Have I told you, I'm getting married?
Expect more on this for the next 6 months. Sorry (not really - we all love a good wedding!).
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Photos: Grace Kelly, Princess of Monacco wed in 1956.
More on that dream
"When we think about the future it looks like this...
Sun-drenched rooftops and leafy driveways, water, water everywhere, lapping at the dock with a calming insistence. Men (husbands, sons, the ones we grow old with) in white shirts and panama hats perpetually reading the paper, and smoothies at 11am for no reason at all." - HRY
Photos: Rachel Kara, Words: Hannah Rose Yee
Emma Mulholand
Think about the coolest kids you know. Not the most fashionable or the most popular or even the trendiest, but the coolest. Because there's a difference, right? Something in the way that they wear the clothes, rather than what it is, exactly, that they are wearing. It's an insouciance but not an affected one, like a perfect nonchalance. It's not that they don't care - of course they do, everyone does, deep down, did we learn nothing from The Devil Wears Prada? - but rather that they don't need to care. Innate coolness trumps premeditation in matters of style, always.
Innate coolness is how we would describe Emma Mulholland. The cool kid's label of choice, she designs for the boys and girls that flit through your existence in 90s prints, bleached hair and high-top sneakers; usually simultaneously, with a beer in hand, at The Cricketers. Formerly of Romance Was Born, this season represents Mulholland's first runway presentation for her eponymous label, but it didn't show. A slick, tightly curated presentation (it was a packed house - standing room only - with big-name editors, international bloggers and scenester party photographers jostling for attention on the front row) with slick, tightly-curated clothes paraded by models across the room, weaving around a surfboard installation with the singular motion of sharks.
You know these clothes are going to get worn. The polar bear spring break sweatshirt? Coming to a boozy barbecue near you. The paint-splattered overalls over the 'Let's Get Physical' one piece? Practically made for Bronte Sundays. And that sheer finale dress, embroidered with a killer whale rendered in sequins (incidentally, Mulholland's favourite look, though it began life as her nemesis)? A party starter if ever we saw one. The theme of the collection was 80s and 90s ski-wear, spliced through with Malibu references to lighten those icy motifs. Cleverly styled with everything from Skins activewear to Ryan Storer or Dinosaur Design jewels each look was fully realised, so much so that the inspiration required no leap of imagination. Fluorescent boardshorts and sheer leopard print tee shirts for the boys, silky bomber jackets emblazoned with logos fresh out of an 80s teen movie and what is becoming Mulholland's signature; chalk-hued backpack with accompanying sharkfin, this season offered in bright, resplendent metallics. Why not? That's the question that seems to drive Mulholland's designs, and it's not a bad one at all. That's the thing about cool kids. No matter what they do or what they wear, they always look like they're having so much fun.
Innate coolness is how we would describe Emma Mulholland. The cool kid's label of choice, she designs for the boys and girls that flit through your existence in 90s prints, bleached hair and high-top sneakers; usually simultaneously, with a beer in hand, at The Cricketers. Formerly of Romance Was Born, this season represents Mulholland's first runway presentation for her eponymous label, but it didn't show. A slick, tightly curated presentation (it was a packed house - standing room only - with big-name editors, international bloggers and scenester party photographers jostling for attention on the front row) with slick, tightly-curated clothes paraded by models across the room, weaving around a surfboard installation with the singular motion of sharks.
You know these clothes are going to get worn. The polar bear spring break sweatshirt? Coming to a boozy barbecue near you. The paint-splattered overalls over the 'Let's Get Physical' one piece? Practically made for Bronte Sundays. And that sheer finale dress, embroidered with a killer whale rendered in sequins (incidentally, Mulholland's favourite look, though it began life as her nemesis)? A party starter if ever we saw one. The theme of the collection was 80s and 90s ski-wear, spliced through with Malibu references to lighten those icy motifs. Cleverly styled with everything from Skins activewear to Ryan Storer or Dinosaur Design jewels each look was fully realised, so much so that the inspiration required no leap of imagination. Fluorescent boardshorts and sheer leopard print tee shirts for the boys, silky bomber jackets emblazoned with logos fresh out of an 80s teen movie and what is becoming Mulholland's signature; chalk-hued backpack with accompanying sharkfin, this season offered in bright, resplendent metallics. Why not? That's the question that seems to drive Mulholland's designs, and it's not a bad one at all. That's the thing about cool kids. No matter what they do or what they wear, they always look like they're having so much fun.
HTR have had such fun taking you to the shows. If you missed it you can see more from here, here, here and here. Sexy bed heads at Ellery, the perfect baseball capped Marilyn Monroe at Kate Sylvester, silk suiting sitting just right in a warehouse at Christopher Esber.
Being the good bloggers that Hannah and Talisa are it will require a little bit of a dig to find more of our fashion week experience together but do it, you will find much treasure as you go.
Vogue for breakfast
"The suit is the chauffered car of ensembles. It's the James Bond of ensembles. It's the kind of thing you wear when you know you look good, rather than when you want to look good. And Vanishing Elephant’s suit sure does look good..." - Hannah Rose Yee
What a morning we had shooting this strawberry basil breakfast delight for Talisas Vogue Spy Style blog. She is the doll of all dolls. Glowing skin, dark doey eyes, delicate all over, honestly flawless taste, endearingly clumsy with a knife and an apartment that has better light than some of Sydneys best daylight studios. Expect more of this.
Photos: Rachel Kara
Ps. Wishing to look that good in an all black lady suit is perfectly ok. I've been doing it ever since she first slipped it on. Pants, jacket and shirt all by Vanishing Elephant.
Shakuhachi
Close your eyes. Let us take you back to a far-gone era. A time when hemlines were high, people gazed longingly at the stars and silver boots were a thing. The 1960s, you say? No. Actually, fashion week. A far-gone era of 14 days ago (an age in fashion terms, trust us). But, yes, the 1960s wouldn’t have been a bad guess. Because, you see, the Shakuhachi show drew inspiration from the 1960s. Andy Warhol’s pop palace, the aluminium-everything, the dashing derring do and the big-hair-go-go-boots sensuality of Barbarella, otherwise known as the inconceivably long-limbed Jane Fonda. That was the 1960s, but that was also the Shakuhachi collection. Short, sweet, and wickedly fun, the collection sashayed down the runway like a girl with a mission, oversized floral prints and shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather.
Almost as a testament to the playfulness that ran through the range, the models hammed it up behind the scenes - Charlie's Angels style - tossing their hair and blowing the smoke from finger guns. We even saw the normally reticent Ruby-Jean crack a wink and a winning smile to the throng of photographers milling around backstage. Maybe it was all the hairspray (the look was slick-back cadillac, with hair combed back tight into low ponytails and a few wet-look strands pulled out at the front) or maybe it was the sight of reflective surfaces (silver knee socks, opalescent shirting and pearly sequin detailing), a boon for magpies like the fashion crowd. It was clearly a hit for everyone; the leggy girls arm-in-arm in minidresses, the editors, making notes of the retro-fit two pieces and peep-toe go-go boots, the buyers, mentally placing orders for those metallic backpacks, those digital-print swimsuits and those perspex visor hats for truly modern resort dressing. And, yes, the bloggers, too. We loved that fun, flirtatious mood that managed to combine 60s ebullience with graphic futurism. It wasn't new but it was definitely compelling.
From start to finish, from the first wink of multi-coloured sequins, the first swing of booty-short clad hips, the first flash of a crinkled metallic-twinged bomber jacket. Is this what is was like in the 60s? This fearlessness and flippance? This way of walking that said - no, shouted - 'look at me, look at me?' Maybe. But, this being fashion week, this is also going to be what it's like in six months from now, as those booty shorts and mini dresses and bomber jackets walk the walk right off the runway and onto bright-young-things all around you. Consider yourself warned.
Fashion week finished and the real world came crashing down and
When Life Was Exotic
The satisfaction my eyes feel when everything that makes up a picture locks in and settles just right, perfectly even.
Photos: Camilla Akrans for Vogue Japan feat Nadja Bendon styled by Sissy Vian
Ellery
To be a champagne bubble of a girl about town - and who doesn't want to be, deep down, really? - in the town that is Sydney you have to own something by Ellery. She is the it-designer with the wardrobe to match, just as likely to be found on the pages of magazines as her designs are. She designs for girls who are just like her - good-time girls who are the first to arrive and the last to leave, girls who never take their brand new Celine heels off, no matter how much pain their feet are in - and this season was no different. Full of crisp separates and statement pieces to get the party started, this collection was a return to - and a celebration of - everything that Ellery has made her name with. Girls in the shortest skirts and the best hair and looks straight off the runway. This was a collection for the dedicated followers of fashion.
Goat-fur vests and caped shoes are not for the faint of heart. But you can hardly call Ellery devotees - who have previously sported everything from sateen bloomers to ballooning shearling sweaters - faint of heart. What they are is fearless. And that's what this collection was all about; not being afraid of wearing floral-printed flared trousers or , not caring one iota about tying your jacket around your waist. This was a collection full of the idiosyncrasies and quirks of styling that belong to those few who are regularly found on street style blogs. It was distinctly formal - evening dresses with padded cap-sleeves and boned corsets in Ellery's trademark shade of mustard yellow - with a surprising voluminous bent, whether through sleeveless tuxedo vests over trapeze-cut blouses and mini skirts or puffy tactile sweaters (there's that fur again).
It's not an easy look - indeed, most girls can't pull it off - but that's what makes Ellery so immensely watchable. You can isolate the easiest things to wear (maybe you can tie a jacquard bomber around your waist, too?) but that's not the point, really. The point is to stride out to drinks at the Apollo on Friday night in a fur singlet and wide-legged maxi skirt slit right up to there and completely own it. Like we said, it's not easy. But at least there's an ideal girl you can model yourself on. She's the life of the party - a veritable champagne bubble - with a mop of perfect hair and a bright smile and a sense of wild exuberance in everything she does. Who is she? Why, she's Kym Ellery herself.
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