Lady of the Woods: Outfit

Coat: H&M

Cashmere Scarf: Brora

Sweater: thrifted

Skirt: thrifted

Boots: Ariat

Now is the last chance to go for walks through the park without the really cold bite of winter, the weather is warmer than usual this year. Last week friends and I were walking through the park at dusk and a coyote ran past! I was almost hoping to catch sight of one while I had my camera with me this time... 

I love winter: piling on the vintage furs, the wooly sweaters, and checking out the silhouettes of dried milkpods and evergreen trees. Nature has a whole new look and so does my wardrobe. There are ways of layering that means you don't have to hide under a Canada Goose jacket all season. 

VERUSCHKA as "the Girl in the Fabulous Furs"

                                       

 

Photos from the Richard Avedon photoshoot "the Girl in the Fabulous Furs"(from American Vogue October 15th 1966.

 I just saw the documentary about Diana Vreeland called "The Eye Has to Travel" at the Bell Lightbox, and my head is still spinning from all the eye candy. Vreeland was the notoriously uncompromising and always colourful editor of first Harper's Bazaar, then Vogue. Aside from Diana Vreeland's willingness to live out her grandest fantasies in full technicolour, I also love that Vreeland had her clothes made by Coco Chanel back in the 1920's, as well she managed a lingerie shop in London that sold naughty items made by nuns.

Veruschka was a supermodel of the 1960's into the 70's (maybe even still?), and fancied herself more a muse for artistic editorials, even turning down more mainstream commercial modeling work if it was not of a certain creative standard. Vreeland favoured Veruschka for some of her more fantastical projects, including an editorial that was shot on location in Kyoto, Japan, and published for Vogue in October 1966 entitled "The Girl with the Fabulous Furs". Richard Avedon was the photographer. In these photos we are transported to a wintry Kyoto, misty and snowy and full of mystery.

I had travelled to Kyoto a couple of years ago in the dead heat of summer, and have always wanted to return there in winter, to see everything under a blanket of snow. I love the idea of travelling to places in winter, being cozy inside a warm coat or blanket while drinking in the landscape (and maybe some hot local hooch).

the siouxvenir break down

Building a shop.

Liliana Porter, Untitled (triangle). 1973. B + W Photograph.

I've got mounds of vintage clothes piled up, to be sorted, documented, getting ready to be shipped to loving homes of some seriously fashionable ladies.

All the behind-the-scenes work that I've been putting into this project, siouxvenir, has been mostly invisible as a tech-shy artist like me grapples with the challenge of opening an online shop on etsy. The etsy part was not the hard part, nor finding the lovely vintage items, which I can spend time hunting for now that the winter season is bringing me more free time. It's this idea of having a blog, and somehow combining the familiar exercises of keeping sketchbooks, journals and photo albums in a digital world.

At any rate, the end result should be a fully operational shop of hand-picked jewels, up and running in a matter of weeks (or days)!

...So Welcome.