Bat Channel

Bassike cotton voile Oval dress - $70 (reduced from $160)
Cotton On slip underneath - $10
Elke Kramer Trompe le oile resin bangle - $70 ebay ($160 retail)
Sportsgirl leather heels - $10 op shop

Sometimes I wish I was really a minimalist at heart - that I could just post some photos and maybe a couple of lines about them and hit "Publish" and be done with it. If I didn't struggle with minimalism, if I could just get all pared down and mid-nineties, then today's post would look like this:


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xx
Skye

Eh, never going to happen! Accessories, adjectives, anecdotes - I like to pile 'em on and that's just the way it is.



I've had a thing for this dress for a while, but absolutely could not (and would not) pay $160 for a big voile oval - so I stalked the Bassike website until it went on sale and then I snaffled it up in a haze of credit card-related gluttony. I kind of wish I'd got the navy one as well:



...because it doesn't have quite the same Buddhist nun/Harry Potter robe connotations, black being the ideal shade for silent contemplation and teenage wizardry (not to mention graduating from university and taking holy orders). Moody, enigmatic glamorous vampire bat type people might also be found flapping around in a winged black dress like this one - swirling mysteriously off into the night sky to a moonlit gothic castle somewhere. I, on the other hand, am rather more flying fox than vampire bat and far more likely to be found hanging upside down in some shrubbery eating a mango, or flying in for a furry fruit bat hug.




Awwwww, almost entirely gratuitous fruit bat action!

Egg shaped sacks in midnight black are also ideal for dinner parties - no need for waistband loosening after that second helping of dessert, or fear of staining from red wine sloshing out of glasses brandished by exuberantly gesturing drunken people (that would be either me or my husband). And if you're too tipsy to drive you can always fly home!



This is what happens when a flying fox goes corporate and gets a nine to five gig (that's 9pm to 5am by the way). I struggle with minimalism and I struggle with structured jackets and yet I persist in the face of ever mounting evidence that I wasn't designed for the wearing of the blazer. I blame the media.


Flash!

This linen specimen was five bucks from Bondi markets a few weeks ago when I made a flying visit to Sydney, and I only bought it because I felt like I had to bring something back with me. I bought it from this really bitchy dude who, while I was browsing the racks, actually prevented someone from buying a dress from his stall because they were supposedly too ugly to do it justice. She just took the punishment too - I think I would have punched him on the nose! I did have the following exchange with him on the subject of the jacket though:

Me: Hmmmmm.
Him: I actually don't hate the fit of that on you.
Me: Eh, it would probably fit better if I had less in the breast department.
Him: (cheerfully) Well, you can always cut them off!

Why did I give him my money? Why?


Looking all depressed because I gave five bucks to that guy.

Did you notice that I got my hair cut? It's the ritual end of summer shearing of the crispy sun and salt-fried beach hair, happens every year, and every year makes me feel like I've lost my superpowers for a couple of weeks until the straggles re-grow, regroup and reassert themselves. It took me a while to find someone to cut my hair (always a challenge in a new town) but after a few dead ends I managed to stumble upon a sneaky secret salon with a sausage dog wandering around, Noel Coward on the stereo, and a hairdresser who's carefully collecting a clientele to create a "daylong dinner party". I might have to wear my oval dress next time I get a hair cut, being as it is my favourite dinner party dress of the moment!



Sass & Bide t-shirt - $2 Bondi markets ages ago
Grey patent leather Mollini Chloe knock-offs - $20 (new) op-shop
Red & aqua silk pleat front pants - $1 op-shop


Secret side stripes on my silk trousers - part marching band uniform, part Adidas parachute pants.

Just for a thrill (ha!), this is what I wore today for desultory bit of rainy day op-shopping and puddle jumping. I've been in a tomboyish mood all week, must be the shorter hair...
xx
Skye

The Dog Days of...Autumn?

Floral 80s dress - $5 Surry Hills markets
Tan leather sandals - $40 Sportsgirl sale
Tan leather eighties elephant belt - $7 op-shop

Well apparently it's autumn now, but no one told the weather gods round here - so I'm still wading through the humidity with no makeup lest it melts off, no sleeves lest I drown in a puddle of my own perspiration, and hair all afrizz and untamed. I do love summer though, so I don't really mind it deciding to extend itself beyond the borders of its designated months. Still, living with the constant threat of feeling the trickle of sweat down the backs of my knees is wearing a little bit thin. I'm not a sweaty sort of person generally - have always been one of those "ladies glow" types who can run ten kilometres without working up more than a light sheen - so I have no inbuilt coping mechanisms for this sticky state of affairs.



I genuinely enjoy being able to just throw on a frock and some sandals, but it does make for some pretty uninspiring blogging fodder. I do have a wardrobe full of things just waiting for a day cool enough for me to wear them, in fact a quick tally of recently op-shopped acquisitions totalled more than thirty new (old) things that have never made an appearance here. Tropical Cyclone Hamish may be on the verge of being downgraded to a mere Tropical Storm but he's still predicted to send some rain our way in the next few days - so I might be able to actually wear some of that vast array of stuff.



One thing I recently scavenged out of the depths of an otherwise depressingly sanitised op-shop (you know the ones - colour-coded racks of polyester bootcut pants and kitten heeled mules from the late 90s, bright fluorescent lighting, no interesting clutter to poke through and a mean lady who checks your handbag when you leave to make sure you haven't stolen anything) was this eighties elephant belt. It was hanging on the special display rack at the front of the store obscured by a burgundy pleather faux ostrich skin Matrix style duster coat priced up at eighty dollars (!) so I almost missed it.



We've been fighting against the elephant thing in our house for a while - it's a slippery slope with these things, one minute you've got a couple of cute elephant things sitting on a shelf, next minute you find yourself building extra rooms to house your collection and making an appearance in the Guinness Book of Records as owner of the World's Biggest Pachyderm Collection. We made a conscious decision to try to limit the elephant population yet somehow they keep sneaking in, but we really don't want to become known as the crazy elephant people - so for anyone I know reading this, please don't give us any more elephants! I travelled around the house with the camera looking for evidence that we might be candidates for E.A. (Elephants Anonymous) and found plenty, tragically there are actually a few more lurking around the place that I failed to photograph...










Elephants with their trunks up are supposed to be good luck charms, I dread to think of the disasters that might have befallen our household if we didn't have the herd hanging around. I suspect the elephants might also be responsible for my super fantastic good luck in scoring a stack of Swan Brand t-shirts from the utterly magnificent Likkle Girl Who Wurves Pwetty Things:



She sent her highly trained cohort of shopping operatives (I could have said "shoperatives" there, but too cheesy even for me) out onto the streets of Singapore and they delivered a pile of pure cotton pleasure - and a couple of little dude-sized Singapore souvenir t-shirts as well. Likkle Girl - you are the newest inductee to my Hall of Deadset Legends!







xx
Skye
PS. There are heaps more of those terrible made-up shopping words, anything with an "op" prefix is fair game. If you happen to be a journalist writing advertorials about shopping malls for a local free newspaper, then this list might give you a few handy ideas:

Shoptimist
Shoptometrist (that's an optometrist who's really good at shopping)
Shoperation
Shopportune
Shopulent
Shopportunity
Shopsonification (that's something about red blood cells and bacteria and stuff, but don't let that stop you)