In praise of....

The healing power of red lipstick. Red red red.
I had the odd sensation today of staring at many well dressed women (well done Melbourne ladies), as of differing styles and garb - style hippies, svelte older 'girls' in discrete leggings and boots, sensible firengine red loafers, manes of silvered hair, kitchy asian girls decked out in black, cool boots on everyone - but not really amazing lips.
I have recently noted how often i get stopped and told:
a. Great lipstick colour.
b. What brand is it? Where can I get that shade?
c. Love the lips!
Oddly, men and women comment.
I realise there are those who feel naked without painted or finished lips - I'm one of them. And I'm sorry, lip gloss does not cut it. Or simple balm.
If venturing out, adventure begins where we speak and focus conversations - even with an otherwise naked face, lipstick is fantastic for the soul.
As for the correct shade, that is another post of marathon proportions.

Sense and Confusion

Have you ever felt that what you are typing/thinking/yapping about to no one in particular is actually part of some strange zeitgeist you were other wise blind to?
Lately, I've become fed up with TV (let's just say, more than the usual sighing with disgust, more like a slow burn of hatred for the offerings from the Tube, followed by irrational throwing of the remote), bored with mainstream everything, and now even the ubercool offerings from the eternally ironic world of retro are ticking me off. And it's not just me. There seems to be a groundswell of tactic frowning at work. not everything from the 70's, hell, the 80's now, was cooler than now. A lot was basically crap and remains so. No amount of years can make orange flares and brown rumpus rooms crazy cool desirable. Revisiting your childhood collection of Smurfs, Abba socks, your mothers collection of rough brown glazed pottery pinch pots or countless macrame instructions are cool or worth sharing with the rest of the world unless like minds really want to seek you out.
Actually, that's what blogs are for.
I just want to make sure the mental clutter is cleared or stashed far away from me - not revisiting as a very special guest star for the ninth time on Tumblr.
Your past is your past. you can't go back, nor should you try.
If anything, please go back further to a time unknown to you (yep, everyone born post 1970) and dig around for the truly different and inspirational. Not icons approved by the masses. Put down the reproduction poster of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Read the book instead. Interested in old Hollywood glamour? Research a forgotten star, or director, or studio. Look to British, German, French cinema and really look at what they had to say about that era. Look at vintage world cinema and dig (beyond wikipedia, but I know you have to start somewhere).
If we want and strive to be different, have a new story ready to thrill.
If burlesque is being shaken down every desperate wannabe with a hot glue gun and sequins, go back to the music halls, circuses, travelling shows and cabaret. I enjoy Cabaret (the movie) because I have an increasing knowledge of that period, and what I grow to love takes me to new and old places with another perspective: Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Kate Bush, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Arthur Freed, Vincent Price, The Archers, Random Harvest, David Niven, circus films of the fifties, Lili St Cyr, Edith Piaf, Serge Gainsbourg, Goldfrapp, Portishead...and I don't know why but they all seem to flow on in connections I can't clearly identify. Now I need to add Frankenstein, Elsa Lancaster, The 49th Paralell, Tod Browning, Helmet Newton, Diane Arbus (eep spelling), Interview magazine...spirals witihin spirals.

Who needs retro when there's a whole mythos out there ready to play hopscotch with?

Fashion irony

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/aug/15/sleeve-mary-portas-duchess-cambridge

This is not an obsessive rant or anything, or a sigh festival over royalty. I just like the fact I've read yet another article discussing the need for some fashion cues that doesn't extole the self-flagellating joy of limiting (or blindly embracing) a set of high maintenance values that you just don't like.
Hello anyone who owns a yellow dress, bikeshorts, lycra, Laura Ashley florals or slogan t-shirts.

For me, this means hooray - I found a dress I can wear to work, look good, feel confident and actually like to wear.
This is the opposite feeling to just buying the dress 'because it's in fashion', but it then lives in your wardrobe with the price tag still attached.
My wardrobe, the black forest of tears and desperation.

Well, no more of that. I have been secretly staging a coup over the past few years and taken fashion blunders in hand - the black forest has park rangers now and an express highway out of there straight to jail (well an opshop).

I agree that the notion to dress with care and individuality is paramount, but within reason. I'd prefer not to have to think too hard about how to wear it. I read somewhere if an outfit is too complicated and requires instructions, it won't sell (because we've already done some bizarre solo wrestling match/dance in the change rooms and lost interest after 8 minutes).
I just love the fact it's not just me who is losing interest in what current fashion dictates and where my money will be frittered away next.

And it's not limited by age either. Not everyone has more chutzpah that you. I've looked at a stunning array of people 20 years or older that me who are just as clueless and wandering around in get ups that they don't look that thrilled to be out in public in. Perhaps we all need some alone time to reveal fashion is not your friend. It's out to get you.
So a dress with sleeves is a radical idea, but unwashed navy tracksuit pants, greige anything, jelly shoes and toeless boots are deemed fantastic?
Oh, and newspaper articles and ads that keep chanting 'unsightly' this or that.
One persons 'unsightly' is another persons 'this is all have to work with'.
I think the aim should be not jettison everything you ever owned, but understand how to evolve and not punish ourselves too much.
Be kind to yourself and what you wear, but if others are waking up to the need for change (which flatters), start the revolution please. And embrace the laundry. Don't get me started on clean clothes....

I said this wasn't going to be a rant. Damn.

Elegance and the pressure to be perfect - counteractive measures.

I'm not going to ramble forever about this, but sometimes you need to own your look.
Commit to your style - not completely rebel and wear orange fake fur to work in a wigged-out protest against beige - but cherry pick the highlights out there (look back, cast a critical eye over the present, think of tomorrow - vintage and futurism can co-exist harmoniously).

I have decided it's time to start posting some helpful ideas - and for completely selfish reasons, as I am in a state of constant evolution and need a hand to hold.
But not just yet.......

In praise of JPG

I am a fan of Jean Paul Gaultier for the simple fact he does what ever he likes and its never repeated or cause one to say, 'oh, that, I've seen that", or if you do, it's with a little wonder and delight.
Why dress like everyone else? Why not take what you have in the wardrobe and tweak with a few simple ideas? No one is asking for Lady Gaga madness, as we are humans inhabiting space with others and let's face it, there is a time and place for everything.
Subtle twists win over garish excess.
And it won't scare the regular people.

At the urging of others - voila!

After some crafty chatter amongst other zine creators and like minded web gypsies, I realised that the sorts of things and ideas I was keen to read, or see, were not actually out there in the printed world.

So, time to create something I want to read, and hopefully, a few others will agree.

I'm yet to think of a profound tagline or astounding personal statement, but I'm sure something will manifest itself. soonish. really.