Thrifted 70's shirt, criminal damage jeans, Kurt Geiger boots.
But that's not really what I wanted to show you guys.... CHECK OUT MA TENT!!!!!!!!1111!11ONE!!
I made it with a few things that I picked up in camden, plus a few sheets/flags that were lying around. It's so mystical and cosy, and pretty much my favourite place to be, and I just sit in there and burn joss stix. Totally unproductive, but I feel like I'm gaining spiritual knowledge and valuable life experience which will allow me to talk to people with blue hair.
Its nearly Christmas (or Winterval, as happy atheists would say) and I've compiled a wishlist of pieces that if I owned, I would always look good:
Black Leather Biker - Burberry, Plum Velvet Blazer - Zadig&Voltaire, Bobble Hat - Animal (though I really prefer hand knitted varieties because they are more interesting). Fedora - Rag & Bone, Feather Headress (or any headdress!) - Rouge Pony @ Asos Marketplace, Skull scarf - Alexander McQueen, Jumper with shoulder pads - Bitching&Junkfood @ Urban Outfitters, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WATCHES IN THE WORLD!!!! - Z&V, Statement Feather Necklace - Isabel Marant, Raglan sleeved top - ebay, Blouse - UO, Fishnet top - darksideclothing.com, Oversized top - youreyeslie.com, Envelope Clutch - River Island
Insect ring - Kenneth Jay Lane @ net-a-porter, Day dress - Topshop, Crop top - Topshop, Maxi dress - River Island, Bayswater Satchel - Mulberry, Rock and Roll vest - Amplified, Suspenders and stockings - La Senza, Skinny Jeans - Levi, Fur Coat - Michael Kors (with or without Gaga), Leather Shorts - Alexander Wang, Cashmere socks - Pringle, Full circle skit (which you can barely see, I'm sorry) - Topshop, Galaxy leggings - blackmilkclothing.co.uk, knee high boots - Kurt Geiger, Hello Kitty Vans - Vans.com, Black Wedges - New Look, Pom Pom Carpet Slippers - Vava for Topshop, socks and brouges like iwantyoutoknow.co.uk wears.
Friday, 2 December 2011
PARTICULAR BRAGS: Vintage doc martins from the 80's. DAMN STRAIGHT!! and free monster energy t-shirt. Yes, that is right free.(Good when you're a student despite my aversion to Monster)
Abysmal outfit posted. I sort of stopped dressing like this a few years ago, when I realised I always look too happy in photos to be an emo kid. Howevs, I've been getting relatively nostalgic about the closeness I used to share with other misunderstood waifs for many years. Nothing is quite the same.
It's clearly been floating around in my subconsious since I displaced myself to London, drunken freshers photo's point out:
Its probably wrong to miss the days when I drew stuff like this,
and covered everyhing with graphics like this:
So I pulled together a little number that would have been cool in 2004. I sincerely swear to dress better (AND POST IT! I ADMIT I HAVE BEEN NEGLECTFUL)
For my Modo Soc. this years show is themed 'Olympic'. Im working on a (relatively small) collection, and I'm drawing on 1980s American sportswear but updating it to a Britsh street cool, as we have the 2012 games. I just thought I'd share some photos I have been drawing my aesthetic from, and I'll let you know how everything goes!
Most images are vintage sports ads, Michael Cera in Juno and Joey Essex TOWIE both emit a sporty cool, Kate Moss from Vogue and Medham Kirschoff for Topshop are the current English vibes I'm drawing on and the Prada AW'11 swimhats are inspirational by udating sportswear to high fashion.
You may have seen my submission, but I wanted to write a little more about it here.
When moving into uni halls, I moved out of a bedroom that I had put time and effort and love and all of my personality into, and was allocated a generic blank box, complete with mass ordered, characterless furniture (have I ever mentioned I despise cheap-looking pine fittings?).
My uni room wasn't home when I moved in, and my old room very much was. Sanctimonious, beautiful and a culmination of many inspirations.
I spent weeks mood-boarding, after years spent pulling and storing beautiful pages out of interior magazines Vogue and Stella. The floor was chosen, a beautiful ebony false wood, and I spent two days painting over the previous owner's colour choice. I wanted an industrial, post apocalyptic renaissance feel, because I'm obsessed with fantastical escape, yet live in dystopia. The grey walls, with gold splatters, weren't exactly how I wanted them in reality, but in my mind they were peeling golden plaster; the Russian palaces after the revolution, broken and decaying but steeped in lavish indulgence.
Hidden beauty and interest had to be incorporated. What is the point of something that isn't beautiful? So I used Russian dolls as jewellery storage, vintage bags to store odds and ends, and swathed everything else in beautiful fabric, hiding the functional reality under a veil of sparkles and flowers.
a shelf.
The golden accents
A belly dancing belt to cover the book spines
Now my uni room feels lived in. It is still very neat because I deal a lot better with order and a blank space, sort of like a dramatic black box to create in, but now I feel more at home here. The institutionalised feel continues to linger, and there is a funny smell that I need to buy incense to overcome, but slowly but surely I have added little touches of myself into my new room.
It leaves me in a very interesting state of transience. When visiting home it doesn't feel like home any more - it is the same, yet different. On my return, I'm not arriving at a safe place, I'm coming into an rented room with a fixed leaving date. Not going to get too comfortable!
Perhaps it is a good thing. After all, with no place to be tied down to one is filled with a sort of wanderlust, a yearning to achieve and create a something new, something influential yet still mine. However, I can't help thinking that if I was living in more of a wretched hole, like some of the halls I've seen, it would be harder to let go of the past and move into the future. If I was in one giant, breakable party house, would I ever want to move into the future? Or would I happily squander for eternity. Fearfully, I think the answer to that question might be yes!
I was pleased to read them, because many people look upon fashion and politics, or fashion and anything 'intelligent', as incompatible. I disagree and thin that both fashion and politics are interesting but that the politics of fashion is even more so.
Influential people all over the world are interested in fashion. How can I claim this? Well, rich people are influential, and only rich people can afford designer clothes. If there wasn't a need for style when becoming influential, then the entire fashion industry would be non-existent.
I think that fashion is more than just peacocking. clothes say something about a person, something about what they stand for, and I hate it when image is seen as superfluous to 'intellectuals' with an agenda.
The power dressing of the '80s showed women to be professional and adaptable to their masculine roles; ikat prints symbolise an intelligent traveller, and an asda t-shirt with yesterdays breakfast on it, because you "don't care about fashion" portrays the student who believes they're cleverer and more powerful than an entire government.
When people judge others for caring too much about clothes and make up, they should think about how the image is often more powerful than the message; an iconic symbol is Che Guevara, but his message is often forgotten in the market stalls selling mass produced flags.
And even if you don't have a political message, your image can make you influential. Just look at reality TV stars!
So, lets all to St Pauls, but only after our manicure!
We could have this manicure! Because I LOVE the nails from Made in Chelsea!!!
Being in London has made me feel SUPER BRITISH and SUPER HIPSTER so most of the time I look like this:
Also the beauty of webcams means that my pictures are not beautiful, but are quicker to upload than with my nice camera. SOZ :'(
So yeah... I'm bored of hipsters. (Crazy, I know right?) I literally dont think you can live here without a pair of "geniously ironic" galsses, but everyone I've met is a genius, so I suppose it is fine.
I've got totally new style inspiration, and I'm going to quickly moodboard it here, but I might put a detailed one up if I can find a scanner, although I might look a bit like a Tavi fangirl because everything is handdrawn as all my magazines are back home.
^^^WOAH sorry about the long sentences there, sometimes I talk without breathing and I think that is a pretty good depiction.
Kate and Alexa and Peaches and the beautiful famous english girls that frequent Camden Town and expensive nightclubs and will forever look sleazy and studenty and young.
Mary Portas, because her shop has just opened on Oxford Street, and everyone in London always looks so polished but edgy. I like that polished but edgy look. Do it with kitten heels and shift dresses.
I hear Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road' is being made into a film? Thats cool because everyone is casually undone, and likes beat poetry and politics and being clever and wordy, and looking deliberately scruffy-inteligent. But we're British, so add to their style blazers, tweed and Docs.
Also loving the nails on Made In Chelsea, and keep copying them. Rainbow pastels? YES.
I promise promise promise to write some super awesome things soon, but I'm so busy!!
So have fun with this picture!! (I know it's old, but my camera has only just made it's way to the computer... Lazy beast!)
Its a golden phoenix. Only when I can have glitter injected into my skin will there be any permanence.
Dyed my hair pink, because I don't have to have a real job for three years.
It doesn't look that pink, and it is more of a reddy pink, but it is better than that. When I unpack my camera, IN MY NEW STUDENT HOUSE I'll show you. In fact, I'll probably have lots to show you! (can you tell I'm excited?)
Also, I made that gorge blue stole you see in the picture earlier :) LUSH, and it only cost about £3 so screw you the throw company!
A la prada of course:
DIY all the way, for all of your fashion needs. xxx
Just got back from Reading Festival (for those of you that don't know, it is a music festival in the town of Reading, rather than a week of literature. Ho ho bad jokes.) It has left me shoeless, and rather than take the time to clean festival mud from my boots, I thought I'd come inside and blog about the experience. Besides I have blisters on every single one of my toes, so sitting down is the prefered modus operandi at the moment.
Reading Festival isn't the first festival I have been to, but it is definitely the most commercial. As well as this, you cannot be a cool UK teen without having attended this event (or the sister Leeds festival) it would seem, as the average age of people attending was about 17.
These cool kids are loving Reading.
This meant there was a significant amount of police and security present, which personally made me feel more unsafe and worried about getting arrested for things like climbing the fire towers and urinating in public than at smaller fests. I mean, festivals are pretty much the safest places in the world aren't they?
People at festivals are totally cool. They just do what they want, chat to anyone, share anything and dress up however they want (although most people stuck to hotpants, UV face paint or animal onsies). A trip back from the portaloo's which should have taken 10 minutes took me about 3 hours, because of chatting to random people and being given free things. That is how the world should be all the time... and I don't get why it isn't :(
gettin' arrested for dressin' as a monkey
The camping is a wicked part of festival life, a proper 24 hour party, but the music is better! I don't get people who sit around the campsite after the arena is open????
Like, one morning, there wasn't much we wanted to see until about 2 hours after the arena opened, so we stumbled into the alternative tent and stayed there watching some SICK standup comedy for about an hour. Honestly, comedy in the morning and it's difficult to leave. I would recommend Daniel Sloss.
Some of my other highlights were Metronomy, and Cage the Elephant... but anything that was playing in the NME tent was amazing.... OMFG I NEARLY TOUGHED ALICE GLASS!!!FGFHTGHRHFH.... haha but YEAH the NME have really got it going on.
Metronomy
My particular fave NME moment was probably Panic! at the Disco. Did I forget to mention that I used to be the BIGGEST emo fangirl ever???
LOOK I was really emo!
Panic brought it all back. We kind of wandered over there as a bit of a filler, like: "oh Panic! used to be good, lets check 'em homeboys", then walking to the front of the stage I got a little excited shiver, like I'd just swallowed glitter butterflies... and then Panic! exploded. It does help, I suppose, that they are a beautiful band, but they are also brilliant performers. Brendan Urie was all over that stage, and their set was perfect for a festival, playing lots of there old stuff for the people that loved them way back, but integrating it with their new stuff, which was a beautiful plug, and I might be a fan again and buy the album etc (because lets face it, Pretty Odd was just that).
Muse were pretty good too... litterally the biggest crowd I've ever stood in, and they had lights and lazers, and they know how to do good stadium rock, but they're really only getting a token mention here, because, and yes I'll admit it, I got a bit - bored. Muse are so perfect when they perform now it's like there is no need for an audience; I stopped listening to Muse after 'Absolution', so their performance was a bit lost on me. I could have created the same effect at home with itunes on visualiser.
On the other hand, My Chemical Romance made me cry. (Look, I already told you I was a huge emo fangirl, but if you don't want to hear my in depth analysis of their set and the direction I think 'Danger Days' has taken, stop reading now, and just watch this video my friend Cal made)
Opening with Na Na Na was totally expected. BUT STILL TOTALLY AWESOME! MCR live have an awesome energy that just makes peoples fists pump. It's so beautiful. They even make you jump around a bit when watching them on TV (according to my dad, who was pretending I'd let him come with me all weekend - thank you BBC). Their older stuff had this punky energy to it that the Danger Days album brought back after the more queeney elements from The Black Parade, which is great, as they have such energy. Gerard struts around the stage like he owns it; he was so camp, but it so worked for Reading becuse you need a massive performace to win over a festival crowd, who might not be familiar with your music. Although some of the emotion was lost from songs like Helena, the crowd was never lost, and the atmosphere was absolutley buzzing.
Gerard Way and Ray Toro
The best bit of the set from my point of view was Dead! For some reason everyone went absolutely WILD, I think it was because most people have heard the Black Parade album, and Dead! is one of the few that translate brilliantly to a live performance because it loud and angry and fast.
I was hoping for a few more of the older songs, because 'Revenge' is the best album in the world, and some of the songs from 'Bullets' are still so raw if you are lucky enough to hear them performed. However, they stuck mainly to the new album, and it was still awesome. I love the new album, because they have gone back to their roots, as they promised original fans they would, but they still kept the conceptual fantasy of the 'Black Parade'. The brilliance of the new direction that MCR have taken is that they have managed to bypass the fame that encompasses other bands to keep their raw energy and anger; it is sometimes hard for a 'punk' band to keep old fans happy when they are living in a celebrity world with no pain or anger. My Chemical Romance were born out of a storm of anger over the attack on the twin towers, and they have recreated that pain by creating a comic book landscape in which to place themselves. Crazy, yes, but brilliant also.
Personally, I can totally connect to 'Danger Days' in the same way I could connect to 'Revenge'. Back when I was 14 and angsty and angry at the world and love and feeling all tween and misundertood, My Chemical Romance felt that too. And they sang about it. 'The Black Parade' is full of confused feelings, the band became a household name, couldnt feel angry any more, and as a fan I was a bit lost. But sometimes, when life left me a bit lost, that was the only album I needed. Now, 'Danger Days' is here. Destroya, Vampire Money and Planetary are full of that angsty rage, but it is more refined. It is a more revolutionary rage, a changeable rage. Also, there is a sense of growing older and lost youth in the album, a feeling which I can totally relate to. I imagine the band were nostalgic about their roots, finding it difficult to have the same pain as when they were releasing bullets, and falling under criticism from fans and the media for the black parade. That nostalgia is verbalised best in 'The Kids from Yesterday'. On stage MCR said it was their "favourite song on the album" so it is obviously poignant for them, but it is also poignant for me, becasue I'm leaving my childhood and moving on to university. Like MCR I'm growing up and moving away from my 'Revenge', and I can totally understand Danger Days.
Did I mention Brian May arrived? And did We Will Rock you with them?
When there was a slight groan from the crowd as they opened into s/c/a/r/e/c/r/o/w I couldn't understand it. It was a brilliant song from a wonderful set, by an amazing band. I loved their performance, and I love their music, and I think that the future looks so bright for My Chemical Romance. Just watching one live performance can ignite a lasting passion for that band, and their reading performance was definitely one to remember. I'm so glad I was there.
