Shoesday: Hi Tops

As well as coveting her uber skinny legs, dimples and bank balance, I am also rather keen on getting my mitts on Miranda Kerr's fabulous hi top sneakers...

These Isabel Marant sneakers (retailing at a slightly unattainable $725) were first drawn to our attention by the inimitable Beyonce in Love On Top.

I have been known to drag friends around major cities - notably New York - in search of the perfect hi-top sneaker (unfruitful on that occasion). Now I'm wondering if I need to resume that search...

Lay It On Thick

Aside from the well-documented Harajuku girls as a distinctive fashion icons of Japan, everyday Japanese style is definitely up there in terms of distinctiveness and classic, simple style.

Japanese style is restrained, elegant, unobtrusive and absolutely lovely. That goes for the guys, too! To me, the defining element of Japanese style is the use of layering. I was completely fascinated by this! I've never been one to layer, mainly because I'm terrified of creating too much bulk. Lucky for the Japanese - who are basically as wide as a chopstick - this isn't an issue. Also, their clothes are designed to be layered. Everything is fabulously light-weight, and just begging to have something thrown over the top of it. 

I think she has at least 4 layers on here, but does she look weird & bulky? NO!

So I did some Googling to see the reasons for this love of layering, and this is what I came up with:

• modesty
• suntans are not fashionable (except among the ganguro subculture)
• the Japanese believe that covering up in hot weather will keep you cooler than exposing your skin to the sun
• the weather is so hot and humid that you want to wear two shirts: the one next to your skin will absorb the sweat, and the one on top will stay clean and pretty
• the Japanese are self-conscious about being slender and small-boned, and think they should wear baggy clothing to compensate

Seriously, I cannot stress to you enough how demure the Japanese are, yet somehow they manage to rock it out and not come across as boring, beige nuns. Big ups to them.

So the lesson today, folks, is if you have more than one favourite item of clothing wear them at the same time! Then you'll be doubly happy, and you will exude an air of foreign mysteriousness. Try it.

Well Hello!

You thought I'd gone, didn't you?

I'm back! Moving house, travelling to Japan and having zero alone time can drag a girl away from her blog.... But not forever! xo

Happy Friday: The Little Red Dress

What could be lovelier than the adorable (and supremely talented) Alber Elbaz posing with the the equally talented and fabulous, Emma Stone? While she's not breaking any new fashion ground, she does look sensational.

A Final Bedtime Story

Oh God there are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die... but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready.

- Maurice Sendak

World renowned children's book author Maurice Sendak has passed away at the age of 83 following complications from a stroke. Most famous for his fabulous book Where the Wild Things Are, it is with great sadness that Sendak - known as the Picasso of children's books - has left the literary scene. Sendak authored and illustrated over 50 children's books in his career, and won countless awards, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's book illustration in 1970, the Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are and the National Medal for the Arts (awarded by Bill Clinton in 1996).

Sendak marvellously at work in a clip he illustrated and wrote for Sesame Street in the 70s. 

A sickly child, Sendak spent much of his childhood indoors reading books and honing his craft as an illustrator. Following a stint as a window dresser at FAO Schwartz in NYC, Sendak became a professional illustrator. He also worked as a costume and stage designer for operas - so he was well established in the arts scene. 

But Sendak's real achievements lay in his children's literature. According to the New York Times, Sendak "wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitised world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche." 

Where the Wild Things Are has sold over 19 million copies worldwide and the story reached a whole new audience when it was made into a movie in 2009 (as we know - I was a tad obsessed, and saw it countless times, with great pleasure!).

In his later years Sendak revealed he was gay. Following the death of his partner of 50 years and other friends, the man known for his unsentimental writing had grown especially reflective, describing himself as a "happy old man" but someone who would "cry all the way to the grave".

"I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more," he said.

"And since I don't believe in another world, in another life, when they die they're out of my life, they're gone forever." [Please note, if you can track down the audio of this quote - I heard it on the radio this morning - he says all of this through sobs. It is so touching and so sad - yet lovely.]

Bumble-Ardy, the first book in three decades in which he did both illustrations and text, was released in September by HarperCollins Publishers.

Fascinating

ANZAC Day

It's Anzac Day here in Australia, a day to commemorate not only the anniversary of the first major military insurgence by Australian and NZ soldiers during WWI, but also a day to commemorate all those other Australian and NZ soldiers who have gone out to battle to fight for us, our freedom and for the political, economic and social freedom of others.

I'm not going to bang on about this at all. I'm going to let the echoes of Paul Keating (former PM) do it for me. He gave this incredibly moving speech in 1993 (actually on Remembrance Day) at the gravesite of the Unknown Australian Soldier in Canberra (at the War Memorial) . I often come back to this (and other PK speeches - I adore him)... So. Here it is!

We do not know this Australian's name and we never will.

We do not know his rank or his battalion. We do not know where he was born, nor precisely how and when he died. We do not know where in Australia he had made his home or when he left it for the battlefields of Europe. We do not know his age or his circumstances – whether he was from the city or the bush; what occupation he left to become a soldier; what religion, if he had a religion; if he was married or single. We do not know who loved him or whom he loved. If he had children we do not know who they are. His family is lost to us as he was lost to them. We will never know who this Australian was.

Yet he has always been among those whom we have honoured. We know that he was one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the Western Front. One of the 416,000 Australians who volunteered for service in the First World War. One of the 324,000 Australians who served overseas in that war and one of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil. One of the 100,000 Australians who have died in wars this century.

He is all of them. And he is one of us.

This Australia and the Australia he knew are like foreign countries. The tide of events since he died has been so dramatic, so vast and all – consuming, a world has been created beyond the reach of his imagination.

He may have been one of those who believed that the Great War would be an adventure too grand to miss. He may have felt that he would never live down the shame of not going. But the chances are he went for no other reason than that he believed it was the duty he owed his country and his King.

Because the Great War was a mad, brutal, awful struggle, distinguished more often than not by military and political incompetence; because the waste of human life was so terrible that some said victory was scarcely discernible from defeat; and because the war which was supposed to end all wars in fact sowed the seeds of a second even more terrible war – we might think this Unknown Soldier died in vain.

But, in honouring our war dead, as we always have and as we do today, we declare that this is not true. For out of the war came a lesson which transcended the horror and tragedy and the inexcusable folly. It was a lesson about ordinary people – and the lesson was that they were not ordinary. On all sides they were the heroes of that war; not the generals and the politicians but the soldiers and sailors and nurses – those who taught us to endure hardship, to show courage, to be bold as well as resilient, to believe in ourselves, to stick together.

The Unknown Australian Soldier whom we are interring today was one of those who, by his deeds, proved that real nobility and grandeur belongs, not to empires and nations, but to the people on whom they, in the last resort, always depend.

That is surely at the heart of the ANZAC story, the Australian legend which emerged from the war. It is a legend not of sweeping military victories so much as triumphs against the odds, of courage and ingenuity in adversity. It is a legend of free and independent spirits whose discipline derived less from military formalities and customs than from the bonds of mateship and the demands of necessity. It is a democratic tradition, the tradition in which Australians have gone to war ever since.

This Unknown Australian is not interred here to glorify war over peace; or to assert a soldier's character above a civilian's; or one race or one nation or one religion above another; or men above women; or the war in which he fought and died above any other war; or one generation above any that has been or will come later.

The Unknown Soldier honours the memory of all those men and women who laid down their lives for Australia. His tomb is a reminder of what we have lost in war and what we have gained.

We have lost more than 100,000 lives, and with them all their love of this country and all their hope and energy.

We have gained a legend: a story of bravery and sacrifice and, with it, a deeper faith in ourselves and our democracy, and a deeper understanding of what it means to be Australian.

It is not too much to hope, therefore, that this Unknown Australian Soldier might continue to serve his country - he might enshrine a nation's love of peace and remind us that, in the sacrifice of the men and women whose names are recorded here, there is faith enough for all of us.