THE IDIOT

You guys, I am SO. SORRY. I know I promised to spend more time on you, but you have no idea how busy I’ve been lately – for one thing, I have to make a hardback zine and find a stockist for it some time in the next four weeks, as part of my third year work – and my internet has been giving me about ten good minutes a day for the last two weeks. The court will probably write this all off as an excuse, of course, and I’ll lose custody once and for all, but what can I say? If modern cinema and women’s magazines have taught me anything, it’s that we might pretend that we can have it all if we’re gainfully employed, but we’re really selfish, career-driven bitches who ruin their families lives. My only hope is that the affections of a good man can eventually show me that really, love is all I need. Love, and babies. And a cookbook. And a hairbrush to sing into.

Anyway, I’m just checking in to let you know that I’m alive. To get you through, here’s a picture of me rushing from one important task to another, as I almost always am. Note that I am barely breaking a sweat in my perilous Nina Ricci shoes. I “just be chillen”, if you will:

Oh no, fuck, that isn’t me. It’s Daphne effing Guiness. 

We can pretend, though, no?

(As well as working my well-proportioned ass off on a number of projects, I have also taken the time out to see Harmony Korine’s new film Trash Humpers at the London Film Festival, and if you’re planning on checking it out sometime, then I hope your mind is on the pill, because it’s about to get fucked:

I wouldn’t describe the overall experience as enjoyable – a brief synopsis descibes it as “A film unearthed from the buried landscape of the American nightmare [that] follows a small group of elderly Peeping Toms through the shadows and margins of an unfamiliar world“, and the title is pretty much self-explanatory – but if you want something that will stick in your mind for a few nights afterwards, it’s probably worth checking out. In other news, I hope Harmony reads the letter I sent him about collaborating on a sequel. It’s called Trashforce Humpers, and it follows a similar narrative arc to the original, but with a few subtle twists you won’t see coming. A major Hollywood actor is hotly tipped for the lead male role, although he faces strong competition from a young up-and-comer called “That one guy who works in that one bar that we went to in Shoreditch sometime that I think is really bangable“, so who can really say who’s going to come out on top? In order to find out, let’s just pray that Mr. Korine is receptive to film pitches that are written in ransom-style newsprint. The diagrams are a real treat!)

AND EVEN THOUGH I HAVE A KINK OR TWO IN BED, WHEN I’M WITH HIM IT’S JUST A DREAM

Earlier this week, I inflated fifty balloons without the aid of an air pump, but I’ve decided to avoid turning it into a joke about blowing, even though the gags (ha!) so clearly write themselves, because for once, I am not in the mood. Not tonight, Blogsephine, etc, etc. I am WORN. OUT, and I mean that intoned in the most emphatic, Rachael-Zoe-style cadence you can imagine.

I’d be hard-pressed to describe to you my lowest ebb of the last four weeks, for instance (and believe me, there have been highs and lows, both chemically and non-chemically speaking), but if I had to choose, I’d probably go with the moment last night when, as I was waiting at the bus stop on the Walworth Road in tears, some spotty cunt in tracksuit bottoms, reeking of beer and cheap cologne, swaggered by and hollered “Ratface!” directly into my kohl-drizzled fizzog. Asshole though he may have been, I can see his point; I am a bit of a neurotic fucking wreckage lately, and it’s probably starting to emanate from me like a bad smell.

A few days ago, I had all my hair cut off , like a woman who had just gone through a particularly bad breakup, and I’d convinced myself that it would make me into some kind of zen, new-age druidess who was able to cope with anything life chose to throw at her without batting a black-greasepaint eyelid – actually, the chop had only two outcomes:

1. Leaving my cheeks looking ever more like those of a horse sucking on a mint humbug, hence, presumably, “Ratface!“
2. Allowing me to create the sheer, unadulterated volume needed to execute the above hair-yabba-dabba-do from Jeremy Scott S/S10 with nothing more than hairspray, a paddle brush, a barey-functioning 1990s crimper and a prayer.

Truly, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, no? I can’t say that I’ve felt any more in control since I got rid of what I will fondly call The Iron Curtain, but who really does in these situations? I bet even Alexa bloody Cheung had a stupid reason for cutting her hair short so famously, the most notable difference between our situations being that, rather than being feted by the style press on both sides of the Atlantic, I’ve been heckled in the street by hoodies. And, God willing, I’ve never fucked a Monkey, Arctic or otherwise.

In addition to this, I’ve become obsessed with the idea of turning my hair navy blue, for some reason, adding yet more weight to the idea that I am too indecisive and immature to go more than about eight weeks without getting bored with my own appearance, thankyou mother. Thank fuck I haven’t got a tattoo yet, because I’d be forking out for laser removal hand over bloody fist, if this hair bollocks is anything to go by. In all seriousness:

I hate to sound like a fashion fag (Kidding! I love to! I wouldn’t say things like “a narrow trouser” otherwise), but doesn’t this seem very “now” to you? Answers on the back of a picture of KT Shillingford’s ombre hairstyle to the usual address.

(Things which you are welcome to buy for me after perusing the S/S10 shows; all of Rodarte’s collection, all of Demeulemeester’s collection, Josh Beech, the new Jeremy Scott X Longchamp tote, the sunglasses from Giles, a party dress from BCBG, and a wig made from Daphne Guiness’ hair.

Hello again, by the way. ‘Sup?)

YOU MAKE NO SENSE

 

Things have been a little hectic here lately, y’all, and Trashforce has been neglected as a result. I swear, I’ll be back soon with some pictoral proof of just how many young men I got to see in their underwear this fashion week. In a professional capacity, of course.

(Assuming you haven’t been taken away by child protective services by then, that is.)

SOMETIMES I WISH I HAD A GUN

Okay, you know what?

I am done with Wang. Seriously, you guys. I am going to stop being hella into Wang – “feeling Wang hard”, if you will – for an entire season, at least. I don’t know if there’s a word for someone who is so into Wang that they’re into the opposite, but that person is me right now (I tried googling it, but for some reason I kept getting pictures of Lindsay Lohan. How weird is that?). I have only myself to blame, of course; I’ve been spoiled by some truly fantastic Wang for a couple of years now, so I guess I always assumed I’d keep coming back for more, but this has been a real fucking wakeup call. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Reader, I’ve been slapped around the face with some underwhelming Wang, and it stings. In my eyes.

I’m not much into the idea of wearing a nappy for fashion’s sake, be it quilted satin or otherwise, and chiffon trousers, though maybe suited to an editorial, are hardly breaking new ground. I’m also not leaping at the chance to wear greying y-fronts as outerwear, even if I am supposed to look like a slutty cheerleader in her jock boyfriend’s underpants, or whatever kind of football fantasy is supposed to be going on here. Maybe it’ll be one of those collections that’s going to grow on me over time, but for now, it’s doing precious little other than providing me with the usual biannual excuse to make cock puns with gay abandon. The thing which hurt most of all, however, was that the Wang I like best this season:

Looked like it belonged on Lady Gaga. And I mean, come on. There’s no possible way you can make a good dick joke about someone who’s gone to the trouble of prefixing their name with the word “Lady”.

…is there?

JOHNNY, ARE YOU QUEER?

It’s that time of year again, little buddy – the time when everyone gets their invitations to the shows at London Fashion Week and I try not to hiss with jealousy, mumbling something about how it’s the parties that really matter, you pussy, because I’m too rock-and-roll and free-spirited to waste my time with trivial shit like sitting in the twelfth row and swooping in to steal the freebies from underneath Pixie Gelfdof’s seat on the way out.  I can’t be pissing away my valuable drinking time looking at beautiful people stomping up and down in things I’m never going to be able to afford, or peering into the middle-distance and trying to figure out if that’s really Jethro Cave, or if it’s a really tall girl with an undercut and a gumby earring – I’m an important person, and like all important people, I get my fashion news secondhand via Style.com or from the pages of Vogue. Other things which I do during fashion week as a result of being a “big deal” include home-dyeing my hair, spending an hour deciding whether my shoes make me look fat, and planning which party will have the most free alcohol left by the time I leave the house, in case you were wondering. It’s not easy to be me, but I’m trying my hardest, y’all. 

If, however, I were the sort of person who got invited to these things and, if we can stretch the boundaries of realism a little further, I was somehow able to attend the shows in New York, my eye would definately have been caught by this dress from BCBG today:

I know it’s hardly breaking new ground (the sheer panels, pattern and bandage style aren’t a million miles away from both old season Balmain and Balenciaga in places), but sometimes looking fuckable wins out over innovation. Say what you like about Gareth Pugh – I think he’s a genius, for the record, and I still mentally clutch my pearls every time I pass him on the street even though I know he’s lived here forever, because I’m a hick at heart – but you can’t go to a Dress To Get Screwed party in a vinyl balloon dog costume, unless you’re a very specific kind of pervert and it has some very unusual cutouts. The sheer panels, for once, aren’t positioned in such a way as to force the wearer to go commando, which could go in either the positive or the negative column depending on how you look at it. And I’m a sucker for a really vibrant purple. Or, even better, I could opt for this insane look designed by Nadia of The Foxy Man, which is essentially footwear continued all the way up to the neck and turned up to eleven:

Either would look great with my slippers while I’m enjoying fashion week from the comfort of my own home, don’tchafink?

(Bet you wish you could wear uggs in the front row, Mz. Wintour. Burn.)

IT’S 1969 OKAY, ALL ACROSS THE USA

Jerry Hall is famous for saying that at some stage, a woman has to choose between her face and her ass. For me, that stage came around the age of about sixteen, where I realised that in order to have a tiny, modelesque rump, I was required by nature to look like the Cryptkeeper in a black wig from the neck up; during one of my thinner months, I was mistaken for a drag queen in a nightclub, despite being barely five foot four, and although my default user picture on facebook is usually Nick Zedd dressed as a woman and reading a book about suicide, sometimes I change it because I’m never quite sure if people who’ve only met me once or twice actually think it might be me. Biology’s a fucker, ain’t it?  Even now that I’ve gone soft and useless, I still noticed that I looked superimposed on the nightbus security footage yesterday, like someone had scribbled a cartoon of Siouxsie Sioux on the telescreen in pen. I might be happy to let my face get back to being as bony as possible, however, if I looked like Jamie Bochert. She’s so fucking creepy, dug-up, Patti Smith sexy that it almost makes me want to forego my beloved carbohydrates  (even beer and pizza, either of which I could possibly be some kind of sponsored spokeswoman for, if required)  and start getting mistaken for a man again; given that she too looks a bit like a horse, it might not even be an impossible dream, although I can never hope to gain the requisite six or seven inches of height without the aid of some serious platforms.  I’m not saying I’d be interested in screwing Michael Pitt, although I know a few people who would, but there’s something to be said for a woman who can make androgyny look twice as sexy as being tanned, blonde and chesty. The difference between her looking equine and my having a long, hollow face, unfortunately, is tantamount to the difference between a thoroughbred and a Thelwell pony respectively, and is also the thing which prevents me from pulling off “off-duty model” style with aplomb,  or being able to look like Marilyn Manson and still induce a hard-on:

Or perhaps that’s just me.

Maybe one day, scientists will perfect that height-enhancement surgery that people go on dodgy holidays for, and I can go out to Bangkok to have my femurs smashed and repositioned, or whatever insane bullshit it is they do to desperate people like me – until then, I’m condemned to roam the earth on my belly, like the snake in the garden of Eden. Figures. If only for the number of people I’ve made feel ashamed by their nakedness.

(I’m writing this sitting on a mouldering chair and listening to the Stooges’ self-titled LP on repeat at an undisclosed location – believe me, if I told you I’d have to kill you, and I hate to get blood on my shoes – trying desperately to decide what to wear tonight, because that’s the kind of earth-shattering stuff that I spend my time thinking about. Believe me, if you thought this entry was boring, you should have seen the last three drafts I made, all of which ended with me typing “BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH” and then holding down the H key for another couple of hundred characters. Either way, you should know that by the time you read this, two of my housemates, who are currently on acid, will have “either had sex or killed each other“, and we’re taking bets on which. Sort of like a Swedish lesbian cockfight. So there’s a bit of excitement for you.)

I WANTED LOVE, BUT I ONLY LOST MY PANTS

As I said to Sandy yesterday, if I said I was never going to let anyone stick anything in my face again, I’d be lying. This whole thing is Tasha Tilberg’s fault, if it’s anyone’s; a girl can be fooled into thinking she’d look good in anything if she’s seen it on a fucking supermodel, and I can’t stop myself from compulsively googling her and staring at her septum piercing, even though everyone who knows me knows that I have a particularly long and equine face. I know, right? Who would ever want to fuck me ever again if I had a honking great ring through my nose, a character from Edward Lear’s The Owl And The Pussycat? I’d look like something that should be being led around a paddock by a farm hand. It’s the same feeling I had when I found myself thinking that I absolutely, you know, needed a coat made entirely from hair after seeing Kate Moss striding forth in Margiela’s blonde version on the swimsuit issue of V magazine this Spring, despite knowing that, as the old saying goes, guys don’t make passes at girls who look like Dougal from The Magic Roundabout.  My attraction to clothing, accessories and, in this case, body modifications which may or may not make me appear eminently unfuckable appears to be growing with each passing month that I spend in a relationship, with the desire presumably being inversely proportional to my need to search elsewhere to get laid; knowing that an unkempt hairstyle or a pair of directional trousers isn’t going to stand between me and orgasm inevitably leads me to be too comfortable with looking weird. I bet Anna Piaggi’s always had someone to sleep with, for instance, because she allows herself to look like a wonderful nutcase. 

Don’t be fooled, however! Sometimes the things I end up going for are practically mainstream:

Have you ever seen anything more barf-inducingly “cute” and “quirky” than this sweatshirt from Monki in your life? I absolutely love it, even though it looks like the person who’d wear it might like Belle and Sebastian and wearing block-coloured hoisery. It’s only available in Sweden, but I plan on getting Sandy to pick it up for me in a couple of weeks, because if there’s one advantage to living with a Swede, it’s the consant nudity, but if there are two, it’s that and the fact that I can get Swedish clothing with relative ease. In fact, if we’re going to talk about things that I actually like, rather than my bitching and moaning about bullshit for yet another few hundred words as per, this guy from Michael Angel’s on my to-do list as well:

See? I’m completely fucking boring when I’m being positive. I bet you’re hankering for a humiliating anecdote about my banal, art-student life more than you ever have before. I could tell you about my new job, but as it is I’ve had another day of being out in the sun in an oppressively black outfit, so we’re all just going to have to suck it up and wait for another day. At least I’m getting back into the habit of posting more than once a week; I’ve been the blogging equivalent of a deadbeat dad for the last couple of months, turning up once annually on your birthday to shower you in silly string and then fuck off home, leaving you excited and baffled. Maybe this year, though, I’ll get you that pony you wanted. You guys still like that shit, right?

( Speaking of t-shirts, I notice that a lot of the bigger bloggers are still doing a t-shirt with Borders and Frontiers, with varying degrees of success. Obviously we’ll never know what my design would be like, because I’m not one of the big guns, but rest assured that Print Liberation appear to have created what might be a pretty fair approximation:

Kidding! I’m far too sophisticated to liberally pepper everything with obscenities just to get a cheap laugh.

Or am I?)

RED CADILLAC AND A BLACK MOUSTACHE

There are one or two things in life that I find it nearly impossible to quit. Being addicted to cigarettes (Marlboro Lights, in case anyone’s interested in cooking up a sponsorship deal) is probably a terrible thing, for example, and may or may not be the final, acrid-smelling nail in my coffin eventually. Collecting leather jackets is a fucking expensive habit from time to time, too – at a Hackney car boot sale this weekend, a guy tried to charge me £20 for an unembellished motorcycle jacket that was slightly too large for me (I would have welched on the deal when he referred to it as a “Lady Gaga jacket” anyway, so if you’re reading this, leather-flogger, your boner-deflating pop-culture references cost you a sale) – but I still maintain that it’s cheaper than collecting a lot of other things (art, obscure LPs, Faberge eggs, &c) so it’s only a minor inconvenience to me.

The biggest flaw in my character would have be my weakness for incredibly tall, absolutely beautiful men; this is the kind of habit which is fine if you’re a waifish, Jane Birkin type with impeccable features who can have any man of their choosing, but can be crippling if you’re actually a short, bad-tempered lardarse with her hair in a Shoreditch topknot, like being a homeless man with a penchant for top-grade cocaine. I’m not saying I’m, as Lionel Ritchie might intone, “easy like Sunday morning”  - I like to think of myself as more of a frenetic Friday night, if anything – but despite having hitched my wagon to a somebody at this moment in time, I’m never going to be able to keep my eyes from popping out like a Tex Avery cartoon when four (four!) well-known male models walk into a local bar like the beginning of the steamiest Rabbi, Priest and Irishman joke ever written. Similarly, I spend too much of my time looking at bullshit that I can’t afford or can never obtain on the internet, viz:

These assholes that everyone wants. I’ve been in two minds for about six months as to whether I could engineer this myself, rather than trying to track down a pair of out-of-season boots that would probably end up costing me more than a kidney, but here’s the thing; I’m not sure if, either way, I could deal with having spikes that large on my shoes. Call me clumsy, unco-ordinated and haphazard, not least because that might be accurate, but like most Londoners I tend to take the tube every day, and I cannot for the life of me imagine bringing spikes into that sweat-soaked hellhole; there are certain commuters on the overground to Dalston that I’d rather not piss off at the best of times, and subjecting them to something approaching medieval torture would seem to be a fucking bad idea. Granted, they could prove useful for a swift kick in the bollocks if the gibberish-spouting homeless man who lives outside our building ever turns nasty, but what if I end up crossing my legs in a skirt without paying due attention and grazing my calves? What then, Watanabe? What then? Are you going to come over with a chic, well-draped black bandage and sort my shit out for me? Yeah, I thought not, you innovative bastard.

In addition to this, I have no idea if one has to use a gun for this kind of thing, or if I can just hammer them in with gay abandon, so if anyone has experience with putting hazardous metal on their shoes, I’d like to hear about it. In the meantime, I guess I should probably just stick to oggling male models – they’re marginally cheaper, after all, given the price of booze round these parts, and I’m definately less resistant to being poked by them (Hey now! You saw that one coming, admit it).

(Things I have issued a moratorium on this week include:

• Graphics students in baseball caps.
• La Roux.
• People who don’t assist me in tracking down the t-shirt pictured above as soon as is humanly possible, because they are bastards who are obstructing my happiness and I hate them.

I’m off to try and find a way of wearing black without roasting myself like a turkey. There’s probably a stuffing joke in there somewhere, but what do you want from me? I’m sweltering.)

THANKS FOR THE MAMMARIES

Sometimes, it’s shitty having breasts. Hard to believe, I know, given that Western society has led us to believe that we live in a mammocentric universe, but don’t be fooled – these puppies can be a pert, bouncy, awe-inspiring hindrance when they want to be. Admitedly, they’re ideal for filling out an Agent Provocateur bra (The Aliyah is my usual set of choice, in case any of you creeps and perverts were wondering), but put them in the wrong kind of menswear and it’s a weird, lumpy, Joseph-Merrick-style no-man’s land of frump which, quite literally, no man would be interested in visiting. Because I never learn from my mistakes, however, and because I sometimes, in my down-time, dress like an extra from Wayne’s World, I inevitably still flip through menswear editorials every now and then and try to imagine what life would be like if I were a titless, six-foot being who could stride through life like a tall drink of water rather than say, one who shuffled through it like Jimmy Krankee in a Motorhead shirt; with that in mind, when I recieved the new J. W. Anderson lookbook via email yesterday morning (featuring a familiar face and a very unfamiliar wig, no less) I immediately found myself wondering if any of it was appropriately gender-neutral:

 

The sight of Ashley Stymest in a nipple-grazing wig, looking like a puny Rick Owens in white short-shorts, is a lot for a woman to take in before a strong drink, much less before coffee, but if it’s my duty to spend my days looking at barely-legal male models in a state of partial undress, then so be it – we all have our cross to bear. Once I’d adjusted to the shock, however – I haven’t had hair that flowing since I was seven, for fuck’s sake! - I was pleasantly surprised by how unisex the whole collection was, and even moreso by the hardware in the second picture, above (I have no idea if it’s a “stylist’s own” deal, or if it’s made by the designer, but either way, I’d be eager to get my hands on it). This too, I think, would work on someone who wasn’t a lanky (albeit symmetrical) streak of piss:

Especially if it’s made of silk, which it appears to be. I hate to go all Rachel Zoe on you, but isn’t that purple just fucking awesome (I could add that it was “killing it”,  or that “I die[d]“, or that it was ‘bananas” or whatever, but it’s a little-known rule that these phrases shouldn’t enter your vernacular until you reach a certain X to Y ratio of fame to eccentricity)? I’d like to think that even knockers couldn’t ruin this top, or that, if they did, that I could at least add the curvy woman’s boring and slightly fat-shaming best friend, the belt. The wig, I’m assuming, is optional, which is lucky for me, because, unlike Ash “The Illustrated Man-Boy” Sytmest, I have the kind of ten-head which has always required a fringe. 

(In case anyone is interested, an article which I believe I originally penned for the seemingly now-defunct War magazine has also been published in this zine:

And can be read online. If you’ll excuse me, thanks to a tip from a commenter about some Acne shoes on ebay, I’m off to piss my afternoon away on internet auctions. Christ, I excite even myself sometimes.)

A DEVIL IN THE WOODS

As you know, if there’s one thing I’m good at – innuendo aside – it’s deleting my obviously rushed entries after a pang of guilt, and trying to replace them with more fully-formed ones. I realise that you don’t wait two weeks between posts to hear about how excited I am about my latest dye job, or which John Waters film I’ve been watching, and as a “blogger” (urgh!) I’m supposed to offer you something at least a little useful or insightful to read; with that in mind, I’m going to share with you a particular sartorial quirk of my own which might, at least, fit the dual purpose of educating and entertaining, the entertainment stemming mainly from the fact that it makes me look like a total fucking whackjob.

Firstly, I should say that I’m working on the assumption that we all have times when we hate everything that we own, because I know this to be a universal truth. There are probably some assholes who never have this problem – Lady GaGa probably wakes up excited to wear yet another cunt-strangling lurex leotard, for example, and Dita Von Teese, in all likelihood, faces the day secure in the knowledge that she can pull on whichever samey and derivative neo-1950s gown is closest to her bed – but I’ve been having it for months, and the pressure of looking at a rail of neutral black every day and still being stumped is driving me slowly insane.  I could be belittling and say that it’s because things more important than fashion have been cropping up lately, and I could then be a total wispy moron and add a rejoinder about how there’s nothing more important than fashion, Karl Lagerfeld is my God, I practically shit LV monograms, etc. etc., but you all know that really, I just want to be able to look really fucking good every day, more likely for the purposes of seduction than in the hopes that I’ll run into Marc sodding Jacobs at Dalston Superstore. 

With that in mind, I decided to start out the whole long and pointless process by laying out ten items on the bed that didn’t make me turn away in horror and start from there. I ended up with these:

1. Black leather motorcycle jacket.
2. Some black, well-tailored and fairly narrow harem pants.
3. Cropped, grey racerback vest, oversized.
4. A chiffon, tiger-print blouse.
5. Blouson motorcycle jacket, faded to grey.
6. Black studded chiffon evening jacket with stud-encrusted epaulettes.
7. Oversized faux-fur stole with tails.
8. 3inch Christ-on-crucifix pendant.
9. Black sweater with wide, Balmain-style shoulderpads.
10. Black leather miniskirt, highwaisted and very short.
11. Extremely haggard skull and eagle t-shirt, wearing into holes.

I know that’s technically eleven and not ten, but I’m only human, after all; a grasping, materialistic human who has a glut of things and no inclination to wear most of them, at that, rather than the kind of lucky, free-spirited rough sleeper that Erin Wasson might admire, unfettered by the near-medieval torture of having too many clothes. 

Because appearing nonchalant doesn’t, for some reason, come as easily to me as it does to those fortunate homeless bastards, the next step after making the shortlist is for me to formulate an image of the kind of person I’d like to reflect to the outside world. If you’re interested in doing this yourself, it can be as Byzantine and ridiculous as you like, if only so that I can feel less like a luntic when I’m staring at my half-bare clothes rail and wondering if I’d like to look like someone who was once in a no-wave band, but now works as a stylist, and maybe I’d like their fictional husband to be an artist who used to be in a motorcycle gang. You know, something like that, but whatever. It’s not as though I get eerily specific or anything. Anyway, once I’ve formulated this really vague and casual outline, I might, if I could be bothered that day, or I wasn’t busy doing something really interesting and cool, start looking at everything else that I have, and start wondering if that person would wear it. And then buying new clothes on the same principle. Is that weird? That’s probably weird. When I started writing this I felt pretty confident in sharing my methods, but it’s petering out because I’m starting to realise that spending the last two months with only intermittent internet and no landline has possibly left me a little like Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway, muttering about warbrobe management to a handbag with a face drawn on it.

Sorry about that. Could we maybe pretend that I’m still cool?

(If I could, by some miracle, get this jacket in my wardrobe, it would definately nudge something out of the top ten eleven, even though I think having three leathers in there would probably be counterproductive, and would completely ruin the point of the exercise:

Call me, though, Jen. Perhaps you’d be interested in swapping it for a particularly gaudy and tasteless religious pendant, or a different leather jacket of significantly lesser value [that grammar was wrong, I can feel it]? That’s just how I roll, baby. That’s just how I roll.)