It's supposed to be in colour

So far this week has not been wildly adventurous. Yesterday I wore a black dress and today I wore a black dress. Tonight I was packing my gym bag and wondering idly what I might wear tomorrow. "A black dress," I decided.

So here's how I wore today's black dress...

..a Veronica Maine crepe dress with a cotton knit cardi and two pendants. The big pendant is a locket. The small pendant...
...is a heart. An anatomically accurate heart. I bought it from a very clever silversmith who has a fascinating store in the Flinders Street Arcade in Melbourne. My heart was originally strung on a very thin thread of silver chain and packed in a silver test tube. I could have also bought a liver or a brain pendant. I liked all three pieces very much, and I liked the silversmith's explanation of her pieces: "They're essentials," she told me. "You can't live without any one of them."

And here's my gym bag. It is one of my favourite things in the world:

It's from Comptoir des Cotonniers , a French fashion chain that specialises in clothing for smart adult women and their teenage daughters. I would not have thought that such a range would be possible but it is and it is great. This bag - which can hold my gym gear, papers, shoes, lunch box and an armadillo should I need to carry one - was part of a range of clothing from there Spring range about two years ago. I'm still kicking myself for not buying the matching skirt. (I did, however, buy a black dress. Well, it was Paris. I think it might be unlawful not to buy black dresses when you visit Paris. )

My bag hangs around while I plough through these.

I think these files are one of the reasons plain black dresses are currently so appealing. Maybe the work will be less onerous if I throw caution and black dresses to the wind and wear this,
an extremely cheerful frock I bought at a sale on Saturday. It is by a local label called Musee. I love the fabric - a light soft rayon - and I love the cheerful print.

What do you think? An absence of colour for dreary files or a bunch of magenta flowers to make work seem a little more bearable? Do you have particular work dresses for particular kind of work days? Do black dresses make you feel happy or invisible?

It said jade is the new black

I am especially enjoying the blogs of the Northern Hemisphere at the moment. Everything is so different for the European and North American bloggers - they have shorter days, thicker clothes, snow in some cases.

Over the weekend in the Southern Hemisphere I was faced with the fact that summer is definitely here. I addressed this point of geography thus:

They're my favourite black Birkenstocks, doing some Saturday work with a pair of J Brands and a peach coloured Jigsaw blouse that I steadfastly refuse to throw out despite three immobile stains it now carries.

There's a lot to love about the Sydney Summer, even for pale, burn-to-a-crisp-in-an-instant women like me. For one thing, all the flowers out.
And there is toe maintenance to be had. I am a disciplined person in many respects and pride myself on my occasional convent-like austerity in some matters, but frankly I would sell my siblings if it meant I'd get a foot rub. Hence my pleasure in planning a pedicure. The colours of the flowers and bright skies helped me narrow it down to two colours.
Sunday was pedicure day and I wore my favourite purple Birkenstocks. On my way to Newtown, where there is a nail salon staffed by friendly women and stocked with excellent magazines, I had my toenail colour scheme challenged by the jacaranda.
So you can imagine my satisfaction when I was able to find a colour that was just right, and turned my toes into ten little Chinese charms. I present spent Jacaranda blooms and the grass as my reference.

My smugness was short lived when I arrived home to find Ellie had outdone me yet again. Her toe-maintenance is far less labour intensive yet the results are infinitely prettier.

Things to do, purposes to be served & a bag of chips, please

I crossed paths with this very impressive male at a zoo recently. He wanders around all day, attending to various bird tasks and making submissions to all the food outlets for hot chips. I love his focus and determination as he heads to door of this cafe. He's not supposed to to eat hot chips but frankly I don't know how you could refuse him anything. I'd hand over my phone, watch, wallet and hot chips if he asked.

Tomorrow is a busy day for me. I have meetings, an ornery document to complete and a couple of issues to negotiate. I feel like I should be wearing something utilitarian like a boiler suit (or maybe a garland of bright blue and green feathers) but have instead narrowed it down to this:

This is a light navy jacket from an Australian store called Von Troska. I love this store because the clothes are elegant and last forever. They also have the best sales which is when I visit. With purpose. I like it with this:

This makes me feel almost as powerful as I imagine that tail makes our chip-eating friend feel. It's very pretty.
It's a piece of Czechoslovakian glass I found it at a flea market years ago for a few dollars. It's a hard thing to team with work clothes but when I can manage it, I always feel it sends out a definite message - "don't mess me with me for I'm wearing a pendant the colour of CLEMENTINES."

Sadly this is as far as I've got with tomorrow's outfit. I'm going to have to factor in a skirt (I'm thinking beige) and some shoes (absolutely no idea. I wish I had some clementine coloured shoes.).

What are you wearing today?

Excuse me while I block the aisle

It's become pretty clear on this blog that op-shopping (or thrifting or scouring charity stores, depending where you're reading) is one of my favourite past times. Maybe you and I frequent the same store. You'd know it if we do - I'm the one on the floor, crouched over the scarf bin, getting in everyone's way as I painstakingly go through each piece, looking for the lovely silk numbers.

It's a worthwhile effort. Silk scarves are practical and pretty. You can wear them to work, you can wear them in your hair, you can channel Jean Seberg or Jacki Onassis or Marilyn Monroe or the Queen and use the same scarf for each look. And there are some great bargains to be had. Here's how I search and what I look for.

First - the most sought after and expensive fabric is silk twill. This is the fabric used for the best quality scarves. It is a dense fabric, a tiny bit papery to touch, but smooth and quite durable. It actually rustles when you wave the fabric, and because of it's strength it holds dyes and prints very well. If you're not familiar with the feel of good silk, hang around the scarf section of your local department store. Take a bit of time to feel the weights of the silk scarves, then do it with your eyes closed. Check the label, compare the feel of good silk to polyester. This will help you identify good scarves when you're thrifting.

Okay, so you're on the floor in the thrift store and you got a little rustling pile of silk scarves to go through. How can you tell the really really good ones?

I check the edges first.
The best quality silk scarves will have rolled edges, not machine hemmed. They means your scarf has been finished by hand - literally rolled around the edge like a pastry and carefully stitched closed. This is done to prevent the edges from fraying.

Next, look closely at the pattern:
The attention to detail in this critter is high, the colour saturation is quite deep and the print is even - no colouring outside the lines, no streaks or patches and a high level of fine draftsmanship. A cheap scarf won't have the same level of care in its patterns: the colours will be outside the lines, they'll overlap, the colour will be uneven and maybe garish because of the cheap dyes used.

The patterns and use of colour can be of great significance - a design or a colour scheme can be used to represent a collection or favourite them of a designer:


This is from Madame Gres and dates from the early seventies. This French fashion house was renown for it's sophisticated and womanly clothes. She used lots of shades of cloudy blues in her suits and dresses.

Now you've examined your scarf up close, shake it out and look at the entire design. It will look like a framed image. Whether it is design, a print or a scene, when you see it in the context of the entire scarf it will work as a full picture:
This is a Gucci Accornero, as are the butterflies I've been featuring. If you like Gucci you've probably seen variations of this prints a lot in the last few years. All of these illustrations look as like pages from a very handsome botany text book. These incredibly pretty & skillful designs were originally issued on clothes and accessories in the sixties and seventies, and were all drawn by an artist called Vittorio Acconero. (You can read about him and the history of his designs for Gucci here.) Alot of people actually collect silk scarves to frame, so intricate and beautiful are the designs. The Accorneros would all make for a pretty impressive gallery. I have been lucky enough to find two - one with a pink border that does a lot of work with my summer clothes, and another with a brown border that looks great with denim. Each Accornero was found in a scarf bin; the pink one was ten dollars and the brown one ..
...was eight dollars.

Here are some other names to look for - I found all of these in local op shops and vintage clothing stores:
Missoni, four dollars in an Enmore op shop.
Louis Feraud, ten dollars at the Kirribilli Markets.

Pucci, five dollars at an op shop in Newcastle.

Chanel, thirty dollars in a vintage clothing store in Darlinghurst. (More than I would normally pay but, well, it's Chanel. And a beautiful shade of green. And there's little purses! )
And, yes, I've found the mecca of scarves too:
Twice. The military Caty design was five dollars, the dog design below was six dollars. I bought them at op shops in Enmore, and within two weeks of each other. Lightning does strike twice!
Not all the scarves I own have designer names. Some have the same high quality details but no name. All good thrifters know that finding a good brand is part of the thrill of the chase, but we also know that some of the best made and most flattering pieces in our wardrobe are anonymous.

And finally - my personal favourite in the kaleidoscope that is my scarf box. I can pick one of these designs at a thousand paces across a crowded flea market with my sunglasses on:
Liberty of London! No scarf collection would be complete without them.

Do you have any scarf tips for me?

Heck in a dress

In my last post I mentioned a five hundred dollar dress at a op shop (or thrift store if you will) I was rootling through over the weekend. Sheila, a reader with whom I am certain I share an op-shopping gene, asked what the heck kind of dress could it have been?

I would love to report that it was an original mint condition Fortuny in a pale custard coloured silk, or the wild red frothy hip-clinging number from La Dolce Vita. It was nothing as exciting, but it was elegant, quite practical and looked a lot like this. Not exactly, but by the same designer (Betty Jackson), and in a very similar shape and shade. In short, it was a great work dress and in very good if not new condition.

And I was in a rather posh part of Sydney, miles away from my usual stamping ground. I had no doubt the local charity shops would be pricey.

Perhaps I should offer a case for the defence here? I have been doing the rounds of op shops since I was a little girl for my mother was also a champion op-shopper. I grew up wearing second clothes; some of my favourite, best loved items have been found on the racks and shelves of op shops. I love the process, I love the results: things are donated, they are priced reasonably, the money goes to a good cause and I get a great dress. I'm also happy to pay a fair price for an item - $30 to me is a good price for a clean, practical garment that I know I will wear. I would have handed over $50 for this dress.

In fact, I was certain the tag on the dress was a mistake, that they had meant to price it as $50. I asked the lady in the apron behind the counter. "Is this meant to be $500?"

She creased her brow and shook her head. "I don't think so, but I'll check."

I followed her out to the back where she had a hushed conversation with other apron ladies of the shop. About as much as I could glean is that the dress had come in with a particularly impressive load of designer clothes and they had all been priced very high. "It's $500 dollars," the boss apron lady said.

$500? It wouldn't have cost that much new.

I put it back on the rack. I have a lot of respect and admiration for the Salvation Army but I feel their pricing policies, and indeed a little bit of the fun of op shopping, jumped the shark on Saturday.

But it wasn't a complete loss. There were brooches, a lovely old hair clip and some very hard-to-find Liberty bangles.

I washed the Liberty bangles in a lingerie bag on the gentle cycle in my rather snarky washing machine. I thought they came up rather nicely. The bangles, I should add, were much more in line with op-shop pricing at fifty cents each. The jewellery was eight dollars a piece. I wore the blue bangle with this dress today.

Perfectly valid, up in smoke and so forth

Now you know why I haven't been able to blog for more than a week. There was a very bad fire in our street. Two houses and two factories were destroyed. No one was injured but two sets of neighbours lost everything, although I am happy to report firemen saved a pet rat and pet cat, both of whom were found huddled together in the old stone laundry at the back of one of the houses. No one could save the the Internet though, at least not the tendrils that reach my house and that melted in the heat.

The upside is that I have many posts prepared for the coming the week. The lesser downside (that is, as opposed to the greater downside of the damage and the loss) is that I did get a little over enthusiastic when my Internet connection was restored and I made rather a nuisance of myself on eBay. But I need a bottle of Cabochard, I reasoned. I witnessed a horrible fire. I need another handbag. It makes my inevitable mortality seem less important.

There are no other upsides or downsides, but there is this tangent:

How does Kate do this? I don't know. My only conclusion is that her spine can actually turn like a curtain rail. It has been hot today and she has adopted this pose three times in three different locations. Every time she does, I stand over her and stare. It's becoming a bit of a habit for both of us.

If you're around this week - and I hope most fervently that you will be - I will explain to you how recognising this this ...
...helped me accumulate these:
And I'll tell you what I bought at the thrift shop where they had tagged a dress $500. Yes, five hundred. Here is a clue: I didn't buy that dress.

Before I go, let's ponder it once again:


She must have ball bearings somewhere near her shoulder blades.

Talking the right language

Here is a face that says gidday if ever I've seen one (and obviously I've seen lots around here). I snapped this gentleman in the Blue Mountains a few weeks ago. He was quite amiable about the first photo but when I moved tad closer he turned his face and dropped his smile. I admired his communication skills.

Today I had to talk to our finance guy. I'm sure you have a finance guy too, the senior management guy in the company who runs all the corporate affairs. I dreaded this call because I never feel that I can make myself understood in our conversations. I don't think he enjoys the calls any more than I do but today we struck a happy medium and the conversation was crystal clear: He had shortened some text I needed for a document and explained this edit as producing an "eloquent sufficiency".

I was mightily impressed.

Later this afternoon I had call to email a brave friend some Mary Oliver -

clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.

and he understood exactly what was meant.

It interesting how we can make ourselves understood, I thought tonight as I pounded away on the treadmill, sweating away the last traces of poisonous cottage cheese. We wrinkle up our nose, use single syllable words, adopt an accent - all kinds of things to get our message across. Clothes are language, I decided. Suits are full sentences, skirts are verbs, blouses are adjectives and these, part of my staples for the Spring I'm assured will be here any minute, are my semi colon:


And this, an old friend with lovely manners...
is an a-line Tara Jarmon dress that I've cropped to emphasis the buttons, which must be fullstops.

Do you have any language in your wardrobe? Are your earrings apostrophes? Do you have a full palette of exclamation marks? Tell me - I'd love to improve my language skills!