18+, Or My Visit to The Armory

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Hello New People

I see that *SOMEONE* has sent a number of you over here looking for interesting stuff. Hello to you all!

Stick around for a minute or two. I'm in the process of writing a bit about my visit to The Armory where I took those photos our dear Mr. Ellis posted.

For now, feel free to say hi and introduce yourselves.



-Agent Redhead

Hello Again, San Francisco. And How Are You?

I can barely see what I am typing for the sunlight shining through the window. I am obviously not in London as I type this. I am in fact sitting in one of my old haunts in San Francisco watching the weather change from sunny to rainy and back again.

I've been back for nearly two weeks. I don't know how time is passing so quickly. I avoided coming back to SF for nearly nine months. After the CSM debacle I had to take some time to flail and run in circles. I suppose I felt intimidated by the caliber of friend I have in SF. Everyone I know is doing something- usually something noteworthy. I admit it was a self-centered impulse, but I didn't want to come back having failed out of a world class school without something interesting to show for it. My friends wouldn't have judged me or even cared of course, but I would have found ways to sense judgment where it wasn't. This summer was a really shitty time for me and I needed the time to sort my shit out. And I did, through shoes.



I was chatting with my friend Kitty the other day and I found myself saying, "you pick 'your thing' and you do it and do it and do it until people start to take notice." That is what I need to do. Make design my thing and just do it. And do it. And do it. And find people who want to work with/for me to help me do it. I am re-inspired to take a look over my shoe design sketches and think about investing some time and money into prototyping.

Yesterday I tromped around Isotope Comics in reflective silver boots and drank gin and tonics with lovely people. The store owner and local supervillain James talked me up to his customers and friends as though I were a celebrity. Like I said on Twitter the other day (do you follow me on twitter?) "Sometimes you feel like you're with the band. Sometimes you are the band. And sometimes you haven't even heard of the band and everyone laughs at you." James is one of those rare people who can't help but make everyone feel like they are in the band.

So here I am, back in San Francisco, missing London, but feeling like I never left this city. Of course I did leave. And I will be leaving again on the 25th and returning to England, which currently looks like this:


(thanks to Mr Ellis for the picture)

Though for now, I'm just going to enjoy my bitter coffee, served to me by a bitter barista, in a dirty cafe full of surly people.


And now I leave you with a photo I took in Chinatown.

A Bit of Bragging

A few funny things about my life:

I've had three Christmases. One on the 25th with my aunt and uncle and cousins and extended family in Cambridge. On boxing day I ended up having dinner with Terry Bedford, who shot Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We all talked about vintage comics, shoe design, film, and the future of advertising. Terry and his wife are absolutely lovely people with amazing taste in art.

The second Christmas was on the 30th with my mom and her boyfriend and it was chill and filled with cookies. The third Christmas was on the 1st with my boyfriend and his daughter, and was filled with Legos and silliness.

Three Christmases! I must be making up for all those years I didn't celebrate at all.


Our new years eve plans involved going to a party with a space theme. The Boy and I had to come up with costumes other than my silver space girl outfit. So, I did a quick google images search for "space girl" and guess what showed up on page one?



It seems that photo I took with James Courtney has made the rounds. I've been approached by many people who want to buy prints, and been recognized as the silver space girl on more than one occasion. Of course this is all well and good, but I was a bit put out because yaknow, I already own that outfit and I was looking for NEW inspiration. ;) (Oh and if enough of you go bug James about that photo, he will start selling prints or postcards at Wicked Grounds.... so go bug him!)

And speaking of Wicked Grounds, it seems a that post cards featuring this photo (also by James Courtney) have been on the shelf and selling out:



If you want a photo of the naked American Redhead then go buy some before they all sell out.


And now I must crawl into bed and attempt to ward off this plague I brought with me to the new world. *cough *hack *death

Snow!

It's snowing!

Proper snow. Snow flying horizontally in the wind. It's a pain the ass if you have somewhere to be, but first snow always makes me feel like a little kid. If I had wellies and a pompom hat I would put them on and waddle around the park.

Another Piece of My Puzzle

When I was a little kid I loved to draw people. I designed clothes often enough, but as I discovered the last time I went through my mother's attic and found my old sketchbooks, it seems my favourite thing to draw was women in kinky lingerie.

I suspect this trend began because I used to steal my mother's Victoria's Secret and Fredericks of Hollywood catalogs to use as pose reference. At first I had no idea what lingerie was for- to my naive eyes it was just another sort of dress up costume. But judging from later sketchbooks, I figured out its purpose pretty quickly. Soon my women were brandishing whips and wearing corsets. I don't think I understood exactly what I was drawing, but on some level I figured out that this stuff was supposed to be sexy.

Flash forward sixteen years and I have begun to develop a sudden obsession with high-end lingerie and innovative, strappy contraptions that serve no purpose other than looking fucking sexy.

So a new dimension to my design future has begun developing in the back of my head. I think it's time to start up my youthful habit of drawing half naked women again. Only this time I want to add it to my developing design line. I was to design and produce shoes, latex clothing, and innovative/naughty lingerie. I know there are companies that dabble in similar spheres, but I have a rather unique design aesthetic and I think I could put together the most amazing boutique full of fabulous-ness!

This plan of mine has been growing and developing in the last few days. It makes me so happy to consider making this plan a reality. I really want to make this happen....

Gary Numan, Eigenharps, Boyfriend and Bad Weather

The Boy was here for ten days- ten very full days.

We saw Gary Numan in Manchester, wandered around Liverpool, played Eigenharps in Birmingham, had dinner with my new friends, met up with old friends from San Francisco, drank absinthe, mulled wine, mulled cider, ate too much food, spent too much money, and generally had a good time for ten days.

A few impressions and highlights:

*Gary Numan put on an EPIC show
*Drag Queens in Manchester aren't very friendly
*Girls in Manchester have fantastic shoes, but cannot walk in them. I should offer lessons.
*Afflecks in Manchester makes me feel old
*Liverpool has the coolest cathedral ever. And the creepiest graveyard. And my friends and I are all horror movie stereotypes- "hey everyone's gone, let's go back into the graveyard!" "what could possibly go wrong?" "Um, I'll stay here while you go." "Why isn't my camera working?" *while not looking at the monster coming at her...
*The unbelievable amount of hilarious FAIL during our trip. Bars, restaurants, tours, events.
*Liverpool had the shittiest weather ever. No wonder so much music comes out of there. "If we get famous, we can buy tickets out of here!"
*Coco de Mer is the best lingerie store ever
*I have lived here long enough to actually have a "favourite bar" and know which places have the spiciest indian food
*being one of the first couple people in the world to play an Eigenharp. I haven't been so inspired by an instrument in a very very very long time.
*being offered a fantastic situation where I might be able to learn more about shoes, teach, and gain access to the facilities needed to prototype some of my shoe designs!

These ten days have made me want to travel more while I am still here in Europe. I am inspired to start making music again. I can't wait to start working on making more shoes. I'm ready to start exercising and getting my health back. And these ten days have also made me incredibly thankful for all my friends in London.

It was a very full ten days. And now I need to relax and catch up on sleep. So I'm just going to hug this heater and settle in with Slaughterhouse 5 in my local cafe.

Big Girls Don't Cry

I have so much to write that it will have to wait until tomorrow. But for now, let me just make a note about one thing that matters to no one but myself. The Boy flew home to San Francisco this morning, and to my surprise I found that having built up some semblance of a life in London made his departure much easier to handle than his previous visits.

The last time he visited, I was angry at him for most of the week he was here (for no good reason) and spent the last three nights crying on his shoulder, worrying about how he was leaving and I would have to go back to my dorm room and my empty depressing life without him.

This time everything was different. And it was so much better.

And now, I'm going to attempt to make my bed seem less empty and go to sleep. More info on my last two weeks will be forthcoming.

Living It Up

Until two weeks ago I was one of those lame 20somethings that wasn't living up their youth. I almost always stayed in and opted out of social events or parties, making up excuses and finding reasons I couldn't go.

All of a sudden my biological social clock switched on and I've had to buy a little calendar just to keep track of all the events I've agreed to attend with new friends. I've sort of fallen into two different groups of lovely people that are into art, style, nerd stuff, and latex clothing.

London doesn't feel like such a lonely place anymore.

Where Things Stand

I have been remiss in my blogging duties. I know that a couple people back home read this in order to keep up with me, so this post is mostly for those who want an overall update.

I visited Goldsmiths some weeks ago, and was shown around the design department. I drooled over the BA Design program's facilities and the concept behind the program itself. On top of that, I really liked the idea of attending a college that wasn't just an art school. The diversity of thinking and temperament would be a nice change from all of the art-specific schools I have been to. In short, I would love to attend.

Of course the reality of life is that I can no longer afford to continue my studies, and a BA is no longer something I can aim to get. I've wasted a lot of time and money on three different schools and that decision has come back to bite me in the ass.

However, I looked over things and realized that I might be able to fund one final year of study, and suddenly the 1 year Masters at Polimoda began to look pretty good. But I find myself waffling. Maybe it's weakness, but I am hesitant to live in a country where I don't speak the language. I feel quite lonely here in England a lot of the time, so can you imagine not being able to speak comfortably with most of the population? Of course I would learn Italian, but I am very conscious of language and how it can be used. Starting over with a new language in a new country would make me feel very isolated again. I don't know if I want to do that.


In other news I have accidentally gotten myself a weekend job. I was asked to work by the head of the shoe design school. See, she runs two footwear boutiques and now I work at one of them as a salesperson. So that's kind of nice. It's also an in. It means she no longer sees me as just a student who pays to learn from her staff.

And speaking of shoes, I have been making a point of working on new design every day. I grab my bag, run down to the coffee shop and camp out with a sketchpad and a book of tracing paper. The coffee shop window sills are littered with Taschen design history books, so I often grab one at random, flip through to random pages and pick a lamp or a chair from which I sketch a page of shoes.

This new habit began when I was bitching and complaining about how I don't have access to the materials I need to continue making shoes. My flat mate got really angry and kicked me around a bit, telling me to get off my ass and stop whining. She then bought me a drink and discussed how she could help me proceed with creating a design portfolio. I worked out what I needed to do, and she offered to help me with the branding and design of the portfolio. She is also going to help me get a copy of Rhino so I can begin rendering my more radical heel/platform designs more precisely.


In other news, I have broken a long standing habit of being a hermit and begun socializing. Making new friends is really scary for me, but I really need to stop being a lonely, cranky bastard holed up on my couch and cursing the world at large.... at 24. So I've started making plans with people. Old friends, new potential friends. Every time I go to meet someone I get the overwhelming urge to cancel on them last minute. I want to wrap myself in a blanket and hide instead. But so far I've only canceled once, and that was with a legitimate reason. So, go me.


The Boy is coming to visit in less than two weeks. And as per usual I'm scrambling to make my apartment look nicer, and magically lose a few pounds. I get nervous every time he comes to visit, and dread the couple of days leading up to his departure. And since I won't be coming home for Christmas this year, I'm particularly dreading these next couple of months in solitude after he leaves.


And now I've run out of things to say, and I have to go run errands before I meet up with a cute girl for drinks tonight and pack for a party I am going to after I go to work tomorrow (whew!). So, in leiu of a witty summary for this rambling post, I leave you with a picture I took in Florence, that made me giggle: