Dress like Dita: that’s right – I’m just crazy about Tiffany’s!

So, day four of dress like Dita and I decided to go for the classic little black dress, and used Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s as my inspiration.

My hair was still really big and had lots of product in it from doing the victory rolls. I had a quick trial run of the french roll beehive style above, and it seemed to go pretty well and was even relatively easy!

So of course when I got up in the morning to do it properly, it totally didn’t work. I had major trouble getting the french roll happening, as I obviously couldn’t see what I was doing. So my mum ended up helping me with that, but then I didn’t end up having enough hair left coming out of the French roll on the top to create a beehive out of.

But looking at this picture of Audrey, I realised her hair is actually a bit longer than mine.

So I ended up giving up on achieving the French roll beehive and figured I’d just got for a regular beehive instead, which was far easier. I tied my hair in a pony tail on the top of my head and teased the pony a bit and then pinned the front part of my hair over the top of the backcombing to make it look smooth. I then pinned my little tiara into the beehive and all done!

The dress I’m wearing is another LynnMall purchase from the random shop I got the blue dress from. I love the little crochet collar and puff sleeves. It’s a nice detail that stops the dress from being too boring, but it doesn’t make it too busy or overdone.

The black patent Mary Janes were 9 bucks from The Warehouse. I’d been looking around everywhere for a pair of plain black Mary Janes after the heel broke off a great vintage pair I had while out in town one night, resulting in me limping around town like a pirate and the boys I was with attempting to break the other heel off by smacking it on the bar. They were unsuccessful and my night ended soon after.

The handbag is Kate Spade, which along with a Kate Spade wallet was a 25th birthday present I bought for myself while visiting a friend in Hong Kong.

The tiara was bought in Big Bear Lake, California a few years ago, because one never knows when you might need to look like a princess.

The coat was bought from Max years ago.

Here’s a side profile of the beehive. I managed to get a bit of height going on. I actually really like the beehive as a hairstyle, but I do want to try it with a rat and see if it still looks good and is easy enough to do.

My make up was the same base as yesterday (the Prescriptives and LM mixed)

I tried to do a cat’s eye with Bobbi Brown gel liner in Graphite Shimmer.

My blush is Nars Orgasm. I lined the bottom of my eyes with MAC Beauty Marked eye shadow on an angle brush.

The eye shadow was LM eye basics again with MAC Seedy Pearl.

Lipstick is Shu Uemura Rouge Unlimited in BG938 with MAC All Woman lipglass over top.

Sorry, I’ve got a bit of crazy eye syndrome happening in this photo, but it’s probably accurate! This dressing like Dita stuff is pretty hard. I was ready to chuck in the towel after today, as I couldn’t really work out anything to wear for day five that I was happy with.

Nothing seemed to fit right or feel right or felt like it was missing some important element. I think I’ve got something sorted for tomorrow, but am not entirely happy with it, but hopefully it will come together with hair (pin curls, if I ever get around washing my hair and setting them) and make up (I’m going to try a bold red lip. Eek!)

The whole experience has been helpful, though. I think it will be useful for rebuilding my wardrobe. It’s given me an idea of what I like to wear and what I don’t and where my wardrobe is lacking. And it’s also opened my eyes to the importance of accessories in building an outfit. While Coco Chanel may have said that you should take one thing off before you leave the house, and I agree that less is often more, the accessories that you do wear with an outfit can make or break it.

Dress like Dita: An Education

 

For day two of dress like Dita, I took inspiration from the film An Education, in particular the beehive style of Rosamund Pike, pictured above. The film has some gorgeous fashions, as well as great performances, so if you haven’t seen it, you should.

Trying to do a beehive was an education of sorts. I found it quite difficult, actually. I think it was maybe that I have a fear of backcombing. It just seems so… wrong. I felt like I was destroying my hair, so I think maybe I wasn’t as vigorous as I should have been, so I didn’t reach the heights of Rosamund’s beehive, but it did work out pretty well in the end, after a few goes. But it was a real workout on the arms!

The beehive definitely felt bigger and looked bigger in the mirror than it appears in photos. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m just not that used to big hair or if it’s a trick of the photo. But it felt a really glamorous style that I think I would do again, but instead of doing all the backcombing, I think I use the cheat’s version, where you use a ‘rat’ (some fake hair wrapped in a hair net) to get the volume and you just pin your own hair over it. It seems like it would be far less damaging.

I felt a bit of a ’50s prom vibe today, with the beehive and the dress with the little built in cape. The dress I got on the weekend from some random cheap shop in Lynn Mall. It’s the kind of place that has a lot of fugly stuff, but then the occasional gem, and all at a good price (this dress was $45 I think).

I’m wearing it with matching vintage snakeskin heels and clutch that I got from a vintage store in Nelson years ago.

I paired it with a Trelise Cooper coat I got from Encore, a designer recycle store in Ponsonby.

For my make-up today, I used the same base as yesterday, but went heavier with the eyeliner today. My blush was Tarte cheek stain in True Love. On my lips I’m wearing MAC lustre lipstick in Lady Bug, which I blotted to soften the colour and put some clear MAC lipglass on top. On my eyes I’m again wearing the Laura Mercier eye basics in Linen, with LM cream eyeshadow in Ecru Silk and metallic cream eye shadow in Gold.

I’m really enjoying the detailed dressing so far, although it does take a lot of time, but it’s mainly just the hair that takes time, which I would hopefully get better at. It seems so easy in the tutorials at YouTube, so maybe one day I’ll be able to whip my hair into a beehive in five minutes!

It totally makes me want to shop, particularly for accessories. I feel like I need pretty hair clips and gloves and I’d really like a 1940s style suit.

Anyway, I now need to go and try to brush all this backcombing out of my hair. My hair’s looking slightly flatter now, as I work with headphones on all day, so it created a bit of a dent in the hive, but the multitude of hairspray I used managed to keep it in relatively good condition all day. I never used to be into hairspray, but there is something to be said for walking outside into the wind and your hair not moving an inch.

High-flying style

I recently flew down to Blenheim for a weekend away. It’s always a very small plane that you fly on, that seats about 20 people, and I was sitting right up the front, so had a good view of the pilot.

Being a pilot is something that doesn’t really appeal to me at all. I love flying and the freedom it affords, but I would far prefer to be a passenger than pilot. It didn’t look overly intensive flying the plane for the most part, which surprised me. In fact, if you didn’t have all of those dials in front of you, it looks less intensive than driving a car.

It was the style of the pilot that caught my eye, though. There’s something so classic about aviator style. Aviation-influenced classics such as aviator sunglasses and leather bomber jackets continue to be a big influence in fashion today. The pilot wore Ray-Bans, the classic blue shirt with lapels and an oversized gold watch.

I love the look of an oversized masculine-style watch on a woman. It’s a style that was pushed strongly by stylist Rachel Zoe. Like all her other oversized accessories – think large sunglasses, large bag – I think the point was to make the woman look smaller in comparison. The picture below is actually Taylor Jacobson, Zoe’s assistant, wearing a vintage Rolex.

The large watch does make the watch look dainty, but the strong masculine style offers a good variety of styling opportunities, as you can have it looking plain and simple, or can dress it up to look more feminine but not fussy.

That simple style aesthetic is a hallmark of aviator Amelia Earhart, whose androgynous style is still very contemporary.

Earhart is being played by Hilary Swank in a new bio-pic, Amelia.

I love the leather bomber she wears here. I bought this copper-coloured vintage one with lapels at Buffalo Exchange in Williamsburg for the bargain price of $28.

The aviator-style sunglasses, as worn by Tom Cruise in Top Gun (remember when he didn’t seem crazy?), have been a massive trend over the last few seasons, and along with the classic Wayfarers they have been a big part of the reinvigoration of the Ray-Ban brand. It was only a few years ago when Ray-Bans were sunglasses only your dad would wear.

Model Agnyss Deyn here shows off goggle-inspired sunglasses here.

These geek-chic Persol aviator reading glasses are a strong aesthetic, but if you suit the aviator style, they could look pretty cool.

Leonardo Di Caprio’s played a pilot in two films. Here he epitomises that clean-cut man in uniform look as a con man in Catch Me If You Can.

He looks far more rugged here as Howard Hughes in The Aviator. I love the lace-up boots, like those which Amelia Earhart was wearing above.

Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself

I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the weekend. It’s the first time I’ve seen it in years, and I think it may be even the first time I’ve seen it as a grown-up.

It kind of amazed me how contemporary the themes still are, and it seemed like it would have been so daring and racy in 1961. I know we tend to think of the ‘60s as a time of daring, but the free love and riots and sexual revolution all seemed to be more at the end of the decade. 1961 sensibilities would not have been much different to those of the 1950s, I would imagine.

It’s the kind of film that really still has something to say about the quest for identity and love and belonging and a woman’s place in the world and taking control of our own destiny.

I also love Holly’s idea of the mean reds.

Holly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?

Paul: The mean reds? You mean, like, the blues?

Holly: No. The blues are because you’re getting fat and maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

And, of course, the style is immaculate, which doesn’t hurt, and continues to provide inspiration.

All I Have to Offer You (is me)

I went to see the film Samson & Delilah a few weekends ago. It’s a film that has received really good reviews, which always makes for slightly complicated viewing for me in that it raises expectations.

I wasn’t blown away by it at the time, but the film has really stayed with me, and it has made me think about the world around me in a slightly different way, which to me is the mark of a great film.

Samson & Delilah offers a window into the world of two Aboriginal teenagers living on a small reservation-type settlement in the middle of the Australian desert.

The film itself is unusual in that there is very little dialogue; the two main characters remaining virtually silent through most of the film.

It’s remarkable that first-time writer/director Warwick Thornton had the bravery to write a film which is so sparse in its use of language.

Thornton is himself an Aboriginal of the settlements, and he was basically illiterate when he decided to write the script of Samson & Delilah. I imagine that there could be a temptation to overwrite the story so that he felt more secure it would be understood in a particular way, but by leaving a lot of the film in silence, there is more space for the viewer to make their own interpretation of events, a space where the viewer has to participate, and Thornton creates a film that’s more challenging because of that. There’s no rhetoric or commentary to agree or disagree with. There are no easy answers.

In the film, Warwick’s brother, Scott, plays the old transient Gonzo. In an interview with Thompson on National Radio, he discusses how he wrote the role specifically for his brother, who has lived rough and been under the influence of alcohol for most of his life.  After three rehabs and nine months, Scott was finally ready for the role. But after filming finished, he went bush and back to the bottle.

Through various events, Samson and Delilah end up living rough under a bridge in Alice Springs. One particularly heartbreaking scene which struck close to my heart was when Delilah walks through the streets of Alice while people sip their lattes at the café, turning their heads and avoiding eye-contact with the homeless girl.

I thought of this yesterday when walking home from work. As I walked my usual route down Victoria St, I noticed that the homeless people who are usually scattered around the sidewalk were not there. But when I got down to Queen St, I saw the homeless man who is often on Victoria St, an extremely large man with a bushy grey bread. I want to say that he wears sunglasses, but I don’t know if I’ve willfully imagined that because I don’t look at his eyes.

I never know quite what to do or how to respond to the homeless in Auckland. I think part of me feels that we have a benefit system in NZ, so there’s not actually any need for people to live on the streets. So it can become easy to think that they’re there by something resembling choice.

But then I imagine the benefit system in Australia is similar to the one here, and so while there was no need for Samson and Delilah to end up on the streets, that’s just the way it worked out, and I don’t think you could say it’s their fault, or their ‘choice’.  And if the character of Gonzo is meant to represent the life Samson is headed for, and in turn there’s little difference between Gonzo and the homeless man on Queen St, then that does make me feel differently about his ‘choice’ to live on the streets.

I don’t like the idea of giving money to people living on the streets, because I imagine a lot of people are living that life because of various addictions, and there’s no way to tell what that money will be spent on, so I lean towards the idea of giving food, and yet I can’t imagine the big man is lacking food. He’s been living on the streets for at least a year as far as I can remember and has not gotten visibly smaller.

I remember my cousin, who is a schoolteacher, telling me how a teenager at the Wellington train station begging for money approached her. But instead of simply giving him some loose change or ignoring him, she asked him why he wasn’t at school and talked to him and gave him contact details of people who could hopefully help him get out of that situation.

I guess maybe the best I could offer is conversation or even a smile, a look, a hello, rather than looking away, as I always seem to find myself doing now. Maybe I’ll be too gutless to start a conversation, but at least if I offer a smile, I’ll be offering something.

http://www.samsonanddelilah.com.au/