Sewing a Travel Wardrobe

It can be nice having something gorgeous to wear when you are traveling.  Clothes are our shelter, but in the absence of a home or place to rest, they can also help remind us of who we are.  Travel clothes need to be practical, however.  They have to be lightweight, versatile, easy to wear with almost anything, and okay to get a little crumpled.

I had this in mind recently when I sewed my new favourite top – a Wiksten tank in a lovely Liberty print.  It’s the perfect summer top.  It goes well with shorts, jeans and loose pants, but can also be worn tucked into a high waisted skirt or pants.  It looks lovely under a cardigan or a blazer and could also been worn pinny-style over a merino base layer in winter. It will need an iron occasionally, but if it gets a little crumpled I can hang it in the shower with me to smooth out the wrinkles.

But most importantly, it makes me feel really pretty.

something every girl should know

How to accurately measure your insole

I have tried several times to buy shoes online.  The results are usually pretty disastrous.  The shoes always turn out to be too large.  I sometimes have equally terrible experiences buying shoes in person.  I know I’m not the only one to have squeezed my foot into a very snug shoe while saying ‘these will stretch, right?’   This moment of delusion is normally followed by weeks of hobbling around the house in thick woolly socks + new shoes -  a seriously great look.

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.

walking away from new purchases…

It’s a good time of year to go shopping. Actually, it’s a very bad time of year to go shopping – because the weather is beautiful and demands new sartorial choices, but it’s been long enough since last summer that I can’t remember what clothes I own. I know I own a lot of beautiful clothes… so why am I not wearing them? Why I am wasting my time going into stores and looking at clothes I don’t even really like?

So I’ve been trying very hard not to buy new clothes, and to instead unpack properly and organise the clothes I do have. Blessed is the time when you are alone in your beautiful house and have the space and peace to mooch around doing just this. Last night I went through lots of boxes and suitcases and piles, and found lots of old favourite clothes that I just adore… even if some are starting to look a little shabby. I also went through boxes of fabric and sewing patterns… thinking about what I can make myself. I’m thinking that some of my things need updating or altering… but that’s probably preferrable to just buying new clothes… and aesthetically, peacefully and utilitarianly satisfying as well.

This cardigan revamp by Kristena Derrick at thimbly things is my number one inspiration at present. I have some beautiful scraps of Liberty Tana Lawn that I think would make lovely birds… and lots of fine merino knits that are developing little holes. I’ve been thinking about reinforcing beautiful fabrics to make patches for a couple of years now, ever since shim + sons did it on some childrens’ tshirts… but could never work out how to make it sophisticated and minimalist, rather than cutesy. But Kristena has nailed it. Sew covetous.

In which our heroine imagines that she is a 1930s starlett

A while back I bought some black, highwaisted, widelegged pants from retrospec’d. It was a bit silly of me, because they are really high waisted, and really wide legged and should probably be worn with heels. But I was in a Greta Garbo mood when I bought them, and wanted to be elegant and frosty. The fact that I have no dinner parties or soirees to go to is a moot point.

I never wear heels, and for a while was imagining that I could take them up and transform into a gamine, ballet flats-clad naif. But I tried them on in the weekend with flat shoes and decided that this was never going to work. Besides, I masquerade as a gamine naif most of the week, so it would be nice to dress up on the weekend now and then and try something different.

It turns out that my only heeled shoes are a pair of beautiful vintage lace-up tap shoes, which tend to look ridiculous with anything other than very short skirts.

So… Plan C. Buy Espadrilles.

Which seem playful. The kind of thing you wear in sunshine, in company. I can’t wait for them to arrive!

Prep

I bought this blazer on etsy the other day, from a great little store called plastic tags.

It’s not the usual sort of thing that I would wear, but I love the colour… that soft dove grey. And I like tailored, feminine clothes that have a hint of the masculine very much.

When it arrives I’ll have to see what I can wear it with. I’m going to Melbourne for two weeks in September, for an academic conference and to see my sister (who has just moved down there and is living in Fitzroy). I’m hopeful that the weather will be nice enough for this new purchase to be the perfect conference and just general gadding about Melbourne (you know… going to markets, riding trams, perusing bookstores) garb.

scarf watch

I should know when it gets cold in Sydney.  I’ve lived here for five years.  But I find my (perhaps not so) intuitive sense of when the seasons change is never accurate.  There’s something about growing up in a cold, dreary place and dreaming about warm sunshine that makes you really tuned to seasonal changes.  Sydney is different, though.  And I am hanging out for winter.

So what I do is watch for girls wearing scarves on the train platform in the morning.  There is this day when, for some unknown reason, all the girls are wearing scarves.  It is one of those strange mysteries of the universe, how they all know that it is scarf day and that winter is about to begin.

I know we have at least another month of hot weather ahead of us, but I am pleased to report that I saw 3 (three!) scarves this morning: a beautiful electric blue lace shawlette, a daggy burberry style plaid wool number, and a very very nice grey scarf.

So soon, ladies (and gents, if you are scarf inclined)… it will be time.  I am not about to follow these bellwethers just yet, but I will be watching!

They got the heating right at work today, it is so nice and cosy.  I love being at work in winter.  It makes me happy. The library is my little coccoon.

And I am thinking about knitting a nice cosy jumper!  I will post photos of the patterns I am looking at when I get home, because while my workplace may be cosy, they have this new annoying policy that means I can’t upload photos at work.  Which puts a serious dent in my blogging.

drops in the river

I have had a lovely, rainy Saturday.

I got up and went to the Everleigh Farmers’ Market.  Ate delicious things.  Got muddy feet.  Caught the train to Central.  Walked up six graffiti-laden flights of stairs.  Went to a great vintage clothing sale.  Walked back to Newtown.  Tried on clothes in Yoshi Jones (they don’t have the beautiful retro, graphic skirt that I have loved for ages in my size any more… woe is me for missing their sale last week).  Browsed multiple bookstores.  Looked at the Araki book.  Bought fresh produce at Alfalfa House.   Crashed briefly.  Went back out to Reclaim the Lanes.   Got sidetracked.  Went and ate pastizzi.  Came home and drank ginger beer.   Cooked with someone I love.  Drank too much red wine.  Watched the West Wing.  Waved goodbye.  Basked in solitude.  And now I’m about to curl up on my beautiful red bed and read.

It’s still raining.

A perfect day.

vulpine

I covet this fox scarf designed by UK textile artist Donna Wilson so much. I saw it in Dunedin Public Art Gallery when I was home at Christmas, and thought it was sweet… like an old fox stole, but playful and not at all dangerous to the real life foxes out there. Remember that pitiful moment in Grizzly Man when Timothy Treadwell cries over the dead fox? I don’t want anyone to weep over my clothing, but I do like the idea of a fox draped around my shoulders. Sartorial gestures towards woodland creatures are awesome.

So, yes… the desire for this quaint piece of fabric whimsy is growing. I have been a vulpine state of mind for a couple of weeks, now… and seeing Neko Case three times in the last week hasn’t helped.

I wants it.

Home, on a shady street, then library-bound

It feels good being back in Sydney.  Beth woke me up this morning (I broke my alarm clock the other night, so no more sheep and crickets in the morning) and we got a coffee at Scrambled and then went… fabric shopping!

I will soon have a beautiful new summery little black dress, minimalist, with the only embellishment being the construction of the garment itself – my favourite kind.

I was wearing a very cute parisian outfit this morning, a little black skirt and patent black flats with a stripey blue and white top.  I ruined this outfit before our day had really even started, however, by spilling coffee all down my front.  Never take the lid off your coffee in the car, ever.  A rookie mistake from a card-carrying pedestrian.

So after my delightful morning off (which also involved listening to Regina Spektor’s Fidelity on repeat, a delicious white peach, and reading Bolaño in the hammock with my cat for company), I felt entitled to wear my new, awesome Andrew Bird tee to work this afternoon.  Apparently this breaks a cardinal rule of concert shirt etiquette, because you are not supposed to wear a new concert tee for at least two weeks after you have attended said show. 

I went to see Andrew Bird play in the Concert hall at Sydney Opera House on Sunday night with Dave, after flying back from NZ that morning.  It was such a delightful show.  Tables and Chairs made my cry it was so good.  I didn’t have enough cash to buy anything at the merch stand, but I really wanted one of the tees, because they came in my favourite red and had a bird that is also an LP on the front, that reminded me of Charley Harper’s birds.  Dave was remarkably sweet and found the ten extra dollars in schrapnel that I needed to make up the price.  I adore that boy.

And that, my friends, is the extended story behind today’s library-girl outfit.  I don’t care if the hipsters say it’s too soon.  What’s so wrong with commemorating a wonderful evening?  Life is great.  A friend told me last night that he could tell that I was well by my syntax, and it’s true!  It feels good to be back at work.  Everything is wonderful.  This is going to be the year of productive and awesome.