from the sublime to the ridiculous

update - it's akira day and hot as blazes, so even if the skirt was done, there's no way we'd be wearing it.
working on the freaky skirt has got us thinking that there's a very fine line between something that's artfully couture and plain hideous. we'd love the finished thing to be along the lines of artfully couture, in the same way that ana's hats are (we dig the octopus).
when erin came over tonight to a feed (yes, we donna hayed with a spinach/ricotta/feta number, which like everything donna, owes its life to styling), the skirt as cape trick went down stone cold - as in "you remind me of one of those crazy knitter old ladies".

it's not like we love the cape idea. both capes and ponchos just seem wrong - a recent magazine with the heading "poncho power!" drove home how much we truly reckon something is wrong with the whole poncho concept, backed up by blogdogblog's imploring "make sense, not ponchos". however a cape, particularly a heavy one, has a heck of a lot more stability than a skirt - it won't droop as much, if a cape falls off or has a couple of gaps in it - no big deal - moreso however for the skirt. hmmm.

we'll just keep on keeping on, hopefully with the akira deadline in mind (fashion designer and mentor of sorts to knitwear designer lorinda grant is doing a talk, and we thought it would be fun to wear something a little different, hence the skirt, if we ever get the thing finished...)

thing is, even if we were to shell out the odd US$600 or so for an ana voog original, we'd probably try the hat on, think we looked like a total nutcase and it'd rarely ever see the light of day again.
it takes (guts? creativity? some sort of weird political statement?) something profound that we're not sure that we have.

the refused (a swedish punk band who have broken up, but the video for (amazonian linkage to cd and free song download) "new noise" has been requested a couple of times by visiting rockers programming ABC music video tv rage) got me thinking about fashion with their liner notes to "the shape of punk to come" - "like the rebellious swing kinds of the 40's or the crazy jazz heads of the 50's to the stylish mods of the 60's we all need to recognise that style in contradiction to fashion is necessary to challenge the conservatism of the youth cultures placed upon us. strict in our style but with a touch of elegance and freedom and individualism." (another aside in a list of many - it's not just us who thought the singer was a tad easy on the eye - readers of swedish elle magazine voted him in as sexiest man).