The Love they get from the dress

My Winter

What’s there to love about winter? One writer queried. Well, there’s plenty actually. There’s the liberation you get when you wake up in the mornings (after several attempts) , of knowing that regardless of your skin imperfections you can still look stylish in those bulks of tights, scarfs, and oh, trench coats, they come in handy when you want to hide that 2 kg you’ve just gained.  I love having to wear what I feel contented in, and winter grants me that freedom. 

 I love wearing stockings, black ones only because they’re sexy. But because I stay in Pretoria, it is not practical for me to wear my black stockings in a 30ᶜ blazing hot city, I only wear them winter.

I love winter because I can get away with the UK boots trend.  See that trend we all love but just can’t follow because of our hot weather. Boots and an above the knee dress or skirt. You can’t wear that summer because you will look like a city girl meets driller. So when our chilly winter comes, we get to play around with that look. It’s chic and we deserve it. I love winter because I can eat anything I want. I love beautiful, warm food, and during winter I eat without feeling guilty.

 I save the guilt for summer. It is only in winter that you can eat a bunny chow twice a day and not notice any avoidable weight gain. It is only in winter that you even get away with wearing different-colour-socks and still pretend as if life is normal and nothing is in the wrong. Winter is great; it allows you to have an excuse of staying indoors and not going out. I mean you can just say it’s cold and save having to explain why you don’t want to go to News Café. It gives you the freedom to dodge the outdoors and have the entire day to catch up with the Basket Ball Wives

You wouldn’t get that time if it were summer and you can go to a street braai or food festival.

 Winter is not bad at all, it is only bad when it is gone because then you realise that you have put on some weight and you don’t even have time to visit your personal trainer. Other than that, it’s perfect, you can even get away with wearing your boyfriend’s jacket. They’re romantically warm.

Cleopatra Days

www.vogue.com

Life Style Events

I am so excited about a lot of things this June, you guys. My diary is full of life style events. If you know me you will know I love me some good wine and beautiful food.  So first on my June diary is the Oyster, Wine and Food Festival in Randburg.

I am so excited, and I am going to drag the boyfriends with me. I know they will “enjoy it” because, they don’t like oysters. Well I and my girl Khethelo will enjoy seeing them not enjoy it.  And besides I want to try lot of different food this time. Less wine and more food.

Date : 1-2 June 2013

Venue: Brightwater Commons Shopping Centre

http://www.brightwatercommons.co.za/

Next, is Khanyi Dhlomo’s new venture. If you haven’t heard, she has a new store ,if I may, opening up soon. So she is touring her pop up store around the country. Since I am based in Pretoria I will attend it here. I am super excited. I know for a fact that Luminance (the name of the store) will sell high end items. That means expensive items. Lol. But I am looking forward to the browsing and they will be offering styling too.

Venue: 131 on Herbert Baker Boutique Hotel, 131 Herbert Baker Street, Groenkloof  Pretoria

Date: 7-9 June 2013

http://luminanceonline.com/trunk-shows/ for more

The other events are more corporate but I am just excited. June is not here yet but it will be a great month for me.

I dont want to give you the wrong impression

Well….. her Majesty Rihanna always does it for me. If it’s not the oversized sweater she is rocking, it’s the black cap. I am not a sporty person. I’ve always said that I am a girly girl who can’t stand sweaters, sneakers and caps. But these days I find myself indulging in All Star sneakers; over-sized sweaters (stole one from my boyfriend). And I must tell you, that it is as girly as that pink dress of mine I got for my first date (well that was years ago, but still). I am in love with the tom boyish trend and Rihanna, as my fashion idol, has done me justice in inspiring me.

                                                                    

But what Rihanna does best though, is that she rocks her black cap with an umbrella skirt and heels. Yes, she makes the sporty cap look classy.

To Celia Khumalo

There will come a day
When the fear of death will be the favorite joke
Passed amongst corpses,
And they’re already laughing
My love, please don’t be afraid, but there will come a day
When field mice play in our empty sockets
When our bones become homes for living creatures other than our egos
When time jostles our skeletons out of the composition that is me and you
Will write with us, love letters that spell I owe you eternity
If we believe in life after death
Then I often wonder why we assume the dead like coffins
When people were never meant to live in boxes
So I pray that our children have the good sense to leave us a little wiggle room
Leave us exposed like stray dogs in a thunderstorm
I will hear the breeze, but not know it as the breeze
I will feel the rain, but not know it as the rain
I will behold the sky, but not know it as the sky
Instead, I will hear the breeze and think it is your laugh returning to the hearth of my ear
I will feel the rain and think it is the pinprick of your kiss
When the rain is tender I will know that something has softened you
When the rain is violent I will know that something has shaken you
In this newfound understanding without eyes or ears or hands or lips
Our bare bones will make love in the dirt, never knowing our nakedness
Imagine, a course wind cursing through a calligraphy of weeds
In our disrepair we have grown gardens of ourselves
Sprouts of curious grass shooting from my eye sockets
Our knuckles, hard, smooth skipping stones meant for child’s play
The devilish sun picking its way through your missing teeth
Neither one of us can keep from smiling these days
The days go unnoticed and the nights go unslept
We talk with our souls through the holes in our ribs where organs once sat
Imagine, your skull in mine both reduced to grins
Both washed clean of our skins and our sins
Growing young again
Forgetting why we ever wrinkled or why we ever furrowed our brow
With the plow, the plow of anger
Become dust with me, insignificant and everywhere
For I will love you, even after your marrow has become a whisper
Your bones, nothing but the snickering of gravel
With the sunk and the spaces that are shadows
Whats behind your skeleton, laced with mine
I will tie your soul on my ankles and know what it’s like to step into a dream
You will tie on my backbone, see how bad it hurt the day you said you were calling it quits
I don’t remember why you left, or why you came back
I don’t know how many years have passed
Not really sure years passed at all
All I know is the rain falls, you kiss me like a rainfall
The sun, it bleaches us clear and everyday is a romance
All this to say we’re already laughing
There is a wedding of earthworms and pebbles
Waiting in our tuxedo skeletons, the wrong fit
There is place for our faces to lie, planted besides, forever smiling
There is a place, where we can be still and in love
There exists a place, where we can still be in love
Just two gentle skulls.
by Alysia Harris

Celia Khumalo, My Grandmother

Having been raised by my late grandmother, I can attest to grandmothers not only imparting wisdom to young girls, but also a sense of style which comes with grace. I was raised by my beautiful grandmother and at some point I considered her to be my mother because she was more around me than my mother.

My grandmother was everything a woman should be. She was gorgeous, smart, serene, optimistic, loving, caring and sophisticated. Yes she was the most stylish woman I have ever met. At a tender age of 50-62, I remember how she would comb her long, grey hair. She never relaxed it though but it was always straightened and soft…. Wonder how she did that…. I would watch her take a bath more than twice a day, she would tell me that “ as a woman, you have to bath before going to bed. Your grandfather doesn’t bath because he is lazy and doesn’t appreciate the beauty of being a man, so you have to appreciate the beauty of being a woman.”

Everyday was a dress-up day for her. She would, after cleaning the house and over seeing that the farm goes well, she would bath and wear her tribal-printed dress with a nicely tied turban. She always put emphasize in moisturizing your hands. She had beautiful, lenient yet strong hands.

My grandmother had all the trendiest items, well she was not aware of that but she had this fur coat that was to die for. Apparently my grandfather bought it for her. I wanted to take it when she passed on but I was only 13 at that time and it couldn’t fit well.

Going to church was like going to a fashion -show -intimate -dinner date with God. With vanity my grandmother would wear her nicely tailored skirt, heels, a small clutch which had a bible and Vaseline ( for her lips). She looked so pretty. I admired that. I wanted to be like her. I always said when I grow up I will dress up like her.

My grandmother didn’t understand women who never took a shower, she would say “one doesn’t need to be going somewhere to bath and look nice, like a woman”

My grandmother did everything with poise, panache, dignity and style. Regarding of how busy she was with running a big family, a farm and my grandfather who was more of a child, lol, she still had time to be beautiful. She made time to be pretty out of all the madness.

When I  last saw her in hospital, her hair was still long, her lips, softly curled, her hands strong, her smile wide and she said to me, “You shouldn’t have came, I am fine, go home and PRAY”

My grandmother is not just my protagonist, my role model, my goddess; she is my fashion and style icon. She was here as an elegant, phenomenal woman, she lived and she loved.