Radio Silence.

Posted on April 27, 2012 by cutselvage

You may have noticed the tumbleweeds rolling through Maison d’Cutselvage recently – I do apologise for the lack of updates. For those who don’t follow me on tumblr or twitter, some pretty serious personal stuff is going down, and writing blog posts is way, way down on the list of priorities.

With that said, I’m off to New York City in two weeks, and I’ll be attending the Big Fat Flea (as well as lots of shows!), so I’ll try to do a post about that when I return. In the meantime, I’m still active on Twitter and to a lesser extent, tumblr, so follow me if you want to follow my thrilling exploits*.

*Thrilling exploits not guaranteed.

Chub Republic Brisbane Inaugural Clothing Swap

Posted on March 11, 2012 by cutselvage

An image of the orange and black Chub Republic BNE logo button.

Yesterday was so exciting for me – with Kath of Fat Heffalump, Dr Lauren Gurrieri and Isaac Brown, we hosted the very first Chub Republic Brisbane Clothing Swap! (Big thanks the Chub Republic Melbourne lovelies who let us adopt their name). This was the first event that we have hosted, and I hope it’s the first of many more.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of the day’s events, since I was too busy helping to set up, try on clothes, and generally keep things running smoothly. The fat community in Brisbane is still growing, so we just had a small group come along, but I think everybody enjoyed themselves, as well taking home some fabulous new clothes.

I managed to score a few goodies – please excuse the terrible photos, I just dashed these off quickly when I got home.

Image of Zoe, fat and pale skinned with shoulder length blonde hair and thick-rimmed black glasses. She is wearing beige cuff sandals and a blue and white spot sleeveless dress with red ribbons printed on it.

I eyed off this dress on the City Chic website when it was first released – the print is so cute! But I couldn’t justify the cost at the time, so I quickly grabbed it when I saw it on the swap table.

Image of Zoe, fat and pale skinned with shoulder length blonde hair and thick-rimmed black glasses. She is wearing beige cuff sandals and an orange knee length dress with a ruffle crossover neckline.

This one is a Lucie Lu dress from Kath – I’ve been hesitant about orange on me in the past, but I bought an orange shirt when my hair was purple, and since then I’ve been keeping an eye out for more!

Image of Zoe, fat and pale skinned with shoulder length blonde hair and thick-rimmed black glasses. She is wearing beige cuff sandals and a black maxi dress.

Please excuse the creases! This is a Target maxi that isn’t horrid, and I don’t even have to hem it. I’m planning to get a lot of wear out of it over the next few weeks as the weather is still quite hot here.

I hope everyone who came along yesterday had a fabulous time, and stay tuned for future events!

Fatshion February 2012 + other sundries.

Posted on February 11, 2012 by cutselvage

I didn’t participate in Fatshion February last year, mainly because I didn’t have a functioning camera, but I was determined to give it a go this year. The project was started by jessiedress, and you can read more about it at fatshionfebruary. I think people sometimes get unrealistic expectations that our wardrobes should be magical, never-ending and constantly filled with new and exciting outfits, which ignores the reality of clothing – that things get reworn, people wear clothes that aren’t ‘fashionable’ per se but that get the job done, that sometimes dressing in more than a pair of leggings and a loose teeshirt just takes more spoons than one has available. Normalising the reality of being fat and dressed – not well-dressed, or fancy or fashionable, but just dressed – is super important to me.

I’m posting my outfits daily on my tumblr, and you can find more information about what wearing there. Below are the first ten outfits of Fatshion February (I skipped 07 because that was just a crappy day in general).

My roommate photobombed yesterday’s photo, because that’s just how we roll.

In other news: I’m returning to New York City for two weeks in May, and I’m so stupidly excited about it! I haven’t had a proper holiday since, well, the last time I went to NYC in November 2010, and I’m looking forward to relaxing in Central, eating lots of bagels, going to a few Broadway shows and of course, hitting the Big Fat Flea! It’s going to be so exciting to mingle with so many other fabulous fatties, and get some sweet clothes for cheap.

I visited Melbourne for a few days over the new year break, and on one horribly hot day, filmed a review of the Japanese drama Last Friends with the marvellous Amanda; you can see our fabulous faces over at her blog, Lost in Omo!

Outfit of the Day: Fat Vintage 2.0

Posted on January 17, 2012 by cutselvage

This is the second dress I picked up from Savers when I was in Melbourne in December. I almost passed over it completely, because the weather was so hot and I couldn’t even contemplate having long-sleeved polyester on my body. Fortunately, Amanda rather forcefully encouraged me to purchase it, and at $12 I figured I could afford a gamble.

I’m glad I did, since it’s stupidly comfortable, and has a pussybow and princess seams. A cool change came through Brisbane this week (it’s been pouring with rain as well), so I decided to give the dress a spin.

An image of Zoe from the front, hands on her hips. She has blonde hair in a topknot and is wearing a long-sleeved navy patterned dress, dark green tights and tan oxford flats.

Please excuse the poor light – it’s very difficult to get decent photos in our flat with my little point-and-shoot at any point after about 11am, and I’ve hardly ever organised enough to have time to take photos in the morning before work.

An image of Zoe from the back, hand on her hip and the other on the back of her head. She has blonde hair in a topknot and is wearing a long-sleeved navy dress, dark green tights and tan oxford flats.

I’m looking forward to taking lots of outfit photos in Fa(t)shion February - this will be my first time participating, so it’ll be a good chance to get into a photo-taking habit!

Dress: Vintage via Savers//Tights: We Love Colors//Shoes: Wittner

Outfit of the Day: Fat Vintage

Posted on January 3, 2012 by cutselvage

Happy new year! I hope you all have had absolutely smashing holidays. I only had a short break, just over a week from the 23rd of December til the 3rd of January, but I made the most of it, spending lots of time with my family and zipping down to Melbourne for the New Year weekend.

I had wonderful time, although it was brain-meltingly hot – at 6:30pm in the evening, when being driven to the airport, we went past a sign that stated it was 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit. UGH). And I managed to find two fabulous vintage dresses at the Savers opshop in Brunswick. I wore this one to work today, and I absolutely adore it.

A image of Zoe, pale skinned with blonde hair in a low ponytail, wearing a two-in-one style dress, the top half in brown, cream and lavender floral, the bottom a terracotta brown. She is wearing cream flat shoes and black thick-rimmed glasses. Shot from the front.

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2011 Round-up: Top Five Albums

Posted on December 20, 2011 by cutselvage

I take my music with me everywhere, since travelling by public transport isn’t pleasant without something to help block the noise of people chattering. I listen to music when I’m working, and I have a playlist specifically to help me sleep. Needless to say, music is very important to me.

I’m not good at keeping up with music trends, and I tend to discover bands about a year after they become popular, but every now and then I actually listen to an album the year it has been released. So without further ado, in order of date of release, here are my top five albums of 2011.

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Outfit of the Day: Breaking Boundaries

Posted on December 18, 2011 by cutselvage

I have several half-written blog posts kicking around my drafts folder, but I’ve been so busy I’ve barely had time to think about blogging. One of the things I’m doing is working with Dr. Lauren Gurrieri and Isaac Brown on a fat embodiment project, which is incredibly exciting but also quite taxing on the mind – delving deep into my feelings about fat acceptance, as well as been photographed rather a lot! On top of that, I’m assisting with some of the administrative stuff, on top of my regular day job. I feel like I barely have time to do anything but sleep, work, and the odd bit of socialising at the moment.

However, I did manage to get organised on Wednesday morning to take some photos of my outfit. When I was in Sydney in November, my friends and I ended up in KMart, and I took a gamble on a size 18 floral tube skirt. It was $10, why not? But being essentially a stretchy tube of fabric, it highlighted the one area of my body that I have trouble accepting: my belly. I’m a classic ‘apple’ shape, in the sense that I have essentially no hips and a big ol’ belly, with not much in the way of a waist. It can be really difficult to find clothes, especially trousers, that fit well, so I live mostly in dresses and skirts.

Even though this skirt basically frames my belly, it’s also exceedingly comfortable because the fabric stretches when I sit down or move around. And since loose, over-sized tops are very popular at the moment, I felt that I could be covered up enough not be self-conscious – plus, the top in question has thick horizontal stripes, another fat girl no-no. I felt pretty subversive, actually.

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Working nine til five

Posted on October 30, 2011 by cutselvage

Dolly understands the drama of working a standard nine to five job!

A common complaint from a lot of fat people I know is the difficulty to get work clothes that fit, particularly in the nebulous area of ‘business casual’ that many workplaces have as their dress code. It’s quite difficult to find clothes that are comfortable enough to sit down in for 8 hours a day, as well as being appropriate for the office environment, reasonably priced and perhaps most importantly, what we want to wear.

I am incredibly fortunate to work in an environment where I can wear quite casual or daring outfits on a day-to-day basis – others don’t have that flexibility, and may need to dress more conservatively. I tend to shop sales, but I’m lucky to have the income to purchase things full price if I need to do so. And I’m a size 18-24, so I still have a good number of options to choose from, though being in Australia sometimes makes it a bit harder.

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YesStyle: East Asian Plus Size Clothes

Posted on October 24, 2011 by cutselvage

Many of you will know that I spent almost two years teaching English in Japan, and let me tell you, finding plus size clothing there was like the holy grail. I wish I had known that YesStyle existed! So few international brands shipped to Japan, and while I could always shop at Nissen or find a few things in the XL size at Uniqlo, having more options would have been wonderful.

Luckily I do know about them now! YesStyle has an Australian website, the clothes are very inexpensive and there’s quite a variety, so my friend Sonya and I decided to go in on an order together (we’ve done two now).

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Outfit of the day: Casual Friday

Posted on October 8, 2011 by cutselvage

One day I’m going to be organised enough to catalogue my work outfits every day for a week. The other day a colleague commented that I “never look the same two days in a row”. And it’s true, my personal style is probably best characterised as chaotic. On Thursday I wore a black billowy shirt, black mini skirt and black-and-mesh leggings, because I woke up in a foul mood and was doing my best sulky emo impression.

Yesterday, though, I felt cheery and excited for the weekend. I rarely wear the one pair of jeans I own outside the house, but I thought they’d work well with the striped tunic and pink blazer.

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