The show-stopping exhibition Hollywood Costume opened at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne last week. Direct from London’s Victoria and Albert museum, the exhibition is sure to draw in seamstresses to cinephiles alike. Hollywood Costume features over 100 costumes, painstakingly gathered from private collections over a five-year period. No genre…
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Oscar Wilde once wrote that ‘fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months;’ a sad but very true point. We buy clothes that are fashionable at that moment and then throw them out before the next season. Some items, however, never go out of fashion; a…
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I have been nostalgic about the past for as long as I can remember. The clothing, technology and society of bygone eras have always seemed far more interesting to me than the present day. This interest in mind, I found myself drawn to the new exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, which…
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This summer, I was lucky enough to spend two months clerking full-time at a law firm in my city, and apart from the excellent training and support my colleagues provided me, it was the sartorial side of the office that provided me with most food for thought. For me, corporate wear is the most chic…
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The Haute Couture presentations for Spring/Summer 2013 came to a close in Paris recently, as 33 design houses continued the tradition of lavish and exclusive showings of unthinkably expensive garments. Strictly regulated by the Parisian Chamber of Commerce, the title of Haute Couture is awarded only to designers who show collections of more than 35…
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Threads is a new series profiling emerging designers in Australia. Whether your work is classic, avant-garde or just plain cool, we want to hear about it. Get yourself out there! Send an e-mail to fashion@lipmag.com. We’d love to get to know you and your work. First in the Threads series is Zoe Brown, a young designer who’s…
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With the holiday season only just behind us, the image of Santa Claus is likely still fresh in our memories. That’s right, the portly old man who saunters around in a red suit perfect for those artic temperatures. Santa and his iconic garb are now ingrained into our popular consciousness, seen in countless films, advertisements…
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Since the end of the Victorian era, men’s fashion has been pretty darn boring. The 20th century saw men coupling their upper-body wear with almost exclusively pants, shorts or other bifurcated items of lower-body wear, and that’s been it. Not a skirt in sight unless we count Scottish kilts, which, outside of Scotland, feature only…
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As we draw closer and closer to Christmas, I admire my younger sibling’s excitement about the holiday and the jolly old man who makes it all possible. They approach Christmas with wonder whilst I simply view it as a great excuse to eat enormous amounts of food. Their endearing ability to find magic in the…
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A friend of mine recently wrote a post over on XOJane entitled ‘When Activism Gives Way to Advertising: How Fatshion Blogging Ate Itself’ (she didn’t pick the title, but the pun makes me lol childishly). In it, she describes feeling alienated from the fatshion blogging world and how it has also been saturated by the…
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It’s no secret I indulge and sometimes (OK, mostly) enjoy conspicuous consumption. I think fat women in particular have been denied the right to enjoy fashion and consume it the way that straight sized women have been able to (or, I suppose, the way that well-off women, who would likely to be able to afford…
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On a recent rainy afternoon, well-supplied with biscuits and cups of tea, my Grandmother and I were joined by her globe-trotting Italian friend Yvette as we sat down to explore the changing role of fashion in young women’s lives, and as it turns out, Grandmother really does know best. Armed with examples of current fashion…
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Here we have Vivienne Westwood causing one of her classic kerfuffles by claiming that she ‘doesn’t see why women in the privileged world need to be’ feminists. It’s an interesting point to raise as it brings to mind how often those in positions of privilege seem to either forget or willfully ignore the thronging mass…
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The world of the ballet meets high fashion in the sumptuous new exhibit at Melbourne’s NGV International, Ballet & Fashion. Celebrating the close relationship between renowned local and international designers and ballet, the exhibit explores the blurred line between the costumes and haute couture. Launched in conjunction with 50th birthday celebrations for the Australian Ballet,…
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