Editor's letter

Blogger is still not working!! Which means instead of seeing all the exciting beautiful things I am creating you will have to be content to read some articles and perhaps do a little proof reading? THANK YOU FANS

Snow white had an evil step mother. The great thing about characters in fairytales is that we are not really ever told much about them; this particular queen is ambitious and beautiful, but also vain. The moral of the story is that excessive vanity and self obsession will not only lead to a sticky end, but also put you down in history as the woman who talks to inanimate objects and poisons fruit to feed younger models. The ugly step sisters spent hours on getting ready for the ball, narcissus fell in love with his reflection, the argument between Athena, Aphrodite and Hera started a war lasting 10 years; vain characters litter the stories of our childhood, never as heroines but as the antagonist, causing hatred and ultimately self destruction. This is something we are warned against to such an extent that well into adulthood we find it difficult to accept compliments, we lie about how long it took us to get ready, we tell people “oh, it just dries naturally this way”. Perhaps attempting to eat the heart of anyone who dares become prettier than you takes things a little far, but could we all benefit from a little vanity?

Before putting together this issue we took a long hard look in the mirror and asked it, who really is the fairest of them all? We took time to be self indulgent, and admitted to it openly. We stood in a freezing field to take beautiful images. We enjoyed looking at our own reflections, not just in the mirror, but the reflection of ourselves in our articles and photo shoots. We realised that to embody the meaning of vanity, we have to be completely obsessed with every detail on every page, spending hours over perfecting images to be precisely right. A happy side effect of this is that the whole team’s group fanaticism and endless arguments over which images go into the final spreads, is that like the wicked queen, we are proud of what we have achieved.

You should know that I have designed some beautiful layout to go with this and it looks snazzy.

blame blogger, not me.

BLOGGER!

Today I am in such a bad mood with my blogger account that I set up tumblr....get on over to http://ailsasloves.tumblr.com/ for my latest photos.
Blogger, I will come back when you are willing to be reasonable.

A Thought For The Men...

A thought for the men... wear stuff with pockets.
Wednesday was my first proper menswear workshop (proper because we had one of those "lets talk about fashion and split into pairs" lessons already). We were designing and making man bags out of denim. This is my first experience trying to design macho, and it just had to be a bag?! I figured; keep it simple (like men), include lots of little stitch details and make it practical. Here is what I made;

 Please make appreciative noises about the cute stitch detailing and the little pockets on the side....

On a slightly annoying note, I have been trying to post this every day since wednesday to no avail. If Blogger persists with annoying interface issues I may have to ditch it and move to wordpress or tumblr.

hope you liiiiike

xx

Stills

Blue and Orange Silk

Some designs for some beautiful silk that I have.

I drop these objects at the exact same time, saying ayoooooooo, I'm Galileooo

Christmas Lights

I have entered the holiday season with gusto. My toes, arms and legs are killing me from ceilidh dancing so I've spent the past two days watching medical dramas cuddled up under a blanket. Having driven my big sister insane, I decided to turn off Grey's Anatomy and play with my camera. So I took these photos of my Christmas tree, looking all pretty and modern arty.

The Strip Tease

For one night only, I, Ailsa Lindsay, will be performing an academic strip tease in the style of a St Andrew's student. (if you are thinking about getting all excited and scrolling down to see the end result, I should warn you that this is a very Scottish strip tease, and you still end up in a jumper and warm jeans)
I'm up staying in St Andrews with my big sister for a few days because she just loves having me around. St Andrews is 600 years old, and so has some amazing and really fun traditions; last night I went to a debate where we all drank port before and there were all sorts of cute little bits. My favourite, obviously, is that it is completely legit to walk around the town in your gown, which is bright red and fleecy. The "academic strip tease" is what the students call the tradition of HOW YOU WEAR YOUR GOWN.
E.g.
In first year, you wear it up on your shoulders. This is my preferred method of gown wearing because it is the warmest way to wear it.

In second year you wear it slightly off both shoulders. Because you are so old and mature and too cool for school.

 Although this is a colder way to wear it, it is clearly the superior year to be late and have to run places.

 In third year you wear it off different shoulders to distinguish between the years, off the left for arts students. Alastair recommended I wore it off this side because if I looked like  a scientist I would attract lots of attention. Wait a minute...

 I tried to demo fourth year but somehow the photos don't have quite the panache that Seonaid achieves with it. Practice I suppose.

 This was us leaning in for the self timer. Not sure that was entirely necessary.

PREPARE FOR THE ICEAGE

Some of you may have seen on the news (or posted as every single status on facebook today) that it has been snowing in Scotland. Concerned that I might be snowed in/have to wear sensible shoes, I ran (read; hastened) to my food cupboard to see what I will have to survive on over this long cold winter.

This did not go particularly well for me.

Mentee-ing

At Uni we have a system where all the first years intern for a fourth year putting together their collection. I've been paired with the amazingly supportive and trusting Coryn Dickson, who is in the middle of making pre-garments for every garment in her collection, which is a ton of work. Normally I help out in a general way with pressing, hand stitching, tracing of patterns, drafting basic things, sewing on buttons etc, but today Coryn  was holding an amazing ethereal photo shoot which happened to involve 11 potted plants which we borrowed from B&Q. To get them all up and down to the second floor studio we had to put them on the lift on their own and then send them up, which got some surprised looks from people who saw a lift full of plants arrive. I haven't seen the photos yet but fingers crossed, I'm sure they'll be amazing.