Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Sweater Challenge


Hello there reader, once again I have decided it is time to set myself a little creative challenge (and I must say that having a blog, no matter how neglected, is a wonderful way of keeping on track).  This time I have taken it upon myself to complete 5 sweaters by the end of the year.  Upon first hearing, this may sound a little too ambitious, I assure you reader it is not.  Having recently uncovered the mother-load of unfinished knitting projects whilst unpacking some of my many boxes (sadly, just because everything is out of storage and in my house doesn't necessarily mean that it's out and contributing to the general quality of my life) I think this should be a challenging, yet doable task.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

My new dress

I found the idea for this dress over at Outsapop (probably my favorite blog on refashioned and upcycled clothing). It will probably not surprise you to learn that I have a rather large stash of old crappy band T-shirts rescued from the trash bin at work, and given that there is only one seam involved in making this dress, whipping this up was really a no brainer.

hood up

hood down

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween!

Well here you go - this year's Halloween costume. Because of my large amount of vintage clothing, it has become something of a standby for me to dress in a specific decade's costume, rather than as a definable character (incidentally, none of what I'm wearing here is vintage). Two years ago I was 60's (leaning towards mod) and the year before that late 20's/early 30's. This is certainly a godsend for a lazy person such as myself, the problem is that I usually end up in something I would wear on a normal night out (barring the star on the eye, this is the case here). This year I was shooting for 70's glam rocker, but I think I ended up looking more like a Kiss fan.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Well here we are, two days before Halloween (and when it comes down to it, all the good parties are going to be tomorrow on Saturday night) and I still haven't decided on a costume. Since last year's was understated to say the least, and since this year's will probably be in the same vein, I thought I would share with you what was probably the most striking costume I've ever donned. I made the hat out of too many styrofoam cups and wore it to a club in Belfast where for the first few hours I was the belle of the ball. After that, as everyone became increasingly inebriated, I just got harassed by drunks who wanted to rip pieces of my costume off me (my gentleman friend almost got into several fights defending the hat's honour). I ended up tossing the damned thing into the centre of the dance floor and watching everyone cheer and smash it to pieces. I went home that night feeling very tiny.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

New Daswunderkammer hat design

Monday, August 30, 2010

Here I am attempting three of this season's makeup trends at once: green eyeshadow, orange lipstick and khaki nails. I must say, I don't look nearly as clownish in this picture as I felt when I was looking into that mirror. Still, I imagine I won't be sporting this look again anytime soon.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Go Mexico!!!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

a couple that didn't make the cut

Because I've been so bad about posting here lately, I've decided that my penance will be dragging out a couple of rather unflattering pictures I've taken in the last few months.

I really liked this particular outfit. I really did not like any of the shots of it I took.

I like to think of this as my "severe ballet mistress" outfit. Turns out, it was a little too severe to be captured well in a photo.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

I am still working out the best way to take a self portrait in my new place. Here is an early attempt. The top is Alice Temperly for Target. The trousers were given to me by my friend K. back in high school (I'm finding all sorts of things I haven't seen in years as I unpack). The belt is thrifted. The shoes and sweater are a couple of the usual suspects in my clothing artillery.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

a virtual tour of the wunderkammer

There has not been much posting here of late because there has not been much in the way of dressing up. As I mentioned earlier, garment thread HQ is soon to be moving and I think that has made me a bit reluctant to start any new projects (and at the moment putting on anything more elaborate than a pair of jeans and a shirt is considered a "project"). Anyway, I thought I'd take a moment here and share some pictures of the space where the magic has been made for the past few years in all it's shambolic glory!







an outfit for a visit to the auto mechanic

The plaid and beat up Converse say "Yeah, I might know a thing or two about cars so don't even think about ripping me off", but the ruffles are a bit of a sartorial eyelash flutter.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

It's not so much that I haven't been taking pictures (well, okay . . . yes it is partially that), but I have been incredibly lazy about uploading them from my camera. Here's an outfit that looked much better in person than it does here. I love doing the jacket-as-cape thing.

In other news, garment thread HQ will be relocating at the end of the month. I hope this will provide some of the space and privacy needed to reinvigorate this much neglected blog. As always, stay tuned.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Here I am proudly showing off one of my new tomato plants (which, incidentally, I did not plant while wearing this get up). This outfit is slightly problematic in that its still a bit too chilly to go bare legged, but introducing tights to the ensemble with it's polka dots and strong colours seemed too tricky. Once again I will freeze in the name of fashion. The top is from my great aunt and the skirt is from the Rodarte for Target collection.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

guest blogger

Why do girls take pictures of themselves? I've been asking myself this a lot since ending the wardrobe project. Though I have been taking self portraits since jr. high, it has only been in the last year that I have started sharing them with the world at large . . . with mixed feelings. Yes, many many girls are posting their pictures online - just look at Wardrobe Remix for example - and yes, we do it because we love dressing up and want to show off our fabulous threads. This is what I keep telling myself, but I can't help feeling there is something more to it than that and got very interested in the figuring out what sort of girl takes pictures of herself and what her motivations are. To that end I decided to recruit my dear friend and one of my favorite underdiscovered writers, R.C. and put the question to her.

The Self-Portrait Blues

By R. C.


Miss G. asked me to write about why so many girls do that thing of taking tons of photos of ourselves. We remember having an interesting conversation about this subject years ago (I have a ton of photos I’ve taken of myself since I was little). I don’t recall coming to a conclusion about why so many of us are inclined to take so many self-portraits; if I did draw a conclusion, years ago, I can’t imagine what it was, because today the question stumps me. All I can do is come up with a list of observations about this phenomenon.


1. When I was a teenager, I took a picture of myself whenever I was in the middle of crying.


2. The girls I know who do a lot of self portraits are, across the board, a) beautiful, and b) insecure.


3. My instable and emotionally immature mother used to have really bad fits of anger. She’d either cut herself during these fits, or give herself a really fucked up haircut. In the midst of these tantrums, or maybe during the calm after the storm, she often (always?) took a photo of herself. She takes her photos on disposable cameras and always orders doubles. In many of the letters I’ve received from her throughout the years, she’s included one of these disturbing self-portraits.


(self portrait of the author 4/26/93)


4. Sometimes, girls’ self portraits feel like an empowering art project, an homage to Cindy Sherman. When I was a teenager I took 2 series’ of photos using the self-timer on my 35 millimeter camera, and I was really proud of both of these series, I felt like a real visual artist. Both series’ of photos required dressing up and creating a set that contributed to a narrative: one was of me kneeling to pray and then packing to run away, with the TV on in the background. The other series I took, in the really neat garage at one of the houses Miss G. and I lived in, was of me dressed up and dancing with a broom.


5. I’ve known many girls who take pictures of their injuries after cutting themselves. Sometimes I think they end up showing them to people at the time of their crisis, which makes these photos seem like a cry for help. But all the self-mutilation photos I’ve seen or taken were kept to the photographer for years, shown much later after the fact/phase of cutting.


So I don’t know what conclusion to draw from these observations. I think the most significant clue here is that, like I said, all the girls I’ve know who’ve taken lots of photos of themselves have been beautiful and insecure: I’m thinking of a lot of specific girls when I say this, like at lease twenty female friends are coming to mind off the top of my head. To take the pessimistic route, which is the only one I can figure here, maybe it’s because we feel we’ve survived this long, as wild as we are, by “depending on the kindness of strangers,” and we’re afraid of what’ll happen to us when we lose our looks, so we want lots of documentation of the salad days.


Please tell me I’m wrong.


Sunday, April 18, 2010

Friday, April 2, 2010

Dress Week postponed due to weather

I once read an article on Anthropologie and it's merchandising strategies in which they used the expression "happy clothing". Well, this is one damn happy dress! I put it on and felt so breezy and carefree that I decided the rest of the week would henceforth be dress week (specifically "happy sundress week"). Of course, this was at the start of the week when the weather was so lovely and Spring-like, and since then it has been cold and rainy (hail in some instances), so dress week has been put off until further notice.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

As you know, I always like to get a bit of orange in on the 17th, but this is the first year in longer than I can remember that I actually decided to wear green as well. I used to like to tell people I had Irish immunity because I really believe that if you have lived long enough in Ireland (North or South) you should be allowed to a) listen to U2 without embarrassment and b) skip the green on St. Patrick's Day with impunity.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Saturday, March 6, 2010


I have been receiving some complaints recently from one of this blogs most loyal followers about the lack of outfit pictures these days. And while I don't really have the closet space at present to organize a return to the one-new-outfit-a-day format of last year (you'll have to trust me when I say that the logistics of that were a nightmare), from this point forth, I vow to post at least one outfit a week.
This week's look is from my recent trip north to attend my number one friend's wedding reception. The pose and the fruit are the result of a few glasses of wine and a tableful of friends directing the shoot. The blouse, by Vivienne Westwood, was a New Year's present to myself. The skirt is my much loved Alexander McQueen for Target one and man, that thing works wonders on the dance floor.

Friday, March 5, 2010

a few more for my to-do list

I've been saving my Anthropologie catalogs for years with a mind to knocking off some of their pieces (purely as a patternmaking exercise mind you) and then I noticed the wealth of diy tutorials online lately inspired by "the evil store" and since I've been pretty broke lately I thought I might try some of these out














Thursday, February 25, 2010

This is why I will never be able to give up buying new clothing. Damn you Target!!!!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

one for the foot fetishists

Socks are fun! It's such a shame that they are so often overshadowed by the rest of an outfit. Over the years I've amassed quite a collection and it seemed time to take a moment to celebrate the humble sock.

stripes from my ex's mother

trompe l'oeil spats from Anthropologie

fancy Tabio socks

gold chains from Topshop

Monday, February 22, 2010

fashion icons for all occasions

[I wrote this article about five or six years ago for a zine my dear friend Mrs. N was editing. She had asked a number of people to write about a subject dear to them and I naturally chose fashion. In the end, the zine never came out, and this article remained hidden on the desktop of my mom's computer. So here it is, my short and very subjective list of fashion icons. I would love to hear from some other people who their list of fashion icons would include.]

Perhaps with the world on the brink of crisis as it is today, it seems frivolous to write about fashion. Well, it is. But with so many horrible things going on from our foolish and arrogant foreign policy, to our frightening lack of reproductive freedom (and everything that lies in between), I thought I'd choose a feel good subject. And fashion should make you feel good. Unless, of course, you take it too seriously, because as we all know, being well dressed will never make you a better person. It will, however, lift your spirits and on most occasions make you feel more confidant.
There is a famous quote, which ironically, I can't remember, but the gist of it is that geniuses steal. To this end I present my list of fashion icons for all moods and occasions. Please steal from them at will.



For ruling the world: Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland controlled the fashion world for nearly five decades. She is the one who first coined all those obnoxious fashion phrases like "leopard is the new black" (or whatever happens to be the new whatever at the moment). [light is the new dark, Mr. K.?] Diana Vreeland has too many awesome fashion moments to recount here, but there are numerous books ranging from affordable to downright insanely expensive, which explore her in depth. I will however leave you with some typical Vreeland advice: "Why don't you have your cigarettes stamped with a personal insignia as a well known explorer did with a penguin". And really, when you think about it, if you are planning on ruling the world, why wouldn't you?






For being crazy: Little Edie Beale

Little Edie's wardrobe in the movie Grey Gardens is just fantastic. Watch that movie and it will forever change the way you view clothes. Why shouldn't you wear a hand towel as a head covering? And who says you need to fastenings the way they were intended? On those days when you find raccoons eating the walls of your house and semi-feral cats relieving themselves in your bedroom, just go with it and wear you nylons over your shorts.
If you happen to be independently wealthy, you could also go the route of the Marchessa Casati. Drop some belladonna in your eyes and buy yourself a cheetah and make like the Italian marchessa.






For clubbing: Diane von Furstenberg

Think 70's Andy Warhol & Studio 54. Diane von Furstenberg is my favorite version of the Cinderella story: after marrying the prince, she realizes that being a princess is boring and opts to become a fashion designer instead. Scoring a DVF dress will probably set you back considerably, but don't worry, just get yourself some fabulous slinky fabric with a bold print and knock off one of her wrap dresses. She even published a "health & beauty" book in the 70's for those of us plebs who aspire to fabulousness.




For making the scene: miscellaneous debutantes of the 20's & 30's

Any copy of Vogue from the 20's or 30's is full of fabulous and forgotten women. On their own they are hardly remarkable, but as a whole they are ripe for style plundering.
Here are a few to get you started:






Lady Lavery - posed for the banknotes of the Irish Free State










Marquise de Casa Maury - renown for her exotic looks and listless manner. She dressed like a nun on her wedding day and vaselined her eyes.










Baba d'Erlanger - wore jewels on her bathing suit and painted the tips of her fingers maroon










Countess Haugwitz-Reventlow nee Barbara Hutton - changed nail polish and husbands to match her dresses









For being a vindictive little bitch - Mrs Reginald Fellowes

Daisy Fellowes made a hobby out of seducing other women's husbands. She gave dinner parties composed entirely of people who couldn't stand one another. While staying aboard he yacht, she fed her guests tinned food while she ate caviar. Her style philosophy was this: wear whatever will make other women feel foolish. A favorite trick of Mrs. Fellowes - tell people the dress code is formal when it is, in fact, casual (This is not a very nice trick girls, and is only recommended for those of you who don't mind making enemies quickly).





For being adorable, but slightly unhinged - Amy Sedaris

I'm afraid I am more familiar with Amy Sedaris through her numerous interviews than any of her actual performances [this is no longer true - I relished every little morsel of the Strangers with Candy series a few years ago]. But whatever. She makes my list because she always has on the most wonderful little 50's dresses. I also love that her house is fill with taxidermy and surreal Todd Oldham pieces. I would consider dressing in this sugar-sweet manner if you are going to be engaging in bizarre behavior. It makes it that much more confusing for you victims and that much more fun for you.