Depends how you look at it

This is the same view from the same window, once again snapped by my learned friend and his new lens. Sydney is squelching after a true deluge these last few days.

I love how a view can change, and how one view can be interpreted so many different ways.

I am always intrigued how we can interpret a view, and how we can construct a view of ourselves in particular circumstances. It is one of my great theories: that really stylish people can interpret their circumstances and environment through their clothes. My other learned friend Nat, who has featured in this blog before, was in Court today and dressed accordingly. Appearing amongst senior counsel in their barrister's robes, Nat used a Calvin Klein dress, a See by Chloe blouse, a pair of Marc Jacobs shoes and some spectacular tights and given the robes a very good run for their money. Judge for yourself (see what I did there?):


Are those tights fabulous or incredibly fabulous?

Here's the brief:
*Dress, Calvin Klein, bought in New York in 2000
*Blouse, See by Chloe, bought in New York 2008
*Shoes, Marc Jacobs, bought in New York 2005
*Tights, bought from a local funky boutique called Pretty Dog just a few weeks ago.

And it all flows together seamlessly, which goes to prove the fashion mags right - buy classics and you'll wear them forever.

My look today said "It's raining and rain reminds me of every holiday I've ever had in the Northern Hemisphere." Thus I wore this:


The dress is from Gap, part of the range they made with Liberty fabrics in 2009. I bought it on the sale rack in Paris last year. The cardi is from one of many love-glazed sojourns in J Crew when I was in New York earlier this year, the belt was a dollar at a garage sale around the corner and my tights are Wolford. The boots (which you can't see but I am definitely wearing) are vintage and cost me about $30 on eBay.

My learned friend who isn't a woman but has chunks of glass took the photo while he was wearing a plain, utterly beautiful black wool Cerruti 1881 blazer that he bought in Rome in 1983. It looked like he picked it out at Armani yesterday. "I go through phases with it," he explained. "I wear it for a while, then put it back in the wardrobe and forget about it, then I remember it and start wearing again. It's like a little black dress, except it's a jacket".

I thought that was a lovely point of view.

The world where we live

This is the view from the offices where I work. Not my office - I'm a few doors down and have a very different view of the harbour - but the view from my learned colleague's office. He got a new chunk of glass today (that's hip snapper talk for lens) and very kindly offered to take a shot of my jewellery. I'll show you that in a second, but first let me explain this - it is looking directly north over Sydney Harbour. You can see the Opera House just to the left and that imposing baroque structure with the wrong coloured steeples in St Mary's Cathedral. You can also see the trees of Hyde park, some of which are wearing their autumn colours.

It's a wonderful photo, no?

The next shot is my Dianna Porter Sybils necklace. If you look closely at each stylised charm, you'll note they are stylised figures of women, complete with little bosoms and each etched with a word. I used to buy one every time I went to London, and if I had a dollar for every time someone commented on this piece, I'd be travelling to London more frequently and in business class. I wear the charms on a plain chain with my wedding ring and a heart. It's one of my signature pieces.
Coming soon - jewellery made by my very gifted friend Romana and hopefully more of my learned colleague's photos.

You might as well live

The thing is, I need a list.

I have a list on my desk every morning. I write it last thing before I go home the day before. My list can include simple tasks like "read papers", "file" or complex tasks like "check appeal - details Dom after 2" or cryptic things like "Day Adv inq - LFM June 16 - pros for AStatF".

I have lists for my my home life too. My grocery list says things like this:

*lemons
*rice
*cranberry cereal
*work milk
*noodles
*tomatoes
*oats
*narnas (aka bananas).
*geggs (aka eggs)

My wardrobe list, which I write about every six weeks and is supposed to guide me effortlessly and stylishly through the upcoming season, says things like this:

*Blue pinny
*Beige pinny
*silk cotton crew neck
*Narna tee (aka Banana Republic tee shirt)
*wool tights
*Bally boots
*other Bally boots

..and so forth. It reminds me what I have and what I like wearing. It enabled me to get up extremely early the other morning to go to the Trash and Treasure market, all kitted out in a frock I had tucked away at the end of last winter:

Here's a close up of the pinny (or pinafore, if you will). It's a corduroy number I bought off a local ebayer for about eighteen bucks:
Here's a list of what I was wearing that day:

Tee shirt: Banana Republic
Dress: Cue, from eBay
Tights: COS
Bag: Mulberry
Boots: Bally , second hand, eBay

My clothing list at the moment is big on tights, boots and dresses. I have a work version and a home version. It was thrown in to chaos today when I was wandering around Sydney's CBD and came across this on sale (in a very big way - $40 reduced from $150) in a local chain store called Witchery:

That's a pretty tragic photo of what is actually a rather lovely blush-coloured rayon dress. Here's a close up of the smocking panel on the front:


It's a very soothing flattering colour and a wonderful shape - straight up and down, loose, suitable for strolling around estates with a parasol, playing croquet with my chums and Charlstoning. I will be wearing it for none of those activities, instead opting to team it with rather rugged plain accessories.

When I finally get my head around this dress it will appear on a list thus:

*peach smocking dress
*peach silk slip
*brown wool tights
*brown Marc Alpert boots
*cream crew neck
*red faille bag.

It might take a month or so though.

As I recovered from the chaos of an unexpected dress I went scouring for a copy of Harpers. US and UK magazines are available in Australia, but the up-to-date ones (that is, available here about a week after they hit the newsstands in Ohio or York) are zipped over the globe by air mail and cost a bomb - up to twenty dollars. I limit myself to Real Simple, Harpers, British Vogue and Lucky. Today, however, my list was challenged again when I found this:

It's a new British magazine with a very different attitude and much more stark copy than the usual run of magazines. It looks distinctly smart and not at all patronising. I am inordinately excited - I rather fancy myself as a bit of a gentlewoman. The proof, though, will be in the printed pudding: I will report back directly.

Oh, and I also got this with Some Blonde on the cover:


I had to. It was on the list.

There's no other word for it

It's been a busy week. I write my firm's newsletter and by the time I finished that this week I could barely bring myself to sign my credit card receipt when I bought a small bundle of distracting magazines at Borders yesterday. I've recovered and have even been thinking.

One of my favourite things-to-think-about are the eBay purchases I'm expecting this week. Mostly they're wool dresses (one cherry, one navy & black, one brown pinstripe pinafore, all bargains) but I also bought a copy of Bill Bryson's new book about the history of all the things we have in our home - forks, pepper, wash baskets. I love those kinds of inconsequential details. Thinking about home got me thinking about the Brontes who shared such love and did so many amazing things in their humble homes. It got me thinking - why haven't I read the Tenant of Wildfell Hall? I surprised to learn I didn't already own it so it's due here this week too.

I kept thinking about home, the love you can have in homes and the form that love takes. Then I thought about the specific things that are in my home that I love: flowers in vases, a fresh cup of hot coffee, having a shower, fresh sheets, my favourite pasta in my favourite bowl.

And that leads me to why I hate Valentine's day. I refuse to celebrate it and long ago banned my spouse from even buying a small dandelion on February 14. I hate seeing love presented as a sickly infected package, one that anyone can have provided they pay inflated prices for inbred roses and a fatty over cooked meal. One that requires effort only one day a year.

Real love, the proper kind, takes effort and thought and sincerity. It doesn't come in the shape of some noisome teddy with a battery operated heart throbbing on his cheap nylon chest.

To my mind real love is the quotidian details. It's sharing the housework, watching the news and sharing outrage or relief about the same story, making the bed you share together, sharing the care of your noxious and ungrateful cats, knocking on the door and saying good bye when you're leaving for work and your partner is still in the shower.

It's remembering to buy their favourite fruit for the week when you buy the groceries.
It's making their dinner, not just for tonight but enough to ensure two generous helpings for lunch this week:

It's buying the morning papers which your spouse has to read in order to start their day and coming back with a bunch of multicoloured rosebuds:

All these things happened for me this weekend, all without fanfare and without prompting. They mean more than a than a million of those forlorn teddies and their finite battery-operated hearts could ever mean.

I think love like that stays in a house even after the acts have been played out. They had that love in the Bronte house and I've seen that kind of love in lots of houses. You can feel it when you walk in.

The only other thing I want to add here is that my cat Ellie is turning out be a far greater pervert than I suspected. This week I caught her on three separate occasions, hiding in the bushes. Exhibit a:
Exhibit b:

She was watching the printers who work across the lane arrive for work. It one of the things she loves about living here.

What kind of love do you have at your house?

But sometimes you do

You don't get any real signs that seasons are changing in Sydney. Summer starts making its intentions known in October and it's still pretty emphatic well into April. Right now, in late May (which is technically the third month of autumn) big patches of coloured leaves are only just starting to show up in parks and in my mother's new back yard near Lake Macquarie.

You don't often get real rock cakes either, but you can in the cake shop in the quaint shopping strip of my mother's new neighbourhood. You definitely don't get photos of these rock cakes because, so rare they are, we devoured them all before I could say, "where's my camera again?"

You never get to see bellbirds - they're very paranoid little birds - but in my mother's new backyard you can hear them continuously. Here's a couple of seconds' worth:

And you never, ever, go into charming little second hand stores and find a magnificernt wool crepe peplum jacket with a beautiful spray of coloured beads for fourteen dollars. You might find a silk scarf or an old bone buckle or a needlepoint glasses case perfect for holding lippies and hairclips ...


.. but the likelihood of finding such a beautifully preserved garment, one that you can wear tomorrow with a pencil skirt and snub nosed ankle straps, one that looks like it floated across the decades from the wardrobe of Julia Flyte in Brideshead Revisited straight in to mine is very remote.

But not impossible:
I had to do some photo manipulation to ensure you got the detail of the cut and shape. Note the built-in brooch of beading, which I feature in close-up:

There's not one missing, and they're all applied by hand.


I wish I could travel back in time to spend some time in Adrian's store. I bet he (or she) had some fabulous dresses and heard some excellent gossip from some of London's best parties.



I'm going to an afternoon tea party tomorrow afternoon, hosted by one of my learned and erudite friends who also is a fabulous cook. I will be making my entrance in Adrian's glorious peplum top. I am hoping I don't go unnoticed.

And finally, you won't find yourself surprised to learn my insolent cat Kate has found a new way to insult me without even opening her eyes.

I'm certain she is giving me the finger.

O Daisy of all the world!

Yesterday the inspiring Dorky Medievalist over at In Professorial Fashion very kindly bestowed on me a happy shout-out shaped like like daisy. It is her Eye of the Day award which brings me great tidings of giddy pleasure not only because I love her writing and style but because I really like daisies too.

Thank you Dorky!

I got up early on Sunday to go to a trash and treasure market in western Sydney. This had mixed blessings:

*I lost a very dear brooch, packed with sentimental rather than monetary value, somewhere amongst 500 stalls. Sigh.
*I had an egg and bacon roll for lunch.
*I met these two little guys, both of whom were for sale:



He's really enjoying that apple. This is a rainbow lorikeet - you can see them in flocks all over Sydney. They are even more beguiling in the flesh (or in the feathers, if you will).

Later we drove down to Port Jackson for a walk and possibly a soft serve ice cream but he bacon and egg roll was sitting in my stomach like setting concrete so instead I took time to admire this bloke - or possibly this sheila - wearing one of my favourite colour combinations:

I admired this bloke too, mostly because he doesn't moult or nip my fingers, but also because he's a great cook and makes me laugh frequently:


He blends in well, non?

All this fresh air and the lost brooch made me made me a little wistful so I came home determined to build a replacement for the brooch. I remembered a jacket, lovely nipped-in-waist coarse woollen 40s jacket I bought when Nat and I went on out on our play date. The jacket is very close fitting but a beautiful shape, all hour glass curves and sharp tailoring. The angle of the pockets are particularly pleasing and the colour! It's a lovely wintry moss colour with a matching lining.



It was made for someone with less inclination for egg and bacon rolls than me, or at least someone with an industrial strength corset. However, I'm not the kind of woman to let my waist line stand in the way of a fabulous jacket. Thus I headed for my What Do I Keep In Here Again? box and fished for a solution:


This is a lovely old enamel belt buckle that is aching to be used and loved again. Here is my plan:

1. Dry clean jacket.
2. Sit in front of TV, quaff a pot of tea and sew buckle on fresh green jacket while watching Stardust for the 58th time.
3. Wear jacket at earliest opportunity.

I will keep you posted. Literally.

If only they came in threes

Not long ago my friend and esteemed colleague Nat sent me a charming email that said: Would you like to go on a play date to Surry Hills market this Saturday? A play date! The perfect way to spend a Saturday. Here's Nat at the markets ..


..and later enchanting a well mannered little dog who assisted in a rather outre boutique. He liked her grey Topshop silk dress and Mark Jacobs bag as much as I did.



We had a grand time.

There's nothing quite like Saturday. Thursdays come close and Fridays are nice because you can smell Saturday in the wind, but only Saturdays offer the full technicolour spectrum of rest, recreation and getting the washing finished that is unmatched by any other day of the working week.

And on Saturdays you can eat and dress a little more leisurely, more adventurously. During the week I wear black and grey suit things and eat my gravel-like breakfast and dull low-fat lunch at my desk while I curse all the newspapers (ALL of them) and answer my phone. On Saturday I favour floral frocks and boots and big vintage purses. I can eat breakfast twice or not at all, I can drink so much coffee my muscles twitch or I can take my time getting to a cafe that I knows makes an excellent beetroot, ginger and orange juice (you'd be surprised how nice that is). On Saturday you can take your time over dinner. You can stay up late.

There's a lot of choices available on Saturdays that aren't as practical during the working week.

Here's my Saturday breakfast which a lovely young woman in a Newtown cafe prepared for me at a very reasonable price:


Did you know cholesterol is that exact yolk shade of yellow?

And here is my Saturday night statement dinner. It says "No one can stop you eating a whole beetroot on Saturday":

Can I just add that this photographs includes evidence that proves I shelled one and a half kilograms of peas which of course you can only do on Saturdays.

Flea markets and Saturdays are always closely intertwined for me. Most Saturdays will find me a flea market sending out positive vibes for a liberty scarf, an Hermes belt and a pair of fabulous Maud Frizon wedges from the 80s. Actually, that's not quite true - I am usually sending out vibrations of thanks because I have found one of these things:


This belt was $30! I was shaking with excitement when I realised what I had found (and not because of all the coffee I had for breakfast either). Hermes issues a new African animal charm every year. They can be attached to bags, necklaces or belts. I am yet to find an Hermes bag (well, one that I can afford) at a flea market but I was thrilled to find this gorgeous dog collar belt complete with the elephant. I am hoping to find an Hermes tiger one fine Saturday.