Lipstick Story

Outlandish, exaggerated and rhetorical statement: Red lipstick is in fact war paint in disguise.

Over the hectic Christmas shopping rush I realised two things; the principles of war (selection and maintenance of the aim) can be effectively applied to shopping, and that women who wear red lipstick are in fact wearing a sort of modern-single-woman war paint.

My father has a lovely tradition with his Christmas shopping; leave it till the last second and then blitz it all in one day with my assistance. This year I demanded a McFlurry as payment (for those of you who live in a cave they cost ninety nine pee) and the stingey bastard still wouldn’t pay up. We were almost finished, down to the last thing on the list. I was wearing appropriate shopping battle gear- flat shoes, comfy bra, hair tied off my face. Before the search for the small and strange last thing I felt the need to apply copious quantities of “pleasure me red”, my favourite red lipstick which I was most certainly not born with (maybelline, get it? HA). A bald, middle aged military man, my father didn’t understand why I felt the need to do so. I tried to explain that it makes you feel prepared, invincible, brave. This was when I realised that it shouldn’t be so hard to explain to a military man after all.

My best friend hates that I am so capable of giving the impression that I am both confident and not lost (which I am most of the time- I really have no sense of direction). Well one weekend I accidentally left my pleasure me red in her flat, and she too felt the draw of the war paint. She, like me, was able to feign a confidence which she didn’t feel once she had tried it out. She now bought her own tube a few months ago.

The Picts used to paint themselves blue before going into battle. This was for two main reasons; to be able to identify who was on their team in the heat of the battle and to scare the enemy. I am not suggesting that red lipstick plays a central role in the single-vs-couple battle that has and always will rage, but putting it on is like a tiny miniature version of the ancient painting ceremonies. It prepares you for a world where every day is an interview and every road a catwalk. And I love it.

Is it cos I is White?

I was asked to do a photo shoot for my friend Asna and her magazine project, which is based on ID magazine. Their theme is opposites so I was modelling against the very beautiful Melissa Kuwana, who is actually a very close friend. The chemistry on camera is quite clear, in fact most of the photos that Asna really likes are when we burst into fits of giggles.

When Asna and her editor Zoey were putting make up on me the conversation went something like this;

Oh my gosh you are so white! you are SO WHITE! Like, actually WHITE, you are so so pale, it's the same as WHITE!

HIGH MILL

HIGH MILL

http://www.hw.ac.uk/

Eating an Apple Very Quickly

This is my first attempt at creating a GIF, which I suppose is a little bit inspired by moving over to tumblr (for those of you who I have not already shown, clicky clicky)

Dead Pretty

My little sister is getting used to me asking her to do weird and wonderful things, this weekend was no exception with a fancy late-night half-dead photo shoot.

The idea was to have this as the back and front cover of a magazine so that you only see the whole image once the magazine is open. I don’t think the plan is going ahead but fingers crossed, because I liiiike.

Red Riding Coat

 I have a little bit of a Red Riding obsession and recently bought myself this deep red coat with wolf trim collar and cuffs. It makes me feel like a fairytale princess.

 These photos were taken by my little sister for an art project at school.

This is my best impression of a moody, tortured artistic type. I got a green bottom off the steps.
In other news, blogger appears to be working at home! Which means my problems are either Galashiels-related or old laptop-related. Will try my best to fix it.
xx

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