Blood On The Leaves

My eldest son turned 25 this week. Imagine how old I feel!

One of the things I love about having adult children is the exposure to new ideas they give me. I mentioned to my son the other day that I didn't really understand why Kanye West was held in such high regard. He sent me a link to a wonderful explanation of how Kanye has used the human voice in revolutionary ways within the hip-hop genre and had thus progressed music as a whole. I now feel like I have a whole new appreciation of the artist and I can listen to his songs with a completely different perspective.

I have had a similar experience with a fashion style recently. Up until now, I have avoided low-cut or open neck styles on dresses, for obvious reasons. I felt that they were one style that made no sense for me and would never have a place in my wardrobe. This was despite loving the look of the simple, plain slip dresses used as the underpinning for many outfits in the exhibition of costumes from the Miss Fisher Mysteries.

 Dress: Alpha60

Risk of scar exposure: High 

And then I noticed Veronica Maine styling their summer collection with high-neck knits underneath open necklines and I suddenly got a new appreciation of ways that I could make the style work for me. I had a number of tops that I had relegated to layering pieces last summer and it occurred to me that they would work perfectly for this job!

Tops: Cue 

To my eye, the tops need to be short-sleeved and high-necked for this to look intentional.  I tried it with T-shirts and did not like the result nearly as much. Of course, it is always possible to layer over the top of a dress like this too.

  Long tunic: Dogstar

Crop top: Carla Zampatti

So I have gone from being sure that slip dresses were unworkable to being excited by the versatility to the style and enjoying the ability to pair it with things I already have

A new dress and a new type of music to enjoy! What more could a girl want?

Blood On The Leaves by Kanye West

Biding My Time

This is the second experimental sale purchase I wanted to show you. I bought a winter dress by this brand, Alpha60, last year and loved it. This dress was in their summer collection  and caught my eye when I saw it on their website during the sales. Alpha60 don't have a store in my city so I couldn't try it on before buying it, something I always prefer to do. I was a bit concerned that the neckline might be too low or gape-y but I decided that I could always wear a T-shirt underneath and went ahead and ordered it.

                                                             Dress: Alpha60
                                                             Culottes: Uniqlo
                                                             Necklace: Frank Ideas                         
I have to tell you that it is one of the most comfortable and versatile dresses in my closet. On very hot days I wear it on it's own, and the top is just fitted enough not to cause a problem with gaping or chest exposure. I also wear it with a shirt underneath when I want more coverage, and today I have worn it over a pair of culottes to give more volume and length at the bottom of the dress. The asymmetry and drape make it visually interesting and the sides can be buttoned together at the back to create a sleeker look. I am now putting "strappy sun dress" on the list of things that can work for me.

One important point: I do think that fit is important with this style. I suspect that if the top of the dress hadn't fitted quite so perfectly I may have felt much more anxious about wearing it with nothing underneath.

Happily, the Alpha60 size guide appears to be quite accurate. I have had pretty good experiences with ordering the right size online and I think it may be partly because I take chest, waist and hip measurements periodically and use those when deciding what size to order, rather than the number on the tag. The only problem I have had so far with biding my time and stalking pieces online has been that sometimes my size sells out. But as someone over at YouLookFab sagely remarked, "It is not necessary to own every pretty thing in the world"

Do you buy clothes online? Have you been happy with the results so far?
Biding My Time by Busby Marou

Ne Me Quitte Pas

A few weekends ago, we attended the Brisbane French Festival. I particularly wanted to go because, along with the great food stalls and the wonderful atmosphere that comes from having all the people around you conversing in French, the Festival had invited  Parisian designers Jerome L'Huillier and Mette Pedersen to create a fashion show and answer questions. The fashion was lovely - lots of bright prints, which my husband loved!- but the most interesting part for me was the Q&A afterwards.

A young designer in the audience asked Jerome for tips about building a successful business and competing with big fashion houses with their enormous marketing budgets. His reply contained two ideas that I found interesting: firstly he believed that whilst, when he started out, talent and hard work was enough to ensure success, he no longer thought that was sufficient. Secondly, unless the public are prepared to support local designers and pay a fair price for their work, the market will contract and the only two options will be either fast, cheap fashion like H&M or the very expensive, high-end design houses like Dior.

                                                       Dress:Alpha60
                                                       T-shirt: Sportscraft
                                                       Shoes: Wittner
The talk really made me think about the value I place on my clothes and the necessity of being willing to support things that are important to me. And I do believe that fashion is important. Over the last few weeks, I have been exploring Australian designers and last week I bought this dress from the new-to-me Melbourne designer Alpha60.

I think this may be the perfect dress for a flat chest. It has an overlay that covers the chest and long pieces that can be either tied to emphasise the waistline or allowed to fall free and create flattering vertical lines. It is a wool blend and so will give me some much needed warmth - even though I live in a warm part of the world, I feel the cold and I anticipate this will be worn until the beginning of Summer. I am quite thrilled to have found another possibility for my clothing choices and I hope that Australian designers continue to receive support in their quest to provide us with interesting and unique fashion options.
Do you have any local designers that you especially enjoy and like to support?

Ne Me Quitte Pas by Nina Simone