I love the idea of this Japanese versus American school girl aeshetic of Jenny Fax’s latest collection. So I decided to make my own hybrid collar! All you need for this is an old sweater or cardigan, some scissors, a sewing machine or needle and thread and, if you so desire, some embroidering things. I used some wool and a big needle for the latter part because when I say ‘embroider’ I just mean sew things onto things and hope it doesn’t suck.

I got this old boy’s cardigan for three euros and everything else I already owned. I think, especially if you don’t live in an area that treasures vintage, or whatever that means these days you could get your own argyle sweater or grandfather cardigan for little money if you look carefully. Big sizes will be easier to find than in the women’s section.

This was my idea:

Cut according the knit, or as straight as possible.

You could totally do this with a regular piece of fabric because the pattern is so simple really; it’s just a big oblong with two smaller and longer oblongs attached! To make it fall better you should have some neck lining and you should probably sew on the two longer oblongs a little slant so they’d make a V-shape that comes together at the bottom. Either way, I love the idea of the knit and knits are really easy to embroider because you’ll never mess up the fabric! Here’s how I did it. Instead of the big argyle sweater I wanted I found this cute boy’s cardigan and decided to wing it.

I put on the cardigan and attached a ribbon where my shoulder ends and folded it where my waist ends. Add a couple of centimetres and cut it.

Got out my sailor vest and measured that quintessential sailor oblong. You could just wing it though. Mine is about 24 centimetres measuring from my neck.

Cut. Put it on and decide what else you should change. I decided to make the V-shape more pronounced pinned it and cut it accordingly.

Wearing it in between stages helps a lot to, like, not fuck up. Lastly, sew it with a sewing machine or by hand. Now you have a blank canvas for bad embroidery!

When putting together an outfit around it (when I got sick of embroidering it) I felt it was part of a school uniform and I decided my school’s mascot is a sad octopus. The red V-shapes are supposed to be hearts just like the Jenny Fax one but I didn’t have thick enough wool to achieve that effect. But hey I feel this collar is going to be perpetually in a state of change. The stitches are so easy to get out you can even re-use your wool so let yourself go! :D

(Channeling teen spirit.)

Some days I look down at my outfit and realise it was funded by impossibly little euros. This was one of those days I realised I looked awesome in a eight euro outfit. And I love that, I love that I rummage and dig all the little dusty corners of smelly boxes till I get what I want just because I am so passionate about dressing up. But sometimes it gets me down too. Sometimes I go out in real stores and silently weep for the prices, even in those horrible retail stores. But food, too. And so many things like buying drinks at a bar, or an album, or a train ticket, or a sandwhich when you’re outside and hungry and ice cream ice cream ice cream. Everything, really. And it sucks to have to make choices all the time and I want that piece of salmon damn it and quinoa and ugh if I have to stand here sober between all these drunk sweaty dancing people I’m just gonna die without a glass of wine, and oh my god will you look at that pretty dress why am I not allowed pretty things? and pretty people and pretty cars and furniture and If I’d only own this and that I’d be truly happy and I could start my life.

Let’s be real, my sadness and longing in this sense is unaltered bullshit. It is purely caused by a consumerist visual culture that promises dearly you’ll be happy if you only own this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. Oh and buy this to buy less!

You don’t need any of that.

But sometimes it’s just damn hard for all of us to see through that and realise we don’t need either those things or that much money. If you can eat and have a roof over your head without worrying you’re really damn privileged and you better realise it.

Sometimes it stings and nags though. Here’s what I do about it: I don’t ever and I mean ever visit a store that’s out of my price range and when I don’t have any money I don’t visit stores, period. Advertising is the devil and you better know it; I use Adblock on all my browsers and try to look away from cheesy ads on the street. I don’t own a TV, and it’s made a huge positive impact on my life. No magazines or big fancy blogs ever. Damn it, magazines and blogs, you make me feel fat and ugly and poor, and I am neither of that. I am fabulous and wealthy in both looks and life and advertising better realise it soon enough.

After several years of this I feel pretty resistant against advertising and pretty things though that doesn’t mean I’ll have my bad days. I can still get super down on not having a lot of money to buy food though. I just love food so much. I am clawing at my teary-eyed face just thinking about fancy foods.

I mean, what do you do about this never-ending consumerist lust which is such a drag and bummer on your life?

Accidentally took this but it is too much of an accurate presentation of me right now to ignore it.

Actually wanted to wear the first outfit again but I settled with the items surrounding me when I got dressed (socks & shirt) due to passiveness. RIP life energy.

You can now support me by buying one of my illustration prints over at my brand new etsy shop (◡‿◡♡). More prints and possibly some other stuff, too, will come soon. If you have a preference for a certain work, let me know!

Here are some of my personal favourites that are now online and ready to be bought, handled with care and loved.

Kimono Hime is a magazine that features a style of kimono mixed with contemporary accessories such as high heels, giant fluffy earmuffs, shawls etc. In doing so it breaks the rules of wearing kimono but, maybe because the art of wearing kimono are so incredibly vast, intricate and thus daunting, this technically incorrect way of styling of Kimono Hime has been partially responsible for a resurge in wearing kimono in Japan and it’s an beautiful thing to see.

I have been googling lots about it and I’ve come across many things that didn’t sit right with me so I decided to google some on cultural appropriation, too.

Cultural appropriation is often confusing, especially for someone who was brought up in a society that still bears a lot of colonialist aspects (i.e. Westerners always feel justified in taking an aspect of another’s culture and strip it from their meaning for our own personal gain, for our own personal expression). After a long train of thoughts I often wonder cynically that all cultures will ultimately mix and there’s no getting around that but isn’t this idea is instilled in me because my culture has still so many remnants of colonialism and teaches me it’s okay to use elements of another’s culture for my own personal gain? I’d say yes. I don’t think I am the voice to be talking about this because of that. But because I felt uneasy about it I feel the need to include some ideas on cultural appropriation of kimono along with the stylings of the Kimono Hime magazine. It’s a weird juxtaposition perhaps but, hey, whatever.

That said, for me to decide whether or not the idea of you wearing a kimono would be offensive, I would have to know a few things: Do you actually know HOW to wear a kimono? Do you know the rules for wearing one, such as how to match the kimono to the current season and how to choose appropriate accessories based on the occasion AND the formality of the kimono? What kind of kimono do you plan on wearing — do you have a real one or just a kimono-shaped bathrobe? There are lots of rules to wearing kimono, do you know ANY of them?

You also need to learn about cultural appropriation. I’m assuming you’re not even in college yet so it might be a tough concept to grasp. Plenty of college-educated adults struggle with it. But I would suggest that you start by reading through the Wikipedia article on cultural appropriation to get an idea of what I’m talking about. But at the end of the day, a white person deciding to turn the cultural clothing of a minority group into a costume is in NO WAY equivalent to a member of a minority group wearing a ballgown. Life isn’t fair, as many of these people can tell you — white people have a long and sordid history of stealing minority’s lands, destroying their languages and cultures, tearing children from their homes, and trivializing the things that minority peoples have done to try to maintain their cultures. One way we as a group do that is by taking things from other groups and using them WAY out of context, for example, pretty much any instance of a white person (especially a woman) wearing a Plains Indian war bonnet. Unfortunately the thing that makes cultural appropriate so tough is that the line between borrowing and using things APPRECIATIVELY and simply APPROPRIATING something and using it inappropriately is very fine, and people disagree on where that line actually is.

Your right to express yourself is NOT being denied. You are just being told that you can’t express yourself in a way that offends other people. This is NO different than being told you can’t wear a t-shirt with the F word or the N word on it to school. Also, consider this: How would the people around you react to a Japanese or Japanese-American student who wore a kimono to school on some day other than Halloween or some other day specially set aside for ethnic clothing? If the answer is that nobody would even notice one way or the other and that student would be allowed to go about his or her day without being treated differently for it, good for you, you happen to go to a very enlightened school. But chances are that person would get a lot of attention, not all of it positive. So why should you, who by your own admissions is not Japanese, get to wear kimono to school any time when they probably couldn’t without risking everything from stares to violent bullying? THAT is what is unfair here, not that you are being told that certain costume choices are off-limits because they might offend someone.
A wise and super informative Yahoo answer

Re: Cultural Appropriation of Kimono. Like the Karate Gi or Kendo uniform, Kimono is Clothing worn specifically for some purposes. You cannot practice Tea Ceremony without leaning to properly dress yourself in Kimono, and learn what is appropriate for the tea ceremony and what isn’t. Cultural appropriation is wearing the most outrageous Kimono Hime to Tea Class, and insisting that it is correct, or good enough. Likewise with Japanese Koto, Shamisen, Ikebana and other japanese cultural ‘arts’.
Anonymous breaks it down at the kimononagoya tumblr.

it makes me, as an ethnically-Chinese person who also gets glossed over as ‘Japanese’ by people who don’t give a fuck about such distinctions, extremely uncomfortable when i see something like that. if i wore a proper kimono – and god knows i would NOT unless my Japanese friends begged me to and even then – i might get compliments, but i would also be perceived as a stereotype, especially in the ‘West’ here. and then i could take that kimono off, and i would still be seen as an ‘Oriental’, along with all the baggage that comes along with it. afp takes off the kimono and goes back to being ‘normal’ and default ‘white’. afp’s whole shtick is but one of a very long history that continues even today of yellowface. it might seem like such a small thing – it’s just a kimono! – but when you have all these incremental actions that take place on a wide scale in white culture, it becomes more than that. it leads to a world where there are lots of people who don’t know what the difference between China, Japan and Korea is and don’t care to. and so forth.
And so much more brilliance here.

my response to this is clear and simple; i don’t think the issue of institutional racism and discrimination can be completely divorced from the question of cultural appropration. they feed into one another. one would not exist (at least not in the same way) without the other.
The ever-insightful Julia on cultural appropriation.

Lastly, I like these two coordinates because it shows you can inspire yourself on kimono without being culturally appropriative, several intricate layers create that distinctive silhouette. Yeah, those are kinds of kimonos they’re wearing under it but you can just as easily create this silhouette with a dress. Personally, I have been inspired by the kimono pattern clashing of Kimono Hime and Osen in these two outfits. It’s all about the patterns and colours for me (as always).

More on kimono
• More Kimono Hime magazine scans here (and then some kitsuke book scans too!).
• Here is a tumblr that discusses Kimono styling with the traditional rules in mind.
• This hub of V&A on Kimono is quite interesting.
• You can find some info about the traditional art of wearing kimono on wikipedia, too.

More on Cultural Appropriation
• my culture is not a trend.
• Wikipedia is insightful.
• Indo-Chic by Ananya Mukherjea
• Accosted by Racist Costumes by Katrina Richardson

Continually being unwittingly inspired to dress like innocence (itself) is not at all an unconscious psychological need to express the suffocating feel of girlhood still pulsing through adulthood at all. I just like ribbons. For sure. Yes?

Outfit & make-up & shoes as self-care because vanity is nothing to be apologetic about.

I have been wearing these shoes all day yesterday and today inside to convince myself I can handle rocking horse shoes as daily wear. These are twelve centimetres high and the shoes I am eyeing are 7,5 centimetres so I could definitely handle them, right? Too bad that walking on cobblestones is nearly impossible with any wedge-like shoe and there’s cobblestones all over here. But you know what? I think I’ll get them anyway one day because I deserve them.

p.s. I am a european 38, and my feet are exactly 23,5 centimetres long just in case you’d want to buy them for me ~(◐‿◐)~ 
No but seriously, if anyone has any experience with either rocking horse shoes or Bodyline let me know what you think!

Be still, my beating heart. Momu, the Antwerp fashion museum, is currently running its first historic exhibition that deals with women’s daily fashion from 1750 till 1950. What excites me so is that it aims to shatter the romanticised old fashion ideal that is often shown on a sterile and fanciful, high-class pedestal. Instead, Momu places its dresses on a floor that mimics cobblestones and juxtaposes them with photographs of women doing their own thing, wearing their daily outfits, and by doing so present this as old street style. Sports-, summer-, travel-, morning-, noon- and street-wear finally get to be outshone by evening dresses.

The entire exhibition focuses on daily wear of the rising middle class rather than the all too common haute couture and evening dresses, which are often more elaborate, expensive and even more restrictive. This confronts the viewer immediately as the pair of dresses you first lay eyes upon are each other’s expensive and relatively cheap counterparts, which beg you to think of class differences for a refreshing change.

One thing I just cannot get out of my head was the pregnancy dresses and their respective corsets. Despite the frequency of pregnancies, seeing these dresses in any media, then or now, was exceptionally rare. It is equally understandable and surprising due to the fear of (especially female) sexuality while simultaneously pushing women into a perpetual child bearer’s position. Yeah, the dichotomy of forcing women into femininity while at the same time punishing us for it still feels painfully modern. It was confronting, creepy and perfectly fascinating.

Another thing I loved especially was seeing repurposed dresses, altered to the current fashion, or even down right ripped apart to make a completely new dress, which always leaves an individual touch and destroys our Hollywoodian concept of the ever-lasting elaborate and highly expensive wardrobe and the blank slate woman, incapable of thinking or doing; instead she shows us her age-old strength and creativity through the ages by cutting up and repurposing badass dresses.

Though the restrictiveness of this fashion may make us feel pitiful for these poor, meek females, this exhibition has left me feeling that just like when we today may chose to wear the tortuous garment of our choice because we were taught it feels innately more powerful, attractive and worthwhile but refusing to being totally represented by it, these women too didn’t let themselves be defined by their corsets and dresses but instead let themselves be heard in the smallest but coolest ways they could.

Last three pictures by aabb

Last summer I worked at an exhibition that was closed off to anyone over the tender age of sixteen and held works by famous and infamous artists alike. Whoever came in had the option to buy and show their love to the work they appreciated most. Most guests were between six and eleven. Finally, someone wants to purposefully overlook or research the aesthetics we were taught were good and proper. It questions our grown up aesthetics, it questions ‘taste’, as we know it.

The most popular picture was a horse nursing its foal, drawn in a rough and child-like hand, with a green polka dotted background. The least popular was a picture in muted colours of a dishevelled looking vase. The latter was obviously done by one of our most famous artists.

When the curator came by checking out the progress, I was left so disappointed to hear his disdain for the horse picture and praise for that one kid who chose that obvious famous picture. ‘What refined taste, he has!’

While high-fiving yet another six-year old that fell in love with the candid horses, all I could think was, ‘what thirteen-year-old has such dull taste?’ But that is my taste, I know it and I refuse to believe that either his taste or mine can be good or bad, it just is.

But why is a picture that is rudimentary drawn and communicates such a natural and pure beauty, considered ugly, tasteless? Why is realism so highly valued? Why is a cheerful polka dotted background childish? And why is a beige sad vase good and beautiful (because it was drawn by a famous artist?)

Of course this kind of dualist idea of taste is also applicable in fashion, language, and basically anything that has the dualist connotations of being able to be bad or good.

Taste is incredibly subjective and the meanings we give colours are obviously marked by the society and time we live in. Yet in this culture and time we find yellow and bright patterns cheerful and muted colours sad. Then why are we so hell-bent on raising muted colours to the statue of ultimate high-class taste? In very oversimplified terms; what kind of world finds sadness tasteful and cheerfulness tacky?

An example that shows our warped view of taste is Greek and Roman sculpture. In school we were taught to see the white marble, idealistic statues as the foundation and the prime example of good art, and good taste. Yet, when it was recently discovered that the statues were actually painted in bright colours and bold patterns many (including art historians — excuse me while I continue to give art historians a life-long side-eye) flat-out refused to believe our amazingly cultured Greeks and Romans, aka the foundation of our “civilised” life (excuse me while I mutter bullshit under my breath) loved such a bold combination of colours, despite strong evidence.

In this video the last man talking says: ‘When you see these bright colours, you see how much more human this time was. People like bright colours. They, like, see stuff; they’re like oh that place looks cool let’s go in there!’

According to him, this culture liked cheerfulness and that makes it real, that makes them human. He says it with a sort of disdain as if living, breathing and feeling is in bad taste. Excuse me while I bawl my eyes out for the sad destiny of our warped culture.

I don’t even want to get into the implications our ‘good taste’ has on the way we see other cultures that value bright and bold patterns, colours and spirituality.

Of course the world isn’t black and white. Neither is it only red, yellow and blue either. And though this culture is dualist, this world isn’t.