LOOK AT YOU; YOU’RE GORGEOUS
Unilever’s filmlet Mirrors is the latest in its series to tap women’s weird self-loathing ways. Beauty brand Dove’s 2013 research found one in three women regard their mirrored reflection with more anxiety than satisfaction, a sad consequence, one suspects, of a world crackling with TOOFATOLDUGLY messages for every ordinary woman and girl every bloody day. Dove’s research found we start off thrilled to the little-girly-gills by our mirrored reflection, but that joy is eventually thrashed out of us.
http://youtu.be/5I0SSUdP9X0
Last year, Dove’s confronting filmlet Camera Shy also showed women ducking away, chucking cushions, anything to avoid a camera being pointed at them for the same TOOFATOLDUGLY reasons.
One Good Thing though. A certain girly comeraderie does mushroom with recognition that all women endure the same subtle, daily bollocking. On Youtube, for example, Camera Shy clocked up 18 million-plus views and, at the time of writing, Mirrors had already clocked about 44,000. The girl-Voxfrockers were among them. We watched with tears welling while our one Voxfrocking boy went “huh?”.
Which says it all really. That mirror thing is a girl thing.
FIT BUSY FIT BUSY FIT BUSY
The Voxfrockers live a mixed mash of health and fitness attitudes; one of us is a rabid squatter and hot yoga-er, another jogs 10 km. just for fun, another swears by the restorative power of a brisk morning constitutional followed by a sprinkle – a la Karl Lagerfeld – of bracingly chill water on the face and breasts. Where our views do converge, is on the matter of clothing. It’s got to be noice. We love Lorna Jane, for example. And, Stella McCartney for Adidas; hell-o! And, we’ve recently warmed to the subject of this quikstix Voxreview, Vie Active. (Examples pictured here and main photo, top.)
Vie Active
It’s barely a year old, the brainchild of Bondi-raised athlete, fitness instructor and mum Noa Ries, and her French-American extreme skiing triathlete husband, Bryan Ries. The pair based Vie Active on their own squats-to-street, fitness-to-family reality: “As a trainer and a mother I would often find myself still in my exercise clothing at 4pm,” Ms. Ries says. “I knew that there had to be something other than Lycra; something that would let me still feel fashionable and chic but that could handle the intensity of a tough workout”. They found it after intense research into high performance, fast dry and wicking, anti-microbial fabrics including F3 Compression (no idea) and good old Aussie Merino Wool.
The collection of tank and crop tops, fast jackets, shorts and leggings includes functional flat seams and zips, concealed pockets and tricky configured jigsaw components for best fit, jazzed with clean on-trend colours and patterns. Ms. Ries reports her collection is already stocked in fitness boutiques across the US, UK and Australia as well as parts of Asia and the Middle East. For online and other stockists, and more on the marvellous, fastrising Ries’s, go to www.vieactivewear.com
Compiled by Terry Carruthers intern@voxfrock.com.au, with Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
