Pretty suprise

A funny thing happened involving a parakeet the other day. Funny enough to make me diverge from the fashion focus of this blog. He was totally colour-blocking before it was cool anyway...

Republished below are a series of emails.

Day 1: The parakeet arrives

Mal was taking photos of a finch in the park and he figured it used to be someone's pet so he called me to ask how to catch it.
I told him to throw a shirt over it.
He took it home and called me to ask if he should just let it fly around his apartment.
I told him to put it in a dark box with food and water
He told me he is going to keep it as a pet and wants to buy an antique finch cage to put it in.
He sent me some photos of the bird.
I sent him an email telling him the bird is not a finch but a parakeet.
So now he has a pet parakeet.
It's cute.

Day 2: The drama unfolds

Mal called me last night as he was walking home to tell me about how happy he was to have a new pet.
When he got home he could not find him.
He'd let him out of the box when he went to work, and although he'd been happily chewing through his computer cables when he checked on him at lunch, he was now nowhere to be found.
I told him to look under the fridge, on top of the cupboard and in the toilet bowl.
I told him to see if the gap under the door could fit a bird.
He told me he possibly could have got out an air vent if he had pushed it open. We weren't sure if he would have been able to do this.
I told him to look under all his clothes.
Mal was disappointed as the parakeet had pooed on the only thing he didn't want it to poo on. Still could not find it anywhere.
We decided it probably had pushed its way out through the vent.
I told Mal not to be sad. I said he made it strong enough to go on and continue with its life outside the apartment.
I was worried he would find it dead months later in his hiking shoe. I was worried it had electrocuted itself chewing through cables.
Mal was very upset and decided he would have to get another parrot to replace it.

Just before lunch Mal messaged me to say the bird was back.
He thinks it had gone to sleep inside his hiking pack.
He has now put it inside an upturned laundry basket like I suggested yesterday.

The face of androgyny

I saw a great article on Style.com about whether gender neutral clothes were the future of fashion. I love a thought provoking generalisation as much as the next person and it got me thinking. I cast my mind back to when I was a fashion hungry 20-somthing, bored at my desk job, and became addicted to a little blog called Bryan Boy. Fast forward four years and BB has a Marc Jacobs bag named after him... way to make a girl feel like an underachiever... But insecurities aside, what I loved about BB's blog was the way he wore girls clothes. He made them look good, probably helped by the fact that he has a natural affinity with styling. Seriously I would look at his little home fashion shoots, that funnily enough seemed to be shot all over the world, and would be struck by clothes envy every time. I wanted to buy his outfits more than most I saw styled in magazines. And yet he has no breasts, hips or vagina. So what do you make of them apples anonymous advertising executives??? Silence... so I thought. Androgyny looks like a winner to me.

Celebrities sell, don't they?

Ahh celebrity collaborations. They sound so good to the PR people. "Celebrities, everyone loves celebrities!" They think all they need to do is make that connection between a brand and a celebrity and zap. Instant sales. If only...

The thing is celebrity love is not really love. It's more a voyeuristic fascination. Sure we might like some celebrities. We might think some would make great friends, mothers, sisters, brothers and lovers. But the ones we love the most in a newsworthy sense are the ones that make us shake our heads while simultaneously boosting our self esteem. "Thank god. Thank god I'm not Lindsay Lohan," we think, even with the knowledge that she has lots and lots of money. Or at least used to.

And because of this, the celebrities that gain the most in terms of newsworthiness and magazine circulation figures are the ones that are a lot more risky when it comes to deciding whether to allow them anywhere near your brand.

Take Lindsay, dear old girl. Cast your mind back to 2009. Remember when she was made artistic advisor for Emanuel Ungaro? Remember how Ungara himself, who sold the fashion house in 2005, came out and said "Lindsay Lohan's collaboration was a disaster. I am furious but I can't do anything about it. Ungaro is in the process of losing its soul". Yeah, quite something to make someone say their namesake creation has lost its soul. Might not want to put that on your CV Linds.

But it's not her fault. I'm sure the girl loves fashion, probably in the same way I do; with no basis of studied knowledge, talent or experience. She just likes woolly materials and stretchy things and shiny shiny glittery and heels!!! Oh my god sweet leathery heels. I digress... But it's easy to get carried away when it comes to fashion. I challenge anyone to turn it down the offer to collaborate with a fashion brand without daydreaming about the awesomeness of getting to play with a whole lot of designers and a glitter gun.

But Lindsay was like a Middle Eastern country; very unstable. She wasn't on the right side of celebrity love to make people forget the fact that she doesn't have any knowledge of fashion. So when they heard of the collaboration it created more of a "What the fuck?" than a "Hurrah!" thought. Hence the resulting statements about the brand losing its soul, because, well, it just seemed so damn ridiculous. A brand with a soul and direction would not do something so crazy.

But celebrity collaborations can and do work. Take the latest collaboration between Australian brand Wheels and Doll Baby and Dita Von Teese, she of the nipple tassels. It works because the brand suits Dita (50s rockabilly, vavavoom sweaters and nipped in waists.). So the resulting collaboration is going to be loyal to the brand's direction and won't alienate the customers who love it. There's a good chance Wheels and Doll Baby's customers are fans of Dita too, because she has such a similar style. You could easily imagine them pouring over photos of Dita looking all coquettish and vampy in a cleavage hugging cardigan and then going to Wheels and Doll Baby to find a similar style.

I think that's the best kind of celebrity collaboration: when the celebrity and the brand suit each other, when it just makes sense and doesn't jar. But sadly, it's probably not the kind of collaboration that will make it into the news. Not unless your celebrity is photographed throwing up the two bottles of champagne they drunk at the launch party that is... now that's worth a small headline at least...

Pyjama days

So you know how in the winter-ish half of the year you can spend a lot of time holed up inside, watching episode after episode of some US show that the Australian free TV stations refuse to spend any money on and then when they do finally acquire it as the filler in some big package deal they show two episode at 11pm on a Wednesday and then dump it? Yeah. Well anyway, suffice to say there is a lot of couch time. But what to wear on said couch? Yes some people wear pyjamas. These are the people who visually appear a little "crusty," a touch "dead-skin cell coated," or Hugh Hefner-ish. In the early naughties fuzzy, fruit-tingle colured Juicy Couture velour tracksuits filled this need. And at petrol stations across the US we got paparazzi photos of celebs bending over and exposing their plastic surgeon's butt fillers, winking between baby blue velour. A "Kiss This", embroidered like an anal speech bubble just below the waistband at the rear. Or for those butts with less to say, a simple star as a visual aid to highlight it.
Thank freaking god Missoni's pyjama style autumn 2011 ready-to-wear range has grown the fuck up.
It's pyjama-wear for ladies, that is, shirts under oversize ice-cream coloured knits. Floor-skimming unfinished trench coat style jackets in faded tweed-like material and something that looks like it may once have been used as a picnic blanket and python for those who step out somewhere fancy when they do a corner store milk and chips dash.
There are wooly shawls trimmed with trippy yellow fur, which looks like it's enjoying the morning after an acid-trip.
Tiny belts hold together huge billowing pants. It's almost grandma-style pyjama wear really. With everything longer and looser but well finished, with nice lipstick and a little hat.
And little girl colours. They remind me a bit of when you were finger painting as a kid and trying to make the prettiest colours you could but you didn't know how to mix them and so some of them slipped and skidded their way into "unsettling green" territory. They are saccharine but with a little salt chucked in for good measure. mmmm

When colour is sooo f***ing good

Winter is here. Or in fashion land it is anyway, in Sydney it's actually summer and I spend most of my time wondering if the 35-degree-plus days are going to stop or if I'm going to be forced to buy a fan for my tiny tiny room. One night I was actually driven to getting out of my sweat-soaked bed to lie on the fake wood floor in the hope that it would be cooler. Didn't make for a great night's sleep, need I add.
Sometimes in can be unappealing to look at winter fashions when it's so hot. All the fur and wool and thickness and fuzziness just makes you feel hot and itchy. Blah. Most of the 2011 fall/autumn ready-to-wear shows have made me feel this way. The grey tones are predictable. I'll try to appreciate the designs but I get bored waiting for the next photo in the online slideshow to load. Next thing you know I'm watching 3 straight hours of Toddlers and Tiaras. Now THAT shit is fashion... haha.
Today I saw my first fall show that made me go "Oooooh me likey, me wanty... bring on the ice and rain and frozen capillaries!!!"
So what was it? It was Fendi.
And why was it? Because the colours was so different to the acid-trip brights and muted neutrals that have leaked all over everything designers have been spitting out lately. These are the kind of colour combinations that make you turn your head and trip over your heels. Unless you have "an eye" for colours or "a wallet" to pay someone who has "an eye" you can't make this shit up yourself. It sure ain't no paint by numbers shit (Am I grabbing you with this swearing? lol). And it's sooooo good for winter times. Times when it is all too easy to suddenly find yourself locked in the same tiny tiny room in the same flat above a chicken shop for days and days on end as the rain sheers down in relentless sheets. You look outside at the dark, at the gloom, at the VISIBLE cold and the world just FEELS darker; potential and inspiration and motivation and the last few drops of positivity are leeched from your very skin by the stuffy dry air of the indoor heating system. You feel like SHIT. You don't want to DO ANYTHING. And yet designers INSIST on feeding this mood with gloomy, stuffy, DEPRESSING clothes.
Not Fendi. Fendi, this fall, is JOY. Messiah like, they have shown the way; you don't need to buck the trend in a delusional way, wearing searing pinks and acid yellows, much like a child scrunching their eyes closed, hands clamped over frozen ears and screaming to block out the reality of the season. No no no. NO. All you need is a dash of mustard, and swipe of burnt orange and a liberal dash of rich blue. The rich earthy browns are warm and comforting. Seriously it made me look forward to the colder days, which I quite enjoy actually, especially autumn with its gorgeous swoon of leaves and crunchy-under-footy-ness and smokey smells. The colours are quite autumnal in that sense.
Yup, think I might go pop out and see if it's in the air yet...
Check out all the photos at Style.com.

Prints turn it up

Bright colourful prints have got a grip on fashion at the moment, despite the occasional reactionary swing back to neutral minimal colours like camel.
Designers seem to be enjoying themselves playing with new technology like digital printing to see just how far they can push their clothes. Can they make a printed fish swim off the fabric? Can they make a model look like a walking, breathing lounge room?
Ahh, Mary Katrantzou, your playful attempts to fuck with what we've come to expect from clothes (They keep us warm? Make our butts look pert?) are refreshing.
Kantrantzou's autumn 2011 ready to wear collection is walking art. Unless your boyfriend is a design freak, buys Details magazine, and wears drop-crotch pants, he will hate it. Your mother may love the colours. All kids under the age of 5 will. But sadly they won't be able to beg their parent's into getting them Kantrantzou's junior range because it doesn't exist. Perhaps it should? Hey if I'm making wild requests I might as well add in a range dedicated and gifted to me there too.
The colours are just happy, an aesthetically luscious celebration of beauty inspired by some of mankind's most glorious consumer things: Ming vases, rich tapestries, etc. Nothing under $10,000.
Yeah you could be cynical and say fuck off, who has that money? I'm not going to sit here and be force fed this expression of elite, decadent consumerism. But if you're that way inclined you might as well run off and pick up a roll off disposable garbage bags that you can take to with scissors to fashion into your next outfit. These clothes have no time for people concerned with sustainability and thrift. They're expensive and they don't just know it, they throw their wads of dollar bills in your face.
But they do so cheerfully. Like "Whoooooo, yeah!" If they could talk, which not being present at Kantrantzou's show I can't confirm either way...
Pic is from Style.com, which covered Kantrantzou's show.

Sex and Ex-mas presents

Christmas is an awesome time of the year.
It's a time when you get to buy things that you would never buy for yourself because its A. not your taste, B. your allergic to it, or C. it wouldn't fit inside your rubbish-bin sized apartment. Sigh.
But at Christmas all such shopping constraints get thrown out the window. All of a sudden there is an excuse to buy those colours that make you look as if you've just come back from holiday with a variety of toxic jungle virus. Ok yeah, that may not be a thrill entirely within itself. You'd have to be a bit of a sad-case, measured portions, short-back-and-sides nancy girl to get off on buying a colour outside your range. But there are cool things that one can buy as long as you can find someone who you think it won't offend so greatly that they'll disinvite you from all their parties in the new year; Such as gay porn.
Gay porn is great. Probably not all gay porn, although that's open to debate, but a big sweaty hunk of retro gay porn looks fantastic. Probably a live-ensemble is a bit much. It's not really up there with that IKEA brand of subtle art that blends with your couch and pastel coloured cooking utensils. It could get messy and require emergency cleaning with BAM (and the dirt is gone!!). It could offend your parents. So let's restrict it to the 2D. Calenders. Calenders are the perfect Christmas gift. And fuck it if the person your gifting has already received four calenders as presents because hello: how can one have too many calenders?
"No, I'm sorry, I just don't want to be that organised, thank you. I prefer it if my dental appointments and various relatives birthdays come into my consciousness through a delightful mix of luck and serendipity."
Everyone in the world has more than one room where a calender would either be useful or add stylish and delightfully renewable decoration. And old-school gay porn is perfect on a calender. Now this is an important clarification: I'm not talking about brand new fresh off the 2010 block gay porn. Giving this as a present would be inappropriate in the manner of gifting someone with a dildo. It just doesn't work unless you have some kind of dildo-themed joke running with the person, or for some reason they just asked you to get it, awkward looks and unspoken understandings swallowed with the dregs of your latte. No. I'm talking old gay porn. Dating back from anytime before the mid-90s (Have you seen what the kids were wearing in the 90s? It's starting to get increasingly more amusing each time I'm reminded of it. Delightful.). This makes the porn go from arguably titillating to funny. It becomes a great visual of fashions gone by; be they the various hirsuteness of the pubic region, the oiliness of the skin, the size of the bodies, or whatever clothes or otherwise they may be wearing. Yes, there's nothing better than woolly mammoth 70s porn, or pimpin' mac-daddy 80's porn. It's fashion and sex, together at last! Or is it as they always were??
AM I NOT WINNING YOU OVER YET?????
If you don't believe me, you should go and buy different themed gay porn calenders for all of your friends: bear boys, s&m, twinks, juiced up muscles, taxi-drivers (I'm sure there's a fetish for it. Taxi's are the public toilets of the modern world.). Buy them all. And gift them. Wrap them up and give them to your loved ones with a smile and a message of Christmas wishes, joy and merriness, etc etc (Insert cliched holiday cheer here). Trust me. It's the gift that keeps giving for the next 12 months of the year.
xxxo