I’ve written about this before, but I am at my happiest these days when I am making something with my hands. I think crafting has overtaken reading – gasp! – as the hobby that brings me the most contentment. I am loath to describe myself as a “creative” in any real sense, but the act of making stuff is my true passion. While I still adore my library, my current home dream is to have a little art studio. [Think I can talk my husband into giving over our garden shed to me? Or maybe building a new, less spider-filled one? Hahaha!] If money were no object, I would pick up painting, pottery, and metalsmithing in a heartbeat. I want to make things! All the things!

Alas, real life requires me to scale down my dreams somewhat, and make do with what skills and supplies I already possess. Jewelry is something I’m obsessed with at the moment, and while I don’t have the means to make stuff out of metal and stones, I have a few other media at my disposal. Mixed media pieces intrigue me so I have been exploring the possibilities of combining my embroidery and beading efforts.

I jot down my ideas, in sketch form, in a notebook to keep track of them. I call these “prototypes” but they’re more along the lines of very embryonic designs. Most of them never progress past that point, but I like to revisit them from time to time; sometimes, an old idea sparks new inspiration. The next step is to mock up a life-size version of the design on paper, and then go from there. I like using a medium thickness felt as the “backing” – or canvass, if you will – for my pieces because it’s still workable with a needle, but sturdy enough to provide some structure to the piece.

The first piece I’m going to show you today started off as a putative harness. The logistics of that defeated me, so I put the idea aside, and re-fashioned the piece as a bib. It turned into a very large bib, but having already cut the felt (big mistake), I didn’t want it to go to waste. I like large jewelry, so the size wasn’t a problem from an aesthetic perspective, necessarily … but I didn’t reckon with the amount of time and effort it would take to embroider/bead by hand.

Hours.

Hours and hours. And hours.

About half way through, I gave up and put it aside for the sake of my own sanity. Weeks passed. I worked on other craft projects in the meantime. But the piece weighed on me. I’d already made a big investment – in beads alone – and it felt like a waste. So I pulled it out and looked at it with fresh eyes. Didn’t hate it as much. Decided to plunge on.

Hours and hours later (probably close to 50 in total), I was finally done.

I’m proud of it as a first effort, particularly as a matter of perseverance. But I wanted to get a little more adventurous.

For my next effort, I decided to incorporate fabric and reclaimed jewelry into the mix. I covered the felt with material scavenged from a J. Crew skirt I thrifted; the fabric was a beautiful abstract floral brocade shot with gold thread – almost like a painting. It’s the perfect backdrop for my embroidery, and I used beading to pick up some of the colours and add some extra sparkle. I also added an enamel pin (thrifted) to enhance the maximalist effect. “More is better” is my guiding philosophy with these pieces; I’m aiming for a riot of colours and textures in every piece.

The chain here is also reclaimed from thrifted costume jewelry. The upcycling aspect is one of my favourite parts – you guys know how much I love finding (or, in this case, making) beauty from the trash heap.

Emboldened by my experiences, I decided to keep experimenting. This photo from the A/W 2019-2020 Stella McCartney collection (courtesy French Vogue) provided some serious inspo:

I had a large metal ring I planned to incorporate into my next project, and I decided to wrap it in yarn and use it as a connector/feature piece.

I’ve been having a lot of fun making these pieces, and friends have even started giving me scraps of old jewelry to upcycle. The only drawback is that I have more ideas than time but … onwards and upwards.

Advanced Class

When I think about pattern mixing with plaid, the first combination that comes to mind is florals. Inspired by the master himself, Dries Van Noten, I decided to dig deeper. So, um, stripes it was. I think this outfit works quite nicely, even though it’s definitely “in your face” bright.

*pats self on the back*

Funnily enough, I wore the same sweater to my son’s advance birthday party back in June (we always hold his party for friends early to avoid summer vacation schedule conflicts) and again on the day of his actual birthday last week when we treated him to a morning of fun & games at Chuck E. Cheese. In related news, we have an 8-year old in the house now and OMG how is that even possible?! I still vividly remember when he could fit into the crook of my arm; meanwhile, he’s a 4 foot 7 dynamo who can run (and talk) circles around his mom. No, I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Notes: Gap sweater (thrifted, $5); Tracy Reese skirt (consignment, $20); Derek Lam flats (thrifted, $12); Coach bag (thrifted; $40).

The New Skort

Remember the skort? The shorts that looked like a skirt? These Maggie Walt pants are the maxi version of that, and I can’t get enough of them. I’ve been wearing them quite a bit this summer, in no small part thanks to the cooler weather. They are a heavy linen, so they’d probably be too warm for actual summer weather, but they’re a good weight for the non-summer we’ve been having.

I kept the rest of the outfit simple to let them take the stage, so to speak, but there is nothing basic about it (or so I like to think). The Rafael necklace works beautifully with the patterned waistband, adding just a bit of colour and extra visual interest.

Notes: No name top (thrifted, $7); Maggie Walt pants ($6.50); Rafael necklace (thrifted, $8); J. Crew shoes (retail, $80).

Plaid Overload

You’re not sick of plaid yet, are you? I hope not, because I’m not tired of this maxi skirt yet, so you’ll be seeing it again in the coming months. And speaking of pattern mixing, I had another brainwave and decided to pair this plaid with an abstract geometric print in a similar shade of blue. Still trying to make Dries proud over here … although I feel like he might find the lapis necklace a bit too safe and matchy-matchy. Baby steps.

As a side note, the top is one I had earmarked for sale last year, only to find that no one wanted to buy it. After a few months, I decided to keep it to, um, prove a point or something. I’ve ended up wearing it a fair bit, which makes me feel like I’m winning the argument with the imaginary naysayers who didn’t see the potential of this very cute top, ahem.

Notes: Kate Spade Saturday top (thrifted, $5); Ralph Lauren skirt (thrifted, $6.50); Me Too flats (thrifted, $16); vintage necklace (thrifted, $8).

Thrifting has its downsides. There, I said it. The main one, in my opinion, is that it introduces you to nice, expensive things at a completely affordable price point … but it offers no guarantee of supply. One recent example was a magazine I picked up at Value Village for 99 cents (plus tax). It wasn’t just a regular magazine, it was a special edition of French Vogue featuring the 2015 Spring/Summer collections (Paris, New York, Milan, London). The entire thing was basically a photo-book report on that season’s collections, and it was amazing. Minimal ads and text. Pages and pages of runway photos. I spent a blissful hour or two poring over it. And then I wanted to see more. Have never seen one of these magazines at the thrift store before, probably won’t again.

Do you know how much these magazines normally run?

$40CAD plus tax.

No joke.

I know, I know. Vogue has an online database of runway collections, free to access. Somehow, it’s not the same. I like having all the (physical) photos in front of me. And being a person with a decent chunk of disposable income, I went and scratched the itch; I bought the 2019-2020 Fall/Winter collections edition at Chapters. It was painful, but I managed to rationalize it. Still – dammit it, thrifting, for introducing me to yet another expensive habit.

All that being said, let’s get to the real point of this post.

For years, I did not look at runway collections, finding them irrelevant to my experiences as an average consumer in a non-major urban centre. As I have shifted my perspective on style recently – approaching it more as an art form/means of creative expression – I have begun to appreciate couture again. It’s a point of view. It might not be directly applicable or translatable to my real life needs, but it can inform the way in which I look at and use clothes. I am also reconsidering the idea of “inspo”. I’ve never been a huge fan of copying others’ outfits, but the process doesn’t have to be that literal. The best sources of inspirations are those which push me to see things from a fresh perspective, to ask myself “but what about this?”

I found flipping through the photos from the collections to be a great creativity-sparking exercise. At a high level, just seeing all the different silhouettes, styles, styling choices, colours, textures, and so on, made me feel inspired … not to go out and buy new things, but to go through my closet and try new things. Then there were dozens of outfits that I went to analyze more closely – things that caught my eye on a page, made me go “wow”. I looked at these and tried to break them down: what message/feeling did each look convey to me, what did I like about them, what elements would translate to my personal style, etc.

I thought it might be interesting to some of you if I ran through an example. This is a more literal case than most, but that’s because Dries Van Noten speaks my language, style-wise.

Let’s start at the beginning. What I loved about the original was the Bohemian-Adventurer flair, seemingly haphazardly assembled but with a keen eye to the overall harmony of the outfit. I loved the drama of the fur collar, and how the ornate top was juxtaposed with the other pieces, yet brought them together in a really cool, unexpected way. I liked the volume of the pants, and how the outfit retained its slim vertical lines despite all the layers. And somewhere in the mix, there is a kind of devil-may-care attitude that I would love to bring to my own life (even just a little).

As I said, my resulting “inspired by” look is a fairly close translation of the original. The pants have an interesting shape and volume, and the high waist works well with a cropped jacket, keeping the vertical lines. The waistband offered a good contrast with the bright print top, adding a bit of Bohemian flair. The top was probably the one item I would not normally have used in an outfit like this, were it not for the Dries inspiration. (I could see myself pairing these pants and jacket, because the proportions work so well). But I like it here. In fact, this outfit works equally well without the jacket, which I ended up taking off as the day got warmer.

The one thing I chose to forego from the inspo was the extra accessory. I think the necklace is a fabulous styling choice on the runway, but for my real life, the outfit was enough of a “statement” without anything like that.

I have been doing similar exercises as I come across runway looks that really speak to me, so let me know if you would be interested in more posts like this.