Ye Olde 80s

I desire little for this blog to become a drawling relay of events from my social calendar, but I have been advised to include at lease a couple of my field trips in order to convince the cyber world I am not the olympic torch and I do in fact go out.
Thus, here is an extract from the fabulous tale I call life.

Last week, as part of a short course on Style and Culture at the LCF, we were taken to the V&A to view 'From Club To Catwalk', an exhibition on the counter cultures of the late 70s and 80s and their ascendance into the high fashion world. As a generality, the 80s era has never been a personal favourite of mine due to my dislike of pop music and my distaste and therefore ignorance of the fashions beyond the leg warmers, neon and perms. And to my delight, I found myself recognising much of its influence in my own style, let alone modern fashion as a whole.

Featuring the works of Galliano, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander Mcqueen I saw past the ugly charicatures I toss aside in fancy dress stores and welcomed the 80s into my heart.

My favourites were the inflatable orange rain coat by Michiko koschino which has filtered its way into my wardrobe by the means of an inflatable back pack (which I naiively thought was a trend heralding from the 90s). Living by the sea I craved its air stuffed arms and plastic hood as a stylish alternative to the lifejacket or lilo. Made a few decades earlier, who knows, the story of Titanic could have turned out very differently...

Another eyecatcher was the ethereal evening dress from Gallianos 'Fallen Angels Collection' of '86 which I could only imagine nymphets and cursed waifs flailing about in and tearing amongst the branches of twilight forests. I knew at that moment that I will only ever marry in that dress, or perhaps simply marry the dress.
The Hard Times look (think Desperately Seeking Susan meets Lady Gaga) was undoubtedly the most in tune to my style, having spotted a studded jacket I was certain had been stolen from my bedroom floor.

Goth, Body wrap and, my favourite, Glam fetish all towere above me in the hall of fashion history, as iconic and influential as the grecian sculptures that flexed their muscled thighs under the same roof.
If one doesn't recognise their own style in the outfitso of the 80s, then they cannot deny the gift it gave us through club culture and diy.

At night, young designers’ imaginations were sparked by a vibrant London club scene. John Galliano recalled, ‘Thursday and Friday at St Martin’s, the college was almost deserted. Everybody was at home working on their costumes for the weekend’. Designer Georgina Godley remembers, 'Young London was all about taking risks and creating something out of nothing through passion and ambition'.

'Club to Catwalk' at the V&A

10 July 2013 - 16 February 2014

BREAKING NEWS: Scientific studies have proven CURVY Girls are HOTTER than Skinny Girls

This isn't some bullshit feel good about yourself post, this is the damn truth. I have spent years considering Kate Moss and noughties models to have the ideal figure, but no longer. I can not resist the beautiful curves of women such as Lana Del Rey, Iggy Azalea and Vanessa Hudgens. In the 90s they created the waif as a contradiction and rejection of what was considered beautiful at the time, and now curves are doing the exact same thing. Where I once thought a sinny girl was the image of the free spirit, care free and androgynously rock and roll, it has now become to me the symbol of stress, neurosis, vanity, insecurity and conformity. Curves are the true care free, they don't care if they drink all day and eat black forest gateau and lick whipped cream off nipples. They are the embodiment of sex and eroticism, the mother and the woman. The true rock and roll. Here's to the Beauty of Ugliness and all it represents.

(curves, curvy girls, iggy azalea, brooke candy, lana del rey, dita von teese, Vanessa hudgens)

Please excuse my silence as of late, as unfortunately my life appears to have resumed and thus my cyber one must falter. Despite this, I must inform you that I am in the midst of a chapter that will become the infinite cause in the creation of myself and who I am to become and though it has not been an easy ride, I would have had it no other way. We must all face segments of distress and loss of identity at points in our life, some earlier than others, but you must never look back with regrets and bitterness but instead thank them for what they have taught you and made you. Pain itself is merely a higher form of pleasure and once you stop rejecting it and let yourself embrace it, the world will open up to you. We think these moments mean its the end of our life, but that is all they are. Moments. Moments that are gone and no one need remember. We can not wait around for our lives to change, we can not live in fantasy forever. We're alone in our making, and its up to us what we want to be in our own story. A victim or a fighter?

Who Knew Lung Cancer Could Be Sexy

I would be the last person to glorify or glamourise smoking in any way having long believed it to be a sign of weakness and conformity. Needless to say, there is a very (very) select percentage of the population whose beauty,glamour and radiant coolness manage to contaminate each and unattractive thing they do with their divinity and convert it into something incredibly sexy. These are those.

1. Penelope Cruz in Vicky Christina Barcelona





Playing the effervescent damaged beauty Marie Elena in Woody Allen's Spanish Sexual Journey about 2 American tourists on Holiday in Barcelona, Penelope Cruz blows around the movie in a fiery wind of anger and sexiness. Being European is a slight ugly filter for smoking as it is practically fed from the breast and no one can envision a French madame or Spanish senorita without a cigarette dangling from their lips.



 

2. January Jones in Mad Men

In a time when smoking was believed to be good for health, smoking was as commonplace as eating and sometimes more. Mad Men's creator Mathew Weiner has confessed that the actors smoke fake cigarettes whilst filming to inhibit actor vomit from tarnishing the sets, yet that hasn't stopped youtubers creating an 8 part series of video's featuring solely clips of Betty Drapper sucking icily but sexily on the cigrettes between her pale talonned fingers for the viewing pleasure of smoking fetishists world wide.

 

3. Brigitte Bardot in Life

 

 

In the 60s, you couldn't be a sex symbol and not smoke. Fortunately for Brigitte, she fit both criteria.

 

4. Kate Moss in Life

 

 

 

Not every woman can flit at will from this:

 

to this:

 

But then Not every woman is Kate Moss. Hence, for those 2 reasons, we forgive her.

 

5. Lana Del Rey in Born to Die/Paradise/Life

 

 

This woman inhales smoke more than she does oxygen. But as well as being possibly the most beautiful woman in the word (controversial but challenge me I dare you), having a voice of an angel and a mind to match, she also is the only person I have ever seen look impossibly elegant and beautiful and transfixing at all timeswhilst sipping the juice, which is far more difficult than you might think. Perhaps its the lips, perhaps its the hands or perhaps its just her. But for all those reasons, on top of the fact she is Lana Del Rey, miss Grant takes home the crown for most beautiful and sexiest smoker, thus contradictin an oxymoron.

 

(smoker, lana del rey, kate moss, Brigitte Bardot, January jones, mad men, betty draper, Penelope cruz, Vicky Christina Barcelona)



Wild Horses Couldn't Pull Me Away

Just When I thought Alice Dellal couldn't be more perfect, Karl Lagerfeld, once again, perfects perfection.

The youngest and most assymetric of the Dellal clan can be credited for the entirety of my style outlook on life since I first saw her trying on clothes in Oxfam in a cameo on MTV's 'Daisy Lowe in 24 hours' when I was 13. It's not easy to steal focus from Daisy Lowe, yet for me and Alice, it was love at first sight.

And though my style influences have since evolved from the torn fishnet, studded denim and brick heavy man boots look, she still remains the very heart of my style and outlook.

And that is why I fell in love with the most recent Boy Chanel Campaign.

For me, style is all about juxtaposition and contrast. Every yin item must be balanced with a yang. For every studded collar there must be a frilly cuff. An innocent and childlike dress must be balance by an undercut or stripper heel. Even if your entire look for an evening is prim and modest and respectful, you must counteract a slither of it with a subtle sprinkle of naughty, a secret edge that will only be noticed if looking very closely.

So nothing, nothing, nothing could radiate such perfection as an image of the beautiful, undercutted and studded Alice Dellal in the wardrobe of a prepped and privaliged Blair Waldorf type.

The clothes are perfect enough, but worn by a woman of similar strain and little edge she would not glow. But paired with her tousled blowing undercut and striking, dark face the woman is transformed into the embodiment of the ideal woman. My very own virgin mother.

And I have never seen a more beautiful woman, than the woman in this campaign.

God save Alice Dellal.

(Alice Dellal, Chanel, Boy Chanel, Punk, Undercut, Karl Lagerfeld)

Attack of the Aberzombies

Wow, I guess I've been right all along. Abercrombie and Fitch really ARE an elitist Cult of Nazi C*nts. Congratulations for making the KKK look gay.

 

 

The first time I read this, I immediately thought it was a joke, partly due to the excessent use of the description 'good looking' prompting me to think the lovely Mr  Adolf Jefferies was making a Movie Reference by quoting the infamously vain and stupid Zoolander.

There really isn't anything I can possibly say about this.

Only that If Abercrombie is for attractive, slim, cool good-looking people, why the hell is Michael Jeffries wearing it?

 

Judge for yourself, fatties! :)

 

Details of my Stinkbomb-Vaseline Abercrombie Store Massacre Plot to follow...

 

Hey there, Sexy Space Babies

 

ELLOHA. So I hate labels and stereotyping as much as the next modern alternative teenager, but I feel like the ' Super hot space alien sea punk tumblr aesthetic neo-90s Brooke Candy look' is becoming a not so slender slither of a mouthful. But perhaps that's the beauty of this aesthetic, in the words of Warsan Shire 'you are terrifying and strange and beautiful something not everyone can understand.'

Nah, I'm pretty sure I just don't know the name.

Henceforth, my pillaging and plundering of the cyberspace shopping mall has brought me to a secret mecca of (insert official style title here) clothes. And I am buying everything.

 

Oh I need a dollar dollar a dollar's what I need. This dress is the definition of divine, simply because it is so perversely tacky it is actually classy. It is enough to make even the Brooke Candiest of white trash ratchet stripper rappers weep with aesthetic pleasure and I want to own it purely for the purpose of wearing it back to my old school's fancy Summer Ball paired with a duo of gold hoops, a side pony and a permanently extended middle finger.

Hot. The shirt looks like My neice made it out of tissue paper and cellophane in her nursery art class and the tweed skirt is 80% Cher from Clueless, 10% crime scene tape and 10% my grandma's smart jackets.

Anyone who reads my blog will be aware that I have a fetish for fur clothes, especially less conventional fur items. If you're aiming for the psychedelic cave man on acid look then this is the skirt for you.

Hey there sexy space alien babe, will you beam me up and dissect my organs AFTER we've made sweet alien love?

Mohair? I think you mean Woah-hair. Winter nights out without the need for a jacket...your life will never be the same again.

Remember these? My sexy pink version of this remained a faithful and loyal swimming bag until the end, when I accidentally betrayed it in a tragic accident with an unusually sharp pair of safety scissors.

 

THE END