Foibles

I always see clothes and think: 'Oh but that's so expensive – it would just be so easy and so much cheaper to just sit down, draw the pattern and make an identical one myself...'

I'm quite an impatient pattern cutter/maker of things however and, as a consequence, do things like try to draw a summer dress with a waistband without any reference to the book that has all the instructions in it. And then I run out of pattern paper.

I always do this, and pretty much always fail and get frustrated. By the end of last night, I had rather rashly decided never to cut another pattern, buy an item of clothing or read another fashion blog again. Happily this was completely ridiculous as I just can't help myself with fashion blogs and looking at clothes, and through this lack of conviction, today I stumbled upon Lauren Moffatt's spring 2010 collection.

Both images from http://shop.laurenmoffatt.net

There is such a lot to say about this that it's hard not to just hammer the keyboard, but here goes. First of all, the shoot was styled by Kate Lanphear, who is a fairly well-known and mainstream fashion name, but seemingly styling in a not so common Lula-esque way – quite whimsy (whimsy now my new Etsy search term) and playful and young and really very sweet. The styling also ties in with the unusual names that are bestowed on the pieces: my favourite of these is the 'Tunnocks and Teacakes' dress, which is a given, given my Scottishness, but other good ones are the 'Somewhere in Stockholm on a Bike Romper' which is pretty much as you would expect, and the 'Being Courted in Corsica Ruffle Dress' which is reminiscent of L'amant (The Lover), the film set in French Indochina that I mentioned here. Incidentally, I watched it, liked it and thought it very beautiful, although it is quite a raucous one.

So, although verging on the saccharine and kind of jumping on a bandwagon of Lula-ness, this fun, jolly collection has, somehow, renewed my confidence in the possibilities of making my own. Perhaps my silly, badly balanced dress doesn't actually look quite as bad as it did last night... I'll let you know.