victoria from 5 to 7 | fashion, film, lit, more

With the passing of recent fashion weeks, there's been a definitive upsurge in nudity on the runways and, with it, an increased volume of news sources "writing" about fashion as though they have a clue what fashion is . These articles, however, do clarify how the function of fashion as a genuine artform is obscured from us and converted into a pornographic display of bodies (as fashion's function is to present the female body in an attractive light to a male audience).  For example, the New York Daily News, writing on 'The naked runway: the most outrageous non-clothing fashion designs' , wins the medal for most thinly veiled excuse to exhibit pictures of half-naked runway models in history. In an attempt to make this "newsworthy", one of the captions, in absolute shock and horror, explains that 'at Lingerie London, racy designs ruled the catwalk'. At Lingerie London  models wore lingerie. Sexy lingerie. Who'd have thought.  For a...

So it's been a long time since I last posted anything. Turns out working full-time, volunteering weekly, picking up extra jobs on the side, and moving your entire life to London, whilst also trying to conquer your reading lists for your Masters doesn't leave much free time to a) go out and do nice things so that b) you can sit down and write about them for a blog. As mentioned, I've upped and moved my life to London to study for my Masters. I've also gotten a new job, picked up a second job (money is more important than my stress apparently), got a bunch of flatmates to handle, and am still trying to conquer my reading lists for the semester. Amongst such turbulent activity I've had to regress to consuming the culture of 11 year olds to cope....or....well....culture I actually consumed as an 11 year old.  Aly & AJ in vintage Aly & AJ t-shirts show that returning to your past can be fun, not just cringe - from Refinery29 In case you hadn't h...

Personal Shopper is the latest collaborative effort from Kristen Stewart and director Olivier Assayas, following on from Clouds of Sils Maria in 2014, and it's confounding, infuriating, and exciting audiences both commercial and critical. Though I don't claim to understand this film any more than the next person - I still don't know if I actually liked it - I do think a significant thematic development is the relationship between the material and the immaterial throughout the film - that is, the stuff that Stewart's character, Maureen, a personal shopper and medium living in Paris, shops for versus the spiritual affirmation she seeks from her recently deceased medium twin brother. that Chanel dress though A significant portion of Maureen's daily life is spent at her job as a personal shopper for her boss, Kyra, whose penchant for designer fashion sends Maureen anywhere and everywhere, within and outside of the country, for the latest stylish wares. These se...

With the progression of the digital age, the definition of "celebrity" is stretching, warping and changing more than ever - who is a celebrity? Oscar winners, reality TV stars and social media influencers are now all lumped under the fame umbrella, so has it lost its meaning? Often we lament the loss of true Hollywood glitz and glamour, the timelessness of Marilyn Monroe or Bette Davis, but the real systems and structures of Golden Age Hollywood - namely, the star system - have never really left us. In fact, the star system has only really morphed, bleeding into everything we, as consumers of digital content, encounter daily. And I think the best way to make this clear is through the hit (it has a whole 4/10 on IMDB) 2003 movie S Club Seeing Double which is really all about the star system and the construction of "celebrity". It sounds ludicrous, but just follow for a moment.  This is from Singin' in the Rain  (1952) but you get the idea The Hollywood...

Ok, we've all heard about Girlboss , the latest Netflix Original for us all to binge. It follows the start-up of Nasty Gal, an online fashion retailer that had its roots in vintage designer fashion, founded by Sophia Amoruso in 2007. Though everyone is talking about the events of the show, it's doing something else particularly interesting - one episode visualises internet forums and instant messaging in a refreshing, unique way that really captures the weirdness of how we engage with one another online.  Girlboss, Season 1 Episode 10: Vintage Fashion Forum Girlboss  is a loose retelling of events in the run up to establishing Nasty Gal as a brand, and follows the trials and tribulations of Sophia (Britt Robertson) through business, love, friendship and fashion. Though it misses the mark in spots, and really lacks in exciting makeover/runway sequences I've come to expect of media about women in the fashion industry, the tone is generally a nice balance of humour an...

Now released in the UK after its release in South Korea back in June 2016, Park Chan-Wook's latest offering, The Handmaiden , is a period drama that is far more dynamic, fun and ferocious than it initially appears. Simultaneously mimicking the structures of an Austen-style Victorian drama and a luxurious, erotic thriller at the same time, the film also deconstructs the differences between masculine desire and feminine sexual fulfilment. The Handmaiden is a film you need to see - in your local arthouse cinema - to continue to support genuinely good, non-Western cinema.  Kim Tae-ri (left) and Kim Min-hee (right) as handmaiden and lady, respectively, in The Handmaiden Adapted from 'Fingersmith', a novel by Sarah Waters and set in Victorian England, The Handmaiden  lifts the plot and overall structure of the text and re-situates it in 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea. Such a shift is fitting between the two periods - both characterised by distinctions of class, gender an...

Last month I bailed out on my class work and my work work in order to go an visit my pal, Kirsty , in London. Save for a 3+ hour delay at the airport (thanks Easyjet!) and a very late arrival in London, we had a fantastic time. I was there for four days, ran into my lecturer on my flight (awks), filmed an interview, and didn't visit the universities I was supposed to be visiting.  I spent my first day alone, since poor Kirsty had to go and suffer through an 8 hour day at work on only 3 hours of sleep. Setting off from Mornington Crescent (aka a tiny bottle green tiled haven of an Underground station) I headed to the Wellcome Collection, a science and technology museum. From there I headed towards Regent's Park, where, initially, there were signs prohibiting dogs which seems like a crime against humanity. 10 minutes later I saw sense in their madness - when I did  get to the areas that allowed dogs there were so. many. dogs. A much higher dog yield per square foot.  ...

Though the industry has been trending towards diversity and inclusivity of late, fashion has a bad habit of taking these steps for superficial reasons. Every time a fashion brand steps away from slim white models towards literally anyone else, media coverage erupts with excitement and creates an excellent chunk of free advertising for the company. No doubt, moving away from the rigid templates we expect from fashion (both high and high street) is always a welcome and positive change, how can fashion brands incorporate diversity into their selection of models without descending into tokenism? And how can brands incorporate activism in a way that isn't simply about making money? To briefly summarise: it's great when brands do nice things, but it sucks when they do these things for money rather than for the customer's experience or wellbeing and social change.  The great example of how to incorporate these steps towards body positivity and social change without them c...

Get Out  is a sharp and humorous social thriller with a succinct plot and plenty of tension telling the story of Chris Washington who, on a visit to his white girlfriend's family home, finds himself in the centre of a kidnapping plot and must escape the overwhelmingly white country estate and return to freedom. The film is a particularly incisive criticism of the remnants of slavery and seemingly minute instances of racism amongst America's white liberals, exposing the ways in which America is anything but "post-racial". In line with the succinctness of the plot (hurrah for a film plot that doesn't overrun by approximately 45 minutes!), the film employs the symbol of the deer to quickly convey these differing relationships to race beneath the facade of acceptance and equality. Spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution if you haven't seen Get Out yet (and if you haven't seen it yet, why not?). Throughout the course of the film, the deer is a recurrin...