If a black dress is the sartorial equivalent of the daily coffee: practical, sharp and dark, then the statement dress would be the wardrobe counterpart of an iced hazelnut triple shot macchiato with cream and chocolate syrup. These dresses are meant to be talked about , admired, swooned over and envied. They are the dresses you buy for a special ocassion, the sort of dresses your daughter will want to steal. The Alex Perry dress pictured above is like a gelato on a summer’s day: pastel hued, light and delicious.
Josh Goot has really played with proportions this season – I love this beautiful bustier, thigh split, long sash number. It’s modern and sexy at the same time.
This Dion Lee number is a sexy and intricate play with textures and lenghts.
3 more outfits and the full story up now on Vogue.com.au here !
photographed by : Alice Wesley- Smith
Artist Vicki Lee and photographer Ted O'Donnell met, fell in love and started producing amazing art babies. I first encountered their pictures last year , shortly before they held an exhibition titled IS./WET and was absolutely fascinated by the mix of Ted's photography and Vicki's paint experiments. Nearly a year has passed and they are busy creating more mysterious ,beautiful, visceral and atmospheric art in a series titled TO END : flowers , Renaissance lighting and billowing smoke fuse ominously with melting, dripping colour taking on another dimension. Their playfully combustible energy, friendly rapport and total lovesickness fashions the kind of roses I'd love to receive on Valentine's Day. I picked their brains about love, art, inspiration and squid...
How did you two meet?
Ted : A batch of rainbow chard in the veggie shop.. we still often hang out at the veggie shop.
Vicki:We met at an organic fruit and vegetable store. I was fascinated with this colourful rainbow chard spinach (it was pink, purple, yellow, red and all the colours in between) and he started telling me all about its nutritional value and how it is actually quite sweet. He ripped off a bit and put it in my mouth to taste. Game over.
What attracted you about your partner initially?
Ted: Disarming beauty, brutal honesty, and a unique way of seeing the world around her
Vicki:Ted anchors such deep sense of calm internally it seems to permeate to the aura surrounding him. He's a man of the Earth, which is the ultimate sexiness in my eyes. When we first started dating, he picked me up for the movies wearing a Ralph Lauren tweed blazer on and no shoes, which to me screamed a capacity and desire to do it all and not be limited by much, especially as he didn't say anything about it as if it was a normal thing to do.That and he has perfect curly hair. I LOVE curly hair.
What attracts you about him/her now?
Ted: Her quest to live life beautifully on her own terms ...and still her unique way of seeing and responding to the world around her.
Vicki: So many things at all different levels. To answer in short though, there is an excitement surrounding our union as spirits.
He's a yes man in the best possible way. We end up in the strangest and most awesome situations because we both have a thirst for raw experience and pleasure. Ive always seen human interaction like the mixing of chemicals. Its what is produced in the fusion that says it all and makes you go back for more.
What is her/his most annoying characteristic?
Ted: Paint.. everywhere...... (no really, everywhere)
Vicki: The same thing I'd say is his best characteristic. Man of the Earth is an Earther, watch out!
You create beautiful art together. How did it come into existence?
Ted: It's just what happens when we are together, we like to do it. Once we started playing around with various ideas we just felt the compulsion to continue.. it wasn't really a choice we made
Vicki: I'd been stewing on this concept for a few months and over wine one night we just started putting it into action at home.We were mixing all sorts of kitchen ingredients like tahini, honey and turmeric powder to make the paint and dripping it all over roses and orchids we could find lying around.
What do you love the most about working together?
Ted: The fact that it is a work in progress, with no foreseeable end date..
Vicki:It always feels like we have a funny little secret going. Like an in joke but no one else is caring or watching haha
I also like watching Ted in action. He's a lighting genius.
What inspires you?
Ted: Music, self expression, honesty, fearlessness..
Vicki:Movement. To me, life is movement. Everything in it and about it passes and changes and transforms and thankfully never remains as is. So seeing this process in nature, for example in moss forming or waves crashing can keep me pretty happily occupied. How beautiful everything becomes when you realise it cannot last.Even when you think you're regressing, time means you are always moving forward.By movement I don't mean physical movement, I mean flow, lucidity and vitality.I call it juju. The WD40 of life.
What are you obsessed with at the moment ?
Ted: Single fins.. my vegetable garden.. the art of fermentation.. and the quest for rich tonality in my photographs
Vicki: Squid. I google the movement and pattern change of squid every day. I think it might be an addiction...Snakes. The rainbow serpent, the kundalini snake, shakti and even sperm all take the same form and mean the same thing. It weirds me out. Also this one tone of grey that is almost khaki olive but not quite. Its magnificent and graceful but strong as well.
Favourite book / tv show / film ?
Ted: Most things by Hitchens, The Old Man And The Sea - dont really watch any tv shows... - lately, The Great Beauty and anything with Phillip Seymour Hoffman in it.
Vicki: Book - The Picture of Dorian Gray -Oscar Wilde, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Songyal Rinpoche...film : I'm a bit embarrassed to say its Forrest Gump! Tv show : I don't watch tv, its too big a commitment.
What is on your bucket list as a couple?
Ted: Live in Paris, live in New York, then dissappear in the jungle somewhere.. making beautiful pictures all the while
Vicki: Get a block of land by a water stream and design and build a place from scratch. Aim to have given a bit more than we've taken by the end of it all.
What will you do for Valentine's day?
Ted:Enjoy each others company while avoiding the mass hysteria.
Vicki:On our first Valentines day together, Ted took me to the street he grew up on with a 6 pack of Peroni and 2 skateboards...we have a bit of a tradition now so maybe Five dock skate park this year?…I love a bit of cheese , it just has to be good quality cheesy.
Check out their new website www.tovl.com.au and contact them via email to reserve your piece of To End magic.
The other night I had a great work dinner with some of my fellow bloggers. We were rolling out funny stories of our various attempts at getting the best picture with less than happy results - like the time I self shot a story on a hill and had my brand new Nikon D7000 roll off the tripod , while I helplessly watched the lens roll down the incline cracking all the way. Or the poor boyfriends who are forever trying to get a good insta picture but since they have exactly zero professional skills, they keep getting it blurry every time, then exclaiming : it's not my fault, it's the model! Then there is the beautiful picture of a deserted beach with a tagline "exhaling in paradise", when in all reality, it's 7 am and in an hour the beach will be as full of people and boats as the Athen's crazy Piraeus port. But the worst must be trying to smile and look fresh when you have the worst flu/ period pain/ migraine headache. In a bikini.
Being a blogger is to nurture a fantasy world with a healthy dose of reality. Every blogger worth their salt will not try and sell something to their readers that they do not like because in all reality we are the curators of fashion/experience/food/travel. If you sell out , then your readers will not trust your taste.
Similarly, it is often easy to dress up fashion. Amazing vertiginous heels, sexy dresses, beautiful bags - they are so incredible, it isn't hard to look good in them. But what happens on those days that you are going to a backyard BBQ, a festival, beach party, concert? Those are the days that it can be hard to think about pieces to wear. I have compiled a few of these heroes that I love at the moment for all those life's "reality" moments . Shot on an actual beautiful deserted part of Byron Bay's Belongil beach sanctuary
I love a bit of nautical . It makes everyone look so 50s Med, classy and pulled together.This is the kind of outfit that could go from lunch at your potential inlaws to a friend's bbq (Sweater by Vanishing Elephant, shorts by Wrangler, flats by Sambag, sunglasses by Sheriff&Cherry, hat by Panama hats, necklace by Pink Lou Lou)
There is nothing more pretty on a summer's day than a white lace dress. This season do the high-low trend by wearing it with some wide two strap Birkenstock sandals for relaxed cool (dress by Lover, sandals by Birkenstock from Tuchuzy)
Sometimes it's all about denim cut-offs and a well cut t-shirt. It's the sort of throw on you wear when you pop down to the shops , go to a festival or a girlfriend's house. The best shorts for these occasions are not to short and a little bit baggy...comfort guaranteed. (top by Camilla&Marc, shorts by One Teaspoon, sunglasses by Sheriff & Cherry, vintage belt by Gucci )
A maxi dress is one of those pieces that keeps summertime breezy and relaxed. I love one that combines volume with interesting details and an exposed back - might as well show off that tan! ( dress by Free People, moccassin boots by Minnetonka, sunglasses by Sheriff & Cherry )
Snake print is huge this season and it works for easy dressing too - wearing it top to toe is total rock n' roll cool . ( Top and jeans by Maison Scotch, bikini top by Agent Provocateur, clutch by Asos, sunglasses by Sheriff & Cherry, crystal necklaces and bracelets from Crystal Castle )
photographed by Kasia Werstak on Byron Bay's gorgeous Belongil beach
When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with mermaids. Not happy, beautiful mermaids that welcome you onto their backs for a ride on their shimmering tails or give you rare pearl necklaces from the depths of their father's ocean but murderous, blood thirsty, mercurial creatures that await in the depths to pull you down by your feet into the black abyss of the ocean and devour you in chunks with their gnashing pointy teeth. It didn't help my case that I was obsessed with books from a young age, traversing the forbidden distance to the library on my own in search of more tales to feed my already overactive imagination.
When I first read Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, it somewhat dulled the fear that any time I get into the water I might be eaten but instead of this horror it took away, the tale brought a dull sadness and visceral pain into my somewhat innocent view of the world. For you that have never read the original of this not-quite-suitable-for-children story, the Little Mermaid is an altogether more tortured creature: once she gains her much wished for legs, she can hardly walk for the pain is like being cut with knives, the prince she loves falls in love with another woman and the only way the Mermaid is able to turn back into her previous form is to stab the prince to death with a witch's dagger. Innocent this story ain't and somehow , after reading this , I understood the world as it is - altogether more tragic, melancholy, fallible and imperfectly beautiful than I had previously presumed.
When I saw these clothes in Bonel Pr's showroom, they reminded me of the mermaids of my youth. Beautiful, fragile, kaleidoscopic, strong, unpredictable. It seemed entirely fitting that the young label's name is Dyspnea. Established in 2012 by Aimee-Cherie Kendall, Jameen Zalfen and Rachel Motteram in Perth, the new range titled Reptilia uses Swarovski crystal embellishments, leather, soft cotton, PVC ,plastic feel fabrics and mirror detailing for a demi-couture feel. Compelled by the colours , I borrowed these clothes and gave them a dystopian mermaid make-over on one of Australia's most beautiful (and whitest!) beaches - Hyams beach.
Dress by Dyspnea, headpiece by Sarah and Sebastian X Hatmaker
Top and skirt by Dyspnea, bracelet, rings and neckpiece by Sarah and Sebastian
Skirt and top by Dyspnea, cuff by Vera Xane, earrings by 8 Other Reasons
photographed by Alice Wesley-Smith
