Meeting and Greeting

I imagine my friendships as a spider’s web. Strands reach out in different directions; some towards college, others towards London or other parts of the country. A few have to stretch across oceans and bypass countries or continents to reach bloggers in America or Australia. Occasionally the horizontal skeins join one friend to another as lives overlap, often in unexpected ways. For me, the existence of this disparate collection of individuals and social spheres is a continual source of pleasure.

I’m always looking to add further threads to the web. Each unfurls the possibility of something new – another person to talk to, work with, enjoy the company of. They arise in a number of ways. The most obvious is mutual acquaintances, either introduced in person or recommended by a friend. A few were lucky chance encounters on residential courses or during events. Many have been found through London Fashion Week, with several street style photographers and other individuals met across the cobbles. Recently I’ve had the privilege to meet two bloggers slightly younger than me in separate cities, after long strings of emails. In both instances it was delight to move from computer screen to face-to-face encounter.

Such a diverse range of social interactions proves the irrelevance of age. Exchanges take place with people from fourteen to sixty-plus and carry a common theme – curiosity about and interest in other human beings. There’s a phrase that encapsulates this for me, taken from E.M Forster’s ‘Howards End’: “Only connect.” I most value the friendships that cut through the shallows and allow for this sense of connection – of conversation and debate, shared interests and contrasting opinions.

Talk between old friends has a different context than that of new acquaintances. One is characterized by ease and familiarity, the other often revolves around discovery. To find such new encounters, sometimes you have to take a plunge – be the brave one by igniting conversation with the person sitting next to you.

Then there are the other approaches demanded by pursuits such as street style photography. I experienced a nervous flutter on waylaying well-dressed individuals for Oxfam at Hay Festival last summer. Despite brandishing my camera, it still took a deep breath of courage to ask if I could photograph the passersby whose shoes, layers or smiling eyes caught my attention.

With photographer Fred however, I was in front of the camera for the images above. I met him after someone I know mentioned several times that he would “have to” get us to do some work together. I followed it up and several weeks later we met on a freezing afternoon at the top of Primrose Hill. I had little idea what he looked like, trusting instead that he would recognize me. His camera was a good indicator though. We chatted between shots, me taking very gentle steps in the green Office heels as we crisscrossed paths and chose suitable benches. A quick removal of the coat to reveal the sixties dress beneath was chilly enough to require a warm pot of tea afterwards. We discussed aspirations, inspirations, respective A' Levels and Cindy Sherman. As I walked back through the ever-darkening afternoon I paid special interest to the people around me: the dog walkers, the families, the joggers, the tourists, the couples, the lone strollers. Each undoubtedly had their own web of threads spinning out their daily encounters. 

You can see more of Fred's work here. 

Workshop Coffee photography of Jessica Mieja and Vanessa Jackman

The resolution formed in January lasted all of eleven days. I would read all the books piled in my room before any more joined them. No more purchases until I’d taken in Tolstoy and finished The Odyssey. The promise might have been kept had I not, nearly two weeks later, found that I had nothing to read for an imminent café visit. I get antsy without a book in my bag; I was forced to visit the nearby charity bookshop. My resolve was broken, but I was richer for it - leaving with and consequently gobbling up Jeanette Winterson’s ‘The Passion’, plus ‘A Book of English Essays.’

Winterson may be best known for ‘Oranges are Not the Only Fruit’ but her other novels are just as exhilarating. Reading ‘The Passion’ feels a little like witnessing light and images as they bounce off a mirror. It is pared back to the point that each word has weight, but is executed with a light and joyful touch, one of those texts that you know immediately will become ever better with each subsequent reading.

The essays, however, accompanied me to London and back on my last trip (the next for LFW is taking place shortly). William Hazlitt filled my tube journeys and G.K. Chesterton provided food for thought as I enjoyed breakfast at Workshop Coffee. I was privy to insights on walking, cold mornings, knowledge versus understanding, shyness, the pleasure of the dark, ambition and many other subjects. Each topic, often concerned with something taken for granted or overlooked, opened up another area to consider. Of course, having first been published in the forties (with essayists spanning from the 16^ththrough to 20^th Centuries) there were outdated attitudes and omissions, not least the lack of a single female essayist. No Virginia Woolf, despite her being the most likely candidate, and a certain propensity for all individuals to be treated as a ‘he’.  

However, in the introduction the editor advised all prospective readers to turn to a particular essay on page 235 – Maurice Hewlett’s ‘The Maypole and the Column.’ I did just that. Hewlett begins by discussing the rural practice of adorning a maypole with streamers and flowers, before presenting the following:

“So they transfigured the thing signified, and turned a shaven tree-trunk from a very crude emblem into a thing of happy fantasy. That will serve me for a figure of how the poet deals with his little idea, or great one; and in his more sober mood it is open to the essayist so to deal with his, supposing he have one. He must hang his pole, or concept, not with rhyme but with wise or witty talk. He must turn it about and about, not to set the ornaments jingling, or little bells ringing; rather that you may see its shapeliness enhanced, its proportions emphasized, and in all the shifting lights and shadows of its ornamentation discern it still for the notion that it is.”

In my copy, I immediately underlined this paragraph in pencil. It expresses a little of what I aim to do with my blog. Each written piece doesn’t necessarily have to fall into the categories of ‘wise’ or ‘witty’, but I do hope to expand on, unpick or highlight particular ideas. It gives me the chance to discuss themes from feminism to the way we label clothes. Each week I enjoy talking about different subjects or engaging in debate.

Today the essay as a form has been largely replaced with the column, the book review and the memoir article. It still exists, but few now label themselves as 'essayist'. It’s a job title I'd like to aspire to in the future. Though in the meantime, this blog is my maypole, each post a ribbon, adding another set of clothes, photographs and words to those already there. 

These are just a handful of photos from a shoot I did with the extremely delightful and talented Vanessa Jackman last summer in London. (These images, plus more were posted on her blog a few weeks ago). I'm sure that for many, Vanessa needs no introduction as a truly gifted photographer. She arrived early one morning with wonderful Jessica Mieja in tow, whose expert touch with hair and make-up is highly skilled. The clothes are all mine apart from the loaned white lace dress which is Alice by Temperly  from My Wardrobe. So in keeping with my musings above, I suppose that this particular post is adorned with second hand lace, silk and satin - and a smattering of pale gold sunshine. 

Swimming and Spinning photography

The following article was first written for Young Minds, so apologies if you read it back in December. I lightly edited it for re-publishing here. I felt that the photos taken of me by the multi-talented and rather gorgeous Lucy Feng (who I put in front of the lens here) last Autumn were appropriate on two counts - not only in the general energy and joy of the shots, but also in my proximity to a body of water. Everything worn is second hand. 

Dad went swimming recently – a brief, mad dash in and out of the freezing hillside pool. I crouched on the rocks above with my camera in hand trying to frame the moment, to capture him in the green cocoon of running water. I squinted through the eyepiece as he squealed. The winter stream was bitterly chilly, but I forced him to stay until I could focus and click. As he jumped out and reached for the towel I had a brief snatch of elation, of realizing quite how special these small moments still are. 

Little over a year ago my dad wasn’t dipping as much as a toe into cold water. This was unusual for a man who usually celebrated the delights of mountain streams and plunge pools regardless of season or temperature. The other three of us often watched as he slid in and out of lakes or rivers, his long legs kicking up as he laughed with the adrenaline rush. Roger Deakin’s ‘Waterlog’ was his guiding text, the outdoors his cathedral. The swimming stopped at the beginning of autumn 2011. Long walks, days out and that fascination with the beating heart of forests and hills gradually disappeared too. 

Depression was the diagnosis – the word he was given to explain why he could no longer function; the word that was offered to my brother and me to justify why our dad would be moving temporarily out of our home and into hospital; the word handed to my mum to help her understand why her husband’s eyes were empty. That word has become misappropriated and misunderstood in every day language. It is a clinical term, describing an illness that debilitates both mind and body. It is not interchangeable with sadness, despondency or any of the other more easily defined emotions. ‘Sadness’ doesn’t hang like fog in the living room for six months. It doesn’t give justice to the man whose head was full of terror, hands trembling as he ate, speech devoted only to paranoia and apologies. ‘Sadness’ wasn’t what created an impassable void between our father and the figure that sat on the sofa all day. This shape looked like dad, but had none of his curiosity or humour. It huddled reading trashy books and filling out sudokos day after day as we tried to coax him out. I imagined the real man outside somewhere, sculling up and down a river or strolling through a field at twilight, as he used to do. The outdoors scared this replacement. When we went away to visit friends he pleaded with us to let him out of the car, to leave him behind, to let him walk back home. Our house was a cave, with everything beyond the walls and windows threatening.

It’s very easy if you're on the outside looking in on depression to use blithe instructions like ‘pull yourself together’ or ‘stop moping’ or ‘use your willpower.’ But this is as impossible and insensitive as suggesting to someone with two broken legs that they should simply pull themselves together, get up, go for a run and then do something useful. The impact is as physical as it is mental and emotional – and it radiates out from the individual to affect all who surround them. 

Severe depression took all that my dad loved and lived for, and warped it. The chemical imbalance in his brain made literature unreadable and the landscape unreachable and terrifying. For him each stretch of water was no longer an embrace, but a place filled with possible dangers: broken glass and barbed wire waiting at the bottom or hidden currents that might pull us under. He didn’t need the adrenaline from jumping in the sea, his system already full of it from the constant horror and panic of ‘fight or flight’ as he sat on the sofa. He tried to fold himself away there, but couldn't curl small enough to pass unseen. We saw, and it hurt.

Depression is a wound of sorts. It can eventually heal – although the process of recovery may be one of complications and setbacks. Getting better is also a different process for everyone. The possibility of my dad’s return became clear on the afternoon he agreed to join me for a walk. Our conversation was stilted, but the steps were progress. Like a tide, the extent of the following revival varied from day to day. He moved from activity to monosyllables as moods shifted. But if the stroll was a first sign, then the revisiting of a favourite river was a decisive signal. It’s not melodramatic to say that when he was so ill, neither my mum nor I could imagine him ever swimming again. The idea was incompatible with the reality we had all coped with for months. Nonetheless, there he was – hollering with as much energy as remembered, lips grinning beneath a striped beanie hat.

His depression officially lifted in late spring of last year, after much trial and error and ongoing combinations of approaches for managing and treating it. It now strikes me that his illness left him stuck at the bottom of a silted lake. We wanted, desperately, to catch him with hooks, suddenly yank him from the depths – dredge him up in an instant. Instead it was an agonizing process of waiting for the dark liquid to drain away, drop by drop.

That liquid is now not dark, but clear. The riverbed is sandy and covered in stones. Dad made up for lost time through cycling, writing and taking me on six-mile walks. Although it is now cold, he still retains this spark – a desire to fill himself up with life and the joy of being here. Whenever he now steps into a mountain plunge-pool, with breeze ruffling leaves, it is an act of celebration. A celebration of swimming; of the human ability to suffer and recover; of the wonder to be found in days out and other activities; of the bonds between family; and of the relationship with the outdoors.

We all push forward, taking it one stroke at a time.

Homage to Orla Kiely

A plain door and flashed ticket lead to

ladder-steep stairs.

On the upper floor, desks;

where pastel secretaries tap and file.

Light brims over the clatter of keys,

a corridor of motion.

Boucle suits and t-bar shoes with polished heels and toes,

Mohair jumpers pink and soft as typists sit in rows.

Filing cabinets stacked

in blocks – a backdrop to

phones and teacups,

lamps, moneyboxes, beehives

shifting as they stoop and turn.

Cabled dresses, squirrel jumpers, jaunty circle skirts

All revealed as coats are peeled and sleeves rolled up on shirts.

We watch,

weight balanced on one metallic heel

or placed equally in two patent boots,

clustering at the edge.

They gather in a throng of knits as klaxons mark the close,

The working day has faded to a final, knock-kneed pose. 

Easy to imagine them still

typing, talking, working, walking

in a pocket of time,

suspended above Flitcroft Street:

hanging on the hem

of the past.

Rosalind Jana, 2013 

Photos of the Orla Kiely presentation very kindly provided by the beautiful Dina of She Loves Mixtapes

London Fashion Week is often described as a circus, but the more appropriate location might be the fairground. Colourfully dressed crowds; catwalk spaces strung out across the city like stalls displaying their wares; the spectacle of the shows and presentations. At LFW the Ferris wheel is not a physical presence, but an apt metaphor for the tumbling, ever-turning motion of each day as buyers and press make their way from place to place. Others are less concerned with the designers’ attractions than with the attendees – streets taking precedence over the catwalk as outfits are observed, aligned in the frame of a lens, quickly shot.

The increasingly theatrical aspect of London Fashion Week was most clearly encapsulated in Orla Kiely’s presentation in the Elms Lester gallery on Flitcroft Street. A mise-en-scene of desks, typewriters and beehived models greeted viewers who climbed the stairs with invites in hand. The whole experience was a multisensory immersion into another age - the taste of champagne and the sound of phones ringing balanced against sights of mustard cardigans and peter pan collars. It was an irrepressibly charming performance in situ. The line between stage and the audience blurred as we watched the 60s style typing pool from the sidelines – many with cameras in hand, or in my case a welsh-wool covered notebook and pen.

There is something incredibly desirable about the clothes that Kiely produces each season. They represent a full-skirted, pastel-sweetened vision of youthful elegance. Ankle socks abound in the lookbook, while during the presentation, white tights flashed past as models walked, sat and giggled behind carefully manicured nails. As with all collections, the overall theme can be broken down into individual designs – Mondrian-esque block print shift dresses, velvet jacquard jackets, pink dvore pencil skirts. The floral sprigged shirts and grey, faux fur coats will no doubt be desirable to a wide audience. A few consumers might emulate the playful office feel of the presentation, but these are all items with individual versatility and longevity. The presentation was a beautifully staged chance to set the clothes in motion and to assemble a story around the designs. 

And yet there’s something interesting about the role of women in these narratives. The crisp chic of a 50s secretary does have its allure – not only in the tailoring, but also in the whiff of stationary and thorough organisation. Add in the evocative clack of typewriter keys, the colour co-ordinated office space, the industriously stacked filing cabinets and you have a space that harks back to the world of Mad Men or The Hour. But despite the perceived glamour and style of such settings, the reality is that few would now aspire to being an ‘office girl’ - as they once did - or to working in such a retro environment. After all, the corsets and girdles worn under nipped-in dresses in the 50s and 60s were symbolic of the restraints placed on women at the time.

We are fortunate enough today (in the West) to live in a society where all jobs and roles are technically open to us – much higher rungs on the ladder to reach for if so wished (if not always achievable due to other factors.)

Perhaps it’s a process of drawing out the differences between inspiration and idealising of a past reality. Taking an era or look as stimulus for the creative process does not necessarily translate into a desire to live in that time period. We can acknowledge the allure of pencil skirts and sweaters as Orla Kiely does so gloriously, whilst also noting that we’re lucky now to be able to make an active decision to dress like this – treating the aesthetic as one of a myriad number of options, rather than a narrow given.

My slight homage to Kiely's AW '13 collection was composed of a second hand vintage blazer and cashmere jumper (both charity shopped), blue shirt from my mum, a second hand Valentino skirt (present), shoes from a charity shop and vintage accessories. 

If you want to see more of my writing, head over the the brilliant All Walks on the Catwalk website where I wrote an article about my experiences of modelling and body image.