Nostalgia

It's been sooo looooonggg since I last blogged, partly because of EXAMS and partly because I haven't been feeling inspired enough.  However, I am feeling motivated and open minded right now because I finished my main and most important exam and I can really tune into whatever is inspiring me at the moment.
Last year I quit tumblr after the realisation it was eating my mind and my study.  I recently created a new one, mostly because I think tumblr is great for creative inspiration and it's super for keeping up with, you know, the current themes and subcultures that are most popular and interesting.  It's important to know your context if you're interested in something like photography and fashion (like I am).  However, I've been finding that lately I've been drawn towards the old rather than the new, which I guess is a funny reaction to have to becoming part of a modern website.
In fact, to my dad's horror and my own amusement, I have started listening to an old people's radio station.  If you ignore the ads for cataract surgery and the occasional bad Elvis cover, it's really delightful and it makes you feel like you're in the good old days of which you were never a part of.  Isn't it funny that we can feel nostalgic for something we never experienced?  I think that's what a big part of nostalgia is anyway, like looking at things through rose-tinted glasses.  The station is 95.7 FM if you're interested.  Here are some old songs that I really like at the moment, although I didn't hear them from the radio.


I love this because of Fred Astaire's dancing, and also the story of the song.  'Watching movies with Fred Astaire in it' is on my holiday to do list.
"I'm steppin' out, my dear,
To breathe an atmosphere
That simply reeks with class;
And I trust that you'll excuse my dust
When I step on the gas."



I saw this song on the brilliant PSA about voting for Obama over Romney.  I really hope he wins.  Anyway, Lesley Gore is so glamorous, but she is singing about not being owned by anyone because she is a strong independent woman so BAM

Like I was saying before, tumblr is an endless source of images such as these ones I found.  I think I'm most interested in the depiction of women throughout the history of the photographic image, and their interaction with the camera.

A female Lockheed employee works on a P-38 Lighting - Burbank, CA -1944

I don't know the context of this photograph!  I do like to know context.
No use having a random image.

Judy Sargent and a blonde friend stroll along lake shore, Chicago, Illinois, 1941. Photos by Charles S. Cushman

I love this one because her swimsuit reminds me one I recently bought.  It is so cute I should really post pictures of it some time.  Summer's coming!

Jean Shrimpton at Flemington Races. Derby Day, 30th of October 1965.

I was watching the news, and they were talking about how this dress was caused a stir on that day in 1965 because of her bare legs and lack of hat/fascinator.  Appalling!
I think it's important for women to learn about other women that have lived in different eras, and those such as Lesley Gore singing about independence and Jean Shrimpton making 'scandalous' fashion choices.  I love seeing what they wear and how they all behave in front of a camera.

1. source
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Happenings

Okay I only post every few weeks, but in that time everything builds up in my brain and then sort of settles there until they all fit together.
Dress and 70's magazine

This Women's Weekly from 1972 is brilliant.  I have (willingly or unwillingly) sacrificed some homework time to scan pictures from it.  Excuse the crapola scanning skills.

Grimes
Enough said?  Her hair is so god damn awesome.

Photos

Maire and I before formal.
I'm in an Asos dress, and Maire is wearing Alexander McQueen (I KNOW RIGHT)

(All photos taken by me)

Spring + Outfit Post
I call this grandma chic.  I also call it thank-goodness-there-is-sun.

Jumper - Monsoon, Shirt - Sportsgirl, Skirt - Sportsgirl, Shoes - Windsor Smith (Maire's)

Also I've been thinking about movies a lot lately.  Soundtracks, film stills and stuff.  It's funny how they all hold these connotations, and you get a certain feeling when you see a film still or hear a song from a movie.  I like that.

Clothes are great

So, I have had a break to do nothing (school and work and not being interested in anything) but today I read the latest Australian Vogue at the hairdresser and I just fell in love with clothes again.  Here is a short collection of ramblings and things I love all in the one post because I want to.

Julia Sarr-Jamois by Tamu McPherson

1.  This miumiu skirt/patchwork style/Codie Young.  I love this so much.  The skirt is JUST SO GREAT, you guys.  And I love how she's paired it with the grey tights, and those structured loafer type shoes that I usually don't really like but are perfect with this look.  You couldn't do anything else but smile in this outfit!  That sort of patch-work style is so fun but I love the fact it can be structured as well as just a simple skirt like in this photo.

Marc Jacobs Fall 2012 style.com

Carven Fall 2012 style.com

Oh and this Australian model (Codie Young) has fantastic street style.  It's quite simple, but she always looks really comfortable and warm wrapped up in layers.  Also, I wish I had her hair.

Vanessa Jackman

Vanessa Jackman

2. Willow Smith. Her pink hair is SO COOL.  I get the feeling she does whatever she wants.  I heard Will is trying to deal with the emotional stress of his kids.  Whatever, she has really cool clothes.  And I love the headlines that go with the photos, like 'From popstar to emo kid!  Willow Smith sports orange hair and porcupine bag as she dresses in angsty all-black ensemble!'

3. Designer items that are copied by cheaper brands. OK, obviously for the designer it's not so good, but for me? Well...

Fluro flower origami dress from topshop.com

Christopher Kane Spring 2012

Harmony shoes from Tony Bianco

Celine Resort 2012

You can imagine my delight when I walked in to Tony Bianco and saw an almost exact copy of the Celine shoes I have mentioned I think two times on this blog before.  My grandma kindly offered to buy them for my formal, and they are so perfect with my dress.  Yay!  As for the topshop dress, that's on my wishlist...

4. Summer/floral crowns/Dolce and Gabbana. Damn you, rookie mag and your road trip.  All the pictures of summer and meetups and icecream and flower crowns... I CAN'T EVEN.  Here are some pictures from the installation they did at Space 15 Twenty. So awesome.  I want to eat them.

Both photos from Space 15 Twenty's flickr

So as I sit here trying to soak up the sun that comes out from behind the clouds on average 3 times a week, I will cry silently and talk about flower crowns.  Sorry, here is another lovely photo :'(

Susie from sylebubble

Susie from stylebubble is so immaculately well dressed and quirky and her flower crowns are just off the scale.  I cannot talk about floral things you put on your head, though, without adding some pictures of Dolce and Gabbana's Autumn 2012 show.  Frida Kahlo would be proud.

all style.com

5. Cibo Matto/Kate Bush/The XX/Major Lazer.  "You can go for a week without love - you will die without food." And they are the wise words of Yuka Honda from 90s Japanese girl duo Cibo Matto.  Oh, my god.  Just watch this music video.  They are crazy and I love them.  I also included some other stuf that is relevant to my life and that I like.  It's my current playlist.









6.  The Olympics.  Because sometimes when we don't have to watch Australians doing boring things and not getting a gold medal, in that rare moment of peace there is diving or gymnastics.  And all is well.

A post in which appleworks paint is used to express my emotion

I saw this picture on facebook a few days ago.  The accompanying text was: 'like this photo if the person on the bottom is you lol'.  I really really hate to sound like an* ANGRYFEMINISTSAVETHEWORLD* but this is wrong on so many levels.  The top images are 'thinspo'; images created for the purpose of motivating people to be skinnier.  I know that the addition of the bottom image is supposed to be making a joke out of it, like 'OH, fuck that skinny shit. I'm just gonna eat all this junk food' but you're also sort of saying that you believe eating cake will give you fat thighs.  I am telling you right now, one piece of cake is NOT going to make your thighs any larger.  BUT THAT'S NOT EVEN THE POINT!
The point is this.  It's like you have to choose between these two people:

'that girl' VS 'NOT that girl haha'

crap 'appleworks paint' skills by me
if you think this is great you should see my friend's artistic genius on paint
watch this space
yes maire i'm talking to you

In the facebook photo, the thinspo pictures are 'that girl', and the one having a party by themselves is 'NOT that girl haha'.
OK, here is the most INCREDIBLE MIND BLOWING THING YOU WILL EVER HEAR:

'that girl' DOES NOT EXIST!

DOES NOT EXIST!
DOES NOT EXIST!
'But the photos!' you say. 'The tumblrs, instagrams, the girl at school, the girl I saw at the gym!' Really?  You're going to base someone's entire existence on 1. what they look like 2. what they tell you?  Ever considered they don't tell you everything? Ever considered that actually, you have no right to judge them and class them into a specific 'type' of person? Especially on the internet.  That's the funny thing about the internet, a person has complete control over whether or not to click 'post'. The whole stupid thing about this is that girls think skinny=healthy.  And worse, not eating=healthy.

'But slim does equal healthy!!!'

Well, I don't know if you knew this, but you can't tell whether or not someone is healthy just by looking at them.

Watch this Laci Green video for more:

You do not have to put yourself into one of the two mentioned 'types' of girl.  You can be healthy without running through forests.  You can eat cake and be healthy.  Actually, you can just eat cake.  Eat cake.
I'm not going to do some 'you're beautiful on the inside' 'everyone's beautiful' etc shit because I don't think that's the problem.  I actually hate 'everyone's beautiful' because it's like 'OOOH okay now that I'm the same as everyone else I can FINALLY stop worrying! woohoo!' Today, we have an obsession with beauty and the sometimes ridiculous social standards that are attached to the word.  Maybe that's always been the case, I don't know.  It just seems like it's reached an extremity.
Some magazines are under fire at the moment for presenting unrealistic images of women and using models that are 'too skinny'.  (~if you want to escape from this and take a nice relaxing bath in glitter and radness and girl power, visit rookiemag.com~ p.s that was not spam I seriously love Rookie) People are saying, 'oh, I wish they used real girls in their magazines'.  DOLLY Magazine already does this.  They use their readers in the magazine and have 'retouch free zones' which I think is great.
But.
You can put as many real, plus-sized, every-day, un-retouched girls in the magazine as you want and it's not going to make a difference to the way we view them.  Some may celebrate 'NORMAL GIRLS IN VOGUE!' 'REAL GIRLS MAKE A COMEBACK'. (note: real, normal... again, all we're doing is classifying one 'type' as normal and the other as abnormal.  There is no normal!) Girls will still flip through magazines.  They will look at the shoots, and they will still compare themselves to the models.  I guess after a while we would get used to looking at girls that don't have legs as long as the Yarra River, and maybe the comparison and desire to look thin would diminish.  What I'm trying to say is: it's not the magazines that need to change, it's our attitude and our awareness about this issue.  That might seem a heck of a lot harder, but it's probably easier than convincing Anna Wintour to... well, to do anything.
There is a great article written by Helen Razer about Vogue and this issue, and I think the last sentence sums up it up well.
"If Vogue aspires to make long-lasting change, then it is no longer Vogue."
Don't let magazines (or anyone, in that case) tell you how you should look or how you should feel about yourself.  You're the one with the brain, and the body.  That means you have control.

Fruitsfruitsfruits

About a weekend ago I went to see the Napoleon exhibition at the NGV.  It was pretty interesting to see Napoleon's statues get fatter as the exhibition went on.  Clearly he got a bit used to fame and fine dining (disclaimer: I know nothing about history ((Napoleon history)) (((YES I went to the exhibition whateva))) so please forgive me).  And why am I talking about Napoleon?  I don't know!  BUT at the gallery shop, this is what I found:

FRUiTS!!!! OK I knew nothing about the magazine before I bought this, but my friend changed my life by finding this collection of Japanese street style images.  So it was maybe published in 2001 but who cares the fashion is still so cute!  Here are some of my favourite images.

IDEK what that is but it's cool.

I love her sassyness and her skirt.

Backpacks and strawberries! <3

Super cute shoes.

I love the make up and hair of these girls.

He has a cow. On his t-shirt.

CUTE JAPANESE SHIT

Vivienne Westwood shoes which I will own one day.

Sailor Moon! Why not????

Super amazing skirt.

Ripped white fishnets *saves into filing box of things to do*.

Excuse that crappy images that I took with my camera which you could probably just find on the internet somewhere.

All images from Fruits - Phaidon Press.


My friend and I decided to go to Chocolate Buddha because we just needed some Japanese food after looking at all those Japanese clothes.  We shall now take this momentary fashion break to look at my lunch.  Start salivating.

I was so inspired by the converse + coloured socks thing going on in FRUiTS I decided to recreate it at home, with my sparkly converse that I'm still wearing about 2 years after I got them.  I praise Mr Chuck Taylor that the sparkles are still intact.

Speaking of sparkles (do I always somehow get on to sparkles in every post?) I bought my formal dress!  And it has sequin embellishments, that's how it relates to sparkles.  I don't think I'll put a picture up until I actually wear it, but I thought I'd tell you because I bought it from this amazing Melbourne brand called DI$COUNT.  They had a pop-up shop on the weekend and I even QUEEUEUUED (how do you spell that?) to get in.  It was well worth it, though.

Above two images by me.


Back-tracking to Asian style, an equally FRUiTful (omg so relevant) source of inspiration is k-pop videos!  I had a thing for k-pop about 2 years ago, and now I think I'm getting into it again.  Here are some of my all time k-pop favourites to finish the post.