it's the season

Lambs! Colour! Crisp air! Sun! Nature! Pretty dresses! Flowers!

Happy first day of spring.

the wanderer

Wouldn't it be fun to run away and live like a gypsy in a house truck for a while? My mum used to take my sister and I to gypsy fairs all the time when we were growing up; I remember being both terrified and wowed by the carefree gypsy lifestyle. These photos of Kate Moss are from the upcoming issue of V magazine.

film club

I saw the film Seraphine recently, which chronicles the life of French artist Seraphine Louis. It was quite depressing really - an eccentric artist drawn into madness - but her paintings of flowers, leaves and fruit are quite wonderful.

dirty rap

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: What song best describes your current state?
NATALIE PORTMAN: My current state . . . I’m trying to think of a song that feels like sleepwalking. [laughs] I don’t know. I’ve mostly been listening to dirty rap lately. That’s sort of my scene.
GYLLENHAAL: Your affection for dirty rap is something that people really don’t know about you, which I think is fascinating. You do incredible things for the world, and then you listen to just completely obscene hip-hop music.
PORTMAN: Really, really obscene hip-hop. I love it so much. It makes me laugh and then it makes me want to dance. Those are like my two favorite things, so combined . . . I’ve been listening a lot lately to “Wait (The Whisper Song)” by the Ying Yang Twins, where the lyrics are like, “Wait ’til you see my dick”—which is just amazing because it’s whispered. [whispers] “Wait ’til you see my dick . . . ” [laughs] Crazy. So I just listen to it like I’m a five-year-old, like, “Oh my god! I can’t believe he just said that!"

How great is Natalie Portman?
Watch her spout some dirty rap here.
And read her Interview interview here. It's very cute - her and Jake talk about the Smurfs and the Garbage Pail Kids. 90s flashback!

thank god it's friday

Casual wear.


No makeup.



Sneakers.



Gay abandon.



The beach.



I'm not sure but we can't be all frivolous all the time so here's a lovely quote from William.



Colourful knitwear on lazy beach evenings.



Getting to parties on the train.



Being stupid on escalators.

home time

I'd like to live in any of these houses please.

the zombies

It's hard not to adore a band that include the lyrics 'Who's your Daddy', in all seriousness. I love The Zombies, I think their album 'Odyssey and Oracle' is the best thing ever. One summer, it got stuck in the CD player in my car and it was the only thing I could listen to for three weeks. I didn't really mind.

museum of dresses

"You can't believe how many dresses I have. It's like I need a separate house to contain all my dresses. It's like a museum of dresses."

Yes, I know, I post about Zooey Deschanel a lot. She's just so cute; I can imagine sitting around with her over a cup of tea and a cupcake, talking about boys, books and clothes. I think what I like most is that her style is so unapologetically girly; and like me, she owns a ridiculous amount of dresses. Style.com talked to her about her style influences; she cites 60s Mod, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Grace Kelly and Rose Parade floats. Swoon!

more than words

I am a writer, so I clearly have a thing for words. There are some that I hate - like fabulous, funky, fashionista and panties - and there are some that I love. I've recently noticed that I use the word 'lovely' a lot; I also like the words whimsical, golly, vulgar, dreamy, silly, sweet, rad ... the list is endless really. I found this random - but great - list of the '100 Most Beautiful English Words', a list of favourite poetical words compiled by some guy who goes by the name Dr. Goodword. His name may be lame but the list is quite cute. I like the following:

Ailurophile - A cat-lover

Demure - Shy and reserved

Ethereal - Gaseous, invisible but detectable.

Ingénue - A naïve young woman

Insouciance - Blithe nonchalance

Lilt -To move musically or lively

Woebegone - Sorrowful, downcast

What are your favourite (or least favourite) words?

La-di-da, la-di-da

Annie: Sometimes I ask myself how I'd stand up under torture.

Alvy: You? You kiddin'? If the Gestapo would take away your Bloomingdale's charge card, you'd tell 'em everything.

Annie Hall is one of my favourite movies ever. Top five, definitely. I've written about it a lot on this blog. I love Alvy and his neuroses, I love Annie's terrible driving, I love the cute lobster scene, I love creepy Duane, I love Jeff Goldblum and his forgotten mantra. Oh yeah, and I love and adore Annie's mannish outfits. There is a lovely spread in the new French Vogue that takes inspiration from Annie's wardrobe; I particularly love the blazer, shirt, hat, satchel, man's watch and camera combo.

French Vogue scans from Refinery29

date night

This is such a cute photo; it reminds me of romantic dates, intimacy and being wooed. Plus her hair looks totally rad. Tell me a story about your best, or most memorable, date so far?

hearts

Tennessee Thomas by Garance Dore

I must own these tights. Immediately. But how?

the rose seidler house

I've been working on a project that's made me realise just how little I've learnt about Australian art, design and architecture in my time living in Sydney. This weekend, I started to remedy that, beginning with a visit to the Rose Seidler House - my friend Jessica and I went to the annual Fifties Fair that is held there - the grounds were full of vintage clothing stalls, and people dressed in period costume, and driving the coolest old cars. The architect, Harry Seidler, is responsible for some of the most beautiful buildings around Sydney, and this is the home he built for his parents.

The outstanding feature of Rose Seidler House is that it is one of the purest examples of mid-century modern domestic architecture in Australia.The term mid century modern refers to the work of the generation of young architects who emerged from American universities in the late 1940s. They were taught by the leading modernists of the 1920s Bauhaus: Walter Gropius, Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer. Among them was Harry Seidler who was imbued with the new philosophy when he designed Rose Seidler House in 1948-50. It combined the new architecture of space, the unity of arts and architecture, the new vision of abstraction in the visual arts and the new technology of structural engineering and industrial design.This holistic design theory and practice determined the use of form, space, materials, colour, fittings, interiors and landscaping. Rose Seidler House should be viewed as a total sculpture based on the 'tensional opposition' of these elements. The sculptural form of the house, of interest from any angle, departs from the traditional notion of a house as a decorated box. We can imagine it as a cube, with a section cut away below and another cut from the centre to form the sun deck. The solid walls of the traditional house are replaced by glass, and this 'floating' skeletal form is anchored to the ground by slender columns and the 'tentacles' of the ramp, stone walls and louvre screen.These are all part of the total sculpture.

sunday

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I like lazy Sundays a lot.

'tender mercies'

The invitation for a Mason Martin Margiela menswear show.

A beautiful Nina Ricci outfit.

Harmony Korine's book Mister Lonely.

An ambrotype by New Zealand artist Ben Cauchi, entitled Dead Arm.

A still from the 1983 film of the same name.

calm down

I am such a worrywart. If things are going crazy, I fret and fuss and can't sleep at night. But I don't really like to talk about it to anyone. I wish I could steal away this weekend to somewhere 'earthy' and hang out in a hammock, go swimming, maybe play the piano in my knickers or whatever.