An Illustrated Fashion Blog by Angie Réhe

Given that Jaclyn yesterday cut her long black hair off into a Louise Brooks/Uma-Pulp-Fiction style bob – a move I would have deliberated over longer than she’s been alive – I was prompted to consider what feels like an entire life of variations on the same haircut – mine that is. Friends may think I’ve tried other hairstyles, but really any variations have just been the result of bad communication with the hairdresser (and really, what the hell language do they speak anyway?), or just bad haircuts.

Hang on – didn’t I see a new look in a mag recently and sketch it into my diary?  Yes, I did.

Argh, it’s only a curve on the fringe.

And the bobsters…

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In an indirect way, I could kind of attribute my career choice of fashion design to knitting.  As soon as I was old enough to hold knitting needles I insisted my mother taught me to knit so I could join her and my sisters in their fun-seeming circle of gentle click-clack knitting.  One episode of The Rockford Files and one knitted row later, my new hobby was ovah.  I mean, are you knitters serious?  You are really willing to spend that long producing one lousy item of clothing?  Forget it.  At the age of 5 I turned to the sewing machine and pronounced it my new best friend.

Of course there was another option, but I didn’t warm to the knitting machine either, since it represented 2 things in my eyes: 1. Standing beside the machine with both arms up at a right angle holding the “hank” of wool firm while mum wound it into balls to use on the machine (um, doesn’t that constitute child abuse in some countries??), and 2. The relentless sound of the soaring side to side of the (hand) knitting machine, in the background of every stinking song I attempted to tape off the radio – in those days kiddies, the cassette recorder also recorded the ambient noise.  (Hence the funniest thing in your sibling’s life was to bust in on you recording your favourite song and say something really stupid. Hilarious.)

BUT, allow me to wax lyrical over the machine-knitted creations I have just seen launched at the new exhibition at RMIT Gallery in Melbourne:  The Endless Garment – The New Craft of Machine Knitting.

You’ll find the amazing work of ten leading international and Australian designers, some of whom aren’t stocked in Australia so this is the only place you’ll see them.

Part of the gallery has also been transformed into a knitting factory with two computerized flat bed knitting machines that produce amazing garments and “push the boundaries of what knitwear is.”

This truly is a fabulous exhibition.  So make like Coogee never existed and go check it out – these garments are not your average swettahs…

SANDRA BACKLUND, Stockholm.  Control-C collection 2009

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As with anything you yourself do, you can bet the house that no-one you know will ever do it for you.  As such, my walls are bereft of portraits of me, and my wardrobe without any clothes made especially for me.  Oh wait – there’s that dress made for me by that ex-boyfriend ages ago.  Now there’s a story – there’s something decidedly NQR about a boyfriend that can hand-sew better than you can.  I really should have seen the light flashing when he presented it to me with a blonde wig and a set of false eyelashes – I mean really, did he want to pretend he was going out with Paris Hilton or was he planning to pimp me out?  I never did ask, and again I digress.

There really is nothing like having a garment hand-made for you, to your measurements.  The measure-up, the fitting-like-a-glove – it’s a line you’ll cross that you’ll never want to go back over. Lucky for me in my circle of endlessly artistic/clever/talented friends, there is a source of such a thing.

I’ve been coveting the designs of Kara Baker since I saw them on the catwalk at The Venue in St Kilda in 1984 (I was 3) in the Fashion Design Council’s maverick parade.  Even better than buying them off the rack is visiting her in her studio to peruse the sample collection, try them on, choose a style, get measured up, then start the satisfying wait for the especially-and-only-for-me garment.  It’s the only way to shop, and makes you feel very, very spesh.  File it under T for try it.

In a blatant bit of self promotion – and why wouldn’t you? – check out the article the lovely ladies at Style Melbourne wrote about Patsyfox and her soon-to-be-redundant former self.

Actually the journalist Kimberley Smith who interviewed me needs a medal, or at least a new ear, because she had the great misfortune of meeting with me when I had been alone with my pencils for too long, and I seriously chewed her ear off.  Bless her, she took it well.

Read it.

Of all the ways to potentially screw up a friendship, and friend, there are many, you’d have to give a 9 out of 10 to letting your niece do a dirty big tattoo on one of your best friends’ back.  Unlike a bad haircut, the expiry date for trouble should it go wrong is akin to that of a Mcdonalds all-beef patty – infinity.

So you’ll understand, I’m sure, why I would perform circus tricks to change the subject whenever they got together – “Oh look!  Whoever would have thought I could do a handstand drunk and in heels!”  But this was a runaway train no amount of throwing drinks on myself was going to stop.

Imagine my relief then when I turned up (late, waiting for the valium to kick in) to the first sesh at Korpus, and saw Amanda’s happy face.  Oh joy!  Maybe there is a god!  What a kicking talented niece I have in Jaclyn, our painted lady. Same blood in our veins remember – same blood.

Stress over, I settled into my ring-side seat with my latte and SLR, disturbed only by falling on the ground laughing when a guy in the other booth asked me if I have any tattoos.  “Me?” “Mwwwaaahhahaahaaahaaa!”  Hold on while I stitch my sides up.  Buddy, I have to ask the audience when I’m deciding which wine to order.

No, no tattoos, I’m here for the show – I like to watch.

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I haven’t always been the sooky weeper who caused a water-mark stain on the silk blouse I wore to see Bright Star.  In fact, it doesn’t seem that long ago that I was driving past a wedding ceremony after another heinous break-up, and hung out the window yelling “Don’t do it!  He’s probably sleeping with your bridesmaid anyway!”  Ah cynicism, we had some good times, no?

Well apparently those days are behind me now because walking down Sydney Rd Brunswick on Saturday, I saw this sign taped to a pole and was moved.  Is this not the sweetest thing you’ve seen this year?  Cuter than a bunch of kittens?  I’ll bet he still writes to Santa, too.  Natch I disguised a couple of the numbers before loading it on the internet – but I can’t help wondering how many pranks he’s had by now…. And if I was being really honest I’d admit I’ve been this close to calling him to ask if she called him…

P.S. If this turns out to be a marketing campaign for Witchery I’m going to spit….

But of course that’s not a drawing, so here’s an offering from Dr Sketchy’s….

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Given that I’ve been (literally) attempting to run my arse off recently, I’ve become accustomed to sweat.  But nothing could have prepared me for Grandmaster Flash at the Espy on Australia Day eve.  Sweatbox?  You got it!  I awoke the next morning with an icky feeling in my lungs reminiscent of the old smokers-in-bars days, finally realising my lungs were full of other people’s armpits.  Eeuuw.  But Grandmaster, you gave great beats, and we danced as if possessed until the end when our shoes were actually sticking to the floor.  I didn’t even mind when I found the young dude down the back actually playing all the tunes, and doing the scratching. True!

So just when I thought I couldn’t cope with one more gig/festival/dance-off, I realised the tree is loaded and it’s time to swing into action with the second annual tribute to all things fig.  Last year’s began with fig delicacies washed down with champagne, and ended with disco dancing in the lounge room fueled by vodka.  Behold, the Festival of the Fig 2010…

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Or should that just be cranky?

37°C today, and sticky. Despite having run between 4 and 6km almost every day since new years, my thighs are chaffing.  Speaking of which, want to go for a run but too hot.  Meh.  Caught the train home from the city and everyone at Southern Cross station was annoying, most specifically the B-O monster occupying the space next to the only spare seat.  And young men cutting me off to get to seats on the train.

Honestly, sometimes I just want to make like Eartha…

…and spank the entire world.

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Here I was pissin’ & moanin’ about lousy Melbourne weather during a Sydneysider’s visit, and setting fire to my Marc Jacobs jacket (ok that is still significant), when all the while fabulously famous people on the other side of the world were getting rained on in dresses worth more than my house.  Not to mention all that work of having their faces ironed and stretched.

Actually I was glad of the umbrella action frantically going on in the background, because lord knows the dresses were bore-ring at this year’s Golden Globes. Do they all employ the same stylist?  Because I could save them a lot of money:  1. Go to any designer and get a strapless dress with fitted body/fishtail hem;  Make it fleshy pink colour – think Nicole.  2. Go to Bulgari and get as much bling as they’ll lend you (directly proportional to the takings of your last film).  3. Instruct hairdresser to create “undone” look of nonchalance for appearance of casual attitude (this will not be at all incongruent with the bling).  4. Go hungry for approximately 2 weeks before the show.  5. Botox yourself stupid.  There – you’re good to go.  50 bux and we’ll call it even.

I watched and loved the show anyway, but where’s Biork when you need her?  Bla bla yawn.  Thank god for Cameron Diaz who pretty much always wears something fabulous and not cookie-cutter like.  She would have been my chosen muse for the day had she not been so damn polite about holding the dress up off the red carpet (Rachel Zoe obviously has rules) and thereby not striking a single worthy pose.  Le sigh.  Is Alexander McQueen really that scary?

So alas, I went with Emily Blunt in her Dolce & Gabbana cookie-cutter frock and hair of nonchalance.  When in Rome…

Oh and let’s not forget Nicole Kidman:

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