So about two months ago my little brother, who is fifteen, asked me "how do you start a trend?" He has taken a bit of an interest in fashion in the past year and the little shit is tall and slim and can wearing horizontal stripes! Now that Christmas is fast approaching I have been doing some browsing online for clothes that I think would suit him (not that I actually have the money to buy him anything at the moment) but for Christmas I want to get him something nice.
Here are some of my personal favourites.
topman grey cotton trousers
asos striped crew neck jumper
topman elbow patch jumper (front)
(back)
"that's what she said" junk food t-shirt
For his birthday back in July I got him a navy Junk Food t-shirt with a faded Mickey Mouse head on it. I found it in TK Maxx for a nice little price so I may have a look in there again some time soon to see if I can find another one for him. If not I will mooch around Topman because they have some really nice stuff on the website. If anyone has any suggestions I am very open to them.
bedside table. lamp. alarm clock. dictionary. candle in a jar. watch. blue nail polish. pink lighter. stapler.
dresser and wardrobe collage
other bedside table. books. silver dish with rings. crystal dish with earrings. kleenex.
absolut vodka and applying makeup
snoopy hairdryer
all photos taken with Instagram
These are pictures taken around my room in Galway with Instagram while I should have been studying. I do love how you can take a crappy picture on Instagram and then send it through a filter and suddenly boom (!) you have a fantastically pretentious photograph.
This image came up on my tumblr dashboard a few day ago and it really hit a nerve. I had read an article on the Daily Mail about how this ad and one of the Prada campaign shots featuring the beautiful Hailee Steinfeld have been withdrawn from circulation. The reason that this picture (above) made such an impact on me was because it reminds me of reading about how people responded to the publication of Lolita in the mid-fifties. I read Vladimir Nabokov's novel back when I used to be locked in our dining room supposedly studying for the Junior Certificate. Obviously at the tender age of fifteen I was a little more than slightly disturbed. When I picked it up again last year though I developed a adulation for it. I am even tempted to read it again over the Christmas break after the embargo of Juergen Teller's latest perfume campaign with Marc Jacobs. So this ad was banned due to the phallic placement of the perfume bottle on Dakota Fanning's lap. As Fanning is only seventeen and is therefore still a minor it was asserted that the image was sexualising children. Ironically sexualising children and setting them up to be debased is exactly what has happened to the advertisement above. This is not the first time that there has been questions surrounding the exploitation of Dakota Fanning. While putting together this post I came across a strange kind of article called The "Rape" of Dakota Fanning. Having been in the public eye for the majority of her life, I suppose, caused Fanning to grow up perhaps a little too quickly. But then again when I think about the things that my friends and I were talking about - not even mentioning the things that we heard the promiscuous girls were up to - and then to be honest it seems a little unfair to make such a fuss over a perfume bottle. It seems that up until the age of eighteen, it's all like think of the children and then as soon as they become an "adult" there is more sexualisation than you can shake a stick at.
image via google.images.com
Hailee Steinfeld for Miu Miu
image via google.images.com
I do believe that this particular Miu Miu ad being banned is perhaps a little over dramatic. It seems that a number of the complaints that it received was because it apparently depicted teen suicide since Steinfeld is crying and sitting on a railway track (above). Prada retorted that it was an abandoned railway and she was not crying rather simply "looking wistful". It's unusual to hear of a shot from a fashion campaign being banned due to reasons other than sex and weight related issues. Of course one of the first things that is called in to question is the fact that here we see a fourteen year old girl as the face of a brand targeted at older women. Personally I don't find anything wrong with that. Being a fan of fifteen year old Tavi Gevinson, who is, in turn, a fan of Miu Miu, has made me realise that there is no age limit on fashion anymore and then there is Suri Cruise who is just in an absolute league of her own (see Suri's burn book for added humour). Anywho so do you think that people are perhaps a little overly sensitive these days?
I do like all of these backpacks very much. Unfortunately the alligator beauty from The Row has a hefty price tag of $24, 000 so I guess that the Jansport or the Friis Company ones are more in my grasp.
When I came across this website, I knew I absolutely had to do a post on it. There is a quiet kind of creepy Diane Arbus quality to them (check out the siamese Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum) which being a fan of Diane Arbus really drew me to them. How I came by them is quite an odd little story too. As you may have noticed if you have been on Google at all, today - 23rd November - is the 60th anniversary of the publication of Stanislaw Lem's first book and due to a series of continuous browsing through a number of pages including the wikipedia page of a jackalope (mystical horned rabbit) I wound up on the blog of the lovely Miss Winfield Martin. Alice and Wonderland is a recurring theme throughout her work and with the melancholy palette it is just impossible not to love them.
You can pick up some of her acrylics on Etsy for about $25 (less than €20) which would make them an ideal Christmas present...
As anyone who knows me will know I am a serious F. Scott Fitzgerald fan. Seriously. For a few seconds though, I will digress and talk about the subject matter of another movie that is very close to my heart.
My sister has been teasing me over the past few weeks about how I apparently am counting down the sleeps until My Week with Marilyn is released. She's not wrong. I really am very excited to see it; mainly to scrutinise Michelle Williams's portrayal of the flaxen-haired icon (but also a little bit because I think Eddie Redmayne is divine). When I saw the first photos of Williams, I was not entirely convinced. Then once I saw the trailer and I was even less convinced.
However that was until I came across this video (above) of Williams performing "Heatwave" from There's No Business Like Show Business. I finally started to warm to the idea of yer won from Dawson's Creek playing the ultimate icon of the 20th century. I do have to hand it to her though, you need some set of balls to take on a role like that. I have seen so many TV movies and have never been wholly in favour of them. The only person who I have been remotely convinced by is, surprisingly, Anna Nicole Smith in her infamous "Gentlemen prefer fur-free Blondes" PETA campaign.
image via peta.org
Anywho back to Williams, after seeing that video of "Heatwave" I began to really really look forward to seeing her playing Marilyn. After seeing dozens of actresses trying their hand at the breathy beauty, I did like the TV mini series that adapted Joyce Carol Oates's immense dramatisation of MM's life. Both the novel and said mini series were named Blonde. I have read this massive novel on numerous occasions because it is just so insanely detailed that it's hard to believe it's not Marilyn herself. The mini series featured a young Australian called Poppy Montgomery in the role of MM and she was also pretty good. It's rumoured that said adaptation is going to be embalmed in celluloid with the lovely Naomi Watts as the lead. Unfortunately though I have found it pretty hard to find out any more information about this.
Now to my man Gatsby.
image via dailymail.co.uk
Did you enjoy that?
Here is some more.
image via firstshowing.net
image via firstshowing.net
Ahh.
The Great Gatsby. The costumes?! Think of the costumes!!
Although I was not particularly thrilled about Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, after seeing these pictures I now have a new-found appreciation for his goofy face. I personally would have preferred someone like Luke Wilson but I guess I can't have everything. I was also very excited, when I initially heard they were remaking this, at the prospect of Ben Affleck playing Tom Buchanan but they have Sir Gawain for King Arthur otherwise known as Joel Edgerton who ain't half bad looking either. Carrie Mulligan as the lovely Daisy Buchanan? Well what is there to say? Except for the fact that the cute to boot Isla Fischer is paying the rival for her husband's affections: the ill-fated Myrtle. Ah! Too excited!
My only major concern is the fact that Baz Luhrmann is directing it. If anyone has had the pleasure of enduring Austraila then they will understand my anxiety. And it's in 3D...
Which I find slightly questionable...
I am however elated that they don't have Dominic Cooper in it. He irritates me. A lot. He is almost as annoying to look at as Nicolas Cage.
Hopefully he doesn't spoil Milton Greene for me.
Milton Greene and Marilyn Monroe
image via themarilynmonroesite.com
I just wanted to put up a quick post about my new room.
A girl moved out of my house last week so I seized the opportunity of moving into what was her old room. I had spotted, through the door, on a number of occasions that there was in fact a stair case in the room and now I have the lovely little duplex that I was so curious about all to myself. It is about four times the size of my old room and that's just the first floor! From the outside, this just looks like an average two-storey house and you would never guess that are in fact three levels. Although the third level, which is more of an Anne Frank-style annex to be honest, is reserved strictly for myself as you can only access it through my room. As you can see from the third picture, I have taken it upon myself to make it into my own little personal study space.
The ceiling is insanely slanted though on all sides. Which explains the door with the sawn-off corner in the final picture that fits perfectly into this bizarre little room. On top of that though there is a series of little brown doors (as you can see in the third picture) that make up this huge interconnected storage space all around the perimeter of the room. Hours of endless Hide-and-Seek fun to be had!
