‘Full of stars, source unknown’ (via uallau)
Stars, dress up inspiration, unknown sources.
Tag: costumes
Delighted to uncover Claude Cahun. Jeez.
Not least for Halloween ideas.
De-colonizing and Fair Isle knitting.
I just read several knitting books and several anti-colonial books at the same time, and I have all these new ideas about my own knitting. As happens when you read different topics at the same time, I found where they overlap and connect. An example.
From Michael Pearson’s Traditional Knitting: Aran, Fair Isle and fisher ganseys, 1984.
Pages 121-2.
[The Shetland Islands] lie to the north east of Britain and are in fact closer to Norway than mainland Scotland. … The inhabitants owe their heritage to the Norsemen who settled there in the 8th and 9th centuries, living under the patronage of Norway for over 500 years before the influx of Scottish mainlanders in the 13th century. Norse influence then began to fade and ended with the sale of the islands in 1496 by Norway to the Scottish Crown.
From this date right through to the present day the history of the inhabitants has been one of ruthless exploitation— by the Stuart family till 1615 and then by the splitting up of the islands into estates run by rich immigrant Churchmen and landowners…
The two knitting traditions that had the most resonance for me were Cowichan sweaters and Fair Isle knitting, both affected by Scottish colonialism. The more I read about Scottish history, the more it seems like Scotland has been a volcano of settlers for hundreds of years. They can’t stay home. Why? I continue to read. I want to know more about how I ended up here, descended from at least five different Scottish settler families on Coast Salish territories.
But. Ideas I got from this round of reading.
- Folk knitting history is patchy and there are many versions of events and stories.
- Reading books by American and British people mostly involves serious denial about colonization of any kind. It’s almost a relief to read books about North American genocide, because at least the destruction is presented as destruction. I read one book about Fair Isle knitting that presented Norway’s sale of Fair Isle to Scotland as simply a “reflection of the fact that the island was by then more Scottish than Norse.” OK, author, but how did that happen?
- Knitting has labour politics as well as the more discussed gender roles. I hadn’t thought much before about the history of underpaid cottage industries where poor people knit clothes for rich people, for peanuts per hour. It is still basically impossible to make a living wage selling hand knitting. Like gardening, it’s one of those subsistence activities that middle class people dabble in for leisure. Not sure what to do with that right now.
- Again, being a folk art, patterns and ideas spread whenever one crafter meets another (or even a craft). It sounds like Cowichan spinners and weavers were keen to pick up knitting from European settlers and missionaries, just as crafters. But also, English style knitting (yarn in the receiving hand) was taught in residential schools as a “civilizing” domestic skill, sometimes to produce items the school sold for profit. I want to find out how Turkish style knitting (with the yarn around the back of the neck) ended up in the Andes, when by the time of colonization I think Iberians were knitting in continental style (yarn in the loading hand). So far I haven’t found a resource that has both crafty knowledge and awareness of colonialism.
More from Michael Pearson.
Page 128.
Because of the natural tendency to identify with areas within reach, British knitters have usually assumed that Fair Isle was the place where two-colour knitting was invented.
I don’t know how natural that is. It does seem to be part of British and maybe European culture, to assume cultural dominance or sameness. Do non-Euro people have a history of that too? Assuming that everything was invented nearby just because it’s here now? (Two colour knitting, as far as I have been able to find out, first turned up in Turkey and Egypt, then spread via trade routes to Baltic and Nordic Europe.)
I would wear this dress.
Ms. Hunt sent me this at work and I’ve gone back to it three or four times already. Owl dress!
The least ridiculous monkey dancer I can even imagine.
(Excerpt from the Suo Sarumawashi Association’s official introduction)
Sarumawashi, literally “monkey dancing” evolved over a 1000-year history in Japan. Ancient Japanese chronicles refer to it as a form of religious ritual designed to protect the horses of warriors. It later developed into a popular form of festival entertainment, and was performed all over Japan from temples to imperial courts. Today, Sarumawashi is ranked alongside Noh and Kabuki as one of the oldest and most traditional of Japan’s performing arts. It features acrobatic stunts and comedic skits performed by highly trained macaque monkeys.
Masks / drag
Is that Batman, Spiderman and… Colonel Sanders?
In praise of experiencing underwear.
From the Strumpet & Pink website, a goal I can get behind:
Our knickers are experiential and focus
on feeling rather than objectification.
Years ago, my friend Logan talked so much about wanting velvet underwear with the pile facing inwards that someone finally made him some. Fuzzy on the inside.
Apologies for all the skinny, pale-skinned bums. I thought the ruffles were worth it. I am imagining my future undercrafts.
Blue and green, RGB dress, making do with close-ups
Those blue and green colours give me physical pleasure the same way red and blue do. There are other colour schemes that I get excited about, but I have a soft spot for red-green-blue because of working at a monitor all day.
All this to say that I made an RGB outfit and wearing it is my own spiritual rapture. The colours of personal happiness. On my body. I may or may not succeed in documenting it with a full length photo, but I have collected these fragments.
The bottom of the dress (I’m the fishnets).
The top of the dress (under a cardigan, and I should mention that I shrunk one eye in photoshop because my camera has a bit of a fishbowl effect around the edges and sometimes it catches faces in distracting ways).
I made a sash out of lime green dupioni silk (shiny).
And then with this scarf, it makes the holy trinity of colour pixels.
I’m working on expressing more political intentions with my wardrobe (slowly… I am mostly making things not buying them), but for now I am glad to express any conscious intention.
Another fashion face mask.
I still note pictures of masks in fashion and pop culture. I go on long quiet breaks every few years, but I also ponder some topics for years and years. I am trying to figure out what this persistence/absence is about. Hiding out whenever I am processing anything? Needing to be better at learning in public? Being a generalist and working on a thousand things at the same time, gradually, over a long period of time? Those are good starting ideas.
This mask, I think I like because it is both campy and inhuman. The pantyhose fabric is so gross that it’s funny, but then the full face coverage is too creepy to be fun. I am delighted.
I will leave the “gosh models are skinny, etc” disclaimer as an exercise for the reader.
Bunnies, rabbit ears, overwhelming subtext.
I guess that is photoshopped? I started looking at blogs in languages I don’t understand, and ended up finding a whole bunch of bunny-related images. There is nothing to understand.
Huge knitted sash, clothes with tassels
This is a couple of years old, but it is still my favourite thing at Steal This Sweater. It doesn’t even make sense as clothes, only as decoration.
Ruffly thing to knit
My instinct is to knit up a weird costume/uniform and wear it every day. When I don’t instantly know the name of an article of clothing, I seem to interpret it as having some qualities of a costume. This is a ruff, I suppose. I feel it is festive.
power jam
costumes. costumes are a productivity tool.
this morning, on my way between breakfast and the bank, i saw a business man running full tilt down the street. a business man like from a children’s book: in a conservative, navy blue suit and tie, with dress shoes, holding an open umbrella upright above his head. running fast, with long steps making his trousers flap. his tie might have been over his shoulder, but that seems like an embellishment that i would add.
i used to want to organize some kind of annual soccer game where everyone would wear power suits. navy vs. brown (i.e., bankers vs. car salesmen), or white shirts vs. blue shirts. (i also like camping in skirts and mary janes, or just generally taking control of my office wear.)
but the connection that made me realize what an excellent, if obtuse, productivity tool was available to me in costumes was remembering, when i saw the business man running, how much better i like doing housework if i’m wearing a tiara and carrying a wine glass. the glass could be full of water or hot tea for all i care, but carrying it around makes dusting or scrubbing a fun time. an event.
i’m sure you understand right away, what it is like to do housework in a tiara and carrying a wine glass (or a martini glass), because i tried explaining all of this at the sara marreiros show tonight and everybody caught on right away. “you should get some of those slippers with the fluff on the front.” and the thing is, i had some and i ran them into the ground doing housework. we are all on the same page here.
i’ve been thinking about running stairs lately anyway, because it seems like a weird and efficient urban exercise option, and i think if i got a washable power suit i could really get into running. you can wear running shoes with a skirt suit, i think. that’s a classic commuter move. nylons would be best but i have to draw the line somewhere (and they look really weird with my furry legs).
a lot of self-employees and telecommuters make a point of getting properly dressed to work at home, because it gets them into productivity mode. i do that too (my key items are a bra and real pants). i’d like to figure out a home office costume that goes one level further, not just into productivity mode but into like, titan of industry mode. what is the word for one of those pillars of society who wield massive business powers yet are admired for their philanthropy and preferably also some type of artistic skill? genius? character? sarah’s imaginary friend? i want to get into like, gomez addams mode. mon sauvage!
contenders for my new work outfit.
- a clerical cloak of some type
- a green bookkeeping visor and crisp shirt
- power suit
- my old default: the tiara and the wine glass
- sassy underwear (possibly combined with the clerical cloak?)
- dresses with hosiery and jewellery. and footwear.
- cleanroom spacesuit.
- specialized garment, like a lab coat or a utility belt
- monochrome outfit of any kind
i think part of what is holding me back from my ultimate productivity-sauvage costume is that all the glamorous titans of yore were dudes, and the lady workers did not have cool 3-piece suits that suggest timeless power. this is an unforeseen feminist battleground.
High holidays
Hallowe’en is my favourite holiday, balanced by Thanksgiving and New Year. I was up late at a pretty dull party, and up early for a long, slow breakfast with a lumbering behemoth of a group (my cousin’s bicycle activist tour coworkers), and now I am too tired to make witty paragraphs. It’s a list format day.
Highlights from my adventures as Bride of Frankenstein:
- So that’s how you use Tupperware to build tall hairstyles…
- Galen’s great-aunt: “So dear, you’re a ‘goth,’ aren’t you?”
- More great-aunt: “How did you get your hair so tall?” (Making me feel suddenly awkward because her everyday hairstyle is a beehive variant and I wasn’t sure whether she thought mine was ridiculous or not.)
- Dragging the hem of my white dress in puddles and mud on purpose, because it was only a bedsheet.
- Still having gray streaks in my temples at breakfast today, and getting to talk to our waiter about it. He still had metallic green fingernails from a Satan costume. We said one sentence each, I think, but I liked it. He was a good waiter. I might have had a 5-minute crush on him.
And of this Hallowe’en in general:
- Mistaking Rebecca for a couch twice, instead of recognizing the back of her California Raisin get-up.
- Walking around having serious conversations about work and responsibility and taking charge, and being taken by the snippets that passing pedestrians must have heard coming out of that Raisin, with her huge aqua-rimmed sunglasses.
- The whole city smelled like brussel sprouts. Probably from fireworks? Hopefully from some anti-loitering stink-bomb we imagined the city bureaucrats setting off.
- So many fireworks going off. I love the spectacle, but this year I was actually moved by the way pretend-bombs emphasize the absurdly peaceful and neighbourhoodly place I live. (Bang!… no flinching. “I’m sure that’s fine.”)
The whole reason I like Halloween is for the costumes. I can’t come up with a reason that costumes are important or worth a holiday, but I stand by Halloween. New Year’s I like for the cyclical celebration, and Thanksgiving because gratitude is one of the few things I practice in what could be considered a spiritual way. That one actually is important. But the costumes!
Why I love costume parties
Being propositioned by a drunk couple is much funnier when the couple is Raggedy Ann and Andy.