Sew Good

The other day I was shopping beside a mother-daughter pair and I overheard a conversation between them that went something like this

Daughter: Yeah, that'll look really good on her. Dyou know her mother is making her prom dress?
Mum: (in tone of utter, basest contempt) Why?

Their hands brushed over the fast fashion they were perusing, and they moved on, leaving me half-amused and somewhat distressed.

So then I remembered reading something Hamish Bowles said, about his time at CSM, and how he despaired that nowadays no one would spend the whole week diy-ing and creating a look for a Friday night out at Taboo as they had way back when. I find myself rather in sympathy with his sentiments :/ The democratization of fashion by the rise of the high street is in a way a positive development, but a part of me is small and forlorn at the thought of the necessity-impelled creativity and nights of sweet domesticity -crazy glue gunning and ripping apart of old clothes with friends- that I missed. I personally sew and diy a lot, obviously, but there's just something different about these (completely inaccurate??) images that are flashing through my mind of the sisterhood of travelling diy-ed pants. There is something of the Do-it-Yourself! ethic that I am nostalgic for, although obviously I was never around for it. And with the erosion of that need and that culture, I feel that fashion, for the everyday person, has also become bereft of a certain sense of play and fun. An acceptance of imperfection, because obviously you can't recreate a runway look with random tat and cheapish fabric, but it's fun to try nevertheless. 

This is related to my thoughts on how vintage became a trend, because when I started out buying vintage it was at least partly out of necessity as well as the desire to look different and buy clothes outside of the current trend cycle. And it's no longer easy to find 99c sweaters, which I own. There's a look now, for vintage bloggers, and it's a look that's recreated on the high street. And that's okay, but it's also somewhat antithetical to the spirit of vintage in the reincarnation which I first embraced it in.

To balance out the gratuitous verbal barrage which I so delight in, here are some random photos I dug out of my hard drive of punk-y people, because the punk movement was a time, I feel, when the DIY spirit was really cherished and celebrated.

And I'm going to throw in a picture of SJP in her SATC 80s remix outfit, because it's horrific and it amuses me and I like her pastel purple corset.

Fashion A Celebration

To fashion a celebration is to live life with joy unconfined, to cast our existence in the light of play and possibility, to know that we are conscious and active participants and that we can choose to be pushed along passively or to write our will across the sky in stars

With the addition of the faithful comma, (Fashion, A Celebration) it is also a joyful dedication to a good friend, a fickle mistress and an endlessly fulfilling discipline.

Yes, this titular explanation could have gone in my first post but this also serves as a gratuitous method to populate the page with words. The italicized words are from the dedication of T.E. Lawrence's book Seven Pillars of Wisdom.  

I'll make me a World.

The creation of this blog was impelled by an interview I did with Alexis Magazine, during which I was asked for a website or blog. I was very sorry and quite embarrassed to reply that during a time when social media and increasingly democratic access to computers and the internet are making the world a smaller and more exciting place, my internet presence was limited to a facebook account which I infrequently used, old fanfiction that must now be cluttering the squalid and decrepit edges of the net somewhere, and comments on blog posts and forums that I enjoyed enough to contribute to.

My first experience with blogging was as a class assignment for English when I was twelve, six years ago. On my part, at least, there were no survivors. I cannot remember what I wrote about but it must have been rather self-consciously anguished and I don't think I want to jump back into the memories of my misbegotten teenage angst, thanks very much :/

This blog will contain posts about my life as a fashion design student in Florence starting October 2011. It will probably be cluttered with new sewing projects, random visual inspiration and moodboards, personal style shots, bits of poetry and book excerpts, collections I like, musings on fashion and feminism and body image and food. Attempts to limit my blogging to a specific sector will be unsuccessful as I am a highly speshul vague and non-specific brand of lunatic.

That is all.

Liz