sale time

PS.... we are having an end of lease sale at Bowerbird until we close on the 4th of August. Lots of bargains. Pop in for a look if you are in Glebe.

196 Glebe Pt Road.

9518 4048

Put it in your diaries

Don't forget to put the 'Fifties Fair' into your diaries for next month. The annual fair, now in its 13th year, is on at Harry Seidler’s Rose Seidler House - an historically listed house in Wahroonga on the north shore. The house is a tribute to the modernist era in architecture and is worth a visit just to check out the modernist features and amazing views. The fair is loads of fun and there is lots of fabulous vintage stalls, street theatre and fifties fashion on show - always a great day out. it's on Sunday 26th of August.

How to look this hot at any age??

I picked up a copy of the latest New Woman magazine yesterday. Now I am a fashion mag-aholic and generally buy atleast 2 per week. New Woman is not one of my all time fav's I have to admit. My interests lay firmly in what trends are being fleshed out on the runways of Paris, Milan and NY than stories about cheaters and who my boyfriend might also be sleeping with. So once I have totally exhausted all the various Vogue editions internationally and read Instyle and Harpers Bazaar from cover to cover, digested Nylon, Frankie and Ruush... I then start on the New Woman's and the odd Cosmo (even though that one generally makes me feel kinda old).

Anyway, The reason I brought up the New Woman purchase is because Liz Hurley is on the cover this month. New Woman have dedicated the issue to anti ageing and have used Liz as their pin up girl which is understandable as she a gorgeous looking woman. However, I almost didn't recognise her. In fact, I had to the read the cover to work out who it was. This brings me to the most incredible part - it actually reads: "Exclusive - Elizabeth Hurley - How to look this hot at any age (yes, she 42)". Now really - I think the only way a woman (even one who's 22) can look that hot is by being seriously P H O T O S H O P P E D.

I don't know about you but I am getting slightly alarmed by the amount of airbrushing going on these days. Admittedly, I usually ignore it and focus on what said celeb is wearing rather than their flawless complexion but once they start to become unrecognisable while spriuking the secret to eternal youth...I scoff. Sorry Liz

lets all go fug ourselves!

Oh, the creative genius of those crazy gofugyourself girls (http://www.gofugyourself.com/) . Although they are kinda mean to most of the celebrities who fall vicitim to their fashion critiques...they are completely hilarious and generally 100% correct. I'm most amazed though by their seemingly endless knowledge of crappy american television/films. I wonder if they have jobs?...apart from ridiculing celebrity fashion disasters I mean.

that didn't go so well....

To your right is a picture of what I looked like with red hair. Unfortunatley I had to use a photo of Ronald McDonald as I didn't have time to take a photo of myself before racing back to the hairdressers this morning and pleading with them to re-install my lovely brown locks.

On the bright side though (haha), I now know that brilliant red hair really really doesn't suit me and I can/will cross it off my list of things I'd like to try (but have a bad feeling they may not turn out so good). I blame Karen Elson for this bad lapse in judgement - how dare she look so hot with hair that loud!

Think I'm gonna colour my hair (again)

When I first opened bowerbird in Glebe I had long blond hair that I would either straighten each day or curl with hot rollers depending on what kind of mood I woke up in (ie: bad arse rock chick or little bo peep)...Anyway, one day I decided long blond hair was really annoying and took tooo long to do in the morning...and using the hot iron was giving me RSI. So I went to my hairdressers - which is conveniently located next door to my shop - and got the lot chopped off. Actually it wasn't anywhere near as short as it is in the photo above - that's been a progressive thing. Each time I go I say "just take a little bit more off this time".

Then, one quiet afternoon in the shop, I was looking through a magazine and saw a picture of Many Moore (when she had her cute short haircut) and decided I wanted to look like her...so I put a "back in 5 minutes" sign on the door and got the guys next door to dye my locks brown. Of course it took a lot longer than 5 minutes and obviously I didn't end up looking anything like Mandy Moore (I think I've got a good 15 years on her) but I was pretty happy with the result...for about 2 weeks. For the last couple of months I've really been wanting to change the colour to dark auburn (or is that orange) a la' supermodel Karen Elson - Of course I know I won't look like karen Elson (I'm not that tall - ha!) but I can't get it out of my head...so I think I'm just gonna do it. I've booked an appointmet for 6.30 tonight - I'll probably end up looking more like Julia Gillard than Karen Elson!

So much to do!

In between all the things I have to organise with the closure of the shop and the birth of my on-line store I have been busily creating my new label "rescued" by bowerbird. Rescued was inspired by the realisation that alot of the vintage dresses skirts and tops I source I tend to rework in some way - something that I've been doing since I was a kid...so why not focus on doing an entire range of re-worked/deconstructed pieces?

Sometimes it might just be a hem coming up a few inches to give a 'nanny-ish' dress a bit of an edge as a mini or if I think the material has potential but the dress is a bit daggy I'll buy it and turn it into something completely new. I also love love love beading and embellishing things so I often spend hours sewing beads and sequins onto a plain dress to give it a colourful, rich and textured look. It's amazing what a few hours of beading can do for a frock!

I will take some photos and download them over the next couple of days of some of my designs.

...And I had an idea about the creative process when the online store is open for biz too. I am thinking that I will create a "design a dress" forum where I will post 'before' photo's of vintage finds and talk about what I think the dress need - open it up for discussion/opinions and then post photo's of the dress each day as it come to life. Then once it's been reinvented into a fabulous frock it will be available to buy!

Be great to get your feedback on this idea - anyone know if anyone else is doing it on their shopping site??

x

Well decisions have been made now!!

Ive been a busy little bowerbird...

There has been a fair bit of discussion around the dinner table since my last post - thats for sure!

The lease on my shop expires next month and I've decided not to renew. The idea of setting up my business on-line (only) is appealing on a number of levels...The most obvious being the fortune I will save on rent and outgoings. But there are other reason as well...

As amazing as its been creating something tangible from a bunch of ideas randomly floating around in my head (you can see the shop at it's current webiste www.bowerbirdglebe.com.au) there are serious limitations to having a business that is solely your responsibility...where you are the company director, the shop assistant, the buyer, the cleaner, the accountant etc etc etc. Namely time constraints!

As a start up biz, my fledgling little bowerbird has relied on my enthusiasm, determination and my optimism to keep it flying high. And although I have enjoyed the experience wholeheartedly, I'm looking forward to having a little bit more flexibility with my time to focus on some of the other things I love to do - like designing and reworking vintage peices for my new label "rescued" by bowerbird.

Sooo...after much deliberation, bowerbird glebe will close it's doors in August and re-invent itself as www.bowerbirdvintage.com. To be honest, although I'm a little sad, I'm also exhilarated and chomping at the bit to get started on the next stage of my biz. I'm looking at the last 12 months as a really good learning experience and am looking forward to using some of that knowledge to go forward and create something bigger and better!

My dear friend Kath, who has been a guiding light towards this next stage, and posesses infinite wisdom of the cyber kind has supplied me with an armload of data that concludes that internet shopping is serious biz in Australia...and although we are probably around 5 years behind the americans in terms of our web savvy, each year internet sales steadily increase.

It's exciting to think that potentially my web site could attract thousands of people a day - (hey! ebay started out small remember?) - especially when some slow days in the shop I might see a dozen people if I'm lucky.

So, I'm focusing on how to make this happen now...as well as putting on a big "end of lease sale", creating new garmets for my label, moving house, building web sites, starting blogs...lucky I learned how to be the ultimate multi-tasker these last 12 months hey?!