1. MODEL OFF DUTY
The Voxfrockers’ combined 36.78 years in fashion produced one inarguable certainty lay-dees and gentleboys and that is models, ie: young persons of colt-like legs, stripling torsos, swan-like necks and heartbreak faces, can chuck on a chaff bag if they’ve a mind to, and still look drop-dead gorgeous. The rest of us, the 94.78 per cent of us born Not Models and Never Likely To Be Mistaken For Models, must strive all our lives for a comparable shot at attracting admirers for love and friendship. Truth hurts, fashion’s a tricky project, what can you do? Which brings us in our loopy Voxfrocky way, neatly around to the subject of Oskar, a year-old Aussie fashion brand of simple sartorial concepts, clean, drapey lines and easy, sporty/casual chic, which markets itself – rather cleverly we thunk – as, “synonymous with the model off duty look”. How clever. And – see below – how kind-of-sort-of accurate. (Just add colt-like, stripling, swan-like and heartbreak accoutrements.)
Below is a panorama sample of our faves from Oskar’s current and typical offering of thick and oversized hooded knits, boyfriend shirts and easy-cut denim and track pants. What do you think? Prices whizz up and down between about $80 and $130 depending on the piece, which is highly affordable and you can shop it here or see a broader selection of its collections at www.oskarthelabel.com
Oskar’s “model off duty” looks
2. HI-HO HI-HO
Women’s off-the-rack corporate wear is a fraught fashion genre; eye-boilingly bland if you shop the most common racks of wash-’n-wear tailored jackets, trousers and pencil skirts, job-threateningly tricky if you wing it among the plunged necklines and hiked hemlines of big-box high street and designer fashion alternatives. What a girl needs is a miracle between the extremes. A dress, for example, of modern design, modest pattern and shapely-but-not-too-slinky silhouette that says “I’m here to work, buster” from the front but, with a high-heeled hip-swing (boom-shakka-left, boom-shakka-right) an unmistakeable, “I’m all woman under this frock, sonny-boy” from the back.
A dress like this one. Diana Ferrari’s Fiona is low-key graphic wicker-check patterned, features just enough sleeve for chic, a classic knee-grazer hemline and dragged waistline that happily accentuates – but not too much – a womanly torso, hips and bits. Its chameleon nature will acomodate a tight little peplum or oversized boyfriend jacket, a ladylike cardigan or even a fleshy, neoprene-eque sweat-top for casual Fridays, provided your corporate feminine core is scrupulously expessed with dagger-toed heels and that boom-shakka hip-swinging thing mentioned earlier.
Shop the Fiona now for $189.95 and its perfect mates, the Chaplin clutch $69.95 and Tiffanie pumps $139.95 at www.dianaferrari.com.au and stockists 1800 101 285.
Diana Ferrari – “Fiona” dress, “Chaplin” Clutch and “Tiffanie” pumps.
3. THE ORACLE
The Voxfrockers popped Suzy Menkes’ most recent video interview on our ToDo list on June 12 then promptly forgot it. Hell-O? That’s two weeks of Menkeslessness we’ll never get back. The rare unfurling of fashion’s most respected commentator by The Business of Fashion’s indefatigueable Imran Amed, was a particular doozy too. Miss Menkes is The Oracle, no question, on all matters of fashion. And Mr. Amed, the gifted curator of fashionable oracles (small and big Os) whose media web-empire has rocketted in a breathtakingly short time. Both Miss Menkes and Mr. Amed exhibit a clipped primness that is a joy to watch.
“There is a limited time, I think, that journalists should spend glorifying themselves online…” says Miss Menkes at one point in the 30-minute interview. “People can read me, see me, feel me…” she says at another, which triggered some hoots and collective mind boggling among the Voxfrockers. She was referring, of course, to her new role, recently announced, as fashion editor and columnist across many Vogue platforms, for Conde Nast International. Have a look here, and if you are one of the two people left on the planet not yet subscribed to The Business of Fashion, you can rectify that here.
Suzy Menkes in conversation with The Business of Fashion
4. SCARF IN A PORCHE
Voxfrock recalls being scared witless as a child by the legend of Isadora Duncan, a flamboyant dancer and socialist-Russian sympathiser strangled by her own extravagant neck scarf early last century. Miss Duncan secured her signature tendril of silk at her throat but allowed the tails to flutter in the wake of her open topped sportscar until one day they caught in the wheel spokes and….whoops. You get the drift. Which is our Voxfrocky introduction to designer Amanda McCarthy’s rather gorgeous contemporary incarnation of a driving scarf. Ms. McCarthy’s Leonard St fashion label is well established and highly revered, facts that apparently endeared her to online magazine Woman With Drive, launched by Porsche last year. Porsche asked Ms. McCarthy to design a scarf pitched at half of its typical customers: “The Porsche Woman is intelligent and ambitious…has a savvy yet classic style, and is always refined.” Well naturally, this also described half the Voxfrockers so we warmed to Porsche’s collaboration with Ms. McCarthy immediately. Porsche’s Woman With Drive scarf was finally launched this week. It is quite lovely, with echoes of Grace Kelly in the lipsticked motif on its breezy silk. We recommend you secure yours elegantly, as she did, with a loose knot under the chin and silken tails flicked back over both shoulders to flutter in the Porschey breeze, provided their flight is confined inside the vee-hiccle.
Read Porsche’s magazine and purchase your very own limited edition Leonard St for Woman With Drive silk (180 x 85 cm.) scarf (pictured below and main photo, top) for $118 here
Leonard St for Porche Women With Drive
Compiled by Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au with Terry Carruthers, intern@voxfrock.com.au
