Entomology

Wearing: Lenko buggy top, DIY hat, thrifted floral trousers, Jelly Beans pink sandals.
If my face looks grumpy/exhausted/gross it's because I'm tired from work and my billions of Biology assignments. OK so there's actually only been three assignments but food web ecology, scientific drawings and popular science articles are all pretty tough. The good news is there's only two weeks left of semester! Also it looks like my pants are undone, but I swear they are and I just felt like tucking my shirt in (which was apparently a really bad choice).
I suppose I'm balancing my really bad mood with bright and obnoxious colours and fun themes which sounds super counter-intuitive but I highly recommend you give it a try sometime.

Candy Rush

Wearing: DIY crown, thrifted blue floral blouse, DIY pink gingham top, Cue skirt, Jelly Beans pink sandals.

Over night the world seems to have been taken over by another fad and I'm just sitting here taking outfit posts after work (hence the ugly no make-up face). It feels like I should be a character in a video game... or at the very least a resident of the candy kingdom. Lately, I've been really thinking about my colour combinations and this idea sitting on the verge of cotton candy and jaffa dreams which will probably be soon followed by some weird oxblood colour to balance the pastel with something a bit more dark and creepy. I also really love the cheap nature of this outfit; the two shirts would have cost next to nothing, I made two of the badges myself and I've bought some of the other things from junk shops or really nice Etsy sellers with impeccable taste and manners. When I have more time I'll make the badges properly instead of using huge chunks of blue-tack and a safety pins, per my usual laziness.

Up to my Eyeballs

Hi, hello, where did the time go? It seems like forever since I promised to post a little more often, which was obviously said with the best of intentions. And then school got in the way. C'mon, we can all relate can't we? Now please, don't get mad and I will make you an apology cookie. Outfit posts seemed pretty pointless after coming home from a full day on campus; if my face were looked a little more enthused and my attention for collaging lasted longer than ten minutes we may have achieved something here. But we didn't and there's mutual dissapointment everywhere; I'M SORRY!! The good news is I finished the sedimentary geology component of my unit (which was terrible) and I'm left with this lovely sense of accomplishment at the moment. So let's direct that at some hardcore procrastination shall we? 

This collection of images is a little more graphic driven then normal, but I'm really discovering some new junk and old stuff for my little aesthetic journal, plus all the free university publications and curbing my addicition to buying things online. The sad thing about Etsy is that a lot of what I buy won't arrive in my country until a month later, during which time I usually forget about it and stare at the package with a goody expression for twenty minutes trying to pain-stakingly remember what clothes I was going to wear with the piece etc. So images are a little more immediate and with a high-speed internet connection I practically have the world at my fingertips so at the moment my heart belongs to ideas and photographs as opposed to physical and tangible objects. 

1, 2, 4, 8, 18- Rookie Mag; 5, 10, 12- Claire Inc; 14, 15, 22- Ginette Lapalme.
3- Dogtooth (2009). 6, 7-Heavenly Creatures (1994), 9- Sofia Coppola; 11, 13- Edward Scissorhands (1990), 16, 17, 23-unknown, 19- Bikini Kill Pussy Whipped, 19- Romeo + Juliet (1996), 20- Lost in Translation (2003), 21, 24, 25, 26- Freaks and Geeks.

Proenza Schouler PS11

The PS11 from Proenza Schouler is what I consider to be an instant overnight classic; if they didn't cost upwards of a thousand dollars each you can rest assured I would have already have a whole assortment/ rainbow/ armada of these bags at my disposal. Unfortunately I don't have that kind of money, any blog sponsors to speak of and lofty morals that prevent me from supporting the Chinese market of clone factory knock-offs.

There's something really tempting about the combination of metal studded spike pyramids and eerie petrol coloured sheen/ strong block colours with adorable wristlets that has identified so readily with the fashion community that they were snaffled with an insatiable global community across websites like Net-a-Porter and Opening Ceremony. They've been around for a year or so now, but it's only recently I've turned my attentions to cataloguing all the wonderful things I can no longer afford such as seasonal hang bags and clutches which can generate a myriad of clucks for my humble little island in space/ place on the internetz.
When it comes to a selection of bags that has such a wide range of different styles (totes, clutches, handbags...) and colours to choose from the sky is literally the limit. I like to be weird and specific in my little niche of style, so the eerie holographic and reflective petroleum mirror materials speak to me on an aesthetic level and are probably the most rare and unusual. I like weird things...

Art Teacher

Wearing: Romance was Born dress (worn as shirt), thrifted floral trousers and Jelly Beans plastic sandals.

I really needed some huge dorky jewellery or statement crochet neckpieces or something to fully convey the dorky mood I was in when I wore this, but instead chose to focus on all the cool psychedelic colours. These are my new pants, they cost me THIRTY DOLLARS from an OP SHOP. For those of you not sure, Op Shops are opportunity stores or the Australian equivalent of a thrift store. Things like the Salvation Army... charity based organisations and things like that. Normally I am the most frugal of thrift store shoppers usually not contemplating anything over the cost of five dollars but as soon as I saw the obnoxious floral pattern I had to have them and even was reduced to paying for them using eftpos. It was well worth it in the end, and I already have an exciting story about being insulted wearing these at the local pub when trying to find the function room for a friend's birthday party. Needless to say, these pants will be my best buddies for a long time when I feel the need to bring out the narcissistic side and people or enjoy splashes of ambiguous colour injected into my outfits from cotton pants.

Prada Spring 2013

I know the ethics of cultural appropriation has been a hotly debated topic in the fashion industry within the last few months*- after being incorporated across clothing for decades now. Prada's Spring collection of 2013 borrows oriental style from traditional Japanese culture, but without heavily relying on it. Sure, the silken pale pink jackets and wooden heel sandals scream of the geisha universe but the structure of the jackets has been reinforced with more starchy material than Imperial silk, sharper shoulders and general Western flow. Omissions of obi, dragon motifs and traditional motifs are a step in the right direction moving towards original concept design furthered by asymmetrical jacket lapels still carrying feminine charm. Instead there's the juxtaposition of short, androgynous pompadour hairstyles which appear to follow this Rookie video tutorial, surprising jersey sportswear and thick geek glasses adorned in meticulous plastic petaled flowers. For any Australian fashion blogger who followed the Kim Ellery case, did you notice her final court appearance? I found it surprising she chose to wear Prada floral sunglasses when she herself has sunglasses designed under her label Ellery but I suppose it says something about the global fashion hierarchy. I've also noticed models of certain brands batting out of their league and buying more prestigious, expensive and luxurious labels for their leisure wear but I guess all this is a story for another blog post.

I found the emphasis on the toes of the shoes combined with metallic silver material to be a little baffling like the blueprints of natural running shoes that promote traditional and lightweight design but still obviously being showed... eventually I came to regard the concept as iconic in its own, lovingly peculiar way but noticed a certain missing niche market for the shoes on eBay. For a fashion house label as expensive and glorious as Prada I know the consumer is supposed to buy into the experience of big fancy doors and dramatic window displays but for a poor uni student scavenging other people's cast-offs can be just as good. Since I'm like an isolated island floating in a deserted ocean when compared to buzzing activities of mainstream fashion bloggers, I have no idea whether anyone took to the footwear exhibited in this collection. Perhaps some people love these pieces so dearly they will try to hold on to them forever and ever. Or they may just never were initially bought in store. Who knows?

I think the strength of this collection lies in the diverse assortment of floral motifs- Miuccia Prada no longer being confined to the two-dimensional silk print motifs of Summer/ Spring of 2010; instead moving on to design a range of ornate petal arrangements and nectar offerings. The combination of classically feminine motifs against the angular silhouettes which bewitchingly hide the female form... as opposed to what could have been an ocean of sheer or tightly fitting bodycon skirts/ dresses. Oh wait- that's what every single store in a downtown shopping centre looks like. But enough badgering of the local and public accessible fashion industry, it bores me so, they could never engineer sandal boots imitating precious metals towering inches above the ground. And I'm unlikely to find tourist carved wooden-heel sandals lying about in the corner of just any old op shop; they've all been undoubtedly predated on by vintage resellers and businesses aiming to make a quick buck from the inflation of prices. It sounds like I hold a mean grudge against these establishments and in principle I suppose I do but in reality they are magical places with decor to die for that get my creative juices flowing. It's hard to find an aesthetic middle-ground where prices are kept at a minimum but I can really identify with the ideas and concepts of a collection; free images are prime real estate to broke teenagers such as myself.

The deeper we get into Winter, the more I keep creating gingham collages and incorporating novelty chocolate foil wrappers of ladybugs in my collages...I wonder what insects think of all the flowers in this collection and whether they'd try endlessly to pollinate them (evidently I have been working far too hard on uni assignments and can't shake the entomology mindset I have immersed myself in for the last week and a half!). But on a serious note, the whimsy and fantasia of this collection is deadly delightful. Yes I just used a bunch of opposing image-evoking words all jumbled together but it's this sort of confusion in fashion that I relish. I relish the strange insults uncultured uncouth are bound to dish out on the streets and the misconceived responses of cretins. It sounds almost contrary to believe you could really justify insults with a feeling of validation but it's all character building I guess which is what every high school advocates to their students in one form or another at some point. And it's a little easier for me to explore the social sciences and effects of this collection rather than running a tedious laboratory experiment and logging the interactions of floral clothing and insects. For the moment that is.

I'll admit I am not a huge coat fan; when the weather turns cold I hide in large sweaters and swamp myself in yard long scarves being reduced to a peeking nose and shroud of long but somehow still weedy hair and beanie. Instead, I turn my attention to the magical menagerie of skirts and all their wonderful, pleated intricacies. Usually I get so wrapped up in colour and patterns that I lose the perspective of three-dimensionality when it comes to clothing; or this is my interaction with a two-dimensional image being far too timid to brazenly walk in to a Prada boutique and play with their clothing (afraid of being snuffed out by sales assistants OR WORSE leading them on to think I can afford to spend a few thousand dollars in their store at once!!!) but simple pink allows me to see the *architecture* of the skirts and techniques that went in to their manufacture. Manufacture in a loving way, under a studio run by pixies and probably smells like a French patisserie no less, as is my deluded understanding of how fashion houses operate.

*But does anyone else find it strange that appropriation is kind of everywhere? I mentioned it being around for a long time; seriously I find twenty year old shirts borrowing from some type of ethnic craze brandishing elephants, paisley etc. but it seems the big brand names pay the most. Because consumer outrage can be directed somewhere, the brand can overall suffer and somehow a vindictive group of people can feel justified in ruining a business- but what about the smaller operations that do the very same thing? I don't think the whole issue is as black and white as to say, you belong to a culture and only you can wear/ identify with that style because that sort of dangerous thinking can exclude the sharing of cultures. If people were too concerned with strictly adhering to a single race/ country/ religion I may not have even been born; being a bi-racial daughter of a loving Caucasian father and Asian mother marriage and partnership. 

 I've been observing the conservations of feminist groups on Facebook, a silent observed if you will, and some people seem so wrapped up in being politically correct they're willing to really let it effect the way their perceive and interact with the wrong. I can appreciate their approach and sentiments to not offend people but isn't the twentieth century global community willing to put the strict stereotypes and typecasting of darker days behind us? Prada presents a neat summation, from which I draw my arguments where minimal toes were metaphorically stepped on but the winds of Asia and fashion industry change sweep over us- and frankly it's a much needed step in the right direction. 

Aside from my whole, huge and distracting argument as a side note on cultural appropriation in fashion I hope you enjoyed my review of this particular Prada collection and found it at the very least understandable. At this stage of my school semester (starting of Week 10 out of a possible 12 weeks) I have absolutely given up on cohesion losing faith in my grey matter cells to do anything but focus on the very basics of survival; eating, sleeping and watching Doctor Who. Despite the collection delivering a confusing jumble of tongue-in-cheek design with the very best materials money can buy I thought conceptually the whole reinvention of Japanese culture to be very interesting and at the very least entertaining. With the main brand label of Prada taking such a dramatic turn in their design, I wonder what little sister Miu Miu will hold in response in the next few collections to come? Needless to say, my purse strings will be poised for the dramatic end results.