Playing Autumn

At least once a year, you need to get into a leaf fight. I call it playing autumn. The days are running out, the leaves are becoming damp, and the time is nigh. Play it in the next couple weeks and you'll feel like you're 5 years old, in a brown boots ad or an American university photo shoot.

A couple of classic spins as leaves were being thrown up in the air...

Leaves have just been picked up at this moment, ready to fall aloft onto the photographer.

Outfit:
Top (I'm crazy about the scalloping and and Johnny Cash style ribbon), New Look. The sweetly feminine Zoella definitely inspired this one: http://schoee.blogspot.com/
Leather skirt, local charity shop. The skirt's long enough to feel preppy and grown-up, as opposed to a black leather skirt that's perfect for meeting Axl Rose on the Sunset Strip, circa 1986.
Cute and wonderfully ridiculous spats, Asos. http://thefabulousmission.blogspot.com/2011/08/back-to-school.html#comments With these sorts of two-tone brogues, you'll either have the urge to become a fat 1930s gangster who is really just a sax player, or inherit a poodle skirt and become an extra on Happy Days. Both options are rather great.  

Woolen Warmth

Part of Coco Chanel's clothing philosophy was less is more. I rarely ascribe to this admirable dictat. In the film Coco Avant Chanel (2009), Coco is at a ball. All the women are wearing elaborate Edwardian dresses. She opts to design herself a simple black dress and we're supposed to think she's the chic belle of the ball for it. The director should have had my sympathies. I like the modern sensibility Coco Chanel and her designs were supposed to embody. But the problem was, I really like the embellished, frou-frou, fabric laden gowns that represented the status quo she was reacting against. I would be delighted if these fashions were part of my society (outside of wedding gowns).   

Image from http://www.daemonsmovies.com/2009/09/23/coco-before-chanel-director-anne-fontaine-interview/

Coco Chanel allegedly said that 'before you leave the house, take one thing off." It was in this spirit of letting the clothes and the fabric speak for itself that I chose not to add a necklace, some fanciful earrings, a scarf, or a belt (I almost wish I did later) to my outfit. Helpfully, you can also use her idea when you're low on time. What would Coco Chanel do? That's right, stop getting ready and just go.

I was actually weaing three different kinds of wool on this day. Gasp. I love the poppy red of the blazer and its channeling of English Edwardian fox hunting heritage. Fortunately or unfortunately, a blazer on its own doesn't make one part of Downton Abbey. Fortunately, it also doesn't have any of the more brutal foxhunting connotations and class divide that accompanied Edwardian times.

There's a wondrous quality to nobbly knits that makes me wam. Coco Chanel would probably think the combining of cables, diagonal knits and checks was far too much. But then she didn't know much about blustery, damp England in 2011. Vive la difference. Winter, bring it on. The wools been broughten.

Outfit: Poppy blazer and pleated check trousers, Marks and Spencer. Black short sleeved cable jumper, Forever 21, acrylic sadly.

Naval Officer's Sister, Fisherman's Adopted Wife

Horatio Nelson, hero of the battle of Trafalgar, was the sixth of twelve children. One of his sisters was called Susannah. What happened to her, you ask? Being from Norfolk, I imagine her marrying a fisherman, settling in a fisherman's cottage by the sea. On cold days, she tended the fire and was warmed by an Aran, fisherman's sweater. Every couple years, Horatio would stop by. One year he came home with a Norfolk sailor, wanting Susannah to clean him up. He left behind the sailor trousers. The dot print on the navy trousers arrived circa 1963 to Susannah's descendent. They needed to be worn by the sea.

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Note the sailor's trousers' buttons at the side. They're a little bit 1940s, minus the print. 

If you want to find some English seaside mythology, head to the Devon village of Budleigh Salterton, on the 'Jurassic' coast, where these photos were taken. On a sunny day, everything will be more sun-bleached; when it's overcast you'll have incredible saturated colour. The red sandstone is moulded and coloured like Petra or the Grand Canyon, and it's a perfect place to find an interesting looking rock for a door stop.

The images below are some of the flowers that also seem to love the wind blasted sandstone hills. Susannah would have sketched them. 

Outfit: Cream cable knit turtleneck, Marks and Spencer (from a Budleigh Salterton charity shop), sailor style flared trousers, Primark (charity shop), red ballet flats (Marks and Spencer). Loose red t-shirt, Topshop. 

Tale of the Pretty in Pink Print

I come from deepest Japanese ceramics, having flirted with chinoiserie, and later dubbed a STATEMENT PRINT. My smooth leaves belied the story of the battle and scramble for light in the forest. At times, the foliage on the print was depicted as an artfully tangled mess and at other times an intense graffitti spray. Regardless of how I was described, I longed for attention. I was initially jealous of the black judo belt; its blackness a symbol of power and authority, but then decided it couldn't compete with the off the shoulder cut and wide, wide sleeves. Some people call them batwing sleeves, but I prefer them to be called ninja angel sleeves. They hide all manner of things (arms notably) and bring movement.

The colours were intense and demanding enough on their own. My owner chose the obvious contrast of dark versus light, the innocent sweetness provided by the white sandals. A heel, especially a hot pink or black heel, would want to compete with the dress, and it would lose. It also might destroy the soft femininity of the fabric which is trying hard to drape like silk, in all its fluid glory. Added jewellery would have a similar sense of tacky excess. Thus, altogether we have a pretty in pink print, suitable for a wedding, date, girls night or walk in the park. Either the birds and bees will be attracted to you, mistaking you for a bright flower, or they'll fly away, fast, as if the Increduble Hulk were being unleashed on their quiet parish.

Outfit: Pink print dress, Zara (not real silk unfortunately but reasonably priced). The most Un-Gladiator gladiator sandals, Clarks.