A Good Egg

Isn’t it lovely when you catch up with someone you haven’t seen in years and it doesn’t seem like any time has passed at all? You just pick up where you left off, even if it is four long years ago, and find – unexpectedly – that the things you’ve been thinking about, reflecting on and enjoying, well, this kindred spirit is right there with you.

A sand, sun and surf-filled afternoon on Balmoral Beach and Kirribilli – probably the Sydney most people think about when you mention the city.

Looking for whales (unsuccessful).

Waxing lyrical about kings and cabbages, music (the National), television (Mad Men, 30 Rock), books (D.H. Lawrence, Ian McEwan), politics, hipsters, vampires, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and London, life, love and everything in between.

I even got a little sunburnt.

Dieppa Restrepo

Ankle-twisting footwear aside, for work, errands or lolling about the house, a girl needs stylish, elegant yet comfortable footwear.

For my next duvet day, I would like these please…

Photos from here.

Gerda Taro

This woman is training for war, and wearing fabulous stacked heel oxfords while doing so.

Taken by Robert Capa‘s girlfriend Gerda Taro, who was killed tragically in 1937 at the age of 26 as she covered the Spanish Civil War.

Happy weekend, all – I’m off to Sydney for a wedding, a birthday and some warmer, brighter weather!

Image taken from here.

Republican militiawoman training on the beach outside Barcelona, August 1936

Clogs

Possibly not my most sensible purchase given the heel height of 4″ and the toe platform of 1.5″.

And in all honesty, I shall probably spend more time admiring them than actually taking them for a walk.

But given there is plenty of scope for shrewd, calm and level-headed decision-making elsewhere in life, a rational shoe, is a boring shoe.

Bring on the fabulous, the ridiculous and the potentially ankle-twisting footwear!

Clogs purchased from here (one of my favourite etsy stores).

Sunday Girl

Sundays are for gardens. And for traipsing down garden paths. And tea (in this case, organic chai; I occasionally stray into right-on, hipster territory). And yummy things to eat (a Chinese sesame-sprinkled doughnut and a home-made Greek almond crescent this time). And sunshine. And reading (Françoise Gilot’s account of her Life with Picasso). And revelling in the cool green grass beneath one’s feet.

Toasty Textiles

The sun came out yesterday.  Excitedly, I piled out, with my cup of tea, some needlework and various bits and bobs, for a leisurely al fresco day, so my chilled limbs could soak up the well-missed sunshine and my skin could absorb some Vitamin D.

Approximately ninety minutes later, I became aware that the pleasant warmth had deteriorated into a vague discomfort.  I realised then that there were distinctive tan lines where my shorts ended and my thighs and arms had turned an unhealthy-looking lobster pink.  I scrambled out of the direct sunlight and spent the rest of the afternoon underneath the shade of the verandah.  A mistake to think that the harsh Australian sun is anything like its gentler European cousin.

On the other side of the world, the Toast Winter 2009/10 catalogue is out.  And reminds me of the snug, bright glow of October days in East London, spent tramping through piles of red, orange and gold leaves while swaddled against the oncoming chill in soft, warm woollens, a scarf artfully wound around one’s neck and a thick coat.

Ms Bradshaw

As gay as pink suede!
~Carrie Bradshaw, Season 2, Sex and the City

The kooky queen-of-all-things-vintage and empress-of-needless-boy-related-melodrama has certainly made me look at my fuschia suede Chie Mihara’s in a new light. The bright raspberry colour, the solid, ergonomic block heel, the gentle scalloped edges, the plump toe… certainly the lines hark back to those of shoes of the 1930s and 1940s.

But gay?

Of course I could see a certain type of man flouncing about in them. But I could see this man also flouncing about in any number of of shoes which I owned – the black pumps with a leather bolero frill, the bright red wedges, the slightly chunky shiny mustard coloured bright gold buckled brogues…

Ah.  I’m seeing a certain trend here.  All these shoes are, shall we say, of a flamboyant variety.  Which does not, in any way, exclude sassy, glamourous girls from loving and wearing them.

Or perhaps I just have a wardrobe full of gay men’s footwear!

Conceptually speaking

Ever since I was lucky enough to catch ‘The House of Viktor & Rolf’ exhibition at the Barbican in London last year, I’ve been quite taken by this pair of Dutch designers. They started their design life as conceptual artists, and still bring a sense of irreverent humour and offbeat intellect to their clothing collections. It is the ideas underpinning their collections which I quite adore: the cataclysmic black/colour explosion that was Flower Bomb; the layered clothing of Russian Doll; the more subtle themed collection based on the Dutch custom of bronzing a newborn baby’s shoes.  This is fashion as high art.  And any designer who counts Tori Amos and Tilda Swinton as muses is all right with me!

Apparently, Viktor & Rolf called their latest collection (which recently showed at Paris fashion week) ‘Credit Crunch Couture’ and noted how the ‘hacked into’ nature of the tulle symbolised an attack on excess.  A collection to express and combat the gloom caused by the global financial crisis, and maybe even raise a wry smile?  I’d say the boys succeeded.

I’m an Amish kindergarten lumberjack and I’m okay…

APC Madras Autumn/Winter 2009/10.  Part Scandinavian lumberjack.  Part 1970′s kindergarten mum.  A little bit Amish.  And French insouciance all through and through.  So much more lovely than Madras Spring/Summer 2009/10 which was all primary colours, monkey prints and romper suits. This season is truer to the main APC line.

Excitingly, I’ve discovered a lovely Melbourne store which stocks Madras.  Now all I have to do is work out my budget…

Life Lesson #218: Don’t do a Tantalus

No matter how much you covet, desire, lust after, fall in love with what you perceive as the most beauteous, the most perfect, the most glorious of footwear, if the shoes don’t fit, leave them be.

In a irrational fit of longing and befuddled by the animal print, the velvety touch of pony skin, the artfully dishevelled leather bow, the delicate curves which make the wearer feel simultaneously like a ballet dancer with tiny, delicate footsies, Audrey Hepburn and a Leftbank Parisienne (not mutually exclusive things, admittedly), I purchased these lovelies.  Which are half a size too small and give me huge blisters on my heels and my toes within an hour of traipsing about in them.

I’ve tried stuffing them with wet newspaper, placing plastic bags filled with water in them before putting them in the freezer and even paid for them to be professionally stretched.  All for naught.  Pony skin, it would seem, does not stretch like leather does.

And now they sit in my wardrobe, tantalising out of wear.  As happened to Tantalus, the rather nasty ancient Greek king whose eternal punishment was to stand below vines and their bounty of grapes which receded from his grasp each time he reached towards them to quench his thirst and hunger.

I wonder if there was any way to encourage one’s feet to shrink?