Sunday 15 January 2012

Current loves

This started off as a post about growing up and accepting the responsibilities of adulthood. I wasn't happy with my inability to articulate myself wittily enough whilst discussing such a tender subject, so have saved that diatribe for another day and decided to just show you all the stuff I am currently obsessed with, most of which are things that make me reflect on the aforementioned situation.

Pastel bubble hair. Having a quarter/third of life crisis as I approach my twenty-sixth birthday has given me a craving to dye my hair again, having been blonde for a few years now. Growing up, I always loved these ladies' hair, even though they are all wigs (and one of them isn't really a lady). In fact now I think about it these three are probably my ultimate style icons.


Tom Waits. Music for grown ups, definitely... a guy I was at uni with used to play his albums in our studio and I just didn't get it, at the time I was listening solely to hardcore European crust punk, willfully closing my ears to everything else - if it didn't have a strong ethical message, I didn't want to know. Here's a song which as well as being great and having a cool video, is apt for the subject at hand and was covered by the Ramones - a band that kind of get maligned by members of the modern punk scene as being too frivolous, which is utter bollocks.



Beat writers - William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac. I always loved Hunter S. Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk, and these are the guys they learned their style from, they grew up during the great depression and WWII and made their mark during the cold war years - as such their writing is gritty, uncompromising and chaotic. I'm currently reading 'Post Office' by Bukowski and 'Junky', Burroughs' semi-autobiographical story of heroin addiction and life on the edge of society.

Here's William S. Burroughs doing vocals on a track from Tom Waits' 'Black Rider' conceptual play/LP which they collaborated on, his voice is haunting. He was 79.



Geisha fashion - not really anything to to with the others, I just really like this at the moment. Here's a hat I made recently using Japanese Kanzashi flowers, intricately folded from tiny squares of fabric. I'm currently working on some more styles, for a Harajuku-inspired photoshoot I'm helping to style on Wednesday for Chimp Magazine. Hat by Kalandra Jane Designs, photo by Berni Harris Photography.


Daria! I never got to watch this when it was originally on - I was probably a little young anyway, but my stepdad and I used to watch Beavis and Butthead which was on around the same time (and from which Daria was actually a spinoff), back when MTV was still clinging onto its last shreds of counterculture credibility. It's full of all the sardonic wit a young lady needs, and should be required viewing for every girl who can't (or couldn't) wait for high school to end. You can watch every episode of Daria for free here, apart from the two feature-length episodes.



Perhaps inspired by the grunge soundtrack of Daria - Riot Grrl. I always resisted angry girl music as a teenager, totally rejecting any music made by women and seeing it as aggressive feminism, passé in a world where I surpassed my male classmates academically and always felt equal to my male friends. However, I obsessed constantly about boys I fancied - maybe if I'd listened to a bit of Joan Jett or L7 I would have felt a bit more secure about myself, rather than wallowing in introspection and worrying about how I was seen by my peers.



Micheal Cera films. Superbad, Youth in Revolt, Juno, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - at first I hated this new brand of awkward alterna-teen angst comedy. I have now come to appreciate them despite the fact I still think they're a bit twee and formulaic, I like the departure from the plasticky teen movies of the late 90s-early 2000s. I'm sure there weren't sweet, goofy boys when I was growing up... they were all little bastards. Maybe I just scared off the nice ones with my forcefield of adolescent rage? Anyway... I like them.

5 comments:

  1. I love your blog, enjoyed reading this post, and also really love your hats-I think I'm going to be after one from you before very long (I've got a birthday coming up soonish...)

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  2. I have always loved Mrs. Slocombe and her jokes about her cat. One of these days I will have that hair, I'm just waiting for the hair I have to finish turning white hahaha.

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  3. You should totally have Frenchy pink hair. I wanted her hair so badly! "You look like an Easter Egg" - cool! Your style would really carry it off, do it! And I loved L7 in my teens after seeing them on The Word - remember that? I wasn't allowed to watch it, but I used to pretend to go to bed and then plug earphones into my TV! ;)

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  4. I have recently re-discovered Daria too! I too remember it being on MTV when I was younger but my family never had SKY TV so I'd only catch glimpses of it when at my friends house as her older sisters watched it.

    Juno is one of my favourite films - since watching it I have had this strange urge to get a burger phone and if it wasn't for that film I might never had discovered The Moldy Peaches/Kimya Dawson.

    I just came across your ebay shop whilst browsing fascinators and wondered to myself if you had a blog and wha'dya know?! You also follow loads of people that I follow.. why have I not come across your blog before?! x

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  5. That Kanzashi hair flower on the hat is to DIE for, am currently fixated on all things Geisha inspired and trying to buy as many Kanzashi as possible, simply beautiful! xx

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