The Stuff Strikes Back

Okay, the day has finally come. Tomorrow I will be selling this (and more, believe it or not) at the Valtteri flea market.

This is what I wore today:

Coming soon

I'll be posting about something very interesting in the next couple of days... Here is a sneak preview!

Tiptoes

Lesson on how to make one's legs look stumpy: wear strappy ballerinaesque shoes with mid-calf lenght trousers!

On a different note: Yay! Vogue Collections is out!

Could someone who knows Cesare Paciotti tell him that he simply must send me these shoes! I will settle for just one pair, too, if need be.

Moral dilemmas, part deux

The beginning of summer isn't necessarily the most ideal time of the year to start thinking about the moral dimensions of wearing second-hand fur. However, I found this hat at a local charity store for 5 euros. Why would I never in a million years even consider buying a piece of new fur, but I feel that it is okay to buy it second-hand? Am I supporting the fur industry nevertheless? Despite the fact that it is illegal in Finland to advertise fur as an ecological choice, could it actually be more ecological to wear one life-lasting second-hand fur hat than to buy cheaply mass-manufactured, imported acrylic fake fur hats that only last for a season, even if the production of real fur is probably (at least according to Animalia) more energy-consuming?

I wear leather shoes almost every day, too, and I eat meat. Isn't leather murder, too, just like fur and meat are? Am I okay with leather shoes or a nice steak simply because they don't look like cuddly animals? Is it easier to justify the need for proper shoes or a nice meal than the need for a warm, pretty hat? Does it make me any warmer (no pun intended) inside to want to believe that cows-turned-into-shoes have nicer lives than foxes-made-into-a-hat?

Ugh, this topic is giving me a headache. Yes, buying a wool hat off a local designer who spins her own yarn would certainly have the highest moral ground of all.

Moral dilemmas on a rainy day

I regularly go through phases when I feel bad about spending too much money on clothes, or simply about owning too many clothes already. For the most part these phases come after massive shopping sprees. This year has been slightly different: I haven't actually bought huge amounts of new things, nor have I spent that much money on clothes either. It has been just the opposite; I have got rid of big piles of clothes, shoes and bags. Interestingly enough, though, I seem to be still entering another phase where I question my role as a consumer. It is not that I have anything in particular to feel guilty about - okay, I have bought a couple of pairs of wonderful shoes, a second hand cape, sequined leggings, some undies and perhaps a cardigan or two... okay, I have bought quite a few things, but it is nothing compared to last year - but I still feel uneasy about the relationship between myself, consuming, and style.

The other day I was browsing through a bunch of new fashion/style blogs (they were new to me anyway). I am not going to start naming them here, because I have absolutely no right (nor desire) to judge them or their authors. It simply hit me that a lot of fashion/style blogs concentrate on consuming. Probably the most common inspiration for a blog post is a new purchase, or a new desire to purchase. (I went back to my own old posts, and noticed the same thing: my sense of excitement is palpable when I have bought something new, something fresh that I can share with my few readers.) It doesn't really even matter whether a blogger is a high-fashion spender, a high street consumer, or a vintage hunter. We all keep looking for the next piece of clothing, the next pair of shoes, the next handbag to make us feel something.

Is this simply the core of fashion and style? That we must consume? That we must renew our skins, and ourselves? Would anyone follow a style blog if the blogger kept wearing the same things over and over again, in the same way? It is often said that fashion works in cycles: it doesn't really go forward at all, it reinvents itself again and again. It inspires itself, it lives off its own past. Yet we are stuck in the new and exciting. We consume in order to reach something new (that is actually old), only to dump it after a short while, just like we (or our mothers) have dumped it years ago, in order to go back to the future. Is this really how it works, and more importantly, is it working for us? Does it make us happy?

TV is bad for you

I knew there was a reason why I haven't had a TV in about ten years. Some wiseguy in my building had bought a new TV, and instead of asking a professional to wire it up, he or she went ahead and decided to do the job him(or her)self. In the process he/she destroyed all TV and internet connections in the entire building. Not having internet access in over a week was, well, interesting to say the least. I am trying to find out which neighbour was behind this horrible deed, and once I figure it out, I will give him/her the evil eye.

Otherwise the past week hasn't been awfully interesting. I have gotten into wearing blue, and red lipstick.

I also tried out some new posing techniques.