I don’t know about you but I am very easily diverted from what I should be doing and I am always looking for some distraction that will allow me to postpone diving into the to do list. The internet is a veritable treasure trove of such distractions and it was there I happened upon a site called draw a stickman.
Category Archives: Musings
♥ Something Completely Different
Filed under Musings
♥ Not Quite Couture!
Two autumns ago I enrolled in a dressmaking class. It seemed like a good idea at the time and very much in tune with the zeitgeist, besides I had a treasured length of fabric bought aeons ago waiting to be turned into a dress. I spent an age flicking through pattern books before selecting one for a very tailored dress.
Filed under Musings
♥ Before Blogging
I have blogged now for just over six months and those months have speed by at a spooky rate of knots. I know I don’t say this often, but I will today, thank you for reading Just Add Attitude, I very much appreciated that you do.
♥ Autumnal Sunday
Today had an autumnal feel in these part, the sky was daubed with grey-grained clouds, there was a chill in the air, and when I looked up at trees I saw that their leaves were on the turn.
Filed under Musings
♥ Favourite Quotes//Six
‘But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it; it becomes a habit of our lives and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it as such periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations beyond any of which our present or prospective self is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert.’
From Adam Bede by George Eliot 1819 – 1880.
I came across this passage many years ago; I find it comforting. So when ever life seems somewhat bleak and I have to rummage through dense dark clouds in search of hidden silver linings I read it again, the words have never failed to soothe.
Filed under Favourite Quotes, Musings
♥ Swan Song for Summer
Summer is drawing to a close; leaf-shedding autumn looms. In truth the Irish weather is such that the transition between seasons is barely perceptible. I sometimes rail against the lack of sun and a surfeit of rain in these parts but in the wake of hurricane Irene I realize how lucky we are to have a climate not visited by meteorological extremes. Still it would have been nice to have the occasional opportunity to wear some summery clothes.
Signs that what Keats called the season of ‘mist and mellow fruitlessness’ is almost here are many, it’s cooler, the shroud of darkness falls earlier each evening and leaves begin to tumble when the wind whips up. As we glide gently into autumn there are many things I will miss about summery days: eating outdoors in garden cafés, freshly picked local berries, darkly beautiful sunsets, riots of colour in gardens, looking at boats bobbing in the tranquil bay…
Before I started to write this I realized I haven’t had a proper summer holiday this year, so on an impulse I booked a short break. I am heading west in a few weeks, not unfortunately to America just a few days in a rugged part of Ireland that I have never visited before. Who knows we may have an Indian summer and I might get to wear a summer frock when I get there.
Filed under Musings
♥ A Bear and a Spreadsheet
I have looked at my unnamed teddy bear (I never got around to christening him) a great deal more than usual this week; I suspect as a reaction to watching Brideshead Revisited (the movie) last weekend and seeing Sebastian Flyte with his bear Aloysius. Yes, I know it’s been out for an age but I am only just getting around to catching up with a raft of films I missed when they were first released.
Now on to something completed different but trust me there is a tenuous connection. It may be a sign of incipient insanity but from late 2009 I have kept a clothes spreadsheet, diligently entering the cost and details of everything I bought since then and daily updating the spread sheet on the basis of what I am wearing that day (clothes purchased pre the end of 2009 are not included as it would have been impossible to remember when I purchased them and their exact cost) to arrive at a cost per wear figure. It’s not time-consuming, it takes about 15 seconds to enter each new purchase and a similar amount of time daily to update the sheet. It ‘s extremely satisfying to see the cost per were reduce the more I wear something but also very sobering when I look at the per wear cost of items worn infrequently. I think that the only sane conclusion from studying the spreadsheet is that I have too many clothes; I have in mind as a project for next year to buy less and to properly sift through my closet and remove the bulk of rarely/never worn items.
Now back to the nameless teddy and the tenuous connection. I bought his blue-striped shirt in Camden Passage in Islington when I lived in London, if I were to work out the cost of the shirt per sq cm it could well be the most expensive separate I ever bought. However unnamed teddy has worn it every day (except for sporadic-shirt-washing-days) since 1990, so on a cost per wear basis it’s almost certainly my best buy. Sadly nothing on my clothes spreadsheet comes anywhere close.
Is there anyone else out there who keeps a cost per wear spreadsheet?
Filed under Musings, Shops/Shopping
♥ My Rules//Clothes Buying
It has taken me a couple of decades to formulate a loose set of rules through which I try to filter and regulate my clothes buying habits. I don’t mean to be prescriptive or to offer them as a universal panacea for closets stuffed with inappropriate, unsuitable or unworn clothes; they are just a personal set of guidelines that have helped me avoid mindless random purchases. I am sure you have your own clothes-buying rules; here are mine.
At the beginning of the year I make a list of gaps that need to be filled in my closet, if I am exceedingly honest when writing this list, it is minuscule.
I resist the temptation to buy on impulse. If I feel I am about to utter that oh so dangerous familiar phrase ‘I’ll take it’, I walk away, even if it is just to have a coffee, I find that space for reflection is often enough to dissuade me from purchasing. I can always go back in a few days to have another look if it’s something that has really caught my imagination.
I don’t buy a piece without being able to answer yes to the following questions: does the item suit me, suit my lifestyle and have I got at least three other items that I can pair it with?
The next question is; is it worth it? A very subjective judgment but I bear in mind that a blouse costing €15o could turn out to better value than a dress costing €100 depending on the amount of times it’s worn.
On the subject of an item’s worth, I never buy designer items at full prices, as I feel that they are mostly priced at a level that the market will bear and not at a level closer to their intrinsic worth. Most of my clothes are from the High Street with the odd high-end pieces that I acquired in the sales or at an outlet. .
I don’t buy items that don’t fit me. This may seem obvious but it has taken me more years than I care to remember to stop myself from buying, in the sales, things that would only fit if I lost a bit of weight, or that need to be taken in (taken up is ok) before I can wear them.
I buy mostly neutrals with the odd splash of colour, this may sound unremittingly boring but it least it means I have a selection of separates which I can mix and match.
That’s it but I have to confess that I occasionally bend the rules!
Filed under Fashion, Musings, Shops/Shopping, Style
♥ Feed the World
Sadly we live in unequal communities, within unequal countries, in a grossly unequal world. I don’t know if there is any sane solution to the perpetual conundrum of balancing the have/have not equation but I greatly admire those who give it some sort of shot.
One such person is Lauren Bush (yes, let’s get this out-of-the-way, she is a niece of George W. Bush) she is also the fiancée of David Lauren, son of Ralph Lauren; I don’t know what she will be know as after her marriage but she could of course be Lauren Lauren. All of that is beside the point, as what I wanted to write about is her brainchild the Feed Project, to which she has devoted considerable time and energy.
According to the Feed Project website click here their mission is ‘to create good products that help FEED the world. We do this through the sale of FEED bags, bears, t-shirts, and other accessories by building a set donation into the cost of each product. Thus the impact of each product, signified by a stenciled number, is understandable, tangible, and meaningful.’
Unfortunately when I attempted to order a couple of items, via the website, I discovered that postage (to Ireland) on a $65 order was $61 so I decided not to proceed. Feed bags are available in Harrods in London, which is where I bought my Feed One tote a few years ago (I think it was £38). The large One on the bag indicates that each Feed One bag purchased enables the Feed project, via a donation to The United Nations World Food Programme, to provide school lunch for a child in Africa for one year. Because of my difficulty in ordering Feed products I wondered if I should continue with this post; I decided to go ahead as today is World Humanitarian Day and if you are so minded there are lots of other ways to give.
Below is a video of Lauren talking about her work.
Filed under Musings
♥ Vanity Fair
I don’t often buy Vanity Fair, not because it isn’t an excellent magazine with well researched, informative articles as well as a slew of pictures by talented photographers but because if I were to cave into to my desire to buy all the magazines I like, I would live surrounded by leaning tower of Pisa-likes-stacks of old magazines.
I bought the September issue of Vanity Fair because I wanted to read a profile in it, of French designer Agnès B (I wrote about my love of her clothes here). Agnès B is a successful designer and retailer who doesn’t believe in advertising, so it is rare to see editorial coverage of her or her clothes, in one of the glossy magazines, as I suspect they mainly reserve editorial coverage for those who have large advertising budgets to spend with them. The profile was a good read; an overview of a life much more than ordinary and dwelt on the many ways in which she and her company give back to society. Naturally the article mentioned her aversion to advertising. I love Agnès B clothes (for their casual simplicity and timelessness) but they are at the top end of high street prices, so when I reflect on what a marketing/advertising budget would add to the cost of the clothes to the consumer I am glad that Agnès B is ad phobic.
The September issue of Vanity Fair also features The 72nd International Best-Dressed List. In case you haven’t heard the women on it include: The Duchess of Cambridge, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Tilda Swinton, Christine Lagarde, Princess Charlene of Monaco…..The Huffington Post has pictures if you would like to see them click here.
Note; the photograph of Jennifer Lopez on the cover of Vanity Fair was shot by Mario Testino.
Filed under Musings
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