hello from london [part thirty-eight]

hello friends

how are you? i am well. there is much to tell you. where to start?

i really liked our show for london fashion week [you can watch it here]. wakako played me the show music a few days before and i got excited the opening track is from the life aquatic with steve zissou. i asked her if that is one of her favourite films and she shrugged, she just likes the music.

i love the aquamarine dot top worn underneath this check and crest print dress. when the model did her turn and started stalking back, the split sleeves took my breath away [not seen here]. this look just keeps on giving! i love it! my guests at the show were bahbak [i invited him last season], serena, and chris [my new beau, yes, that is right]. after the show chris [his first] said he felt like he was in sex and the city. my little boss' daughter [aged three, nearly four] asked her father "are they real peoples?" referring to the models. oh, fashion! no proper show gossip, sorry.

what else? oh yes, paris. i hope my big boss is not reading this. he surprised me in the paris showroom by making reference to the polaroid project from 2005. if he can find that, he can find this. paris was such a surreal experience. we woke up at 3.30am on a thursday morning to catch the 5.20am eurostar. that pretty much set the tone for the trip. it felt like time raced ahead and my brain was doing its best to keep up. sometimes i did not know which day it was. it was a major head spin but having said that, we worked all day [talking customers through the range and collecting their orders, you know, selling] and ate and drank and danced all night on company pounds. n i c e. on our first night we went out to celebrate alexis' birthday and ended up at cafe de flore drinking with sophie calle [mark's friend], sitting near wes anderson [sophie's friend] who was with lou dillon, and walking past karl lagerfeld who was sitting outside. i was so starstruck, i did not know where to look.

the absolute highlight of the entire trip was when annie, my old boss from poepke, came in for an appointment.

i was so homesick i wanted to cry when she left but annie stayed for more than an hour chatting with mark and i so i totes got a decent fix. i am not saying this because i am biased or anything but of all our customers i thought annie made the best selection. she chose print heavy pieces that reflect the true nature of e k. i was so proud of her if that makes sense. sydney friends, you are so in for a treat come february. okay so it will be summertime and you will all be beachside and as if that is not exciting enough but the e k range will be instore and colour exploding all over itself. i asked mark if he will fly me home so i can visual merchandise the poepke window. he thinks i am joking but secretly i am not.

other things that happened in paris, umm. on a night out with esme's friend who works for jean-charles de castelbajac, he invited us back to his hotel room to try on some de castelbajac's dresses. i know what you are thinking but it was not like that at all.

this is alexis. how amazing is the michael jackson dress? he said we were only one of twenty people who will ever try it on.

here i am looking like an expensive chicken.

after, we all pile into a taxi and head to le baron for a dance. i hit on a ridiculously hot french girl [for the first time in a very long time] with little luck and alexis is plied with free drinks and makes out with a french boy. some people have all the luck. sigh. i am not really sore because...

we officially finished work in paris on thursday october 8th but alexis and i decided to stay on [separately] for the weekend. chris came down on the eurostar on friday night. we were both seriously giddy with excitement. i take him out to dinner and we go for drinks at le perle in the marais. all week i have been pocketing these absolut vodka tumblers from le perle. i like the blue type on the front of the tumbler. i was hoping for a set of four but only walked away with three. we visit the lourve, walk through the tuileries [a public park behind the lourve], stand on the champs elysees roundabout, visit two other galleries [one with a maison martin margiela exhibition, the other showed guy bourdin films], and eat candle-lit dinners with a bottle of the house red.

the eiffel tower and i.

so, chris. you do not know much about him. he is english, a motion graphics designer, and used to work with my friend jonathon. this will be the first time jon has been told about this [he lives in sydney now, you lucky people]. surprise, jon! we went on two dates in february this year before chris backs off and tells me he only wants to be friends. okay, no probs. we date other people in the following seven months while maintaining an easy friendship. then last month when we are both properly single, he surprises me with a "you know, i like you" at the petit mal #3 launch. oh. really? the penny drops. he never lets me pay for anything [which i resist], he always walks me home after a night out, when we went for a swim at hampstead heath last summer he was a complete gentleman, and the week before his declaration he gave me a mix cd full of subliminal messages. i thought we were only friends! anyway, here we are, dating. sometimes if the light is right, he looks like brad pitt, but not very often.

what else? i had a day off yesterday and c planned the best adventure day ever. we had lunch at the whitecross street market, it is only open on weekdays. when edwina was here [you know her, she used to work at incu] she gushed about the burritos from whitecross and how she would get one everyday. sure, how good can a vegetarian burrito be? well, let me tell you, it was truly amazing. please come visit me just so i can take you and watch your face when you take the first bite? if i was an office worker around there, i would save on public transport fares and just roll to and from work because i would be that fat.

we are eating our burritos on park benches with a group on pigeons doing whatever it is they do on the patch of grass in front of us. chris comes up with this gem

"what makes their head do that? is it connected to their legs?"

we went to see the anish kapoor exhibition at the royal academy of arts. are you bored yet? i just realised the length of this update. okay just quickly, i really enjoyed the anish kapoor show. i liked the scale of his works, their simplicity and inherent genius. i walked past yoko ono and chris laughed when he saw my awestruck face.

this is 'shooting into the corner'. a canon shoots a wax canon ball into the next room every twenty minutes.

we had hot beverages at the wolseley [a cappuccino for him, a hot chocolate for me] after and then went to dinner in the root master [a big red bus converted into a vegan restaurant just off brick lane]. i rolled into bed after that. it was the best day.

it is saturday night and i am in bed typing to you. after this i am going to start a big felt owl for c's future niece or nephew [due in december]. i guess i could be doing something more, you know, fun but this is my first night in since paris. crazy times!

also i see florence and the machine [or flo mac as some people call her here] is playing st jerome's laneway festival in sydney come january. you should see her if you can, that lady can sing. and the xx! oh my, they are my most favourite band in the world right now. die. i went to see the big pink the other night. i like them, maybe you will too? you know how teenage boys like the work of john donne when they are in high school because he is a bit dark and writes about love? i think those same boys like the big pink for the same reason. their debut album is about girls and not being in love with them. uh-huh. next week we are seeing phoenix and then the dirty three in december. i am back to paying to see bands but the trade-off is not so bad.

love

o

a long overdue hello from london [part thirty-one]

hello friends

every time i think to write to you, i feel i have nothing. i feel i have nothing now but i should say something, if only to let you know i am alive and well. the countdown is on, you know, less than four weeks before i see you. hurruh!

ok let us split this into threes. one, work. two, me. three, the boy.

so, work. a few weeks ago mark called me to the back room where we keep the printed fabric archive, online store stock, excess stock, and i sometimes keep a desk in there for when our sales agent is in.

"olivia, this room is a mess!"
"oh. sorry. i will fix it later today." [please do not hurt me!]
"just kidding!" [laugh]
"ok..."
"do you want to stay?"
"where?"
"here."
"oh. yes."
"ok."

so there you have it. e k is sponsoring me. you know how fickle fashion can be, i mean, this is true for right now but fingers crossed it will still be true in october when the "working" part of my working holiday visa is over. i am excited and happy and i hope it happens.

the other reason mark likes me, other than my ability to pay my own wage with sales from the online store, is that he considers me his walking spell check.

mark asks the room in general "how do you spell eduardo?"
he swivels around to look at me.
"umm e-d-u-a-r-d-o."
"yeah that was what i was thinking."
"sure you were."
"shut up!"

we both burst into giggles. next he is on the phone to someone calling himself a welsh wizard.

ok, me. so what do you want to know? i treated myself to a haircut. the right side of my head is cropped very short and blends into a long left side. i look a little bit eighties. rodrigo has offered to maintain the cropped side for me with a pair of clippers but i do not trust him. what else? oh yes, i am moving house. it is a little bit sad because i love where i live but i am only moving five streets away to a proper share house with two other girls. my new room is bigger and the rent is cheaper. do not fight it, just accept it. i am not sure the area is as safe but it is in shoreditch proper and there are less house rules. one of the girls is rodrigo's friend and studying film, the other girl finished her film studies and just directed a feature. excitement city! fingers crossed the flat will be the creative hub it promises to be.

now, the boy. i will not bore you with too many details. if you can date a music journalist, i highly recommend it. i try not to milk r for too many favours, but he always manages to wrangle a +1 from somewhere. we went to camden crawl [a two-day music festival in camden] and saw the yeah yeah yeahs [w o w !], the big pink [new english band, ok], and echo and the bunnymen. we went to see hot chip play a secret show in shoreditch. i liked hot chip before but, if possible, i like them even more now. their live set was amazing and there was a lot of love in the room when they started a song with the line "i want to be your one-life stand" [obvious play on the concept of one-night stand] and i turn to r and say "oh they are ridiculously romantic." and he explains two of them got married recently [not to each other]. my phone ran out of juice that night but when i charged it the next day, r had sent me a message while we were dancing to hot chip's dj set to say he thinks i am cool and is very happy to be here with me. die. we are seeing the horrors on june 6. i wonder how big i can make my hair?

r is away in san francisco on a road trip with two friends. do you know what that means? my weekends are free! i cleared three jumble sales yesterday [one in a church hall, one in a design studio, and one in a community centre]. i love going through people's junk. i came away with three books [sylvia plath, woody allen, j d salinger], three melamine plates painted with paris street scenes, a plain canvas bag [no logos, rare!], a necklace with a macaroon pendant, two japanese magazines with e k on the covers, and another painted plate i won in a raffle. treasure galore! i had afternoon tea twice in two days. this weekend has made me realise i miss my own company because i spend much of the weekends with r. if i were with him now, i would not have gone to these jumble sales or had afternoon tea adventures with the girls, things i love. there is a lesson in there somewhere.

love
o