Commercial break

we interrupt our regular programming with a commercial from my regular old life in singapore. 

just when i swore off shopping (and spending) for the foreseeable future, i get an email from my flamenco teacher. she's ordering for flamenco shoes from spain in june and is opening the order to all her students so she/we can get a bulk discount. the shoes are about $200 each, so my first thought was "no thanks". i have a second-hand pair that's serving me quite well and no two hundred bucks to spare. 

but then i had to go to the shoemaker's website... and damn! these shoes are cute! click on the link to check them out (i don't know how to take screenshots with a mac).

okay, that's it, just presented the dilemma. now back to regular programming.

Excellent

This is a movie so unbelievably girly, whirly and twirly that, on leaving the cinema, I felt like reading three Andy McNabs back to back, just to get my testosterone back up to metrosexual level.

writes Peter Bradshaw, film critic of the Guardian.

UK Vogue: The Ageless style issue

Vogue has just biked round the July issue of Vogue which has a piece by me on 1968 fashion, Thatcher chic (apparently) by Mario Testino, a long piece by Lisa Arnmstrong, fashion writer of the Times on how to dress as you get older, a cover shot of Uma Thurman, facing forty with glamour and a piece by editor Alexandra Shulman on her own wardrobe at fifty.

Farewell, I might be some time.

Yet another reason not to buy cheap clothes

Every once in a while I take a bag full of clothes to the charity shop. My view is that yeah, all right, I've bought disposable clothes, but since they'll get a second lease of life in someone else's wardrobe, with the charity benfiting as the middle man, then when I buy something, I am, in part making a charitable donation further down the line.

Or so I thought.

“Disposability has caused an explosion of problems,” says Dr Lucy Norris, the co-curator of a new exhibition at the Horniman Museum in south London, which traces the odyssey of clothes dumped in Oxfam clothing banks and charity shops. “Clothing is now given in such huge quantities to British charities that they can’t sell it all in the shops. The volume is increasing, while the quality is decreasing.”

For charities to get a return on our tat, most of it is exported. But if you had visions of your old treasures being parachuted into Burma as aid, think again. Charities don’t give clothes away, they sell them. “It takes too long to ship things to disaster areas, and to air-freight them is too expensive,” says Rob McNeil of Oxfam.

Instead, the clothes end up in eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, where they are either sold whole or organised into great colour- coded mounds, as in Panipat, north India, then shredded, pulped and respun into what is known as “shoddy” yarn (recycled wool) and made into cheap blankets.

. . .

The problem is that much of what is donated is synthetic, which is the most difficult to recycle; cotton is also expensive to reuse. The easiest textile to recycle is wool, but the demise of knitwear over the past 15 years has seen the “shoddy” industry suffer. And while donation bins are being stuffed with synthetics, charity shops are struggling to stay competitive with the likes of £3 jeans.

Now that our castoffs are being shipped halfway around the world, what about the environment? Do the benefits of recycling outweigh the carbon cost of shipping? Oxfam hasn’t assessed that: the environmental benefit is only part of the story — cash is the rest. And it’s a difficult area. Second-hand clothing exports can damage the local garment trade — from 1985 to 1992, 51 out of 72 Zambian clothing firms closed, partly due to foreign competition. “If we sent stuff to where there is already a second-hand clothing market, it could undercut that industry,” says McNeil.

You really should read the rest.

Doing the vamp

Go babe, go!

A film is released today which stars four female characters all in their forties. One hits her fiftieth birthday during the action. The actress who plays her is 51. The other actresses really are in their forties, not 23 year olds with prosthetics. It was its female audience which made Sex in the City, not studio executives. Women of all ages watched it. It contains a character which I don't think had ever been seen on screen before, the single, financially independent vamp.

Kim Cattrall has her number:

But is her vamp persona realistic at the the age of 51? "It depends on where you live," says Cattrall. And on what you look like. "It also depends on your financial security. She's a very successful woman, and she takes care of herself."

The vamp understands the power of her sexuality. She gets the idea that it's not just looks, hormones, but the manipulation of a whole appearance through clothes, scent, jewels. This role has usually been taken by the mistress, the manhunter (think Rita Hayworth in Gilda), occasionally by those with inherited wealth. The potency of the single, sucessful city-dweller who insists on taking her pleasure on her own terms is a new creation.

Not of course one than many of us can emulate, but in an age of the sixty-something Harrison Ford reprising Indiana Jones, we at long last have the older women come to centre stage, at least in fiction. Good.

Taking a breather

help, i have shopping fatigue. this to me is very strange, because a) i have actually done very little shopping myself, and b) i never thought i could get sick of shopping!

the culprit seems to be my latest writing assignment and one that i've dedicated this seoul trip to: a shopping guide for an inflight magazine. without the impetus of an article to write (and the payment that naturally follows), i probably would not have spent the past three days trooping to seoul's shopping districts with such diligence. 

i stumbled through myeong-dong on monday, hit itaewon and the most popular 24-hour mall in dongdaemun on tuesday and traipsed around two school zones, hongdae and ewha women's university, yesterday (with a second trip to itaewon). as you can guess, i came home dead tired each evening.

this morning i woke up and found myself close to puking at the thought of doing more shopping. i would have blogged about the stuff i scored and shops i saw, but right now i would rather jump out my window than see more clothes and shops, even if i was ecstatic about them yesterday.

i did a quick check on how much material i have for the article and found that i only have to hit one or two more shopping districts. yay! this leaves me time for blessed rest till about after lunch, after which i plan to check out the up-up-upscale shopping district, apjugeong. this will be window shopping lite -- it's very near my hotel and far beyond my budget. i've reserved insa-dong, the arts and crafts area, for saturday with marlon, my favorite art attack partner. 

more shopping pics, mishaps and musings later. for now, i'm crawling back into bed. 

Springtime palace

haha, doesn't that sound just like a koreanovela title? well, it is springtime and i did go to a palace for my first sightseeing jaunt. 

ironically, though i used to work for a television network that imported all the best korean soaps, i know nothing about them except for a handful of titles. never even watched a single episode! the ones i remember are my name is kim sam soon, emperor of the sea, jumong, coffee prince, spring waltz, winter sonata and of course, the biggest rater of them all, jewel in the palace.

it was jewel that came to mind when i visited gyeongbok-gung, reportedly the grandest palace in seoul and a shooting location for historical soaps (i don't know which ones). the morning gray had cleared considerably, and i really got how spring can be so lovely. it was nearly closing time when i arrived, and i was with what seemed to be an entire school of the most chic (without being TH) 12 to 14 year-old students i've ever seen.  

spotted: two ladies in hanboks (korean national dress) hurrying out of the palace grounds. i fought the urge to shout "jang geum! jang geum!" after them. check out the teenager with the visor -- just goes to show you can never start your skincare regimen too early.

this is my pathetic attempt to have at least one photo of myself in the palace.


i found the palace to be a mix of chinese epic-scale grandiosity and japanese serenity. it really was quite tranquil. the mountains behind the palace make you feel like you've gone back in time, until you turn to face the entrance and see all the skyscrapers just outside the main gate.

kick-ass pagoda-type building is the national folk museum, which was closed by the time i got there. fortunately there was lots to see (and snap) on the museum grounds. like the cutest stick-your-head-in-for-a-photo standee ever! and i mean ever!

squee! isn't it adorable? i was dying to have my photo taken, but there was nobody around to do it for me. bah.

one of the signs on the mini exhibits outside the museum. i thought it looked totally out of this century with the misty mountains and trees in the backdrop. this sign could say "toilet" or "atm" for all i know.


a small section of the grounds in front of the museum held a collection of these old stone totems used to ward off evil. they look to me almost like modern cartoons, or very graphic depictions of grumpy neighbors and evil aunties.

upon exiting the palace grounds, i promptly got lost. i spent an hour walking the palace's perimeter walls in search of the metro station i had come from, which is equivalent to the amount of time i spent inside the palace. bummerrrr.

interesting walk, though. the most bizarre thing about it was the troops and troops of police in full riot gear at every street corner. and i mean every street corner. i was too whacked out by the sight of all those policemen to even take a picture. a lot of them seemed really young, which puzzled me till i found out korean men are required to do army service in their youth. upon comparing notes with marlon, the mystery of the myriad policemen was solved: a military exercise was scheduled in the city for 2-230pm the next day, during which hotel guests were advised to stay indoors. scary.

there were other, less paranoia-inducing sights, however. the area around the palace has interesting little artsy cafes and galleries. i actually found i didn't mind getting lost, because i never would have caught the sneaky surprises tucked into quiet alleyways like this.

the walls held a small collection of gorgeous stenciled graffiti, like this protest-themed piece of art...

...and, tadaaaah! a classic miss universe coronation moment! i truly fell in love. the person who can identify which beauty queen is being crowned gets a prize from me! i wonder what underlying theme led to this graffiti. let me guess: "world peace!"


you know you're in an artsy neighborhood when you peek around a corner and see a giant spotted pear. or is it a pumpkin?


a man with an earpiece and wearing a dark suit stopped me in front of a building where there seemed to be an abnormally high concentration of policemen. i turned his suspicion to my advantage and asked for directions to the nearest metro station; he obliged and gently shooed me away (what was in that building, i wonder?). just as well, i thought -- miss universe graffiti and giant pears are fun, but my feet were really starting to hurt.

Into the dark

This rather muddled piece on credit-crunch chic takes its cue from the M&S A/W08 range which was had its press show last week. It seems to think that we'll all be buying colour and pattern because black is too depressing and we'll need to cheer ourselves up.

It's talking about style-conscious women who have been buying a mix of Primark, Zara and some designer labels. Will they now cut the designers? I'm not a trend-spotter and I can't speak of what others might do, but the credit crunch (and it has had knock-on effects on me) means that I can no longer afford to buy disposable clothing. Stopping and thinking, asking if this will last more than a season, has now become instinctive.

On the other hand, do I want to be wearing the same black jacket for the next seven years at every party? I don't go to huge numbers of parties, but I do go to several, and wearing the same thing every time makes me feel like when I come in people think, 'There she is, in her jacket.'

Smile corner

'There is a real vulgarity in the way women dress at the moment," purrs Roberto Cavalli, stubbing out his cigarette in a turtle-shaped gold ashtray and reaching into his green, lizard-skin manbag for a cigar. "They show off too much and try too hard. They don't understand where the line is between sexy and vulgar. I know where that line is."

	King of the world: Roberto Cavalli with Celia Walden

I expected many things from the 64-year-old Italian designer - lover of leopard-print and creator of red-carpet dresses that stay up against all the laws of physics - but not this. Remember the slashed, lime chiffon number worn by Victoria Beckham to her own Full Length and Fabulous ball?

There are many words to describe it: understated is not one of them. But then we are in Cavalli world - a floating parallel universe where the senses are assaulted by a frenzy of satiny animal prints, gilt, mahogany and orchids.

and on and on, a pleasure to read

Metro mishaps

my first engagement with seoul was learning how to take the metro. i stepped out of the hotel monday afternoon after finishing some writing work armed with nothing but a copy of an expat magazine with a map of the seoul metro... and this icon filed away in my short-term memory from the morning we arrived.


the hotel i'm staying at, the renaissance seoul, is located in gangnam, the business district south of the river. all the streets look like ayala avenue, but extremely wide and festooned with coffee shops. the first thing i learned about my street is that the nearest metro station, yeoksam, was a convenient five-minute walk from the hotel. what i learned when i started walking was that it was majorly uphill.

okay, it doesn't look all that challenging from this photo, but by the time i got to the metro station i felt as if i had been sufficiently punished for the box of guylian bonbons (and maybe the ice cream and famous amos cookies i had last saturday).

i got on line 3 and crossed the han-gang river to go downtown, into the city center where all the shopping areas and a few major sights are.

considering that the korean signs were a little disorienting at first, figuring out how to get where i wanted to go was quite easy. english words seemed to leap out at me from the jumble of korean characters, ensuring that i had enough information to propel me forward. the disembodied voice on the train not only provides an english translation, but even tells you which side of the train to exit from at a particular stop. nice.

while on the train, i played paparazzi and shot proof of my first impressions. this is what i'm talking about with the suits and sun visors.

i had no trouble getting on the train, but getting off it was a major production. for some reason, the turnstile kept spitting out my single-use ticket (just like those in paris) and wouldn't allow me to go through. i tried each and every one of the eight turnstiles to no avail. finally, a passerby pointed to a large red button that said "help", on a wider turnstile for the handicapped. so i pushed, and wondered what kind of deus ex machina would come to release me from the bowels of the metro.

the trumpet of the gods was tinny and electronic, and it played that annoying tune that garbage trucks in manila blast. i'm sorry, i know it's originally a classical piano piece, but i really don't know what else to call it. it goes tininininininininiiii.... tinini... tinini... (repeat). i apologize for the jologs reference!

so, how helpful, right? i tried it again. and again, the tinny garbage truck ditty. i paused, waiting for something more instructive. then, a voice from a speaker below the help button crackled to life. "push it! push it!" it barked impatiently.

i actually bent down to the speaker to talk back back, a response undoubtedly caused by years of ordering from mcdonald's drive-through. "push what?" i shouted.

silence. so i pushed the only thing in front of me, which was the handicapped turnstile. it gave way -- and i was through! sigh of relief. i actually had a split-second nightmarish vision of me being stuck in the metro station for hours. 

the man at the ticket counter, a cheery middle-aged korean man, looked almost as relieved as i felt. he took my ticket, grinning, and gave me a hearty wave goodbye as i skipped up the steps.

What are these people on about?

Apparently the designers are pushing the cruise collections because global warming means we no longer have a winter. So that's why sales of shearlings have collapsed and why you can't see one in the shops and Joseph doesn't stock them any more . . .

You can no longer always tell what you are looking at," said Liz Walker, executive fashion editor at Marie Claire. "A winter fashion show may have no coats or sweaters, and the only thing that reminds you it's a summer show is if you see a girl in bikini."It's definitely to do with climate change. Ten years ago you knew you were going to have to shoot coats and sweaters in Russia or Iceland, but nobody wants those clothes anymore.

First glimpses

"the temperature is 13 degrees celsius..."

it wasn't the touchdown at incheon international airport, but the purser's announcement that woke me up with a jolt. thirteen degrees?!?!?! i was totally not prepared! marlon and i stared at each other -- we both wore cotton tops and jeans. good luck to us!

as we lined up at passport clearance, i surveyed the outfits of arriving koreans to see how we would fare with the weather. girl in sandals, long t-shirt, leggings and cardigan: okay, i think we'll be fine. girl in floaty, sheer slip dress: hell, more than fine. woman in jogging pants, ski cap and puffy hooded parka: we're f*cked. talked about mixed signals!

this is my guerrilla shot of the airport. marlon grumbled: "the more i travel, the more i see that the philippines is the only country that doesn't have an airport that looks like this."

not true, i countered: thank god for india.

we arrived at 7:30 a.m., and got to seoul just in time for the morning gridlock.

korea is known as the land of the morning calm. i have a sneaking suspicion that "calm" may have been a diplomatic euphemism for "gray". check out the view from our hotel room.

thank goodness, it's not smog -- it really is just early morning mist. the air is extremely clear, and after the sauna that singapore has been the past couple of weeks, beautifully refreshing. the 13-degree temperature hasn't turned out to be so bad and is really great to walk around in, although i have a bit of a morning cold. 

looking at these pictures, i realize the first glimpses i had of seoul were not too inspiring -- kinda drab, actually. fortunately, they were replaced pretty quickly, and i think i'm beginning to like this city. 

First impressions

koreans are blessed -- high cheekbones, glowing skin, good strong physiques. kainez. ang daming guwapo at maganda. i actually literally stepped back in surprise when i saw the skin of the guy who delivered my room service lunch; he must have migrated to seoul from lothlorien.

the density of coffee shops per square mile is astounding.

i saw more goyard bags go by in fifteen minutes in myeong-dong than i ever have in my lifetime. maganda pala sila sa personal. gusto ko na sila.

old ladies are majorly turned out, just like old ladies in paris. their favorite accessory: visors. this completely puzzled me until marlon returned from his skincare field work and provided the missing piece. the visors are for skincare purposes -- that's how they keep that phenomenal skin glowing well into old age. that's what i call dedication.

people are extremely helpful.

men wear actual suits to work. really well-cut suits to boot. again, just like paris.

kukur seems to be the metropolitan fashion statement -- as in kukurtinahin. the shops are hung full of lacy, sheer, shapeless dresses and very large shirts in muted colors. i think i'll stick to shoes and bags on this trip.

the city is great for walking.

traffic is bad, and rush hour is worst at about 10:30 p.m. that means people go home from work at roughly 9 p.m. 

there are very few tourists, which is nice.

that's it for now. good night, i'm exhausted.

Some ebay items

Since my moth catastrophe I have been doing some serious wardrobe pruning and have decided to sell a few items, two Anya Hindmarch bags and one Nicole Farhi jacket which is a bit big.

You can see the listings for each item here:

Anya Hindmarch Cooper
Anya Hindmarch Whistler
Nicole Farhi navy swing jacket

Please note, none of these items have been infested by moths, but a Brora green cashmere cardie was.

Bank holiday Monday

Terminal tales

quite a few firsts last night. first time in the shiny new changi terminal three. and i mean shiny. 

the outside reminds me of frankfurt, the entrance to the toilet reminds me of paris-cdg, and the eating area reminds me of dubai, where pia fell off her chair randomly at mcdonald's.

terminal three had those odd wormhole-ish airconditioning vents that must have been leftovers from the giant noses/penises that hold up the roof over clarke quay. yes, i said giant noses/penises. you must see to believe.

it was my first time to present travel documents other than my passport -- in this case, my singapore identification card, or IC.

terminal three is quite the mammoth. marlon and i were all set to caper happily around the airport like a bunch of tourists, and maybe catch a free movie, until we saw a sign that told us we would need at least 14 minutes to get to our gate. i wonder if they tested the walk with people of varying slowness.

the terminal also had a surfeit of really cute chairs, like these swan chair-esque thingies.

these remind me of my melissa sapatilha flats.

they had a ferrari store... yeah i know, me taking a picture of a ferrari store is totally out of character. i blame it on the late hour.

but most importantly, they had a guylian belgian chocolate cafe!

whoopee!

i bought a box to eat on the plane. 

these two lovely seashells came free of charge, courtesy of the pinay counter girls at the cafe. go pinoy! 

it brought back great memories of all the pinoy employees at the duty free shops in the dubai international airport, who practically thrust free chocolates at some of us in the glee club. 

ah, touring memories. there were a lot of them at the airport last night -- seeing a gaggle of teenagers dressed alike in sports shirts and jeans. travel attire, anyone? and while changing singapore dollars to korean won, i remembered gerard, who being a math teacher would come up with quick and easy conversion formulas for every country we stopped in on tour. it would always be something totally brainless, like multiply by five and drop three zeroes or something. in the pre-euro days, he did it for everything from slovenian tolar to belgian francs to italian lire! fun fun fun. 

and now after six hours, four belgian chocolates, two meals, a one-hour cab ride and 155,200 korean won, i'm in my hotel room in seoul.

An appeal to my readers

A friend of mine has been sending me some wonderful emails on the perils of menswear. He has written about the male mutton-dressed-as-lamb conundrum, and the difficulties of 'smart-casual' in the business environment - a sea of boring men in pressed jeans and polo shirts. Not to mention his early teenage forays into clothes buying in Swinging London.

I have invited him to come over as an occasional guest contributor. Among his long list of increasingly feeble excuses has been his contention that no-one would be interested.

So do we have any takers for a column from a well-dressed but cool Englishman of a certain age?

Record your responses below and I'll pass them on.

UPDATE
The gentleman in question has moved an inch or two, having sent me a list of possible pseudonyms, but has now pissed off abroad for a few days. I will update you when I hear more. All I can say is, it will be worth the wait.

Fixin' to go

this is what my sunday evening at home looks like:

me with my feet in a basin of hot water that marlon was kind enough to set out for me. i never knew the soles of your feet could hurt. it started with an ache on the bottom of my heels and spread out during the longest mass i've ever attended (almost 2 hours at novena church). after a little over two months of lessons, i've come to identify flamenco with hurts you never knew you could have -- pain shooting down the insides of your forearms, the length and front of your thighs, the soles of your feet, the sides of your ribs. fortunately that's not all i associate it with, which is what keeps me coming back for more. i associate it, surprisingly enough, with choral singing.

(that reminds me, i have yet to blog about flamenco. i promise, my beloved las otras, i will! bagbagabagbagabag! all i can say about it for now is that if i had a flamenco stage name, today it would have to be La Bloatana. damn this time of the month.)

marlon and i frantically trying to polish off the perishables in the ref before we catch our 11:50 pm flight to seoul. we don't want to come back after a week to any nasty surprises. the leftovers this evening are great -- cold couscous salad and chicken drumsticks with barbeque sauce made from scratch. this was the menu for yesterday's lunch, when we had shrenik and shivaani over. the barbeque chicken is something of a showstopper and seems to be our default dish for guests; i made it when we had david and phyllis, our first-ever guests for dinner, a few months ago.

me with extra strength zit cream caked on the whopper that's taken up residence on my cheek.

marlon putting toiletries into my pink suitcase.

utter peace and quiet.

it's a nice way to leave home.

So tell me . . .

Betty Jackson says:

'I still think that clothes look better on thin people. I'm sorry, that's the truth. They look better in a size eight and ten than they do in a 16 and 18.'

Do we disagree?

It's not a love story

Ripped off from Norm, who spotted it first, this very telling insight from David Baddiel, about Jane Austen, summing up my disgust at the recent biopic (not to mention the increasingly Mills and Boonish quality of film adaptations of her work.

I first read Austen as a teenager, given Nothanger Abbey as an O level set text. I did not much enjoy it, unable to appreciate at such a young age, what Baddiel so effectively describes. I am not, like Norm, a Janeite, but Baddiel's assessment of her as the firs modernist, will take me back there, right now:

However, the great writer who has really been portrayed this way most frequently in recent times is one who hasn't yet been visited by the jaunty Gallifrean: Jane Austen. Both in the film Becoming Jane and the TV movie Miss Austen Regrets, Austen was depicted as a waspish cynical tomboy, clever with words if not so clever with men: a sort of Regency Sue Perkins. In the TV movie, there was a greater stab at complexity, as the character grew bitter with age - an Elizabeth Bennett who never nabs Mr Darcy - but in both there was, I would hazard, an incipient underlying sexism, based on the notion that Austen's work was underpinned by her own failures in love.

Because here's the thing about Jane Austen. She was a very great genius. She is possibly the greatest genius in the history of English literature, arguably greater than Shakespeare. And her achievement is not that much to do with love, although that was her subject matter. It's to do with technique. Before her there are three strands in English fiction: the somewhat mental, directly-reader-addressing semi-oral romps of Nashe and Sterne and Fielding; the sensationalist Gothic work of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe; and the romances of Eliza Haywood and Fanny Burney.

However great these writers are, none could be read now and considered modern. When Austen gets into her stride, which she does very quickly with Sense and Sensibility, suddenly, you have all the key modern realist devices: ironic narration; controlled point of view; structural unity; transparency of focus; ensemble characterisation; fixed arenas of time and place; and, most importantly, the giving-up of the fantastical in favour of a notion that art should represent life as it is actually lived in all its wonderful ordinariness. She is the first person, as John Updike put it: “to give the mundane its beautiful due”, and her work leads to Updike as much as it does to George Eliot.

I have no idea how a mainly home-educated rector's daughter came by all that, but I know that imagining her as a kind of acerbic spinster flattens out this genius. It becomes all about the subject matter and not at all about the huge creative advance her work represents.

Gay or grey

Let me very firmly indeed declare myself on the side of the author, here:

I look dreadful with both white hair and blonde hair. I am a dark-haired woman. And so shall remain.

And there's the rub. Women will admire Anna Ford and the rest of the glamorous grey brigade, but they will hesitate to follow suit. We don't want to go grey because of ageist prejudice, but the guilty secret is that many of us are scared we haven't got the cheekbones or the chutzpah to carry it off. My suspicion - and OK, it's deeply unsisterly - is that some women are happy to turn silver because they know they still look hot; it's not so much authentic ageing as a subtle assertion of superiority.

The other problem about grey hair is that it is such a high-maintenance option. You don't have to get your roots retouched every five minutes, but if you want to stay fabulous, the rest of your grooming has to rise exponentially. Flawlessly styled hair, immaculate clothes and perfect make-up are indispensable, as is a trim figure.

I know, dahlink, I know

i watched indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull yesterday with marlon, shrenik and shivaani. i gasped when cate blanchett first appeared onscreen. 

and for the first time, it wasn't because she was so fabulous -- it was because she was edna mode!

other than that, the movie was not bad at all -- after i spent the first fifteen minutes of running time searching harrison ford's face for signs of botox. i appreciated all the classic indy trademarks -- campy villain, gruesome creatures, overplayed deaths, puzzle-solving, escape attempts with attempts at humor, massive destruction, grand myth (in this case rather bizarre and cross-bred with another george lucas franchise).

i'm kind of glad the fedora stays with ford for now. i love shia labeouf, but he isn't quite the swashbuckling adventurer type to pass the torch to. remember the young indiana jones chronicles on tv? that guy was so much hotter; too bad he was about a decade too early for the sequel.

What French women do differently

When I was sixteen I was packed off for the summer to a kibbutz. Me and agricultural labour are not a match made in heaven, nor the spartan socialism of daily life. One hot morning, and every morning got hotter than the next, I was walking along a lane-type arrangement holding a small scythe to hack away the dead leaves in a banana plantation when I raised my arm for some reason. The kibbutz girl next to me screamed. Oh, she cried, you are bald.

I was supposed to have looked like this

apart from the red sequinned dress and the clutch, obviously.

Susannah Frankel, in the Indie, writes:

It is the stuff of legend that European women the chic, beach-loving French in particular are less likely to remove underarm hair than their British counterparts, who are, also famously, considered not to be as comfortable in their own skin. Given that France is a country where beauticians will wax eyebrows, top lip, chin, nostrils (yes, nostrils) in the blink of an eye, this is not just an oversight. Instead, while hair on legs and, indeed, pretty much anywhere apart from the head might be considered unsightly, armpits are left just as nature intended.

Hemlines

As Jess Cartner-Morley points out

Wearing calf-length is this season’s way of telling the world you read Vogue. It is so very fashionable that you won’t even see it in the shops yet, because this is next season’s trend. The trouble with fashion, of course, is that it is so very often at cross-purposes with old-fashioned notions like Looking Nice. (You will notice that Anna Wintour, though presumably well aware that calf-length is quite the dernier cri, does not go near it with a bargepole.)

"...And world peace."

maybe i've been watching too much gossip girl, but i just feel like i came from an interview for the position of usher to the dartmouth representative. scratch that, i feel like i just came from a panel interview for yale cross-pollinated with a miss universe question-and-answer portion. and this is the mental equivalent of me wondering whether i should have said something about world peace.

there were times when i wondered whether i should be saying what i was saying, but then i told myself long ago that i'm through being a people-pleasing chameleon just to be hired -- it's all about finding the right fit. i may have shot myself in the foot with one of my answers, but i'm pretty confident i didn't pull a janina san miguel. 

speaking of answers, it's the first time i've heard an employer describe themselves as "task oriented" versus "results oriented." iiiiinteresting. i wonder what the difference is. i kind of like "results oriented" more; people can just get so caught up in processes sometimes.

i became aware of two things about myself during this particular interview. one is, i have an internal smile barometer: i use people's smiles during a conversation as a gauge of success. if i can make you smile, i've "got" you. (yeah i know -- define "got", right?) by this token, most people find me amiable and charming. however, i've discovered that not all battles are won by charm (as any girl who tries to twinkle, wheedle and pout at an mmda officer on the take will discover). 

the downside: getting people to smile or warm up to me is like missing the forest for the trees. i can be seen as being flip or fluffy, which more often than not leads to tanking with people who are slow to warm up, painfully serious or just naturally poker-faced. lately i've gotten quicker at catching myself reverting to this barometer, which makes it easier to ignore. does anyone else have any going-well "indicators" like this?

second is, i've seen just how much i've come to see my extensive freelance experience as an asset. so i was rather surprised -- and a little thrown off, i'll admit -- when one of my panel interviewers seemed to regard my having held down a freelance job for over a year concurrent to my day job with suspicion. maybe i'm reading too much into a tone or expression or a simple "why?" or maybe they've just never encountered anyone like me before. who knows? but that's how views (and people are). one of my strengths might be someone else's red flag. c'est la vie.

okay, no more agonizing! because you know, that only leads to agony! and no more thinking, too -- because it only leads to more thoughts. from now on, any thoughts i'm going to have about this employer shall be related to how i can cook up some kick-ass story ideas for them by wednesday... or earlier. 

*cue megalomanic laughter* lulunurin ko sila! it's time for some good old pakitang-gilas!

oh, and world peace.

Useful idiots

A man I know, a man not unknown to military manoeuvres on the battlefield, a man who, in fact received a battlefield promotion during the Yom Kippur War, tells me that he too has moths in his house.

His moths are on the lower level, and he says that to ensure that they do not ascend the stairs and eat his Gieves and Hawkes jackets, he has given them a small carpet to eat.

For if we give Germany Czechoslovakia and Poland, they'll leave France alone, won't they?

Patricia Field for M&S

'Wait till Carrie finds out what she's wearing next'

I wasn't able to make the M&S A/W08 launch yesterday but here's news of it

Marks & Spencers announced today that they have signed a deal with trend-setting Sex and the City stylist, Patricia Field to sell a one-off 35 piece fashion range. This is due to launch mid October and will be available from 10 M&S stores, online and with selected pieces going to a further 50 stores across the U.K and several stores abroad. Of her collaboration with M&S, Field said that she “wanted to be involved with a brand who really understood women of all ages”. This retailer has always lived up to the maxim of ‘being all things to all women’ and in these uncertain times they’re going to have to try as hard as ever to deliver that.

Actual M&S outfit available this Autumn

For those in Monaco this summer

'Linen kaftans and dresses and jewelled leather sandals were invented in the land of the mummies to suit the needs of the people based on climate and on social status.
Today kaftans are a must have accessory for covering up at the beach and leather bejewelled sandals help protect against scorched soles of the feet, when leaving sun chairs in search of refreshments. Linen dresses; trousers, tops and tunics are currently filling up the high street waiting to be purchased by holidaymakers, or Brits who believe that their summer has not been the two sunshine filled weeks in May.
'To celebrate Ancient Egyptian women, including their attire, the Principality of Monaco will this summer host the largest Egyptian exhibition ever to be staged in Europe, the Reines D’Egypte. The exhibition will be the first to focus on the female pharaohs, wives, mothers and daughters who influenced three thousand years of Egyptian history, including exhibits on Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Nefertari.
'More than 250 superb antiquities and works of art will go on display at the Grimaldi Forum between the 12th July and the 10th September 2008.'

Clothes origami

Word of the Plume Cocoon dress is all over the shop.

Thinking the same thing at the same time

The largest number of comments ever received on this site is the discussion on scarves. It seems like everyone is thinking about them.

Now the Telegraph has two pieces about the economy of having things made bespoke, an even greater rejection of the throwaway culture of cheap clothes. It argues that buying bespoke is the way to go during an economic downturn, the sartorial equivalent of 'only the rich can afford cheap shoes.'

"It may seem contradictory that people want a more specialised service when talk is of less disposable income," says Lauretta Roberts, editor of the fashion industry magazine Drapers. "But it does seem to go that way: we trade up in a downturn.

"Buying bespoke is about finding your own style and investing in it, rather than falling prey to every trend. It becomes about spending wisely and not wasting money."

During the good times of the past decade, the idea of having something custom-made was eschewed in favour of fast, throwaway fashion. But now frivolous spending on cheap clothes feels wrong - not to mention ecologically unsound - and our appetite for unique, well-made replacements is growing.

"There is a huge backlash against mass production and anything that suffers sameness," says Marian Salzman, a New York-based trendspotter. "Thus one-of-a-kind has great status. Bespoke makes us feel like we're enjoying a good life. It's the new special."

This woman had this dress designed and made for her. Personally I think it's bloody awful but if she likes it, and feels good in it, and it fits, that's the main thing.

Catching up with gossip

i've elected to get with the program, literally, and start watching gossip girl. the deciding factor: how easy it is to download movies via limewire with my new macbook pro. if you knew how long it used to take me with lulu, you would tear your hair out. i nearly did, a couple of times.

nineteen minutes into the first episode, this is what i have to say:

1. the girls are really, really pretty.
   
2. where is it written that the boys have to be as pretty as the girls... and wear as much, if not more makeup?
   
3. i wish we could have dressed up our private school uniforms that way... with gorgeous tweed coats, shortened hems, stockings and jewel-colored patent pumps. rarrr.
4. it's betty and veronica all over again. and i've always been on team veronica.

On the recommendation of the Manolo

I am awestruck.

For the past couple of the weeks, the Manolo has meaning to recommend to you The Clothes on Their Backs, the latest novel from the Manolo’s good friend Linda Grant.

The reason the Manolo recommends this book to you is not just because Linda Grant is the friend, but because The Clothes on the Backs is among the best things the Manolo has read in many years.

There are many reasons the Manolo loves this book, one of the most important of which is that our friend Linda does such the masterful job of demonstrating one of the Manolo’s core beliefs: that the clothes we choose to wear say volumes about us, not just about that which we choose to reveal, but also that which we attempt to conceal.

Linda Grant’s memorable characters wear memorable clothes that aptly reflect their status, their personalities, their era, and their internal condition. And so, if you love clothes and you love shoes, and are prepared to think about them in complex and meaningful ways, you will find this book very satisfying.

But, beyond this narrative facility with fashion, the Manolo especially loves the Clothes on their Backs because there is real life in this book–messy, complex, disappointing, sometimes difficult, sometimes glorious life–our preconceptions are overthrown, moral clarity is difficult to come by, and, just as in real life, things rarely go as we would have wished. In the end, however, the message comes through, you cannot shirk life, you can only live it.

So, you must buy The Clothes on Their Backs and read about Uncle Sandor and Vivien, and their clothes, and their lives, for in all ways this novel has to it the ring of authentic truth.

'It never will be clear as long as she's explaining it'

Courtesy of George Szirtes, the following. Sublime.

Don't

Pale denim is back. This is what it will look like on you.

When little boys grow up...

... they become husbands. 

this afternoon, i finally saw why little boys are hard-wired to do all the gross stuff they do in childhood: dig up worms from the soil, catch and fondle bugs and beetles, torture creepy crawlies, play in the mud, and make mommy eat their "mud pies". 

it's so they can grow up into men who will clean out the refrigerator when you find a hideously barf-inducing compost pit, potato plantation and onion garden growing in the chiller. while we girls do what we've had a lifetime of practice doing: shudder, hold our noses, and say "eeew." 

little girly shriek optional.  

The male mutton

In a feature on the divine Nicky Haslam, whom I once sat next to at a New Statesman lunch, of all places, this observation:

But in real terms, 'mutton' is much more of an issue for men (mutton dressed as ram, perhaps?). Women have lived in fear of committing this premier fashion sin for generations. This has left us extremely well-equipped to do and wear whatever the hell we want, without looking daft or inciting judgment. We know how to get away with stuff.

Men don't. Men - who have only recently been introduced to the possibilities of metro-sexuality, of Beckham-endorsed experimentation with challenging fashion statements, of expensive denim and He-vage (man cleavage, achieved with especially deep V-neck T-shirts) - are not yet aware that an extremely fine line divides these thrilling, liberating styles from age-enhancing daftness. They don't know how to age these brand-new looks, how to carry them off into their thirties and beyond. See 33-year-old Beckham's over-plucked eyebrows and too-tanned skin; the contrast between 35-year-old Jude Law's thinning hair and his army jackets. And Russell Brand, who at 32 should start rethinking his signature silhouette quite soon, because his hips are perhaps no longer as lithe, and his arse no longer as trim, as his super-skinny jeans require (and the kaftans aren't distracting us). These boys are a couple of years and a couple of bad denim choices away from Tony Blair and Jeremy Clarkson in jeans status. Or Richard Madeley, in weekend garb.