ninetwelvetwentyfive

not actual marni;  are you kidding me?   no, this dress is sort of marni-esque, i think.   it was a lucky score from the “vintage” rail at the recycle boutique and i think that, paired with a grey cardigan, grey woolly tights and silver shoes, it has a sort of faded-floral glamour that makes me think of consuelo castiglioni.   or is that just wishful thinking ..?

but the true star of this outfit has to be the necklace.    it’s absolutely kick-arse gorgeous .. made by the lovely and super-talented leora of leoravon.

it’s a .303 bullet, reclaimed and inset with a tourmaline crystal .. transformative, as leora says .. “it takes something that was once destructive & violent, now dead and spent, a symbol of fear, and gives it a new meaning”.  i really like that.  and i really love this piece .. i can’t tell you how many compliments i’ve already had, and i’ve only had it a few days.   leora even sourced a nickel-free chain so this allergic delicate flower could wear it  and that’s the beauty of etsy:  lovely vendors selling beautiful hand-made things and who really care about their clients.   thanks, leora.  you rule

some days are so beautiful, all you can do is rent a car and take off to the beach.  yesterday was like that. so that’s what we did.

(sunglasses karen walker, sweatshirt uniqlo, black skirt self-made, tights can’t remember, karen walker runaway girl necklace and charity shop bag covered in studs by your humble reporter.  not shown, wicked-cool russell and bromley brogues ..)

(ah, there they are.  they’re a luscious cherry red.)

the rockstar rockin’ in the free world.  he’d never touched the pacific ocean before.  how adorable is that?  so we went down to the water’s edge, and ..

.. the tide came in, very quickly.

it was a lovely day.  how did you make the most of it?

(photo taken by the rockstar)

ah bless, sometimes men just don’t get the whole fashion thing.  the rockstar is extremely stylish and works a suit better than practically anyone i’ve ever met.  but he doesn’t quite (yet) get that it’s not so easy for us chicas to pick appropriate outfits.  in packing my suitcases for this one-way trip, i had to pick clothes that would be suitable for two weeks in nearly-winter london, a month in nearly-spring new zealand and a month in definitely-summer brazil.  not easy, but i think i did a pretty bang-up job. what i did not do, however, was anticipate that three days after arriving in wellington i would be attending a wedding.  the rockstar’s best friend’s daughter was getting married and both she, and her husband-to-be, are evangelical christians.  a little heads-up might have been helpful.

looking through my wardrobe, i realised i had very little that wasn’t (a) black, and therefore possibly unacceptable;  (b) over-challenging fashion-wise, and therefore possibly unacceptable;  (c) a bit too boho, and therefore possibly unacceptable;  (d) skin-tight and short, and therefore definitely unacceptable.   this beautiful jaeger dress came to the rescue.

i love jaeger.  my mum used to save her pennies to buy  pieces of it when she was a student.  i seek it out in vintage stores because a lot of people have not yet come to appreciate the utter awesomeness of their 60s and 70s ranges.  in fact one of my most treasured and most-commented-on vintage coats is a gorgeous apple-green jaeger number picked up for a tenner at a carboot sale.  okay, so later on the big j became very boxy and very unflattering, the kind of stuff that ladies-of-a-certain-age bought because that’s the brand they’ve always bought.   for a while there was a collaboration with bella freud which did okay but was screamingly expensive and didn’t quite hit its target market, i felt.   but with the breakout a/w 2007 jaeger london collection — of which this dress was a part — the venerable old lady stepped once again into the spotlight, making everyone remark how god-damn sexy she is, still, after all these years.  witty and modern shapes, beautiful fabrics and finishing and the ultimate accolade of a kate moss photograph .. and this perfect dress.  pretty, styley and just that bit unusual, it was perfect for an early-spring wedding.  no thunderbolts were forthcoming, so i musta did good.

(not that you can see in this photo, but i wore the dress with seamed stockings, my comfort station goats-head necklace and my karim rashid for melissa wedges.  hey, i figured i’d already made some concessions to the occasion ..)

you’re not supposed to take photos in the newly-reopened wellington art gallery, but i didn’t read the gallery advice thing properly so snapped a couple of quick pics at the yayoi kusama show.  a nice lady came over and said i shouldn’t take photos.   i said to her “oh i’m sorry i didn’t know .. would you mind if i kept that one, though?  you can’t really see the work, it’s just the reflection i like”.   she smiled and said it was okay.  so here is myself and the rockstar, reflected in one part of an installation which is all about — ta daa! — narcissism.  kind of apt, really?

(oh, and what i’m wearing, just so i can pretend this is an outfit post:  battered chuck taylors, battered diesel jeans, customised uniqlo cardigan which you can see better in this post.  oh, and my wayfauxrers.  i have been a bit slack on the style thoughts and outfit documenting, but i’ll get back on that, promise promise.)

in order:  last view of london, real cutlery in business class, a (brief) upgrade to first which was somewhat scuppered by the plane developing a fault and having to switch to another flight, a night in a hotel near the airport because the delay meant i missed my connecting flight.   interesting coincidence:  the hotel i stayed in was the same hotel my family stayed in the first-ever night we spent in new zealand, back in january 1978.  by the looks of those avocado-green bathroom units, it hasn’t been decorated since.

more to come xxx

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.

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

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

well yes, as a matter of fact, i am.    minidressthing, karen walker runaway;  tie-dye circle scarf, AA;  grey leggings, uniqlo;  boots, solea.   hair, 100% gen-u-wine bedhead.  yep, i did get a bit of stink-eye for wearing a minidress on my local high street, but .. *shrug*.

good things:

1.  frozen pão de queijo.  this is the brand i get, from my local budgens — heaven in your freezer.

2.  waking the dead .. and the post-mortems with my pal emily at work the next day.

3.  the xx!  amazing dreamy music.

4.  sore tummy muscles from hooping

5.  my new camera, the amazing panasonic lx-3.  man, it is sick, and i am totally in love with it.

oh, and the rockstar.  he is, was and always will be an extremely good thing.  i’m sticking around for a few more days in london to finish a big project but i miss him and those days will drag.  drag.  draaaaaaag.