Sitting pretty

Wearing sheer 1950s daisy-print dress from Reycle Boutique, rose gold Repetti mary jane heels from eBay via Ana, heart-shaped perspex purse from Etsy, Datter necklace and ring and misc opshopped belt, plus NARS Afghan Red lipstick.

My shoes sort of blend into my feet and my bag sort of blends into my dress... whoops. I got a new role at work and my boyfriend got a promotion so I wore this out to celebrate. My new thing involves starting at 7am and finishing at 3.30pm so it is actually still light after I finish work, so maybe I'll sort my shit out and start taking better outfit photos in the near future. Maybe not, though.

I don't know if you can really tell (I hope you can?) but I am wearing makeup in these photos. Woo! I am SO excited about beauty stuff lately and I have basically spent all my spare money from my last four paychecks on makeup and skincare stuff. The catalyst for this was my pal Morgan (who will have a beauty blog up and running pretty soon) who is essentially a beauty guru and amazingly inspirational and useful when it comes to me sending her random photos I've found around the internet and asking her to tell me all the products I would need to look exactly like that.

Morgan does these big beauty buys online and I've mooched off her international mail forwarding service to attempt to become more put-together and help towards my yo-pro aspirations. Pretty much everything I do now relates to my yo-pro aspirations tbh. The other day I went to Morgan's to pick up a haul of lipsticks and stuff that had just arrived for me, and got to pore through her impeccably organized makeup collection and damn, it has me inspired. But as this is sort of a new thing for me, I have been pretty lazy with my usual kind of harm minimization deal that I try to adhere to in my everyday consumption.

Because I don't really know a lot about makeup and my mum never really wore it, I've just been picking and mixing with a totally miscellaneous array of products that seem useful and/or fun, like undereye concealer to help with the 6am starts, and waterproof mascara because I am yet to learn that rubbing my eyes all the time = bad for makeup - but also glittery silver eyeliner because glitter. I do try to be as ethical as is possible and reasonable with my general consumption, through buying almost everything I own second hand, repairing my clothes and shoes and taking care of them, and buying local as much as possible - except makeup, because prices in NZ are insane. I am loath to pay $62 for anything, let alone for one lipstick.

However, I do not pretend to be completely consistent and there are always areas in which I could do better in terms of conscious consumption, and makeup is definitely one of them. As I learn more about beauty and how to optimize my face's cuteness, I want more and more to invest in really nice quality makeup that will last well. It is so easy and fun to buy cheap makeup to play around with and try to find out what looks good, but hopefully as time goes on I will be able to justify spending a little bit more to get a product which is quality, natural and not tested on animals, such as Tarte cosmetics’ great cruelty-free and natural products. I don't really want to support animal testing by voting with my dollar so I am going to try my hardest to be more consistent with my approach to makeup and invest in great quality products. I am really excited to conquer my fear of looking like a kid playing in their mum's makeup bag and start looking FIERCE.

NB: This post contains sponsored links but is 100% my own opinion and writing.

Sponsorship 'n' shit

I have always had mixed feelings about sponsored/care of/advertising posts on the blog. Christie and I have turned down lots of offers from companies who don't really fit into our aesthetic or we're just not that into, because it seems ridiculously disingenuous to promote something you don't even like on this very personal platform. Boohoo contacted me a few weeks ago wondering if I'd like to do a product review, and I immediately thought I'd politely decline. New-new (as opposed to old-new) clothes don't generally appeal to me massively, but I had a squiz through the 'new items' bit and came across this floral brocadey dress and fell in love a bit. 

It really, really appealed to me because I guess I try to look a little bit more ~profesh~ at work than I did slobbing around as a student. I am luck that my workplace has a much more casual environment than many, but some of my clothes are just not quite there in terms of work-appropriateness. As I'm sure many other vintage lovers experience, a lot of my clothes have flaws that I don't really care about - stains, little repairs, loose threads, wonky hems and faded fabrics. Although I don't mind these at all in everyday wear, I do like to smarten up a little for work. I also find most work-appropriate clothing kinda bland, except stuff from Cue and Orla Kiely but I really can't afford that. (Side note: if anyone knows of any blogs that incorporate vintage into officewear, please let me know!)

So I thought this dress bridged a good gap - very vintage-looking, with its multicoloured shimmery brocade fabric, but still 'smart' enough that I can wear it to the office and not feel weirdly self-conscious. The dress also has a great scoop back and cap sleeves, and the skirt holds its shape well because of the stiffness of the fabric. I'm wearing it with an amazing embroidered 1950s woolen cardigan that I got today from Emporium Vintage, old tights, and these amazing Chloe mary jane flats that I found at Recycle Boutique. They are the most excellent quality shoes I've worn in a while, and when I took them up to the counter they turned out to be half price too. What a win.

So, yeah. I decided to give it a go, the whole advertising-y thing. I am really, really interested in how you all feel about sponsored posts on blogs, and I would love to get some dialogue going. I definitely prefer blogs with a more personal tone rather than a more advertising-y tone. I find it a little discouraging/hard to relate to when an entire outfit is c/o and every post contains something that was sent for review, but the odd bit of advertising or free stuff doesn't bother me at all. It's hard to turn down something that is free and nice, such as this dress. However, I would much rather be honest here than get sent tonnes of free stuff and make readers feel alienated in the process. This blog is not a source of income for me - although I know for many bloggers theirs are, and that's totes okay, just really not my thing. It's more of a way to connect with people and chat about the semiotics of this little world and the way we dress ourselves without too much corporate intrusion - I hope? The whole concept of blogging as a bottom-up way to affect the market is so problematic, though, and I don't want to lapse into that. I guess it comes down to that I don't want my tone or the framing of my posts to be even slightly altered by the hope that companies will see me as marketable. Some people are just really inherently attractive and have saleable images, but I think I would struggle to come across as one of those people.

Soo... thoughts?

Proud To Be A Woman-Child

Can we all please watch this rude, offensive bit of nonsense and discuss it? Deborah Schoeneman, one of the writers of Girls, is on the Huffington Post live panel slamming women who dress like 'women-children'. This was started by an article she wrote on the website on the subject. For a publication which seems to be pretty against slut-shaming, this just seems like the same thing- deriding women for making active choices regarding how they present themselves.

To equate Courtney Love's wearing of babydoll dresses with her infantilising herself is beyond offensive, and shows Deborah Schoeneman truly has no understanding of Love's ideologies. Asking a man what he thinks of a woman's choice to wear something girly is offensive, because it implies all my choices are made for the viewing pleasure of men. I will not change the way I dress to become a better product of the male gaze, and is some seriously heteronormative bullshit. To say that femininity must be 'authentic' for it to be justified is offensive. Nobody else gets to qualify or justify the way I dress. To make these sweeping generalisations about me based on how I present myself is ludicrously offensive, because it shows that you have no desire to engage with me about why I choose to dress the way I do, in novelty prints and full skirts and florals and frills. I am offended, and I am allowed to be, because I am not some passive sweet little baby despite what you may read from my love of pink puffy dresses.

And why do I choose to dress like this? Because I god damn like it, and I am allowed to. I am attracted to all things typically feminine, and I do not have to and will not ever apologise for this. I have always thought of fashion as the only mandatory form of engagement with art. If you want to live in mainstream society, you have to wear clothes. So I believe you should have fun with them. You should wear whatever you want even if it IS childish, skimpy, all-black, corporate, ripped or whatever. There is no correct way to dress. The concept of 'dressing your age' is outdated and silly, and entirely constructivist. You don't just get to say 'these are the fashion rules because I say they are and you need to dress how I like'. Why? Why should a woman only be taken seriously if she is wearing a suit? I need answers and justifications, not this classist, snobby crap.

Brad Beardall is featured on this video panel, whoever he is, and he doesn't get to tell women whether or not their choice to wear pink is valid or not. I am not going to explain all the ways in which I am an empowered woman, because I do not need to justify the fact that I am wearing a frilly carrot-print dress with a ric rac trim right now. This assertation also speaks down to implies women who make the choice to do 'non-empowered' (and I say that with quotation marks) things. Schoeneman says because some women write their own movies and make their own websites and other 'strong' things, it is OK for then to be a 'woman-children'. What? There is no condition of dressing in a youthful way. If a woman doesn't have a career in the business sector or doesn't challenge traditional notions of femininity, is she allowed wear girly clothes because it's more 'authentic' that way? Femininity, masculinity, or anything in between does not need to be justified by our actions. I don't need to dress in the costume of the demographic I belong to or the job I work.

And maybe the worst part of this all is that Deborah Schoeneman, backed out at (literally) the last minute from having Jess Mary, author of this great article on why the idea of the 'woman-child' is dumb, appear on this panel as her response was deemed 'too scathing'. Actually, Jess Mary debunks the myth of the 'woman-child', like so so so many other awesome ladies I could name. By being a strong, thoughtful, interesting, independent, mature woman who also chooses to sometimes wear 'childish' clothing or present themselves in a 'childish' way, Jess Mary contradicts this ridiculous idea that a love of a youthful aesthetic means you are a helpless baby. It seems like Schoeneman wants to have her cake and eat it too. She wants women to dress 'adult', but doesn't acknowledge the right of an adult to make their own choices.

My kitten sweater* and Heidi braids, like my hairy legs and lack of makeup, are choices I make because I like the way they look and the way they make me feel. However, they are also a 'fuck you' to people like Schoeneman who think their opinions are the be-all and end-all of gender politics. Deborah, I don't want your approval. What I actually want is to make you angry and disgusted at the way I dress, so you can keep feeling bitter and looking down on people arbitrarily, and so I can keep feeling awesome about my clothes. Because I do feel awesome about every last bow and frill. I am not 'scared of growing up' simply because I adore clothing with kitties on it, nor do I desire to go back to my childhood, or some synthetic romanticised conglomeration of childhoods. Brad Beardall's claim that I am scared of tackling big issues is made redundant by the fact that I just wrote like 1500 words on a Big Issue.

*My amazing kitten jumper was made by Joy White, amazing mum of the amazing Kelly White, and adapted from a pattern by Tiny Owl Knits. I will definitely be posting more on this later because it is the nicest, warmest, most beautiful quality thing I've ever owned and I've barely taken it off since I received it. Kelly is a great example of a funny, smart, cool, interesting entrepreneur who dresses in bright colours and novelty prints. Kelly has made her living making beautiful homewares and jewellery that are laden with cutesy nostalgia and childish goodness. Does that qualify her femininity enough for you, Schoeneman?

Nostalgia

At the beginning of this year both Christie and I were contacted by an online magazine that seemed pretty legit, asking us if we'd like to be contributors for the May issue. We were chuffed, and diligently wrote our pieces, and emailed them through, and were never got back to by the editor. Maybe our writing sucks, or maybe the next issue never happened and their website, suspiciously enough, hasn't been updated since March, so I guess our pieces are never gonna be published in the magazine that shall remain nameless. So here's mine. I was asked to write on my style icon.


I remember, very clearly, thinking about this question for a long time before I asked it. I must’ve been 6 or 7 when I asked my mother ‘what was before the “Olden Days”?’ I can’t remember her answer, but she was the oracle, and I’m sure whatever she had to say moved me deeply at the time. To my tiny brain, the notion of old-ness was totally blurred, an unsure mash of what I’d learned from old books and visiting a local ‘heritage park’ obsessively. The Olden Days represented some elusive concept I’d conjured from very little evidence, but I obsessed over it for many years, a little unnerved by the fact I could not access it fully. I, over my childhood, decoded the decades and centuries into some semblance of accurate chronology, but remained obsessed with notions of past lifestyles and cultures, especially those of the 20th century. It’s odd to ponder that question in relation to what I’ve become at age 20. My love of vintage now goes beyond simply wanting to dress nicely- I want to be fully immersed in beautiful old clothing all the time. I dream of serendipitous thrift finds, and I am instantly drawn to others who visibly share my passion for retro.

With the wiseness of retrospect, I can deduce that I was fated to become who I am today, and it’s closely tied to the identity of my mother, who I’ve always thought of as an older version of myself. It’s been in my blood since my before I was even imagined, when my mother was a young’un in rural New Zealand being raised by her own mother, a woman with no regard for nostalgia, nor frivolity, nor fashion. Unmoved by the prospect of dressing five children under the age of 10, my grandma was given bags of clothes that friends’ children had outgrown. Much to the horror of my uncles and aunties, these were always a decade out of date. The few remaining family portraits of the seventies depict a group of squinting children with wonky hand-cut fringes (which must also run in my blood) in geometric shifts for the girls or high-waisted shorts for the boys, all made from matching fabrics. They consistently looked like terribly unhappy little Von Trapps.

I also have a huge bank of stories from my mother about childhood toys thrown into the dump and burned family photos- too many to pick an exemplary one, but I’m sure it is understandable why my mum resisted this unsentimental attitude. She credits this theme in her youth as the origin of her own slightly-amusing inability to throw anything out. Recently cleaning out the mezzanine in the garage of our family home, we found too much junk to chronicle, beginning from when she left home at age 17. Amongst the detritus I unearthed one of her old teeth, which is now a rather fetching necklace on a sterling silver chain, and the only garment she’s ever sewn, a beautiful eyelet blouse that she made in Home Economics in the early seventies. At age 10 I started wearing the sterling silver watch she was given for her 10th birthday, and now I wear one she bought for herself in her early twenties, in her first flush of freedom in the big city. I can use these as tools to summon or draw parallels between my life and hers. Perhaps my love of vintage comes from a strange, misplaced guilt regarding the lost relics of my mum’s youth, a desire to tap into what she was doing or wearing or wanting to be at my age. Perhaps I want to preserve everything possible from my own golden days, hoping to pass them on to an equally-retrospective offspring one day.

I believe I’ve inherited this intense sentimentality I have from her, and I struggle hugely with the concepts of minimalism and downsizing. The nostalgia I experience through the medium of vintage clothing rarely lapses into idealism, perhaps due to my childhood spent pestering my mother for more stories about her own tough one. I know the stories, second hand but still so real, of the chill of winters spent on the farm in too-small coats and holey woolens. The sixties and seventies were not ‘a better time’, just a different one. In an unconventional way, my mum equates to my style icon, my biggest influence, and the reason I adore vintage in the all-consuming way I do. I should really thank my grandmother for giving her duchess lace wedding dress to the Salvation Army a few years after its purchase, and for throwing Mum’s koala toy on the bonfire, and for the decades of family photos rotting under the old cottage, still on the farm.

Some photos of my mum and her siblings from their childhood, scanned from slides by my Aunty Shelley:

Heteronormativity 'n' shit

I recently wrote an essay, for an awesome paper I do on gender and sexuality in the media, on heteronormativity and the fetishisation of marriage in the fashion blogosphere. It was possibly the awesomest essay I've ever written, although I'm not gonna reproduce it here because it is full of boring academic references, and also it specifically analyses several prominent bloggers and their treatment of romantic relationships, and I'd feel weird about putting that on the internet. (If you want to read it though, feel free to email me, my address is on our 'about' page.) But god, I've never thought about blogging as seriously as I did while writing that essay. When you step back and take a look at personal style blogging, it's really, really weird. It's such a tight-knit little community, full of awesome people who love and support each other, but sometimes it's not all it's cracked up to be. It seems like fashion blogging in particular just creates its own conventions and norms, parallel to those in mainstream mass media that blogging is so often praised for being able to subvert and overthrow. There are definitely a set of observable patterns to the style blogs with the most readers, and I don't think I need to list them. I sometimes feel shitty and guilty for buying into them without actively making any choices- I am about as normative you can get in terms of the fashion blogosphere. And often when I mention my boyfriend, even just in passing, I feel a strange guilt for reinforcing heteronormativity in fashion blogs. But nobody should be made to feel guilty for being who they are. Including queer bloggers and individuals. Down with heteronormativity!

 One of my absolute favourite bloggers ever, who also happens to be queer, has spoken to me before about how the style blogging world can be isolating for her due to the whole fetishisation of the photographer-boyfriend (or husband) character. And I know she is not the only one. There is an expectation that extremely stylish bloggers will have extremely stylish boyfriends whose photographs and photographs of whom will feature in their posts, who will have an awesome bloggable life full of food that photographs well and an appropriately whimsical home. Marriage is fetishised to a huge extent, and the event itself is turned into a living blog post. And if you are heterosexual, that's great! And if you have an awesome whimsical wedding, that's also great! Power to you! Wedding posts make me cry for some reason! But there is a hazy sort of line where blogging about one's cute life can become isolating and alientating for anyone who doesn't include a heterosexual partner in their blogging routine- because they don't have a heterosexual partner, or because said partner isn't interested in featuring on a blog.

The assumption is made, both in the blogosphere and in any other aspect of life, that an individual is heterosexual and cisgendered until they say otherwise. And to identify as anything other than utterly normative in terms of gender and sexuality requires this whole process of interpellation and subjectification that is kinda ridiculous. I never have to announce myself as a straight person. But because fashion blogging is often intertwined with lifestyle, mentioning 'me and my boyfriend went opshopping today' is totally innocuous. But if a female blogger mentions she and her girlfriend, it's suddenly perceived as political, or making a statement. On a similar note- I found a reading (I've lost it, if you know the author please let me know because I can't remember) that talked about how interesting it was that we've decided the gender of the person you're sleeping with is what is the most important thing about them, or the most important thing about how we have sex. Nobody ever asks 'are you lights-off?', but 'are you gay?'. Somehow this has become SO important, yet so under-represented in the blogosphere. Studies have repeatedly shown (and I can give you sources, if you want) that members of the LGBT community read blogs and participate actively in the internet at a significantly higher level than straight-identifying individuals, so why is the LGBT presence in fashion blogging so weak? And why are there so many engrained conventions that prioritise heterosexual long-term cohabitation as the holy grail of all relationships in the grand hierarchy of what is legitimate and what isn't?

Speaking of heteronormativity, Kristin drew my attention to this post over at IFB about how you should make sure your blog makes you look smart, successful and sexually available, just in case a guy you're going on a date with googles your name. Because that is possibly the most important thing in the world, right? Also, this article assumes the entire audience is straight, and desperately want advice on how to snag and retain a man. Cool. As Kristin said, blogging is meant to be a place where we can represent ourselves however we want without having to think about being objects of the male gaze like women do constantly in other forms of media. Because we are 100% free to construct our own representations of ourselves, our lifestyles and our relationships, we have absolute agency over our identities as women (or non-women), which we should be using to challenge the way we think about fashion, not to make us look like marriage material. Instead of asking yourself if you would say aloud to 'him' what you have just written, reassure yourself that if he was a decent person he would think it's cool that you write about your passion and express yourself through how you dress yourself.

The other day my boyfriend and I were talking about something and he mentioned my blog and I was like 'hey now, you've never even read my blog!' and it suddenly occurred to me why he doesn't care (in the nicest, most caring way possible) about my blog. He sees me and talks to me every day, he sees what I am wearing, asks me where I got that dress, is often with me when I bought said dress. Why would he have any interest in reading it too? He doesn't care what I write about, and I don't think any of my friends, nor my brothers, nor my parents, nor my cousins particularly do either, although they've all read this blog at various times. Also IFB is pretty shit actually, does anyone else agree? I was thinking that perhaps me and some Smashies (you know who you are) and maybe some other awesome feminist bloggers could probably start a pretty good blog for queer and feminist critique of the blogosphere and fashion world, anyone keen?

I can pretend all I want that this blog has potential to be super famous and successful, but I don't have any money, let alone enough to compete with the likes of... y'know. My home will never look like Elsa Billgren's, as much as I would like it to, but we do have awesome space-print curtains we got for a pittance on Trademe and some great paintings and novelty-print pillowcases from opshops. I am utterly content with my life of picking up furniture on the side of the road and freezing half to death in our rickety, over-populated flat, despite its lack of 'mainstream' blog-ability. And I think I might start being a bit more vocal about being an unemployed and very poor student living a very studenty life, because it's one of the very few things that sets me apart from the majority of young professionals in the blogosphere. I don't need to pretend that I have lots of money or quietly gloss over the fact that my savings are rapidly depleting and I am beginning to get anxious about my future, because maybe that's one of the things that could become a bit of a ~selling point~ of my blog entries? I don't know.

Congrats if you have got through all of this. It doesn't really have a thesis statement, just a lot of feelings I have about blogging. I guess this will be my last post for a few days because Jack and I are going to stay with his parents for a while, for another intense runaround of every single opshop in Taranaki and various other districts between there and Wellington. For your time, here are some pictures of my wardrobe rail thing from the other day. I think all the fabrics look so great together.

~kitten around

Sometimes when I open my wardrobe in the morning (or open my 6-foot chest of drawers, or rummage through my boxes of stuff to go into storage, or my sewing pile, and so on), I end up tangentially wondering about its existence. There's no real rhyme or reason to it, although most of it is intensely whimsical. And I'm turning 20 in a couple of months, so I'm not getting any younger, especially in the scheme of the blogosphere. In less than a year I'll be graduating if all goes to plan (hahahahahaha), and maybe one day after that trying to find a serious, big-girl job in an office or something. I wonder, when will it get weird that my favourite outfit is a giraffe-print minidress with patent t-bar flats? When will my bum-length hair start being 'inappropriate' for my age? What is the half-life of rainbow glittery oxfords?

Except for the occasional odd look/point/laugh, and the occasional question about the theme of the party I'm attending, people I talk to are generally pretty positive about the ~zany~*~ wardrobe I've spent the last 7 or 8 years collecting and curating. I hate subscribing to arbitrary social standards around personal style, but I do occasionally worry that I look like an overgrown 3 year-old. Women like Helga and Vix are serious inspiration for me though when I have these weird little quarter-life crises about my dress sense, reminding me that you can be a grown up and still wear bright, interesting, quirky, whimsical vintage clothes. I hope my wardrobe does have some real longevity, and I don't wake up one day wanting to only wear black and beige and bin all my weird, questionably-ugly clothes.

This dress was one of those things I see on Etsy and think 'oh, if only, but the price tag! I could never buy this!' and then find myself hunched over my laptop typing in my debit card details ten minutes later. It reminded me of an amazing skirt I had years ago featuring a border print of pale yellow kittens playing with balls of wool, that I sold in a fit of madness and have regretted ever since. It's by the amazing Katie-Louise Ford, who has a gorgeous blog too. I just couldn't get past the saccharine combination of green-eyed kittens frolicking in hearts made of flowers, plus the peter-pan collar and full skirt. I don't know if I've ever seen anything more twee. I've probably only got 7 or 8 years left in which I can wear this dress before I start pushing the boundaries of age-appropriateness, so I guess I'll just wear it every day between now and then to make the most of it.





(Kitten-print dress by Katie-Louise Ford, Asos t-strap flats, fuschia belt off another vintage dress, costume-cupboard satchel. P.S. None of these are edited, I just left my camera on weird settings accidentally. I don't know how to make them look better... soz)

Regarding my Asos shoes, my mum ordered them for me as my old pair of t-bars were getting into a terrible state from me wearing them every day. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but when they arrived I was extremely disappointed- they're very bad quality. There were glue marks and smears on the side of one shoe, and the fabric of the straps was starting to fray quite badly already. I've worn them twice and not only are they very uncomfortable, but the fraying is getting much worse and they look old and worn already. What a waste of money. They're the first Asos item I've ever owned, and probably the last too. I'm going to order a pair of Goldenponies t-strap flats in the near future to replace these- the wait is long, but it'll be worth it. I'm sure these will have fallen apart by then!

Starry starry starry

(Wearing Topshop dress from eBay, carnelian necklace from Dear Oh Deer, and t-bars from Emporium Vintage)

I am ecstatic that this dress and I were finally united. It's a Topshop one from 2007, but unfortunately for me, Alexa Chung wore it on TV once. Of course, this meant it went for ridiculous prices on eBay, always a little out of my financial league. A few weeks ago, after a fit of essay writing deep into the night, I felt like rewarding myself, so searched for it on eBay for probably the thousandth time. I managed to find one in my size, and bit the bullet and bought it. Waiting 11 days for it to get here was agony, especially on top of the 4 years I'd already wanted it. I am chuffed with it, and the detailing is impeccable- you can't really see the bows on the waist, but they're so adorable. I added this gorgeous carnelian necklace that I won on Ice Floe to add to the witchy vibes.


Also:

It's always slightly awkward to bring up break-ups, especially in the blogosphere. A couple of my favourite vintage bloggers, whose names I won't mention because I don't think they'd want me using them as examples, have recently ended relationships with boyfriends. They dealt with it in very different ways on their blogs- one making a specific entry letting her readers know, another subtly referencing it for several posts in a row until the message became clear. When Logan and I broke up a couple of months ago, it obviously wasn't my first thought how I was going to blog about it, but it did eventually cross my mind. It's not overly pleasant to talk about at the best of times, so it's even less comfortable to share details of your failed relationships with a group of almost-complete-strangers on the internet. At first I was just not going to mention him ever again and hope you all just forgot I ever had a boyfriend, but then I got thinking about the way our personal relationships and our blogs become intertwined.

When I read blogs like Elsa and Niotillfem, and many others who all fit into the same category, sometimes I get little pangs of envy for their perfect relationships with their successful, camera-handy, teddy-boy-esque fellows*. It is sort of a pre-requisite of being a highly successful blogger that you have a talented man* behind the camera to help show off your lovely life, and that he be well-dressed and willing to be photographed looking so. Chances are, he's a good cook and buys you vintage jewellery too. But the nature of blogging is that we only see a single facet of these relationships. As juicy as it would be to hear about fights and drama, it's just not inkeeping with the glossy and hyper-realised version of life that is the norm in fashion blogs. Like personal style, weekend road trips and even meals we cook, relationships are commodified by the way we photograph and write about them online. They become part of our product, the lifestyle we sell. I have definitely been guilty of playing into these conventions in the past- it's not a bad thing, just an interesting thing.

We all want our lives to come off as interesting and happy, to attract attention from others for being so. This is made easier through the platform of blogging, a place where we can talk and talk about all the wonderful things we have and experience and share them with the world. Sometimes things aren't so sweet though- in my life, at least. Occasionally I get a crappy mark on an essay I worked really hard on, sometimes I look terrible in an outfit that looked amazing in my head, and this one time I got drunk off cheap moscato with my best friend and cried about how much we hate men while we listened to Bruce Springsteen's Hungry Heart on repeat for several hours. But I don't think a lot of the audience of this blog want to hear about that kind of thing- maybe my real friends care, but I don't think a group of internet strangers really want to know about it when I'm sad. It doesn't really fit in with the theme of this blog, or the model of fashion blogging in general. I guess what keeps you guys coming back is the whimsical photos and the vintage dresses, and not really the person behind them. I'd like to think I really enjoy the personalities of my favourite bloggers, but I'm not sure if that's the same for every blog reader. There's a bit of a template we all follow though, and I wasn't aware of it until a friend with a personal blog said he envied my blog, in that it had a genre with pre-set conventions already laid out. I guess personal style blogging is pretty easy in that sense, because it has such a defined aim.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this tangetial rant. It's always interesting to me to observe the rising and falling of trends within the fashion blogosphere, and the ways we subconsciously mirror one another in the content and style of our posts. Anyway, the gist of this post is that a couple of months ago I had a boyfriend, and now he is no longer so. Oh well, these things happen, and I'm ridiculously happy with the turns my life has taken as a single lady. I've somehow managed to achieve pretty much everything I've ever wanted, all by myself! I'm seeing an amazing new dude though, I really like him and I'm super excited. Maybe you'll see him on here in the future, or maybe things won't work out. I'll keep you guys informed, though.

*This sentence, and this entire post actually, is largely heterocentric and I am aware of this. I refer to boyfriends and husbands in this post predominantly, as I'm sure every reader can think of many popular personal style blogs where male partners feature heavily, and this is the context in which I've observed these patterns. I do not intend to discredit, belittle or exclude any relationships.

Bear with me

I've been feeling horrible about blogging lately. I feel like the more blogs I read, the less awesome my life seems. I've been so busy with university lately and feeling so unmotivated in general, that the idea of posing for photos and critiquing myself in a public forum makes me feel a bit crap. Every blogger seems to have it down- the right balance in their lives, the most amazing wardrobes, the nicest cameras and the most lovely things to photograph and share. And my life seems to mundane in comparison- a full-time student living in a barely-standing house in suburbia, spending most of my time drinking beer and watching The Simpsons with my boyfriend. Ugh. I don't really know what to do about this silly jealousy- of course bloggers don't like to write about the bad things in life, the days they went thrifting and found nothing nice, or those outfit shoots that don't turn out right. There's just always an aspect of having a fashion blog that says 'look at what I've got and, ergo, you haven't'. Um. I don't really know where I'm going with this- possibly just appropriating rumours that fashion bloggers are a self-indulgent and narcissistic bunch. Whoops. Anyway.

Not only have I got a case of the blogger blues, but to add insult to injury I've had a couple of wee accidents lately-firstly, a fall off my bike onto some gravel, tearing through my brand new stockings and giving me some seriously grazed knees. The next day my senile old cat tripped me up as I walked down our hallway, and I bashed my elbow against one of our stainless steel door handles- ouch. I've got nerve damage to my arm (thanks a lot, Roger) and my fingers keep doing involuntary twinge-y things that spook me a bit. Needless to say, I'm full of painkillers right now.



Thankfully, said boyfriend is always there to make me feel a little better about myself. Through some cosmic twist of fate, we both had Tuesday off work, so we set out so visit a couple of second hand stores in North Canterbury, about an hour out of the city. One of the best things about Christchurch is the sprawl, and the little periphery towns that go with it. We picked Oxford and Amberly as our destinations, and we weren't disappointed. It was so lovely to get out of the routine of uni-work-essays that usually dominates my waking hours, and see more of the country.


The opshops up North proved fruitful, and I slowly filled Logan's back seat with the most amazing things. One of my favourite finds was a trio- the amazing blue floral dress just down there, a sweet blouse and an embroidered chambray dress that I suspect were all from the same donor. They seem like the kind of things that a skilled grandma made for an ungrateful granddaughter, as they're beautifully handmade but have clearly never been worn. I'm glad I could take them on as my own.


Afterwards we stopped off at Brew Moon, the makers of our absolute favourite beers ever (and we drink a lot of beer, trust me). We got their sampler with a glass of each different beer, as well as a massive bowl of chips and two different kinds of cake... and we took away a 2-litre rigger of the Hophead organic pale ale, which tastes like apricots. So good!




(Dress, belt and shoes all thrifted on my road trip, thrifted cardigan, tights from Myer ages ago and crochet bag from Trademe for $4, vintage necklace a present from my boyfriend.)
I threw this outfit together from things picked up along our little road trip. This dress, from the grandma collection, was an absolute steal at $1 from the best opshop ever. I love the horizontal pleated detailing on the hem! I only had $8 cash, or else I could've taken away a much more significant pile.

I'd also like to say thanks to the lovely ladies at Ventricular Projects for including me in their dream wardrobes project. Tricia and Carly are two seriously awesome babes, who are both committed to making and sharing the most excellent bits of art and culture. Check out the rest of their dream wardrobes if you want to feel some intense blogger envy!

On Vintage

I've spent the last week of my list completely emerged in an essay entitled: 'analyse one local example of ‘retro mode’ in terms of the fabrication of an effect of cultural historicity.' That might sound hideously boring and tedious, but I've enjoyed it to the extent that I am considering changing my major for Political Science to Cultural Studies. But none of you guys really care about that. The point is, this piece of writing has mainly been about the way we perceive certain eras of history, and the way they are looked at in the modern era. Although I was writing about steampunk and how it treats Victorianism, I couldn't help but think long and hard about the world of vintage blogging.

As a society, we have a misguided and over-indulged tendancy to idealise the past. In 1937, long before 'vintage' even vaguely resembles what it does now, a fellow called Laver mused:

"The same costume will be indecent 10 years before its time, shameless 5 years before its time, daring 1 year before its time, dowdy 1 year after its time, hideous 10 years after its time, ridiculous 20 years after its time, amusing 30 years after its time, quaint 50 years after its time, charming 70 years after its time, romantic 100 years after its time, beautiful 150 years after its time."

Many fashion bloggers, along with design enthusiasts, collectors and general retro junkies, have a tendancy to idealise the bygone days from which we draw our fashion inspiration. We don't look at the 1950s, for example, as a decade struggling to deal with the trauma of a world war, or as one where women were respected only for their small waists and abilities in the kitchen (or bedroom). We look at that era as a golden age of fashion and design, where New Look and Horrockses reign supreme and women have a certain glamour that the modern lady lacks completely.


An advertisement for Horrockses Fashions.


We, as fashion bloggers, prefer to sanitise the past, looking at it in terms of, for example, '1950s-ness'. Decades become a kind of art form, rather than a period of human history. Architecture historians of the modern era call it 'historicity'- a yearning for a non-descript 'days gone by', leading us to butcher the past for the purposes of aesthetics. Recently reading an interview with a blogger whose name escapes me, I was astounded when she said she felt she belonged in the 1950s rather than the modern era. Sure, maybe if you like being repressed. The reality is, if we were teenagers of the fifties rather than of the 21st century, the quality of our lives would be significantly worse. As we romanticise the stylistic elements of an era, we can't help but take other parts of it with us on a nostalgia trip down a path we never personally experienced. We approach the past through stylistic connotations, and it becomes a pastiche of a parody of a stereotype rather than some kind of real sense of history.

And by god, was our man Laver right or what? Vintage fashion is so 'in' that Forever 21 and Glassons have used the term to describe their latest ranges, cheap parodies of full-skirted dresses made in Chinese sweatshops. 'Vintage' now means anything that looks like it was made or designed before the year 2000, including unflattering 'mom' jeans from thrift stores, cheap polyester blouses from the 80s, 'Crosby sweaters', and all sorts of other abominations. A search for 'vintage' on an online website brings you a vast array of results, only a small portion of which are legitimate vintage fashions. It's become a fashion buzz-word, and become somewhat severed from its true meaning somewhere along the way.


Mimi Farina's wedding in 1964

Vintage fashion wasn't vintage when it came out, it was just fashion. Have you ever talked to someone aged 60+ about the fashion of their youth? They're unconditionally baffled that there are a group of avid followers of the clothes they were forced to wear in their youth. They can't possibly imagine how their horn-rim reading glasses are now collectible, their Crown Lynn swans are not sought-after. In the 1960s, children played dress-ups in day dresses from the decade before. And when I think about mainstream cultural output from my youth- Ikea couches, jeggings, ugg boots, Eminem- I can't possibly fathom anybody romanticising this era.

To me, vintage doesn't simply imply an era, a certain number of years ago. It has connotations of quality, of an age before mass-production. Clothing was made to last a lot longer in, say, the 1960s than it is today. People had less disposable income, smaller wardrobes, and trends changed on a slower scale. I have dresses from the 1950s that I've had since I was 12, worn on a regular basis, and they've still got at least another 10 years in them. I'm not sure if anything from Topshop would undergo that kind of treatment. Also, the vast majority of clothing in retail shops today is made in sweatshops in third-world countries. When for a similar price you can put your money towards an item sold by a small business of charity, and look a bit unique in doing so, why wouldn't you? To me, shopping vintage has endless appeal.

To me, I think something 'vintage' is at least 35 years old. That said, I've been wearing vintage for around seven years. I suppose in that time my classification for the term has gone from around 1969 to 1976, without me even realising, but I'm not so sure how I feel about that. In another seven years, I guess I'll have to think of vintage as 1982. That's the year The Dark Crystal and E.T. were released. Call me crazy, but I don't think I'll ever want to dress like characters from either of those films. In my mind, there is a cut-off for what I consider to be true vintage, from an era before Made in China was ubiquitous. But maybe I stand alone in this.


Hosiery through the ages.

I guess, in the end, I don't know where I'm going with this whole thing. I love vintage, I've worn it for a long time and I will continue to do so for a long time. Despite its undeniable status as extremely trendy, dressing in clothes from before the mid-seventies aligns too perfectly with my figure, my views on mass production and my sense of aesthetics for me to give up on it. I am lucky to live in the 21st century, not just because I can vote, work and get paid almost what a man does, and trust that I'm not going to die when I catch a cold. But because we are gifted with the retrospect to be able to pick and choose from previous decades, and be inspired by so many years of film, literature, photography and art. And although the term is generally used as an insult to architects, we have historicity on our side. As I type this, I'm wearing a 1950s dress, with a 1960s sweater, and brand spanking new Goldenponies oxfords on my feet. We can learn from the mistakes and misgivings of past decades, as long as we consciously separate their culture from their cultural output- that is, the fashions that you probably love, or I guess you wouldn't be reading this blog.

Seriously now,

I recently had dinner with a group of old friends I hadn't seen in a while. When I made the announcement that I'd purchased a bikini, mouths hung open and silence reigned supreme. You see, I have not long been a bikini kind of girl. More of a crying in the changing rooms at how disgusting I look in a one-piece type. But recently things have changed a bit.

In my teenage years I've been at both ends of the weight spectrum, both overweight and unhealthy and very underweight and far more unhealthy. So I feel I am a somewhat qualified authority to say that being skinnier did not make me happier. Right now I weigh 11 kg (25 lbs) more than I was this time last year, and I have never been as happy with myself and the world around me. A lot of the credit for this paradigm shift, from counting every calorie meticulously to happily gorging myself upon Scrumpy and onion dip on a regular basis, goes to my boyfriend Logan. He has helped me to accept that I am not a disgusting person because I have some fat on my bones, that a woman who doesn't look like a pre-pubescent child is sexy, and has introduced me to some amazing foods and changed my eating habits for the better. He has helped me to realise that size and shape has no relation to being attracted to somebody, and doesn't change what kind of person I am.

I am so grateful for him and for finally being able to accept my body and my face, because hating yourself and being ashamed of how you look is crap. It permeates every aspect of your life and affects every choice you make, making it impossible to focus on working hard or doing well at school or even maintaining good relationships. Instead of being ashamed of my body, I am now ashamed of spending so much time obsessing and standing on the scales and feeling terrible. Because I am not a disgusting person, nor am I inferior to somebody who weighs less than me. I am still not completely happy with my body, and there will always be a tiny part of me that wants to lose weight, but I am going to continue muffling that voice with the sweet insulation of camembert cheese. It makes me feel sick to my stomach to think of how many peoples lives are dictated by outdated and unrealistic body image standards. I know 8 year-old girls who think they are 'fat'. I recently read an article in a magazine that informed me not everyone has a bikini body. What? Who says? That is so wrong, it's sad, it's terrifying.

I no longer give Cosmo and Dolly and Vogue permission to make me feel like a fucking piece of shit because I am not a size nothing. I have never worn makeup and I'm not sure when I'll start- nobody's opinion of me as a person is going to change if I cover up my freckles and undereye circles and whatever else is supposed to make me 'ugly'. I no longer feel ashamed of wearing a short skirt- nor a bikini. Its debut outing was at Christie's 16th birthday/pool party, and I was by no means the skinniest girl there. And what of it? I still looked great, regardless of my weight. I will judge you, a lot, if you dare judge me or anybody else or pass comment on their weight. It's pathetic and childish and can you actually not think of a better insult than 'she's so fat?' There are way too many horrible things going on in the world, let's try to put messed up body image to the side.

(Photo by Mitchell. Vintage bikini, Zara cardi and UO sunglasses.)

I know it might be scary and foreign to some people that a swimming costume that shows two inches of my torso be so anguishing for me. I'm just not going to feel like shit about myself anymore. So there.