I LIKE RABBITS

When my husband was a little boy his parents used to tease him for looking like a rabbit. They said, "When you grow up you're going to be a giant rabbit!" And he was totally freaked out. Luckily he grew up to be a giant hot surfer with zip in common with rabbits, unless you're talking Rabbit Bartholomew. Anyway.

Rabbits are fabulous. Not least because they are a great shape, with their pointy ears and pompom tales. And you've got to love their twitchy little noses. Actually rabbits taste pretty good too - I once ate a rabbit pie in Portugal and it was delicious (sorry Bugs). If my cats wouldn't eat a rabbit, I'd totally get one as a pet (and brush his bunny hair and make him happy - to make up for eating his uncle that time).

So anyway pets. Some things, fish for example, and stick insects, guinea pigs...confuse me greatly as to their being objects of pet-worthy desire. Rabbits, however, rabbits are another story. Rabbits rock.

That's why Easter is so fun. It's just the excuse you need to go all Marc Jacobs on us, and work giant silk rabbit ears on a very silly headband. And look DAMN FINE like Daria and the Olsens.

I'm going to pop mine on this Easter Sunday before we start rolling eggs down hills. Then I'm going to make my husband wear them and giggle at him.

Roll on Sunday, my bunnies.

BEAUTY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND

Ah, so this is why we do it! When I see the pictures from the show we staged last week I feel glad in my heart. I love how romantic the girls look in their extravagant settings designed by Kevina-Jo Smith and Helen Fitzgerald.

Kevina sewed a quilt of silk flowers for model Sophia to loll on, in her demi-couture gown of printed organdie with its absolutely OTT ginormous skirt (25 metres of silk organza!). This is the stuff my dreams are made of, and for an hour on Wednesday those dreams were suddenly realised ... in candy colours.

Thank you Inge, Kevina, Helen, Cara, Terry, Jacqui, Kate, Milou, Arlene and above all Fay for the amazing job you did. Ladies, you rock.

Anyway, about these incredible pictures Cara shot...If you could eat pictures, I would eat these. Heck, I might give it a try. Delicious, no? Who's hungry for a high fashion fix?

Photographed by Cara Stricker from the SS11 Mrs. Press show

CRY IF I WANT TO

I loved Mia Freedman's column in the Sun-Herald's Life magazine yesterday. It's not because I'm an uber bitch with a schadenfreude complex that I warmed to the picture of Freedman - super mum, super journo, super at lipstick - sobbing in a car park because she was late and had hurt her finger. But because that's what happens in the real world - take it from one who spent that very afternoon in Bedlam-worthy hysterics on the side of the road because there was a spider in the car.

So why the surprise at seeing Freedman's wobbly humanity in print? Because our surface driven, image obsessed world is one in which, increasingly and relentlessly, perfection (or at least the idea of it) is what counts the most. Weakness and imperfection signify loser-dom at best (craziness at worst) and no one wants to own up to that in the Sunday papers. We'd no more admit to crying over spilling milk than we would to Botoxing wrinkles or coveting a tit job.

We are not encouraged to talk, or write, about our failures and fears. And we certainly mustn't blog about them! Your online life can come back to haunt you if you ever run for President...

Well, guess what? I don't want to be leader of the free world. I cry in car parks all the time. I cry when spiders jump on my face when I'm in traffic. It might make my make-up run, but it also makes me normal.

Go Cyndi Lauper, I say:

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
You would cry to if it happened to you

Nobody knows where my Johnny has gone
But Judy left the same time
Why was he holding her hand
When he supposed to be mine?

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
You would cry to if it happened to you

Play all my records,
Keep dancing all night
But leave me alone for a while
'Till Johnny's dancing with me,
I've got no reason to smile

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
You would cry to if it happened to you

Judy and Johnny just walked trough the door
Like a Queen with her King
Oh what a birthday surprise,
Jude is wearing his ring

I't my party and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
You would cry to if it happened to you

Ooooh
I't my party and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
You would cry to if it happened to you

Confessions of a Workaholic #2

The show must go on. Because we've invited 100 people and Milou and Arlene have just spent four hours making chicken finger sandwiches (not actually out of chicken's digits, just shaped like fingers or soldiers or sticks or whatever, anyway) that look like they were ordered in. And Tempus Two and Peroni and Santa Vittoria just delivered boxes and boxes of bottles to the impossibly posh Rose Bay house Terry has lent us for our sins. There are 13 models, and teams of Joico hairstylists and Napoleon make-up artists in the basement. The show must go on because Inge has been steaming since 10am. And because Kevina and Helen have planted a jungle with the peacocks (2 stuffed, one a living breathing girl) in the second bedroom.

All I've done is scream that I can't find my phone then make people call it so it shrieks its location out to me. But never fear - there is justice. When you've all gone home to your cosy beds and cups of cocoa I will start to scrub the pale grey floors. I will scrub these floors across which 200 feet have stepped until 5am. And then four hours later I will get right on up and scrub them again. Stiletto heels be damned. Got to go. Mop and bucket calls.

BACK TO NATURE

Once upon a time, Cara and Kevina and I went into the magical forest behind the ocean in Bundeena. We took with us beauties (Annabella and Hermione), sparkles (a 1920s silver lace dress; wisps of 1930s beaded silk); feathers (an ancient ostrich boa); leather (that fabulous Pop!Eyes skirt) and love, natch. The result, High In The Hills, is in the new issue of Yen. These are my favourite shots.

BETHANY MITFORD?

Beth Linz, the Mokum designer who also designs the prints and dressing table packaging for Mrs. Press, is the face of Mokum's gorgeous new Moderne collection. We think Beth, aside from being very clever indeed, looks like a Mitford girl here, modelling dresses by Mrs. Press and lolling about all over chairs covered in her Moderne designs. Don't you?

HOW DO I LOVE THEE, LEONARD COHEN? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS...

Today, this is my favourite song...what's yours?


"I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time,
walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me,
it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye."

DRESS UP, WHY DON'T YOU?

Let's face it, there's nothing like a ballgown to guarantee joy.

Recipe for a smile
1. Take off jeans
2. Remove sneakers
3. Climb into enormous brocade ballgown as seen at Louis Viutton A/W 2010

Hello sunshine. Rock a giant frock today!


(images from style.com)

Confessions of a Workaholic #1

So work/life balance...what's that then? My entire life is work. I'm tired to my bones. And that's not very glamorous is it?

This week I feel like a Yorkshire miner going down't pit all hours for nowt but a rock hard lump of grey bread and some dripping. Because the problem with working for yourself, apart from the fact that you have to take the bins out and make the tea and design everything and sell everything and pay for everything, is that the last one to get paid is you.

Oh and that is never ends. So you're emailing at 11pm and you wake up at 5am worrying about whether the waist bands on your tulle skirts are going to be wonky or not. Jaded? Moi? No, but tired.

MUSEWORTHY: Gloria Swanson, 1899 - 1983

"She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn't know, you're too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it!"

OH MY! Is Sunset Boulevard the greatest movie of all time? Not so long ago I went out every night; these days I watch old films with my husband while eating Ritter Sport marzipan bars. (Less glamorous I know, but don't knock it until you've tried it).

Anyway, Saturday night we rented Sunset Boulevard (I've just found Swanson's biography, Gloria on Gloria, in an op shop). Seriously, this is the most fun you can have outside of a night club. It's so much fun it ought to come with a warning.

Gloria was movies in the 1920s, lending the screen glamour, grace and the sort of high camp drama queen excess that comes with endless furs and diamonds and being the ultimate favorite of Cecil B. DeMille.

When Billy Wilder came to make Sunset Boulevard, an acidic take on the trappings of fame and the hell that is ageing on (and off - for the movie's star is a fading one) camera, he apparently thought of Bette Davis first, but thank heavens he happened on Gloria.

Gloria is completely fabulous, as she digs her vermilion claws into down-at-heel-writer cum gigolo Joe Gillis (William Holden), throws an enormous party for two, carries on, cuts her wrists and refuses to believe she is not the biggest star in the world.

When the film was made, 1950, Gloria's had been out of the spotlight for 20 years. Oh cruel fate! That life so closely parallels art lends the film a visceral energy, but it's the clothes and Gloria's straignely pained open mouthed pout that I love best.

"Mr B. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup..."


Let's leave the last words to Laura Branigan (sing along now):

Gloria, you're always on the run now
Running after somebody, you gotta get him somehow
I think you've got to slow down before you start to blow it
I think you're headed for a breakdown, so be careful not to show it

You really don't remember, was it something that he said?
Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?...

MAGIC HAPPENS

Cara Stricker and I spent a fab day last week shooting the Mrs. Press look book for next summer. Cara's mum Jenni painted the most incredible set and model Annabella nailed every shot in ten seconds flat. Love it when it all works like this. Too exciting.