The mourning gown

This was the day Lou Reed died, this was the day I walked in the bush and this was the day I wore a floral dress. It was Labour Day 2013 and we spent the day with a dear friend in the Wairarapa.

 

In the morning we woke up to the news that Lou Reed had died. It was all over facebook and people that I never thought would be fans were posting about him and his music. We listened to Lou for a good few hours and I read bits and pieces from this autobiography. He lived in a time of such liberation and freedom yet he had to constrain so much of who he was. It made me think that I am so blessed to live in a world where I can be me, just me, who ever I want to be.  

After we listened to Lou Reed and ate breakfast and read books we drove up the road to Fensham Reserve near Carterton. Walking through the reserve is like walking through loads of different types of bush. There is a swampy bit with Kahikatea, a fernery with mamaku and ponga, a grassy bit, and an amazing dense section with totara and matai. My favourite bit was a bit of the track where you felt as though the trees were hugging you as you walked along the narrow path. What makes this bush so cool is that there are loads of signs around telling you what the trees are; like a living classroom. There were loads of birds around and at one stage we got followed along by tirairaka (fantail). As we walked along my boyfriend picked pikopiko, also known as bush asparagus. 

 I love being in the bush, I love being outside and walking, I often forget how much I love it.

I got this dress in Napier from a big big op shop. I had been in Napier for the week at Kura Reo, a week long total immersion Maori language course, after my boyfriend came to get me we stopped at the op shop on the way to a cafe for lunch. When I went to order my lunch I did it in Maori without noticing. I had to turn my brain back into English and it was the most incredible feeling. If you don't speak a language you soon loose it. My boyfriend doesn't really like speaking Maori to me (it's his first language) so I feel as though slowly, it is slipping out of my head, and one day it might just disappear. I know my teacher would be disappointed in me as he believed and taught us that no matter how little we should still use it, and often. He used to tell us about how when he was driving he would practice his speeches to the dead by doing them to the road kill. It was silly but made so much sense. There is a great whakatauki (proverb) that I always go back to in my life that kinda works to sum up my little rant about my uselessness about speaking Maori and my love of the bush. 

Ko te manu kai i te miro, nona te ngahere. Ko te manu kai i te matauranga nona te ao.

The bird who eats the berry gains the forest. The bird that consumes knowledge gains the world.

Sunday - A day for doing the things that matter.

Today was a good day. As I said in an earlier post, Sundays are for doing the things that matter with the ones you love.

We started our Sunday by going to the food market down on the Wellington waterfront. It's such a cool place, people gather to buy vegies, herbs, tofu and hot food. A boat sells whole fish where you can have it filleted right before your eyes. All sorts of people gather at the market; it's a vegie filled melting pot.

After the market we went to the National Irish Feis for the second day, I watched my first game of hurling and supported our young Club members (I'm the Secretary of the Hutt Valley Irish Society) perform their story telling entries. I took my whanau with me today and it was nice to have company.

I entered the oratory section, I entered a month ago and entered in the hope that it would encourage more entries. I hadn't prepared anything as I didn't want the stress but I had intended to speak about the Irish Society as my marae. Once I got there I was told the topic was a prolific Irish figure. Lucky I had the letter I wrote to my ancestor in my bag. I spoke about my Great Uncle, William Arthur Ham, the first New Zealander to die in the First World War. He was born in Bray, Ireland.

I "competed" against one of my fellow Club members, he is one of my favourite members, he wears Sein Fein "Free Ireland" t.shirts, he is warm and kind and his speech was about Gerry Adams. As the adjudicator said, it was a real history lesson. It was an honour to stand beside him and "compete". My friend has a stutter and when he does public speaking it just disappears. It's magic.

Not a dress but how good does this look.

After my speech (yes Laura, I got a medal) we went over the hill to the Wairarapa to visit a very dear friend. He has a beautiful home (an old villa he moved) on his ancestral land and grows kai, looks after chickens, collects books and has pet tuna (eels); it's a perfect mix. The heart of the home is his coal range which I'm standing in front of. I love my friend and when I go to his home I can't help but think about my Dad and how this is how I know he would love to live. We made our dinner of meat, kumara and our own damper over the open fire under the stars. It's a type of paradise. In fact, I saw a shooting star & I didn't say anything, you always know when I'm spell-bound because I go very quiet.

Two pumpkins.

I got this dress from a friend of mine. She was selling some stuff and gave me this dress for free! I love it because it came from a friend and because I can pull it on and run around and feel naked. It's so light and wonderful for summer. One year I wore it on Christmas day and my (way cooler than me) brother and sister made me wear it with the skirt pulled up so the shirt like bit hung over the waist band bit. I wear it how it feels comfortable, and this is how. Yeah, suck on that siblings.

Great story, great dress.

One year Karen Walker was having a $150 sale. Everything in the store was $150 or under. I went in, probably the first time I had been in there, and spotted this dress from across the room. I was determined it would fit and that I would buy it. I tried it on and walked out to the bigger mirror. Well, you should have seen the look on the girl's face. Oh, she said, that wasn't meant to be out. Someone else came out of the changing room and said, that looks great, jealous I didn't see it. I looked back at the shop-girl and honestly thought she was going to vomit. I took the dress off, took it up to the counter and as the girl took it over the counter I saw the original tag. The dress was originally $957. I don't think it was meant to be sold in the sale.

For ages I didn't know where to wear this dress and as it's silk I was a little too afraid to wear it. I think I wore it once before I got a boyfriend who hated the dress, for years it hung, never to be worn. After a while I decided it had to be sold on, so I put it one last time and came down the stairs to where my new (and current) boyfriend sat. He gasped and said, how come I have never seen this dress?! You look amazing. And that was that. It quickly became the go to party dress and has had some pretty good outings. Every time I wear it someone says how much they love it. I can't believe I just about got rid of it. Here's some pictures of me and my Karen Walker dress. 

Me being interviewed as the 2010 Rose of Tralee

The dress loving boyfriend, Buck Shelford (former All Black with one testicle) and me at Government House.

The beautiful 2010 Auckland Rose of Tralee, Mrs Brown and me.

50th Anniversary of the Irish Club. Me & Jo

Chilling in the garden at my Uncle Jerry's (the Governor-General)

Green for Ireland

The other day someone said, "oh I love the way you style them", so I thought I should show how I wear these dresses with the rest of the clothes. I mean it's not as though I go around in just a dress.

This is what I wore to the first day of the National Irish Feis on Saturday. 

I felt like a fish out of water. 

In the hall it was as though I had stepped on to the set of Gig, there were curly wigs everywhere, stiff, bright coloured sequined dresses all over the place and repetitive music screaming out over the sound system; outside young Irish people spoke in what sounded like rhymes to each other as they watched teams kick, pass, bounce balls in a way I hadn't seen before, they swore & exchanged mocking comments. I felt my ancestors laughing at me as I wandered around unable to find a place to swim, but in the hall I found the water I was looking for; the oratory. 

 

This dress from the stash comes from a chain store, can't remember which one. It's got beautiful butterfly wings on it and I love the colours. It's much better with a cardy and I hate the cowl neck, so nineties. I usually wear it over pants but that would be breaking the self-imposed rules of this challenge. I look so blissed out in this picture, it was the start of the long weekend and I knew that it would be one of adventures. This was the calm before the storm...

 

Friday - Red October

By special request, I wore a red dress in honour of "Red October" the commemoration of the 25th of October the Socialist Revolution in Russia. Click on Red October to read more.

The woman that asked me to wear it is a revolutionary. She is one of many women in my life who are fierce and brave and loyal and hard working and I am privileged to have these women surrounding me and keeping an eye on me.

I didn't take a picture of me in the dress today, first day, sorry. So here is a picture of a picture of me wearing the dress that sits on my mantlepiece at home.

Me and my Papa

The dress is by Carlson a world famous Dunedin (my home town) designer. I love her clothing and never thought I would own one of her dresses. This dress fits so well it is like it was made for me. I bought it at the same time I bought that long lace gown and I wear it often to lots of things. I'll take a picture of me in it the next time I wear it (won't be long) and post it up.

I only have a few more days left of going through my stash of dresses for Frocktober. I would just like to remind readers that I have not purchased/borrowed or found any of the dresses, unfortunately, I own them all. In light of the upcoming final week I sorted out what dresses I would wear for the final few days. Here they are, with the exception of today, all ready to go.

Thursday - The 21st Dress

So this one from the stash is the dress that I actually got for my 21st. Mum said "this is the kind of dress you can only wear when you're 21." At the time I didn't really think much of it, but what I think she meant was, right now, you're really skinny so you should buy this dress because one day you'll be too curvy to wear it. That day has come.

I took these pictures before I went to work and I was so tired. These pictures show a little bit of my wee tummy and my big thighs. These photos were really hard to get; the other ones show every little bump and curve and on advice, I will not be posting them.

It's actually really nice to wear because it's two layers of cotton and it's heavy and stretchy. It can also be worn in a number of ways, halter neck, winged sleeves, low back, tied at the top etc. 

I actually love the top of this dress when I wear it with the winged sleeve, it's just the bit around my booty that's no good. But can you keep a dress just for the top?

Wednesday - The Jackson Pollock dress

When I walked downstairs in the morning wearing this dress my boyfriend went "ooooh, I love that dress, it reminds me of a Jackson Pollock." He's right, it's kinda like an expressionist painting. I got this dress from a second hand store in Levin. It was summer and I needed a dress for the trip and the matching belt with it was too good not to buy.

Today I went to work and then I went to the launch of my friend's beer. He is such an amazing person, an incredibly hard worker, generous with a kind soul and really good at making beer. He made a wheat beer recently (my fav type), it is so good, so so good, it tastes like banoffee pie.

 

After having a beer we went to the art opening of our new Mexican friend, Jorge Satorre, an artist who had been staying with us for the week. His work was beautiful, truly. The piece I am rubbing is a stone from Guatemala. I couldn't stop touching it and wanted to keep it close to my skin. I have a sponsor child in Guatemala who has recently stopped needing my support. To feel a rock from the land he has grown up on was pretty amazing. It was magical. The rest of Jorge's work included tiny bronze minatures of all the extinct New Zealand birds. To see them all, lots of them, perched on a plinth was pretty tragic. The way he had arranged them was as though he had left space for the ones that would eventually become extinct. If you click here you can see more about the exhibition. I wanted to include this quote from the exhibition catalog that I think is rather wonderful and expresses how I sometimes feel when I am engaging with the cultures around me. 

"It is impossible to say what an individual is doing unless we have tacitly accepted the essentially arbitrary modes of interpretation that social tradition is constantly suggesting to us from the very moment of our birth. Let anyone who doubts this try the experiment of making a painstaking report of the actions of a group of natives engaged in some activity, say religious, to which he has not the cultural key. If he is a skillful writer, he may succeed in giving a picturesque account of what he sees and hears, or thinks he sees and hears, but the chances of his being able to give a relation of what happens, in terms that would be intelligible and acceptable to the natives themselves, are practically nil."

Edward Sapir quoted in Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory. A History of Theories of culture, (Walnut Creek, C: AltaMira Press, 1992) 571