I’ve a tattoo on my left shoulder.  Once upon a time, long long ago, I persuaded a tattoo artist I was old enough,  although I wasn’t. I’d great fake ID, even better make up and a bit of an attitude. My adolescent risk taking behavior really isn’t his fault – so don’t hate on the guy who marked me for life with needles and ink when I was only a woman-child nymphette.

The time has come to ‘grow the collection’ as the say in tattoo circles. Truly, I’m about to get a new tattoo. For this, I am considering my lower back, but it’s caused  more than a frown from the few people I’ve mentioned it to. Having a tattoo on your lower back is considered a little bit rubbish apparently.

No please don’t! It’s so not you and it will look cheap, seems to be the consensus.

Oh dear. Do I care? Not much.

You see, the lower back tattoo is sometimes referred to as a slag tag in The U.K or a tramp stamp in The U.S. Even if the design includes beautiful words by T.S Elliot as mine will, the new tattoo will still be a ‘tag of slags’ . Doesn’t matter how high brow or unique  my back will symbolically come to stand in for all sorts of dodgey info about my morality, easy virtue and inferior taste. Those people with higher cultural capital will mock and shun me ( maybe even by fluttering fans  at me like in Les Liasons Dangereux), thus reassuring themselves they’re the legitimate ruling class by their superior judgement and subordination of me and my back.

It’ll be super awful and I’ll be stuck with a badge of shame for life. I’ll probably have to sew an ‘A’ on my breast just like poor Hester in A Scarlet Letter. Perhaps I’ll simply get an ‘A’ tattooed on my breast instead and cut to the chase?

Actually I’m having none of it. A slag-tag is a complex simultaneous cultural equation.  Yup, I’m not brilliant at mathematics, but when I do the sums for this tattoo - I come out with a composite number rather than a prime number and I’m sure I’m correct.  As a sign it’s polysemic init?

Remember McQueens bumster trousers?

McQueen adored the  slight dip and curve of lower back as it meets the buttocks. It was his favourite part of the female body apparently.

It was a look that spread and spread, although few dared go as low as McQueen’s signature buttock-baring style. 

Wadda ya think? Should I go ahead?

Finally I promised today that I would mention  a dream my friend had about a vejazzled roast pork belly recently. I KNOW!  You don’t need to say anything. One doesn’t need a degree in Jung to know there’s something more than a bit Peter Greenaway the cook the thief the wife and her lover about this. I suggested a suppressed fear of female sexuality combined with an irrational phobia of south-east-folk-glamour. The total objectification of the female genitalia reduced to a carnal slab of meat with rosemary and fake gem stones. Hmm what can it all mean?

Now my friend now wants to know if there’s a market for a new restaurant that adorns meat-dishes with semi-precious stones in the the shape of cherubs and love hearts. Hotpotjazzle madame? JazzyKebabby for you sir? I said no, I didn’t think so.

A very nice friend who’s family have a house near Puerta Banus (think BIG yachts, premier league footballers, little dogs, lots of gold everywhere) invited me as a means of escape from methodology hades. During an evening wandering the cobbled streets of the old town in near by Marbella we came across the most heavenly vintage and designer clothing shop Dèjà Vu on Calle Pedraza, 8, Old Town Marbella 29601.

facebook.com/dejavumarbella

This isn’t your average seller of secondhand, instead the store has a careful selection of pieces from classic to sartorial arranged in what feels like a chic salon full of curiosities and yummy nic-nack-ery. A visit will make any fashionista swoon I guarantee. Not only that, with such a good selection of important labels and key designers from the last century it’s a bite size lesson in the cultural history of ladies-wear as good as any V&A exhibit. Check out this Chanel suit in the first picture below!

This Emilio Pucci dress is my favourite. Perfect for drinks in Portafino or BBQs in Long Island… I wish.

The owner Richard is super-knowledgable about his stock and charming too.
Find the shop on facebook or www.dejavumarbella.com

When I was in Willamsburg I happened upon the most amazers 2nd hand book store called Spoonbill and Sugartown

The service left a little to be desired – the staff were too busy having their own conversation to be helpful and when I asked for a bag I might as well have asked for the woman’s 1st born child by the look on her face. Nevertheless, the cultural & critical theory stock was the best I’ve seen anywhere. There is one shelf in the bookshop in The Tate Modern that occasionally turns up something interesting, but this place was something else.

Whilst there I bought myself a copy of French Thinker and all round cool guy Barthes’ The Lovers Discourse

As the review on the jacket says

‘A Lover’s Discourse maybe the most detailed, painstaking anatomy of desire that we are ever likely to see or need again…The book is an ecstatic celebration of love and language and…’

Barthes is such a brilliant character, a philosopher, a semiotician, a cultural theorist, journalist, teacher; he was interested in so many different aspects of culture and everyday life – what ever captured his imagination. I found out in the foreword by Wayne Koestenbaum that Barthes was a gay man, something I didn’t know and he lived most of his life with his mother Henriette whom he was devoted to.

His Mythologies is a work I know very very well indeed. It has been a source of inspiration for my own work and thinking for over a decade of study and research and it’s a book I know like the back of my hand. The Lover’s Discourse is, I’m finding, quite hard going and I’m certainly glad of the notes at the beginning. As it says, the book is a series of linked miniatures about the different thralls of loves categories. It’s about how love ‘is a translated affair; love, Barthes proves, is not a feeling we take raw, but a condition that passes through the mediating scrim of plots, prejudices, and assumed positions’ ‘(Koestenbaum 2010 pxix)

What I adore about it, is that it’s an academic text, but at the same time it isn’t in the slightest. It’s emotional, it’s painful and there is a mediation of suffering that emerges from the words. As the reader I feel as strong sense that the author has felt something and very deeply too.

As Koestenbaum says, Barthes never wrote a novel, but this comes close. It’s critical prose. I also love the fact that the footnotes and references are so vague. Yabooshucks to the Harvard system. Away with you citation! Barthes flouts academic convention by only slight references to the thinkers, spiritual leaders, poets and philosophers he employs. For instance,the name Freud may casually appear in the left margin, but that is it. It’s up to the reader to follow this up if they care to. Bravo for Barthes! The contemporary academic writing ‘house’ style is a sore point for me. I dislike the conventions of thesis writing and how the author’s creativity and feeling is snuffed out by the academe in pursuit of convention and under the guise of objectivity that’s a nonsense anyway. I do so admire Barthes and even more now I’ve begun to read this.

Meanwhile, somewhere on The Upper East Side. You know you love me. XOXO

Williamsburg really reminds me of The Brick lane / Hackney road end of Bethnal Green circa 10years ago. The area on N Avenue where the market is & Bedford Avenue with lots of shops and restaurants is fairly gentrified in a Brooklyn hipster way.

Brooklyn Flea

I spent a great day wandering around today & met a few lovely locals, who couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful.

This guy & his friend were amazing today with local info.

Once you get off the main drag it gets even more interesting.

Brooklyn or Brick Lane?

Williamsburg or London E2?

When I heard about The Savage Beauty exhibition a while back, I thought to myself what a shame it’s being held in The States and not in The U.K. I would not get to see it – money, time, and work blah blah. But I made it happen. I simply made up my mind it was not to be missed and to go. So now I’m in NYC – for various other reasons nothing to do with the exhibition – but good reasons and the best part I got to see the McQueen. I might knock up some quick self-helpy manifest your life manual in a minute! Watch out Deepak.

Absolute highlights are: the black duck feather & lace dress from a/w 2009 , really has to be seen up close to be understood. A stunning corset of lilac and silk, appliquéd with black lace. Of course the famous Kate Moss holograph set to the theme from Schindlers List by John Williams which I watched about 5Xs. But for me the exquisite cream silk tulle lace gown with resin antlers from the a/w Widows of Culloden collection blew me away. The gown is such a work or art it actually made me tearful. It sounds trite, but Alexander McQueen wasn’t just a designer, he was an artist, an inspiration, and a good East-End boy. He was a genius.

The exhibition is beautifully curated. The pieces are set in dark, atmospheric rooms, dressed in baroque cases and gilt frames. There are film installations from the catwalk shows on the ceilings and Handel’s Sarabande makes up part of the heartrending classical soundtrack in the background as one moves around the rooms.

I’m sorry there aren’t any more snaps but photography wasn’t allowed, so (ahem) I’ve noooo idea how I ended up with this image.

Colour Blocked Two Button Placket Shirt

I’ve been a Fred Perry wearer ever since I can remember & I love the fact that the brand has evolved to incorporate capsule collections for the slightly more sophisticated customer working with a designer as elegant as Nicoll. If I could, I would buy/wear almost every piece of clothing in the range. I especially love the delicate twin sets and shift dress too.

One of the things I admire about Fred Perry as a brand is that it is so inherently cool. It does such a good and clever job with it’s social media strategy working with and promoting the notion of subculture. particularly around music. The tell us your story strategy is also very clever.

I suppose all this has got me thinking about the notion of cool and also prosumers and online co-creation, all of which I discuss in my thesis. If you’re interested in reading thought provoking text on cool, I recommend the work of Poutain and Robbins’ (2001), which claims that the origins of cool lay with the cultural evolution and assimilation of Afro-American culture into the American counterculture of the 1960s, which was absorbed by the advertising industry.

‘Cool’ does not simply mean something is good though; ‘… ‘cool’ always carries an extra, often barely perceived, connotation: describing something (a record, a movie, a soft drink) as ‘cool’ rather than ‘swell’ or ‘dandy’ makes the statement, in however small a way, that the person who utters it is cool and not a nerd or a conformist’ (Poutain and Robbins 2001 p31).

And as Heath and Potter say in explaining their rebel sell thesis, ‘Cool has become the central ideology for consumer Capitalism. Think back to the last time you bought something… Why did you buy it? Probably because it was really cool’ (Heath and Potter. 2005 p193).

Anyway, I dig my top.

This is me spinning around to Minnie Riperton in the garden of earthly delights after too much fizzy stuff during one of those glorious balmy evenings we’d a few weeks ago. The skirt is one I’ve owned for years and the fabric is from the Laura Ashley archives circa 1970. I believe it’s stitched for spinning.

Will somebody wear me to the fair? Will a lady pin me in her hair? Will a child find me by a stream? Kiss my petals and weave me through a dream.

The Chris Cunningham Gucci advert is another worship of mine. It’s Cunningham at his most haunting and other worldly. I could watch it over and over.

Flora for Gucci by Chris Cunningham (youtube version)v I know Cunningham has done commercial work for Orange before, but whoever came up with the Gucci collaboration is a genius. On first analysis the idea of placing Gucci a fashion house that shouts establishment, tradition, classic design with Cunningham’s jittery cyber punk status is more than juxtaposition, but it works wonderfully.
And if I was a person who could spend money on new clothes then I’d be going berserk on maxi skirts at Freepeople this season. I’ve said this before, but I love the photography used by this label.

Freepeople tired maxi-skirt

A great fashion blog can be found here with a post all about maxi-skirts. Lots of nice photographs of women in their maxis. All hail.

The maxi-skirt silhouette constructs a romantic and traditional image of femininity, but an outmoded one. The covering up of the female form and the relationship of this with past eras that were much more repressive for women isn’t exactly appealing for a lot of people. But, this could be countered with an argument about the liberating possibilities of covering up the female form in an age where even female children are encourage to wear mini-skirts and invite a sexual gaze by wearing skimpy clothing.

Ultimately for me, the maxi-skirt is all about shallow aesthetics I’m afraid. It ends with the fact that the indulgence of so much fabric and dreamy shapes and outlines is well-lovely.

Spring has sprung & it looks so lovely I just wanted to share.

Urban Outfitters opened in Brighton back in November taking over the old Borders bookshop (R.I.P) space in Churchill Square. I’ve managed to avoid thus far as that particular entry point to Churchill always makes me feel like a salmon swimming up stream, but with such a big retail space and hoards of people coming out clutching bags I couldn’t avoid having a peek and seeing a) what they’d done with the interior and b) what lines they’re carrying.

My UO days date back to the 90s visiting the stores in NYC, particularly the one in Seaport. I would describe it’s early incarnations as a sort of trendy Ikea with clothes. A place for college students to get discount candles, throws etc and inexpensive vintage looking T-Shirts and cool sugary pink Korean pop-culture nic-nacs. When the brand came to the UK and I lived in London, I found myself drifting into the one in Covent Garden and Oxford Street  for a window shop. I understood the market for the stock, but didn’t want to be charged the  inflated U.K prices  for things I’d pick up myself in charity shops and on holiday.  TBH I was staggered at the price hike and rebrand into a self consciously hip fully signed up member of the high street. #avoid.

The company also now own the more sophisticated Anthropologie of which we’ve only one in the UK on Regent Street. The home ware is gorgeous, although the clothes are a tad conservative for my taste, think Boden on acid, Laura Ashley on speed. They also own the clothing label FreePeople which produces divine L.A hippy /West Coast-chic stuff. I think ASOS stock a bit and I like a lot. I’m especially fond of the catalogue photography and aesthetic but have never bought anything as it’s a tad over priced.

But what’s going on with the designer lines in Brighton’s U.O? I saw A.P.C Madras (worship!), Chloe , Vanessa Bruno, t.b.a and Vivienne Westwood on the rails. These are v grown up brands and stocked else where in the city in smaller boutiques in the lanes. Paradoxically the OU Brighton store was totally chokka with under-25s. In fact, on the day I went in I’d say the average age of shopper was 19. Are people getting a lot more pocket money these days?

If want A.P.C I don’t want to buy it from a shop full of local teenagers and be served by yoot with a dreadful A-symmetrical haircut in treggins who know nada about grown-ups fashion. I want to go to the nice small boutique and feel I’m buying a piece that half the student population of Brighton isn’t wearing. What are A.P.C thinking? What are U.O thinking?

I’m sure the store overall will do well as it presents an accessible  and neatly packaged version of the vintage second hand aesthetic that was so popular last year. The trend has truly filtered to the high-street and for the brand, I guess it’s a case of right time right place, but I for one, am very confused about who Urban Outfitters is.

Earlier this summer my work went something like this: reading journal articles – fine, making notes –  fine, planning -fine ,  mind maps -fine, thinking about things -fine, meeting people for lunch excellent, writing actual words – not so good.

A typical morning would be boot up the computer, open my note book and try to write a paragraph of my response to some new literature.  I’d stare at the screen for about 25 minutes  without typing and tackle it head on by looking up a recipe for soap. Soap for everyone for Christmas, hurrah!  Perhaps I’ll become an aroma-therapist. Look at watch, time for a mug of tea, mmm the kitchen needs a wipe…here we go.

Lovely windows.

My problem(s) FEAR & LOATHING. I’m afraid. I’m really afraid. This will never be over and there’ll be more recommendations, more changes. The examiner will hate me. I can’t write. It’s never going to be over, not now, not then, no never. Hmm I think I’ll bleach my tea spoons.

A v quick bit of online research suggests that procrastination is often rooted in fear of failure. There is a useful handout at the writing centre all about it.  Also I came across a person who claims they procrastinated over their thesis for  two decades and reading their story made me feel better about myself I have to say

According to the usefull handout I’m guilty of at least 3 of the most commone pro-cras strategies

Substitute something important for something really important? (For example, cleaning instead of writing your paper = very clean teaspoons)

Let a short break become a long one, or an evening in which you do no work at all? (For example, claiming that you are going to watch TV for ½ hour, then watching it all night = watching an entire series of Gossip Girl in 48 hours..perhaps Chuck Bass might ‘arrange’ me a docturate sigh).

Spend too much time researching or choosing a topic (= I have read everything ever, I’m not kidding. I’m now at the point where I’m ordering unpublished manucripts from the 19th Century from obscure libraries).

Does any of this sound familiar? Sadly I think it may. The is at least one PhD & procrastination group on facebook with over 500 members. The latest news feed says “fffuuuuuuuck i hate my thesis” ( apologies for bad language these words are not my own). There’s even a forum.

The good news is there’s lots of tips out there for tackling pro-cras.  50 tips here and  some nice Zen habits here.  Common tips are chop up tasks into mini ones, make mini deadlines, make deadlines public, schedule a reward, have a routine, banish distractions. Also a really fascinating article about the science of pro-cras with some handy hints about building up stamina and will power to get things done in the same way one would train for a physical task like a marathon; the article suggests

you must treat your daily work like a competitive athletic event. Your self-control is a muscle. If you don’t tend to it through rigorous training and careful schedules of use, you’ll perform well below your potential..

There’s immense value to be found in trying to understand procrastination and getting to the bottom of why you’re prone to thinking in a certain way, IMHO is the 1st step to getting going. Realising that I do what I do, because I’m frightened has been liberating and now when I’ve a morning which starts badly I can label my thoughts and say to myself “I’m procrastinating”. In doing so, for me it seems to now stop it in it’s tracks. There is a really good talk at audio dharma on thinking which explains this technique and can help with lots of other things and noisy thoughts. The speaker talks about how our absorption in our thoughts pulls us away from being present and how we create an adversarial relationship with our thoughts. It suggests you work with what’s going on rather than resist it. It’s been a big help to me.

Look. Clean teaspoons!

Mini deadline and rewards don’t work for me. I miss the deadline and then give myself the reward anyway, because I’m nice  and I deserve it. What has helped , is adopting the Pomodoro technique.

The author says…

I found myself in a slump, a time of low productivity and high confusion. Every day I went to school, attended classes, studied and went back home with the disheartened feeling that I didn’t really knowwhat I’d been doing, that I’d been wasting my time

It’s based on the idea of tackling tasks  for 25 minutes at a time. You’ll notice a difference in your work  and productivity almost immediately.  You can down load a free booklet to get started that takes 25 minutes to read. Or even better, there’s a quick crib sheet to get you started.

Once again best of luck. Procrastination is a horrible horrible state of being. Be nice to yourself, don’t judge yourself. if you’re in it, just notice it – it’s the first step to moving forward. Good Luck!