lovely lovely

My sister was given a gold ASOS dress from a friend for christmas that she wanted to wear today, it being her birthday. She didn't have a pair of tights she liked to match so I volunteered to cycle into town to buy her a purple cable knit pair I had seen. In the time it took me to buy the tights and a few groceries a mild blizzard had picked up and my cycle home turned me into a veritable snowman. Abominable.

The kitchen was as cosy as you please, I love being locked up and warm looking out at the cold weather, it's like being inside a car when it's bucketing down torrential rain. My afternoon was accordingly lovely, I sewed colourful buttons onto an old cardigan, baked fairy cakes (or cupcakes as they are now so popularly dubbed)with pink butter cream icing and jelly tots on top, baked brownies mmm I know lots of people think their brownies are the best but these ones really are, please don't take my word for it try them out for yourself to try and prove me wrong: They're Nigella Lawson: http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/nigella-lawson/snow-flecked-brownies-recipe_p_1.html I took them out of the oven a few minutes early so they were the right degree of crunchy on the outside but still gooey on the inside, sprinkled with icing sugar and served with whipped cream Y U M

back west

driving home for christmas *la la la bus driver driving me home for christmas la la la... the joyous homecoming was neither as momentous nor as romantic as the songs had me thinking it would be. It feels on one hand like I've never left because everything is still so exactly the same as how it was, I came home late at night had some cereal and went to bed. Next morning everybody was pottering around absorbed in doing their own thing and that's been it, I stepped back into the stream of daily life, those already there remaining unaffected and indifferent. But on the other it feels like I've been gone an age and stepped back into a time warp, I've changed but little else has. And that hand hits me harder. It leaves a stronger sting of impact but this in itself is reassuring because at least it confirms in me that I know I'm only passing through now. The fear of returning to my old life would be getting stuck in a deep rut, which scares me to bits and is enough to drive me onwards. Hurrah. upwards.

I like being home because... There's food to nibble on when I'm in a picking mood, I can walk on the prom, the air is clean, i like the proximity of everywhere, i can cycle my bike again, i don't like being subjected to my mother's irritating house rules, or having to put up with her idiosyncrasys, but i like the unpretentiousness of the sales assistants in topshop, i like having friends with whom i can share in - jokes, i like having good friends on hand to be hungover with, i like having friends off whom i can borrow clothes, i like how it's easy to stand out as being relatively well - dressed, i don't like feeling inhibited by that same easily recognisableness and feeling somewhat restricted in what i wear because of it, i like overcoming that feeling because of the confidence i'm given by knowing i look good and have my best friend beside me looking the exact same.

One small thing that I take as a given in Dublin is ripped tights. They emanate the grunge look in an otherwise ordinary outfit. You look on trend without looking gothic or godforbid like you're trying too hard. But the Galway boys are whatever the word is for the complete opposite of ostentatious, with regard to fashion and I have had much slagging for wearing tights with holes in them. In my defense I have never deliberately set out to destroy fine hosiery, it just happens that probably nine out of ten pairs of tights I own have rips and ladders in them and I keep them all to wear doubled up. Two at a time guarantees that one will cover the holes in the other, but of late I've taken to colder legs and only taken from my drawer one pair at a time. Well I like it, and Alexander Wang liked it a whole lot last year in his fall 08 ready to wear collection:

michael clark

It snowed today! not a lot but some all the same. Twas lovely because we had Christmas dinner in my house last night so it's a pretend feeling of a white christmas (stretch that imagination). What a feast we had but Rachel made the strangest roast potatoes ever, they were par-boiled then put in the deep fat frier. And we had peas. Actually we had an odd assortment of contents on our plates as we were trying to use up all the food in the house before we all go home. Which is why we had pancakes and creamed rice pudding for breakfast today, to use up all the milk. And and we watched Home Alone whilst drinking mulled wine heated in the rice cooker because we had run out of clean saucepans...



I WANT TO DANCE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME!!!

The man's simply a genius. With choreography as bizarre as this it could look like the patients from a mental asylum escaped on stage but no no no they just look like they're having so much fun, perfect, beautiful fun

Maybe I'm amazed

The British met the Dutch, and Lucy met Bart. They then introduced fashion, architecture and the human body to each other. Now they’re all busy working together fusing technology and art into forms not found before.

Lucy had trained as a classical ballerina but also dappled in architecture and design. Her fascination with the human body found itself a common interest in Bart’s, and together they began to look at the expression of beauty and the effects genetic manipulation causes on this perception.

Their work consists of common yet unexpected materials which are used to distort the form of the body wearing them. They challenge the concept of an ideal beauty and explore the changes that are occurring as a result of technological advances and how these lines of evolution will eventually have an impact on the development of society.

Baby I’m amazed.













I read my first issue of ‘Wound’ this week and I liked it a LOT. First impressions? It seems to be the intelligent person’s magazine. I just wish I had the money to buy any of the magazines I like, or even better had the money to subscribe. Wishful thinking. Well this issue was one I came across in college and can’t remember which one it was (my bad)... but anyway these are my two favourite fashion photographs from the winter 09 edition of iD:

Leggings, skirt and dress are Louis Vuitton. Tshirt by Leny and jacket from Beyond Retro.


These jumpers are by Ashish.

paint on my nails

Waiting for public transport. A train and a bus to meet. Cheap sandwiches with stale crunchy crusts. A bookshop. Armchair seats by the upstairs window. Overpriced tea. A dash to the library. A laugh at the children not skating on not ice. A climb to the roof. A hanging and a laughing. A bay view. A suburbian street of lights. A talk of displacement. A talk of home.

My song for today:

so? sew!

Today I had a huge amount of energy- I think the three bowls of porridge I ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner respectively can be held accountable for that. But goldilocks isn't complaining, it gave me drive to put my itching fingers to use. Since my stitch and bitch group slowly fell apart this past month I haven't been making much ( I miss knitting!!) the christmas decorations at the weekend got me back into the feel for creating. I bought a length of festive printed fabric and moved on to sewing and stuffing decorations. Then today in college I raided the scrap box for additional material now all I need is time...

In a giddy moment of looking through the Dior Fall 2009 Couture Collection and in the spirit of Make, Mend and Do, I thought how much fun would it be to get really dressed up going out but wearing your very own couture imitation creation? Using what you can get your hands on around the house to make a masterpiece - for after all, necessity was the mother of invention...


a lampshade and some tulle netting?


some nicely painted rubber gloves?


a starched pillowcase?


a shredded feather duster?

actually these ideas could come in very handy for the Alice in Wonderland trend - I bet lots of people will be throwing Mad Hatter's Tea Parties : D

winter wonder land

Note one: I'm getting the hang of baking with yeast! Hurrah for white breads

Note two: At home we always put our tree up on the 8th December and take it down 6th January, so to me that's when the festive season begins and finishes. Today (okay it's two days early, but close enough) I got my first Christmas feelings. We went to Una's house where there was a roaring open fire, pots of tea, and warm mince pies with cream. We had an arts and crafts day making decorations galore







Note three: with the forthcoming release of Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (5th March 2010)promising to have a strong influence on the world of fashion, I thought I'd share this video (which, despite the name, is actually not a Christmas carol)



it's interesting how things change over time. or how at any given time individual interpretations of that very same thing can vary so considerably i guess

my song of the day

bang bang shoot

Instead of getting more work experience with a professional stylist, Eimear and I decided to style our own shoot! It was a very last minute affair, taking advantage of the free time the strike day gave us. We had to make do with what we had at hand... that being our own clothes as the wardrobe, Eimear's house as location, myself as model, Eimear as hair and makeup artist, and calling a favour on a friend for photography.



We had picked out a few locations around the house and garden, and I thought using the tiny shed that stored the boiler would be a good idea, if we brought out a lamp as a prop. So that set the scene for the first photograph.



But like I said, it was a shed and these old places always come with a few spiders... Most of them were dead so I played around with the cobwebs before Eimear came running out of the house with a big feather duster.


Then I got excited and started messing with our prop. Lampshade hats - hot for ss 2010 you heard it here first!!




I love this last photo, Declan was standing up on a stool looking down and I'm bending backwards. Although if you look at it sideways it sort of looks like I'm running out of a space tunnel or something


We used an awful lot of hairspray


Her house has one of those stairs that look like shelves, with holes between each step, so we hung a curtain up across them and tried to take pictures of me hanging down. They didn't turn out very well and we got frustrated from trying too hard. The first one (above) was the best and it was the third (out of what was to be over fifty) photo taken, and was an accident as Declan was just testing the flash at the time



That said, we decided to try less and go back to the shed




The flash is really harsh here but I like the 'deer in headlights' look


This was the easiest outfit to shoot. The width of the door was pretty much the width of the shed. It turned out well with the yellow tights picking up the yellow door.


I had brought this piece of netting to puff out the underneath of a dress but when Eimear was gone to make some more cups of tea I started messing putting it on my head to frighten her when she came back. But it looked so cool we decided to use it as an actual look.


The umbrella was originally brought outside for Eimear to hold over Declan's head as he needed to be outside the shed when taking the shot in order to fit the whole length of my body in, and it was raining and he couldn't get his camera wet. But the colours matched so I pulled it in for a minute to use as a prop


and lo and behold


Declan also likes editing so he did some things on his computer and turned some of the photos into these pop - art thingys. Which are spooky but fantastic nonetheless.

oh oh eskimo

The beginning of autumn is fun. The trees are taking their leaves off as you're putting your layers on. One cardigan becomes two and scarves are pulled out for strategic decoration. The crisp coolness is exciting, dressing up is pulled back into a dimension the summertime forgot. But winter, now that's a different kettle of fish. The ending of November has brought the correlation between degrees on the thermometer and jumpers on my back to reach its peak. It's like a battle of digits: can Celcius make itself lower than Zara can make herself measureably muffled?

From looking around and from reading other people's style blogs it seems most people wear what they want when they want, because they want to. I, on the otherhand, appear to myself to be becoming increasingly practical. Of course I care about what I wear everyday, but comfort has come around to being of a first and foremost daily importance.

Not just the sort of comfortable that brings ease and confidence, but physical comfort. Yesterday I wore two pairs of socks, a pair of tights, a pair of jeans, a vest, two long sleeved tshirts, an oversized woolen man's jumper, a knitted Aran-sweater style cardigan, and a scarf. Then for going outside I also had a coat, hat and mittens.

If this michelen-man style doesn't catch on soon then I'm going to have to seriously consider investing in some thermals...