Review of Remotely Fashionable

Readers who follow my blog or my feeds might have gathered that I have an addiction to frocks, shoes and handbags. I know it’s an irresponsible addiction for a writer to have, and I’ve lost track of the times I’ve told friends that I’m going to stop buying frocks because I’m so broke. Somehow, I always find the money for it, even if it means I have nothing to eat by the end of the fortnight. On the other hand, I don’t really have any other vices: I don’t eat much, I don’t drink much, I don’t smoke, I don’t have a car, and I don’t have a mortgage (though I should be saving for one). Obviously I can’t be a writer without any vices, so it’s imperative that I buy a frock now and then.

Last year I stumbled upon The Fashion Archives when I was stuck at procrastination station. This is an online publication created by Madeleine King and Nadia Buick that looks at the history of Queensland fashion. In 2013-14 they released a 12-issue online publication, The Fashion Archives, which was followed in 2014-15 by High Street Histories, for which they received a fellowship to do research at the John Oxley Library.

Then I discovered they were putting together a book with crowd funding and that, if one threw in some money, one could get a copy of said book and go to a party at its launch. I could get frocked up! I drew out my overused plastic from my wallet.

Last week, Remotely Fashionable: A Story of Subtropical Style arrived, and what a beauty it is. The book, nestled in a box stamped with blue, is crammed with wonderful photographs and readable essays. I went to the party (at the charming Avid Reader, no less) wearing a Review frock patterned with pink hibiscus and pale green palms. I took my fashionable neighbour along too, and looked at all the other people wearing their interesting clothes. It was yet another gorgeous Brisbane evening of books, balmy weather and lovely people.

Why a book on Queensland fashion? Well, no one’s written one before. Queensland, as the authors write, ‘is typically dismissed by its savvier southern counterparts as betraying a gauche, derivative, superficial, or provincial approach to culture and taste. While its natural beauty, tropical climate, and relaxed attitude are seen as major assets for tourism and lifestyle, these same qualities are often considered anathema to the high-minded pursuits of culture and aesthetics, including style’ (13). And then there’s fashion itself which, being associated with women, has traditionally been devalued, ‘the close relationship between women and their clothing … [has] often been perceived in terms of frivolity and indulgence’ (14).

This book fills this gap in Queensland’s history in an interesting and accessible way, beginning with apt foreword by Easton & Pearson. When they started their label, these designers didn’t mention that they were from Brisbane until they started showing in Paris.

There follows an essay by Associate Professor Margaret Maynard, a dress historian, who discusses how Queensland’s climate and class impacted on the state’s fashion. Although the fashionable upper classes looked to Paris for style, they modified the fabrics to suit the climate, using muslin and light silk in summer, while men wore light-coloured jackets or trousers.

I was impressed with Amanda Hayman’s ‘A Brief Redress of Indigenous Fashion in Australia’. Amanda, who is an Indigenous artist and Digital Exhibitions Program Officer at kuril dhagan at the State Library, describes how ‘clothing and body adornment have a close relationship to Indigenous identity and can be viewed as a reflection of country’ (41) and are made from natural materials such as wood, bark, fur, feathers, grass, twine and seeds. Following colonisation however, Aboriginal cultural identity and expression was suppressed, and it wasn’t until after the 1967 referendum that Indigenous people’s wardrobes began to reflect their increasing opportunities. I thought her closing line neat and apt: ‘Just as fashion often resembles trends from the past, with certain cuts and styles from eras gone by reinvigorated by the designer’s personal touch, contemporary Indigenous fashion is able to connect with social and political events in recent history as well as ancient cultural knowledge’ (46).

I also loved Melissa Bellanta and Alana Piper’s essay on the ‘flashy’ dressing of late 19th and early 20th century prostitutes, especially the description of their finery (including fur, kimonos and smoking caps), tattoos and sass. Under the Contagious Diseases Act of 1868, they were required to undergo fortnightly examinations (Tasmania was the only other state to pass this kind of law – go Queensland! Still conservative 150 years later and still outlawing abortion). The women stuck two fingers up at the law and ‘ordered hansom cabs to take them to the doctor’s and entered them dressed in the showiest of styles’ (51).

The collection of essays closes with one by Nadia Buick, who discusses the huge popularity of exhibitions on fashion, both in Australia and internationally. These shows indicate that there is widespread interest in fashion and that it shouldn’t be dismissed as a trivial topic.

The rest of the book has images of vintage Queensland fashion, and entries on people and places that are significant in Queensland’s fashion history. This is a book that’s interesting to read and lovely to look at – and a great Xmas pressie for all the fashionistas out there.

This is my 7th review for the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

A Jaunt to Sydney

Recently I was invited to fly to Sydney to attend the ceremony for the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship awards, as I had put in an application for the prose category.  The Scholarships, valued at $20,000 each, are awarded annually to artists age 35 and under in nine categories, which are offered over alternate years.  This year there were applicants for architecture, ballet, instrumental, poetry and prose. It was, to my delight, a cocktail event held at the Museum of Contemporary Art.  I zipped up my long, sweeping Sacha Drake silk halterneck which makes me feel like a heroine in a 1940s black and white film when I gather up the skirts, lashed on some red Dior lipstick, and wrapped my grandmother’s pearls around my wrist.  Despite having packed a hairdryer that took up most of my suitcase, I didn’t have time to use it because the plane had been delayed by bad weather, so I still looked bedraggled.

The rain continued, so the view of the Opera House and the bridge from the MCA’s terrace was somewhat grey, but it was a lovely event.  As I went on my own I met new people, including Rachel Quigley, who won the prose section a few years ago; Kate Middleton, the Sydney city poet; Bernadette Brennan of the University of Sydney, who was one of the judges for prose (along with Stuart Glover of UQ and Sue Martin of LaTrobe) and who I had passed at ASAL conferences but never met; Michael Barraclough, who won the architecture section and was off to the Architecture Association in London which, being affiliated with the London Consortium where I did my PhD, was where I sometimes passed boozy evenings in the bar; and Emma Schwarcz, an editor who had chucked in her job to write and who, along with myself, was shortlisted in our category.  Christopher Currie, author of the extremely polished The Ottoman Motel, was the well-deserved winner.  He was currently unavailable, Bernadette explained, because he was on his honeymoon and had no reception.  And then more connections emerged: Emma used to work for my publisher when they were at Hamish Hamilton, and I realized I’d had dinner with the wife of the poetry winner, Michelle Dickinoski, one cool evening in Auchenflower when strawberries were in season.

I stayed on at B&T’s in Surry Hills for a few days, looking after their pair of korats while B&T went on some insane bike ride in Canberra.  Being seven months old, the cats were still full of kittenish exuberance, which extended to chewing my hairbrush, jumping on my back and defecating in the tools beneath the staircase.  However, they were forgiven when I stumbled home extremely intoxicated after dinner with a friend and passed out ill in bed, and one of them curled up against my sore tummy and, when he finally finished his toilette, went to sleep.

I lived in Sydney for four years before I went to London, and was at Wollongong for three years before that and was often travelling up to visit my sister or friends, so I know the place well.  This was the city where I first fell in love, then left the man behind to go to London.  For years afterwards whenever I flew back, the places where we had been still breathed with memories of him.  This time, watching the good-looking men and stylish women in Surry Hills, and walking through Federation Way which I’ve always loved, with sunlight shining starkly through the Port Jackson figs and my forebear Patrick White’s old house just down the road, and being loved by so many good friends who are also overachievers and make me feel normal, I was sorely tempted to move back.

I was also delighted to find that the model for the abovementioned London Consortium has been picked up by the Writing and Society Research Centre of the University of Western Sydney to create The Sydney Consortium.  Their MA in Cultural and Creative Practice, taught and overseen by the superlative staff of the Writing and Society Centre,  is designed to create a dialogue between writing, the arts, and theoretical approaches to culture. This blend between the creative and critical is also the cornerstone of much of what I produce so I applaud the initiative.  It also signals a willingness to use writing to address, and become involved with, Sydney’s culture — an approach which Queensland’s premier clearly considers redundant.

I love Brisbane’s old Queenslanders, the gorgeous blue sky, lush palms and bougainvilleas, and the jacarandas opening in early summer and lining the river.  After working like a dog for some fifteen years, this is the city in which I have finally learned to relax and socialise (not something that necessarily comes easily to a deaf person).  I’ve always loved the arts scene here too – it seemed to symbolize the brightness and openness of the city, that it was a place that was moving forward.  But now the premier, having stripped our writers of their awards and foreboding the promise of more cuts to the arts, has signaled we are to become a cultural backwater again.  Of course the writers and artists of Brisbane will not be defeated and already my beloved Avid Reader is rallying to do something about it.  And at least, as I said to H., we are not in Stalinist Russia, where Nadezdha Mandelstam memorized her husband Osip Mandelstam’s poetry to preserve it, as to write it down was too dangerous, but still, I am so disheartened.

Latest Favourite Things

It's almost Friday, at the end of another week of writing (a poem and first draft of an essay), work (report writing for a research project), running, dancing, skating and sceptics group. I just can't ever seem to get enough sleep and am about to cry with tiredness, so to get through to the weekend, I thought I should post (a la The Sound of Music) some of my latest favourite things:

1. Morning runs on writing days.
2. My giant sun/rain umbrella with clouds on the inside.
3. My latest acquisitions from Nude Footwear, being some subtly shiny Endless Love peep toes which I shall pair with my Collette Dinnigan frock, and Silverdrops in pink which I will wear with my floaty Sacha Drake dress. Every time I find a new Nude style on StyleTread my heart beats a little faster.
4. The silhouette of the kentia palm against the cream blinds when I stagger up at 6am. There has to be some kind of reward for a non-morning person getting up this early.
5. My new rollerblades. It's hard to look like a girl in skates, helmet and knee, elbow and wrist pads, but I have sourced socks with tiny bows and stripes, and I'm looking for a cute t-shirt to match.
6. My KeepCup from A&S, so I can drink coffee and do a little for the planet.
7. My new phone which, according to H, is like having a Ferrari and driving it around in a paddock. He said the same thing about my laptop and I ignored him then too.
8. Smelling of chocolate when I use Palmer's cocoa butter moisturiser.
9. The hullaballoo of fruit bats along the creek as they unfold themselves for evening flights.

Almost the weekend …

On Partying

I had thought that, once teaching finished for the semester, I would find myself with a plethora of time at my disposal to recover, write and read. Instead, the pendulum swung in the other direction, from WORK to PARTY.

Consequently I have no idea where the last six weeks have gone, and have been lucky to write in my journal twice a month (and here I think wistfully of my undergraduate days in Wollongong when it was once a day until, over the course of a summer, my style improved considerably and led my lecturer to ask, 'Have you been drinking?') so I can't rely upon it for recollection. However I do, thankfully, have some entries in my calendar.

These indicate that I attended salon talks at Avid Reader by Charlotte Wood and Anna Funder; dressed up as a tart for a friend's 40th birthday ('Please tell me that you're wearing more than that,' H had said when I showed him the dark red corset with cream ribbons. 'Not much more,' I replied brightly); attended a lecture at the State Library by Melissa Lucashenko organised by Griffith Review; started salsa classes, or rather, picked up where I left them 10 years ago; had a friend from Sydney to stay, whereupon we drank cocktails at Bistrot Bistro and pedalled to see Henri Cartier Bresson at the Queensland Art Gallery; watched a performance of Pygmalion, of which I heard very little as the acoustics were terrible, though I'd managed to read the script beforehand and was entertained well enough; attended a friend's baby naming ceremony on four hours' sleep, having been out on the turps the night before at a cocktail pool party; went to a samba fitness class with T and loved it; organised a bike ride over the rail trails north of Brisbane, returning sore and burnt in all the wrong places, leading to a hideously striped epidermis of brown and white; travelled to Parkes with H for a week for Dr P's nuptials; caught up with friends in Sydney and, back in Brisbane, attended a trapeze performance by some stunning gay men. Is it any wonder that I am still tired, still broke, and slightly fatter?

On the plane to Sydney I finished Anna Funder's All That I Am which was the best book I've read all year. It elucidated a period and people with which I was unfamiliar – the German resistance movement in the lead-up to World War Two – with beautiful writing, a clever plot and thorough research which the text wore very lightly. Funder was a highly articulate speaker and her intelligence was stunning.

In Parkes H and I visited the dish with a uni friend of H's who had a charming one year old, from whom I elicited some smiles. H tried to explain the physics of gravity to me but that wasn't very interesting so I wandered to the shop and found a Christmas present for Nephew. We stayed with Dr P's Parental Unit who plied us with food and booze (hence uncomely weight gain). I wrote 129 place names, had my toenails painted pink and finished another book I was in the middle of reading, Alex Miller's new novel Autumn Laing which was disappointing (more of this in another post). After this novel I read The Tiger's Wife which, though it took a while to get into, turned into a wonderful piece of magic realism with a clever blending of myth and reality. Now I'm onto Gillian Mears' Foal's Bread which is thus far quite good. An excellent piece on Mears and her writing by Susan Johnson, whose writing I enjoy, can be found here.

It rained for five days before the wedding, and on the sixth the sky bloomed with blue. Everyone was relieved. Jokes were made about the sacrifice of goats. The wedding ceremony was beautiful. I wrote a poem for L&G and read it out, and H was MC. I wore a new frock from Kitten d'Amour with dark red Nude shoes (Nude is my favourite favourite favourite fashion find of the year) that I had worn at the 40th birthday party, and in which I had blackened a toenail from dancing too much. Fortunately, this didn't happen again. By the time the party bus came to pick us up at midnight I was already on my way out. Those at the back of the bus erupted into song as I laid my cheek against the cold glass window and went to sleep. The others went to an after party in someone's hotel room and I staggered around and eventually fell onto the bed and passed out, waking pained and somewhat surly the next morning.

H and I dropped L&G off at the airport for their honeymoon before going to dinner with another friend. As usual, H was unable to talk and navigate at the same time, so for a while it looked like we would end up in Wollongong. While queuing to get back onto the right road, H, to our mutual hilarity, pointed out the man in the car behind us doing his toilette, viz. looking up his nostrils and baring his teeth in the mirror. It was worth taking the scenic route (read: getting lost) just for that.

Despite all my avowals to stop drinking and going out and to actually sit and do some writing, I found myself booked to see Briefs with a friend from London. It was a wonderful performance by a troupe of gay trapeze artists with a commentary from a drag queen that I couldn't entirely hear but was highly entertaining to watch. I got more than I bargained for when, as we were at a table near the front, I was the target of a half-empty can of coke, which sprayed over most of me. I didn't mind as it was still funny, and I had on my pink patent Alannah Hill pumps which were water resistant, but my lovely handbag had stains on it. Oh, these first world problems.

Now I have only two weeks or so of work before I go home to Parental Unit's, whereupon there will be nothing to do but write and exercise. What bliss.

My Frocks

This past week has been debilitating, as I've been housebound with a vile dose of the flu and am thoroughly sick of myself. Rather than writing another post of navel-gazing, however, I thought I'd write about something that cheers me up no end: my frocks.

When my advance from Penguin for A Curious Intimacy came through and I had flown back to Sydney from London for the launch and publicity, the first thing I did was go to Collette Dinnigan. In the tranquil boutique in Paddington, I settled on a pale, knee-length dress gathered at the waist with an overlay of sparkling olive-gold lace, and gold straps. As the shop assistants boxed it up for me, H told them I'd had my novel published and they looked impressed.

'I thought I wouldn't be able to afford one of these until I got married!' I added, and with that they smiled.

I then dragged H all around Melbourne to find the perfect pair of shoes to go with it. They are covered in gold petals and not quite perfect (they aren't high enough), but they were good enough for my book launch.

My cash flow as a writer, however, is rarely so luxurious, and thus I am in a constant state of torment over wanting frocks, shoes and handbags, but being able to afford none of them. Or, so I tell myself. Somehow I always find the money from somewhere. Once in London I went for a week on a reduced diet so I could afford a pair of red ankle boots. Amused, H told Dad about it.

'They couldn't have been worth starving herself over, could they?'

'Dad, you have no idea,' H replied.

Dad should have known. His wife had the same habit. Born in New Zealand, Mum saved her money to go travelling around the world, but got as far as Sydney and spent it all. Then she met Dad and married him. She had a very fashionable wedding, with a white Prue Acton dress and red shoes. Then Dad took her back to the farm and she couldn't shop as much, although sometimes after trips to Tamworth he would notice something and ask, 'Is that new?' and Mum would reply, 'Oh no, I've had it for ages.'

Dad could never quite tell if he was being duped. Meanwhile I, watching these exchanges, became versed in the art of deception.

My favourite frockshop is Alannah Hill, but I am only allowed to go in there on my birthday, which is also, incidentally, when the sales are still on. The year before last they were playing one of my favourite songs, Flashdance, so I was compelled to buy a white skirt patterned with pink, green and red flowers that swayed when I walked. I was utterly broke and shouldn't have bought it, and by the time I got home I was so ashamed that I cut up my credit card. That was only a band-aid solution however, as when the new one came through a few months later I was off again.

Another wonderful label is Review, because they make clothes for women with curves. After helping out with the kids one summer, B gave me some money and I bought a black and cream frock with a deep v-neck, tight beribboned waist and tulle beneath the skirt. I wore it out with B, H and Cousin A to the Bowery, and true to form drank too many cocktails (2.5) and started a little dance with Cousin A, which snowballed into dancing with the jazz band and winking at a random stranger before being shepherded out by B before I did something drastic.

B also used to work for Sacha Drake, which meant instant access to many a cheap frock, although sadly she quit and now I have to find means of accommodating a suddenly more expensive, and still undiminished, passion for SD frocks. Sacha, too, makes dresses for curvaceous women, but the size 8s are limited in number and have usually sold out before I can rummage together enough funds to pay for them.

And of course, there is internet shopping. On nights when I can't sleep and there is no one to play Scrabble with on Facebook, or when I am procrastinating on a piece of writing, I will pass the time scanning pages of clothes on frock websites, be they discount or shopfront. It's incredibly soothing, at least until I find something I like, and then the cogs begin whirring to work out how to pay for it. For this reason, I am banned from Anthropologie, because I want everything on the site.  Another beautiful frock came from this shop, when I stopped off in San Francisco on my way home as a reward for finishing my thesis.  It's of pale grey wool with a ruff and a pattern of long grass on the right hand side in red and white, which goes perfectly with my red stiletto boots.  Anthropologie is gorgeous.

'I'm no good at budgeting,' I complained to B once, after what was probably a protracted period of poverty.

'No,' she corrected me. 'You're incredibly good at budgeting when there is something that you want.'

If only the wants were less fickle than frocks … but then, what would be the fun in that?

I shall end here, for I need to return to my deathbed for yet more sleep. For those readers who love frocks, I direct you to the beautifully written and photographed Dress, Memory, by Lorelei Vashti.