I have been so shelf-obsessed lately (no pun intended - honest) that I forgot to blog about visa swap, the ultimate in credit-crunch fashion, or at least in fashion for the low key high flyer not presently drawing any income...
I would include a link but to be honest the visa swap website is terminally dull - probably the oddest of several odd things about the occasion. Now that this year's event is over, all they seem to have left is a page to sign up for updates. How about some photos and commentary to whet our appetites for next time guys? The choice of Lindsay Lohan as figurehead is also questionable - not so much because of her recent plummet from grace generally, but more because a London event deserves a London face. Personally, my choice would be Erin O'Connor but I'm sure there are dozens of possibilities.
So what is visa swap? You take in your unwanted clothes, bags and shoes and are awarded points per item depending what they are and whether they are designer, mid-range or high street. It's pretty easy to build up points - I had about a thousand and only used half in the end. Then on the final weekend you are let loose to spend your points on everyone's donations at the visa swap 'loft' (er, it's mostly on the ground floor).
It's a really great idea provided you ignore the more excitable rumours about designer goods and recognise that it's a giant rummage sale - in a good cause because the leftovers go to Traid. Yes ideally they would get more shops and celebs to donate really good stuff but I only saw three or four designer pieces (I was about 20th in the queue on the first day) and wouldn't have wanted any of them - too small, too stained or just in a foul colour.
Those in the know also bring a massive shopper or bin liner to carry their booty - the rest of us dragged it around in our arms and had post-shopping elbow for days. Patient scouring of the rails, trying not to hate the girl who reached the green coat before me, came up with an armful of 13 items, some for me and some for friends. Not bad when you consider its basically free. My highlights were shoes with red roses on, a brand new St Martin's toile de jouy summer skirt, a gorgeous indian kaftan (purchased in the market in Rome according to its former owner who I bumped into) and a very cool little t-shirt featuring a businessman and a pirate. Truthfully, I might not have paid full price for any of these things in a shop, but part of the fun is that you can take whatever you like and see if it works later - great for those who are nervous of experimenting or wasting money on things they won't wear. I'm already stacking up stuff to donate next year...
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Shelf love
From the moment we first viewed our house, I knew we had to knock through between the lounge and the kitchen, and from the moment the hole was made I knew it needed to be framed with fitted shelves. After several months dreaming, a couple more finding the right affordable carpenter and a few more still waiting for this rare species to finish other commissions, the shelves are here! I can almost forget the two dusty days it took to fit them and the entire weekend during which we cursed our decision to paint them ourselves for reasons of econ0my. All that is history - I can walk through a wall of books!
I had fitted bookshelves around me as I grew up and something inside me just feels better about them being there. There's just one problem... by my calculations we have enough space to accommodate another 2-3 years books, cds and dvds - after that, it's back to the drawing board, or possibly we'll just have to move house, to somewhere that already has fitted shelves...
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Blood and prevarication
Yesterday I finally got around to giving blood for the first time - following the good example of my husband and aunt and also because I want to know my blood group (not had the letter yet and I'm sure it will be deeply dull but doesn't everybody secretly want to have special blood? Just me then...).
There is genuinely so little to it that I feel even more guilty for having left it so long - it just feels like getting holiday jabs, and with free bourbons afterwards! So if anyone else out there has been putting it off, go now and revel in the sugary rewards of virtue.
It is also a great excuse for idleness. Yes, technically you are fine to work, play and really do anything except operate heavy machinery or drink more than about a glass of wine - but it does make you kind of hungry and sleepy and is a great excuse to have a Sunday-ish time relaxing.
Coincidentally - or it it - I have just discovered a great new way to kill time. Yes I am very late to discover the phenomenon that is Threadless T-shirts, but I have made up for it by ordering seven Ts and rating about a million designs. Yes I have spent about three hours in the last two days on a T-shirt website... For those like me who wallowed in ignorance of this great cultural phenomenon, Threadless is a kind of ongoing design competition for T-shirts (and now also prints). If you join you can rate designs and the most popular are printed and sold - leading to the best selection of Ts I have ever seen at very reasonable prices (ah that weak dollar... but even without that and with the international postage it wouldn't be too bad). You can also vote for reprints of designs that have sold out.
I hasten to add that before I found Threadless, I did finish the first draft of my first novel - it's rather short and frankly not very good, but with lots of good stuff in it waiting to be rescued in draft 2...
There is genuinely so little to it that I feel even more guilty for having left it so long - it just feels like getting holiday jabs, and with free bourbons afterwards! So if anyone else out there has been putting it off, go now and revel in the sugary rewards of virtue.
It is also a great excuse for idleness. Yes, technically you are fine to work, play and really do anything except operate heavy machinery or drink more than about a glass of wine - but it does make you kind of hungry and sleepy and is a great excuse to have a Sunday-ish time relaxing.
Coincidentally - or it it - I have just discovered a great new way to kill time. Yes I am very late to discover the phenomenon that is Threadless T-shirts, but I have made up for it by ordering seven Ts and rating about a million designs. Yes I have spent about three hours in the last two days on a T-shirt website... For those like me who wallowed in ignorance of this great cultural phenomenon, Threadless is a kind of ongoing design competition for T-shirts (and now also prints). If you join you can rate designs and the most popular are printed and sold - leading to the best selection of Ts I have ever seen at very reasonable prices (ah that weak dollar... but even without that and with the international postage it wouldn't be too bad). You can also vote for reprints of designs that have sold out.
I hasten to add that before I found Threadless, I did finish the first draft of my first novel - it's rather short and frankly not very good, but with lots of good stuff in it waiting to be rescued in draft 2...
Friday, 11 July 2008
Skin & Bones
Skin & Bones as in the exhibition - 'Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture' - now on at Somerset House.
This was tricky for me. There is some mind-blowing fashion in it that I love. In particular, the sculptural, fantastical yet wearable clothes from Boudicca's Invisible City collection and Alexander McQueen's Widows of Culloden - which gets points for name alone.
The Mobius strip dress by Meejin Yoon, complete with pictures of how zips transform it from an A-line cocoon to a dress to the famous strip (and there's a stripping pun in there somewhere that they all seem to have missed or turned up their noses at) is very clever.
Yohji Yamamoto's 'Secret' dress from his 1999 Wedding collection is truly ingenious - the dress is beautiful but the best part is the video of the catwalk display. A model comes in, looking around her as if surprised by all the people. As she walks, the hoops in the dress make her seem to float and sway as if walking on water. Just as you think she's made her final turn, a look of mischief comes over her face and she unzips a pocket in her skirt, pulling out a pair of sandals. She puts them on using just her feet, holding up the big skirt, with endearing clumsiness. Then there's more. She opens another pocket and extracts what looks like a complete parachute - two assistants help her don this long robe to cover her shoulders. Out comes a vast hat, and a sort of lace posy to hold. Not one of these things spoiled the original line of the dress in any way. Magic.
But what does this really have to do with 'Shelter', or any of the other rather tenuous linking themes? I can't argue that both fashion and architecture DO have to do with skin & bones, with shelter, with volume, with deconstruction, identity, pleating etc etc. But this exhibition does not provide me with any further information on how, beyond what I could have thought up for myself. The labeling is sparse - most information is saved for the (free) brochure, some items receive next to no explanation even there. In the thematic category 'Weaving' there is plenty of architecture, but no fashion at all... is weaving just too obvious for them to need to display it? I can't help but feel cheated.
The whole show smacks of very stylish laziness, relying on the genius of some of the creators to excuse the curators. I entered, ready and eager, to discover that 'This exhibition takes the early 1980s as a starting point'. But the next - the first - tangible exhibit is from the (late) 1990s - the 1980s are represented by a schoolgirl montage of pages from magazines. Most of all, the show told me nothing at all about technique. It did not, for example, show me how cantilevering can be used creatively in architecture, or how fashion designers have learned from this. Nowhere, in fact, was there the suggestion that any specific designer or architect had been directly inspired by the other discipline or tried precisely to emulate its techniques. I suppose that's just about ok given that we are examining 'parallel' practices, but I still craved at least some actual information.
The booklet explains a little about the architects and their buildings, but I get no sense of architectural history and development, of parallel movements. Yes I too could put a pleated dress next to a photo of a 'pleated' building, but so what? I could throw in some origami too, and some examples from nature, art, cookery - and it might look very pretty but it just doesn't mean very much. Also, in all honesty, the difference in fashion terms between 'volume' (ruffles in this case), 'pleating' and 'folding' is not very great.
Go and see this if you admire sculptural, clever fashion - or perhaps if you are a connoisseur of architectural drawings and photographs (I am not) - but expect to find fabulous wallpaper, not a great novel.
This was tricky for me. There is some mind-blowing fashion in it that I love. In particular, the sculptural, fantastical yet wearable clothes from Boudicca's Invisible City collection and Alexander McQueen's Widows of Culloden - which gets points for name alone.
The Mobius strip dress by Meejin Yoon, complete with pictures of how zips transform it from an A-line cocoon to a dress to the famous strip (and there's a stripping pun in there somewhere that they all seem to have missed or turned up their noses at) is very clever.
Yohji Yamamoto's 'Secret' dress from his 1999 Wedding collection is truly ingenious - the dress is beautiful but the best part is the video of the catwalk display. A model comes in, looking around her as if surprised by all the people. As she walks, the hoops in the dress make her seem to float and sway as if walking on water. Just as you think she's made her final turn, a look of mischief comes over her face and she unzips a pocket in her skirt, pulling out a pair of sandals. She puts them on using just her feet, holding up the big skirt, with endearing clumsiness. Then there's more. She opens another pocket and extracts what looks like a complete parachute - two assistants help her don this long robe to cover her shoulders. Out comes a vast hat, and a sort of lace posy to hold. Not one of these things spoiled the original line of the dress in any way. Magic.
But what does this really have to do with 'Shelter', or any of the other rather tenuous linking themes? I can't argue that both fashion and architecture DO have to do with skin & bones, with shelter, with volume, with deconstruction, identity, pleating etc etc. But this exhibition does not provide me with any further information on how, beyond what I could have thought up for myself. The labeling is sparse - most information is saved for the (free) brochure, some items receive next to no explanation even there. In the thematic category 'Weaving' there is plenty of architecture, but no fashion at all... is weaving just too obvious for them to need to display it? I can't help but feel cheated.
The whole show smacks of very stylish laziness, relying on the genius of some of the creators to excuse the curators. I entered, ready and eager, to discover that 'This exhibition takes the early 1980s as a starting point'. But the next - the first - tangible exhibit is from the (late) 1990s - the 1980s are represented by a schoolgirl montage of pages from magazines. Most of all, the show told me nothing at all about technique. It did not, for example, show me how cantilevering can be used creatively in architecture, or how fashion designers have learned from this. Nowhere, in fact, was there the suggestion that any specific designer or architect had been directly inspired by the other discipline or tried precisely to emulate its techniques. I suppose that's just about ok given that we are examining 'parallel' practices, but I still craved at least some actual information.
The booklet explains a little about the architects and their buildings, but I get no sense of architectural history and development, of parallel movements. Yes I too could put a pleated dress next to a photo of a 'pleated' building, but so what? I could throw in some origami too, and some examples from nature, art, cookery - and it might look very pretty but it just doesn't mean very much. Also, in all honesty, the difference in fashion terms between 'volume' (ruffles in this case), 'pleating' and 'folding' is not very great.
Go and see this if you admire sculptural, clever fashion - or perhaps if you are a connoisseur of architectural drawings and photographs (I am not) - but expect to find fabulous wallpaper, not a great novel.
Friday, 4 July 2008
Life's little questions - part 1
What does a combine harvester actually combine?
Apparently, harvesting and threshing. Not sure that I am much the wiser. I should have paid more attention at Cogges Farm Museum but where there are pigs and rabbits it is pretty much guaranteed that informative posters will remain unread.
What is the weirdest crossbreed on the British road system?
On the way to Cogges, the bus goes over a crossing which is designated a 'humped toucan'. This presumably means there are also humped zebras (well with all those camels around what do you expect) and, still more intriguingly, humped pelicans!
What would happen if Mr Whippy met Miss Whiplash?
Thankfully we shall never know.
Apparently, harvesting and threshing. Not sure that I am much the wiser. I should have paid more attention at Cogges Farm Museum but where there are pigs and rabbits it is pretty much guaranteed that informative posters will remain unread.
What is the weirdest crossbreed on the British road system?
On the way to Cogges, the bus goes over a crossing which is designated a 'humped toucan'. This presumably means there are also humped zebras (well with all those camels around what do you expect) and, still more intriguingly, humped pelicans!
What would happen if Mr Whippy met Miss Whiplash?
Thankfully we shall never know.
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