6 months ago

Seeing my own face on screen after clicking on "Older posts" on www.getyourplanerightontime.com was what just happend.

Me at the amsterdam fashion week, wearing my favorite self made earrings

mixing Calvinism with Fashion

Sarena Huizinga sitting far right, waiting for the jury to announce the winners


500 years of calvinism in holland isn't seen as a good
thing by the dutch fashion scene. The legacy it left to
dutch society is extreme modesty, distrust for
luxury and even dispisal for decadence.
Nonetheless it was the theme of the fashion competition 'Calvijn Classics'
held in 'The Big Church' of Dordrecht, Holland's most calvinistic city.

Some churches, when entering them make you feel small and meaningless.(soo calvinistic) This church was one of them, with her imposing size, 2 meter thick pillars, golden gates, countless arches, and marble floors. During the show, three religious singers made eery sounds to slow and overwhelming music that echoed throughout the church.

I had specially been looking forward to see Sarena Huizinga's creations, they didn't dissapoint, she won second place. The 500 Euro's she won, were allready gone offcourse, as she had invested alot in her collection. When her models came up, I'm not sure if people were in shock or in awe, but I did see some jaws drop to the floor.(The crowd mainly consisted of moms and dads of designers, and entire families that came to see their daughters first model competition.)











First place went to Colloid (Tjitske Hemkes & Brecht Duijf)


Third Place went to Merel Boers, also known as Miss Black Birdy

Merel with her two models

pointy, 14cm-heeled Love

silver platform heels, diy nude tights




The first stand on the market, a table full of late 90's platform shoes, all too grotesque, squared and worn down. At that moment I wishes I had been there earlier and hadn't mised my train. During the autumn hollidays the market is packed with "hip vintage girls", wich isn't a good thing because the prices of all the second hand rubbish raise to those of vintage boutiques.(I refuse to pay 70 euro's for a faux fur jacket) Anyway, the man of the stand just realized he had forgotten to unpack one last platic bag of shoes. And these pointy 14 cm-heeled babies came out, in two different colors! I got them at 5 euros each, my mood got much better and my hopes of going home with a load of clothes to refill my wardrobe went up. Unfortunately I didn't have much more luck. But with the shoes in the bag my day was made.

SHOCKED

Did a simple investigation for an article last week.
Counted all the ads and brand names in Glamour Magazine.
I chose Glamour for a few reasons: because it is the best selling "fashion" magazine in Holland, pages are small and printed on thin paper, meaning that there is less appreciation for images (nothing looks good on half A4, shit paper) and offcourse it is much cheaper to produce.I knew I was going to find a huge amount of ads, but the results truly shocked me. It is seriously nothing more than an advertisement leaflet disguised as a "fashion" magazine. I am frustrated the most with people who keep on buying Glamour and with that prove that all the studies done by the corporate robots behind it are right, that readers don't care about quality, and that the majority of them can't tell an ad apart from real content.

the numbers...
279 pages in total
- 69 ads
- 10 self-promotion pages (entire page filled with nothing more than the word GLAMOUR or SUBSCRIBE)

200 Pages remain.
On those 200 pages I found 594 brand names.(advertisers mentioned the most offcourse)

Elizabeth & James

Today I wore it with a suit that belonged to my mother, everytime she sees it she tells me a story about it and that it's even older than me

Some time ago a friend of mine was telling me about how she always wins everything, and also how she thought that people shouldn't complain about never winning anything if they don't even bother to enter a competition. I kept quiet, it sounded so familliar, I knew I was one of those people! So when Sue from the Stiletto Effect left a comment on my blog about a competition with Chickdowntown, It was a great opportunity to change my adittude, and gues what!? I WON!! It's the perfect not so basic tee, thanks so much Su and Chickdowntown and The Stiletto Effect!!

Powerfull CHANEL

Two golden chains with leather ribbon through them of a 2.55 flap bag casually hanging over a shoulder instantly make a striped shirt seem luxe, french, and carefully picked. A hand drawn Chanel logo turns any simple white tshirt into gold. Associations that come to mind when the number 5 is mentioned don't have anything to do with figures or amounts anymore, instead it brings images of pearls, Coco, allure and square glass bottles.

Image Hollywood Overdose

toen ik nog klein en schaamteloos was

Me circa 1995 at the Airport in Costa Rica, dutch post this time, sorry! Ill get to translating later and post it soon!
dit zijn niet de witte laarsjes van het verhaal, die mocht ik niet aan in het openbaar (vliegveld)

Mijn witte hakken waren mijn grootste trots, ik nam ze overal mee naartoe in mijn rugzakje. Ze waren grotesque. Hadden een enorme hoge blokhak, een plateau aan de voorkant met een vierkante neus uitgevoerd in wit glimmend leer, met een zwarte zool(so 90's). Waarschijnlijk ook knetterduur, maar daar had ik destijds nog geen besef van. Na maandenlang consistent elke avond zeuren met uiteindelijk een schaamteloze grand finale met veel gekrijs en gehuil in het winkelcentrum voor de schoenenwinkel, gaf mijn moeder toe en haalde ze haar creditcard door de betaal automaat.

Voordat ik mijn allerliefste witte enkellaarsjes bezat, propte ik mijn moeders pumps vol wc papier en inlegzooltjes totdat de binnenkant zo klein was als mijn voetje. Ze móesten gewoon passen! Toch was ik niet tevreden met de ouwbollige, degelijke pumps, en droomde van plateauzolen en naaldhakken. Eenmaal met de ordinaire witte schoentjes in mijn bezit, deed ik zodra de kans zich voordeed mijn gympies uit om op die enkellaarsjes te paraderen over de speeltuin, liefst boven op het plastic klimrek bij de McDonalds waar de hakken flink lawaai maakten en zéker niemand ze over het hoofd zou zien. Mijn witte laarsjes gingen ook alle voetjes van mijn vriendinnetjes af, iedereen wou ze lenen, iedereen wou er op lopen!

Afgezien van het feit dat ik een gestoord kind was, liet ik mezelf nooit beinvloeden door schaamte of werd niet beperkt door meningen van andere mensen. Hoe afgrijselijk en tacky mijn 12 cm hoge plateau laarsjes ook waren,(Mijn smaak paste volgens mijn vader meer bij een prostituut(prosti-kid) dan bij een 'fatsoenlijk' 9-jarig meisje) ík vond ze prachtig.

Die houding probeer ik vast te houden, maar niet alleen als er 's ochtends weer een kledingcrisis is.. bergen kleding niks om aan te trekken, ook als ik een ander standpunt heb dan de rest, of iemand weer eens commentaar heeft op mijn kledingkeuze.
Dan denk ik terug aan toen ik klein, schaamteloos was, en het voor elkaar kreeg om op veelste grote hóge hakken toch sterk in mijn schoenen te staan.

LONDONLONDONLONDONLONDON

If I leave my doorstep at 6 Am, I can be in London half an hour before noon. And yesterday I was!(only for the day) I'm still feeling a bit sad to be back allready with an undone 'to do in London' list, and having alot of annoying thoughts such as: "yesterday around this time I was in London", "those shoes probably still have some english dirt left on them" or even on the toilet "last time I had a shit it was in London". At least I got a few nice souvenirs, but havn't nearly shopped properly, and didn't even have the time to see shops outside the area of Oxford street. Besides shopping I visited the Hayward gallery for an amazing exposition of giganctic walk through artworks forming the mindscapes of 10 artist. The gallery on it's own was such an inspiring building, boring at first sight, but the more you analyze it the more interesting this big block of concrete becomes, it triggerd my imagination to think about what this building could have been if it wern't a gallery, most probably it would be the home of some beautiful Aeon Flux-like aliens.
Uhhgg everything was so great, even the weather, I really need to go back soon London is practically around the corner.

ingredients found in my room

old leather jacket
a broken studd bracelett
few golden hinges
a bit of foam for shoulders
I promise this is my last proyect involving studs.

I like

Gold
not sure if tacky
shoulder pads
Michael
chains and studs

15 minute romper

Doing something different than forever wrapping belts around the load of too big second hand dresses I own. Fold in half, cut out a triangle, sew together, voila!

Defending democracy

I've been admitted to one of the best schools of journalism in holland, and can't wait to start in September! Offcourse I want to write about fashion, I realize, and it bothers me, that fashion magazines are seen as inferior magazines and writing about fashion will probably be regareder as empty, commercial and useless by my teachers. (Wikipedia stated about fashion journalism that "the term "journalism" is used as a monicker, but does not carry the overall procedural and deontological aspects of professional journalism." In other words, writing about fashion isn't professional, Surprisingly other specialisations like medicine or sports are much more accepted.) They would rather train us into political experts to defend democrasy. But isn't democracy about freedom, to think and choose for yourself? Being an individual is one of the core elements in order for a democrasy to work, but individuals don't wear uniforms, sheep do, obedient nazis do, insecure teenagers do. People are so trapped in opinions of others around them that they don't even remember their own. They Wear and do what is expected from them, with no appreciation or understanding whatsoever for someone who looks unexpected. Unexpected as a boy in heels or a die hard fan in star trek suit. It seems as if Social control is still above democracy. Because anyone who falls outside of the boring ordinairy is punished by society. It's like being trapped in the 50's. Clean the front garden for the neighbours, wear a suit for your boss, and so on. If it would be generally accepted to be yourself no matter what might come out, it would be unimaginable how different the world would be. Would people make different choices if they could profile themselves freely and find their own true opinions without influences and ettiquettes of what is and what is not acceptable, obligated and expected from you, having an uncomplicated opinion. I think fashion is so important, it is the visible reflection of society.

DIY elastic cage dress

Thoughts of elastic Cage dresses, skirts, corsets have been going through my mind every morning while getting dressed, specially when I look at the amount of nude pieces that I have collected and that need something strappy added to them. Somewhere I feel like a fraud to make something that is someone else's idea, but who's? Buying an "original" was harder than I thought. If the cages are not sold out, they are of numerous brands and all very simillar.
After making the "frame" I tried out dozens of possibilities for the bottom part by pinning the elastics in many different shapes. I still havn't figured out wich one I'll choose. It's too easy not to make a few.

Celeste, minty eyes, gold chains

Celeste, photo byBianca de Jong, styled by me
I am not supposed to post this, but I just couldn't resist this particular picture..
Sea foam is my favorite color, at the moment at least. If working at american apparel taught anything, it would be a million color names. It's not really mint, it's the pastel version of mint: Sea Foam. It even matches my Blog title.

Cleaning out the closet

Imagine all wardrobes being thrown in a hole, just to be dug out in 100 years. What will the content say about us? What do our clothes reflect? That we lived in a standard society of mass production, chain stores, with little appreciation for quality, that the dress code was uniform-like, cheap, quantity over quality and that our way of life is simillar to that of our clothes: standard, average, empty. Not me! It's time to throw out all of the unworthy shit. My goal is to have items I that I will never want to get rid of, shoes that I'll keep for the rest of my life and dresses that my grandchildren would still want to wear.
Inpiration:






Zana's frocks on display, Garbagedress

On my way to work

On my way to one of my last days of work, the lovely Felicia from Damstyle took my picture.

my life is happy again

One month no blog update. Latest developments: I finally resigned my job at American Apparel, I am so relieved that there is finally a view on something new in my life. And because of that it makes me enjoy the few days(only 6!!) i've got left there more, work harder, and realize that it wasn't that bad at all, I had a great time at that company, going to wear their bodysuits for the rest of my life and met alot of interesting people. That said, the 9.5-hour boring workdays are over and I am so excited to have ome spare energy left to do something new and with substance. My brain needs training! Even my vocabulairy has shrunken from putting the full amount of my time in something that doesnt involve much thinking or creativity. I am so ready to spent a day in the library, buy a A3 format sketchbook, take some pictures, visit foreign cities, do an internship, go thrifting...What also musn't be underestimated as an influence on ones moods is new footwear. My new Givenchy babies were delivered 2 weeks ago!

Oh the Irony...

I find pleasure in sarcasm, it is just a little step further than Irony.
The kind of Irony as a 16 year old girl dressing like a granny, with a wardrobe that makes you wonder whether she took the content of an entire elderly persons home. The kind of Sarcasm of wich Alexander McQueen's latest collection was all about.
Provoking people and portaiting -fashion as it is now- almost as a cliché freakshow with lips from a porn star and dresses made out of trashbags. Today I thought I wasn't wearing anything too fancy, untill I entered the tram and everyone started giggling. Specially when I go out with my daughter I've caught myself dressing down, and taking in considerance what people will think about me as a mother. I realized it, I'm over it, I don't care what narrowminded uncultured people think. Next time I walk outside my front door I will wear something like 80's glitter stilletto's, my golden givenchy clip earrings that I love so much, or decide that I am an old soul in an old fashioned dress and a hat with veil for the day.

backstage alexander wang

This is why I'm not a fan of online fashion shows.
images models.com

depressed and vernis a ongles

Every time around the end of February, I come to realize that most of the plans and resolutions I made for the new year havn't been working out as greatly as I had hoped. To name one, updating my blog frequently. Sadly, I've spent the first two months of 2009 becoming almost brain-dead in retail, working 5/6 days a week for 9 hours a day. I wish I had invested all that time in developing myself and doing something I love. I wish I had more time to do inspiring things. I missed Margiela in Antwerp, I missed Vibskof in Eindhoven, I havn't gotten a chance to go to the Richard Avedon exposition. And it seems that there isn't going to be an end to this situation anytime soon, it is so depressing. uhhhgg, but I want money! I want more shoes! I want more clothes!(My wishlist is growing beyond control) I feel broke enough as it is, quitting one of my jobs would make it worse. And to pretend I am in a real crisis I invested in some nailpolish instead of new clothes to make voguish nails while trying to figure out some french, staring at Lara and feeling sorry for myself.