Louise Alsop 2013

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a "cool older girl in high school"- not in a creepy way but to kind of monitor how teenage girls suddenly experiment with how they look and what they wear. There was a moment in Inside Out where Riley transfers to her knew school and mentally takes note of who she should be friends with, singling out the "cool girl" in the room with half black and half blue hair. I always aspired to BE the cool older girl, and when I help out kids in high school I know from work or those who are at the university for work experience I kinda try to give off those vibes but. Yeah it never happened for me. At most I will wear ripped tights underneath a cute skirt or dress but that's as far as I've ever gotten. On the other hand, Louise Alsop totally understands and her designs embody this wild energy with her simple monochromatic and heavily frayed designs. It appears many of the Westminster Graduates were encouraged to reconstruct and subsequently deconstruct their designs for the purpose of *fashion* but none did it quite as well as she did. Plus she created health goth BEFORE IT WAS EVEN A THING!! These clothes are way better than the traditional health goth and minus the Adidas slide sandals.

*Images via Westminster Fashion

Daisy Chain

Wearing: Karen Walker sunglasses, Asos faux fur coat, Tokito dress (worn as top), Cue skirt, Romance Was Born clutch and thrifted heels.

I've absolutely been craving Spring and have an upcoming visit to Melbourne's Botanical Gardens with a botanist friend to look forward to but for now, I present florals for Spring. It's not a terribly original idea and I know Miranda Priestley would most likely shake her head in disgust. Cliches aside I'm rather excited to find the days getting longer and the weather is slowly getting warmer. The pastels also heighten this rather dainty and traditionally feminine motif, but I've enjoyed watching designers such as Moschino and Rei Kawakubo appropriate these motifs for their menswear collections. Talk of abolishing gendered fashion weeks altogether is an exciting prospect but in terms of event organisation it seems that many will be in opposition. I personally can't wait for a time when designers focus on dressing the human body and the concept of gender becomes fluid and malleable. Liberating designers from such boundaries has the potential to spark a renaissance within the fashion industry.

Interstellar

Wearing: Josh Goot dress, Romance Was Born skirt and Lipstik jelly sandals.

First of all I apologise for the clutter in the background but I ran out of time this morning and decided to take these outfits photos at uni rather than at home. Also it was raining this morning and I had too much to do today to wait for the weather to cooperate! On the plus side you can see the archaic (pun intended) folders in the background jam packed with palaeontology papers! While it's not totally inspiring to see my messy office space it does remind me of when I first started reading fashion blogs, particularly The Fashion Void that is DC. This later morphed into Moohoop a Tumblr blog and in 2011 Brooke Kao stopped writing altogether. She was among the first wave of fashion bloggers who really pioneered blogging as a platform for self-expression and although her photos weren't polished, her guide of vintage and thrift stores within Washington propelled her to success. I guess today I just really wanted to be vulnerable and removed from the realm of commercial, air brushed photos and perfect hair.