A Medley of Life.

Well, since I last posted, (um, a month ago...), a lot has happened! For one, I turned 18! Well that was more than a month ago, but still! And yesterday I finished high school! I still have to make it through grad, but no more classes! I was in Toronto for a week on a school trip, and this may not be something that people who read this (if any) care about, but I went to H&M for the first time. Yeah, yeah, I know "fast fashion" is no way to live my life but I did get some really great pants! Also, why did 98% of the stuff that I kept picking out from that store cost 400 dollars? I also managed to get a fabulous NEON YELLOW clutch from Zara for my grad, drooled over hundreds of garments in all the ridiculously beautiful clothing stores that I cannot afford. Oh yeah, and I had one of those "life changing experiences" when I went to the ROM and cried over the fashion exhibit. 

They has this Alexander McQueen gown and this Margiela zipper vest! There was literally one other person there when I went and it was really quiet and echo-y and beautiful. I don't know, but clothing can just be so beautiful. I'm not expressing this properly, but when I was at this exhibit life just felt like it was going to be okay, and everything seemed so beautiful. 

There was just something about the way the lace fell on the floor that made my heart break. I know I sound materialistic here, and so what if I am, but this dress was beautiful. Just so, so beautiful. It was like reading a book or poem that you relate to more than anything else. I just can't get over these clothes.

There was also this completely breathtaking Vivienne Tam dress there too. 

And other stuff:

(Shirt and Clutch from Zara)

(Notebooks from the ROM on some dresses I found!)

(Tommy Hilfiger Shirt)

And some of my collars! 

My sewing machine caught on fire and now I feel pointless.

Tragedy has stuck my life in the form of fire a couple of days ago when I plugged my sewing machine in and was immediately met with the smell of smoke. This horrific and traumatizing event has left the two collars that I had currently been working has forced their completion to be put off for an indeterminate amount of time.
However, there is some good in this awful event. I think that lately I had been becoming a bit too comfortable with my routine in making silly collar making adventures, and well, less adventurous. I put sequins here and beads there, spending hours of my time doing the same thing over and over again. Yes, this was definitely good, allowing myself to learn some basics, find a good starting point and experiment, but I need to experiment more, and try new things.
Being sans sewing machine is letting me do just that. I am going to fail for sure, I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm at a point in my life where I'm feeling like I've always tried to follow the rules, do what's acceptable, and right now I need to challenge that. I want to make something that is completely my own, weird, tangled and ugly. Awkward and imperfect.
I'm inspired and I want to create. Failure will only make me better in the future.
And maybe eventually I'll get a new sewing machine and start making real clothes.

Anyways, I am off on a short trip to Toronto for a couple days, so that should be fun.
In the meantime enjoy a mixture of various images I have saved to my desktop for a variety of reasons.

Blue.

Well, how's that life thing going everyone? Busy as hell? Right? 

The world has felt a bit cold to me lately, and no not just the weather. But thankfully most of the actual snow has now melted and it's been raining all afternoon. So blue seemed like a good and a beautiful colour. Things have been breaking a lot and falling apart. I really only have one month of actual school left, and it's making me see that the world is more vast than I could ever have thought before. 

So, blue. I don't really think of it as a sad colour, more thoughtful, free and dream-like. So, no, I'm not sad, just still figuring it all out. 

She spoke of places I had never been.

I'd like to return to these ideas I used to have of making fashion all about being weird, combining gross colour combinations and prints that nearly any fashion magazine would say is a definite "no-no". I want my outfits to be a subtle "fuck you" to society and the people who try to make everyone fit into a nice little box. I want red hair and fluorescent shirt and a skirt reminiscent of a flamingo. Shoes that look like fruit contrasted nicely with the dolphins and fish print on my dress. This spring and summer I want to make art and be art and adventure and try to find who I am. 

So many things are ending right now, and it all feels terrible and sad, and I'm not just talking about High School. I think so many of us feel this way all the time and right now I know that what I need is for this damn snow to go away for a while, the sun to shine and to wear clothes with humour. So many people don't realize this, but fashion can actually ridiculously funny. Slippers that look like banana peels. Prints so loud and gaudy that make it hard not to laugh. A sickeningly sweet all pink outfit that can't help make you smile. Clashing prints and awkward layering. Yes, fashion can be extremely serious and beautiful, even sad, which I love so so much. But I think so often we get too much of that side. Let's all just take a bit of a break. Be happy it's spring, wear something silly or sunny, something that makes you smile. Because trust me you will be a happier person for it. 

And on a completely different note: here is my grad dress! I'd love some opinions on accessories right now! I'm wearing this dress and jewelry similar to the ones on the right (except mine are not mint/white, they're clear rhinestones), but I'm trying to decide between the two pairs of shoes and a clutch. Any opinions?

Can We Live Without the Sunshine?

Feeling like I want an adventure. I don't want my youth to be wasted. I want to live and go places. I want to find beauty. I want to fall in love with the world. I want an adventure.
But no one else wants to leave their cozy little lives.
The world we live in is one where, ultimately, people play it safe. We seek stability. We aim to "settle down". Find a home to stay in. We search for comfort and trustworthy love.
Frankly, I'm scared of being too happy, or too comfortable with life. I don't want to be controlled by fear or sadness. I want to dress weird, create strange art, run around and scream. I want to go places that may be frightening to me, sing loudly even though I can't sing. Climb mountains and write books. I want to fall in love everywhere I go.

Silence.

I wrote a speech for english class last semester about being quiet. It turned out to probably be one of my favorite things that I've ever written. Since then, I've been thinking a lot about the necessity of many things we say. Do I really need to exclaim myself when I believe something is beautiful? Or is it best to silently let it speak for itself. Our need in society to state the obvious, to continue to say meaningless but ever-present words about nothing is interesting and questionable.
Do we really need to keep in constant communication? Are we not capable of silently appreciating things? Do the bags under my eyes not let you know that I am tired? Does the feeling of cold really make you have the urge to let everyone else in the world know?
Can we just take a moment once a while for silence and beauty. Can we just recognize and understand things without shouting to the heavens?

There are times we live for somebody else.

I've seen a lot of people lately talking about how they really "hate fashion". And I definitely understand where that comes from. How the world is so focused on trends and looking "right". We read and try to write reviews of collections, condemn collections and criticize models. We buy magazines full of ads that tell us we are terrible human beings for not looking a certain way. We spend, we buy, we wear, we collect closets full of pieces of fabric, only to find out in the end that these things do not bring us love or lasting happiness.

That is, if you only look at the most superficial and common aspects of fashion.
I myself do hate these parts that are often associated with fashion. In the end, however, what I think fashion really is about it the clothing. Not the advertising, the buying and selling, not the approval of others. And when I put this out of my mind and I completely forget about these things, when I scroll through blogs and happen across a picture of an old CDG or McQueen collection, I see beauty and wonder and in these moments I fully love fashion and everything about it. I love its ability to create something weird and beautiful, extreme and simple and have it become part of a person and I love the fact that such beautiful manmade things exist, and that we can wear them.

However, this is not what I see often at all. I see so much negativity in the fashion world. Like I said before, reviews, magazines, blogs, picking out all the bad things and things that particular writer didn't like. I see people who dedicate so much time to hating certain models, who if we can just take a moment to remember, are not actually emotionless robots, but people. I see so often people devote time to hating all the things that they don't exactly like, to the point where it's more trendy in the (internet) fashion world to dislike certain designers/collections/models than actually liking certain types of clothing. I've seen countless arguments with explosions of anger because two people have different taste in clothing.

I'm not just talking about people who like fashion either. People are constantly mocking those who choose to wear uggs, or leggings as pants and so on. And I would just like to say that no one is a better person because of the clothes they were. I love clothing, but just because I dress "fashionably" does not make me a good or bad person. Just because a person doesn't happen to care about how they look, or wears something that you find weird or ugly, doesn't make them incarnations of the devil. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"(Hamlet).

I'm not saying everyone is like this, there are a good many people who are not like this. But this negative attitude is common to a frightening degree in the world that I live in.
Can I just ask for you, any one who happens to read this, just to be nice. Be good people. Stop hating. Please.