Seeing Red

After walking around my local area for about six hours, getting light sunburn on my cheeks and waking up with a horrible searing pain on my shoulders I have resolved never to deliver catalogues again. Though it was good for the fitness, it's not worth all the repercussions. I may just hand in my resume all over the local shopping centres and try my hand at that rather than intense manual labour. And the whole ordeal stemmed from me wanting a little more cash on the side to buy nice things. I guess being money-hungry and just plain greedy can turn you in to a bit of a monster.

In my defence I need to save what money I can before my term deposit matures and also there's a range of book bags I want to buy at the store I work out- they look just like the penguin classic book covers in simple horizontal colour blocking design and they come in purple, green, orange and pink. I want them all! There's also luggage tags to buy, iPhone covers and a whole bunch of goodies I'm planning on making a part of my 'back to school' stationary shopping.

 

While there are several rose bushes and climbers hanging around my house we have never really grown this cheery bright red colour. There's been bright pink, pale yellows, pale yellow with tints of pink at the edges as well as a single dark, deep blood red rose. But I quite like this cheery red colour, a symbol of a high romance- I wish we had roses like this around my garden. Then again I may just be going through a large phase with bright red, I can think of a red bag I want as well as a vintage quilted jumper to match. I've really just got red on the brain.

Another proof of my current madness and love for red is the effort I went to adopt a chair abandoned early for hard rubbish collection- it took a blue lifting trolley and careful balancing to fit the rather large chair onto the bottom and walking down two streets earning myself curious looks to put it away safely in the garage. Unfortunately today it's raining and I suspect there will be some mud on the bottom, the garage has a tendency to flood a lot these days. Still, at least I didn't leave it out about and in the open. It's the kind of chair I've been thinking of buying with a large wing back at the top and an upholstered look. It's only red vinyl and ripped in quite a few places but it also reclines so I'm happy.

I love the drama of red and the holiday spirit associated with it as we are know left in the wake of Christmas 2011, which has left us behind. A colour for boys and girls and I have tried to combine the best of the two together; for example the second photograph of the red lion sweater is a mens sweatshirt but I'm itching to try and get my hands on it for myself. I find great comfort in wearing baggy and loose red jumpers- my Literature teacher once advised me that when one is sick, one tries to cheer oneself up by wearing red. This held true for me when I was sick for about the first time in five years and wore a red jumper I favour quite a lot on my trip to the doctor.

I don't even care that it might be a wig- I love the colour coordination of all red clothing with blue hair lying against a red and blue rug. It's a very healthy and homely look and I wouldn't mind getting a rug for my room when I find the room and the time to rearrange everything. I have the perfect rug in mind- it has a moon on if and it's from Urban Outfitters but it is quite expensive and well- it would be nice to have the space waiting for it before I order it. Otherwise if it's just sitting around and waiting to be used it's a waste really.

Tomorrow I get to catch up with all my high school girls and watch Disney movies and eat garbage junk food! I'm quite excited, I've been really slack and haven't seen anyone since schoolies and it's been even longer since I've seen my closest friend. Luckily everyone else has been much the same and this is our first major gathering I guess since study scores were released and it's the Thursday before our University offers come out on Monday. I expect to hear some lovely gossip and see everyone giddy with excitement. The friend's house we're going to is tripped out with a home cinema, heaps of beanbags and pet ferrets! It will be a very good day indeed.

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of an American Apparel blouse in white and a resin necklace I bought on eBay- you may remember my post about the brand 'This is Make Believe'? Well within just one search I got a red rose necklace for only $60 including shipping. I'm very excited; when it all comes in I'm going to try and have my armchair in my room by then and I'll take photographs of my reading books in it and wearing my red American Apparel cape. So there will be a lot of red around when all that comes to fruition. I could also throw some red lipstick into the mix as well- but I think wearing the blouse and my red rose necklace with lipstick and maybe plain black jeans or slacks would be quite enough colour coordination.

Pinky Rings

It feels good to be able to look at great overseas pieces of vintage jewellery and be actually able to afford them again- this Christmas my lovely parents were very generous to both my brother and I. I felt very giddy when I spotted this gorgeous gold ring with a contrasting flower cut into the stone (going through a big black and gold phase at the moment now) and the claw setting. I was so surprised at the feminine structure of it all, what with the shoulders as well as the detail across the band. It's not often you see such thick gold used in the band of a ring as well as the great length of detail used on it. It's such a tiny size too, it would be quite tight even on my smallest finger, my none-preferred hand and on my pinky but I have sort of been interested in acquiring a pinky ring and this would be perfect- hippy and chic and very feminine and full of glamor.

Matt Smith was absolutely adorable on last year's Graham Norton Christmas show in which he wore a three piece suit as well as a pinky ring and had worn off purple nail polish. He's sort of the main motivation behind this post and while watching Doctor Who DVDs full of extra bits through read throughs he'll be wearing a pinky ring and still manage to look as manly as a sack of bricks next to a trowel and wet cement. His ring too had a rather large black face across it and while men have an easier time finding pinky rings, women do not so I really should try my best to snap up such a great vintage piece of jewellery while I am able to.

It's only recently that I've taken to claw settings but I really do love the thick detail of the shoulders, the many claws as well as the exquisite detail of the carved flower in black agate. I can see the centre of the flower and the shape of each petal as well. Cameo rings are nice but this is simply one-of-a-kind and so unique it would make your jaw drop to the floor.

 

I love the combination of tapestry material as well as a pink ring which looks so simple but classic as well. Anyone that knows me well would know I wear a lot of rings or used to but I do like the look of only wearing a ring on your pinky as opposed to my usual method of having a ring on the thumb and middle ring in silver. It'd be great to move more towards gold and I do have some nice Estate finds from online sellers but the decadent floral cameo ring would be the magnus opus of all my collection.

A Kind of Guise: Indian Summer Belt

Hopefully this will be my last post of the day featuring a poduct from the brand A Kind of Guise... not that there's anythign wrong with that but there's only so many woven products featuring ethnic prints that I can absorb within one day! I like the combination of woven carpet wool and leather to create a unique belt that looks like it belongs within a market place. It's very Navajo print, that's pribably what's drawn me to it in fact. The best compliment I've ever recieved was being mistaken for a Native American since in Australia that would be quite a feat. It was something about the way I smile as well as having dark brown hair and eyes. If I should ever dress as an American Indian it would be two long braids down the front, feathers in my hair and maybe getting this belt for a biege or brown shift fress full of fringes.

Made in a similar fashion to the bags for the Kilim Project, the belts are made from 100% leather and cotton and crafted in Germany, if you're interested the braided leather belts with leather details on the ends go for 110 Euros. Even though the belts are made from hand woven wool and are crafted using the finest materials I do find forking out so much money for accessories I barely use to be a bit steep- I much prefer scouring the vintage world online and seeking treasure there. Second hand items have their charm to them and being a second child I'm somewhat used to getting hand-me-downs . The close up detail in the second photograph showcases the amount of care that goes in to the woven bags and belts from AKOG.

A Kind of Guise: Kilim Project Bags

 

A Kind of Guise are a brand that specialise in menswear, but their bags are great unisex pieces imitating an ethnic mood and are crafted from the finest of leather. My favourite bags are part of the Kilim Project which are reminiscent of the vintage backpacks made of a tapestry material; sort of like your grandmother's moth-eaten couch. By that euphemism I mean it in the most charming and endearing manner because the materials used for these bags are not recycled second hand goods.

 

The patterns of the materials as well as the texture is really quite popular in terms of the festival scene, and the structure of the bag is a kind of a bucket shape, with a flattened bottom made of the finest leather and a trim around the edge and the rest of the Kilim Project bags are made from hand knitted carpets. Although the patterns don't have a specific nationality or ethnic pattern to them, the use of hand knitted carpets as a material really reminds me of luxurious Persian goods. There's also a leather pocket in the interior of the bag to keep your keys and mobile phone safe and another feature is the cotton straps and drawstring rope at the top of the bag.

 

The bags are each an individual piece and all of them are already sold out on the A Kind of Guise website, fetching 280 Euros each, the equivalent of $360 Australian. I do love the design and shape of the bags as well as the hand weaved carpet but I personally wouldn't be willing to part with so much money for a bag of this shape; I'd like to see myself using hand bags more at this stage of my life and getting a little more mature rather than reverting back towards backpacks.

 

Boasting a length of 60cm and a width of 25cm, the bags are perfectly suited towards days of fun in the sun, particularly if you're Australian and there are lots of Summer music festivals to look forward to in the coming weeks and months. Made of 100% leather and wool, there's no expenses spared in the crafting and creation of these bags making them built to last and durable in some of the most luxurious materials money can buy. Just look at the rich chocolate brown colour of the leather on the bag above in contrast to the different and intricate patterns of the wool carpet.

 

My favourite design of all the bags and the one I regret not being able to get my filthy mitts on is the rose motif bag in contrast to the leather at the bottom of the bag. The contrast of white, green and red is also very festive and suitable for this time of year and I would have loved being able to wear this bag around my back or shoulders but alas, someone else got to it first and now I just have to sit and wait around to see if a similar bag with a floral motif will be created. I'm not holding my breath or anything but I am hopeful and trying to be optimistic. It's just a really gorgeous, feminine and romantic bag and a great gift for Valentine's day if there was a bouquet of roses hiding within the pouch of the bag as well.

 

Like a lover whispering comforting words in your ear, on each of the Kilim Project bags as part of a Kind of Guise range is the leather badge with the words AKOG and 'No worries, We've done this before'. How cheeky but slightly iconic. I like the close up photographs of the quality of the bags rectangle logo as well as the detail of the knotted wool all done by hand. It's enough to give you sympathy pains and arthritis just looking at the detail and love that has gone into each of the bags.

 

More of the great detail of each of the roses and leaves for my favourite bag of the Kilim Project, just named '33/100'. It makes me heart ache a little knowing that each of the bags made is unique and individual and that my favourite bag off all of them has already been sold. There will be more of the bags coming soon and the website advises fashion hungry masses that they are temporarily sold out and more will be coming but I'm not too sure as to what other flowers may be knotted in carpet and then chopped into making fashionable bags. It would have been nice and I would have worked to buy it, but it's gone and there's nothing more that can be done about it. Wearing it around town in a long black dress would have been great though, to make the contrasting colours of red and green stand out even more. The shade of leather in the deepest and dark brown would have also suited my long dark hair and brown eyes but if I am lucky they will incorporate this shade of brown leather in a future bag.

 

A close up detail of the clean cotton cords used to tie up the Kilim Project bags for AKOG and keep everything neat and tidy in your bag without things spilling out. My favourite bags are the ones that have a matching leather used with the hand knitted carpet; the overall look seems so much better for it and there's unity promoted by matching the wool and leather colours. You can't have it all though and the patterns of the wool as well as the high-standard of their creation are breath-taking when seen from up close, I can only imagine that running your hands over it in person would be an even better experience to the touch as well as the aesthetics of the bags.

 

 

Your limited edition and one-of-a-kind Kilim Project bag comes with its own dust-cloth bag featuring a drawn carpet like the one your new bag is made out of. I can't wait to see their stock be refilled and more of these great bags put out using their high-quality leather and wool carpets. It's not often you see a vintage style of bohemian backpacks recreated to such a high-standard and aimed at the festival target audience. If anyone from their company is reading this I do hope you make more of the rose bag or feature floral patterns; their not just for guys, girls love these kind of bags too!

TV the Label

It initially struck me as an odd name for a fashion label- I first spotted the name TV while scoping out the Alice Euphemia blog in search of some boutique named goodies. As the old saying goes, ask and you shall receive, I found the name TV as well as some interesting photographs of a model with a knitted fox sitting atop her head advertising a dress dubbed 'the sack'. Perplexed as well as intrigued I did a bit of a search on Google but here is my main gripe with fashion labels with this sort of common name. It can be extraordinarily hard to find information about a brand when given such a general and discrete name. 

I made my way to the website for TV and found that the brand first started in 2006, but could curiously only find two collections available to view. Not to be picky or anything but within five years it is unusual to only have two collections worth of clothing... and it's not exactly as if there were many outfits within those two collections. Still though, I was mesmerised by the balance of the old with the new.

There was the new stylised Peter Pan collar and the fresh lemon coloured blouses mixed in with the vintage inspired such as tapestry creations including skirts, bags, vest, high-waisted hot pants and matching bustier, as well as slashed denim shirts, boiler suits and pinafores. I must admit, I myself sort of prefer vintage clothing to what's in store sometimes but it's reassuring to see the best of vintage clothing recreated and re birthed without it smelling of musty old second-hand stores and mothballs. It's the best of vintage clothing without the worst of it.

The first image you will see when exploring the TV website is this mirror image of a girl in a lemon coloured high-necked blouse, thick dark blue denim skirt with a disgruntled and distrusting expression on her face and loosely holding a thick roped tapestry bag as a prop. I really like the bag, it seems so theatrical and recycled- like someone with manic kleptomania stole a pair of thick curtains as well as tassel ropes holding them together and recycled them into a bag. I wouldn't mind getting my greasy mitts on something like that, it's the perfect size and the drawstring closes with a lemon colour at the top which matches the blouse photographed. Also the skirt looks thick and of the best quality denim, they really got the length of the skirt right. It's not too long as to be dorky and annoying but it's also modest and not cheap either. It's a welcome balance really, considering denim skirts wouldn't work well with the maxi skirt fad.

I was also startled by this image of the morose looking model posing on a loosely structured dress of what looks to be a thin, cotton material with a knitted fox. I was intrigued by the use of prop, I'm still a little unsure as to whether the fox is part of the collection and was available within store as a hat or fake fur stole. The presentation of the collection is very neat and minimalistic- no where else is there an item that doesn't look like it doesn't belong as part of the collection. It'd be great to wear something like that as a fur stole, clearly not fur and taking things in vain in a folk-art sort of way. I can't believe no one's ever really thought about doing it before.

I don't care much for the dress- yellow is a very difficult colour for anyone to pull off and I'm not a fan of the texture either but I do like the bag. It's so big and robust in that vinyl black material. It looks like you could hoard many a secret in that bag without it ever seeing the light of day. Comes in handy if your a woman.

I really like the floral jumpsuit, as well as the high necked collar. The top half of the piece gives off such a formal impression but the bottom half of the piece seems to scream 'let's play!'. It's always reassuring to see that a piece like that has pockets, I can't even count the amount of nice dresses I have within my wardrobe that are perfect for a Summer in Melbourne without pockets. Pieces of clothing without pockets these days are just a nuisance and something else to worry about, whether it be having to search through your bottomless-pit of a bag when a phone rings or having to get change out for the bus. I always have peace of mind and feel more practical when I know I;m wearing something with pockets. You could wear this cute little jumpsuit quite easily to the park or for picnics, and I suppose considering the pattern is floral you could even get away with grass stains (although it's not advised). I like the styling of the jumpsuit with confident suede boots, it makes it just that little more stylish.

The tapestry waistcoat gives me a vintage cowboy sort of vibe... and I know just the perfect pair of boots to wear with it (if I ever got my hands on it that is). I have a soft spot for the material so I guess I felt a bit excited to see it used in a collection as heavily as this. There is again the light yellow blouse and the denim skirt combination, minus one tapestry bag. I do prefer the bag over the vest, I keep on lusting over bags at the moment but they're both pieces of equal loveliness and merit.

I felt my eyes widen when I clapped my eyes on this piece, it certainly is a new and modern take on the humble denim shirt and I do like the notion of the slashes through the sleeves but I have a few concerns about it. First of all it looks like you've just had a fight with a piece of machinery in a factory and come off second best and two, the slashes are too rounded. The shape and structure of the shirt looked fine without it and it might have been a good idea to incorporate such bold and clever holes in your design but I do think that the actual execution of the idea fell short.The turned up cuffs make the slashes look even more dorky and impractical. I think it would have been better to leave the denim shirt as it was, or have some sort of suede motif to give off a cowboy kind of vibe. I admire them for their brash behaviour and their design but still, it could have been done just a little bit better.

This whole ensemble makes me feel really excited deep down in the pit of my stomach. For a while leotards, bustiers and high waisted short shorts were all the rage in the last few months and American Apparel still produce clothing of a similar gymnastic and retro flavour. I had been keen to get on the bustier band wagon myself but the trend ended and I don't always feel so confident in showing off my tummy. There's nothing wrong with it- just how it looks when I'm not using a mirror bugs me. Anyway, I love the bright red of the material, the lines and structure of both pieces. It all just screams feminine and vintage glamor. I don't care that no one wears bustier tops anymore, I'm dying to try and get my hands on this one with matching hot pants!

The last of the tapestry pieces from TV's 'Nothing But Flowers' collection, and from what I can gather it's their earlier collection. That's a shame really, if it was their latest release I may just have a chance at being able to find those pieces at Alice Euphemia or something similar but my chances look slim; especially since they don't have an online store attached to their website. A pity that. I love fully structured skirts that are reminiscent of ballerinas as well as pleated skirts. It has the perfect length and shape to it, hiding any wide hips but making you look curvy just the same. The black, long sleeve top with neon blue detail is cute too and the styling of it with the skirt seems jumbled but they go well together. The modern and the vintage representing the present.

The brightly coloured pieces shown in this post are from what I assume to be their more recent collection 'TV Hits'. I did think the pun was cute and the bright colours as well as geometric shapes and patterns were interesting too. The blue striped top coupled with this printed pants remind me of the Versace for H & M collection, which I expect to be a bit more pricier than any of the pieces shown here... well you would hope that wouldn't you? I really like the pleated pants, their structure seems to be straight-forward and business-like but the pattern is vibrant and eye-catching. I think that pants would go well with just a plain singlet top or shirt, you can't have too much going on with that crazy chain-link fence pattern in green over a blue background of the pants.

TV is the eponymous Australian ready-to-wear collective established in 2006 by Monika Tywanek & Ingrid Verner. The label has developed local and international success for its sculpted knitwear, technical tailoring, graphic prints and artisan collaboration.

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TV continue to collaborate on projects and with retailers including installations at TOPSHOP UK as part of the EMERGE designer installations. 

I leave you with a final close-up of the knitted fox... it looks like a beanie wrapped around the model's head! Now that is something I really wish I had, though I would struggle to justify wearing it out especially now since it's Summer. It's just so cute though and even has it's own scarf wrapped around it's neck. I like the speckled effect of the yarn; I only hope that TV produce more items like this or that I somehow manage to learn to knit competently to create something like this for myself.