Toile La La Automne Hiver 2014 2015 Highlights.

Inspiration:  A half-moon in a charged atmosphere, glowing golden hours, twilight silhouettes, primordial nature, cloud formations like ship sails and smoke, the silver and gold of winking stars... the equality of shadows... all the good and Romantic Souls.  Toile La La details here.

From the Toile La La A/H F/W 2014-2015 Romantic Souls Collection:

Fleur - Toile La La Romantic Souls A/H 2014-2015 Collection.

ZiZi - Toile La La Romantic Souls A/H 2014-2015 Collection.

Fleur - Toile La La Romantic Souls A/H 2014-2015 Collection.

Model - Bat, wearing Toile La La rooster-hen toile - A/H 2014-2015.

ZiZi - Toile La La Romantic Souls A/H 2014-2015 Collection.

A/H 2014-2015 cross-body mail satchel in grey, with brass-gold fittings.  Toile La La.

Twilight Silhouette toile wrap-skirt, Romantic Souls A/H 2014-2015.  Toile La La.

Bat, wearing peach candy-floss wig and pin accessory.  A/H 2014-2015 Toile La La.

Shoe-boots, Fleur's own.  A/H 2014-2015, Toile La La.

Vintage Gold Dancing Slippers, ZiZi's own.  A/H 2014-2015, Toile La La.

Romantic Souls A/H 2014-2015 inspiration, glowing golden hours - July 2013.

Excercise Visualization, Description, Imagination.

My daughter tells me about ASMR - autonomous sensory meridian response... she thinks it sounds like me... so I decided to make the most of it with this exercise:

ASMR, synaesthesia, senses which happily interact... call it what you will - I like description.

Environmentally Dressed.

With the onset of the twentieth century, artists and thinkers began to discuss concepts of attire... ideas of blending-in versus standing-out.  One belief was that everyone should dress alike socially - relegating self-expression to the home environment.  Taking that thought further, there were also experiments in having attire match decorative motifs within the home.

I like the concept of matching attire and home furnishings... which seems - harmonious and consistent.  This would require a clearly-established and committed sense of self, I think - to align oneself with a particular style and stick to it.

Now returning to the concept of dressing uniformly within a group - we see this quite often... teams dress alike, people dress rather regionally, and to some extent - even people asserting their sense of self-expression sometimes achieve similar end-results.  Dressing for formal occasions, men - more often than women - tend to have a unified appearance. 

From a hotel window my husband and I recently observed an odd example of uniform dress... herds of young women in towering heels and tiny bandage-tight dresses teetering, trotting, and stumbling along the sidewalk on their way to and from the clubs.

But today - because it's a wintry fall day - chilly, rainy - grey and green... and there's more of the rain and cold and grey to come... I decided to try this:  when the weather is dull and overcast, I plan to wear one little cheerfully bright accent - a sunny yellow scarf or hot pink lipstick or red socks... just for the happy effect it might produce in other people.  Then, when it's sunny and bright - perhaps the rest of the crowd needs to see a bit of cool blue, or might benefit from a minty fragrance passing by.

The Head-In-the-Clouds Wig.

Bebe Bouton wearing the head-in-the-clouds wig.  Toile La La.

Raveling threads from the sewing room are the origin of this fetching wig worn by Bebe Bouton.  Most of the head-in-the-clouds wig comes from a dove blue-grey duvet cover sewn over the weekend.  Bebe - and Bat, another Toile La La model - appear in a candy-floss petal/peach wig in the Romantic Souls F/W 2014 fashion show here.

Bantock's Books.

If you're a die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool lover of digital books - you really need to open up the page-after-page-turning kind of book created by Nick Bantock... his Griffin and Sabine ones are some personal favorites.  It would be impossible for you to open - there, on your digital version - Bantock's mysterious envelopes and to inspect the folded correspondence within.

The Scent Museum: Smeller's Delight Part 1.

Sniffing everything under the sun in a search for something wonderful - and feeling olfactorily frustrated - has culminated in an idea for a museum to delight smellers like me.

Since I'm imagining this - I suppose the idea can be fantastic and out-of-the box - without considering feasibility.  Let's imagine you visit this museum:

The grey, stone exterior of the museum is not flashy, the only hint to the interior being a concrete walkway displaying sunken floral and herbal impressions... shadows or whispers of fragrant components.  There's a tranquil fountain, surrounded by neutrally-scented grasses and trees. 

Upon reception, you receive a necklace-contraption which works like a hummingbird's beak, but fits over your nose - and a map.  Aroma rooms are designated by origin - Floral, Wood, Herb, Spice, Fruit, Animal (or similarly appropriate classifications) and feature numerous smell-sampling stations. 

To obtain a scent, you - the sniffer, don your hummer's-beak and press it against a tiny rubber portal-spot (some conditioner bottles have these rubber seals, which open when squeezed... but in this instance, the fragrance beak penetrates the seal). 

I have also imagined the smell-sampling stations being built like mix-and-match candy bins, outfitted with magnetized lids and with vacuum and release buttons to retract or emit scents.

However you want to envision obtaining the scent... follow that idea from room to room - sniffing away at whatever intrigues you.  The idea here is that The Scent Museum is not affiliated with any certain perfumers and therefore is not promoting specific perfumers, but is instead educating the public nose and stimulating the common and collective imagination.

Even more scientifically - The Scent Museum might equip you with simple and non-invasive monitors that register your response to smells you experience during your visit - and upon journey's completion... you receive a print-out, which you can present at a mixing counter - where it is possible to purchase a completely personalized essential aroma that defines and delights you.

The Scent Museum would - at least, to me - be the fragrance-lover's equivalent of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The Seven Dwarves of Beauty Products.

Stinky, Greasy, Rashful, Skanky, Clumpy, Sticky, Yucky:  Assessing an assortment of eye pencils, lipsticks, and perfume - I realized how these descriptions could very well be the names of a new set of dwarves - The Seven Dwarves of Beauty Products... except for none of these dwarves are good to have around.  The Seven Trolls of Beauty Products. 

How much money do we spend on little beauty/fragrance odds and ends hoping to enhance our appearance/aura and delight our mates... and how many of those beauty treats feel - instead - like a merchandising trick.  There are pencils that drag the skin and tingle the eyes, shallow shimmer sprinkled thinly on the surface of the lipstick or shadow, fragrance that lingers and becomes invasive - like a bad guest, colors that look promising in the container - thinning or morphing once applied.  Stinky, Greasy, Clumpy, Sticky, and Yucky make themselves known right away - but Rashful and Skanky, are even a bit sneaky too.

Maybe Skanky is the worst of these beauty trolls.  In hoping to look or smell chic, you try something different - and realize later - the effect is quite the opposite... what you thought was shimmer is instead chunky glitter... or the fruity fragrance casts a spell of fermentation.

Stinky, Rashful, Skanky, and Yucky most frequently appear at fragrance counters, but have not yet frightened me away - so persistent am I in my pursuit of sniffing out the perfect scent.  Here's a typical session... spritz, wave, sniff - floral alcohol... spritz, wave, sniff - floral alcohol... spritz, wave, sniff - alcoholic fruit... spritz, wave, sniff - fruity floral... spritz, wave, sniff - citrus floral... spritz, wave, sniff - floral vanilla - and so on, until - I bid farewell to Stinky, Rashful, Skanky, Yucky and the entire department of fragrance.  Where are Edgy, Advanced, Mysterious, Mesmerizing, Intellectual, Responsible, and Absolutely Great when we need them?