Scuzzy Hood

Photography by Denver Grenell

Well I’m gonna miss this scuzzy hood in all it’s glory and mystery! My man and I are moving to Wellington, New Zealand in a months time. It’s been 7 years here in Melbourne and it’s been great, although  I’m really looking forward to going back to the Motherland and living close to nature. It is time. I cannot wait for this next phase of my life and to continue my creativity in a wide open space.

The fashion blogging world has become rather hilarious these days! I have always had this thing with fashion where there are aspects I don’t feel exactly part of, but I have always used it as self expression for as long as I can remember.
When I first started blogging I felt that the community was really supportive of each other and I found it so inspiring! Now I struggle to find any bloggers that are doing their own thing and don’t read like an advertisement! There are some people that comment, and I realise when I look at the other blogs that their comment has been copy and pasted through every ones comment section, just to get followers!!? Ha ha!? Really; is that aspect the important part to everyone? What ever happened to the true passion and inspiration? Fame and money and free shit that’s what happened. Boring! I know there are bloggers out their still doing it for the creative aspect, where are you? I would love to meet your acquaintance.

Back to these photos……I always go for walks around my neighbourhood and discover interesting things.I really like exploring around the train lines and I wanted to document parts of it before I leave Melbourne.

My outfit is made up of pieces I have found in second hand shops around the hood as well. The pants were are score. I always have trouble with pants coz of my bootay but I saw major potential in these. They were a strange shape but I pulled them apart and re-sculpted them and I’m pretty happy with the result. They have a 50’s pin up / police women / mod biker vibe to them and kind of remind me of these French ski pants I once found in an op shop in Chch years ago that where the ultimate!
The cotton top reminds me of chicks from the late 70s/early 80s (favourite era) who wear high waisted clean looking denim jeans with white top stitching and brushed out permed fringed hair styles. These characters are usually found in 80s horror flicks or 70s films based on hip hop. I’m not wearing it right here but I was pressed for time so I will develop this look further next time. The shoes are vintage Miu Miu, they walk the line between 40s style and pimped out 70s disco. I found them on etsy about 3 years ago.

So this is Merry Christmas from me! I’m looking forward to next year and I hope you are too. It certainly has been an interesting year. Perhaps it is the end of the world as we know it? The things that are not working for us and that are not sustainable will cease to work and be relevant anymore and what is true and for the greater good will prevail.
Peace and Love to you!
XKX

Know then that the body is merely a garment.
Go seek the wearer , not the cloak.

– Rumi

 

I wish I was a little bit taller

If you know where these come from please let me know. I’m pretty sure it’s an oldie. Had them saved for ages, been giving me mad inspiration.

UMIT BENAN – new favourite designer

Trussardi Fall/Winter 2012

Here’s my wardrobe for next winter.

The suits, as always with Umit Benan, are impossibly cool. I would love to wear that black pinstripe 3 piece.

This was his second collection for the Italian luxury house Trussardi. His debut collection from the season before Spring/Summer 2012, was a collection for ‘the granddaughter of Annie Hall’, and I kind of get the feeling that this girl is never far from his mind. For Fall she took a trip to the Andes.

The main reason I am loving this designer is not only for the final product: beautiful clothes, but for the way he sees fashion as dressing characters straight out of real life, of his life. It’s incredible listening to him describe each character in such considered detail. It all makes sense!In the Umit Benan Fall 2011 collection (see video above) he describes the characters from a re-imagined Wall St movie with Charlie Sheen. One guy is his “younger Dad in the 80s, so cool but with a straight face wearing a big boxy shirt and high waisted trousers with 2 pleats, he is the hip banker”, another is the Micheal Douglas of his scene, another is Neapolitano “the only Italian that works in the bank. He doesn’t have any new American friends, he’s homesick and only hangs out with other Italians.”

This is CLASSIC! I love it so much, it brings me great joy to see someone design like this and describe it just so.

Umit Benan on his Spring 2011 collection, describing the authentic Turkish characters. The people he has cast were picked from the cafe down the road from his family home in Istanbul.

Umit Benan Spring 2013

Brilliant concept for a show!
This collection is uni-sex. In the original fashion show (see video above) it was modeled by a very interesting cast of men. The final suit was then modeled by a women who rolls out of bed (literally) and dons her lovers clothes. We then realise the designer himself has been sleeping in one of the beds the whole time and leaps up to take his bow in his undies. Awesome.

“What makes clothes interesting, gives them meaning and ultimate definition, are the inspirational characters who wear them.”  – Umit Benan 

www.umitbenan.com 

From the top of the Drome

In the Velodrome

WILDFLOWER LookBook 3 

Photography and Editing ELISHA BLOGG

Clothing and Styling WILDFLOWER by Kate Alice Williams

Hair and Make Up MARIA RUSSO

Model GRACE McCONCHIE

Location: Brunswick Velodrome, Melbourne.

All accessories by The SuperMarket 3000

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*Please click on the images for better HD viewing*

A very big thank you and shout out to the crew who helped make this look book happen.
My inspirations for this capsule collection and look book are William Eggleston, Melbourne’s dissolute pathways, 80s French sportswear, iconic women and images of the 1970s, glam bike riding, disco, tomboys and to look important.

For all enquires please email:
Kate Williams
wildflowerstylistic@yahoo.com

A song for Jesse James

Stylistic :
 Black straw hat from the Salvos, House of Licks vintage suede tassel jacket, vintage men’s pinstripe waistcoat, WILDFLOWER Jezebel pants, vintage 70s platforms.If this photo shoot had a soundtrack, it’s this.
This is one of my most favourite movie scores ever. Beautiful and very moving music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

I’m feeling a bit blue about the fact that I can’t do the course I want to do because of my visa situation being a Kiwi in Oz. Booooo 😦
Oh well; I am starting to see there is a different path, the challenges of being a one man band business woman! 

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Buffalo STYLE

I have been thinking a lot recently about my own personal roots in fashion and my inevitable escape back to the 80s on my blog at the moment. I started reading fashion blogs about 5 years ago, and started writing this one 4 years ago.  During that time we have all been witness to a massive influx of fashion, personal style, and street style blogs on the Internet. Street style has cemented its place with in the fashion industry and has become a legitimate inspiration for big business fashion designers today.

I can’t help but feel romantic about a time when creative movements were ground breaking, that you could still really shock people on the street with a zany outfit based on 5 different unrelated influences.

So I did some research and re-discovered Ray Petri and his ‘Buffalo stance’. I wonder what he would think about all this if he were still alive today? Then again he would probably be thinking about the next thing….

 Buffalo style by Ray Petri, The Face, Judy Blame

Ray Petri’s genius vision can still be seen today, 25 years after its first conception. Arguably one of the first ever stylists or art directors, he created a whole new aesthetic by putting together looks inspired by the street, in a formula that is still relevant today. He bought street style onto the fashion stage long before it became the commercialised giant of mass consumption that it is today.

Petri who was born in Scotland and raised in Australia, moved to England in the swinging year of 1969.  He had a jewellery booth at the Camden Markets and immersed himself in the creative culture around him.
By the 80s the English style scene was a huge mix of subcultures, there were the New Romantics, mods, punks, rude boys and Ragamuffins to name a few.  However the fashion industry at the time was all about glossy high fashion images and designer looks straight from the catwalk. Think of the supermodels Linda, Cindy, Christy and Claudia with their fully made up faces and Versace power suits.

It was during this movement that Petri found his calling.  He turned up at magazines like The Face, i-D and Arena and began putting together images inspired by the ‘bad boy’ street looks that where inspiring him at the time, Jamaican Ragamuffin culture, East Indians, blacks, punk whites, rude boys, mods, New Romantics and boxers.

 ‘It can be no surprise that Ray showed up at our door,’ says Nick Logan, founder editor of The Face and Arena , ‘Other than i-D , where else would he have gone?’

Petri absorbed himself in every aspect of the image making process except actually taking the picture. Instead of using models he cast boys, teenagers and friends usually from ethnic minorities, something that often wasn’t seen during that time. As a young teenager, Naomi Campbell started out helping Ray with his wardrobe sales! She then went on to feature in his photographs as one of the original Buffalo girls.

Buffalo Girls: Naomi Campbell, Neneh Cherry, Talisa Soto, COMME des GARCONS in a buffalo style.

The Buffalo look would include designer clothing but for example, an Armani blazer would be pinned and re-shaped at the back to form a different shape. He would then add sportswear, vintage clothing and underwear as outerwear into the mix. The look was tough, street and with a strong dose of androgyny. Little did he know this would soon become the menswear uniform of the time and it would completely inspire the next decade to come – the look of the 1990s.

Buffalo was a word that was borrowed from a few different sources and described this new image and attitude. It was also the name of Petri’s visual imaging company and the name he would work under.

 ‘People tend to associate the word Buffalo with Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’,’ Ray once explained, ‘but in fact it’s a Caribbean expression to describe people who are rude boys or rebels. Not necessarily tough, but hard style taken from the street… a functional and stylish look; non-fashion with a hard attitude.’

Originally the word was taken from a Parisian security business who wore Air Force MA-1 jackets with the word BUFFALO written on them. These jackets where a huge part of the look and later became the uniform of Ray himself worn with Levi 501’s.
In 1988 Neneh Cherry, an original Buffalo girl, put out a single entitled Buffalo Stance purely inspired by Ray and the Buffalo collective. This defined the look, propelling it into the limelight.

 The main thought behind Buffalo was that it wasn’t exactly just a singular look or trend, Buffalo meant: classic and not an idea that would be gone tomorrow. The garments that where used were classic pieces found worn on the street or historical and traditional types of dress. The look was then pulled together using designer pieces, but these pieces were used for their cut and fabrication not for their brand name.

Arena Homme +
 25 years of Buffalo 
The legacy of Ray Petri

This formula is essentially what makes good street style seen today, look authentic.
The original and rebellious thinking that came from the times of the Buffalo crew is what truly inspires me. What Ray Petri saw was the need to connect what was actually happening around him with the dreamy unattainable world that fashion can sometimes appear to be. His observations ring true and it’s because of this that you can still see his influence today. I hope that I can always connect to this kind of creativity.

 

“It’s a Saduurday night!”

My last day of being 30.

Thinking back to my hilarious 30th birthday party shin dig hoe down last year out in the middle of Otway National Park in a massive tee pee. My sister said a speech and then I got up and performed Micheal Jackson’s Beat It for all my friends. I practised all the moves for weeks but on the night I ended up freestyling, haha! A great weekend that was and the best way to see in my 30s!

Wearing New Orleans vintage 70s full length negligee, Mr Barrie denim shirt, The SuperMarket 3000 beaded necklace, a handful o rings.

Here’s Stevie Wonder with his awesome style in 1980.

WILDFLOWER – Desert Film Shoot – magic hour

Photography Raylene O’Hare

Clothing and Styling WILDFLOWER by Kate Williams

Hair Claire Hicks

Make-Up Courtney Sutton

Models Michelle Paris, Jocelyn Talita, Ashleigh Dwyer

Stylist Assist Haylee Magendans

Location Perry Sand Hills, Wentworth NSW

 With thanks to Lizzy Bailey, Jacqui Hanlin, George Husband and all of the WILDFLOWER crew.

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These pictures were taken during the filming of the WILDFLOWER short film a few months back.

It was hard work filming in the harsh conditions of the desert but at the end of the day the sunsets were breathtaking and the air so still, calming and warm.

Eighties Katies

17/9/12

This look was inspired by moody teenagers of the early 80s. I was just looking through the book Luella’s Guide to English Style by the designer Luella Bartley and came across a picture of a surly teenager wearing a baggy le coq sportif striped sweatshirt, skin tight cord jeans and a bad perm. I also just recently saw a whole bunch of pictures of my older sister in the 80s and remember her look. She had the perfect 80s hair.This top I found at the Salvo’s. It’s a Katies top from the 1980s. It was a hideous beige colour so I dunked it in an aubergine dye bath.
I would love to start an etsy store called Eighties Katies! Remember good ol Katies fashion store? I have come across so many snazzy ’80s Katies’ numbers in op shops the last few years and they are actually pretty amazing!Wearing 80s Katies knit top, Dior silver chain necklace, WILDFLOWER jezebel zipper pants, Chanel purse.

UPDATE 26/9: Inspiration picture ref : Moody Teenagers of the early 80s

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