Little Red pencil skirt

Hello hello. The weather is still as miserable as ever here, so all shoots have had to be conducted indoors for the time being. But as soon as there is as much as a sliver of sunshine I shall be outside again.
We were predicted to have some of the heaviest snowfall in the country today. What did we get instead? Drizzle! I really want some proper snow to materialise, even if just for a day. Ah well.
As I mentioned in the last post, most of our house has been redecorated and I thought his door to the loft would contrast nicely with the bold red of the skirt.
The red pencil skirt is one I made over the summer at a pattern cutting workshop, and the material is a raw silk. I love the vibrant colour, though unfortunately it's rather tight, meaning I have to stand around in it rather than doing anything active. The blouse used to be my maternal great-grandmother's. (I think I featured it on the blog a very long time ago, as I wore it to a test shoot last easter). I love the flower detail on the cuffs and neckline. The white brogues were from ebay and I love them to bits! Having said that, wearing them all day to travel by train to the Clothes Show (a fashion event in the nearest city- which is still pretty long distance) and back did take its toll on my feet. The socks were for christmas. The two gold watches are vintage ones. I love little dainty watches like these, even if they've stopped working. The blue belt is thrifted and the red hat is a family inherited one. The owl pendant is one of my favourite necklaces, a kind of lucky charm I suppose. And I've had quite a lot of luck wearing it!
The flowery vintage tin sits on my dressing table and is usually filled with with all sorts of oddities and various bits and pieces.

It was fascinating to hear all of your views on the retouching and editing debate on the last post. It really made me think about all the opportunities we have now in this digital age, but I have to admit that I'm probably still very traditional at heart. Like vintage fashion, I love looking at all the old photos taken by the greats such as Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, Norman Parkinson etc.
In fact I was looking again today at a book done by a photographer friend of ours, Clive. He produced an exquisite book called 'Covent Garden. The fruit, vegetable and flower markets.' It is full of photos taken in the sixties and seventies of Covent Garden market.  I really recommend it to anyone who's interested in photography of the old London- the portraits of workers and pictures of the market deserted in the early morning are so breathtakingly beautiful. This description in particular really struck me:

"I would have three cameras around my neck, and I became adept at instantly changing from one to another- wide angle or telephoto, then back to 80mm, depending on how I wanted to frame the picture, for I always got the picture I wanted framed in the camera- I never cropped any picture in the dark room or on the lightbox."

It made me think about that real craft of planning and setting up an image, and without the security we now have of knowing that we can change or alter the photo if it isn't perfect. And every image on that roll of film had to count, you couldn't go back to edit what you had on the camera and delete the unsuccessful images. I really want to explore using film cameras, and really wish I had access to a dark room!

I'm off on a short holiday to see friends for a few days now, so a very happy new year to all of you! See you all in 2010.

Little Red pencil skirt 2009-12-30T12:16:00-08:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: Unknown