An Illustrated Fashion Blog by Angie Réhe

My ambitions for last Friday night were modest.  High-five myself relentlessly for making it through a ridiculously hectic week.  Tick.  Lose a few more tones off my hearing scale by standing in front of the speaker stacks at the Dead Weather gig at the Forum so I could feel the music reverberate through my body and stare at Dean Fertita simultaneously.  Tick.  Head directly to Cherry Bar post-gig to further distance myself from anything resembling responsible behaviour. Tick tick.

So I stood with my biatch Amanda surveying the dance floor, enjoying a sense of self-satisfaction, when out of the darkness appeared someone who proceeded to hug Amanda and gasp “Awesome gig!”. Apparently not her Australian accent, nor the fact that I squirted my drink out through my nose laughing, caused this guy, or the subsequent hordes (exaggeration), to question if it was in fact Alison Mosshart from The Dead Weather.  On they came – “I love you!” “You’re amazing!  Would you say hi to my girlfriend? – She’s from Singapore”, and not forgetting the guy who stalked us for the duration of the night, snapping surreptitious photos with his phone.

All I can say is there’s going to be some awfully disappointed people when they show the photos to someone who actually knows what Alison Mosshart looks like.

Can’t say I’m not a little bit jealous – I have only ever been told I look like Joan Jett or Ginger Spice.  Oh, and Leather Tuscadero once, when my bleached hair snapped off on the top of my head giving me a flat-top mullet.

The culprit for all these shenanigans?  The Sass & Bide leopard jeans both Amanda and Alison Mosshart happened to be wearing.  It’s that easy.  And that dark at Cherry Bar.

The real celebrity…

And the people I have apparently looked like…

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What a week what a very big week, and with the name of the day being Patsyfox, it seems just a tad ironic that I haven’t managed to post – aaargh!

But here’s my late pass:  From the grand opening last Thursday night and subsequent trifling of my liver, to the LMFF blogging forum on Saturday, illustration classes beginning at the Whitehouse, LMFF Patsyfox Drawing Salon fashion illustration workshops, lecturing in design for RMIT, and don’t even get me started (yet) on dealing with Robert from Guilford Lane Gallery, who is truly a ********* *****, I rest my case!  So as far as actually drawing this week, quickie demo sketches whipped up under the watchful gaze of my lovely students is all I have to offer…I give you mixed media collage, and greyscale gouache.

But as for the party that was the opening of “On The Street…Patsyfox”, here’s a few of the snaps.

The lovely Johanna Preston from the even lovlier Preston Zly shoes, being amused by some undoubtedly witty remark by Patsyfox.

The fantabulous Craig Freakin Web with Randa, & in the background Dr Mary

Effervescent Gabbie with Fiona

My top biatch Amanda (possibly plotting my murder at this point) with Cathy

Oh look, it’s me again, with Carlene

Um, I don’t know these people, but they look tres cool.  And if they are reading this and I did meet them, then I’m pulling out my alcohol-induced dumb card

A wall

Peta, regular reader and supporter of all things Patsyfox, not yet drawn!

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I was proposed to once.  Thought it was a joke and fell off my stool/dropped the phone laughing.  Apparently this is not the correct behaviour in such situations.  I was never forgiven.  It’s OK though, I’m sure this is not related to the fact that I’ve never heard that question again – I’ve been saying since I could talk that I am not the marrying kind.

I am the kind, however, to take an over-stressed, under-fed bride and turn her into a piece of high-fashion art.  Introducing… Bridal Sketches!

You e-mail me your (or someone else’s) high-res wedding photo, and I produce for you an original piece of artwork that you can pass on to your kiddies.  Take it from me, you will never look as good as you do in a fashion illustration!  Don’t like your hair?  I’ll change it.  Always wanted to be a C cup?  I can fix that.  The pencil is all-powerful.

Makes a great gift – I can give you a glamorous gift certificate.

Wouldn’t it be great to use the image on thank you cards?  Why yes, and I can organise those for you too.

Want to know more?  bridal@angierehe.com   www.bridalsketches.com

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Gimme a deadline, any deadline, and I’ll slide under the gate as it’s closing to deliver whatever it is I’ve just finished, after having procrastinated until the night before.  Do I love the fear of maybe not making it?  No!  Then what?  Having important work to do is the only time I actually feel like doing housework/matching jars to lids/pairing socks/sewing up hems instead of stapling them.  God, recently I even weeded to avoid work.

The disappointing side of this apparently common habit is that I also procrastinate about doing work I like, and that’s just dumb.  So even though I had 2 months to work on a bookmark design for The Book Depository’s competition, I still left it until the night before I had to drive up the stinking Hume Highway to my Mum’s for Xmas.

But wait – it gets dumber.  I decided to create my image by almost pure collage – intricate, tiny collage requiring tweezers and patience I only have when I shouldn’t.  Even the fact that when I looked at the final image I realised I could have created it in photoshop in a quarter of the time didn’t phase me – it might be indiscernible to the naked eye, but that background is one complete piece of tissue paper with letters cut out.  Wacky!  And stupid.

I pompously sent it off to the UK only to be bitterly disappointed a month later to discover that not only did I not win, a bunch of bozos did.  Meh/whatevs/talk to the hand.  I’m using it as the first of the bookmark and postcard designs I’ll be selling here in my soon-to-be-opened on-line Patsyfox shop, so I guess I’m a winner after all.

If  you make it to the exhibition, please do justify my old-school ways by getting up close and noticing all the teeny pieces.

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There’s nothing quite like having a friend who’s working on a Ph.D. living next door, when you are working from home. Cup of tea? Great. Oh look – it’s 6 o’clock – make it a G & T? Lovely. It gets even better when they’re interested in what you do, because in their endless compulsion to procrastinate, they are likely to find and flick you the most fabulous pictures, websites, articles, objects of desire, and news flashes imaginable.

Of the plethora of material my neighbour Mary has sent my way, my favourites are:  Godammit, I’m Mad!, internet shopping in general (thanks a mill’ for that one), The Book Depository, the tip that The Sartorialist was in town at that very minute (I have no idea how she finds out some of this stuff), and countless pictures of very cool ideas.

How she finds all of this, and finishes a Ph.D is beyond me, which makes her quite the smart arse, because this week her Ph.D was passed and she is as good as Dr MP.  Definitely the best-heeled doctor I know.  Check out the Giuseppe Zanottis.

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Just when you thought it couldn’t  get more exciting – or more self-promoting – around here, it does:  I give you The Patsyfox Drawing Salon.

Launching during the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival with Fashion Illustration workshops held in the Patsyfox exhibition space at Guilford Lane Gallery, The Patsyfox Drawing Salon offers boutique style Fashion Illustration classes.  Class sizes are half those of regular classes to allow for the personal Patsyfox touch, and held in the evening so people who work or study full time can attend, and in bite size chunks of 12 weeks.

Two course levels are offered: Introduction to Fashion Illustration for beginners or those wanting to re-cap the foundations; and Creative Fashion Illustration for those with some drawing experience who just want to get better and better, and more versatile.  Whichever way you look at it, it’s a lot of fun.  Check the website for more info.  The Patsyfox Drawing Salon also offers private tuition and schools-based workshops.  All tuition by me, naturally!

See the LMFF classes schedule here.

Geez, has it really been a year that I’ve been sitting here late at night eating wasabi peas and drinking brandy? Apparently so, because next week I celebrate the first birthday of Patsyfox with an exhibition of around 30 illustrations from throughout the year. Yes, exciting!

What’s even more exciting is the opening night on Thursday March 11th, 6-8pm. Come witness me drink an unfeasible number of champagnes within 2 hours while attempting to speak to everyone in the room.

Read some of the accompanying anecdotes, and spot some of the actual people from the drawings…maybe.

Stand transfixed by the colour and movement of the Illustration Installation – a looped film projection cut with illustrations – a collaboration between Patsyfox (legend), Nevada Duffy (designer), and Deb Varrasso (film maker).

Most of the works are even for sale, including The Sartorialist illustration, signed by the man himself.

Where?  Guilford Lane Gallery, 20 – 24 Guilford Lane, Melbourne.

When?  9th – 21st March 2010  (Opening night Thursday March 11th 6 – 8pm)

Why wouldn’t you?

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I have a pitifully small collection of Vivienne Westwood garments, and god knows I don’t seem to be the shape they’re designed for – I need to be 5 inches taller and 2 cups bigger, according to the adjustments I make to them.  But like all things I love, the impracticality of it only makes it more desirable.  Even the experience of having to throw myself off a tram while wearing a VW plaid bustle skirt – which bound my legs together like some ancient foot-binding practice – did not dissuade me.

And so under the plaid-spell have I been since seeing her new Red Label fall/winter 2010/11 collection, I failed to recognise an old familiar within it.  It wasn’t until I was drawing it that I realised – ah, isn’t that a flannie?  Oh yes, it is.  Growing up in a small country town in the 80s, I wore and saw my quota of flannies, and not even Kurt Cobain with all his charisma could tempt me back over to the dark side.

I’ll take the orange tights, I’ll take the pink plaid obe, I’ll even take the flannie tie.  But the flannie?  Viv, you can keep it!

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I’m a fan of the back-up plan, a big fan.  I’ve had a spare cyan cartridge sitting on the shelf since the first of the 24 months my printer’s been saying it needed it soon.  So imagine my displeasure when out of nowhere tonight it stopped saying what it wanted soon and became all about the now.  Magenta – now.  Talk to the hand I told it.  Oh yeh? it said – How’s kinko’s at midnight sound?  And I’ve noticed you’re already in pyjamas. Daaaarrrgghhh.  The printer won.

Besides planning for the illustration class I’m teaching tomorrow, I was also printing a picture to draw from the Fall/Winter 2010/11 Vivienne Westwood Red Label, which I’ve become instantly and more than mildly obsessed with.  The plaid – the plaid! Plaid in pink, plaid in green, plaid with plaid.  Wrap me in it, roll me in it, I love it.

But alas, I am victim to printer fug, and had to think of something else to draw.  I give you… Girl shot with the plaid gun.  Reminding me more than a little of a certain ex-boyfriend who liked to dress in head to toe plaid.  I didn’t mind – it made him easy to find at parties – seen a guy in plaid?

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