You could freakin' live in it and I kind of want to!!
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
"It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it".
This blog was started basically so that I could have a place to rant when my love of fashion gets dismissed, ignored or insulted. However having recently found somewhere where loving fashion doesn't get me funny looks I've not felt the need to rant so much and have just been writing more general thoughts on here. However the rant is back.
Like most people I'm not really being myself at my work. No matter what your job is you have to wear a certain thing, conduct yourself in a certain way and get on with the job you are paid to do. That goes without saying. However when you do your job purely because it pays the bills and when people keep telling you that your lucky just to have a job because of the current state of the economy, you can't help but feel trapped in a job you didn't ever really want. Especially when that job doesn't fulfill you. Recently I have been enjoying a rather creative period and have been writing regulary, usually feeling pretty proud of the end result. However all that creativity just highlights how unfulfilling I find the 9 to 5. Those who are lucky enough to earn money out of the thing they love should appreciate every single moment of the experience. Whenever I hear a creative person say that they could never handle the 9 to 5, I feel like yelling at them, because I can't handle it either but I don't have a lot of choice, I hope my situation will change and I really hope that if it does I'm grateful for it. But right now the day to day grind is getting to me because I feel this urge to be creative and I have to stifle it and write memos instead. One of the biggest problems is not being around like-minded people. At least if you can spent your lunch hour talking about the latest fashion week and which shows you liked it makes the day go that little bit faster. I don't even get that. I bought the latest edition of American Vogue the other day and decided to take it to work to read during my lunch hour, a way to enjoy a type of creativity at the office. As I was heading back to my desk with the magazine tucked under my arm one of the girls I worked with was heading out to the staff room with her lunch. She asked me if I was still reading my magazine or if you could borrow it. I told her she could borrow it if she wanted and told her what magazine it was. Her response was to screw up her face and tell me she'd pass. I wasn't particularly surprised, if I'd had the latest copy of Heat I can almost guarantee that she'd be interested in that. American Vogue not so much. I wasn't disappointed, angry or anything, in fact if she had eagerly grabbed it out my hands I would have been really surprised. I just really wished I worked with people who didn't turn their nose up at one of the best magazines on the shelves, without even a second thought. I just felt genuinely sad that this was the situation I found myself in. I returned to my desk and my letters, holding onto my Vogue for all I was worth. At that moment it was the only thing keeping me afloat.
Like most people I'm not really being myself at my work. No matter what your job is you have to wear a certain thing, conduct yourself in a certain way and get on with the job you are paid to do. That goes without saying. However when you do your job purely because it pays the bills and when people keep telling you that your lucky just to have a job because of the current state of the economy, you can't help but feel trapped in a job you didn't ever really want. Especially when that job doesn't fulfill you. Recently I have been enjoying a rather creative period and have been writing regulary, usually feeling pretty proud of the end result. However all that creativity just highlights how unfulfilling I find the 9 to 5. Those who are lucky enough to earn money out of the thing they love should appreciate every single moment of the experience. Whenever I hear a creative person say that they could never handle the 9 to 5, I feel like yelling at them, because I can't handle it either but I don't have a lot of choice, I hope my situation will change and I really hope that if it does I'm grateful for it. But right now the day to day grind is getting to me because I feel this urge to be creative and I have to stifle it and write memos instead. One of the biggest problems is not being around like-minded people. At least if you can spent your lunch hour talking about the latest fashion week and which shows you liked it makes the day go that little bit faster. I don't even get that. I bought the latest edition of American Vogue the other day and decided to take it to work to read during my lunch hour, a way to enjoy a type of creativity at the office. As I was heading back to my desk with the magazine tucked under my arm one of the girls I worked with was heading out to the staff room with her lunch. She asked me if I was still reading my magazine or if you could borrow it. I told her she could borrow it if she wanted and told her what magazine it was. Her response was to screw up her face and tell me she'd pass. I wasn't particularly surprised, if I'd had the latest copy of Heat I can almost guarantee that she'd be interested in that. American Vogue not so much. I wasn't disappointed, angry or anything, in fact if she had eagerly grabbed it out my hands I would have been really surprised. I just really wished I worked with people who didn't turn their nose up at one of the best magazines on the shelves, without even a second thought. I just felt genuinely sad that this was the situation I found myself in. I returned to my desk and my letters, holding onto my Vogue for all I was worth. At that moment it was the only thing keeping me afloat.
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Fashion Victim
The fashion industry is huge, from those who work in your local Primark to the creative directors and fashion designers of the most well known luxury brands. Its not surprising then that its the second biggest industry in Europe. I'm not alone in noticing though how it seems to just keep getting bigger and bigger. A few years ago there was no store like Primark, offering ridiculously cheap, throw away fashion. If it was cheap it was completely dated, bad fitting and ugly. Suddenly most of the stores on the High Street can keep up with the fashion designers showing at Fashion Week. In the past most people shopped on the High Street because they couldn't afford the high-end clothes. Now the High Street is a shopping destination in itself. With fashion designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Stella Macartney, Roberto Cavalli, Emma Cook and Giles Deacon having all designed lines for High Street stores, lines that are priced the same as the other products in the store. Celebrities are now joining in on the act as well, it seems there are very few celebs who don't have their own line. Some of them, like Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B line, are more fashion forward, stylish and worth investing in, others like lines by the girls who star in reality show, The Hills, just aren't even worth mentioning.
No matter where you look fashion is there, it's even invading the televison. After the Clothes Show disappeared, (a programme I loved growing up), there really wasn't another programme looking at the world of fashion in any way. There might have been the odd documentry on a particular part of the fashion world, but the magazine style show had disappeared. Suddenly there's several cropping up, again the standard is varied. There are more fashion magazines, several glossy weeklies along with all the monthlies that have been around for years. You can't even go for your weekly food shop without seeing fashion, as all the major supermarkets have there own clothing lines now.
Now I'm not complaining or anything, after all this is the industry I want to work in so the bigger it gets the more jobs there are. Also if the standard of the High Street is high it means there is so much more choice and it makes shopping even more fun. What I can't help wondering though is; how far is this going to go and how long for?
With all the recent financial problems there have been, even the cheaper side of fashion might seem like a rather frivolous thing to be spending your money on. Even if that's not the case and people still spend money on clothes to help them forget about the stresses of life, surely there are only so many magazines and T.V shows that we can be bothered with. Over saturation of any market allows the consumer to be picky about how and where they spent their time and money. Fashion is an industry that in difficult times still continues to grow and at the moment is showing no signs of stopping. But you only have to look at the music industry to see how things can change. There have been several music retailers facing reduced profits or just folding altogether in recent years as they struggled to compete with online home delivery or downloading sites. With more and more fashion stores having websites and great online stores like asos.com and net-a-porter, surely at some point there has to be a victim. As much as it's great to see the industry grow and expand there has to be a saturation point and I can't help but worry what will happen then. In the meantime though I'm just gonna put on my Giles Deacon for New Look tee and my Emma Cook for Topshop boots and say a little prayer to the fashion gods that things level out. Cause where we are right now is pretty damn good.
No matter where you look fashion is there, it's even invading the televison. After the Clothes Show disappeared, (a programme I loved growing up), there really wasn't another programme looking at the world of fashion in any way. There might have been the odd documentry on a particular part of the fashion world, but the magazine style show had disappeared. Suddenly there's several cropping up, again the standard is varied. There are more fashion magazines, several glossy weeklies along with all the monthlies that have been around for years. You can't even go for your weekly food shop without seeing fashion, as all the major supermarkets have there own clothing lines now.
Now I'm not complaining or anything, after all this is the industry I want to work in so the bigger it gets the more jobs there are. Also if the standard of the High Street is high it means there is so much more choice and it makes shopping even more fun. What I can't help wondering though is; how far is this going to go and how long for?
With all the recent financial problems there have been, even the cheaper side of fashion might seem like a rather frivolous thing to be spending your money on. Even if that's not the case and people still spend money on clothes to help them forget about the stresses of life, surely there are only so many magazines and T.V shows that we can be bothered with. Over saturation of any market allows the consumer to be picky about how and where they spent their time and money. Fashion is an industry that in difficult times still continues to grow and at the moment is showing no signs of stopping. But you only have to look at the music industry to see how things can change. There have been several music retailers facing reduced profits or just folding altogether in recent years as they struggled to compete with online home delivery or downloading sites. With more and more fashion stores having websites and great online stores like asos.com and net-a-porter, surely at some point there has to be a victim. As much as it's great to see the industry grow and expand there has to be a saturation point and I can't help but worry what will happen then. In the meantime though I'm just gonna put on my Giles Deacon for New Look tee and my Emma Cook for Topshop boots and say a little prayer to the fashion gods that things level out. Cause where we are right now is pretty damn good.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Friday, 26 September 2008
Fall from Grace
Although my previous posts have proved that I have a bit of a love affair with shoes, particularly ones with big platforms and high heels I have been wondering recently about how high we can actually go.
If you've been paying attention to this current run of Fashion Weeks it would appear that the high heel is here to stay. There have been at last count, 5 models whose bums have met the catwalk in recent weeks as they've been toppled by their shoes. It happened at Prada and Pucci amongst others and we haven't even had Paris yet. So if models, people whose job it is to walk and look good doing it, can't stay upright what hope do the rest of us mere mortals have?
Don't get me wrong I love heels and will wear them at the most inappropriate time and place, given the choice between a pair of flats or a pair of platforms in a shop I'll pick the platforms, even if I know I can't walk very far in them. However I know my limits, five inches is the most I can cope with and even then I prefer to know exactly how far I will be expected to walk. But I still love my heels and being only 5ft 2 rely on them to take my up to the same level as the rest of the world.
But as much as I love heels I do know that around 379,000 woman are injured by shoes every year and that they cause an seemingly endless list of health problems. However when I read an article telling me that woman should stick to heels of 1.5 inches or less I yell at the computer screen and assume that the article is written by a man (I'm usually right).
Basically what I'm trying to say is: high heels are truely wonderful but there is nothing wonderful about falling on your butt whilst wearing them. So if fashion tells us to go higher and higher where will it end? Will it get to the point where shoes will have a health warning on the box, like cigarettes? Or will people start sueing Prada when they fall over and hurt themselves in the new seasons shoes?
They say "no pain, no gain" but how far are we willing to go in the name of fashion?
If you've been paying attention to this current run of Fashion Weeks it would appear that the high heel is here to stay. There have been at last count, 5 models whose bums have met the catwalk in recent weeks as they've been toppled by their shoes. It happened at Prada and Pucci amongst others and we haven't even had Paris yet. So if models, people whose job it is to walk and look good doing it, can't stay upright what hope do the rest of us mere mortals have?
Don't get me wrong I love heels and will wear them at the most inappropriate time and place, given the choice between a pair of flats or a pair of platforms in a shop I'll pick the platforms, even if I know I can't walk very far in them. However I know my limits, five inches is the most I can cope with and even then I prefer to know exactly how far I will be expected to walk. But I still love my heels and being only 5ft 2 rely on them to take my up to the same level as the rest of the world.
But as much as I love heels I do know that around 379,000 woman are injured by shoes every year and that they cause an seemingly endless list of health problems. However when I read an article telling me that woman should stick to heels of 1.5 inches or less I yell at the computer screen and assume that the article is written by a man (I'm usually right).
Basically what I'm trying to say is: high heels are truely wonderful but there is nothing wonderful about falling on your butt whilst wearing them. So if fashion tells us to go higher and higher where will it end? Will it get to the point where shoes will have a health warning on the box, like cigarettes? Or will people start sueing Prada when they fall over and hurt themselves in the new seasons shoes?
They say "no pain, no gain" but how far are we willing to go in the name of fashion?
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Give me a chance to shine and I'll blind the world.
Fashion is about creativity. Well duh, right? But for some people the way they dress hasn't got anything to do with creativity and more to do with covering the bits of themselves they don't want people to see. Which is all well and good if you're not a particularly creative person. I often think it would be better not to be a creative person, I might not want so much Chanel. Plus one thing I have noticed about being creative is that the number of jobs that allow you to express that side of yourself are well, limited. As I've moaned about in previous posts being told what to wear to work doesn't allow you to be creative in what you wear, but doing the dry day to day tasks that working in administration requires also doesn't allow you to express yourself. So you sit there, typing out the same letter over and over again, or endlessly photocopying and you can almost feel the cobwebs starting to form around your brain. Or at least I can. The biggest problem is that when you stop being creative for 37.5 hours a week of your life its seems to make it even harder to be creative outside of those hours. All I seem able to do is slump in front of the telly and hurl abuse at the uncreative programming. Which gets me nowhere.
So I decided to start an evening course which I hoped would blow the cobwebs away and it has almost instantly. Except now I'm in the postion where I can't get the thoughts down as and when they form because I am far too busy photocopying and picking out outfits that won't cause offence. Which therefore leads to frustration, which really has got to be better then apathy but is still well, frustrating. The outcome of this moan is that I need to be creative and surely if someone wants to create something from nothing and produce something that is orginal because it came from them then surely that shouldn't be stifled. Why are people discouraged from doing what they're good at? Those who are good at photocopying and writing minutes and playing office politics should be allowed to get on with it and those who love to write or design or draw or paint or whatever should be allowed to get on with that and give the world the things they create. Whats so wrong with that?
So I decided to start an evening course which I hoped would blow the cobwebs away and it has almost instantly. Except now I'm in the postion where I can't get the thoughts down as and when they form because I am far too busy photocopying and picking out outfits that won't cause offence. Which therefore leads to frustration, which really has got to be better then apathy but is still well, frustrating. The outcome of this moan is that I need to be creative and surely if someone wants to create something from nothing and produce something that is orginal because it came from them then surely that shouldn't be stifled. Why are people discouraged from doing what they're good at? Those who are good at photocopying and writing minutes and playing office politics should be allowed to get on with it and those who love to write or design or draw or paint or whatever should be allowed to get on with that and give the world the things they create. Whats so wrong with that?
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