ETA:A few weeks ago I sent sovay  a link to an article on Henry V (1944), which among other things suggested that Olivier had cast old music-hall song-and-dance man George Robey as Falstaff in order to emphasize that the character was a relic of more playful and happier times. Now I realize that Ken Branagh did exactly the same thing in his movie of Hamlet (1996) by casting Ken Dodd as Yorick. 

An intro to Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, hosted by John Cooper Clarke who is the most appropriate and also hilarious person to do it. Clarke looks like a walking thistle, and I’m sort of charmed by how openly he loathes the Lake District (“No wonder De Quincey took dope!”) I’d call him the missing link between music-hall and punk, but I think that’s Ray Davies. And also neither of them are missing.

Spiderweb top. Very burlesque. 

Yesterday one of my coworkers was talking on the phone, and I heard her saying, in the driest, weariest tone imaginable: “Laugh Out Loud. Laugh Out Loud. Laugh Out Loud.”

ETA-- Today at work:
Salesman: (on the phone) So do you have the copper already or do you still need it? (cackling) I’VE GOT LOTS OF COPPER!

Hey everybody, I think my coworker is Ea-Nasir 

A few months ago, at a Payless store’s closing-down sale,  I bought a pair of red fake-suede pumps with two-inch heels, brand name “Dexflex Comfort” which have turned out to live up to the name. These things are like, sneaker comfortable.

Only trouble is, I can’t find any brick-and-mortar stores that carry the brand; there are some DexFlex shoes available on Amazon, but (a) I’d like to avoid giving Jeff Bezos any more money if I can avoid it (b) I think these are just leftover stock from Payless, and will run out fairly soon. It’s already easier to find the sizes on either end of the bell-curve than the medium sizes,  and the prices vary wildly depending, I suspect, on how many they have left in that size (i.e. the same style of shoe is $20 in a size 5.5, but $100 in a size 7.)

Apart from wanting more of these shoes, I’m also just curious about the manufacturer – was Dexflex a house brand for Payless or was it an offshoot of the Dexter Shoe Company, now similarly defunct? How did they make these really basic (in every sense of the word including the current slang usage) pumps so easy to walk in?

What are their flats like?

Well this is rather Elsa Schiaparelli.

A Dress A Day is finally posting again after a couple of months hiatus. Meanwhile, in my search through her archives (looking for vintage patterns I can hunt down on Ebay), I came across her post on William Gibson (or rather, a moment where she felt like she was living in a Gibson novel.)

My god, it's like a live-action version of Lackadaisy; and that is one patient (and stylin') Abyssinian modeling it all.

Via Stylebubble; accessories featuring beaded QR codes.

Hey, you know those beads made from rolled-up scraps of paper? I actually found a necklace today at the thrift store that was made of some. It's quite pretty, too.

False eyelashes made of paper - but not just any paper - these are based on Chinese decorative paper-cutting. Seriously - you could have little horses or peonies leaping off your eyelids.