just like a pile of leaves

Meditations In An Emergency
'am i to become profligate as if i were a blonde? or religious as if i were French?
each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.
why should i share you? why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?
i am the least difficult of men. all i want is boundless love.
even trees understand me! good heavens, i lie under them, too, don’t i? i’m just like a pile of leaves.

however, i have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. no. one need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes - i can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless i know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. it is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. do they know what they’re missing? uh huh.

my eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. i am always looking away. or again at something after it has given me up. it makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but i cannot keep them still. if only i had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; i would stay at home and do something. it’s not that i’m curious. on the contrary, i am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, i am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. and lately, so great has their anxiety become, i can spare myself little sleep.

now there is only one man i love to kiss when he is unshaven. heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (how discourage her?)

St. Serapion, i wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. how am i to become a legend, my dear? i’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and i am always springing forth from it like the lotus — the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, 'to keep the filth of life away,' yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and slanders and pollutes and determines. i will my will, though i may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

destroy yourself, if you don’t know!

it is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. i admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. it’s like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

'Fanny Brown is run away — scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; i do love that little minx, & hope she may be happy, tho’ she has vexed me by this exploit a little too. — poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. — i wish she had a good whipping and 10,000 pounds.' — Mrs. Thrale.

i’ve got to get out of here. i choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. i’ll be back, i’ll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so i go where you don’t want me to. it’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. there won’t be any mail downstairs. turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.'
- Frank O’Hara



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For Grace, After a Party
'you do not always know what i am feeling.
last night in the warm spring air while i was blazing my tirade against someone who doesn’t interest me, it was love for you that set me afire, and isn’t it odd? for in rooms full of strangers my most tender feelings writhe and bear the fruit of screaming. put out your hand, isn’t there an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? and someone you love enters the room and says wouldn’t you like the eggs a little different today? and when they arrive they are just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather is holding.'
- Frank O’Hara



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Having a Coke with You
'is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when i’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

i look at you and i would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home i never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why i am telling you about it'
- Frank O’Hara



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Somewhere I Have Never Travelled
'somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience,
your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands'
- E.E. Cummings

(all images from Thierry Mugler Spring/Summer 2012, via)

the curated wardrobe

'for a long time it was exactly the opposite: a big wardrobe was the hallmark of the haves and the have nots. those with wardrobes bulging at the seams were those who lived a life of luxury. they were also often the rich. so for lots of people the desire for a wardrobe that contained every potential shoe and shirt combination became their desire, became a point of envy.

but society has moved on.

over the past decade we experienced a change in the way we could consume fashion, one with an impact not seen since the days of the industrial revolution. it became quicker and easier to produce fashionable clothes and accessories than ever before. in fact, the fashion industry at all ends of the spectrum allowed it to happen. with fanfare the world’s big fashion houses showed their next collections six months in advance and the high street stores, imbued with new technology and able to understand every detail and trend that had been presented before the catwalk was even cold, were able to release it in mere weeks. the fact that so many shoppers readily bought what the high street offered up was not our fault. the industry model was and is broken. broken to a point where it encouraged us – after all, why wait 6 months to invest in a look that you’re excited about now? there was a novelty to it all too. fast fashion. good looking fashion. affordable fashion. had we ever had it so good?

but that novelty has worn off. the ability to access fast fashion has grown at a rate faster than Zara have been able to open their 1,700 stores. comprehend that figure and add to it the an imaginary figure of just how many stores there are for other fast, fashion-foward brands such as H&M and you realise that fast fashion, and the dream of the massive wardrobe that it enabled with an affordable price tag, is now commonplace. it’s not just available to everyone, it is everyone.

and a fashioniser, the world’s fashion forwards who make stylish socialising their hallmark and understand that fashion is a projection of where they’re going in life, never wants to be everyone. so the definition of luxury changes. because luxury is always the opposite of commonality, in every facet of society. the working class poor could scarecly afford food, so the rich Edwardians were luxuriously fat. processed and average quality food is now so accessible that organic and ‘pure’ foods, the polar opposite of what you find in the freezer isle and at takeaways, are now considered the luxury. cheap food is now so accessible that waist lines have bulged and obesity has become an epidemic, thus it’s perceived by many to be a luxury to be slim. across society luxury is defined by the polar opposites of what is most common and what those without a particular attribute, an attribute that is sometimes wealth but just as likely to be skill or knowledge, can have. so where does that leave fashion in an era where everyone can have a big wardrobe, where everyone can own too much, and they can do it cheaply?

the new luxury is a small wardrobe. not necessarily an expensive one nor one filled solely with goods from only the world’s leading fashion houses. these are defintions of luxury fashion past. the new luxury is now to be able to live and thrive with a small, pleasurable wardrobe.

but a small wardrobe needn’t mean doing without. anything but. it is in fact the hallmark of the modern fashioniser with their finger on the pulse. you see, to have a small wardrobe and still look stylish requires one to actually have style. moreso, it requires one to really understand fashion. each and every single one of us has to take a leaf out of the books of the world’s best art galleries. have you ever noticed how galleries have access to so much art but display so little of it? that’s because they’re curated. curation is refinement. refinement is a skill. and we are much the same: we have access to so much but day to day we display so little of it. thus, with the death of average in mind, we must cull from our wardrobe removing from it all that looks average. we must become our own curators.

becoming a curator, however, not only takes effort it takes practice. if you’re anything like so many of my friends then your wardrobe is overflowing with goods. for them, cutting it back, curating it to include only the exceptional, is not only a daunting task, it’s a paralysing one. the irony is, of course, that they’re paralysed every morning or before every event as they attempt to piece together an outfit. they simply have too many clothes and accessories hanging before them to make a proper decision about what to wear. they try on outfit after outfit. one comes off and promptly makes it to the ground; "not working" or "not good enough" they say. their wardrobes are cluttered, and it’s been generations since anyone thought clutter was fashionable. a curated wardrobe doesn’t suffer from this problem. whether the pieces are high quality or low cost, they all work, often together. it’s easier to dress. looking stylish becomes near-on effortless. it takes effort to create the curated wardrobe but you know you need to when you open your wardrobe (or wardrobes if you’ve really been one to indulge in the past-luxury of owning too much) and are greeted by hangers full of stuff, much of it average, yet can say still "i don’t know what to wear."

so if you’re at that stage or if you’re ready to indulge in the new luxury of a refined and curated wardrobe (you might be only recently into fashion and building your wardrobe for the first time) where do you begin?

with the foundation pieces for a perfect wardrobe.'
- Daniel P Dykes, Fashionising.com

attempted murder (of crows)

=everyone on the block might be pretty impressed you're a rockstar. but not God. like he gives a shit about your platinum disc, your goddamn Grammy, the ice around your neck. there's an earthquake in goddamn Turkey to deal with, kids are dying in Iraq, Satan's flying around trying to possess people. like he has time for your bullcrap. he hasn't heard your record, he hasn't seen your video, and you can put his name on the door but he's turning up to your goddamn concert. nope.
even if you're a big-time celebrity, the only way to impress God is to put in a bit of elbow grease at the theological coalface.
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=what the hell is that?
i cut myself.
you didn't get a blood transfusion, did you? Revelation 14:3 - only a hundred and forty-four thousand will be sanctified in Heaven. a little slip like a blood transfusion..and you're f**ked. i don't care what your story is, i don't care if you're a skinny man in France dying of a big disease with a little name..no blood transfusions.
what the hell are you wearing that for? Christ died on an out-stretched pole. he didn't die on a cross, thus a witness does not wear a crucifix.
right, so you can wear that artist formally known as [Prince], symbol?
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=you've got quite the social conscious, don't you? every Friday, i see you outside the Nike store, waving your placard proclaiming 'stop the sweatshop exploitation'. every Saturday, i see you surfing on top of a train, spray-painting S11=M1=03 screaming 'equal pay for third-world women'. then every Sunday, i see you training in a paramilitary camp in Sudan ready to take down US Capitalistm, in an elaborate and ingenius terrorism campaign..hissing through your teeth 'stop the exploitation'.
oh you've got time to stand up for every minority group in the universe..except for one.
laugh, will you. you think Bardot and the other generations of pop stars are expendible human beings worthy of nought but scorn? if they smashed their complimentary Volkswagen Beetles, do they not bleed? if one of their gold records drops on their foot, do they not say 'ouch'? and while we're on the subject, did they get to keep those Volkswagen Beetles? and for all those gold records, did they really get anything in their bank accounts?
in fact, considering the moola pop stars made for the TV stations and the production company, did Katie, Sophie, Daniella, Jason, Simon and all the other singing dancing boys and girls out there at the pop star coalface get a cut of the action that reflected the show's success?
i know their wellbeing doesn't concern you. but ala Faith No More when the guy with the spiky hair was lead singer..i care a lot.
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=i was looking at a copy of 'N Sync Celebrity, and i couldn't help but note just how not attractive nearly every member of the band is. and i don't mean in some subjective 'hey i don't dig that boy band look in general' type of way, i mean 'N Sync don't even tick the basic boxes of shallow boy band attractiveness.
okay, Justin Timberlake's okay, and this guy..whatever. then you get to these two here and if you shoot them in black and white, behind some shadows, you can fool some of the people some of the time..but not me.
and then we get to Joey Fatone.
from what viewpoint, from what perspective, in which parallel universe is this guy goodlooking enough to be in a boy band? tell me there are seventeen people living in your block of flats better looking than him.
don't give me this skin-deep shit..he doesn't even write any of the songs.
if you're in a boy band and you're not goodlooking, what are you?
and don't they know it. in the video clip he gets about two seconds of air time, usually hidden behind a pillar or shot from some 'arty' angle to gloss over his unGodlyness.
under what master plan of God does this guy get to be in a boy band, getting driven around in a silver ghost Rolls-Royce, smoking a fat cigar in front of a fireplace stoking the flames with wads of hundred dollar bills, swimming around in a caviar-filled jacuzzi with hoochie mamas..whilst you're out stacking shelves at K-Mart?
don't tell me, it's not his looks, he brings other things to the band. he doesn't write the songs, he can't dance that well, he can't sing any better than if your voice was put through a reverb unit. how did he slip through the net?
tell me you don't see 8000 people every day better looking than Joey Fatone?
- John Safran

hehehe. as you may have noticed, i've been watching a lot of episodes of John Safran's tv shows lately..very amusing.

+ currently listening to: Elvis Presley, The Holidays, Mr Little Jeans, Fleetwood Mac, Theophilus London, Split Seconds.

just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there

it felt a little uncomfortable and even slightly paralysing to read some notes in my grade 11 school art visual diary this morning:
#6 - how do you feel about a relationship between you and another?
'you sat next to me in the school hall and from that day onward, nothing was greater than the way you would smile and say my name. every minute that we spent together seemed just right..i was so happy.
we reached the 5 or 6 month mark, and the day came when the risk of remaining tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. i can't forget and i never will, you told me what was on your mind.
..and so a year has passed and i am still doing the same thing; drawing and writing..trying to make sense of things. i don't know.'

#5 - how do you feel about school?
'the pressure and importance just frustrates me so much sometimes. i've tended to lose some motivation a few times this year, academically; there always has seemed to be someone in every one of my subjects who is so much better and more amazing, leaving me absolutely uninspired to try and match their efforts.
every so often i have needed wake-up call to keep me doing my best.'


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Fashion by Feelings

Fashion by Feelings is an initiative run by Australian Wool Innovation Limited, in which entrants have to upload an image + a brief outfit description under a category of Loved / Seductive / Powerful / Beautiful / Cute / Chic / Unique / Nostalgic / Natural / Happy / Dark / Active. the outfit must include at least one outfit made of / including wool fibres.

the winner with the most votes accumulated by 29 September 2011 will be awarded a grand prize including return airfares for 2 to Sydney, 6 night's accommodation, a $3,000 Westfield gift card, a personal styling session..amongst a number of other experiences.

please help out by sending a vote or two my way, here.

conversation 16

'you know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? you're chicken. you've got no guts. you're afraid to say 'ok, life's a fact.'
people do fall in love. people do belong to each other..because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness.
you call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing. you're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage.
well, Baby, you're already in that cage. you built it yourself. and it's not bound by tulip, Texas, or Somaliland. it's wherever you go.
because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.'
- Breakfast at Tiffany's film transcript

concurrent / atonement

some (very) simple outfits for days at university + a trip to the airport

confirmed flight Emirates EK 435

Bec & Bridge:
we didn’t know how to send the jeans. instead of a courier company, we used Australia Post. we found a place that sold boxes, they packaged the jeans in foam balls and i remember someone phoning us up after that delivery, “we just received your jeans in the most atrocious packaging ever!” we literally had no idea – we didn’t even know if we were meant to charge freight or if it was free into store. the standard is that the stockist pays for freight.
iIf the stores want your designs badly enough, then they will agree to your terms. in the beginning, our terms were COD (cash on delivery) but now, as a bigger company with bigger orders, our stockists are on thirty-day account. – p5
when you are a start-up label, price point is hard to get right. you have to know your market and what labels you want to sit alongside and make sure your price your product comparatively within that group of designers (and that you produce a comparable product). – p13

Senior Buyer, David Jones:
when you have the buyer on the phone, if the buyer is unaware of the brand, then you need to demonstrate where your brand sits in the market and the relevance the brand has for the buyer. research the customer and where you think your label can fit into the business. ask for the buyer’s email address and follow-up with an email thanking the buyer for their time and attach your current lookbook or ‘hero’ images of the collection. if the buyer is impressed with your lookbook, they will contact you to make an appointment for a physical showing. – p41

Therese Rawsthorne:
it took me a long time to figure it out because i didn’t know anybody that worked in fashion and didn’t have any exposure to the fashion world. being from the country, people went into quite practical pursuits – that whole other world (glamorous careers in the arts and creative fields) was seen as something that wasn’t real. – p70

Alvin Manalo, Saint Augustine Academy:
the first place to start is Ragtrader, if you are Sydney based, pay a visit to E&M Greenfield in Surry Hills. there you will meet lots of young emerging designers who are usually happy to share their contacts. – p132

Event Director, IMG Fashion:
think outside the square when identifying potential brands to target. align yourself with a brand that doesn’t have the opportunity to talk to the fashion industry, but still has a likeminded demographic and target market. for example, we had a women’s ready to wear brand (they had lots of floral dresses in their collection) partner with 'love and romance' book publisher, Mills and Boon – it was the perfect match and both brands got a huge return on the sponsorship. i think too often brands decide, ‘we need a vodka sponsor or a luxury car sponsor,’ and they focus on saturated categories that are targeted by all the big labels – so think outside the square! – p149
the seating plan is a political minefield! i would encourage brands to work closely with their PR and our seating director on their seating plans. a few rules to get you started:
1. don’t have rival magazines seated opposite each other. try to scatter them around the seating plan.
2. if you give one key title five front row seats, be prepared to give all the other fashion titles five front row seats.
3. if you want more floorspace and decide to pull out the front row seats, don’t have the seating plan start with row B. make sure you rename it row A, because when key buyers and media look on their delegate pass and see they have been given a row B seat (not know there is in fact no row A), they might not turn up! – p153

Director, MCM PR:
the editor, associate editor, fashion news editor, market editor and fashion director. the most important people are in the front row – editor, fashion director and fashion news director – and anyone else from the same publication sits immediately behind them. – p285

Fashion Editor, The Vine:
tomorrow i’m viewing the collection of a new label that i had never heard of before last week because they did two things: 1) they got a retailer who i know and respect to contact me on their behalf and ask if it was all right for the designer to contact me directly, so i was expecting the email and 2) the designer sent an email and then called at the end of the day to check that i had received the email (the email had automatically gone into my junk folder). he introduced himself on the phone; i quickly took a look at his email, was impressed with what i saw and said i would be in touch to make a formal appointment to view the collection. having someone who is respected in the industry vouch for you is the best and fastest way to get an in. – p314

- Get Your Break: Fashion Designers - Samuel J Folder (Ed.)

Priory of Sion

'it is life's great paradox, but there's nothing i prefer more than a game of scrabble..but nothing i prefer less than my opponents, who are always accusing me of putting out words that aren't real.
sure, if i put down a word and you haven't seen it before, it must be because it's not real. there's no chance there's a word you haven't encountered before, you know everything, you're the font of universal knowledge, you're a walking Funk and Wagnalls you arrogant fricking a-hole.

anyway, what has all this got to do with religion? well, if i'm playing a game of scrabble and i put down the word Rabbi, no-one's up in my face, no-one has a problem. even though it was originally a Hebrew word, they correctly identify it as a foreign word that's been absorbed into English. yet if i put down Qibla, which is in the Oxford English Dictionary, suddenly everyone's getting huffy, flapping their arms about, running around the rumpus room sending scrabble pieces flying everywhere, 'John there's no such word as Qibla'.
let me tell you what Qibla is. Qibla is the direction of the sacred stone in Mecca to which Muslims turn when praying. i mean a billion people on the planet face Qibla five times a day but no, you're right, you never heard of it at Xavier College, so it's not a real word, not like Eucharist.

but what really annoys me is as you can imagine most of my friends are left-wing pinkos and on any other issue would be falling over themselves to accommodate the richness of multicultural diversity. you put down Qibla and suddenly i'm playing with Pauline Hanson. i tried to explain it's an Arabic words, 'oh we live in Australia, we don't speak Arabic here we speak English.' listen hippy, when you break through the fence at Woomera Detention Centre and whip out the scrabble board, they're going to want to put down Qibla.
until next time, go to hell.'
- John Safran

this blog hasn't become a journalistic Gaga-bashing display on purpose

'hopefully, you've been following Lady Gaga's mostly preposterous columns for V Magazine. it's been a chance to see the world's favorite sensationalist evolve, like a college freshman, from the hungover self-righteousness of her first column, to second-semester signs of budding critical thought.

her latest sermon is on the perniciousness of what she calls "Extreme Critic Fundamentalism" — a type of harmfully negative fashion journalism practiced, solely it seems, by beloved front-row curmudgeon and New York Times scribe Cathy Horyn. Gaga opens with a question: "Doesn't the integrity of the critic become compromised when their writings are consistently plagued with negativity?..when we can predict the same predictable review from the same predictable reviewer?" it's a valid query and the answer is, "of course." thing is, in targeting that question toward Horyn and her kind, Gaga has missed something important.

in fashion coverage, cheerleaders outnumber qualified critics 100 to one. the Internet is heavy with posts and pieces heralding the genius of this designer or the transcendental beauty of that product. rigorous appraisals of fashion are rare and precious.

despite Gaga's claims to the contrary, Horyn is educated exquisitely in fashion, art history, economics, and many other subjects that make her an outstanding critic. she can be as effusive in praise just as she can be damning with words (both Nicola Formichetti and Gaga herself have felt Horyn's sting). as well, these Extreme Critic Fundementalists — as Gaga calls them — are some of the few people who take fashion seriously, who demand more from it, who, sometimes just through the act of writing, can compel a designer or brand to grow artistically. rather than upending talented creatives, critics provide an intellectual framework for improvement and innovation.

Gaga is obsessed with citizen journalism, with "the range of artistic and brilliant intellectuals," she hears from every day on Twitter (is she looking at the same Twitter we are?) democratically she asks, "Why have we decided that one person's opinion matters more than anyone else's." the answer is, we haven't — not really. the world is free to (and usually does) ignore Horyn and stock up on all the dreck it wants. but sometimes, when looking at something new and ambitious, it helps to have a true expert in the room, someone who expects more, someone who knows bullshit when she smells it. whatever Gaga says about her, Horyn has an excellent nose — one we trust and value.'
- In Defense Of Cathy Horyn: Lady Gaga Please Sit Down, Gabriel Bell