In praise of Meadham Kirchhoff x Topshop

Fictional girl band The Cherrys wear Meadham Kirchhoff for Topshop. Photography: Topshop

The stoles are shaggy and eye-wateringly colourful, like the pelts of skinned Muppets.

The whole thing recalls candy-pop dreams and ravers. Dr Seuss. Vintage shops dishing up a mash-up of 70s/80s/90s. The sorts of thing you wish you'd find in a musty shop, but all you find is smelly taffeta. Pentagrams for those who remember The Craft when it was first cool. The attention-grabbing, eye-assaulting style favoured by street style bloggers. PVC like fetish wear and big lacy hearts like shojo girly mangas. Something genre-defying so as to be a brilliant spectacle. Show me something new, high street. Yes, this will do nicely.

If I were a manga schoolgirl, my reaction to the 89-piece range would be a shower of sparkles coming out of my head. Big love hearts and stars in my eyes. This is something I didn't foresee - it was a given that I'd lose my senses for Lanvin x H&M and Mulberry for Target, but I didn't know anything about Meadham Kirchhoff. I just know the first glimpses of the range I had on Grazia UK made my heart swell with delight that someone had thought to make a furry bag in sherbet pastels, and glitter cherry hair ties, and rainbow Mongolian stoles. Someone knew we all had inner freaks and geeks - and inner girl-band rockers. Someone thought a collection so exquisitely eccentric would take off, and it did. Within 24 hours of going live, so much had sold out on the website that I had to bolt down to Sydney's  Topshop to make friends with a magical pastel dream skirt and glitter-lacquered cherry bag.

Then there's the cleverness of the narrative. I can't name another high-street collab that involved the designers dreaming up not one but four fictional women, and clothing them.

The designers in an interview have said that any of the pieces would do for 'one of those days when you want to tell the world to leave you alone'. I can't imagine why. If I saw you or anymore else in this garb, I'd want to know all about you.

La Vie En Roach

Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Roaches make people cry.

It is a terrible thing to never be quite at ease inside one’s own home, to be hyper-vigilant, alert but not alarmed. To constantly scan the walls and the crevices, to anticipate and expect an unwanted guest or ten. Anything could be one of THEM: a clump of hair, a chip of paint, a soft, scuttling feeling against the back of my hand. They are cockroaches. Always cockroaches.

Sydney has as many cockroaches as it has tourists sighing over the Opera House. The climate is ideal – moist, warm, never punishingly cold enough to stop them proliferating, spreading, and affluent enough that there will always be food in our bins and our houses.

How I hate their ancient armor, crazed, erratic movements, constant perseverance and resistance against bottled poisons. How I fear we are building up their immunity against roach-spray – we might be raising an army of super-bugs who cannot be killed. Nothing could surprise me – I imagine I will one day walk into my loungeroom to see a roach the size of Kafka’s nightmares, all tickly legs and drooling mouth. How it will laugh at the slipper in my hand.

One time I thought there was a near-ideal solution. In a move worthy of Jonathan Swift, we would eat the cockroaches. We would stuff ourselves full of them like champion cockroach-eater Edward Archbold. Then if we spotted them inside our homes we would pick them off the wall and down them as if there were no more than gummi bears. The thing about Archbold, though, is that he died after his epic roach-eating feat during which he downed dozens of them, gigantic ones to boot. An autopsy found this wasn’t from a kind of anaphylactic shock. No, insect parts had managed to suffocate him. Cripes. Even if you do your best to defeat them, even if you manage to masticate unfeasibly great numbers of them, in the end, the roaches always win.

Saying no to selfies

The original poser: Narcissus by Caravaggio

Instagram is a mindless pocket-based entertainment source - as you wish you can pull up a feed that reveals, in pictures, the carefully curated and aspirational lives of people you follow. Sure, you can find the odd feed that is brutally, hilariously honest, but usually (and I include my own feed - username theclairelow8 - in this) there's a lot of gorgeous food porn and sunsets and manicures. You know, la vie en rose where the rose is the beautifying filter.

A beloved friend of mine posts shot after shot of himself: his brooding face, his many outfits, his hand holding his phone because he can't seem to resist firing off another shot at his own reflection in lifts, and there are the flashback photos of him with different coloured hair, and at the beach in dark glasses, and on and on it goes. I wanted to do some data analysis and figure out what percentage of images he had posted were selfies; I got worn out by 35 or so. It's a bit wearying and I say this as someone who genuinely enjoys his brand of outsized ego. 

This kind of endless self-promotion is a bit more acceptable if you're a bona fide celebrity - Miranda Kerr, Jessica Gomes and their ilk spring to mind, you know, people who make a living on their looks who really do have legions of fans who will lap up each and every image they post of their beauteous face.

But if you're a narcissist without a fanbase, what is the point of all your selfies? If a selfie floats on the interwebs and nobody hits 'like', does it really exist?

Then there's the over-edited selfie - the suspiciously airbrushed kind, the kind that sparks ire from the friends whose newsfeeds they appear in. Filters are well and good but no filter will obliterate all of your pores and turn you into a perplexingly faux-looking person worthy of The Sims.

I am over selfies. I have been guilty of plenty of them in my time - as overwrought and self-consciously posed and over-filtered as you care. I am as big a narcissist as anyone. Maybe other people find my own photo selection - fingernails and food, trinkets and cats, handbags and jewels - makes them as violently ill as a bucketload of selfies makes me.

Selfies have reached saturation point; they say 'Nothing is more interesting to me than ME.' Time has an article on how the wealthy like to selfie and how narcissists know they are obnoxious but love themselves anyway. Can we please take a break? I think we can't, we can't tear ourselves away from this habit anymore than Narcissus can keep himself from dying as he stares at himself reflected in water.

Vale Cory Monteith / Finn Hudson (I never learned the difference until now)

When I was a little kid without much of an idea of what an actor was, I assumed they and the characters they portrayed were one and the same. This is why it did my head in when I watched Dean Cain talk about Clark Kent.

Fast-forward to now and I'm not sure I really learned the difference between an actor and his character. This is why I was shocked to the core about the recent death of Glee actor Cory Monteith. When I first read reports: alone, hotel room, no suspicious circumstances, I assumed a suicide rather than an overdose. Apparently, Monteith's struggles with drugs were well-documented. I must have missed those reports in spite of being a rabid Gleek. Maybe I didn't want to know. The idea of Monteith battling these kinds of demons is so profoundly at odds with Finn Hudson, his character, the handsome, popular, all-American teenager on the squeaky clean Fox show. Death by drug overdose makes sense for the Kurt Cobains of the world, but the idea that the man who tenderly serenaded Rachel Berry in Mr Schue's choir room could die this way did my head in just like my revelation about Dean Cain.

Because I didn't know the difference between Cory Monteith and Finn Hudson. A talented performer on the show, a talented performer in real life. In love with a gifted singing ingenue on the show, in love with a gifted singing ingenue in real life (Lea Michele / Rachel Berry, who I can imagine being like her character too: bossy, with vocal gifts oozing out of every pore).

The meaning of the Finn Hudson character and the reason why he was a gift to us Gleeks has already been explored at length, and more articulately by Ben Pobjie. And as for me I'll just try to forget that Cory wasn't Finn and Finn wasn't Cory. I could imagine him cold and alone in his hotel room, or have him in my mind in that other way: forever young, forever in love, forever dancing around Mr Schue's choir room with Rachel / Lea on his awkward, teenage feet.

Forever Young - the rise of the haute kidult

It has been said I have the taste of a nine-year-old. This isn't an insult, it's a fairly good summary of me. The good thing is in my new life in a senior role at a magazine for tweenage girls, I am free at last to unabashedly love the cute stuff - to decorate my desk with Hello Kitty without restraint, to add Blythe dolls and Littlest Pet Shop without shame.

It's also carte blanche to reverse age - to choose childlike things which I've always liked best.

That's not to say it's time to plaster myself with cheap diamantes from Diva (not saying I have anything against Diva, or diamantes, or plastering myself with things). It's more about the somewhat slicker stuff, and I'm not the only one.

There must be huge numbers of people like me - haute kidults, that is, solvent adults with a taste for high-end kiddy kitsch complete with price tag to set it out of reach of bona fide kids except Suri Cruise. How else to explain the popularity of Mawi x Disney Couture, the existence of implausible diamond Hello Kitty jewellery, and the fact the Tokidoki x Karl Lagerfeld figurine (plastic!) costs nearly AU$200? Lagerfeld himself must be young on the inside - he gave his cat, Choupette, an iPad, which sounds like something a child would do.

I am 27 years old. When faced with a big, square and sensible Mulberry Bayswater in thick black leather, I inevitably reached for a raspberry mini Alexa, a handbag so weeny it cannot fit my diary. It occurred to me the Bays was the better investment - the sort of bag that could see me through to age 90 and then some. It also occurred to me that something so practical could make me feel like I was age 90. No, far better to go for a bubblegum-pink shrunken It Bag, one that I lovingly pet as if it were a teacup Yorkie. This is after vetoing a mint green Mulberry with flower clasp - that I feel really IS like a child's bag, that looks like something out of Forever New on a good day. It is so little I have grave fears more than an iPhone could be tucked inside and its discount price tag was still the princely sum of more than AU$400.

Fun fashion is ageless, I think. I never believed in those 'How to dress for your age' articles anyway. Let me wear my cartoon cats and fluffy ears beanies (no matter how much Guardian writer Hadley Freeman decries them). Let me be a haute kidult - I found the fountain of youth and it looks at once cheerful and eye-wateringly expensive.

That stuff I wrote that ended up in a book ... uh ... never mind

I'm in this book!

I’m not as good a self-promoter as I once thought myself to be.

I used to spruik stories I had written that I was proud of via Facebook. This dried up.

I, like a lot of writers, have what another writer friend has described as that ‘look at me, but don’t look at me’ thing.

I can better explain it like this: I would love to have teeming masses of readers, however, if someone close to me reads something I penned, it can get cringey.

To use an (awkward) analogy, if a nude picture of me leaked out and thousands saw it, I’d probably shrug, but if my boss and my colleagues and my kindergarten teacher saw it, that’s when I’d want to hide for a while.

That’s what writing is like – being naked. If you’re doing first-person stuff, you need to throw in lots of juicy, slimy, filthy revelations. Your story can’t be the equivalent of a sympathetically-shot, highly-edited and airbrushed image of you; far better that it be like a grainy, tabloid-style image of you scratching your butt. That’s more riveting.

The more personal the writing the worse the ‘look at me, don’t look at me’ gets. A newspaper report on a council meeting? Fine. Memoir? Cringey. Fiction? Really, really cringey.

Well, maybe that’s just me. If people I know read stuff I write, I fear my sentences and plot lines and story arcs and characters could warp their opinions of the real me. I fear revealing something about myself. Eww.

Anyway, this is all a roundabout way of saying I got something published in a book this year: a short essay called Newsrooms, a survivor’s guide. It is published alongside 36 other pieces in this year’s edition of The Emerging Writer, a book for rookie writers that was launched recently in Melbourne. Oh – one of the other contributors is Shaun Tan and that gave me a severe fangirling moment. If you’ve read The Arrival (not that it has any words) you’ll know what I mean – Shaun is a giant.

My essay was something I penned right towards the end of my time at a daily broadsheet newsroom. I pitched to be part of this ages ago because I knew I had some things to say. In newsrooms, you get to do lots of weird shit and that makes for good stories. I think it’s why I love journalism so much – the weird shit.

Some of my current crop of colleagues read my piece and said nice things about it. It was lovely but kind of excruciating. You know, because of the ‘look at me, don’t look at me’ thing.

It was this feeling times a million when I once showed my mum a short story I’d written. It wasn’t one of the pieces that had attracted modest acclaim (I’ve been shortlisted and highly commended for a fiction prize, twice), it was some other thing that had popped into my head and, like a lot of stuff percolating in my brain, had its unsavoury aspects. For example, one of the three incarnations of the same female character was a fetish film actress. I emphasised to mum that I had made the whole thing up: this character wasn’t me. I wasn’t her. These were cringey, cringey times.

I explained this predicament to my creative writing teacher, Craig. He said, wryly, “I’m sure Kafka went through the same thing. I’m sure he had to say, “Mum, I’m not a cockroach.”

Five questions for Nancy Jo Sales on The Bling Ring

I have a thing for Vanity Fair; I think we all do. In its archives you can find socialite spats and lurid murders and wine fraud and supermodel children and tales of a cowboy ranch of scholars in the wilderness that sound too romantic to be true.

Nancy Jo Sales, a contributing editor, writes of the Brant Brothers and Hugh Hefner, of Paris Hilton’s desire to be called a normal teen (back when she was a teen, but far from normal), and of the ‘Golden Suicides’ that rocked the art world. And, crucially, she wrote of a gang of kids whose rabid thirst for luxury goods, specifically, the property of Hollywood celebrities, led them to a crime spree the kids called ‘shopping’. Her story, The Suspects Wore Louboutins, inspired the Sofia Coppola film The Bling Ring and Sales has a book out by the same name that expands on the case in minute detail and provides the zeitgeist: the state of the world while the crimes were being committed.

Sales took five questions via email, even though she had a deadline looming.

1. The kids of the Bling Ring are amazing characters – in a lot of ways stranger than fiction. Did anything about them surprise you while you were interviewing and researching them?

Nick Prugo surprised me with his openness, telling me things that he hadn't even told the police. Alexis Neiers was a surprise in so many ways, although I've heard from kids who live in the Valley that she is more representative of today's Valley girls than I knew. Overall I was surprised by what seemed to be the group's blase attitude towards what they had done (except for Nick, in the end) and the fact that they apparently never discussed either the moral implications or possible real world consequences.

2. You’ve been thorough and comprehensive in talking with the kids (when possible), their lawyers, their parents, their school friends, law enforcement and others. How long did it take to do all this – to lay the groundwork for the article The Suspects Wore Louboutins, then the book version, The Bling Ring?

The article was about three months of research and writing. The book was about six months of research and writing. Both were done pretty fast, especially the book. But these are also things I've been thinking about a long time, reporting on kids for almost 20 years.

3. Your book explains the kids’ MO in great detail: it’s a pretty good how-to guide to robbing the rich and famous. As far as you know, has this case encouraged any copycat crime? Are other kids feeling inspired to go on “shopping” sprees at famous homes?

I've been really glad to hear the feedback I've been getting on the book. Mostly it's young women telling me how much they're glad for the opportunity to have a conversation about our culture's obsession with fame and wealth and how this isn't what they want their generation to be focused on.

4. Alexis Neiers and her mother clearly were upset about your article. What kind of response has she and other Bling Ring kids had to the book and Sofia Coppola movie?

I'm not sure...maybe they have said something which you could find out online?
(Taking Sales’ suggestion, I found this on Perez Hilton: "We already know that Alexis, the real-life inspiration for Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring, is NOT happy about the way she's portrayed in the movie. Since then, Neiers has taken matters into her own hands. She's now in the process of writing a book that will explain how things REALLY went down.")

5. Your book explains a few people have been sort of envious of the kids and their ballsy approach to taking what they wanted in that they’ve said they wished they’d been part of the Bling Ring. Can you imagine, under the right circumstances, yourself doing what those kids did?

I grew up in a loving but strict household; my parents taught me that if you want anything, you should be prepared to work for it. My dad used to come down on me pretty hard if I got anything but As in school, and as soon as I graduated college, I was expected to get a job and support myself. So I can't really imagine doing something like that. I think parents today raise their kids with a lot more indulgence and sometimes this isn't necessarily a good thing.

Conversations with Mr OPI, the man of many manicures

OPI President George Schaeffer goes to Alcatraz.

George Schaeffer is broad-accented and big and also bubbly, with a kind of charm that is in his affability, I think. He's fast-talking, confident, a man of the world. Also: this man knows nail polish. Like really knows it. 

George is the man. He's OPI's CEO and president. Top of the food chain. But not intimidating. You know, you'd spend all afternoon talking with him about your mani-pedi routine and he'd never blink.

"Best seat in the house," he says as I pull up a chair beside him at a recent OPI launch, for their new San Francisco range, at a themed breakfast in Rose Bay. He's right. We talk.

Claire: Has there ever been a colour trend around the world that surprised you?
George: Well, Lincoln Park after Dark was very interesting. We believed in the dark colour, we came out with it and it died. A year later, it was the biggest colour we ever had. It had to have time. Suzi [Weiss-Fischmann, OPI’s colours genius], usually is ahead of her time.

Most other ones have taken off. It's been good. Shatter, for example, was huge but the speed that it died was beyond incredible.When it had its moment, it went like this (he gestures): through the roof

There’s some concern business-wise about Liquid Sand. I think it’s going to be different. People are not jumping into it, they are a bit skeptical. But the colours are wearable and [the effect] is pretty cool also. Glitter with a texture. I think it’s going to have much longer legs.

Claire: Have you noticed an evolution in what women want over the course of OPI’s lifetime?

George: Absolutely not. People will just go with whatever they’re comfortable with, especially with nail polish. It’s complete freedom. I think whatever makes them happy in that moment, it’s good. Seasonality? There is no seasonality.

Claire: You touched on the lipstick index: women reach for red when the economy is depressed. Is there a nail colour they go for when the economy is not looking its best?

George: Any and all. Nail polish surpassed lipstick last year. It’s probably a $2 billion business.

Claire: What do you attribute its growth to? Is there an emotional connection between women and their nail polish?

George: It’s affordable luxury. To buy a great lipstick it’s $30 or $40. You get more fun out of nail polish on your fingers. The colours are much more active.

Prison, huh? Oh, darn, not again. This is me pre-mani, forgive the nails.

In praise of Emma Hill

Emma Hill, at right, with me, at Mulberry Manhattan, Fashion's Night Out

As neither Mulberry nor Emma Hill have released statements yet, it may be too soon to wail in despair that the beachy-haired Brit is stepping down as creative director at the witty, sturdy British accessories label.

But with reports flooding in from Grazia and WWD claiming just that - that Hill is parting ways with Mulberry after six years at its helm - I can only conclude that this bodes well for my wallet but not my heart.

You see, I love Hill's vision at Mulberry. I have nine Mulberry handbags created under her tenure; I adore every single one. I tried to adore the thicker leathers of the older styles hunted down on eBay - the kinds of bags created under the reign of Stuart Ververs, but it was never love. Mulberry, specifically Emma Hill's Mulberry, has exerted a powerful grip over my imagination for some time now. It's very hard to articulate exactly why my small Bayswater satchel in flame makes me tingle with excitement and why I stroke the leather like a cherished pet. I can't say why it is Hill's latest blockbuster, the Willow with detachable clutch, especially in emerald, turns my dials up to 11. Oh, Emma! From small ocean blue Mabel in lightweight antiqued leather to the deep green little Poppy snapped up at David Jones with my stimulus money to the glossy ink patent leather Bayswater clutch with secret pocket for a paperback novel for the train ride home to the huge and strangely faded purple Bayswater that has seen me through many a fashion week, I can't imagine another label that has provided more delight.

What else? I just love the celebrity snaps of Hill at Mulberry's Coachella pool parties: Hill with Emma Watson, a lanky Nina Dobrev on Ian Smoulder's arm. I love how she hangs out with Kate Moss. I love her runway shows and the oversized gnomes and English country gardens, the melted ice creams, the precious doggies in rain macs. I love that she is a critical and commercial success (maybe less so in recent years; this could be linked to the unabashed price rises at Mulberry, *cough cough*).

Not everyone will miss her as I do. Die-hard Mulberry fans at the Purse Forum have given her mixed reviews - some reject the way her Mulberries seem to cater to celebrities, but even those who don't rate her highly have conceded to the fact she overhauled the label into something greatly covetable. I agree: pre-Emma Mulberries are a little stale, a little musty. Emma's Mulberries were forever young. They had a lot of zing, a lot of verve, a lot of joie de vivre. 

A place for Hill, according to speculation anyway, is Coach. I can't really see myself losing my head over a Coach bag, but you never know. Emma Hill, I swear, is a magician.

Braided beauties and botox at the Brad Ngata party

Brad Ngata, centre, and entourage

Brad Ngata is one of those hairdressers who gets profiled by Vogue. I’m on the invite list for a party at his new Crown Street salon. I dream Brad himself will catch sight of my hair – which is thick, coarse, black and falls in glossy waves beyond my waist – and will want to make my head his magnum opus. Maybe he’ll fall in love with my hair and want to revolutionise it. Maybe.

The party has a big sponsor logo-splashed board out the front where two name-checking sentinels stand. Inside, there’s a blunt-fringed cutie, a rare man with magical pastel dream-hair. I say, “You’re here to get me drunk!” and relieve him of a glass of champagne.

Thus hydrated, I start talking with a stranger. This is talking in the loosest sense possible. My mouth moves, then his does, then mine and so forth. As an exchange of information this is a bit of a failure. It’s too loud. Too crazy for pedestrian things like conversation. In any case, I’m grateful to have someone to wave my gums at. This is keeping me from my usual wallflower ways: cling to the wall, scoff the canapés, attempt an awkward compliment, repeat steps one to three. I’m better as an observer, not a schmoozer.

The disco balls are glittering near the bar with its choice of two flavours of boozy slushy: the pinkish one happens to be vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice and it’s delicious and potent. Ah, peach schnapps. I have it from Jeffrey Eugenides that “babes love it”.

I’m in a well-dressed, well-coiffed crowd. Some of them are even worth capturing on film. I’d like to be a slick shooter with a Terry Richardson-worthy SLR who can sidle up to a braided beauty and ask to get a picture of her coif; I can’t do this. Can’t shoot to save my life. Had to try this recently for work and for reasons unknown the soft setting was on and all the shots looked like the lens was thick with Vaseline, like we were trying to capture the cast of Days of Our Lives in their dewy youth, no wrinkles allowed.

In the end I grip my goody bag (travel-sized L’Oreal hair dryer, pamphlet advertising Botox (oh please), pointer to the Brad Ngata app that advertises his services for $20 for a fringe trim up to $250 for a style cut) and I walk off into the night in shamefully flat shoes.

I, wannabe preppy

1981 polo players in - duh - Polo Ralph Lauren. Image via Vanity Fair

She's the sort of woman who is uniformly honey-coloured - tanned of limb and blonde of hair. Also at once lithe and muscular, like someone credibly sporty, she is reclining in pristine tennis whites. The sort of gear you can't possibly wear because real people can't wear white.

I wish I could show you this image which was somewhere in VanityFair.com's image galleries. It is a campaign shot for a high-end athletic wear label and it is beautifully, impossibly preppy. It's so preppy it's poetry. Somehow it's even preppier than the rows of granite-jawed college men with Brideshead Revisited hair who adorn the walls any given Ralph Lauren store.

In my dreams, I am this preppy. I too am of the American leisure class. I am of a world that might not ever have existed for it is so pastel-coloured and sun-soaked and romanticised. It might be less real than my fantasies of how Paris is supposed to be.

In my dreams I have a collection of Lilly Pulitzer sundresses and old-money parents who understand the importance of seersucker and the appeal of improbable names - Bitsy, maybe, or Muffy, or similar. In my dreams I have a country club membership, lacrosse-playing skills and a full wardrobe of J Crew woolens in sorbet colours.

But, wouldn't you know it, it is not to be. There's a couple of reasons (not blonde, not moneyed, no particular athletic gifts to speak of). Beyond this, I have trouble even aping the style. Polo shirts mostly do not agree with me. The athletic, classic, all-American sportswear look is difficult to do - as a friend of mine puts it, it can look nerdy. Being somewhat nerdy at the best of times, the look on me is tempting fate. I appreciate the clean lines, the simplicity but I also feel underdone when I try to do it - there's no statement, sometimes just a mild blandness. I would like to do it with the aplomb of fictitious preppies like Aspeth Montgomery in Curtis Sittenfeld's novel (titled Prep, but of course). Aspeth with her pastel striped bikinis and rich-girl shampoo. Like Lee Fiora, the girl hero, I am caught up in the dream-scape of preppyness.

Ironically enough back in college someone did call me preppy (was it because of the fake Tommy Hilfiger shirt I had on at the time? Perhaps, perhaps). And at the time I thought she meant peppy, as in full of energy and verve. That isn't a bad description of me. Preppy, no. Peppy, yes, always.

In praise of the sass & bide Sydney warehouse sale

My haul: 1. The Sting dress, 2. Mirror Image shorts, 3. A Thing or Two trousers, 4. The Story of Us jacket

One of the great joys of big city living is the sales.  

I mean the kind tucked away in the designer’s headquarters, the kind where you can either nab samples that might have made it into editorials or onto runways (or, maybe, never made it into production at all), or the kind where it’s crazy bargains time because there’s a need to clear excess stock.

I was sent an invite to the sass & bide warehouse sale, and – how sweet of them – got onto the VIP family and friends list that won me shopping time a full hour before the sale was open to the public.

 

Inside it was so orderly. This was lovely and in marked contrast to my last sample: the space was tiny, the clothes beautiful and the women frenzied and so it was shopping at the end of the world. It was shopping in a zombie apocalypse – mindless hands grabbing at things.

Sadly, there weren’t many accessories or any handbags to speak of, however, I was delighted to scoop up a few things: silk trousers and a matching blazer in a floral print reminiscent of a classic oil painting and two rebellious tartan pieces that appeal to the part of me that never stopped being a wannabe punk.

What I paid as compared with the RRPs of the items was a tiny fraction. I saved about 75 per cent. The pants, in particular, are a delight. As comfortable as pajamas with none of the naffness of so-called pajama dressing and amazingly soft and beautiful.

Tips for warehouse and sample sales:

Get on the VIP list.

Arrive amazingly early.

Lurk around the table near the changerooms where stuff goes before it’s returned to the racks.

Do not wear jewellery. While being a quick change artist, you’ll lose an earring.

Slip-on shoes are a must-have.

Consider wearing your better bras and undies – communal changerooms are what they are.

The sass & bide warehouse sale concludes tomorrow (Sunday 21 April) at 3pm at Byron Kennedy Hall, The Entertainment Quarter, Fox Studios, 122 Lang Road, Moore Park.

Flatlay imagery by sass & bide; dodgy image editing my own.

My Australian Fashion Week lunch break

Backstage at Toni Maticevski. Image via Coty

Australian Fashion Week and I did not get to see much of each other this year.

Having covered it for four years running, I gave it rest this time around as I’m now in a workplace that doesn’t require that of me.

Oh, but how I missed it! Yes, it’s but five days in the year but those days are equal parts stress and glamour. I stumbled upon the MBFWA crowd at an off-site show that happened to be near my workplace and was struck down with longing.

But all was not lost. On Australian Fashion Week’s final day, in the afternoon, I visited during my lunch hour. It was an illicit quickie; I couldn’t stay away.

I do think the new Carriageworks location lacks the glory of the waterfront views down at The Rocks. A friend explained the beauty of it was its more workman-like approach – there was, at last, a media room big enough for everyone instead of a skinny bit corralled off at the front.

The shiny bits were ever present – the miniature canapés, the bar with its free coffees (in limited edition cups printed with designer prints, but of course) and the women with magical pastel dream hair and the men in leather tank tops. As always, the best runway is the street outside Fashion Week – even this time right at the end there were enough sweaty volunteers, peacocking bloggers and bambi-limbed models in full make-up and bizarre hair to make for fine people watching.

Models pose at Talulah. Love a smiling model. Image via Coty

These backstage shots come courtesy of my friends at Coty. In my paltry hour at MBFWA, all I had time for was a couple of Instagram shots. Oh, Australian Fashion Week! 

Claire Low loves Claire Inc.

Model wears vintage Chanel. Image courtesy of Claire Inc

I’ve long loved Claire Inc, and not just because of its name.

I stumbled upon it and was struck by its gorgeous styling. 1980s and 1990s pieces that could so easily be frumpy or retro-tragic in the wrong light were suddenly so glamorous they belonged on the cast of Dynasty. The difference was the use of pale, gamine models with blunt-cut hair, the quirky, witty way things were thrown together and the curatorship – the eagle-eye with which pieces were chosen and presented. It’s evident Belinda Humphris, the mastermind behind the operation, at once knows and loves vintage gear.

At the recent launch of the Pills, Thrills collection, I was chuffed to get close to Belinda’s treasures. She had tapped into trends and so there were the lacy black things that could have sprung from Riccardo Tisci’s brain and loud-print pants by the likes of Versace. I was briefly enamoured of a Karl Lagerfeld duffle bag and then flirted with a Moschino bag with its peace and love clasps and hardware and its green versus red colour scheme. That sounds Christmasy, but actually called to mind the colours of a good classic Gucci bag.

Belinda, who once sold me my beloved Karl Largerfeld necklace (two pearls have gone missing; I have never stopped sulking), took my questions.

CL: How do you go about selecting a great piece of vintage? Label, colour, quality, designer cachet, historical value, current trends, X factor?

BH: We look for quality of fabrics, tailoring, and innovation of vintage design. Authenticity verification is a major part of what we do. We are meticulous about fabrics, tags and authenticity marks such as stamps, signed lining, signature features and serial numbers.

CL. Which designers currently designing today will have their pieces increase in value when they die, that is, who is making vintage collectables of the future?

BH: Oh there are so many. [Alexander] McQueen was an obvious one. Hedi Slimane, Tom Ford and  Marc Jacobs already have fervent fans. I also love the outrageousness of John Galliano and Jean Paul Gaultier. True innovators

CL: What are you favourite designer vintage hunting grounds - op shops, Internet, deceased estates, somewhere else?

BH: I’ve always loved op shopping but don’t get to do it much these days. The internet is a treasure trove of goodness and appeals to my need for late night bargain hunting

CL: Describe the rarest piece you ever found and sold.
BH: A silk Chanel blouse from Karl Lagerfeld's first collection for Chanel in 1983. The incredible opal print fabric was designed by Australia's own Jenny Kee! I was so besotted I couldn’t even sell it. It really belongs in a museum

CL: Complete this sentence: I would collapse from excitement if I found a … on sale for $5.

BH: Ha. Currently anything Phillip Lim. I’m Phillip Lim obsessed!

Caviar nails equals caviaarrgh nails

Get a pack of trendy caviar nail gear. You know, a tiny kit with brush, pot of beads and base coat. The beads are beautiful. They are Christmas in miniature: dozens of tiny baubles. They are a city when viewed at night – nothing but lights. They are a complex underwater metropolis, a growth as seen under a microscope, they are hundreds and thousands spread on garishly coloured icing.

Put the nail caviar on. Admire the effect. The regret is going to set in pretty soon. Oh yes, here it is.

You are now in a world of snagging and catching. To go to bed is to sleep with dozens of beads which fall off your dominant hand and go rolling around on the mattress with you. Try a shower. Attempt to clean your body manually and feel that rough texture in all the wrong places. Floss your teeth - every time you push waxed white thread between your teeth there's a pinging sound as two, three, four beads drop into your mouth (don't swallow).

The beads will go everywhere. They will bounce around like excited particles. They will remain stuck to your fingertips for, oh, an hour maybe. It's common to glance down and find they have vanished en masse, leaving behind a silver pockmark where a bead used to be.

The fresh caviar manicure makes you think of genteel times or of a future in which you are similarly incapacitated. In either case, you will need a handmaid, someone to wait on you in every sense of the word, someone with unmanicured fingers with which to personally floss my teeth for me, clean bodily crevices and so on.

Don’t use this product if: you are a nurse, surgeon, dental hygienist, pastry chef, or anyone in the service industry. Or in zero gravity in space – the beads would clog your instruments.

Do use it if: you are going to a dazzling cocktail party, you are a hand model, you enjoy abrasive surfaces.

In one sentence: Argh, when can I get this off me?!

That sinking feeling ...

Bondi Beach has a kind of white-sand glory impossible to match anywhere around the world. Having seen what looked like swimmers in a beach pool doing idyllic laps, I dive right in.

In the water, it took me a moment to figure out why my laps felt so chaotic and dizzying. It wasn’t just that I’d had breakfast not long ago, it was the churning of the ice-cold waves. They have a way of lurching and rolling so you can get seasick as you swim. Your horizon is not the calm, flat, artificial blue of the public indoor pool, it chops and changes and every time you poke your head above water it looks different.

My swimming companion went white. White, even, under the kabuki mask of waterproof sunscreen laced through his stubble. “I’m really having trouble,” he admitted. What melodrama, I thought.

I would do two more of the 50m laps. One was fine. Then the waves, being wild, threw up a terrific spray. I was bobbing, I was flailing. I was trapped by blue – sky above, deep, salty water below, to my left, to my right. Not landlocked now, I was waterlocked. Throwing an arm around a skinny lane rope was helpful as hugging a strand of dental floss; it sank, I went under, I flailed, I breathed in salt water. I repeated this action: bobbing, flailing, watching arcs of ocean spray toss me under again. It was sort of mortifying. I was feeling too stupid to call for help. I was astonished by the situation. “But I can swim,” I thought. “I can’t drown because I can swim.”

I flailed myself over to the concrete edge of the pool and grabbed it. It was solid, and I breathed.

Dear Maison Martin Margiela jacket, it's not me, it's you

Image via TheOutnet

What I hoped would be our fine romance started out innocently enough – with an 85 per cent off sale at The Outnet.

These sales inspire in me a kind of feverish longing and a tired index finger from hitting ‘refresh’ every three seconds as women around the world try to beat me to the good stuff and the whole damned website crashes and crashes.

I was hoping for something that could be as much of a wardrobe staple as my Alexander Wang navy linen blazer. An Acne leather jacket caught my eye but was snatched from under my nose. The next morning, among the slim pickings, there you were: French size 36, shiny oxblood red patent leather, structured and killer. The kind of jacket that would make me look like an achingly cool inhabitant of The Matrix. Probably.

I was seduced, too, by your label. Maison Martin Margiela – a label of great prestige and mystique, one associated with the designer they call fashion’s invisible man, noted for his reclusiveness, his lack of fashion show bows, his use of the collective ‘we’ instead of the egotistic ‘me’ and his anti-label label – just a blank bit of cloth stitched into the garment in its four corners.

Then you arrived and you were as rich and dark as my heart desired, heavily fragrant in the way of all good leathers. I wrestled my way into you in my office toilets. Here, our relationship soured. You were creaky. Really CREAKY. Like damn, there goes my career in cat burglary creaky. What did Google suggest for creaky patent leather? WD40, like what you’d use to fix your creaky door. WTF.

You had a centre front zip, a centre back zip, a funny side zip to affix the somewhat odd big front flap to somewhere near my left hip. Also several press studs. Also a detachable funnel collar. You were an IQ test of jackets. Not something to be donned or removed at a moment’s notice. This I realised when getting in and out was like attempting to put on a straitjacket.

Don’t get me wrong, dear jacket. Even though a colleague who spotted me called you ‘a bit out there’ and my partner was a long way from enamoured of you, I still think you’re cool, you’re amazing. Someone out there will love you and spend their autumn and winter looking like an inhabitant of The Matrix.

That person is not me.

Farewell.