Evolutionary fashion

This morning I read an article on 'The Daily Beast' titled: 'Fashion's Arab Spring' about my favorite designer of the moment, Haider Ackermann. I read more about him and his life. And then I understood why I feel such resonance with him. He was born in Colombia (where I grew up for several years of my childhood, in Bogota), and he was brought up by French parents, and then proceeded to live all over the place. My parents weren't French, my father Dutch and my mother English, but we did live all over the place, including Iran. (this is back in the fifties!) So I have things in common with his background. But apart from that, I am an advocate of being free to be who you are, 

and enjoying your beauty and sensuality.

His work is about freedom. Freedom to envelope your body in beautiful draping fabrics, freedom to be feminine without having to display your body packaged and bound up so tight, layers of stiffening and hype, your flesh sort of squeezes out of the gaps, and you can't breathe, you can't walk properly, because you should done have a course on stilt walking before wearing those shoes, which may make you feel tall and powerful, but compromise your back, and your natural rhythm, and actually disconnect you from your real power, that of being a woman standing on Earth now, in these times. How can this be 'cool' or 'hot'? You're not free to just enjoy and revel in the beauty of being in a feminine body, who's natural rhythm is like that of nature, sensual and gracefully shifting between spaces, the senses alive and open.

the Goddess alive and well at Paco Rabanne Spring 2012

Manish Arora says he found something about himself when he explored the Paco Rabanne

archives for his wonderful futuristic Spring 2012 in Paris a few days ago. I think he found something about the female body, such sensuality, power and beauty, even

though there was so much structure, which is not what I would normally associate with femininity.

The above ensembles were the ones which got to me most, but his ending of frill-necked lizard cup-cake style constructions were full of life and humour, and reminded me of the early eighties when Issy Miyake's sculptural ensembles looked like they might take flight.

Helen Frankenthaler - painter

'Southern Exposure' Serigraph 2006.

I was thinking about women painters who have influenced the way I look at painting, and searched to find Helen Frankenthaler. I was glad to see she is still alive and active. She was married to Robert Motherwell, and influenced by Jackson Pollock. Whenever I come across her work I go 'aaahhh....yes, I've come home', I can sense the feminine Spirit, the languid strokes, lush and sensual, the intimacy of the colours and the open spaces in which your eye can linger.

rose light

I want the scent of this pink pink rose to be captured. As I walked past, its scented tendrils, seductively allowed me to zoom in close. I have taken the license to digitally augment it..Autumn in Melbourne is so wonderful, the roses are like great fecund juicy cabbage heads, sweetly and deeply scented...mmmmmmmm....