I've been spending time at Von Haus, upstairs, next to the S!X showroom.

We are along the hall from Sarah Scout gallery, where there is a quite gorgeous show on - for one more week. Everything is worth seeing. Come say hi. I will be the one with crumbs on my shirt from downstair's shortbread.

Carolina Barua

Lauren Cray

Alexander Batsis

John Gosper

Bernadette Francis

Shoes - Blake Barnes; dress - Teegan Meade

Details from 'Cloth', an RMIT Fashion Exhibition, which is open daily from 10 to 6, until this Sunday (Nov. 20), at Level One GPO, Melbourne ... I think the set-up is fairly ordinary but there are some great pieces -  see also this week's Michi, featuring Kimbra (following a week-end of unlikely obsession).

Loulou de la Falaise by Helmut Newton

Two recent stories written for Michi - one that's a tiny bit silly, although the bread was excellent - and one that's a tiny tribute to Loulou de la Falaise (1948 - 2011), which happens to be my 50th piece.

*  *  *

"... her great-grandmother was Vavarina Pike, who ignited County Wexford in ivory fedoras and beige cardigns acquired at the gentlemen's departments of the London stores ..."

*  *  *

"... Wherever it was, she said: "We hit it off straight away because he had a very silly sense of humour. We got into a fit of giggles" ... "

*  *  *

"Loulou de la Falaise, Yves Saint Laurent muse and collaborator, has passed away... "

Thinking I'd photographed my friends dancing, it was amusing to see afterwards what a great job I'd done of photographing a white chair.

Photography of M-HB by Tana Kaleya

Garden roses at Milly, and a few stories at Michi:

Of recent times ... Camille Bidault Waddington; Gintare Akstinavičiūtė; and She Hunter, who you can listen to here. I believe She creates her own artwork, too.

Also, a note on an old Michi piece... wherein I convinced myself, at least, that Marie-Hélène Breillat wears the outfit described (as above) in Last Tango in Paris. In actual fact, she does not. There is a Focus on Bertolucci screening at acmi at the moment, and I have finally seen the film in full ... I waited for the boater and it never appeared! Great film, much more eccentric than I expected, which reminded me of John Cassavetes and things like Minnie and Moskowitz.

P. S. If I titled these posts, I would absolutely have to call this one Missing The Boater. This is an example of why I don't title them.

Beautiful bows by jeweller Anna Varendorff

Pictures from the official opening of Kristy B's lovely Kuwaii store in Brunswick.

We enjoyed innocent-looking punch at something like 11 in the morning - no wonder I was so overwhelmed by the banksias.

And here is the pink beauty. I ended up back in Brunswick a few days later (visiting my favourite shoe repairs place) and she got me again.

Abundance.

I see it's been a fortnight since I last posted. This comes down to little more than ebb and flow perhaps. Also, I'm disorganised. Also, I've been trying to draw and design.

Also, about ten nights back, I spent some hours browsing beyond my customary blog/web route. I went further than intended and became quite lost in the myriad gorgeous mini-worlds that the internet sustains. I remember, a decade or more ago, when online content was generally ugly; now there is so much that is genuinely beautiful - I wasn't overwhelmed so much by quantity as by quality.

The experience was akin to shopping but even though I was naturally selective I didn't exactly choose or buy anything, and was thoroughly sated. It's not new to recognise that the image is the commodity (rather than the object) - but more and more I sense that the image replaces the object, and that contemporary marketing/product presentation (and proliferation) has the potential to defeat itself, when objects/products are so cleverly and potently contextualized that they can be absorbed and possessed and experienced thoroughly in this alternate realm, such that their tangible existence in RL is (perversely) less vivid and becomes obsolete. An argument, anyway.

And although my average pictures of some very abundant banksias, encountered on the one street in Brunswick yesterday, would seem to suggest that the opposite will always be true - ie. that the image cannot possibly replace the thing and the real experience of being brought to a halt by bright laden trees is more than the camera can capture (and it was, and there was a particularly lovely tree with pink flowers that first made me take note, which I wish I'd had the wits to photograph) - I could also argue that being presented with such a picture allows you to build freely upon the image and imagine a kind of sublimeness and infinity that can be difficult to grasp or feel in the present/presence.