montage no.1

Clockwise from left to right; Dress Up, Fieldguided, Simply Breakfast,  Still from Brooke Shields in Tilt, Frieze, Girl by Band of Outsiders.

the silent years

Ellery Spring 12

The Silent Years

A collection Inspired by cults and secret societies. I love how Ellery have incorporated soft colours and prints with their signature structural pieces. The ombre coat and dress are my favourite...

Images from Ellery Spring 12, collage by me using images from Wrangler and Catherine McNeil for Numero magazine.

democrats are more beautiful

Paintings by Elizabeth Peyton

From left to right:

Jackie and John (Jackie fixing John’s hair), 1999 - Oil on board

Democrats are more beautiful (after Jonathan Horowitz), 2001 - Oil on board

Jarvis, 1996 - Oil on canvas

Piotr’s first I.D. Photo, 1997 - Oil on wooden panel

Little Em (Eminem), 2002 - Oil on board

feels like summer

 

 

I love the Araks SS12 lookbook, a collaboration between friends sharing their love of photography and beautiful lingerie. 

The latest addition to my collection is the Ana bralett in sea, and I would love a pair of the Shelby pajamas too.

Thankyou to the lovely girls at Bloodorange for the lookbook!

Photos by me of Araks SS12 lookbook, Maison Balzac candle (also from Bloodorange), Byredo perfume and fresh hyacinths in my office.

maximillia

Rohan and I just finished working on the re-brand from online store Maximillia.

The collage on the home page will be updated monthly according to new collections. First up is Karen Walker's Sea Monsters, the Jules Verne tribute which sees models with navy nail polish and matching angora sweaters play around with gold brocade and Victorian prints.

All graphics for Maximillia by Badlands Studio

frozen landscapes

Carven Pre-Fall 2012

Another winner. Designer Guillaume Henry describes the knitwear from his Pre-Fall 12 collection as being “picked from a boyfriend’s wardrobe,” while the autumnal colour palette was inspired “by a frozen landscape.”
The starting point for the collection was Diane Arbus's portraits; simple, unfussy clothes with a bit of schoolgirl charm. “I really wanted to get this feeling of the way they used to dress then in the ’60s…there was no question of age or social position.”

I'm hanging out for the first drop of the collection at Bloodorange. I would love to wear it all right now!

Collages by me using lookbook images from Carven via TFS and vintage photos of Twiggy and Jane Birkin.

fall roundup

Oh gosh it's that time of year again. One of my biggest weaknesses is always the international Pre-Fall collections, particularly because it's quite cool in Sydney and I know I could be wearing all these beautiful things right now. This is a current selection of favourites from La Garçonne mixed in with a few other winter inspirations.

1. Proenza Schouler - I love the subtle print of the skirt and the beautiful burnt orange colour (one of my favourites for winter). The fact that the PS 11 bag also comes in this colour is just crazy amazing.

2. 3.1 Phillip Lim - The contrast knitted panels make this sweater extra special, my winter uniform usually ends up being sweaters and trousers so this look would fit perfectly in my wardrobe!

The tweed dress looks beautiful from the back, again with a contrast knit panel and those lovely arm patches. 

3. Photos by Turned Out - This is how I feel when Rohan lends me his Cabas bag, it's just so perfect. Also my obsession with angora sweaters continues. On the right; socks and shoes always make a great pair. I have an old pair of Chloe wedges from the Phoebe Philo days that I will be bringing out again to wear with my new Hansel from Basel socks.

4. Proenza Schouler - Striped Breton tops are a year-round essential. 

  La Garçonne Moderne - I love white pants and jeans; the styling with a simple top and loafers is a perfect trans-seasonal look.

5. 3.1 Phillip Lim - Feels like a cardigan, looks like a coat, and with an attached scarf!

   Satomi Kawakita - This is the first piece of Satomi's jewellery I ever saw,  the tiny black diamond is so special and simple. 

6. Photo by Stevie Dance - I first met Stevie 6 years ago, she has incredible personal style and is a real sweetie too. Also, another perfect angora sweater.

7. 3.1 Phillip Lim - Contrast pants again, I missed out on the ones last season but I have to say I love this colour combination even more.

The 31 hour bag also comes in new fall colours. I have been using my black one every day but I would happily have the burgundy one too.

8. Isabel Marant - I bought a pair of the black Willow sneakers in Paris and love them to bits. They are best worn with a really simple outfit, skinny jeans; a t-shirt and coat is my favourite look.

9. Photo by Turned Out - I have been meaning to try this look of having eyeliner along the bottom lash for a while, It looks so nice with a fresh face.

10. Mociun - This simple triangle bracelet would become one of my everyday pieces of jewellery. Anything gold and delicate is usually a favourite.

     Acne - Working for Acne is dangerous sometimes! I recently got a pair of Flex jeans in a similar light blue wash. I'm not used to wearing light denim but I love how they look with a simple navy sweater and pistol boots. 

11. Organic by John Patrick - I have been on the hunt for the perfect trench coat and this could be it!

     Carven - You can never go wrong with a white shirt and simple black coat.

12. From Philo Sophia - Easy winter hair, with just one bobby pin.

All lookbook photos via La Garçonne

summer shirting

You will have seen a few of Sherie's shirts on my blog lately as well as parts of the Paris guide I have been putting together for her (part four is up now). I have been living in Shirt No.1 from AW12 in both white and pumpkin cotton and was so excited when Sherie asked me to do some illustrations of the new season shirts.
I have a soft spot for stripes but also love the polka dots and liberty print. It's going to be hard to pick from the new collection!

Illustrations by me, Graphic by Sherie Muijs

the art of cinema - wild at heart

The art of cinema no.5

Wild at Heart

 

Our first guest post - part one of a series of film reviews by director, writer and photographer Ben Briand.

I was first introduced to Ben's work in early 2010 after a private screening of three of his short films including Apricot, Some static started and Castor & Pollux. If you haven't already seen them I highly recommend heading over here and checking them out.

Needless to say Ben's work is amazing, as is his taste in films.

Wild at Heart by Ben Briand

David Lynch is an intuitive and emotional film maker, something that has been drowned out over the last decade in most American cinema. His work takes interesting turns and eccentric twists simply because he feels that is how the flow of the film wants to move, not because it was laid down in a script writing how-to guide. Much like a stream finding it's way down a mountain, he is guided by his emotions and where the film is telling him to go. When watching his work you can feel there is little space between the work and the artist - almost like he is inside the film, talking and riffing with its core. He is very much in tune with the film and what it is doing.

This emotional sensitivity creates a unity between his characters and film craft which is extremely strong. Wild At Heart is a beautiful example of this at play. The heady emotion between Sailor (Nic Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) is fuelled by explosive passion, romance, violence and ecstasy. The film's visual and aural elements are always in complete simpatico with these sensations. 

Above are examples of how the scene's colour, framing and distortion all reflect the emotions of the character at that given moment, allowing the audience to feel what the characters feel, even when it dips into distortion and surrealism. In fact you could say that is when we are most connected to Lynch's characters.

screencaps from Wild at Heart by Ben 

in the studio: petite grand

It’s not often that you go to an interview and feel like you learnt more about yourself than you did about your subject. This is, of course, due to the inherent artifice of the interview process. You are meant to probe around the surface and find out as much as you can about the person without being intimidating or rude. You are meant to steer all conversation away from yourself. And, in the course, you are meant to make yourself almost invisible. That’s what you’re taught a good interviewer does, and that’s what you try and do. As much as possible. And, on the whole, interview subjects are quite happy to let you do just that.

Not so with Tanja Kovacevic. Not because she has nothing to say about herself and her successful jewellery label, Petite Grand. Its accomplishment in only a few short years is a testament not only to the void in the Australian market for high-quality and affordable pieces of jewellery but also to Kovacevic’s unique vision for the kinds of talismanic, charm-like bits and pieces of silver and gold that you never want to take off. There’s plenty to say on that front. But she doesn’t want to talk about it, not yet anyway. In fact, she’s more curious about what Talisa and I are going to do with our lives when we finish university.

“I’m so excited for you girls,” she says, sipping tea at her dining room table. “You’ve got the whole world ahead of you!” 

It’s the kind of thing we had both been longing for someone to say to us, as we muddled through a variety of different internships and freelance gigs trying to find our way. And there, in a sun-drenched, airy apartment overlooking that multi-million dollar view of the harbour one long winter afternoon someone had said it to us as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “We’ve all got something in us, we’re all creative, we all have our different outlets,” Kovacevic muses. “I think that a lot of people struggle with that and can be quite confused. It’s not easy to find your calling but you can, and you will.”

Kovacevic’s calling is to make jewellery. She knew that she would work in fashion from primary school, when she would make sketches and illustrations in her free time. After school she worked for a variety of different brands and companies before she settled in for the long term at swimwear giant Zimmermann.

“Only about two months after I started,” Kovacevic says, “Simone [Zimmermann] said to me, ‘we need an accessories buyer for the stores’. I said, ‘I’ve never done it’ and she said, ‘I can see you love jewellery.” Kovacevic laughs. “I’d just come back from living in London, and I was wearing big crazy wooden earrings and all that kind of stuff. It was the London style!” So she started working in buying and development for accessories and stumbled upon something that she truly loved. “Simone saw it in me first before anyone else did,” she says. 

After another stint in London, Kovacevic returned to Sydney and began making some jewellery for herself to wear. “It’s that typical story,” she says, “but I thought, I wanted to do something that I would want to wear myself.” That meant simple trinkets of fine, delicate jewellery that was totally in tune with her laidback, completely unforced style. “I want to be able to run around and feel comfortable in whatever I wear,” she says. Today she is wearing a plain sweater tucked into high-waisted jeans and comfortable ankle boots. It’s an effortless style that suits her no-nonsense manner to a tee. “Everyday I just put this on and I forget about it,” she fiddles with a pair of bracelets hanging low on her wrist. One has a leather strap connecting two thin gold chains, the other is a dainty mish-mash of flaxen-hued bit of metal. “You choose it, you put it on, that’s it.” Simple.

Kovacevic is sipping her tea, seemingly saying, enough about me, let’s hear about you. She’s genuinely interested in what we want to do with our lives, with what inspires us, with how we go about in our various avenues of creativity. She gives us advice about career choices (“If you really dislike something, let it go”). She asks us questions about our passions. She wants to know about the woman behind her jewellery. “Everyone’s got a story,” she says.

It’s this positive outlook that has enabled her business to strike a chord in a difficult retail environment. After friends started bugging her for orders she made a full collection, which caught the eyes of buyers from hip boutique Incu and online store My Chameleon. Now, Petite Grand has over 20 stockists around Australia and one in Japan. Kovacevic has a successful online store and a booming wholesale business, and her designs have found their way onto the slender wrists of starlets like Miranda Kerr and Pia Miranda, as well as the type of insouciant ingénues who dress in head-to-toe A.P.C and have breakfast every day at Bird and Bear in Elizabeth Bay. 

All this, and yet Kovacevic is still running a one-woman show. “Yes, I am the designer,” she says, “but I’m also the dispatch girl, and the accounts girl!” She reels them off her fingers, laughing. “I was lucky enough to do a bit of everything before I started my label, which was why I felt so ready to start my own company.” It’s easy to forget that small businesses often operate like lone rangers, working out of home or little studios, completely by themselves. Kovacevic concedes that the hardest part is not having anyone to talk to, someone to sound ideas off. Now she has help a few days a week, just to keep up with orders.

“I’d really like to give the new collection a bit of time and think of wonderful new things – but there’s really not enough time in the day,” Kovacevic says. “As soon as I finish one collection I have to start on the next, and it just goes from there.” Next season sees the designer experimenting with thin, almost graphic wires and a range of anklets. The coloured beads and the charms are still there, but there is a touch of the urban this time around. Maybe it’s those anklets. They’re the kind that Ashley Olsen would wear, doubled up and hanging low over a pair of tassled loafers. “I don’t think that anything I do is reinventing the wheel, but it’s the subtle little things that I add that I know is unique.” Like most women who wear jewellery religiously, Kovacevic fiddles with it almost without thinking. Her hand gingerly touches the flat discs – Petite Grand’s signature – that hang from the clasp of her bracelets. “I don’t think that I need to complicate it. There’s no need to complicate it.”

To the end, Kovacevic insists that everything in her life so far has been building up to this point. “I still can’t get my head around it, it’s amazing,” she says. “I can’t believe that I am making a living doing something that I am so passionate about.” Talisa and I look at each and the words involuntarily tumble out. It’s the dream. “It is, it is, it is!” Kovacevic exclaims, laughing. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think that I am very blessed.” 

Words by Hannah-Rose Yee, 

Polaroids taken in Tanja's studio by me,

Collages by me featuring jewellery from Petite Grand SS12 and images from The Thinking Tank tumblr; here and here.

a visual inventory

A Visual Inventory by John Pawson was part of my birthday present to Rohan this year. The book is filled with an inspirational collection of images from the architect's personal collection. Ro and I have both enjoyed going through it appreciating both the visuals and accompanying annotations. It's always great to see the inspirations of someone whose work you admire and John Pawson is most definitely one of them.

These are a few things I have been loving lately, particularly now that winter is here to stay. My Acne angora cardigan and Isabel Marant Yuli scarf are old favourites that I still can't get enough of, especially when worn with a collection of delicate, gold rings. I have also been wearing a bit of makeup recently - usually I keep it really simple with Bobbi Brown black gel eyeliner and a coating of mascara but lately I have been wearing Nars blush (Orgasm or Luster) and either a burgundy or rust lip colour. I also always carry around Aesop rosehip seed lip cream to combat the cold weather and Chanel Particulière nail polish is a winter classic I am yet to tire of.

1.  A Visual Inventory by John Pawson

2. From left to right; Bobbi Brown Crismson lipstick, Aesop rosehip seed lip cream, Nars Outsider lipstick, 
Nars Calliope lip pencil, Chanel Particulière nail polish.

3. Isabel Marant Yuli scarf, Acne Lesley angora cardigan 

4. My Merci notebook from Paris, collection of rings, Maison Balzac Le Bois candle,  
A Visual Inventory by John Pawson.

All photographs taken by me.