Rodarte heels

putting the hook back into hooker heels

three cheers for rodarte!

photo from jak & jil (i think?)

moustache

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Matisse on a Monday

La chute d'Icare

The fall of Icarus

La tristesse du roi

The sadness of the king

Polynésie, la mer

Polynesia, the sea

You don't need eyes to see if someone has a heart of glass

The mystery jets are so fantastic, I love their music & their silly but charming videos. But more than anything I love their lyrics

"You wrote your number on my hand

But it came off in the rain"

Lingua Franca

This post on Fashion Robot really got me thinking. I spend my life switching between 3 different languages, so of course language is something I wonder about all the time. It's quite amazing really, how language has developed, and how it is always evolving...

My mother tongue is French, but I have learnt all sorts of languages apart from that...to varying levels of competence! Sometimes I will think in those languages, but usually I don't speak in them. With my kindergarten best friend we speak a mangled tangle of english and french, but always always stick to one language when in company, because it is rude to say things that others don't understand (yeah, okay when we were horrible 13 year-olds we went around insulting people in front of their faces in a language they didn't understand, but gosh darn thank goodness those days are over!).

I do really appreciate however that some languages are far more developed in certain aspects than others, and I find it really useful to switch language to express a particular idea (this is why my franglais conversations with my friend are so great, we flip language whenever one is more expressive). Some words exist in some languages, and are completely absent in others. For example, I wrote "une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps" as the title to a post a while ago. I have no idea how to explain this properly in english! It says one swallow does not make it springtime, which sort of means that one small thing does not indicate a greater change. I wasn't trying to be cute (i don't ever want to be cute!), especially since this blog is more of a personal diary rather than some weird attempt to show off, more trying to document my feeling most accurately. Other lost-in-translation examples in French are "n'importe quoi" and "tu me manques". I always bite my tongue when I want to say these things around english-speaking aussies!

I think the reason everyone in fashion blogs is obsessed with French is because of the nation's historical link to fashion. Hosting arguably the most influential and creative of all fashion weeks today, France has led fashion trends for centuries...even in the time of Jane Austen Europe looked to France for trends. Nowadays, many of the most famous and well-established fashion houses are based in France: Chanel, LV, Dior, YSL, Lanvin, Hermes. So it isn't much of a surprise that the fashion-obsessed will be drawn to a language which Coco Chanel used to present her first collections, and that today Carine Roitfeld uses to direct French Vogue.

Of course, everybody has all sorts of preconceptions about languages, most of which are ridiculous and very judgemental, but also very funny. My friends say French is very sexy and romantic, but really it is a language that is very guttral, with its throaty r's, and contains a disproportionately large number of swearwords (which might I add are much more commonly used than in english, so if you hear a french person saying "what an f-ing bastard!" about a policeman, or "oh shit oh crap oh damn" when they lose their keys, it is quite normal)! I think the sexiest and most melodic language is Italian, but this again makes my Italian friends laugh in surprise.

People always complain about german sounding horrible, but HAVE YOU HEARD A GERMAN SPEAKING ENGLISH?? It's the best accent! really lovely.

If somebody is being obnoxious and trying to show off by dropping words of another language into their speech, I think it is better to laugh at them (quitely) rather than get angry. I used get really annoyed at how obnoxious people were, but really there's no point in being angry. After all, most people will see how silly this somebody is, they are causing themselves enough damage as it is. Laughing is all you can do! (and hope it is a phase people grow out of)

But what's most impressive is that there are people who manage to sound ridiculous and obnoxious in only one language! No need to rely upon misused French to sound silly, for an example just read anything by Germaine Greer, or anything by literary theory academics!

Painting: Chop Suey by Edward Hopper

the shows begin!

it's time for alexander wang!

love how it's grunge but fresh and summery, trashy 80s but still chic, both body con & art deco

photos from style.com

Katharine

"never complain, never explain"

Katharine Hepburn

Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps

Hmph, down in the southern hemisphere, it's still winter! And to think that only a few weeks ago I was basking in this weather:

Well, too bad, at least there are only 4 days until spring! but good ol' zeus will probably keep the weather blustery wuthering heights style for the next while, so I'm rugging up in monochrome...

speaking of monochrome, I found this photo from Garance Dore really fresh & inspiring...amapp triblend + monochrome evening jewellery = a whole lotta rosa-love.

Gimme a gimmel

Here's a gimmel ring. What on earth is a gimmel ring? It's a ring made of three interlocking rings, but worn as one, which I love, because it's kind of like having a secret room hidden behind a bookcase.

This one is from the victoria and albert museum, and I would put up a link to the website, but I don't know how!

It's just such a lovely testament to love: full of symbolism and meaning. The hands "mani in fede" are a popular symbol of love, the interlocked hoops suggest an everlasting bond, and that diamond heart is pretty damn obvious symbolism! The inscription is a quote from the marriage ceremony, that says "My beginning and my end. What God has joined together let no man put asunder".

I really like how meaningful this ring is, wedding rings nowadays don't have anywhere near as many layers of meaning this one does. Seriously, this is the caviar of rings, compared to your garden variety brussel-sprout diamond ring in a gold band -yeurk! I think it shows how people in olden days (1600-50 germany to be precise) invested a lot of meaning into material things. Today everything is mass produced and disposable, which really makes me sad. I don't want to consume all the time without valuing what I own.

My wedding is a looooonnnng waaaaay awaaaaay (hehehe I'm no child bride!), but in the distant future I think I would like to have this kind of wedding ring. And for now, I just want to keep the principle of surrounding myself with objects that are meaningful and beautiful, not just any old junk.

Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the gimmel ring! *applause*

Empire of the sun - walking on a dream

oh man, I love this! The song is really catchy, in a trancy, vogueing in the car kind of way.
But I love the video too...probably because I love Shanghai to death, but also because the singers don't take themselves too seriously. At first I thought it was pretentious, and a bit offensive, since they clearly don't know a huge amount about chinese culture beyond the cliches, but then I realised that it shows a slightly tongue-in-cheek interest in China, which is actually pretty cool!
It sort of reminds me of the film Marie-Antoinette, where Sofia Coppola combined new wave and post punk music with a totally incongruous era. And that suits Shanghai too: a city full of contrasts, a chaotic jubilant jumble of everything imaginable.