KANYEVIL

Okay so i must admit i love it when people are mean to other people who think they are awesome and actually come across as total knobs people liiiiikkkkkeeeeee.......kanye

he takes himself waaaaayyyyyyyyy too seriously

it makes me really happy that someone stuck googley eyes on him and made him look silly i bet this would really piss him off

that makes me even happier :)

GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

For my dad's birthday a couple of years ago i got him some Koi fish, he'd just built a pond in the garden...carved it out, sunk it in and heaved a great big boulder/stone into the middle of it.....into which he had painstakingly drilled a hole into so he could pump water through it and out of the top. It's actually a bit more than a pond really, he calls it the pool of two hearts, as there is another one, up slightly higher that feeds into the bottom pool with the big stone in it via a waterfall, so they're connected and don't exist happily without each other. It represents him and my mum which is seriously cute and kinda romantic to the max.

Anyway the other day i was thinking about when Sissy Spacek throws that big old fish in to the vegetable patch in badlands and its kinda tragic and it got me thinking about the ones i got my dad for his birthday...there was one in particular called ghost he was pure white and very beautiful. He grew like you wouldn't believe.... it got to where he was so big it was unnerving...you know when a fish gets to a certain size and somewhere in the back of your mind you know that you can't just flush them down the toilet sending them back to their mother ocean like all the goldfish you ever owned in your life......well it kinda gets you a bit nervous like you may actually have to comtemplate digging it a grave, burying it...eating it.... or offering it to the cat.

I was watching him  this one day and he was suckering all the green stuff off the big boulder...loudly it was a big epic sucking sound in the world when fish are meant to be quiet...the rock had become a great  big slimey algae popsicle. It was kinda cool watching him be a valid animal and not just a fish cos now not only was he massive and significant but he was noisy too.

In the winter on 2010 our lake froze over and was so solid we could all walk on it, my whole family and tehre are 7 of us...all except my aunty angela she walked around the lake and thought we were all mad. Of course the pond froze over too....i don't know if we all forgot or it just didn't occur to us ...as the weather was extreme and not usual but the fish died that christmas we didn't actually know until the thaw came. It was pretty heartbreaking and i remember thinking oh god were they all just hanging out under there like you do when you get a snow day off school and everyone just has a laugh and goes sledging and builds snowmen..etc..so i presume they were all just under havin a bit of a gas you know just waiting for the ice to melt and then it didnt.

I like to think they all just fainted from lack of oxygen and by the time they were dead they were not even aware that they had died you know..... hmmmm the reality i think was probably less idylic than that.

It was like the time my mom was minding my brothers love birds (he'd been given them by a girlfriend on valentines day (i thought this was a rad present but they were quite annoying actually) my mum would pop them out on the picnic table in the garden for fresh air in the day time,  anyway this one time she was late home from some event and the weather took a funny turn and temperature plummetted and by the time she got home they were dead....little sticky feet up. flat out. back down...gone from the world. My mum was all 'oohhhh god love them.... they died together so romantic' i was thinking.... hmmmm yeah they froze to death to be honest.....i'm thinking not so romantic unless its televised... no broken hearts in that cage.

It got me to thinking about leo and kate in titanic when he freezes to death and she lets him go and he floats down into the deep murky depth of the ocean and old winslet the survivor holds it together floating on her door or piece of furniture or whatever it was.. i mean i always thought she coulda just budged up and let old leo squeeze on but she didnt.......to be fair i bawled so hard at this scene my face changed shape.

yeah freezing to death...never pretty...unless youre like a wooly mammoth or something.

TUMBLE WEAVE

Growing up in Ireland i never had much exposure to weaves.......so when i eventually came to live in Dalston i was understandably pretty fascinated with the whole fake hair business. Especially when i saw them  on the street....so strange seeing these detached from their original source ie.... the head. There's always something a bit creepy about hair that's not attached to a body of something......you know yourself...once they're off the human there is just something a little freaky about them. Anyway yesterday someone i met told a really halarious story about getting their weave stuck in the bus door...and she was describing these stray hairy sea pigs as tumble weaves....well i just loved that so i decided i needed to make a feature of it....did a quick google for some lost weave pics to go with my inspirational title and found a whole blog dedicated to tumbleweaves called girlyoulostyourweave and that made me really happy, there was one picture on this blog of a weave in flight and they describe it as majestic. Oh man, please god let there always be people interested by stuff like this.

SIMONE ROCHA AW12

The Simone Rocha AW12 show I styled during London fashion week. The 25 year old phenomenon that is Simone Cecilia Ming Ming Rocha delved into the ancient tribes of Papa New Guinea and their New Ireland tribe, her native old Ireland....nature, grass, apple trees, ponies...and the random perfectness of Juergan tellers Zimmerman book.

The result of this came beautifully formed... in traditional lace delicately cocoon shaped, lush irish tweeds with tulle seams, woolly sheep dresses moulded with a plastic dress body, solid silver mirror leather was married with textured spotted 'mackeral belly' coats and skirts and calfskin jackets that felt just like simone's daschund Rufus (shiny like a conker) who we love a lot. The black donkey version of this is my soul mate, we are meant to go through life together,  i was compelled to wear this jacket in the studio everyday even just for a few minutes and now in time for next season he will be coming to live with me forever. The shoes were mens brogues and pumps with perspex soles of clear, green and pink that when the light hit them looked like lit up lime and strawberry jelly.

The wonderful team of James Pecis  who gave our girls their wild connemara pony forlocks of hair and Shinobu Abe who blessed them all with freckles and a touch of sunburn from lolling around in the bright grass fields of Co.Galway for too long. You can see the whole show here on style.com and the film here with the awesome soundtrack done by Simone's super talented brother, the little panda that is Max Rocha.

MARGARET HOWELL FOR DAZED

My Margaret Howell page for Dazed Collections with the beautiful Josefien Rodermans, shot by Jason Kibbler in between the rain showers and streaming sunshine in Brooklyn baby in December.

ABBEY LEE FOR US VOGUE

Portrait of Abbey Lee that i styled in the current issue of American Vogue.

Photographed by Beau Grealy.

GET TO THE CHOPPER....

Givenchy Spring 2012 Couture. I love everything about this, the gym hall, the basket ball, the nose rings that make all the girls look like baby predators.

I also enjoy this Arnie Schwartz soundboard immensely.

BALENCIAGA

  

SALEM'S LOT

Pretty obsessed with Salem's album....it's dark as anything but there is light in there too.... like forget me knots growing on a new grave, or when snow falls on piles of rubbish and makes it look really pretty or people rising from the dead that you didn't want to die.....like Jack Nicholson's character in Easy Rider...i fancied him so hard in this film and he was all fucked up and a total alco but he was kinda scared and childlike too and impulsive and just so lost, anyway i was half in love with him when he got murdered and i kept hoping he was just unconscious and not really dead. I hated that they had smashed his lovely face in with a hammer and i really missed him for the rest of the film. I feel the same about the cat that got murdered in Girl with a Dragon tattoo that i watched last night...i really missed that cat a lot after it was gone :(

I'm Presuming this is the kinda soundtrack the world provides you with when your speeding car has veered off the edge of a cliff at night time and everything has slowed down and you can see the ocean shining underneath you cos the car's headlights are still on and you know you are definitely not going going to survive because beside you in the passenger seat the grim reaper is smiling at you and holding your hand and you realize that you're 100% cool with dying.

BANBA

So my massive love in with Ireland continues, it reminds me a little of when my mom used to brush our very long hair as kids and she would put your face in between her boobs and brush all the knots and tangles out, it was extremely comforting and quite a lovely experience considering there was a certain degree of pain involved.

Banba is the ancient name for Ireland (pronounced bahn-va), she was a daughter of the Tuatha De Dannann and the patron Goddess of Ireland. It's a good name for a kid i reckon except it sounds a bit like Bambi...which is also a cool name for a kid...god love my babies....poor Banba and Bambi...an island in the middle of the Atlantic and a fawn with wobbly legs and a speech impediment.


I went to the Cliffs of Moher above on New years day with the Lahinch family all of whom i love deeply (see Lahinch vibez) and it was wild up there, dark and stormy....with the winter sun coming through the clouds and sea spray making everything look dreamy, there was even an upside down waterfall. I'm thinking if you dipped your hand into that it would burst into the flames of beezlebub like a heathen stepping onto holy ground.

We rang the new year in together..all twenty of us..on the steps to the beach surrounded by the high foamy tide and the wind howling around us like a murder of banshees. One of the most memorable and wonderful nye's i can ever remember. Ireland i love you madly.

LAHINCH VIBEZ

This new years eve I'll be surfing (ie..trying to surf...ie... paddling for 45 mins til my arms are about to fall off, and i think i might barf in the sea and then actually...eventually catching a wave ..paddling...paddling...paddling...dont stop keep paddling....  aching... aching... ouch ouch... get up get up... and then standing up like Michealangelo's 'David' for around 60 exquisite seconds where you hear  briefly but perfectly Motzart's final concerto ringing in your ears before you hit the shallows) in Lahinch in Co.Clare on the Irish Coast this year.

Conjoined with me on this one are a bunch of reprobates, English men, Irish women, stragglers and blow ins from the four corners of the world seeking refuge in the Irish sea. Seeking to get their heads blow off by the wind, their eyes burned out by the winter sun and the very core of them frozen to an icicle by the hard blow that comes in off the atlantic.

We're talking full wet suit here.... gloves, hoods and socks cos the atlantic is feckin freezoid. I'm hoping for a full survival tally on this one although we may lose one or two to the sea (there are a lot of us) and some fingertips and toes may succumb to frostbite, other than that i think the whiskey will keep us warm and in high spirits for the adventure beyond the surf.

I have a theory that i totally made up and this is it.... when the old year is turing into the new one like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, the sea churns magic... like cream into butter and can absolve you from of all your sins...no matter how bad...kinda like a really wet confessional box but the sea is your priest and can free you of it all, no hail mary's or our fathers or anything...she will simply wash all your dirty little sins off like soapy suds. I'm really into this ....i'm going to spread the rumour as soon as we get down there and see how many filthy little sinners i can get in for skinny dipping on new years day.

A LOVE LETTER TO IRELAND BY CLAIREBAN

This poem was written by one my best friends and soul sister Claireban with the red hair like fire, like a caribbean sunset, a beech tree in autumn. She's an active volcano.... a ginger unicorn or a selkie if they exist at all... thats what she is, just in human form.

This poem is what being irish is all about. It's the essence of it that gets you when you're away from home. The can't quite put your finger on it-ness of something that holds you suspended in a memory of a person, place or a time and the eternal association of inanimate things with those we love, have loved and those we have lost.

There is a line in Carol Ann Duffy's poem Mrs Midas when she is talking of her husband who wished for everything he touched to turn to gold and it crushes me like a snail underfoot after the rain whenever i read it...'I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead.'

My favourite part of Claireban's poem is 'I miss your men, God i miss your men, i miss your tracksuits, your Nike air max, your women, your mackerel'. 

THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010

A love letter to Ireland

IRELAND

IRELAND

GOD

I MISS YOU

i miss you

I miss you

I miss you blowing in my hair

whispering in my ear

confusing me

I miss lying in your fields

swimming in your seas

smelling you

smelling of you

i want to inhale your gorse

Kneel in your churches

Perv on your knackers

I miss your men

God i miss your men

I miss your tracksuits

your nike airmax

your women

your mackerel

your humor

you camouflaged me

you illuminated me

you gave me this skin

Ireland your in me

your my name

your my great strong roots

the blaze in my hair

my voice

my accent

my prayers

my curses

my wilderness

my WILDNESS

your my conscience

my family

my freckles

my fire

You Mothered me

Fathered me

Your the most beautiful land I've ever seen

I dream of you

I love you

I love you

I love you

see you soon

Claireban

MAGIC BEANS

'Never be afraid to trade in your cow for a hand-full of magic beans!'
Tom Robbins


As an afterthought.... have the bravery and courage to really believe in your magic beans and never ever trade them back in for the cow.

PURE LOVE

NEW YORK LABRADOR

New York. You are perfect even though it's been pissing rain since i got here and has mostly been dark and hardly light at all....i still love you. I'm your golden labrador always, unconditional big wet brown eyes gazing up at you in an 'oh god i love you so much it hurts' kinda way.

ALWAYS IN MY HEAD AND IN MY HEART

"There are bears and there are small dogs. Be Strong like a bear! If they take out your teeth, sit on the dogs. Bears always forget that they can just sit on the dogs. Sit on the dogs." 

Dave Eggers, 'You shall know our velocity!'

Reading Dave Eggers at the minute and  I am so comforted that he is kinda weird and funny like Salinger.  That's what is so amazing about reading, having a good ol laugh or cry by yourself.  I feel like this on the plane sometimes watching films and its just me and the other 300 passengers or whatever all happily strapped to our chairs like mental patients. Noise cancelling headphones on and i may as well be floating around in some space pod thing in the galaxy for as much as i am alone.  I have access to my entire emotional spectrum on a flight.

Also he talks about God which i love, i have a mad empathy and affinity with people who have any concept of god or faith. I grew up with it and i'm not religious but i love faith.... i just love it. I mean you can feel hopeless for a second, at sea with no life ring, no arm bands, no land, no nothing and then faith comes flooding in like a little tsunami, washing all over you with warm ocean and carrying with it a lovely big smooth piece of driftwood for you to cling onto and you know in your heart that, that piece of wood is gunna take you home.

The lovely thing is that miracles can always happen because what you believe in isn't tangible in the first place, so if the existence of something is not proven and it's merely an idea like UFO's and aliens, bigfoot etc... you can't un-prove it, until every single person in the world beyond a shadow of a doubt stops believeing in it and hence it ceases to exist, even as a thought.  It's already too late for that anyway cos everyone loves the Loch Ness Monster and all that other shit. 

So all that stuff like Jesus and heaven and aliens and ghosts, it's kinda just out there and up for debate and to be honest i think it makes life more exciting. So you just keep on keeping on kind of believing in it because in the end it actually doesn't matter, you can go round in circles trying to get your head around it and you never will cos there is no answer. I always think that if something makes people happy and comforts them when stuff gets heavy then it's okay whether it's real or not who cares, anything that gives people faith is so incredibly worthy of existing.

I told my friend Nick this about faith, he has no religion  and he said 'Oh well if thats the case then you may as well have faith in the devil and ask him to give you stuff cos that would be more fun. I laughed pretty hard at that....mostly because he was right. I bet the devil would have given me a porsche by now.

KARLIE AT 14

A really old shoot that I just found with super model Karlie Kloss, shot by Jacob Sutton back in the day. I remember Karlie was 14 years old and incredibly wise and sweet. Gary Card did all of the wonderful illustrations and plasticine animals.  I love how weird this shoot is and it reminds me how we were always doing interesting funny stupid things back then, just finding our way in the old world and being brave and not really giving a shit what anyone else thought. Now when i look at it, it makes me dig those younger versions of us and i love these images.

This is Karlie now in Italian Vogue. WOAHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh someone got all grown up.