Wednesday 29 September 2010

The Business of Trend

I have started an MA in Fashion and Lifestyle Promotion.  Today we had a little introductory session where we all spoke about ourselves.  Name, age, how we got to be on the course, what was the best thing that we encountered on the way, likes/dislikes, who we admire etc.

During this the head of Fashion Design at the university discussed how she loved her job, she loved trend, it didn't feel like work...but that trend itself is like a product.  A product that she doesn't particularly like because if everyone of us brought into it we'd all look the same.  However, what it comes down to is that whether you're a designer or a promoter you are trying to influence people to buy into the trends that you have acknowledged.

Trend is a funny thing.  Designers can get inspiration from anywhere...history, culture, or a cupcake they see in a bakery or trend forecasters.  Trend forecasters scour the land (the whole world!) looking at 'cool' things: a street, a shop, an artist, a subculture that has its own trend within society.  Then they sit back and plan what will happen next.  In the next 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 100 years.  I love it.  And hate it.

Trend is like marmite.  I sit here in my tapered trousers (the shape of the season don't you know!) and I wonder why I chose these.  I didn't acknowledge they were in trend...I hadn't gazed at them in magazines, I hadn't spotted them on catwalks.  I hadn't planned to purchase that particular style, I'd just gone into the shop and there they were but then subconsciously I might have planned to purchase them.  After all, the designers for that shop had planned it.  They'd researched, developed, seen them on celebrities and cool people at catwalk shows and filtered trend down for the high street where it has been successfully sold to me.

The business of trend is frustrating.  Frustating and wonderful.  It's rather amusing to think how it all comes about.  Especially now, in the last throws of fashion week season with Paris Fashion Week in full swing.  I wonder what makes people plan certain items to purchase and what makes others, like me, do it off the cuff with subconscious considerations.  After all, Oscar Wilde said "fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months" yet so many people have been dying for autumn to arrive so they can grab their shearling coats, boots, everything...

Monday 27 September 2010

Hot Hot Heat: Goodnight Goodnight

I have been rather bad at posting anything lately... and when I have it's been rubbish.  However, today I became reacquainted with a song I used to love.  It has really no relationt to my life, or indeed anything, but it reminds me of being 17.

I forgot Hot Hot Heat exhausted until iTunes did some shuffling and finally produced me with something different.  Warner Brothers Records are mean and won't let you embed their YouTube videos so this is a random one...but check out the official video later.

Wednesday 15 September 2010

Cannabis Over Breakfast

I don't know why I've started appreciating the amusement in little things that happen at home...maybe it's because I might be leaving...but over breakfast lately I seem to laugh a lot.  I don't know why as there are very few things that can make me smile in the morning.

As I was making coffee I noticed that there was a bag of green stuff in a plastic food bag.  Surely not...no it must be...nah not cannabis.  Not in my house.  Then I notice it's sat on top of a tub of flour.  Oh God, someone is going to make cannabis cakes.  My dad.  My dad cannot be doing weed in our house.

Turns out I wasn't the only one to consider it.  My friend arrived for breakfast (she was early for work and decided to pop in) and my dad joined us.  Only for them both to stare at the "cannabis" oddly and us to have to work out what it actually is.  It was basil.  My sister had decided to make a pizza at school using dried basil from a tub.  (I said no and gave her fresh basil leaves.)

What I found most amusing about this though was that not only did three grown adults decide that cannabis was a more likely thing than herbs to find in my kitchen but that my dad then went into a detailed description of his cannabis consumption.  Then my friend joined in, not thinking that it was odd breakfast conversation to be having with your friends father over Weetabix and a rather strong cup of Carte Noir instant. 

Yes he'd tried it, no it wasn't always successful, skunk in fact sent him paranoid and gave him hallucinations.  One of which involved hitting his ex-girlfriend over the head repeatedly with a spade.  "One of those big flat ones like they have in America for the snow and stuff."  I pictured the old guy brandishing his shovel in Home Alone automatically.  This kind of violence must have stuck in my mind because in a recent dream I started banging a girls head repeatedly off hard surfaces (floors, walls etc).  This is not healthy.  Clearly people should be talking to me about happy, fluffy kittens and things.  And not ones that have been shoved in a bin.

On an additional note my sister made the pizza.  The dough base was actually made from a scone recipe because according to her teacher "pizza dough takes too long".  The resulting cake pizza provided only added amusement to the entire situation.

Tuesday 7 September 2010

Pop-up Cardboard Cinema

The Cool Hunter have done it again...they've provided me with an article that shows a simple yet quirky idea that made me grin from ear to ear.  Whilst people ramble on about being eco-friendly and are often ignored some concepts can't fail to make you reconsider if you're anti-eco.

This cardboard furniture can be assembled wherever, whenever then reuse or recycle.  Feasible in reality?  I like to think it could be.  It's been used in museums and exhibition spaces so why not?!

Image from The Cool Hunter

Monday 6 September 2010

Empty-headed Critisim

Yesterday, after having a very bad morning, some lovely fellow decided to tell me that this "site" is full of "empty-headed b******s" and that the site name is very apt.  So not only criticism me but my readers as well.  I have had other comments that disagree with my opinions and calling me names for them but never have these people given their name.  Whilst people have always put their names when saying anything nice "Anonymous" is clearly the alias for when people want to be nasty.  It amuses me that this comment came on the article Guardian Soulmates and Short Men (I have now deleted it) as I can only assume he is an online dater that has been shunned by some women for being short.  I was merely stating a strange fact of nature, not saying that you will never find love.

You know what my Granny always says: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything nice at all."  My dad on the other hand just says: "Karma is a bitch so you don't need to be." Everyone likes a rant but blogs  are to allow anyone to put across their opinion.  If you disagree then put that across in an amiable way or keep your mouth shut and stop reading!  This isn't just me suffering though, it's wonderful bloggers like Liberty London Girl.  She calls these horrible people blog trolls.

Image from home.comcast.net

This blog is called First Class Ramblings.  Yes, the name is apt, because I will ramble about whatever holds my interest at the time.  It is not "empty-headed", I'm awell educated, but we don't all have to be pompous and self-righteous all the time now do we.

Wednesday 1 September 2010

Lissie

If you live in the UK you'll know that Lissie's debut album Catching A Tiger is being advertised constantly.  So much so that snippets of her songs have embedded themselves in my brain and like I sheep I've gone and listened to her album.  Listened but not yet brought, sorry Lissie.

She does have a wonderfully sweet voice.  She reminds me of a more country version of Ellie Goulding.  They have similar traits to their voices I think.  Do you agree?  Turns out she's actually teamed up with Ellie in Brighton and did a wonderful duet of Lissie's Everywhere I Go.


I'm sure lots of you will be aware of her but if not here's the song that go stuck in my head and most likely will stick in yours.  Then you too will go and listen to it again and again if only in an attempt to get it out!  Check it out on Lissie's myspace if you're not a fan of live versions... It is good quality though, promise! :o)