Archive for October 2009
leaving las london
i won’t pretend i feel as gleeful as i look in this picture. but lost in the weirdly international space of an airport business class lounge — where only the brands of the mixers would let you know you were in britain — i feel like maybe i’ve already left london. here, i know what i have to do. here, i am at home. sad to think that the nearest i seem to come to home these days is an airport, but there you are. maybe it’s time for that not to be the case. to stop wandering. even for a bit.
it’s going to be okay, you know. it’s just a shame that before you arrive, you have to leave. i hope you know what i mean by that. if you don’t, i am not sure i can explain.
anyway. some very brief long haul travel tips:
1. wear a good coat. a trench coat is ideal. draped over the chair next to me is my beautiful purple jil-sander-for-uniqlo trench and it makes the scruffiest outfit seem magically pulled-together.
2. take a big bottle of water on the plane with you. lip balm, a really good moisturiser (i heart bio-oil) and, if you wear contacts, your glasses.
3. noise-cancelling headphones and some dreamy music are your sleepy friends. john coltrane, dead can dance and henryk gorecki work for me.
4. if you’re expecting your sweetie to meet you at the airport after a long-haul flight, see if you can find out where the showers are in your transit airport. auckland international airport has showers that you can rent — they’re basic, but they’re the best eight bucks you can spend. (unless your sweetie likes that plane-dishevelled look. i guess that’s possible.)
5. and research pays off in other areas, too. seatguru, when combined with online checkin, can be a lifesaver. try waiting out an eleven hour beijing-london flight in a seat that doesn’t recline — with a killer hangover — as i did last year. you’ll never leave seat selection up to the ground staff again.
right. time to ring my boy, brush my teeth, get ready to board. laters, gators.
not at all ordinary
there have been altogether too many goodbyes to say these past few days. too many goodbyes and not enough hellos, not yet.
this was my last day in london. it was a sad day and a day i will remember for ever.
i really don’t have much else to say. i know the universe has my back and that all will be well. but just tonight, this is all a little bit scary. and an ordinary life .. well, it seems like it would be a little bit of a luxury. but that’s not for me, and i suspect it’s not for you, either. we’re the lucky ones, really. let’s try to remember that.
swede f.a.
what’s the first thing you do when you’re travelling and arrive at your fresh, clean hotel room?
do you throw off all your clothes, pull off your shoes and walk around naked and barefoot? (i do this sometimes, but only after a long haul flight).
do you open all the cupboards and drawers and check out the minibar?
or do you — as i do — get out your camera?
(grey cardigan from uniqlo, customised by stitching on a diamanté necklace to which i was fiercely allergic; the big quartz ring is vintage and was a present, the small ring with rotating topaz/amethyst cube is mont blanc and was also a present).
so anyway, i went to stockholm. it was a trip for work and it was furiously busy. seriously, all the mental. but i did manage to sneak in a trip to the fantastic lisa larsson, a truly impressive vintage store where i was served by the sweet and charming lisa herself. spoils: a gorgeous 1940s jacket and a tooled-leather-and-rivets handbag. both things i clearly needed vitally, of course.
so i got back really late on thursday night, rolled out of bed a few hours later to sit in a hot edit suite for a long long day .. and i have now officially shot and edited my last frame for my current employers. it was a bittersweet moment. sad because i will miss the place and the people; excited because of what’s to come.
more pix to come. xoxo
style inspiration: toni halliday
so i am not sure if i have written this already, but even if i haven’t you can probably tell: i am a bit of an old goth at heart. i still wear a lot of black, pile on eyeliner and mascara and listen to dramatic music. it’s kind of sad, i guess, but i think we never really leave behind the things we loved when we were sixteen. and when i was sixteen, i lived in brasília where goth-rock was very big.
yep, you got it: a city right in the middle of south america, built of shining white marble soaring above the red soil and sheltering under the bright blue sky. full of goths. i think there was something about the drama that appeals to the brasiliense nature. you grow up around that architecture, it kind of comes naturally. i expect the rockstar wouldn’t necessarily like me to post this here (he doesn’t know i have this blog yet, haha) but his band were kind of emblematic of that trend and their brand of siouxsie/smiths/gang-of-four tinged rock did very well.
anyway. on to the stylish miss halliday. i can’t remember if i heard curve or saw toni first, but whatever it was, i was instantly in love. heavy crunchy guitars and reverb-laden vocals: yes please. and as for the sooty-haired sooty-eyed singer: wow.
(screenshots from youtube)
i know, right? she’s amazing. it’s kind of hard to get a clear shot of toni’s clothes because most of the videos concentrate on that incredible face of hers. but to get toni’s look, we are talking black. obvs. but not so much glam-goth as tomboy-goth. black t-shirts, skinny black jeans. hoop earrings, hair that just bit unkempt. statement boots. a perfect black leather jacket. possibly black-and-white stripes, if you want a bit of colour (ha). very balmain aw09, i think.
(that second video has bonus hilarious alice dellal-alikes at the start. love that.)
anyway. ladies and gentlemen, all hail the goddess toni halliday. now go and get your leather on.
listen to the silence let it ring out
quiet round here, no? you’ll have to forgive me. no, you will. i am about to pack up my entire life and entrust it to a moving company who (i hope) will put it on a boat so that it will arrive intact on the other side of the world in a few weeks. i have to be ruthless and get rid of piles of stuff. i have to assemble a capsule wardrobe that will see me through a fortnight of northern hemisphere winter (with bonus trip to sweden), four weeks of new zealand nearly-summer and then a month in brazil — and which will fit in two suitcases. and in amongst all of this i have a high-profile project to produce and deliver. mama is busy, in other words.
but because i love you (yes, you) and because i still manage to get dressed in the morning, some pictuuuuures:
this was meant to be an outfit photo, but it turned out a bit more arteriffic and i can’t see, or remember, what i was wearing. that is definitely a very, very old karen walker coat (it has zips all the way up the back and is amazing) and goat-skull necklace from comfort station, though. i took this beside the ladies loos in “the village” in westfield, which is not really a village at all, you’ll be surprised to hear. whatever will those crazy marketing peeps think of next?
yes, you can insert your own show-us-your-growler joke here. i am in the changing room at uniqlo. should i be concerned that both these photos are taken at westfield? probably, yes. wearing cardything from m&s, yeah bitchez i rock markies; ricochet scarf; the ubiquitous christopher-kane-for-topshop dress which i still love because it is sick/fierce/etc; uniqlo denim leggings and boots of awesomeness from solea again. i am wearing them a lot because i need to get the price-per-wear down to something that doesn’t make me feel faintly ill when i think about it ..
xoxo
