Plümo

Did anyone else see Miss Moss's post about Plumo last week? I hadn't checked in with her for ages, and as usual, she had lots of pretty things for me to look at, including some pictures from their latest collection. Here are a couple, plus a few more I grabbed from their website; this shoot is so lovely, and makes me think of sun and holidays, and I want these shoes. Badly. I'm having another heels episode at the moment; it happens once or twice a year. I convince myself that it's my footwear that is holding me back from being a true adult (and not the fact that I get crazy excited when we get to the lolly pick'n'mix at the supermarket, or that I demand to be carried to the couch some mornings), and buy two new pairs. I wear them a couple of times, realise that a miracle hasn't happened in the last six months and I still can't walk in them, and then they go back into their boxes to wait for me to really become a real adult, and I go back to wearing boots and chucks every day. THE END.

PS I bought some gorgeous 20s heels for the shop yesterday; sparkly and silver, with that characteristic square heel, and made in NZ. As soon as I get the physical shop stuff properly underway, I'll get onto photos (and the etsy store); I wish so much these fit me (I've got the dress and the white stockings), but I'm excited to see them go to somebody else who loves them... Slightly envious, but excited.

books etc

I think this picture from The Sartorialist a couple of days ago is beautiful. Colour and composition etc aside, I love how it makes me feel; like she is about to look up and smile, and that I have an hour before the bookshop closes to go through these sale shelves and then look around me at the counter, mad-eyed, while paying, and wishing I had more time. Bookshops, particularly secondhand bookshops, are among my favourite places in the world. I love to scan shelves of browning books, occasionally picking one up just to smell it, doing the knowing "hmm" and feigned look of interest when I see a book I know I should have read but haven't because I keep re-reading I Capture The Castle or The Catcher In The Rye instead, and feeling that rare rush when a beautiful edition of one of my favourites pops up (which is why my library is littered with double-ups). If I get the approving nod from the proprietor on my choices (the last vestiges of my teacher's pet past; I also used to fist-pump when the film-geek at our old video shop complimented our selection), my joy knows no bounds; it's like I've found kin and country.

This isn't at all what I planned to say about this photo, but I guess it can't hurt for you to know where to find me if we're shopping together and I go missing. What I meant to say was that my favourite thing about this girl and her outfit are how expressive they are. I like faces and clothes that tell you something about the person they adorn; that's part of why I like clothes so much (okay, LOVE clothes so much, jeez). My understanding of life is a lot about the human desire to be known and understood. Showing who you are through facial and material expression is a simple way of trying to achieve that.

PS A song that I think fits the feeling of contentment this picture elicits.

fear and laziness in port chalmers

(I should probably go right ahead and apologise to you and Hunter S Thompson's ghost for that one. It won't surprise you to know that dad jokes are among my favourite varieties. Bad puns sustain me.)

I just read this Amy Poehler quote on Welcome to Ladyville:

Great people do things before they’re ready. 

They do things before they know they can do it. And by doing it, they’re proven right. 

Because, I think there’s something inside of you, and inside of all of us, 

when we see something and we think, ‘I think I can do it, I think I can do it. But I’m afraid to.’ 

Bridging that gap, doing what you’re afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that, 

that is what life is.

It's funny how you can hear something that you might have known or heard before but all of a sudden sounds completely different because of who is saying it, and how you're feeling. (Although I remain dubious about people saying what life is, unless they are dead and German and had big beards and names that rhyme with Schnietzsche. But we love Amy, and Amy does stuff like hosting SNL that would have me hooked by IV to a keg of tequila and can't have been much less scary for her when she first did it; more, probably, having so much at stake - so let us continue.) Amy, I hear you.

This boutique thing scares me. The stuff I know, and that I know I can do, comes later, when it's set up, and if I had a dollar for every time I've said I wish I could just wake up one day and find it all ready to go, we wouldn't be (jokingly! JOKINGLY!) debating how terrible would it be to put Joe on a diet so flying him up to Auckland doesn't attract an excess baggage fee. (Yes, I hear it.) Debt, even "good" debt like my student mountain and our not-much-bigger-than-my-student-mountain mortgage, freaks me out. Building something on which I'll be judged freaks me out. Having something that's pretty much all mine freaks me out.

I've never been that good at doing stuff that scares me. This is the first of the four blogs I write/have written for that has my real name on it. When I had presentations in my first year of uni, I would always have a drink first; even for my politics class that started at 8am. The only thing that might be scary to other people that isn't scary to me is baring my emotions; unfortunately, doing that isn't going to pay Joe's airfares. (Having said that, would anyone read/buy a book about pregnancy - so far it's just before, but the plan is for it to have a during and an after as well, eventually? Let me know before I sign the lease.) And I'm lazy. When people say "oh, I would love to not work", 95% of them are kidding themselves. I'm in the 5%. I can easily fill a day with laundry and reading and thinking, and feel fulfilled (if more than a little guilty). I'm never going to be totally ready to do this thing. (Which means, if Amy's right, that if I do it, I'll be great. I would rather like that.)

When I was little, every one's mum had a book called Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. Being the '80s, it was probably a diet book. But the title totally applies here. I feel the fear; no doubt about that. 

So let's see about doing it anyway.

be my baby (Olympia Le-Tan)

It seems wrong to compare my feelings about a collection with my feelings about Jimmy, but the things going through my mind when I found this were so, so similar: How did I not know about you? How were you here, in the world, and not in my life? How uncomfortable would it be for you if I cut off your skin and got into it?

Allow me to explain. In the weekend I found this, which immediately became one of my favourite fashion shots of all time.

I want to turn it into wallpaper, and put it all over my house. I want to paste my face onto it. I want to stand in this pose, in the corner of the kitchen, and never move again. I want to start eating grapefruit for breakfast, instead of porridge, and to go for runs, so that my hips don't line up with my shoulders the way they do, and I look like this in pencil skirts and crop tops. I want to wear my hair like this, and put on fake lashes every day. I want to listen to The Ronettes, and The Shirelles, and The Crystals, and nothing else.

It's from Olympia Le-Tan(who was just a name and some handbags to me before this)'s Spring/Summer 2013 collection, which she first showed back in October. October! This has been in the world for eight months, and I didn't know. I can't marry it right away, which is what I did with Jimmy, but I CAN think about it all the time, and look at it until I fall asleep, which is what I plan to do. Never before have I seen an entire collection and wanted every last piece in it, or seen a runway show this enjoyable, and brilliant. (You'll want to full screen it.)

It's love. 

music lessons

Last night, I learnt how to create the most awkward intimacy imaginable between six strangers in a small room. It sounds like it should have been difficult, but all it took was timing, and Patsy Cline.

'Crazy' is a work of art. In a quiet bar, with people alone or in couples, it should be an opportunity to look deep into your glass, and feel simultaneously alone and connected; to look in the face of hopelessness and inevitability, and kiss it. As Nietzsche beautifully expressed it: to love fate.

My mistake: playing 'Crazy' when four of the five bar patrons were waiting at the bar, sans drinks, backs to the walls and facing inwards because the barman was at the other end of the room, and able to see me in the corner of their eyes, blushing furiously like an adolescent forced to recite her poetry at a family birthday. What could have been a moment of beauty and reflection (and pure novelty for a dj; playing an original, totally tear-jerking Patsy Cline song in a bar, and not at five in the morning to alcoholics), was humiliating. Nobody knew where to look, and the brick walls seemed to push us closer to each other with every breath Patsy took; it was as if they saw me as I felt for choosing the song; naked. NEVER AGAIN. Is what most people would say. Why did I go on to play Nina Simone's 'Strange Fruit' later on, after a particularly depressing line of '80s nu-wave? I couldn't tell you.

If you're thinking I sound like the worst dj ever, let me assure you that Jimmy will never put you in the position those five people and I found ourselves in last night, and that tonight, when we play a two hour set at another bar, I will be sticking to 90s hip-hop and 80s pop, and leaving the ladies of fate for a grey afternoon at home, with a bottle of gin. And if you happen to be a cult leader, planning an afternoon with a morbid ending, and looking for a dj - my email is to the right.

Our Dunedin debut was slightly less noteworthy than the first (and last) time I played with Jimmy (he's been doing this much longer) in Auckland, to a crammed dancefloor (and with PNC and David Dallas in the lane outside - not a coincidence at all!). But at least I went out on a high, with this - one of my favourite NZ songs of all time. As Alanis said (when she wasn't misusing irony), "you live, you learn... you choke, you learn".

twice as nice

I deserve to be whacked over the head for that heading. And it doesn't even really express how I feel about a couple who look awesome. Together, they end up looking greater than the sum of their parts; they look like harmonious creatures from another planet. Harmony. That's what it is. They express harmony.

street and city photos / two kools / rookie / hommemaker / the sartorialist

I have to say, this last couple makes me feel a little unharmonious inside. If I looked like that, I would feel like I had made it. Instead I'll have to wait until I have children and am able to dress them and Jimmy in matching tracksuits like Chas, Ari, and Uzi Tenenbaum. THEN I'll have made it.

SNOW!

This morning we awoke to find snow. SNOW! Actually, I awoke to find Jimmy standing in front of me saying Get up! Get up! and while usually I would demand to know why before leaving my home (the bed), I leapt up (I suppose I knew he wouldn't try to get me out of bed unless it was something special, or deadly), and was greeted by a sight I won't ever forget. SNOW. All over our lawn. It looks like frosty magic.

Beautiful snow prevents me from meeting the bank person today, and Jimmy from putting up the posters for Thursday. So here is the poster... and I guess the bank will have to wait.