A new year...

And just like that we all moved into a fresh, new year...

I particularly like the beginning of the new year. The summer heat lends a languid tone to everything; rushing feels impossible, lounging is the only sensible activity for the long afternoons and perspective seems an easier concept than ever.

I've never been one for resolutions (I spent part of my New Years Eve talking to a friend about resolutions as opposed to goals and whether there is a *real* discernible difference between the two...). The only one I ever made a few years ago - to drink more champagne - was quite done in jest, yet really did colour every social occasion in 2011 with a sparkling effervescence! More so than anything else I spend January feeling reflective and thoughtful.

The La Luna SS2013/14 collection was our most successful by far and as I start sampling for the Winter collection and designing the next Summer collection I have been considering how far the label has grown over the years. As a designer I have more and more confidence in my ability to create and feel a new-found belief in the customers who I create for.

'Riverina' Dress in Blanc, from La Luna, SS2013

I have in the past felt some panic over the fact I don't cater for everyone; i don't do skirts above the knee; that tailored designs aren't particularly forgiving; that everything I will ever EVER make will be high-waisted; that all my jewellery could be roughly characterised as 'dainty'; that my necklaces are always long; that nothing I do seems to reflect current trends...

For the first time I feel completely at peace with the fact I create clothes for tall women with hourglass figures, with nips and tucks at the waist and more buttons than zips. I recognise my products aren't for everyone and that as various eras of fashion fall in and out of favour, the vaguely 'vintage'-ish look of my designs will oscillate between being interesting or naff to the large majority of people.

'Bird on a Wire' headpiece in Emerald from Buttermilk Sky, SS2009

This October will mark the 5 year anniversary since I released the first collection of headpieces 'Buttermilk Sky' under the Ginny & Jude moniker; which seems like a fairly important milestone in a small fashion house. I already have some spectacular plans percolating away for this year, kicking off with a complete website redesign (which will be ready for launch in a weeks time...) and I feel genuinely excited for the challenges that lie ahead.
Excitement tinged with just a pinch of panic mind you!

And even more exciting; if everything does indeed go to plan, I get to take a month off to gallivant around the globe with my Love in the Spring. Hurrah!

Happy New Year everyone!

rabia
xo

Happy Mothers Day! A little bit about my ma...

Today is Mothers Day - a day when we take some time to show our love and appreciation for our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and all the other strong, amazing women in our lives.

And this seems as good an occasion as any to give my own ma a bit of praise...

My beautiful mother Amanda picking flowers in the late 1970s

Here she is holding me in 1984. The tweed jacket I'm wearing is her handiwork!

My parents were idealists, passionate about the very specific decisions they had made about the childhood they wanted my younger brother and I to have. We were both birthed at home (in Annandale and Marrickville respectively), raised on a vegetarian diet and surrounded with music, books and sunshine. The television was almost never on and when it was always proved a rather strange experience: you see we had two; one that had a colour picture with no sound and beneath it, covered in a cloth, was a black and white television that provided the slightly out of sync audio.
Almost all our food was made from scratch by my ma - there was even a brief period when my parents grew wheat to grind into flour to make bread believe it or not - and it was all delicious, wholesome, unprocessed fare.

My brother and I hanging out in the garden in Marrickville

By today's standards some of these choices still seem extreme, so you can imagine how bizarre they would have been in the early 1980s. We lived a very simple life, both by choice and by necessity - my father was a musician who drove taxis, whilst my mum, then a primary school teacher, looked after us at home until we started school. And my childhood could not have been a happier one. My brother and I had several cubby houses we had created, dotted around the generous quarter acre block of a backyard and loved playing in the garden, learning about the different herbs and vegetables. We would go outside in the early hours and only come back in at night-fall. We were healthy, robust, adventurous children who had an appreciation for the small things in life instilled in us from an early age.

Reading to us with her 'reading glasses' which we found out only recently were completely for show. She was always quite the joker!

Messing around in front of the humongous rosemary bush in the back garden, behind the old stone shed.

Our birthday cakes were never new-fangled, tiered contraptions covered in a slick of coloured icing; we had wholemeal spiced pear upside-down cake. Rewards were fancy fruits - creamy custard apples and juicy mangoes. Summer treats were frozen bananas dipped in lemon to retain their creamy colour.

My brother patiently waiting for the cake-eating to begin at one of his birthdays - I love the decorations of colourful wooden beads and streamers. Not to mention that shirt!

Most of our clothes were made by our ma on a very old and very heavy sewing machine. Her handiwork was spectacular with hand smocking and embroidery on a number of beautiful pieces. Sometimes it's hard to believe when looking through old photos that we were even part of the 1980s because my mum dressed us so well. I can thank her for teaching me how to sew and to knit and to use my hands skilfully. I can safely say that my own talents will always seem rudimentary compared to hers.

Some examples of her work - a simple play dress on the left and some hand-smocking on the right.

As a kid I do remember going through periods of longing for different, 'normal' things - I held white bread exulted above all others and would do just about anything to get my hands on a pot of chocolate yogo. I absolutely LOVED the chain store clothing my well meaning grandmother would buy me for Christmas (that would all mysteriously disappear around February), wanted a Barbie doll pretty badly and would read banned trashy books like The Baby Sitters Club secretly at night with a torch.

Now, as an adult older than my own mother when I was born, I can only thank her for her steadfast patience, perseverance and practical skills. My brother and I both know how to create tasty, nutritious food in a flash; how to sew on a button and fix a hem; how to plant something and keep it living.
And most importantly we understand that hard work pays the greater dividends, to never give up no matter how ridiculous the whirlwind, to believe in our own abilities and to remember that happiness is more important than monetary gain. Given our chosen professions of designer and luthier (my very talented brother makes handmade guitars under the moniker Lockwood Guitars) are so very niche and specific, this last point is particularly important. We know that no matter what seemingly ludicrous decisions we make in life, our ma will always encourage us to do what feels best and true for us at any given time. And that is a luxury so many do not have.

Riverside hugs with ma

So here's to my mum Amanda - Happy Mothers Day!

rabia
xo

For the love of...fields of flowers

I have always loved flowers. And not in a slight 'oh yes, flowers are nice' way; in an overwhelming all-consuming sensory overload kind of way.

Where I grew up in the inner Sydney suburb of Marrickville, our 1/4 acre block was filled with all manner of simple, uncultivated flowers. I can remember the small waxy buttercups near the back door, the happy brights of the nasturtiums curled up the stone steps, the throbbing blue of the morning glory vine, the great purple clusters of bougainvillaea, the heritage five petal crimson roses which climbed haphazardly, clinging to the wall of the shed. These simple flowers were gathered into posies and scattered gleefully around the house.

Cheerful nasturtiums trailing the curb.

My brother and I in the vegetable patch, 1986

I was always trying - and very unsuccessfully mind you - to create some kind of field of flowers in the top left hand corner of the property, behind the mulberry tree. This rather barren part of the backyard was invariably choked with blackberry vines and curls of bracken, but I dug up a large proportion of it with my brother and tried to create something more colourful. Whilst we did find a great wealth of tiny glass bottles I now use for vases, the bracken always won out in the end.

Wild Forget-Me-Nots, in NY state. Stunning!

Traditionally cultivated varieties hold very little interest for me. I'm not particularly fond of gerberas, long stem roses (boring!) or long stem anything for that matter. I'm completely head-over-heels in love with the abandonment of wild flowers fluttering across a landscape.

Once when traveling in the Blue Mountains during winter many years ago we happened upon an abandoned wooden house surrounded by a field of jonquils. We hopped over the fence and I had no qualms at all ruining a pair of shoes getting through a muddy ditch to gather armfuls of this deliciously scented stuff. 

Drifts of Daffodils. Photo: Erin Glasener

When I think about traveling, my mind quickly jumps ahead to 'oooh, what flowers will I get to see?'. In New Zealand I was completely smitten with the Lupins. There is certainly no shortage of them over there, and yet each time we saw their multi-coloured heads bobbing around on the side of the road, I would exclaim with glee! We saw a glacier, trees bent over backwards from the wind, eerily blue lakes, and vistas that take your breath away, but the thing I remember most vividly was seeing those wild lupins everywhere.

Early morning Lupins!

Near Rarangi in Marlborough, a delightful seaside yellow variety.

Roadside Lupins. Never got tired of them! (Above 3 taken with a Holga, slide film, cross processed)

I still have a few floral fantasies that I must experience now the Lupins are out of the way:

One is to traipse - yes, traipse - through a field of bluebells. And I will almost definitely feel the need to lie down in them. That delicious silvery blue carpeting the floor beneath a canopy of soft green trees...

Bluebells!! Photo: Busy Nothings

Fanny Brawne knows what I'm talking about. Photo: a still from Bright Star 2009

The other revolves around striding through a field of wheat and poppies in Italy. Fans of the genre will immediately skip in their memories to that infamous scene in 'A Room with a View' where Lucy and George steal a kiss in the Italian countryside. 

Lucy approaching the lustful George in the 1985 film.

Red corn poppies dotted through a wheat field

There is something undeniably romantic about wild flowers; their recklessness, the all-consuming scale of quantity, the bright spark of colour and texture.

Native Flannel flowers en masse. Photo: Lilly Pilly

We had not been together long when my beau picked me up from the airport with a freshly picked bunch of flannel flowers he had gathered for me on his way into town. The epitome of romance.

xo
rabia

The garden of fashion

Yesterday I was bequeathed quite a beautiful piece of fashion history from a dear friend who was visiting from Berlin. 

Le Jardin Des Modes - The Garden of Fashion - is a rather exquisite French fashion journal from 1951 filled with delicious inspiration for the Autumn/Winter collection I'm currently designing...

Lecon De Mode - Feshion Lesson - we had great fun attempting to translate these last night! 

Some standout rules I am taking away from this are that skirts should be between 30-32 cms from the ground and no shorter, belts should accentuate a narrow waist, shoulders should be wide and that a large swing coat over all these tight angles of tailoring is a must!

Fabulous, fabulous ideas...

 

...and what exquisite winter hats!

I am desperately in love with this jacket.

Nothing like some fun fashion tableaux!

Some of you may already be aware that I have been without a functioning camera since last October. As you can imagine trying to run an online business without a camera has been bordering on ridiculous - there are only so many times you can borrow one from a friend!

Thankfully my new one finally arrived today. It is fabulous and we are very much in love.

I had quite a bit of fun testing its macro settings and ISO fiddly bits this afternoon as the sun was just slipping away behind the roofs. 

This hydrangea would be considered by most to be quite beyond its prime, but I am really enjoying its tainted rainbow hues.

xo rabia