Seasonal denial.

 Chloé, second-hand

I am currently living my life in the subdued yet warm tones of the season. Of course, the inverse nature of Australia's seasons mean that rather than running in parallel with the subtle opulence of the current fashion mood in the Northern Hemisphere, our main shopping haunts are awash with the fine cottons and saturated colour of an impending warm season.

I am a traditionalist at heart. For me, the tail-end of any year should be awash with bright-white winter skies, a biting chill upon exiting the house in the morning, and every outfit anchored with a thick, insulating pair of woolen tights. Instead, the closing months of any year in this Southern land are all about golden-tanned legs stretching from below a tiny skirt, make-up melting off in the eleven AM sunshine and finding the perfect navy-blue maillot for long sticky days at the beach.

But I am a master of seasonal denial, and plan to pretend the degrees are dropping for as long as I can in richly fragranced perfumes, fine-gauge knits in Winter's key caramel tones and legs as pale as snow.

Beautiful Badlands.

"I felt all kinds of things looking at the lights of Cheyenne, but most important I made up my mind to never tag around with a hell-bent type, no matter how in love with him I was."

Badlands, Terence Malick's 1973 tribute to murderous youthful rebellion, has burrowed itself deep into my style subconscious. So much so that the very edges of my eyes seem encrusted with the red grit of those sandy Montana plains.

Sissy Spacek's flushed ingénue Holly knows so little about the disjointed world she inhabits- her life is furnished by the gossip of trashy magazines and the mind-numbing inertia of baton twirling. That is until bad-boy garbage collector Kit shows her the true meaning of getting your hands dirty (leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, of course).

Holly is the sweetest of runaways, all strawberry blonde hair and high-buttoned naivety. A dewy mirage in the scorched wilderness. An accomplice to murder that you'd be happy to take home to your mother. As unsure of herself as she is sure of her unhinged lover, she follows him without question, hands bloodied along the way.

Sweet sundresses and frothy white blouses are the fierce antithesis of her criminal status. Everything is teamed with that tough-wearing perennial, denim. Loafers and socks complete this most perfectly innocent of disguises. Saccharine utility.

And if there is anyone that can make double-denim look positively bad-ass, it's two murderess fugitives in the badlands of Montana.

With this in mind, all I want to wear right now is breezy cotton in traditional prints, the barest of makeup and denim... with everything.

Cheap Monday, Hansel from Basel, Topshop, Benefit, Lover, Chanel, Lascivious

Clog blog.

 Clogs; Funkis, socks; H&M

Alright. I’m lazy. There you have it. As if you needed clarification considering my absence of almost a month. I disgust myself, really. Too lazy for blogging. Too lazy for today’s French class (although the promise of revising the subjonctif was indeed tempting). And, as I confessed in my first post, too lazy for high heels.
 

That is, until these pretty much perfect Funkis clogs came my way. It seems to me now that no outfit is complete without the addition of these grayscale dinosaurs, the added bonus being that their clumpy brand of cool makes the stumpy legs on top look positively Alexa-esque. They are a sure joy to walk in, too- I’ve been avoiding the bus for days just to see the perplexed faces of unsavvy bystanders, and savour the slack-jawed envy of many a clog loving Sydney girl as I clomp by.
 

In the general habit of overdressing for entirely mundane occasions, I popped on my babies for a family function with some magical H&M socks. Aunties, cousins many times removed and assorted spouses let me know that I had committed the cardinal sartorial sin of socks and sandals. Mum let me know in no unclear terms that she had spent many years working this most characteristic British tourist trait out of my Welsh stepfather, and she didn't enjoy her firstborn succumbing to it. I told them all they "just didn't get fashion". Mum told me to "get over myself". Probably wise.

My favourite reaction to what are clearly the most incredible shoes in the world, however, came from my dear father. I spent many a school holiday up North,with nothing to do but watch dodgy regional TV, replete with equally dodgy regional advertising. As soon as I told Dad about the Funkis clogs, he burst into a rousing rendition of the jingle for a questionable local tourist attraction- The Clog Barn. All together now!

 

Come to the Clog Barn for a good time

See a piece of Holland Down Under!
With our Dutch coffee house,
Bring your family along
For the best fun in Coffs Harbour!
The Clog Barn!!

 

Props to Rebecca for the genius title. The only thing I like more than my clogs... is you!

April's uniform.

Ring; H&M, lockets; 1928, watch; Burberry, cuff; Sportsgirl, slip; Target, skirt; H&M

A small snippet of today’s outfit. There is something so satisfying about the sumptuous tangibility of disparate fabrics- a silken nude slip fished from my mother’s underwear drawer and layered under a tough black leather skater skirt has been my uniform for the past few days. A requisite tangle of pendants collected over the years is the perfect safety blanket for every outfit. I will be wearing it tomorrow for good luck on the first day of my new job!

Cool, calm, collected.

 It’s so very miserable outside at the moment. Our city has been cloaked in a thick humidity. Stuck on the bus in the early mornings, everyone has a moist frosting of sweat on their necks. When the humidity breaks, it gives way to a dire drizzle that does nothing but compel all of us Sydney residents to whine about the Autumn that never quite seems to arrive. I am craving uncomplicated, sunny simplicity in this grey, suffocating Sydney. 

The video clip for Roy Orbison’s I Drove All Night captures the sun-bleached freedom I’m craving- Jennifer Connelly in all her unplucked-eyebrowed splendour, oversized denim button-downs, unaccessorised black bodysuits, and heavy leather jackets thrown over everything. I never quite got this new season obsession with sportswear until I saw her cavorting in swathes of the stuff in desert America. It's a given that a young Jason Priestly pushed my obsession with this video a little over the edge of propriety. It may be a bit eighties, but it’s all about clean lines, feeling comfy, and looking downright cool. And, if you ask me, those qualities are just about timeless.

Acne, Dr. Martens, Batiste, Timex, Topshop

Vitamin C for the sartorial soul.

Barely two weeks into flu season and I find myself at the mercy of a sandpaper throat and hacking cough. I haven’t even been blessed with the gift of a sultry, husky drawl- less Bardot and more a modern day Clint Eastwood.
 
Holed up at my parents’, too much of a baby to face the perils of illness alone, I have spent the last few days in an intolerably lazy fashion, playing up to my illness with exaggerated groans and sighs, moving only to reach for the cough syrup (decidedly less delicious than in my childhood memories), turn the pages in a battered copy of ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (nothing like aristocratic intrigue for a bit of distraction) and take sips of the seemingly bottomless glass of Berocca that my lovely Mother is wont to provide (“All you need, Lillian, is a bit of Vitamin C.”).
 
Ahh, Berocca. That effervescent beacon of health and deliciousness. Just a glimpse of the bright orange liquid, fizzing away, is enough to jolt me into a moment of health and happiness, and I have been downing it like it is going out of fashion. I remember as a child sneaking small handfuls of chewable Vitamin C tablets from the little plastic jar in the medicine cabinet. Upon discovery, my mouth frothing with sugary orange saliva, my Mother was quick to assert that, although good in small doses, too many Vitamin C tablets would “turn your skin orange”.
 
I am what you would call a Vitamin C enthusiast. I go not a morning without a big, glistening glass of fresh orange juice, and I nearly threw-up with excitement the contents of a pint glass one night upon discovering that a good friend was the granddaughter of Vitamin C pioneer Linus Pauling (seminal life moment, anyone?). And so, having my mother ply me with glass upon glass of Berocca to whip me back to health is something of a dream come true. 

Miu Miu, Isabel Marant, Hermès

The Autumn runways have given me a good sartorial dose of Vitamin C to further ease my sickly ways- pops of bright, cheer inducing orange littered the collections, plastering my face with a cheery smile (when it wasn’t demented into the scowl that constant coughing fits demand).

 A good lick of bright orange lipstick- Morange by MAC- makes for some seriously juicy lips. Some almost-garish platforms by John Galliano will brighten your day every time you look down. And do I really need an excuse to put up this gloriously gaudy YSL Arty Ovale ring?

Some small doses of Vitamin C for the sartorial soul.

Ice ice, baby.

I write this from beneath three gloriously cosy layers of downy duvet, plush blanket and gaudy quilt. My tootsies are ensconced in some gloriously wooly bed socks and I don’t plan to emerge from my toasty cave unless it is to make a mug of milky Earl Grey. The March chill has finally started to make itself comfortable.

The colder seasons are my favourite. I love black-tighted liquorice legs and short skirts with long jackets. I love the warmth of bad takeaway coffee in a paper cup between my palms and the smell of cigarette smoke carried on chill winds. I love the way the city is reduced to a bleak grayscale, the way everything is frozen and sharp at its edges.

 Chanel

 Autumn’s offerings from Chanel, like Karl Lagerfeld’s idea of shipping in a (very real and presumably very, very cold) iceberg from Scandinavia, were an intriguing mix of icy and kooky. The tense frigidity of Wintery bite could be felt in thick layers of Arctic white adorned with strings of glassy accessories. There was something of the slightly unhinged ice maiden , too- the models bundled in swathes of luxurious fabrics, dressed to the nines despite sub-zero temperatures.

Above all else, this drop in temperature has occurred in perfect harmony with the release of Foals’ new single Spanish Sahara. The video clip, with its crystalline seas of fragmented ice floes and endless shades of gray, is a beautiful window to outside’s Winter when tucked up snug in bed.