did you grow that thing there or did it fall off yo mama?

To be honest I dislike facial hair on boys. I find it hard to place my finger on exactly what it is but there's just something about it being there that makes me wish it wasn't. I don't know why exactly, perhaps it's because I sort of see it as befalling those on either end of the spectrum - the patchy bum fluff of an adolescent's self discovery or the attempted compensation for loss of hair else where of a middle aged man. Which in terms of tragedy is a half a dozen of one and six of the other.

But now it seems that certain forces are at work to bring about a change whereby beards would no longer make us think along the lines of Santa Claus, Scott Howard, or even Osama Bin Laden, but should instead make us think of Fashion. Yes, Fashion... Because menswear fashion for Autumn 2011 looks to set some rather unusual trends in the area of hairstyles; possibly predicting an influx in the number of bushy face-bottoms we'll see walking around town over the next year...

Paul Smith, Yohji Yamamoto, Jean Paul Gaultier, have they all gone mad? or are these shaggy beards the new androgyny? I certainly hope not, but some people might just find themselves being super stylish before their time...

♥ ♥ ♥

the first days of spring

colour block

Isn't it funny to think that some civilizations don't have specific words for colours? It doesn't mean those people can't perceive colours in the same way we do, or that they're unable to refer to them, they simply don't codify their colour experiences with single words that are inflexibly used to generalise terms of colour experiences. For example, the Piraha tribe in the Amazon use the phrase "it is temporarily being immature" for green.

Which is what I was thinking of as I read the New York Time's review of Jil Sander's menswear SS2011 collection. The show took place in the famous gardens of Villa Gamberaia, Milan. These gardens are renowned for their structural rigor and restricted palette, so much so that a historian once detailed the number of tonal variations of green. He said "There is the blackish green of cypress, the bluish green of boxwood, the mossy light-absorbing green of yew. There was the lacquered limousine-green of privet, the almost acidic green of lemon trees, and the refreshing green of new mown grass". That's a whole lot of temporary immaturity...

So if I were to talk about all the colours of the rainbow would I really just talking about what we have decided to define as artificial boundaries in the spectrum of visible light? Hmm well Raf Simmons took a selection of naturally occuring colours and intensified them to the MAX. Imagine how brilliant it would be if boys were as bold as to dress like this, everyone would look so happy all the time!

i've been carried along by a river

I recently paid a visit to Cork. Sunday evening saw us hungover with an hour to kill before it was time for me to get the bus back home so we decided to go and play dress up in Topshop. I put together three outfits for Jack, not that he'd ever actually wear any of them but shhh that wasn't the point...

And then this is what I was wearing that day. I had vowed I wouldn't spend a penny on clothes, that wasn't the point of my trip, but on our way to the Co-Op (most amazing vegetarian food mmmmm) we sort of found ourselves in a vintage shop... and I bought a shirt. But it was only three euro and has such a lovely print on the fabric, and I had only been saying how I'd love a Hawaiin shirt and the shape was sort of the same and yes these are all excuses for attempting to justify my breaking my word... I was also wearing my new favourite shoes. They're not brand new because my sister bought them last year in Toronto but they're too small for her now so they're all mine and I love how if I turn sideways when I'm wearing them it looks like I have mice on my feet!


In other news, if you're one of those people who have boxes filled with odd buttons, beads, single earrings and what have you, just because you know they're pretty and might just some day come in handy for something then you'll get this: there's a button exhibition on Paris right now (the Bismarck foundation centre, Avenue New York) *OOOOH... shiney.... but despite their being so small they're actually a really important part of certain things we wear, as they make it possible for us to wear them. We've come a long way from the cavemen using bones to hold their skins and furs together to being able to go to the effort of turning something so nondescript into something so detailed and decorative just to allow us to find the extraordinary in the commonplace.

These ones are a) from the 1940's for Elsa Schiaparelli, b) from the 1960's for Yves Saint Laurent and c) from the 1930's for Elsa Schiaparelli. Also, if you want to read a story that begins with buttons I'd recommend Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.

Well I never

Well I never thought I'd live to see the day I heard myself say something in favour of the Olsen twins but just goes to show you can never tell what life has in store ha ha because here I am, all faculties intact, praising them. Not for their personal style, no it will take a bit more convincing to change my mind on that one, but for their design abilities. I only recently discovered they had a clothing line and upon further investigation their Resort 2011 collection has me seriously taken aback.


I've never taken to the glitzy girly wirly Mary Kate and Ashley duo and the empire they've built for themselves as A) I wasn't ever a girly girl and B) the idea of people who turn their life into some sort of marketable commodity makes me sad. I mean I'll be fair and give credit where credit's due and admit they've done an exceptional job of profiting from every tweeny teeny bopper kid who watches daytime tv, but thinking of how much of their own childhood was sacraficed in the process just doesn't sit well with me. Anyway, that's somewhat irrelevant here because The Row, their clothing line launched in 2007 goes to show how a child star can mature and positively build on this process.

The line, named after the bespoke tailoring of London's Saville Row, is seemingly much more about who the girls are becoming as adults than who they were in their younger years. It's not often I'll be in favour of celebrities crossing artistic domains as I don't think they ever succeed as well in one as they did in the other and only manage to get anywhere by riding on their already created name without really meriting it. However, this is one of those times I'm making an exception. The designs are good; really good. I'm surprised because it's so unexpected and so far from what I would have imagined what they would be capable of producing. Not to point the finger, but they haven't done what the likes of Kate Moss or Victoria Beckham did and just recreate imitations of items from their own personal wardrobes. Their designs are constructively engineered and experiment with proportion and silhouette. They're actually creating modern, tailored fashion and I love the simplicity of this Resort collection. I think the minimalist designs with their monotone colour palette and austere forms are attractive and intruiging. And, furthermore the Olsen name doesn't appear anywhere on the label. They are trying to promote the line independent of their present standing fame and promote an understated yet sophisticated fashion line. See The Row here.

a hoot and a half

I've been tidying up and clearing out my room and came across a piece of old newspaper that cracked me right up. It was the first 'fashion' article I wrote for my college newspaper entitled 'The Checkered Shirt' and so here it is. Something that manages to range itself from Kate Moss to a rant of, of, of I'm not sure what exactly

We are, we are the mods! We are, we are the mods! We are, we are modelling ourselves on models and the rockers are all rocked out. Because didn't you know? Alternative is so mainstream right now.

Kate Moss first created a storm back in 1988. Emerging from Croydon, her tousled, rough and tough street attitude, waif-like frame and ethereal beauty emanated a fresh sort of glamour through the lens of the camera. She was the sort of girl you wanted to both band and be best friends with. The fashion industry was swept up in the whirlwind of heroin chic she created with her emaciated physique. She became the walking, talking epitome of the word cool; living a life that really was glamorous, indie rock and roll. As she moved through relationships with the likes of Italian photographer Mario Sorrenti (famed for shooting nude models for Vogue), to Hollywood enigma Johnny Depp, to English musician Pete Doherty, she set a trend for liking bad boys and liking them bad.
All the while she made endeavours intot he world of music where she appeared in videos for the likes of Primal Scream, the White Stripes and Elton John, before contributing lyrics and vocals for Babyshambles. It was on stage at a Babyshambles gig in London that poor old Pete announced their engagement. But that was all to be blown away...

Kate's living ideal appears to have surreptitiously entered the consciousness of contemporary culture and in a society too fastidious to aspire to live like her, we make do to dress like her. Idolized by a sepctrum of adolescents she stands as the almost exhausted catalyst between retro and Topshop. And there she stands indeed; kitted out in a checkered shirt. Wow. Remaining relatively faitful to the old school, she wears hers boy-style with a tailored jacket and battered boots. But in her shadow flock the 'fashionistas' and the wanna be hip-ers (note: not hipsters) jumping on the wagon. Just take a look at today's crop of popular British indie bands endorsing the look. And the glossy magazines giving advice on how to wear yours "to avoid looking like a lumberjack, pair with killer heels or cute girly ballet flats and flam up with heavy weight accessories". Cue the sorts of Mary Kate and/or Ashley Olsen taking such words a little too much to heart; drowning in theirs with a giant Fendi bag and ridiculously oversized shades, these girls really are out of their depth.
Where are all the Holden Caulfields gone? Where are the artists who wrote their own material? Where are the kids who dream of being strung out all day with lovers and songs?

Starting its days as a clothing staple for manual labourers in the nineteenth century, the checkered flannel shirt stole the limelight each year in Sears Roebuck's Fall line. Far from haute couture it wasn't until dynamic Donegal man Rory Gallagher came on the scene in the early 70's did it begin to connote cool in any way. Its brief appearance in punk and grunge in the eighties passed practically unnoticed and without ever totally fading into obscurity it lurked at the back of our uncle's must old wardrobes only to find itself being dug out of late. The ressurection was initiated by Dolce and Gabbana's Autumn/Winter collection '08, where checkered Anything walked the runway. So now in this time of impending recession, the need for a new 'alternative' is emerging. Because Indie is in. Heck, even the jocks are wearing cardigans. So perhaps one or two of the intrepid young ones might forage through a closet or two in the hope of archaic redemption, but most will opt for brand spanking new vintage... Thrift stores? Purlease, I don't want to get "eau-de-mothball" on my fringe.

So when town gets too small for the agglomeration of boys in girl's jeans and the juke box gets ignored by all the skinny blonde girls dubbed Cassie, take a moment to look retrospectively at what times were like before the indie spirit became commodified and re-envisioned as a highly marketable lifestyle. A time when boys had love affiars with their Fenders and their days held a creative, rebellious aesthetic. When idyll hours were spent in little shops hunting for obscure collections of things to add to the beloved piles of records, scrapbooks, Polaroids and cigarette boxes waiting at home. When there were whores and music whores. When there were long bus journeys to dilapidated venues for intimate gigs, and lots of waiting and shuffling down cold alleyways in the hope of attaining a post-performance autograph. When the diehard fans were dedicated to their relatively unknown cause. When it was a sort of underground, back-room Beatle ania. When it was only for the boys in the band. The sex, the drugs, the rock, the roll; it was real horrorshow all round.
So try to look outside the mainstream, past the pretentious, and ignoring the phoneys try to remember the founding virtues of what the checkered shirt really embodies.

what a kerfuffle

"Rip it up yeah, that's what it's there for, so rip it up yeah, and rip it up and tear it up, until you really don't know why..."

Unless you've met Mr Michael Van Der Ham. As a gentleman playing a personal game of juxtaposition, not only does he know why, but he also knows exactly who, where, what and when to cut, chop, mix and mismatch to win hands up. Yadda yadda he went to Central Saint Martins. Blah biddy blah blah he came up trumps. Etcetera etcetera he won some awards. But who took note of the satire? Where is his medal for that? It's like we bumped into his clothes one day and they invited us over for tea, where from their armchair beside the range they proffered their view on contemporary clothing "fashion is just so transgressive these days.. So much so that I don't believe it makes a bit of difference really that my sleeve came from the eighties but my centre panel, yes that came from my grandmother's wedding dress... 1947 I believe it was... A beautiful silk brocade, so delicate, don't you think? Anyway it's fabulous isn't it my dear? The whole thing? Quite beautiful indeed... I'm so over seasonality; that's best kept for the vegetables I say! Stuff the lot of them, those fashion toffs with their airs and graces, we ought to simply get along with it darling and lets see what we can't pull together for ourselves today. Hmm who cares what anybody thinks, it couldn't matter less if you ask me as long as we enjoy today what we're wearing today. Would you like a hot drop deary?..."


Images from source A and source B and for an extra click, or C if you will, look at the Michael Van Der Ham homepage for lots more pictures

Chloe Sevigny

She's Cool. She gives across this look whereby she a) doesn't try and b) doesn't care, which merits the capital C. She does the multi talented thing really well, like an all-singing, all-dancing child star (except in her case it's all-acting, all-designing and all-modelling too because being the clothes hanger for her pieces makes them all the more brilliant when you first see them, making you like and lust them even more.

Her latest collection was released on Tuesday, Resort 2011 for Opening Ceremony and was a whole lot of patterns put together. Paisley, polka dots, florals, houndstooth and leopard print abound, but not a hint of a headache! The five prints centred around five dresses and the extra pieces were takes on these.

"It's streetwear, it's not high fashion" Sevigny said with a shrug. "It's cool" I said with a nod.


Have a look at the photos from the launch party on the Opening Ceremony's blog here ..

copy cat copy cat sitting on the door mat

Imitation is said to be the highest form of flattery, and of course it's perfectly fine to take inspiration from the art work of another. However, I'm not of the opinion that merely placing a mirror infront of something else entitles the reflected image to qualify as an original piece. Which is why I'm not so impressed with the new Cadbury's Flake advertisement.

Essentially it's a video of Russian model Yulia Lobova swirling and twirling through the air in a flowing dress made by designer Antony Price. It's quite captivating in terms of the music and movement having a hypnotic effect and I liked it because it reminded me of something Jiri Kylian would choreograph for the Nederlands Dans Theater. But in terms of advertising a product it's not obviously successful in that the viewer has no idea about what they are watching until just at the end where there's an "ohhh now I get it" moment.



Gone are the sensuous Flake women and their passionate love affairs with chocolate of past adverts and here is the dress. Over 200 metres of handmade georgette is pleated, frilled and ruffled to create a garment reminiscent of the folds found in a Flake bar. Now you get it.



Standing alone, yes, it's an impressive dress, and you can see the impression of details of a coral reef from which Price claims to draw aquatic inspiration. BUT. But but but is it still as impressive if you've heard of Alexander McQueen before? Because this is where I become a sceptic. The comparison between the Flake advert and the hologram from McQueen's Fall/Winter 2006 collection is too much. An uncanny resemblance you ask? Well... plain old daylight robbery if you ask me.