post-fashion

I have loved William Gibson’s last three books. There’s something really fanciful about each that makes me just laugh, but some of the spook stuff is probably spot on, and they are, indeed, (as Gibson himself has described them) painfully contemporary, to the point of self-conscious kitsch.

But one of the things that I really love about them, that has pulled me in and made me obsess, is the attention to detail – especially sartorial detail – a fidelity to an iconography and corporeality – a satoris even, that is beyond fashion. There is a focus on things that are just made really well, and work. I like this quiet, pure sort of design. These are the kind of clothes that I would like to make and wear.

Gibson said it well in this interview with GQ about his latest, Zero History, which I just finished this morning.

“We live in a world of shrinking resources and one in which the use of energy is an increasingly crucial factor. Something like the high street shop where a fashionable young woman would wear a dress once is lovely in its way, but it’s scarcely sustainable. My position is more or less like my character Meredith’s. I don’t think she’s operating from a conservative impulse – she just doesn’t want her sneakers to fall apart, and in the course of pursuing that she falls in love with the knowledge required to build better sneakers.”

This is my new mantra.

I think I’m going to take a pattern making course.

spool

I’m really loving using my old Pentax ME. It used to belong to my Father, and I used it for seventh form photography twelve or so years ago with very mixed results… I remember spending a lot of time trying to take the perfect late-afternoon photo of the old art deco armchair that lived in my bedroom – the curlicue indentations in the tapestry reminded me of the flowers in Botticelli’s La Primavera, and I thought I could capture the imaginative transposition of that millefleur carpet. Really, though, I just kept ending up with black, dust specked photos with a brillant strip of sunlight that illuminated nubbly wool and the ghosts of flowers.

I wonder where the space in photography between realism and imagination is. This must be an art. At the moment though I’m just practicing the skill – making sure I get things in focus and have enough light. I am a lazy photographer often, though… I like to point and shoot and hope that the magic of the moment will carry over onto film somehow.

My friend Cassie lent me a Diana camera recently, and Dave thinks it might suit me well… I imagine I will quite like the imperfection and the dreaminess its images. I look forward to stalking him and Milla around the house and taking photos of them with it.

They are my favourite subjects at the moment.

Mum

This photo is of my Mother, and was taken in 1967. I think she must be sitting on a lawn in the Wairarapa, in New Zealand. How cool are the Hydrangeas?

Things I love about my mother: her compassion and complete acceptance, her love of words, her secret subterranean girlishness. Her cooking.

I wish we didn’t live so far away from each other.

mid century modern lace

I bought some lace a few years ago on etsy that is so perfect that I can’t quite bring myself to use it. I think it would be so beautiful down the front of a dress or top, but the garment would have to be the very definition of simple itself for it to work.

It’s bold, and geometric, and intricate… but without being fussy. I just love it.