a good period of time, poring over paper selections at Paperchase and then proceed to spend a fortune on a plethora of pretty papers only to find I can't actually do anything with them because of my lack of creativity. I've contemplated making a rough t-shirt with a naively drawn pattern (see shoddy Paint drawing...) and then wearing it for one day as a kind of paper garment type thing.  Then I see Meadham Kirchoff's S/S 10 glitter tees in person.  I'm not sure whether they are made out of fabric but they are definitely rock hard and rigid and remind me of glitter covered card.  I think I embarrassing ask the PR, whether they would chaff or not (I'm told the nip nips are well protected inside as the lining is fairly soft...) but from the exterior, these hard-tees look like they'd be ripe for origami folding. 

Pay Half Trimmings

I do realise that the title of this post sounds like a subject line in a spam email but bear with me.  Actually come to think of it, thanks for bearing with the irregular posting times (thanks to the GMT for closing the gap on the time difference...woohoo!) and the *hangs head in shame* dusty emptiness of the DIY category. 

I realise 'lack of time' is a ropey excuse but I'm still hoping free time will come into my possession.  That said, having spent four days observing fashion professionals who work for companies like Lanvin, Raf Simons, Hermes etc  conducting Masterclasses at the Arts of Fashion event here in Philadelphia, I definitely come away with the conclusion that my own hands are limited in their ability because someone up there did not gift me with nifty and nimble fingers.  It's not even really about fashion school training (which I also lack of course...) but these people, who in their working hours and hours outside that, are constantly generating ideas and experimenting in fabrications, shapes and techniques and happen to be naturally gifted with having fashion eureka moments pretty often.  When they're working with the students who are taking their classes, I often hear sentences that start with "Maybe we could try this...?" and the results are more often than not, spot on.  I'm most definitely happy to be the observer of this idea generation rather than the idea generator...

Take these black pumps from Payhalf.  I went on a bit of a long winded excursion to buy them for the Arts of Fashion show tonight as they are being used to accessorize the Bag Pocket Masterclass conducted by Anthony Vaccarello and Arnaud Michaux.  They just took one look at them and with the trimmings lying around on the table knew what to do with them...

On goes the black fringe running along both sides of the pumps...

...and a feather boa trim is cut up to stick onto the back of the shoes...

Left to my own devices and I might have gone about these two dead simple tricks in a really long and roundabout way... I'll stick to typing and making really good banana and walnut cake...

What to do with those damn buttons...

>>... oh, right... that's it.  I should gather up my boxes and boxes of buttons, colour code them and then wack them on a collar shaped base to make some super cute shirt collars...

Ok, so I'm not about to venture into doing something like this but at the Vantan Tokyo designers presentation on Saturday in Paris, at the very least I found out about someone who has the itty bitty patience to do something like this.  The collecting, collating, sorting, arranging and sticking... makes my impatient brain whir with exhaustion already.  Kotsu Kotsu have that kind of time and patience and so these are the results...

 

Not sure where one fids ickle teensy tiny plastic babies but there you go, here they are all bunched up into a pearl necklace of sorts..

 

Artist Ryoko Takahashi is also one of those patient bods who can sit down a bead a trainer with hundreds of ickle beads... her work was on display at Vantan not as selling pieces but as more of an art installation...

These are also by Takahashi and I have no idea what they are or mean but I do love contemplating them.... I leave you with some hair candelabras to put some cartoon question marks popping up out of your heads...

Tweedle Dee Dee Dum

>> Little did I know that from that talk I did at the London College of Fashion and through the magic of Twitter, the boyf and I would befriend a John Howard Little, a menswear grad from LCF that is on a mission to re-interpret the Chanel jacket.  After seeing the Coco Avant Chanel film together with our other halves, John has been researching the construction of the jacket and requested some samples from Linton Tweeds, the mill in Cumbria which has had a long standing relationship with Chanel ever since William Linton was introduced to Gabrielle Chanel in the 20s' (again, more of those kind of tidbits might have beefed up the film a bit more in my opinion...). 

According to this very insightful article, there hasn't been a Chanel collection that doesn't have Linton tweeds in it and they get a one year exclusivity on each tweed created for them.  At Chanel's request, they have done custom weaves that can involve unconventional materials like rubber flecks, sequins, rafia, velvet ribbon and lycra woven into the tweeds. 

Style Salvage Steve and I have our eyes on certain swatches that hopefully John with his magic skills will transform into his own unique version of the Chanel jacket... if then, then I'm also equally tempted by a knitting pattern that I pulled out of Steve's nan's copy of Womens Weekly that will beget me a Chanel-style jacket if I moss stitch with double stranded yarn to get that nubbly effect....

Fingering Fabric

Let me introduce you to the vest I've been living in for the past fortnight, exploiting any opportunity to wear it if I can even though I don't tend to wear the same item of clothing within a one week period. This Michelle Lowe Holder vest came to me in a pretty long winded way as it was sent to my home HOME address, where the mothership and dear papa lives.  They dangled it like fish bait to get me to come home.  That and a hot pot of wood ear mushroom, black cloud fungus and chicken. 

Of course, it isn't just the arduous Northern Line journey to get it that is the sole reason why I'm currently enamoured with it.  The sandwich of netting swatch complete with pinking shear edges has been heavily abused by my fabric petting habit.  Beastiality is just so passé...it's all about fabric fingering...

Then I further discovered a practical aspect of the design that surprisingly impresses me.  The swatch is removable with button holes and can be moved to the shoulders of the vest and thus makes the vest machine washable.  The fact that tidbits like this makes me relieved shows I'm a) showing my age and b) at risk of being hit by huge bills from home shopping channels.

I'm now thinking button holes and removable fabric swatches, embellishments etc could set about a DIY joyfest that wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world... (I promise I will stop PONDERING DIY tasks and actually get some graft done... )

Meanwhile, I spy more fabric fingering opportunities in Jasmin Shokrian's A/W 09 collection where layers of wafer thin chiffon/tulle make up this pale blue fluff of a top...

Burn burn burn!

I could very well blame my inner pyromaniac tendancies for these pictures.  That would be the easy way out.  No, I'll immediately own up to it.  As soon as I saw Karen Langley's styling in these Chadwick Tyler for Dazed images, I knew that I actually genuinely liked the aesthetic of burnt bras.  I could even try and lay it on a previous life where I was perhaps once a 60s' feminist who had many flammable bras to burn.  That would be the other easy way out.  Given that I'm so UN-endowed in the chest area so much so that I rarely wear bras, it would be ridiculous to think that in a previous life, I was bountifully full-chested with a chest full of brassieres, and thus eager to burn those horrid body shackles in a feminist fit.

There is only one explanation and it's a simple one; it's that new-looking and pristine lace is not really my cup of tea.  Why a perfect condition teal lace vintage dress has been languishing somewhere.  Why I tend to hunt out vintage lace garments that preferably have some discolourisation.  Why I don't mind that my cream lace pumps from the 1940s' are battered, weathered and have a few holes in them (even if I do cut my toe on glass sometimes...).  Burning the lace was the next progression that Langley pointed out most fervently in the editorial.  The other part of the explanation is that I've had a fixation with wearing bras on the exterior for an age even if you guys have cussed me aplenty for it.  This summer of course, go to any music festival and lacey bras are hanging out and about everywhere so much so that the likes of Topshop (providers of the burning bra assets in the editorial and below...) have elongated a lot of their bra styles to make them more like crop-tops for the purpose of airing them about in sunlight.

But perhaps the pyromaniac explanation is also a valid one.  It was IMMENSELY and SCARILY satisfying waving the bra over a candle flame and watching the lace shrivel up...  

Borrowing the Picture Postcard

>> I'm nicking the boyf and EJ's idea of a Picture Postcard and shoving this one randomly up on its own just because... the idea that Kieran here has executed (one of the ASOS Ltd 100 selected students that I snapped at the event on Thurs...) is STOOPIDLY simple.  Stitch/glue a 'spray of feathers' (it has to be a 'spray', make it bunched up or fanned out and it just wouldn't be half as nice...) on a polo shirt.  Turns out his shirt was by ASOS too thus keeping the DIY cost factor down as opposed to doing it on say a Fred Perry shirt....  Now... onto the feather selection... 

Peep at This, Peeps

I always have to blush and cower a little when people say that I don't follow trends with the implication that I'm a trendstarter.  Not true at all.  The honest truth is more often than not I am an avid trend watcher and a lot will wind up in my outfits in some twisted way or another.  I'm certainly not some sort of renegade creature who is up in the clouds somewhere "marching to the beat of my own drum" (I doubt even the most eccentric mavericks are marching to any kind of beat...).  I'm especially sheep-like with this particular post as I have succumbed to the charms of Peeps.Org, an affordable label designed by New York based Mia Lindquist who I gather is still a student.   I had read about the label on several blogs but it was the lace-up floral skirt that Selina at Flying Saucer had bought that really caught my eye.  Sheep alert!  I went and bought a few items straight away. 

There were some postage mishaps along the way but finally my Peeps Package arrived and in it contained the skirt, a nude mesh hands top, a black studded simple tank and then a white studded bikini for wearing over things.  Haven't had a chance to style them up hence this head-to-toe look that demonstrates I sometimes am just too lazy to think of clever combinations and actually I'm fairly happy with being a lazy outfit bum. 

Mia's creations have no grand concept and are just plain fun.  They're trend-led but with her own twist and above all affordable.  I should think that were people like Mia around when I was about 15, I'd be throwing all my Chinese New Year, birthday and Christmas money (my only source of income at the time) in her direction.  One peep at her site today and already she's dropped some new items... I feel another Peeps.org package ordeal coming on... 

Pearly Queens

I'm not going to profess to being a master of the subject of Pearly Kings and Queens, the wearers of the Cockney costume, marked by the rows of sewn on pearl buttons.  Nay, I've never seen a Pearly King or Queen in the flesh sadly even though there's supposed to be a Pearly King and Queen of every borough in London as well as one of the City and Westminster.  Still, after seeing Sinha Stanic's Pearly costume inspired pieces at a press day, I had to delve deeper and with a Google Image Search I found costumes that were absolutely LADEN with pearls...

Not that I'm not fond of Stanic's dresses with their Pearly efforts but I'm thinking some Pearly King or Queen costume expert out there could take their pearly expertise and apply these buttons all over bodysuits, leggings, skinny suits, trapeze dresses and platforms in the manner demonstrated below by the costumes that look like they are heaving with button power.  Though as the Pearly titles are by inheritance only, us fashion Pearly imitators best stick to plain old Ms. or Miss.  Wouldn't want to be a Pearly Pretender afterall!