'anyway…the point was, i’d clocked a lot of bride hours'

The great Amanda Palmer blogs her wedding to the great Neil Gaiman. Touching, perceptive, and full of surprising phrases and sentences.

Radical left journalist ventures into royal bridal fashion criticism

[Image source]

In a look back at the year, US radical journalist Alexander Cockburn writes:

Peering briefly at the royal nuptials in a house high up in the mountains above Malibu, I was surprised to see how spectacularly tacky the British upper classes have become. They looked very vulgar. The appalling cuteness of the Aston Martin supplied the coup de grace. The groom didn’t know how to stand up properly. Contrary to effusive comparisons, the bride’s much touted dress from the atelier of the wildly overpraised late Alexander McQueen, was a far cry from Grace Kelly’s, designed by Helen Rose, who had dressed her in High Society and The Swan. The bride’s headdress hung like a dishrag. The only vestments born with confidence and aplomb were those of the churchmen. The Archbishop of Canterbury, with his emphatic beard and specs, had a splendid cope. His voice was confident. I’d like to see him in debate with one of Teheran’s ayatollahs. But the Anglo actresses watching the event on our mountain were ecstatic. My daughter Daisy, returning to London two days later, reported that the young women she was encountering were all swept away by the event and eager for marriage.

A Question Nobody Asked

With winter fast approaching the risk of flooding in the English countryside is with us again, and this year maybe the smart set will swap their traditional Barbour and Hunter boots for this offering from Italian designer Regina Regis.

The aptly named “Rain Level” wellies come in eight colours as well as the obligatory black, and are graduated up to 35cm in depth, the final marking being in an ominous red to warn of an imminent sock disaster.

Dishwasher-safe

If a dress made from broken 45rpm records seems too soft and decadent for your Spartan tastes, then a recent collection by Chinese designer Li Xiaofeng is sure to appeal.

Made from fragments of porcelain crockery from the Ming and Qing dynasties, these jackets and dresses are proof against the worst red wine splashes and mustard stains, which has to go a long way towards compensating for the necessity of eating all your meals standing up…

Jane Austen's Fight Club

Where the seventies went to die

Leaving aside the black lipstick and Ziggy Stardust makeup (oh, dear!), this dress from Los Angeles-based fashion collective Beauty Is Pain is made of old vinyl 45s, each one carefully cut into just the right shape to impale the poor model when the she finally succumbs to the toe-crushing pressure of her high-heeled platform boots and tries to sit down. Truly an outfit for only the most dedicated of fashion victims…

The rest of the photoset at LA Weekly is well worth viewing, too, ranging as it does from the “Oh, that’s nice!” to the “Oh, my god!”, and all points between.

Oh, no, my hayfever!

Seen on the glossy fashion blog ecouterre (too hip to have a capital letter, it seems), a “living dress” spawned by the unholy mating of a clothes designer and a landscape architect.

Made from recycled bicycle inner tubes and whatever blooms can be stolen from gardens and window boxes, the creators intend that the dozens of water-filled “vases” are populated with the flowers of the season, leaving me to ponder not only what one does when summer fades into autumn, but also the excitement that is sure to come from the inevitable attentions of bees, aphids and passing hummingbirds.

Now, if somebody would please pass me a Claritin?