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I’ve always loved fashion. I’m not particularly fashionable myself, but I love seeing what people are wearing and finding interesting designers to check out.

My sister and I were fortunate our mum was a dressmaker, and there were always scraps of fabric to “dress up” our teddy bears and dolls. I’m sure some of you remember paper dolls? We had quite a stash of these and spent many hours  designing and making new outfits for them. My dad was a draughtsman, so paints and coloured pencils were always on hand.

Even when I was very young I was interested in the clothes mum was making for us, and its only been in recent years I have appreciated what an exceptional dressmaker she was…even making our kilts and outfits for Highland dancing.

As I got older I had more of a say in what mum made for me…like this dress I helped design for my first school dance.

Once I left school and was working, I spent quite a bit of my wage on clothes…specifically designer clothes. I think back now to some of the outfits I bought and wish I had kept them. And of course I went through different styles from the hippy harem pants and “surfer chick” clothes to tailored jackets and skirts and all those bad 80’s looks.

I’ve always admired the style of Helen Bonham Carter. She has such a unique style and carries it off so well. I just love the mismatched look.

My favourite designer of all time Robin Brown, has this look about her designs and the clothes are so beautifully styled on her website. If you haven’t discovered this designer yet, please look at her website just for the sheer beauty of it. She created the Magnolia Pearl label and I love this quote from the site, “Magnolia Pearl’s aim is to attire all with a sense of integrity and lightness, resilience and bewilderment.”

One day I intend to purchase at least one Magnolia Pearl coat or dress.

Another label (or I should really say store) I find really interesting is The Collective. It features the work of Tania Angeli, a talented designer and dyer and Meg Wilkinson, a weaver who’s style I like very much.

It’s so nice to see handmade, dyed and woven garments for sale in a store setting. Too often textile artists who make garments are reduced to selling in markets, and in my personal view this can devalue the work. We deserve to be in high end boutiques, galleries and stores or in the case of The Collective and myself, we just open our own retail outlet.

These are only two of my favourite designers but of course there is more! These are some other favourites:

 Nom*d

Daughters of India

Gudrun Sjoden

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

Coco Chanel

The other day I got a message from my sister asking me what music I had been listening to lately. I have music on all day in my studio, it makes it a much more relaxing place for customers instead of that uncomfortable silence. Some days if I’m trying to concentrate on something, it will just be ambient world music playing. But if I’m weaving I do like to play favourite tunes.

So I thought I would share with you a few of  the songs that I am loving at the moment.

Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real…I really like a lot of tunes from this band, these are a couple of my favourites.

Eddie Vedder is another who I am currently playing a lot, the soundtrack from the movie Into the Wild I really like, but my favourite song of his is The Long Road with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

You may have heard of Playing for Change..it is a global nonprofit organization offering creative opportunities for marginalized and at-risk youth, most specifically in the developing world. Musicians from all over the world collaborate on songs and there are some amazing tunes. Here’s a couple of my favourites.

Through listening to the Playing for Change songs I discovered Roberto Luti, a wonderful guitarist and then from listening to him, found Luke Winslow King. I don’t know how often I have listened to this song and I just love it.

When I was a lot younger I remember being very conscious of what I wore and how I looked, as I’m sure most teenagers do. Those wonderful years of flared jeans progressing onto harem pants and surfer girl clothes from Bali.

One of the great things about getting older is caring less about what’s “in style” and just wearing clothes you feel comfortable in. Some women seem to have developed their own style, for me I think its more about comfort and avoiding ironing.

I do admire older women who can carry off outfits that say I don’t care what others think, this is me and I feel good. I firmly believe that if you feel comfortable in what you are wearing, you will look good. Being at ease with yourself gives you confidence.

 

I would love to have the sort of wardrobe that is full of mix and match pieces, wear dots with stripes, or just a big mishmash of all sorts of colours and patterns. This could either be a big disaster or work exceptionally well.

I have in the past couple of years stop wearing black, not entirely though…I still have a couple of black merino tops to wear under things in winter. Now when I buy clothes I’m trying to be a bit more colourful. Its amazing what a pick me up dressing in a cheery colour is, especially on a cold, dreary winters day.

I think its really heartening to see older women dressing with such a sense of their own uniqueness, not feeling like they have to conform to “what’s in fashion” or “on trend”.

So lets embrace our individuality, have the courage to mix our patterns and styles, wear our clashing colours with joy and be confident in doing it.

“Once you accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”

                                                      Albert Einstein   

Its nearly that time of the year again and I imagine for some people it will be a very different sort of Christmas than previous years. With so many travel restrictions in place, many of us won’t be able to see our families and friends who are overseas. Thank goodness for video chatting…at least it lets us be in touch in a more personal way than just on the phone.

Christmas for a lot of people is a time of rituals, year after year we meet with family or friends at the same place, eat the same food and the day pans out to be similar to the previous year. I think there is something comforting about these rituals…a constant in our lives.

When I was young we always had Christmas at home with a silver christmas tree (which later got upgraded to a green tree which I thought was so tall!) and dinner was always a big ham, turkey, mums special pineapple mint jelly and always salads. No point having a hot christmas dinner in Australia! And of course this was finished off with the plum pudding with hidden sixpences, and  bachelor and spinster buttons. I still have these mother of pearl buttons.

After my mum died christmas was never the same for me, but after moving to New Zealand with Mark and spending nearly twenty seven Christmas’s here, we now have our own rituals. And even though it is just the two of us, the Christmas tree still gets put up.

 

After the year we have all had, lets hope that 2021 is a much better year and we get to see our loved ones overseas.

Wishing everyone a Happy Christmas.