notes on dressing and its person

i was notified of this excerpt when Zulkhairi posted it on facebook.


I've been thinking about how i want to develop my style
I want my clothes to have a sort of deep, earthy feeling

casual and comfortable, colorful
strange
happy

warm


full of character


there are people who can dress in a certain way
that evokes a wave of emotions and memories and images all at once
this feeling, this quality surrounds them in a very natural way
as though the clothes they wear are simply an extension of who they are

nothing more, nothing less


a while ago i saw this boy
i couldn't identify a single label he was wearing
instead i saw and felt a collection of things
like

the wind, old curtains, sand, pearls, kaleidoscopes,
sailboats, treasure chests.....


it was very special
very inspiring

i appreciate people bringing something beautiful to the streets


my wardrobe right now is too coherent
too based on labels
lame
i want to collect different, more anonymous clothes
maybe i need to start going vintage shopping again

i want to dress like a scrapbook


- Yui, a slowboat to mediocrity


isn't the name of her blog entirely delightful in itself? a slow boat is exactly the anodyne i'm on these days.. 


i was just conversing with an acquaintance from five years ago. and he reminded me of how lurid i used to dress in those dark days.. a flimsy lilac scarf, clearly intended for nothing else but embellishment (like a magpie) one of those vests/waist coats that gay men like to layer over tight tees when they feel the need to be "dressy", spiky hair with side-swept bangs a la chinese boybanders.. 


i went through a scarf phase around then, when i was seventeen. every day it was skinny jeans and another scarf.. regular as clockwork.


then came the "drapey drapey" phase as Denver likes to call it, as i moved on towards art school.. black on black, twist and turn, clothes were worn upside down, in and out, layer upon layer upon layer, belts worn twisted around the arm, the throat, like i was Xena the warrior princess, shirts as pants, squeezing my calves into sleeves meant for arms, skirts as billowing capes.. that was certainly the most experimental and "trying" of my style evolution. it was the crest.. and i prided myself then, on inventing what i thought were new ways to wear old clothes. i argued for new silhouettes, new shapes, new proportions, transgressing the boundaries of the normal. 


i had a lot of fun out of what was actually an extremely limited wardrobe. and a lot of nights spent devising outfits. and i'd still end up late to work/school the next morning. (i haven't broke that last habbit though, unfortunately.)


come to think of it, my wardrobe remains rather skimpy. in all honesty, i only have five pairs of shoes that i am willing to wear. and out of those five, four gets regular usage. pants, perhaps a dozen usable ones, but only half of that precious dozen makes it out onto the streets on a regular day.


a grand total of three belts, two of which are black so that rules them out automatically and the last one was purloined from my mother's closet. it is really the only one that i require though. dark brown leather, of a decently slim width and the of course, the all-important buckle, which is something that makes or breaks an item of apparel for me (usually) - a softly lambent brass buckle which feels very solid in my hands. i detest buckles which are overtly shiny and of insignificant weight. it immediately casts a cheap pallour over the entire item. the buckle of my mother's belt is of an aged gold; perhaps it was shiny once, but the decades have erased that bane and a subtler hue has glided into its place...  


i add to my wardrobe on such a slow basis, it is akin to watching a building go up. i'm not exaggerating here. the rate is that slow. 


some clothing categories receive new items in their ranks more regularly than others of course - sweaters, shirts and strangely enough for a country like Singapore, hats. pants are hard, shoes almost impossible, bags i don't feel the need because i'm largely satisfied with the two bag packs i have, along with a handful of totes but that's about it. 


i have often wondered what it would be like to be in possession of a wardrobe that can easily be bought. a wardrobe that is renewed, restaffed constantly, needlessly, on a whim. 


i think i would be overwhelmed. how could i possibly have a favourite shoe when there would be say, forty seven other favourites? i would feel crowded. 


part of what works for me is the intimate knowledge i have of my possessions. i particularly like to wear items that have been gifted to me. it tells me that the gifter knows me well enough, that i occupy a certain place on their list of priorities, that they love me enough to think of me when they chance upon something that might not have been in my path but through them, the item now resides with me. 


"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” 
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince


oh little prince, it is as if i'm encased in a bubble of secrets known only to myself and the gifter unless i choose to share it with someone. 


thrifting at second hand shops and gifts allow me to indulge in that bubble, because they have a story attached to them. as much as i love Muji, what could a random shirt tell me about it? yes it is a nice shirt, nice fabric, nice colour, whatever. but it doesn't have a story. i was browsing, i found something i liked, and surprisingly, i had enough money to buy it. that's all there is to it. 


of course, it gets stale. on more mornings that i can remember, i have slide open the wardrobe door only to be confronted with the same options over and over. most of the time, i make decisions based on what has NOT be worn too recently and who i'm meeting during the day. has that person/group seen me in those pants i wore like, two days ago? no? good that means i can wear that pair of pants. yet again. 


sometimes i love an outfit so much i wish to wear it in the exact same combination. possibly in the same week. but maybe with a different pair of socks (that's the most prosperous department of my wardrobe i suppose, even outstripping the hats. when you're feeling blue and broke, a purchase as tiny as a new pair of socks cheers me up immensely. they're relatively inexpensive, they can't be sourced from second hand shops/flea markets and they're SOCKS. i wish more people would gift me with brilliant socks!)


i always think that its far more skillful to wear the same item repeatedly (and i do mean repeatedly) but styled such that it goes with previously unthinkable combinations, rather than to simply have so many options you could appear in an entirely different look every day. to tease the mileage to its maximum. and if you think hard enough, that's never really a maximum to an item's mileage. unless, like me, you wear a shoe with such frequency till the sole erodes and drops off. until then, one can do nothing but bid adieu to what was a much-loved possession. 


now that i'm in my early twenties, black simply holds no sway over me anymore. the last time i voluntarily wore black, it was for a wedding. perhaps it is with the liberation of the mind that one feels the richness and vivacity of colour. colour is inherently enmeshed with life, i think. there is infinite potential to be explored with colour, which generally mirrors my attitude towards life. i would like to think that i am, on the whole, an optimistic person. though should a stranger chance upon my blog, they'd never know it. they'd think i bath in melancholy daily. it IS a particularly melancholic period in my life, stretching over three years now, but i know, somehow, that it will pass in time. 


i've been planning to write more about dressing and the person.. and this is a start i suppose. a bit narcissistic to be writing about my personal mantras and rules but i've never gave form to them before. its all in the head when one dresses... but i want to start to document it. 


anyway, i keep coming back to these two ladies captured by Hanneli these days:

each so perfect... the first girl with her ethereal locks, the faded flowers, her expression; conjures images of a romantic sprite dancing through fields of flowers, she would love Monet, she would belong in a Monet. and the second girl, i am impossibly envious of the colours she's put together. the perfect dusty rose, is it not? i am but completely enthralled. i want to wear them and luxuriate in what must surely be so comfortable. 

at odd moments i catch myself surveying the scene in the hopes of finding a potential someone.

then, in the heady mob of heaving bodies, one feels inexplicably lonesome and for lack of a better word, empty. this was not the way i'd envisioned myself; it was plain old fun, surely. the music inane though irresistible, the body relinquishing the week's stress. but each trip to the dance floor harbored an irrational grain of hope, always. i don't want to keep returning to a scene like this over and over again. demeaning. contrived. impossible. 


horrific to think about - would my years ahead be filled with more of this? 

because it always starts the same, prolonging the wistful hope over the duration of the night, and inevitably ending with a leaden heart that implode a little more each time.

happiness is many things.

it is going grocery shopping with the partner.

a homecooked meal with everyone present.

that everyone finds time for each other.

watching your sister grow up (though this one's a double-edged sword.. i just want her to retain a child's innocence but it slips away more and more each year)

reading a really good book filled with sentences that tongue your soul just right

doing nothing, simply lying in bed, head on his chest and listening to his heartbeat.

perhaps happiness is really just knowing that you have someone with which to bury your soul and all its myriad of troubles, worries, secrets.

we bled into the same pool of tears, pain dissolving into collective memory borne by each heart. 

We’re always looking. It’s human nature to want to be found.


Ryan O'Connell, How To Get Rejected By Your Crush


his most acute article yet. it's my life buoy these days - thought catalog. 


in other earth-shattering news, i'm very pleased with my new loans from the library. whatever singapore's faults may be, its library system is inviolable. 


i'd spent all day at work feeling bitter and longing to come home to expel it all out through writing but i'm not in the mood for inspiration. i'm in the mood to be mollycoddled and told there's nothing wrong with me. i am angry. i am bitter. i wish i could simply have all the wonderful books in the world drop into my lap and they'd be ones that i instantly love and they'd tell me that despite this, despite all the crap that has transpired, they'd be my temporary refuge from solitude's insanity. a temporary refuge is better than no refuge at all. 

no, i won't

the jesus and mary chain - just like honey

for you, 

i'll be your plastic toy

i'll be your plastic toy

for you

i've been thinking of this song for the entire day.

... passing invisibly, inaudibly, like a cloud, swift, veil-like upon hills, falling indeed with something of a cloud's sudden sobriety and stillness upon faces which a second before had been utterly disorderly. but now mystery had brushed them with her wing; they had heard the voice of authority; the spirit of religion was abroad with her eyes bandaged tight and her lips gaping wide. mrs.dalloway, virginia woolf.


who's afraid of virginia woolf? i certainly am. i'm still trying mrs.dalloway.

never let me go

my baby sister hanxin and i, she (then) at two and i fourteen. this was taken at Goldcoast during our family vacation. i even remember that jumper i'm wearing - it's Topman. those days when there was only one in town and that was located at Wisma Atria. i thought it was the absolute bomb then.

anyway. now, nine years later, i sent her off at the airport today; she's flying to Australia once more, only this time we're not accompanying her - it's for a school enrichment course. oh the kids these days.

funny thing is, Ivan revived that photo of the fourteen year old me just today, of all days. oh ivan. he'll always be that boy that the fourteen year old me thought of as a demi-god.

nearly a decade has passed and we've progressed from Friendster to Facebook but he's the only boy i've never met in real life. we talked on the phone for well over a year, hours upon hours, every single day, a nightly ritual neither of us neglected. yet we never officially met. oh he did spot me occasionally, he being from Anglican High, which is all of three minutes' walk from my place. but i was never as lucky to spot him. omnipotent and omnipresent. hence the demi-god thing.

the nightly ritual was shattered when Ryker came into my life. if there was one thing i regretted, it's the loss of a faithful companion on the phone. i really miss that, talking for hours into the wee hours, every night, despite waking up at six am for yet another day of secondary school (the horror.)

now i am so out of touch with something so pleasant and simple that i wonder what we had to talk about at all. i wonder if i can even fill up ten minutes worth of talk time now let alone five hours.

i'm petrified of boring the person at the other end of the line. i crave it though. i crave the connection, the relationship, the person. it occupies my thoughts - no, it would be more accurate to say that it invades and monopolises my thoughts ruthlessly, ceaselessly.

i don't know what to do about it.

"But I still have to face the hours, don't I? I mean, the hours after the party, and the hours after that..."

yes you guessed it. it's The Hours again. always.

If I were thinking clearly, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat of my extinction, I live with it too.

The Hours

meandering

Nude Study

When your body and my body
Lie together under a white sheet
Your head on my arm
Your leg thrown over my leg
The whole long continent of you
The pale ridgeline of your ribcage and hip and thigh
Neighbor to me
There is nothing that needs to be explained
Or accomplished, the world is at rest and complete
And though
We drift apart in the eddies of the day
We will find our way back
To the slight hollows that mark the place
Where we lie now, astonished, saying nothing.

Garrison Keillor


this morning i stumbled upon his journal. he dances a beautiful dance; i found myself enraptured in a thunderous reverie. an oxymoron to be sure, but the silence that fell upon me ached to shout of approval, of admiration, of agreeability, as Miss Austen would say.


"violently in love", wrote Miss Austen. could that be considered to be another oxymoron? 


i am reading Pride & Prejudice for the third time, and have rented the 2005 film starring Keira Knightley for the weekend. i do think she makes a rather apt Elizabeth Bennet, not incapable of that vivacious wit and "fine eyes", that so captivated Mr.Darcy.


on a side note, i found both book and film versions of The Jane Austen Book club to be charming. highly recommended for fans and non-fans of Jane Austen. non-fans shall soon be tempted to pick up an Austen and be transported to somewhere slightly delirious and magical.


he is so very beautiful in so many ways. i am listening to his selection of songs as i write this and it couldn't be any more agreeable to the soul.