Post Prompted by Punk: Emotion-Driven Fashion and How to Find Fashion.

Pondering aspects of punk culture - mainly the look it produced, leads me to analysis of fashion deviants and fashion oddities.  Punk culture stemmed from a dissatisfaction with the norm - a quotidien refusal - a feeling of rebellion, which sometimes culminated in destructive tendencies, but was quite often channeled into music or fashion which embodied and released that pent-up feeling.

Considering the psychological aspects of fashion reveals a maze-like and infinite variety of perspectives.  In many instances, fashion is a mask or facade hiding the feelings generating the look.  An array of feelings may be expressed - portraying for example, merely a desire to be different, an aesthetic sensibility, refusal, conformity, or even - privileged boredom.

In studying - and enjoying - these fashion observations, I have found it advantageous to use as a viewing reference the various online resources covering the greatest number of runway collections worldwide - rather than relying on fashion or trade magazine coverage of collections - as the magazines rely upon advertising for their livelihood.  Because of this advertising-dependence, the coverage is biased - so an observer of fashion does not receive a clear view of the truly creative and amazing designs being produced globally, but instead a limited and monetarily-motivated perspective. 

I now see fashion in a different light - perhaps not the spotlight, but daylight - after having read books written by designers and journalists within the fashion industry, and as a result - gaining a better understanding of the cogs and gears within that world. For so many years, I mistakenly perceived fashion magazine and press reports as equating a mark of quality or a seal of approval.   If you too share an interest in the creative, artistic, psychological aspects of fashion - do realize you can find fashion everywhere, all around the world - in the street, on the bus, in the thrift shops, or there beneath the needle of your own sewing machine - not just on the runway or in the pages of a magazine.

Just as our language, music, technologies - and lives have evolved and bloomed and hybridized, so has our visual language of fashion - which has changed so much from its earliest origin of being primarily utilitarian, then decorative.  Fashion is very often - now - a feeling.

Well, Hello Again... Some Correspondence for You.

Toile La La letter, p.l.

Toile La La letter, p.2.

My letter for you has two pages and a tear-sheet from Martha Stewart's Living, February 2013... and a photograph of my Redbud tree (Cercis Canadensis), which attracts so many honeybees and bumblebees that it seems to emanate a resounding, buzzing, humming, magnificent  "Om"... and a photo of Simon Doonan's Eccentric Glamour - bookmarked with Number One Good Luck Employee Cat's walking leash... and a photo of Black Beauty's keys.  The whole letter arrives for you in an envelope collaged with a photo-bit - which is Hadley-ish in style.  I would, of course, choose a bizarre assortment of stamps and seals to see your letter through the mail - perhaps a Lunar New Year stamp with Chinese firecrackers - along with a Calendula stamp... then fixed with a red wax seal stamped with a griffin.  And for quirkier correspondence ideas, I'm enjoying reading Good Mail Day... but all of this you can read about in the letter above.  Happy reading!

Brenner, her hen, and her Echium Wildpretii in Martha's February 2013 Living.

my buzzing bee Redbud tree (with two bumblebees in this photo...)

Simon Doonan's aerobicizing and QE2 in-a-rickshaw tales have me hooting with laughter.

Black Beauty's calm (almost centenarian) keyboard - sans exclamation point.

A collage-bit for the envelope, sans stamps and seals and addresses.

Beautiful Antiquity.

Signed, Toile La La.

Big Lil - AKA The Claw.

Today's post, rather than discussing some aspect of art, fashion, creation - is instead, an observation of animal behavior - or more specifically, feline behavior.

I once had a cat - a beautiful Mae-West-feisty Maine Coon - named Lillian, whose size and boldness earned her the rather Hip-Hop sounding stage name Big Lil.  She was a saucy, sassy, spitfire - with a fluffy lioness feather-boa-looking neck ruff... and her profession was destroying furniture, manually. (That sweet tabby you see atop the blog is not Big Lil - but Good Luck Employee Number One, about whom you can read at the Catwalk Today page near the Art Fashion Creation archives... but let's return to Lillian and the subject at hand... paw... claw.)

On the sly, she attacked upholstered furniture of all types - but it seems pleather, or naugahyde, was Lil's preferred prey.  During Big Lil's very long lifetime, her confirmed furniture conquests/victories included:

• a brown naugahyde rocker belonging to my grandmother (which suffered a later attack to the legs by my Boston Terrrier's jaws - not my grandmother, but the rocker).
• a small, ladylike (but ugly) chartreuse and wooly boucle chair
• another unsightly velvety mauve chair
• an avocado green naugahyde footstool (from the '70s)
• a black vinyl weightlifting bench

Wait a minute... in composing this list, I suddenly realize Big Lil was perhaps acting in my favor - and in the name of Heightened Aestheticism.

Although, the injuries she inflicted upon my cream leather sofa seem unwarranted.

All these memories were produced while observing March 2013 Elle magazine's Paris Review fashion spread.  My first thought was "Big Lil Has Been Here!"

How Fitness Impacts Fashion or Style.

Simply put, a body with toned muscles - that moves with ease (and a purring engine) is more apt to "carry" clothing better.  This has nothing to do with size or proportions.  Whatever those may be, the owner of said size and proportion will feel better and move more gracefully if she/he practices exercises which promote better functional movement and range of motion.  

With Spring, people tend to begin thinking of exercise (unless a fitness regimen is already underway as a result of New Year's resolutions)... so, what better time to learn more about ways to shape up - in an affordable and enjoyable manner.  

After ten years teaching fitness methods - and even more years using fitness videos for at-home exercise routines, I decided to share some of my shape-up experiences and knowledge with others - via another blog: Better Shell Fitness Reviews.  With Better Shell, I hope to not only revisit some of my favorite exercise methods (via fitness videos/DVDs by a very eclectic variety of instructors and from many exercise/dance/mind-body genres) - but also encourage others to seek a healthier body and realize that feeling better is the best motivation for exercise.

Here's a recent Better Shell Fitness Reviews post, but there are many others.  See the full blog for fitness reviews.

My Eyes Travel Through Vreeland's Allure.

Images vague, emerging, sometimes mystical, futurepast, engaging, enamoring. 

Here, for you - an Eye Spy of sorts, inspired by Diana Vreeland's Allure:

Drawings smudged in charcoal by Toile La La.