‘Hey,’ said my friend. We were thirteen and had managed to pull a little pocket money together to go shopping. ‘Did you know that Supré means ‘slut’ in French?’ It’s a rumour – albeit, a falsified one at that – that many tweens hear about the female clothing retail giant Supré, who claim to embody…
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‘I don’t have to look nice for anyone’ explains a messy haired girl of 13, seated in a high school auditorium. Her name is Harper Willat and, along with her sister Amber, she was the subject of ‘Dirty Girls‘, a documentary filmed in 1996 that has been gaining a lot of attention over the past…
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I have this picture on my wall of fashion designer Katharine Hamnett meeting Margaret Thatcher in 1984. Hamnett, who had just been named designer of the year, was invited to Downing Street and, seizing the opportunity to make a statement, took off her coat to reveal the anti-missile message on her t-shirt. It’s often recognised…
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Crisp, sculptural and electric, Alexi Freeman’s collections blur the line between clothing and art. Growing up in Hobart in the ’80s and early ’90s, Melbourne Designer Alexi Freeman did not embark on a conventional journey into Fashion Design. His childhood was ‘as far away from fashion as you could possibly get’ and ‘the closest…
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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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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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A little while ago, I wrote about my secret ambition to one day own and run a small business. Although for me that’s still a pipedream, I’m lucky to know an inspiring young woman who has realised that ambition for herself. Ruby Barnett is now the proud owner/manager of a boutique vintage store, Frith St,…
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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 [email protected]. 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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