I spent much of yesterday asleep, for which many thanks to Kevin for doing all the driving while I snoozed. Today’s better, but my brain is clearly not working at full speed. Also I had a bunch of SFAW stuff come in that needed dealing with. Consequently I’m rather behind on what I had planned to do here. Your patience is appreciated.
Still, the good news is that my shopping mojo appears to still be in good working order: fabulous new jacket, reduced from $129 to $39. Sometimes I’m just good.
The utterly speccy ball gown that I got cheap because it was shop soiled has now come back from the cleaners and is officially spotless. It cost almost as much to get it cleaned as to buy the dress in the first place, but it is still a magnificent bargain. Hugos here I come!
Emerald City readers will remember that when I go to posh, dressy events I have a habit of handing out a Best Dressed Award. Now that I have the ICFA photos available, you’ll be wanting to know who won. Well..
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Who cares about the silly old movies? I haven’t seen any of them anyway. Dresses, on the other hand…
The best set of photos I have seen so far is on Style.com, though the BBC does have some good close-ups.
Marion Cotillard’s Gaultier number certainly stood out. From a distance it is absolutely magnificent, but close up it looks a little cheesy.
Cameron Diaz managed to stand out by picking something interestingly different on a night when far too many people seemed to have read a “what’s in this year” manual before hand.
Cate Blanchett proved that it is possible to look gorgeous when you are pregnant.
Renée Zellweger was undoubtedly the queen of bling for the evening.
Helen Mirren continues to look fabulous, thereby giving hope to all of those who feel old by are younger than she is.
Julie Christie’s gloves were, sadly, the disaster of the night.
Kudos to Heidi Klum who announced that she’d be auctioning her gown for charity immediately after the show.
And my pick of the night? If you want to stand out, try picking something really simple and styling, like Katherine Heigl. (Of course it does help to have a great figure and fabulous hair, but it is still a great dress.)
The wearable computer has come yet another step closer with this story from the BBC about using nanofibres in your clothes to generate power from your movements. I can see the military being very enthusiastic about this, so it should get plenty of funding.
Today being the first day of half-way decent weather since I got back to the UK, I took myself into Taunton to do some shopping. It is farmers’ market day, after all. So some venison has been duly secured. I have stocked up on stuff from Lush. And I have books. I have finally got hold of the third volume of Amanda Hemmingway’s Sangreal Trilogy, the first two books of which I have very much enjoyed. I’ve also picked up the second Tom Lloyd novel, The Twilight Herald as I thought that the first one showed a fair bit of promise. I can’t find Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army anywhere, so that will have to wait until I can get to London.
I also looked in clothes shops. As of now I have a certain amount of hope that this might be a good year for summer dresses, and about time too.
When it is raining so much outside (praise be and thanks to the Goddess for filling our aquifers) that you really ought not go for walks, how is one to get exercise? Why, drive the the mall and walk around there instead. A few serious fashion bargains later, we also went for a walk around The Toy Shop Fry’s where, as Kevin explains, we bought a UPS. However, being an incorrigible gadget-hound, and being faced with an overnight trans-Atlantic plane flight next week, I also bought one of these. It is a very nice piece of design. The cover has slots to hold either a hardback or paperback-sized book, and there’s even a handy bookmark. I’ll let you know how I get on with it.
So today I did the Sales thing. (Voice of Mother in ear – “Are you sure that you really need new clothes? Can’t you patch the ones you have if they are wearing out?”)
There are many different approaches that you can take to Bargain Hunting. You can, for example, make like a lion and go with a bunch of your friends, making it very clear that nothing and no one will get in your way. You can make like a cheetah, rushing hither and yon at great speed in the hope that you’ll catch something good. Or you can make like a leopard and loaf up a tree until something edible walks underneath it, and then pounce. Guess which method I prefer?
Of course you can’t be entirely lazy about it. A certain amount of walking around the shopping mall has to be done. But it can be done at leisure and free from frenzied crowds. Case in point today: new business suit, $62.50. Nice to see I’m still in good touch.
P.S. – Also stocked up on holidays cards for next year; all half price in the Hallmark sale, and no sign of the ‘C’ word on any of them. Mother will be so proud.
Kevin and I are now back home, having taken our time over getting back to the Bay Area.
Much of this weekend has in fact been spent on my second favorite hobby (after reading), which is Shopping. On the way up we stopped for lunch at the Westfield mall in Fairfield. This was notable for two things. Firstly we actually had good fish ‘n’ chips. It is rare to find anywhere in the US that sells supposed British-style fish ‘n’ chips and manages to a) have decent sized piece of fish, b) make good batter, and c) serve chips rather than McDonald’s-style fries. This place managed all three. Well done them. And also we found a Gloria Jean’s coffee shop. This is the first time I have seen one outside of Australia, though a little web searching has shown that they are actually an American company. Weird how this franchising business goes.
On the way home we stopped at the outlet stores in C/o/w/t/o/w/n Vacaville. This was a great success (and not too hugely expensive). I was delighted to pick up a cashmere sweater for $50 (reduced from $128), and I may well wear it to BASFA tomorrow. I’m not saying anything more about The Dress. This is partly because I’m hoping it will cause major jaw-dropping when I wear it to a convention, and partly because most of my girlfriends will want to kill me when they find out how much I paid for it. Best. Ball gown. Bargain. Ever.
SMOFcon didn’t officially start until 4:00pm. Kevin, of course, wanted to spend the whole day hanging out and SMOFing anyway, but I decided to go shopping. I’m getting pretty good at navigating around the T these days, and most importantly I know how to get from the Logan Hilton to the Prudential Center without going outside, except very briefly while waiting for the Silver Line bus to arrive.
So shopping I went, and very successful it was too. I now have fur. It is not anywhere near as large an animal as the one that Kevin Roche occasionally brings to BASFA, but it is very cute and very furry. And it has spots. And it was 40% off in a sale.
Yes, of course it is fake. Did you really need to ask?
Anyway, I am now well fortified against the Boston weather, which is just as well as it started snowing on my way back.
I suspect that one of the most boring clichés in the world is women moaning about clothes sizes. But that is perhaps because the whole thing really is crazy. I have a wardrobe full of skirts that claim to be size 16(UK) that I can’t get into, but I regularly buy tops that are size 14(UK). Today, while investigating a sale, I tried on a skirt and two tops, all supposedly size 14(UK). The skirt was a bit loose, the tops were both way too tight. This (Internet retailers please note) is why I won’t buy clothes by mail order.
Oh, and for the benefit of American readers, I’m not quite that fat. Size 14 in the UK is supposedly a size 12 in the US, though I do own US-bought pants that fit and claim to be size 10.
Just don’t get me started on the impossibility of buying boots if you have calf muscles, OK?
I spent much of the morning doing that thing that men hate – wandering around clothes shops looking at lots of stuff but not actually buying anything. Men, it seems, view shopping rather like a hunting trip. The objective is to bring down the prey, any prey, as quickly as possible, and then get back to the cave with it. They don’t seem to appreciate the idea of shopping as an end in itself.
Of course there is purpose to all of this wandering around. There are advantages to being of, er, advancing years. It means that you don’t have to stock up on the new season’s fashions. You just get a sense of what the look is, and then delve into the vast collection of clothes you have acquired over the years until you find something that suits. Fashion designers are not limitlessly inventive. They recycle ideas ruthlessly.
Browsing in expensive London shops has another purpose too. Very seldom do I find something so good that I want to spend a lot of money on it (the velvet jacket being an obvious exception). However, having got some idea of what’s going to look good and what isn’t, I can then shop much more purposefully in the cheaper shops back in Somerset.
Of course I’m not going to follow all the new looks slavishly. Some of them don’t suit me phsyically, and others don’t suit temperamentally. There’s a definite rustic air around this autumn. Not me at all. Besides, the idea of poster showing a fresh-faced blonde model in tweed skirt and chuky knit cardigan, beaming happily as she clutches a cute little piglet, doesn’t seem entirely authentic to me. There are good reasons not to be down on the farm, and having to deal with pigs is one of them.
I also have to remember that I’m going to be spending much of the winter in California, where all that chunky knitwear would do me no good whatsoever. Unless I wanted to sell it to Thai and Malaysian students in Berkeley who are freezing to death from the cold.
