Tavi in the 1960s

I find it just a little bit sad that I've been eagerly awaiting the drought to be broken on Tavi Gevinson's blog, rather than the ecological and climate drought of my own country. It seems that without a proper education and learning as a part of my routine my brain has turned to mush but even if I was at my full intellectual capacity I would still adore Tavi's latest post found on Style Rookie which has a very 1960s appeal to it.

It was Tavi's love of 'The Virgin Suicides' and fascination with other religious symbols of Christianity that cause my to buy two plastic rosary necklaces while away at Philip Island- I seldom wear them unless I know that I won't be seeing anyone I know since they'll know I'm not really religious but they are sort of fun. There are a lot of plastic ones that are 'prison issued' in lots of bright colours- those are my favourite for the kitsch and vintage appeal. If I don't be careful I may just end up collecting rosaries in pastel colours since there are so many available online for a few dollars.

I was never truly inspired by vintage 60s period clothes when scouring on eBay but I am incredibly jealous of Tavi for buying this jacket from Etsy. The colour as well as the political slogans, shape and sizes of all the beasties as well as the swirling effects. I would literally kill to find something as cool as this and wear it everyday, however it seems that finding cheap and kitsch vintage clothing isn't as easy as plugging 'plastic rosary' into the eBay search engine. My faith in the online community for shopping has been restored once again (as if I had any doubts really) and I'm also itching to get myself to Restrostar to try and find some 60s pieces there. If only the sizes weren't to teeny tiny thanks to Twiggy's influence.
 

While I do indulge in thick and generous eyeliner with flicking tails at the end, I'm not sure who keen I am to try the beehive but you've got to hand it to Tavi- she goes where no other modern woman has gone before and uses the past as her greatest source of inspiration. She's really opened my eyes to the beauty of this period and while I have been in love with Peter Pan collars and shift dresses for quite some time now, the colours and prints never had such a great appeal. But that novelty jacket she bought really blew me away I'm scouring Etsy right now for any bits and pieces she may have left behind in her wake.

Two brilliant 1960s pieces in colourful abstract prints and patterns owned by the one girl? Life isn't fair at all it seems, but I am glad that both went to the lovely Tavi who isn't one to hoard away her treasures and vintage triumphs. She's more than happy to show them off to the readers of her blog the Style Rookie. Sadly she doesn't seem to post as often as she once used to and seems to be focusing her attentions and efforts on her new blog Rookie which has a more practical and feminist approach to it.

I really could have worn my plastic rosaries in purple and pink with my Wednesday Adams outfit and hair but at the time I didn't want to over complicate things. I bet there's some great plastic rosaries to be had on Etsy as well and I'm particularly looking forward to finding more, like mine, that glow in the dark.

As well as outfits and pictures of diaries from the 1960s there are extracts of movies from the period as well, and while I may have not been paying attention with the precision of a hawk I was intrigued by the dresses as well as make-up of the photos. Oh Tavi, you sure do know how to get a girl's attention using quirky extracts of people in animal costumes, impossible tree houses and girls in Peter Pan collar dresses with binoculars.

Since Kodak has now gone under and filed for bankruptcy, I'm feeling the negative impact of the computer age more than ever. I miss little cute hand written notes in soppy handwriting as instead of emails and instant messenger. I would love to do correspondence by long and slow letters and buy stamps to send them. I know books being printed on paper will continue for at least another decade but how long will it be before that too is replaced with kindles and iPads? I love being able to publish online but sometimes I can't help but feel that ache and longing for handwritten things and pleasures of a simpler time.

Handmade books

For the first time in my life I have a very cool diary but I haven't really used it at all and that's sort of depressing really. I've been very busy typing at the speed of light as my mother would say and cataloguing gorgeous brands, jewellery and fashion on my blog to fully take up the written arts again. Occasionally when suffering writer's block I'll set about scrawling notes in a book given to me on my birthday last year and then type those up properly but that's as far as things have gotten when it comes to writing things out.

Still, it would be nice to be able to write things out in my own hand writing and put together clippings from magazines as well as photographs. For my boyfriend, I filled in a book from Listography, 'My Love Life in Lists' and that was about one hundred and fifty pages to fill out but some of them weren't applicable. I have to fill in some more the next time I see him but I should write down some vague notes in my diary to jog my memory when I do have the chance to write in his book for him. That's about the most writing I've done this Summer, neatly and with effort.

I had aimed to accomplish so much this Summer as I do every year and though I always fall short, I accomplish something in some small way. I had meant to learn to roughly do water colour and write in cool fonts but that had never come to fruition really. There's still time though and not all hope has been lost. It will just be a little more difficult since I'll now be preparing to head off to university in the next few weeks as well.

The diary I had purchased for this year was from a company called Rebound books and they take old Little Golden books and splice them open, insert diary dates and spiral bound them to make into diaries. I got one mainly to keep up to date with university and since nothing really spectacular has happened this year so far I haven't had much to write in it sadly. There's quite a few blank pages so I suppose I should do rough drawings and sketches of things I blogged about during the week, or print out excerpts of my blog and stick it in with the date. I'm not too sure how much effort I can be bothered with writing the same things out twice, but at least it might give a little flavour to my diary and make it special. I want it to be thick and jam-packed full of stuff. If I had any sense, I would lock myself in my room and read through magazines and clip stuff out of them as well as try badly to draw things from my blog from a frozen screen.

I'm very tempted to turn the blank pages of my diary into something like this- while I doubt I will be graced with the good luck to find as many lovely looking magazine clippings as this if my family were to finally upgrade to a better printer than I could print out extracts here and there of this blog and do up the pages myself. I'm digging the pink and purple painted pages and the rough hand drawn borders, it's all very home made and sweet. I have been dedicating a lot of my time to writing online so I can share it with others who have the same opinion as me, but I can't help but feel that I'm missing the all important process of writing things for myself and in secret and getting to hug a diary close to my chest at night. I was never the kind of girly girl who wrote all her thoughts in secret under the torch of her bed sheets and the crushes of her names and what happened daily, but I wish I had been. Or that I could become that girl now.

While writing in three-dimensional clunky blocks isn't difficult, I can never really bring myself to finish writing say, a diary or writing in a notebook. I always give up halfway through because I have a change of heart and no longer agree with my ideas in it anymore or I hate my handwriting. When I first write in a book everything looks so neat and cute but as I get further into it I get lazy and careless. At least with an online journal the presentation is the same and remains in the same, neat font all the way through no matter how tired and worn out I feel.

This year I'm in half the mind to take on an additional TAFE course or an adult learning class on either an Asian language, Japanese perhaps or a photography course so I can actually hone my craft. It would be a lot of fun to learn how to write characters in an Asian language and when I see the advertisement for Apple iPads I always feel a pang of poverty. I would love to learn things as I go through the year and devote my spare diary pages to learning a foreign language. I think that should be my next task when I next go to the library.

YSL Arty Ovale rings.