A thing that has yet to be publically “proven” yet remains a fact is that I am a lady. On account of this having always been the biological case and my having on the whole pretty average genes sans interesting mutations, I cannot grow a beard or any kickass sideburns. This makes me a little sad, but I have found ways to compensate. Also of course, it means I never have to shave, so I feel that the scales remain balanced.
Half the reason I love this Anthony Peto hat is that it flattens the earpuffs of my hair into sideburny face-clingers. As seen here, this allows me to spiritually bump fists with some of my favourite stylish fictional characters. Let’s give it up for Wolverine, The Cap’n and old Wooden Sword*! And Anthony Peto. ‘Preciate it, fella!
*Characters belong to Marvel, World Leaders Entertainment (I think? Publick and Hammer, anyway) and Hiroyuki Takei, NOT ME!
The mask in my previous post was made for my sister to wear to a masked ball one of her friends was having for their eighteenth (I think?). She asked me to craft one for her even though I’d never tried masks before because she is a good sister and believes me when I say “I can do anything!”.
I agreed because I also believe me when I say this, and because I figured it’d be fun. I was right! Skill-expansion is awesome! Awesome enough to share.
I had a great reel of aluminium wire from previous craft-based sculpture experiments (just under half a centimetre diameter (I can’t find the box to check exactly!)) and a blue 80s leather jacket I’d bought with Kenshiro in mind and which therefore had no need for its sleeves; the leather is thin and soft and easy to sew by hand.
Well, I say “easy”. My digit-skin might tell you differently. Callouses!
I basically winged it. I find that a very satisfying way to work, because I am full of i-told-you-so pride and like to feel I have won a vicious ambushed battle, not simply made a thing. I wanted to have a finished product that could be worn and taken off with ease like glasses, because I find elastic and tie-based masks are very often extremely annoying, because they mess up one’s hair. And, at a dance of the like that demands new faux-snake heels, messy hair is not in desired order.
I cut a length of wire that would reach all around her noggin and used my knowledge of the human head to mould a basic ears-cheeks-nose outline that would rest on her face like lower-placed glasses (she looked like she was wearing a retainer). Then I took her head, and adjusted the moulding until it sat comfortably. Aluminium bends really, really easily, so you can just do this by touch. After it was comfortable enough to be forgettable whilst on, I cut out a Ninja Turtle-style mask -
- from the leather sleeve that was definitely wider and longer than the finished mask would need. Seam allowance and so forth, you see? You need a leather that’s soft enough to fold in to the contours of your subject’s face. Draw with a pen just around the inside of the wearer’s eye socket (that is, under the brow bone and along the top of the cheekbone). I cut out these holes.
Having sewed the floppy leather mask-piece onto the front of the aluminium “retainer”, cut another length of wire that reaches from the tip of the nose up and back to the crown. Mould this to the wearer’s profile. The ridge of the nose needs to be closely followed, but the remaining portion that spikes back over the head doesn’t need to lie flat. Do as you will with it! You can remove it, even; it’s not necessary.
The rest, I think, is figure-outable from these pictures. The orange arrows (forgive their sloppiness! I didn’t have my tablet available, and Pixen hates touchpads!) are where there’s wire piped in, the lilac ones are where there’s no wire. Just pinch and add darts or channels where they’re needed, to fit it to the face of the intended wearer. If you want a mask to be worn bare-leather, you’ll need to be more discerning in your thread-colour choices than I was. Upholstery thread is also a good bet for a project like this - you can find it in any craft or fabric shop.
As uncomfortable and sloppy as this looks when worn it feels perfect. If you’re striving for perfection, I’d advise lining your finished mask with felt. Just cut out the shapes the front is ‘made of’ and glue them inside.
Picture taken by my sister, in her room, dancing to Blondie
I talked about house clothes, before. The ones I showed were mostly of the pyjama-y ilk; they were designed to be worn indoors, or under other clothes. This sweater was made to be “real” clothing, it was made to see the light of day. I think it was bought when so-called Geek Chic was big a few years back.
My sister gave me this jumper because it is 80% wool and it made her itch. I’ve had it in a draw for at least six months. I never wanted to wear it because, again: it isn’t me.
But I am wearing it now! Yes. So I must amend my judgement, I can tell you that it is me but it is only a small part of me. Most of my clothes are always-clothes, really, because I have a pretty good handle on what I “am like” and how I feel that translates visually.
This jumper is, specifically, a bra-less weekend jumper.
I’m not this kind of pale melange grey. I am not these synthetic coarse colours in knitted patterns, I’m not so-uncool-it’s-cool-again nerd-sweaters. I don’t like the way it sits on my torso or how it pulls up off my hips if I move a smidgen.
Except for, on bra-less weekends in winter.
When I have nowhere I need to go, and the weather is cold and damp, and I have typing to do and cooking to plan and it gets dark at four o’clock. When I have/had a confrontation to get past, when we have records playing in the room next door, when I showered at lunch time, when I want to feel like I am dressed but not like I need to represent myself or quite come out of gentle hibernation. At these times, this jumper is perfect because I don’t need to waste something that is “really me” on a day when I just feel like private rest. If I put on a bra, I would hate wearing this jumper. It would be all wrong - once the effort begins being made, choices start to matter. It would change the shape and change the image, and I would hate it.
This jumper is one that says to me “if I am forced, if I really need to, of course I can still be me and project myself through anything. If I have to (what if whatever happened to make Mad Max happen happened? What if: Zombie apocalypse whilst I’m away from my wardrobe? What if I’m kidnapped? & so on)”. It’s a statement of self-assurance to myself (and now, to you).
The trousers don’t go at all, but I love these trousers and I wanted the comfort of them. All those times I have read ladymagazines state “fashion isn’t about attracting men” / “women dress for other women” I hae thought “well yes, but that’s a bit of a simplification, isn’t it? “Fashion” is about dressing for yourself: telling you the story you want to hear. Other things too, but that. Everything just depends on how much you’ve thought about it, and what you’ve decided.
Bottom half: 50s vintage skirt, DewberryVintage @ etsy // department store tights // Gabor shoes
Today I have nothing to say! I am watching vintage Buffy (no Willow! No Xander! STOP KISSING!) and feeling very full. I think all I need now.. is some hot chocolate. I even have tiny marsh mallows to put upon it.
The top half of the 60s office-lady suit I wore yesterday (and thank you for the compliments, ladies!) zips up in the back. If I wear it backwards, and a little un-zipped, it looks like a ’sporty’ (the.. the retro type of sporty) jacket. But still neat and swish! Giving me extra days during my work-week (part time) when I am in the professional zone (in my eyes) but not re-treading. Hurrah!
My beloved has just left, off on a bus-and-a-train, so I am feeling that melancholy that comes based on a marvelous powerful feeling of goodness that is a little time-displaced. To help, and to help anyone who has felt/is feeling the same, here is a song. It starts off good and fun, and then at the 0:50 mark it becomes heart-bursting and will quite possibly make you think of people running in front of a dark starry sky. If you have never watched Hokuto No Ken, I advise that you try it. If I think about it alone, it makes me want to bawl, but it is simultaneously one of the most stoic fictions I have experienced.
I cannot say enough about the style and character design. It’s an epic (I don’t say this lightly) arc-based animated Mad Max, basically, and typifies bikerpunk post-apocalyptica studded leather flamboyant brilliance. It also has some pretty great merchandise available.. as evidenced by STYLISH MAN!
Clickit for shop-link! I like this bag’s illustration because it voices just how I feel about things.
I think that whatshisname, who drew Scary Go Round and now draws Bad Machinery ahaha Ryan and Amy are grown-ups is a really, really good illustrator. He draws well, like the hipster heir to Tove Jansson’s blue house. I don’t keep up with webcomics because day-by-day strip-by-strip irritates me, but every now and then I go back and monster a whole bunch at once. You can try reading from the start, to get the feel for the characters and the history, but it improved dramatically as time went on. The recent stuff is MILES better than the early archives. MILES.
Some songs don’t need videos. Some songs render videos useless; they’re facile or shallow or just say everything they need to say within the audio alone. Sometimes videos are just poorly designed and mean a song that could have been enhanced by moving images have to stand alone and watchers of video channels get to be mildly (or strongly) visually bored for four minutes or so.
The above video is an example of seamless integration of eye and ear food. Audio-visual. If you take away the video from the song, you get maybe half the value. If you take away the audio, same. The whole really is more than the sum of the parts. It’s just magical. It’s a whole 80s dystopic movie in six minutes.
If you enjoy Grace Jones, please buy or rent Conan the Destroyer. She’s a secondary character but her arc is some strong heartwarming, her costume is fantastic and SHE IS JUST SO COOL.
This isn’t me being lazy and spewing out any old shite uncaring, just so I can say “I did it, I posted”.
I really do think that it’s super interesting that there is/when there is a difference between what people will wear in and out of the house. Do you have something you’d never wear outside? Or outside of a particular purpose?
If I go outside my own property (’my property’ included the communal areas of shared housing, though not the kitchen when I was in Halls at uni because we were ground-floor and there was no curtain), I put on ‘proper’ clothes. I don’t go out in pyjamas and there are some items that I own that are daytime clothes but not outdoor clothes.
This is partly because I feel it (a small one, but nevertheless) a duty: I have the time and ability to dress with a mind towards certain levels of old-fashioned etiquette and since I love to see people who look smart I feel it’s only right for me to make the effort. I honestly believe in the inspirational power of looking swish; I’ve been cheered up by snappy strangers enough times to want to do my best for anonymous depressives or bad-dayers. This isn’t to say I JUDGE YOU if you don’t feel the same, because I don’t. I don’t say it’s anyone else’s duty. But I can speak for me and it’s mine.
It’s also because I own some things that aren’t understood in the public consciousness (as far as I have percieved) to mean things that I want them to mean. My clothes are a dialogue to the universe at large, it’s true, so if I know the universe doesn’t speak my dialect there’s no reason I should confuse it.That’s not to say that I don’t want to ‘make changes’ - obviously I do - but puking everything out at once is not how to teach or pointedly affect.
Then there are some things that I just don’t want people to see in person: They may not be ‘underwear’ anymore, but the general public isn’t going to see the cotton of my bloomers, thanks.
^This is a mixture of inside and outside clothes (just because I’m inside doesn’t mean I can’t wear outside clothes, of course. That’s the joy of being in charge! I make my rules!). The DIY’d Dracula thermal is outside clothes but so comfortable that it’s a go-to for inside days, the thermal vest underneath is only going to be outside clothes if I’m part of an expedition to Atlantis/fighting the Axis/building and digging all day/a mechanic/still alive after an ‘apocalypse’.
The Le Coq Sportif jacket is inside clothes. This is an example of it doesn’t outright say what I want to say.. I don’t do sports, for one thing (I do exercise!). My mum bought it for me when I passed the Eleven Plus, I was so enamoured with it and she thought it was awful. I just couldn’t believe the COLOURS. I like bright things! And at the time, the brand impressed me. I’ve been wearing it recently because.. I don’t know, I just have. I can, and I wanted to, so I did.
I’m fed up with professional character designers being so boring with home-clothes scenes (I am looking at you, Marvel Comics).
Having just mentioned JCVD over on No Good For Me, I am reminded that a month or so ago I planned out another whole post on one of the inspirations/reinforcements behind my personal aesthetic. This influence being, The Movies of Jean Claude Van Damme (except The Order).
I say “except The Order” because that is a very bad film. It’s not good-bad, it’s just really lagging and laboured and basically feels like you’re watching a movie that ripped off Indiana Jones (the one with Sean Connery.. I refuse to remember which IJ movie is which because I think he is an ass and dislike his and his movies’ attitude to women), sucked all the rollickingness out of it, and then somehow saw into the future and sucked some plot strings out of the head of Dan Brown. And sucked all the rollickingness out of THAT, too (I like airport novels, and the only part of The DaVinci Code that really annoyed me was when they couldn’t guess that they were looking for AN APPLE. COME ON GUYS). And then shot it in an incredibly drab way, using that one from CSI: Miami on a bad, bad hairweek. That is the worst JCVD film, including Black Eagle.
Jean Claude Van Damme the man himself is not the target of my visual pondering. I don’t know how he dresses out of character (and I haven’t seen JCVD yet). It’s in the movies, and the entire movies themelves; the filmography of Mr Van Damme is a part of my lifelong lookbook. It’s so.. Butch-sensitive. Yeah. I think that’s actually the exact phrase I was looking for.
Jean Claude Van Damme isn’t Arnie. And he’s not Stallone either. But he is Jean Claude Van Damme; he is a name. He’s not one of but he is THAT guy. And that gives his films a little more leeway, I think. Let me take a moment to say I’ve never seen a Stallone movie that wasn’t Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot and I think that Schwa-chan’s movies are some of the greatest ever (and that he is an honestly under-appreciated actor/movie star). The thing is though that they are all serious. I don’t mean that Twins and Junior are meant to be honest psychological studies of people discovering they’re victims of weird reproductive experiments, but these movies do know that they’re “family entertainment”: now slapstick, now tear-jerking, now “it’s funny cos it’s TRUE!”. The movies of Jean Claude Van Damme on the whole lack defined tone. That is what makes it not matter that they’re not blockbusters or “good movies” in that finely crafted oscar winner way. That’s what makes them more important to me.
I have seen two separate movies where Jean Claude Van Damme plays two roles. No, wait, make that actually three. There are probably more. But three is enough! THREE MOVIES where he plays TWO GUYS. Okay, in one of them the identical twin is dead, but even so, a different actor-thinking-publicism would have said “no, sorry, I’ve already done a movie (TWO MOVIES) where I get credited twice.” That’s not exactly to do with visuals (though it also obviously sort of is), but the absurdism present in the fact that more than once the question “but doesn’t it need.. more ME?[/HIM, I like to be fair]” has been answered in the affirmative.. it appeals to me. That sub-surreal what??ness also carries to the rest of the show, actually.
He has just punched this snake.
When I watch a Jean Claude Van Damme movie, afterwards I think to myself or say to my beloved, “what was that movie about?”. And there’s not really an answer. Apart from “People kicking each other, and with guns, and not really dealing with the feelings brought on by completely bizarre life circumstances”. They all have stories, of course, but the stories aren’t really what the films are about. They’re sort of like my kind of poetry.
JCVD movies, to me, are atmosphere/attitude pieces. And the visuals are way important to that (because.. they are movies). Do you see the butch-sensitive? Most of these screenshots (from vandamme.ru) are shot in hard pastels, with that harsh hard dusty comfy familiar feelings of the streets that Westerns were shot on. There’s a whole bunch of denim, which I actually don’t like to wear ever but that is not the point. The point is in the culmination.
There’s a lot of pink and little fussy patterns, little details like a popped collar, combed hair, coloured lenses, that spandex. Tucked in shirts. Jean Claude Van Damme movies are not devoid of femininity, and I’m not even counting the ladies. The dude is kind of femme. But he’s also the butch hero kicking asses and faces and guys off of motorcycles, with the huge muscles and the wrestler hair and all the tough fabrics, frowny faces, boning of chix. BUT he’s also pretty big into caring for people and holding sulky grudges.
The thing I really enjoy about the films of Jean Claude Van Damme, is, I guess, his gender ambiguity. Not in an extreme way, the way you hear it everywhere now, not in an androgynous way, not in a questioning my identity way. It’s not so much ambiguity, in fact, as it is that he is UNambiguous - he just does what he does. To my feeling there is a Van Damme movie persona (I’m not saying he plays the same character in every movie; he doesn’t. I’m saying that the feeling you get having watched a bunch of his movies is cohesive). And it’s a guy, a movie, a world which just does what it does because those things are the way it is. I don’t watch his movies and think “is that guy confused?” I think “compromising himself is not something that he considers, so it doesn’t happen”. And that’s fabulous. I feel at home in those movies.
I just spent three hours or so reading the archives of a webcomic, which I haven’t done in years. This one is the best one I’ve funneled a fair part of a day into though.
Click it to visit.
I heard about it when it debuted and I didn’t visit, because I thought to myself “oh, Warren Ellis, it will just be people being mean to each other and most of them people I dislike”. I don’t actually remember how I got to it today.. Oh yes I do, I was looking for the site to “save John Ostrander’s sight” because working in a visual medium and going blind is a horror story. And America is mad for not having an NHS. But that’s a post for another site.
But anyway, I read it, and it’s actually really really good. I read a book about a post-apoc flooded England/Scotland before, it was good too. That’s not exactly related but flooded versions of places that exist now just somehow really work as nifty backdrops. And I’m a sucker for a ‘dystopic’ future where there’s a goodly amount of people who try really hard to make things better anyway. That’s just my brain.
The story, to do it a professional critic-style disservice, is like the Tribe in London if the kids were magic and slightly less hilarious (and older). It’s a little steampunk I guess - they have things that run on steam - but it’s not neo-victorian, beyond their basic need for a scrappy patchwork Industrial Revolution.
They say the word ‘bum’ quite a lot. That makes me happy and it makes me accept the fiction as one of my own (as in, one I care about rather than being marginally interested in. For love not science!), because I never hear anyone else say bum anymore.
The art’s pretty gorgeous. Sometimes I think that he draws their eyes a bit large, but eyes are important sort of so I can’t complain. And that’s a small complaint besides!
It does bug me that no-one wears a bra. Boobs hurt if you don’t wear a bra and swing about all day working on machinery or skipping or running or such. It bugs me a bit that there are no fat people to be seen. There is effortless ethnic diversity! And everybody has a good haircut, in a believable semi-crapsack world way. Plus, and this is a biggie (oh darn that’s not a joke): a) they showed cock* (flopping) and b) they showed cock before they even showed female nipple.
*I do not say this because it gets me thinking sexy thoughts. I say this because penises are treated, most often, as sacred rocks of filthy awesomeness by visual media. Even the hint that a phallus might be there, under those shorts, is RUDE RUDE RUDE.. hence the smallenising of Superman’s bulge in that last movie he had. Tits fly about all over the place, the tiniest piece of floss is reasonable covering for ladyparts, but the penis is The Penis.
Do people forget that as well as being the bone-machine, they pee from there too? It’s sexual but it’s not ALWAYS sexual. Or if it is, it’s not so unholy-potent that it has to be hidden from our eyes lest we all shrivel under its cyclopean glare. Video game artists in particular make me want to draw wangs and bollocks all over the place with their treatment of the ‘difference’ between male and female (primary/secondary)genitalia.
Awwww teenagers. They have such troubles! The more I (re)watch The Tribe, the more I notice that every character is actually secretly hilarious. They are all adorable. Hilarious and adorable! (Except for Ellie. Go away Ellie! You’re unpleasant!) Aaahhh what a bunch.
For example, Pride. He has terrible hair! He means well! He is a ridiculous flirt! He is a hippie-type who occasionally FLIPS OUT, and has a warrior bond with Lex. He really does mean well! HE IS SO FUNNY.
Not funny like on-purpose funny, with jokes. Just.. just watch the show. Images via tribeworld (and youtube. DVDs won’t allow image-capture!)
Criminal Minds is one of my favourite shows. I have to hide my face at the really nasty gore bits and I can’t watch more than one epiosde at a time or I have (weird) nightmares, but I think it’s well written and gripping and I think Paget Brewster is kind of fantastic. She’s Birdgirl! And on this show, capable and badass but still totally warm! And I identify with her anyway because she’s approximately my physical type!
The other characters are also interesting and have (no, really) proper character arcs. The show GOT BETTER after the main and mainstay character left and was replaced. It has Joe Mantegna in, who I enjoy partly for his role in Airheads and partly because his name is so fun to say. Like a vocal jigsaw.
Anyway. My point is, I make a point to watch it even though it tends to upset me. And usually this is in a OH GOSH NO! way, not a “oh no, that’s so sad” way. Today was an “oh no, that’s so sad” episode! And then I watched Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which was all about particularly tragic, useless forms of social prejudice.. also very sad. The kinds of episodes where you just have to feel sorry for EVERYONE. I must say, it’s nice to have that kind of full-on sadness-for-perp every now and then. I can’t stand constant cynicism, it exasperates me. Plus, it is dishonest.
Those two are my favourite L&O coppas though. The guy who wears tartan ties and has white hair at the temples (the rest is reddish black?) and the lady with short hair and A MILLION FRECKLES. She’s just so fun! Her looks are COMPLETELY at odds with grim’n'grtty, it’s so helpful for my enjoyment of such a generally pessimistic-atmosphere’d show. She is sarcastic, too, I just like them both.
My business cards arrived today! I feel quite giddy with it. Today has just been a good day! My beloved had GOOD NEWS re: future employment. I am so pleased! And I have even been busy:
Not finished yet. Feathers on leather, one wing so far. Bad pictures because my parents took the camera on holiday with them! I think this shall become a pectoral.
LET'S BE BUDS, BUB IllustratorClaire: Twenty-three year old Illustrator and Englisher, female feminist, interested in being helpful and denouncing things that aren't. Designed and drew the Britsh Style Bloggers logo; available to hire on just about any illustration project. Currently working as a Dinner Lady. For illustration portfolio, click the "tales from the sketchpages" tag or my logo below! Why do I do this? click here. Thank you!
I am not paid - in money or in gifts or favours - to endorse anything here. If I was, I would be bad at it, because lying is ugly.
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Oh, and by the way - I do tend to post on Sundays, so if you find that day a little net-empty.. check back? Great idea!
