Things I Want: Céline coat

Because who doesn't want to look like a human version of one of these bags?

There's a whole conversation here to be had about these plastic bags– and there's an intersting blogpost here about an art show curated around the weaving technique used to make the pattern (a post that is also the provenance of the above image). 

What I like about this coat is the way it looks one dimensional, the contrasting lining lending it a depth but still making her look flat as a dressed paper doll. We'll add that to the desktop folder labelled 'in my dreams'.

huh.

I did a mental calculation of words written on my walk home last night. I think I'm up to about 45 000 words. That's my prologue, half of chapter one (including a sprawling lit review that I loathe and am loathe to wrangle into some semblance of okay writing), all of chapter two, all of chapter three and 6000 words of chapter four. I think my five chapters may have become six chapters upon the discovery of a notebook I forgot I kept last year. 
And I am at 210 references in my EndNote. And all these numbers don't really mean much, when you look long and hard at them, because what I'm hoping for, after all, is good writing, rigorous thinking, elegant expression. But on days like this, when even the thought of opening that same Word file again is wearying, the numbers sure do make me feel like there's solid ground behind me. That I'm over halfway.



*In this context, the ad is less an intended plug for Jil Sander and more an admiration for the image and her sinuous, weary or head-scratching pose. Interesting to me that in this image you can't make out much of the clothing- an idea, an image being what's advertised, then, rather than the garment. The you in the clothes that this label can create. Also, why am I spending so much time on a footnote? And asking myself rhetorical questions where all of you can see? 

How to dress for your shape

Hurray yes and I want to pop champagne and throw cake at whoever wrote this. 

Found via  Liv from here.

The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses

I found this online here but it's originally from One Way Street by the peerless Walter Benjamin. My personal favourite is number 11.

THE WRITER’S TECHNIQUE IN THIRTEEN THESES

1. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.
2. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.
3. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.
4. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.
5. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
6. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.
7. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.
8. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.
9. Nulla dies sine linea ['No day without a line'] — but there may well be weeks.
10. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.
11. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.
12. Stages of composition: idea — style — writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.
13. The work is the death mask of its conception.

The things no-one tells you about doing a PhD that you should really know

(I could do a visual analysis of this image and tie her worried expression to the content of this post but really... it's just a gratuitous inclusion of Vogue editorial. 

Image: Annie Leibovitz for Vogue US)

During the course of my candidature, I have often stumbled over common truths about the experience of doing a PhD that I wished someone had sat me down and told me when I started. These common truths often blasted apart my preconceptions of what 'everyone else was doing' and allowed me to understand the parameters within which we work. This was a huge relief. And lately, I have been reflecting on my experiences of being a post-graduate student and have wanted to dot point them out here on Fashademic in the interests of just-starting PhD students everywhere. 

It should be noted, of course, that I'm in the Arts and Humanities, so this advice may not translate perfectly to my quantitative friends in the world of Maths and Sciences who may be working on group projects- but maybe there's some crossover? It should also be noted (look at that phrasing! proto-academic alert) that I'm working in the European (and Australian) style of PhDing which sees us spend all our time drinking tea and reading books  being very diligent indeed as we spend three to four years (or more) researching one project of our own devising.

So with the qualifying out of the way, let us proceed to the things no-one tells you about doing a PhD that you should really know:

1. There will be days where you just don't feel like doing your work- you just don't want to, or you can't, or you need a break. My advice to you, gentle PhDer, is take the day off. It is not a crime to have a break when you need one, and if you feel guilty about it, it might be time to rethink how you organise your work and on what basis you measure a day as successful. 

2. Your literature review. This will take longer than you think it will, it is harder to work on than you anticipated, and you will have to do significant rewrites of it at the end of your candidature anyway as more will probably have been written on your topic by then. It's inevitable, and it's also okay- just get on with it and do a database search every few months to stay abreast of useful new research. 

3. Which brings me to point three: sometimes work takes longer than you expected, longer than you planned for and wrote on your wall planner. That doesn't mean you're a failure, but that work such as we're doing takes time. This is a take-home my friend Becky recently helped me with. I was standing in the kitchenette in the ARC making my twelfth cup of tea of the day and angsting with her about how I had hoped to finish my chapter one draft by the end of February (it was, by then, the end of March). The update for you is that it's now almost the end of April and I'm still working on it. Have I felt good about this? No. Have I been working as hard as humanly possible to get it done (and balance my other commitments like teaching)? Of course. So what can you do? Thanks to Becky's advice, which was that she has experienced the same thing and that it's not unusual, I have accepted the situation as it is, and will just keep working hard. It will get done eventually and really, you can't work harder than you can work. Feel free to write that little bon mot out on a post-it and stick it to your computer screen. Simplistic but true.

4. Which brings me to point four: talking to other post-grads. Having a group of friends to debrief and demystify this process with over the past few years has been invaluable. Chances are what you are feeling other people are also feeling, and sharing it can be a great way to find support and advice- or give it, based on your own experiences. It also means when you're having an unproductive day, you have someone to groan with who understands your predicament and can frogmarch you to Ralph's for a hazelnut affogato.

5. Think of your PhD like an apprenticeship. I thought I had all the skills I needed to do this project already when I started it. I'd done two theses before, felt like I had mad research skills already, and had consistently got excellent marks for my writing- AKA set for PhD domination. And yet in the first year of my candidature, I had an ongoing crisis of confidence. I was meeting other students who seemed so much smarter than I, so much more equipped for the demands of this kind of work, and so much more at ease talking about theorists I had previously never encountered (see: Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard, Lacan.) While I got good at the wise nod and thoughtful 'hmm' when  immersed in conversations about theories I had frankly never, ever heard of before, all the while my mind was whirring: surely I'm not smart enough to do this? Has someone in enrollments made some sort of terrible mistake, leaving some Lacanian would-be expert staring sadly into the depths of a mirror and asking why they didn't get offered a place? (boom tish.)

The problem was expecting myself to be at a completion level of expertise at the beginning of my candidature- which seems really silly in hindsight yet which is also completely understandable. What I found to be a healthier perspective was to acknowledge that I still had much to learn- and that that was not only okay, but was also kind of the entire point I was doing the PhD. As I researched, I discovered amazing thinkers and writers like Walter Benjamin, Gaston Bachelard, Pierre Bourdieu (not his writing so much- sorry P.B. But his ideas are very brilliant so he totally gets included) and Susan Sontag who have deepened and enlarged my perspective on anything and everything from winding staircases to social organisation. From wider reading, my writing has improved; the way I shape ideas has become more rigorous and complex; and, on another level, I have learned something of what it is like to be an academic, always juggling five very important obligations and ideas at the one time and doing my level best to give all I can to each. It's an apprenticeship. 

5. Doing a PhD can be a heck of an emotional rollercoaster. As I said, you can feel not smart enough at times, whereas at other times you feel so clever it's like light is shining out of your fingers and toes (just me?) Doing work of this kind is ongoing, arduous at times, and very personal- it's your ideas on the line, your writing, and the work becomes precious to you as representative of the best you can do at the time in which it is undertaken. Understandable, then, that when you have a really productive day/ace a seminar presentation/get an article accepted you feel invincible and when you stare at the screen dumbfoundedly all day you go home wondering why you're even doing it at all. I find it helps to acknowledge that you're going to have off days, and it's not the end of the world. Take a night off, get some good sleep, and tackle it again tomorrow- you just never know when a super-productive day is going to surprise you. And enjoy those when they come! And they will. And they're great.

6. This article: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/how-not-to-write-a-phd-thesis/410208.article#.UXBwtLduSk4.facebook. Useful. Markers start with the bibliography? They see spelling errors as indicators that there might be deeper errors in the work? GOOD TO KNOW. 

7. And most importantly: try to stay in the moment and enjoy the process. I find looking at submission as the only goal of your candidature an incredibly unhelpful state of mind. It means that you miss the satisfactions that come during the day-to-day of doing your work and reinforce why you're doing your study. It's a privilege not everyone gets to experience, this swathe of time to read, write, think and connect with other like-minded people. Moreover, you're working on a project you chose, that you designed for yourself- shape it how you want it to be, research what you want to, and work hard at justifying the contribution you will be making. Knowing how your work will add extra knowledge to the world is a really great encouragement when you feel flat. 

8. Lastly, a word of wisdom from a friend and former tutor who once encouraged me by explaining that of course my work looked obvious and unoriginal to me- I was the one who had spent weeks immersed in it. But to other people unacquainted with it, it was offering something new and interesting. Always words that I return to when I'm exasperated by my own work.

I'd love to hear what you think- other PhDers, have you got any advice to add? 

See also: The Thesis Whisperer, The Times Higher Education

Not quite right, or "what does one wear to Eveleigh Markets on a Saturday?"

Most Saturday mornings I head to Eveleigh Markets to buy fresh flowers and locally grown fruit and vegetables for the week. I also breakfast on the samples (yes, I'm one of those people and I am not ashamed) and eye off the deliciousness I've never yet let myself buy (for lack of spare cash not for dietary reasons, I might add. If anyone wants to start a 'labné balls fund for Rosie' please do feel free.)

Anyway, my first inclination is always to dress simply- like country-girl simple. Fresh washed hair, white cotton dress and sandals. That way I can weave my fresh flowers in a circlet on my head and make believe for those forty produce-packed minutes that I am a girl in manner of Marie Antoinette frolicking in Petit Trianon. 

And yet- and quite justifiably so- I know I will feel conspicuous among the designer dogs and serious-eyed shoppers with their hand-drawn trolleys. And so I lean towards my most casual stuff- my bassike dealbreakers and striped t-shirt, which is my "off-duty" uniform if we appropriate model fashionspeak and apply it to a curvy, five foot seven-on-a-good-day researcher with "grad student hair" (as I was recently told by a friend.) But then I feel underdressed and so inevitably reach for something that's kind of ok but also just a bit off the mark. Like this:

Here I am, at a loss of how to position myself for the photograph (as always. Could this be considered my signature pose?), wearing a black silk dress from Topshop, a white bassike t-shirt, Marni earrings and a pair of Jil Sander pennyloafers. Accessorised by a hair elastic on each wrist because a. symmetry and b. useful. Apologies to the anonymous gent reading at my waist.

You see why it was called 'grad student hair'? Always just a bit dishevelled. But the point of this image is not to show you my halo of flyaways but to point out the earrings! I acquired them recently from the Belinda sale- something exciting like 60% off and I let myself go there in celebration of my cracking start to the academic year. Maybe I shouldn't reward myself with clothes to celebrate personal achievements but then, who am I kidding? If I didn't, I would have nothing to blog about except the new playlist I made on Grooveshark to write my first chapter to. (Each chapter gets a new one, which you can file in 'useless facts you never knew you wanted to know about my working methods'.) Anyway, the point is (and I do have one, promise) is that the earrings are clip-ons and made of plastic, rhinestones and neoprene so they are pretty much the best ever. Cue big toothy grin.

So all-in-all it's a bit of a weird outfit- Nineties dress and t-shirt combo in the favoured palette of that decade, monochrome. But then I messed it up with the attention-grabbing earrings and shoes but failed to follow through by not even styling my hair or wearing make-up. Much as I like the individual elements of the outfit as garments in and of themselves, as an ensemble they're all speaking different messages. 

In terms of whether I thought I was wearing an amazing outfit- not really, no. An outfit worthy of sharing with you? Maybe not even. But I've been writing lately about how we perform ourselves in particular ways on online contexts, unsurprisingly specifically on style blogs, and I suppose this is part of my performance of myself to you. Sometimes the way I dress is a bit off, like I'm almost there but not quite, and even the fact that I'm wearing amazing earrings or a dress I was thrilled to find (having hankered after a similar Ann Demeulemeester one that did absolutely nothing for me) doesn't overwrite the feeling. At other times, it feels like the clothes I wear are singing over my skin- even when it shouldn't really work but you feel like it just does and somehow that makes you feel like the coolest girl in the room. 

The good thing is that most other people don't really care if your clothes are singing or not- they're doing their own thing and are happy for you to do yours. Running as a throughline underneath all of this, though, is the question of whether or not such experiences could be conceived of as 'self-expressive', bounding off the idea that this is an inherent aspect of dress? 

I think that there is definitely a communication that flows from garment to self,  not just in terms of the relation of fabric to skin but also in the way that the clothes make you feel. The image you have of yourself as you wear them, the image you imagine flowing outwards from your person as a communication to those who encounter you. Taking this outfit as an example, did it express anything about myself? About my taste? Kind of- it shows you what things I like, but not how I would choose to style them if i really thought about it. The clothes semiotically communicate either way, sparking connotations and remembrances or curiosity in people who pay attention to clothes- or they might just indicate me as a young woman conforming to the social demand that we be dressed when we are in public. 

I don't yet know where I'm heading with this, but I know that I want to complexify the relationship between us and the clothes that we wear- and why- and what wearing those clothes do to our moods, our feelings of self, our feelings of being comfortably equipped for the situations we dress for. I don't know if this has a place in my thesis but I can't help but circle over the concept of dress as self-expressive and feel dissatisfied. It's on the right track but not quite there- kind of like my outfit that morning. 

'Fashion's New Showdown' for Vogue Australia

Readers of my first ever blogpost way back in February oh-ten will know that we have Vogue Australia to blame for my introduction to the heady world of fashion. Then-Rosie with her braces and predilection for wearing jodhpurs (more 'obsessed with horses' than 'on-trend preppy') could never have known that those heavy, glossy pages would throw wide a new way of imagining from which I would never emerge. And here I am ten years later, writing a PhD about another kind of fashion communication that has flung open doors (or 'windows'? ho ho) to new avenues for people to interact with and explore fashion- and I just wrote about it for Vogue. And so completes the circle.

Click here to read 'Fashion's New Showdown: bloggers and journalists' (if you like? No pressure... ok, a little pressure?) And while you're there, please do leave a comment if you have a different opinion or have more to add or if you just want to gush about blogs with me. And... go!

Image from vogue.com.au