Notes from May + June: Restored
What I've been up to, things I've loved recently, and a monthly outfit round-up.
One wintry weekend, my husband and I went to Mornington Peninsula for a day of scuba diving, an experience that is as beautiful and otherworldly as it is a bit of slog—there’s plenty of heavy lifting involving cold, wet and cumbersome scuba gear, prune-y hands, and that feeling that you’ll never be dry between your toes again.
But so worth it though—
I’ve been scuba diving for nearly 20 years, and I love that it’s such a glorious combination of focus and relaxation. You need to be extremely present—your life depends on it—but it’s also a deeply meditative and calming experience. When conditions are clear and calm and you find perfect buoyancy, it feels like you are suspended in time, light as air.
And then the moment passes, and you’re reminded that you’re underwater and you’re not a fish, and you get back to the business of staying safe and checking your surroundings and of course, spotting your favourite marine creatures.
Scuba is the only hobby other than reading that I have sustained over a long period of time, and perhaps it’s because it’s a hobby I picked up when I was relatively young—there’s an obsessiveness about my teen and uni years that I sadly lost when I entered my mid-20s. Since then, I have really struggled to start and sustain hobbies, which has made me realise how precious they are. They’re restorative in a way that you can’t buy with money; you have to work for it.
A hobby that I’ve pursued in spurts and sputters is sewing, which is a craft I have so much admiration for, but struggle to push myself in. Like all hobbies, you need passion and discipline to keep you going, and I’m often tripped up by my innate laziness and my fear of activities that require visual-spatial processing. Still, I try.
As such, it’s no coincidence that all the things I’ve enjoyed and remembered lately are related to mending and repair. Of late, I’ve been thinking about this connection between restoration and respect—we put in the effort to restore things because we respect them in some way. Seeking out ways to show respect for things and for people feels like a necessary step to finding restoration in our broken world.
Things I enjoyed
Watching “The Great British Sewing Bee”. I found about this show through
and I am hooked. It’s a lot like “The Great British Bake-off” but much more charming. Watching it, I am reminded of how much labour goes into making clothes, no matter whether they are mass produced in a factory or made by artisans in ateliers. It’s really a disgrace that as a society, we’ve lost so much respect for who makes our clothes. We sniff at fast fashion, but most of us would not last an hour performing the labour involved in making garments. This show made me resolve to care better for my clothes, no matter where I bought them from, if only just to respect the resources poured into making them.Bonus: One of the judges is Patrick Grant, who wrote “Less”, which is a book I am excited to start reading.
Watching this NHK mini-doc on kaketsugi. This is a mind-blowing short doc about a father-daughter team who repair clothes sent from all over Japan using kaketsugi, the Japanese craft of invisible mending. You have to watch it to believe it. The father, a former tailor, taught himself the craft at the age of 37, which involved painstakingly studying fabrics and how they are woven, in order to restore them to their original state. This is one of his amazing notebooks—
Kaketsugi is obviously not an everyday level of repair, but I was deeply inspired by the respect and passion the duo showed for the garments that passed through their hands, whether it was a made-to-measure suit, a Burberry trenchcoat, or a well-worn sweatshirt. Which makes sense, they understand the work involved in making even the most basic clothes. It’s why I try to only buy clothes I am willing to invest the effort needed to care for and repair when needed. If you’re not willing to do that, you probably don’t want the item as much as you think.
Listening to the “Clergy” episode on “Articles of Interest”. I really enjoyed this episode, which explored not only the history of what the Roman clergy wear, but also delved into that delicate balance between celebrating beauty in the material world, while being very aware of how it signals its spiritual mission.
Bonus: Host Avery Trufelman was interviewed by Recho Omandi on “The Cutting Room Floor” and it was such a good one—here’s a short preview with a link to the full episode (paid subscribers only).
Watching Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days”. I put off watching this because I was worried it would be one of those films filled with cliches of “Japaneseness” and the Zen way of life, but thankfully, it was not so. Yes, actor Kōji Yakusho is just a tad too handsome and dapper in his boiler suit, and the toilets he cleans feel too clean to be real, but I couldn’t help loving the cinematic beauty of it all—every frame is beautiful and crisply lit and it made me want to step through the screen into the Tokyo of Wim Wenders’ imagining.
The film manages to paint a life finely perched between contentment and despair, with one or the other always hovering on the margins at any given time, and it really made me feel the fragility of our everyday existence. It is a delicate, moving bit of filmmaking, and it left me with tears rolling down my eyes before I even noticed them.
Watching “Godzilla Minus One”. Another Japanese recommendation, maybe I’m really craving the chance to visit Japan? This film landed on Netflix recently and it is easily the best old-fashioned action film I’ve seen in years. The pace is impeccable from start to finish and all the action sequences seem to serve a purpose rather than just waste time trying to dazzle you with special effects. There’s also an old Hollywood influence in terms of the visual styling—the costumes and sets are fantastic—and overall it just feels like a movie that respects its audience.
Outfit round-up of the month(s)
I found frost on my plants this morning so I know winter has officially arrived. There’s a lot of jumper action happening these days, and I am happy I went with a red one from Babaà as it really perks up these dreary days. Despite my reservations, the cream vintage one (first from the right) is also coming into its own; I guess it’s cold enough in Melbourne for a heavy jumper after all.
Another highlight was wearing my secondhand Dries Van Noten blazer (first from the left) for the first time since I bought it last year. I’m not really a blazer person so I really struggled with wearing it out of the house without feeling like a poser, but I did it. In terms of styling, I took my cue from Hirofumi Kurino, co-founder of United Arrows (more inspiration from Japan!), who dresses down tailored pieces with such confidence and panache.
I don’t normally like the look of blazers with sneakers, but I think Kurino makes it work because he wears them with blazers that are cut softly and casually (as opposed a business suit jacket). Also, his trousers are baggy, but they’re also drape elegantly, so they harmonise with the elegance of his blazers. And finally, all the pieces are done in fairly casual fabrics (unfussy cottons and wools), so the sneakers feel aligned in spirit, rather than jarring.
I’m finding that with clothes that I love but don’t know what to do with, it’s best to just put it out of my mind for a while. Eventually, I figure out how to wear them, or I accept that it’s a bad fit for me, and I move on. The best decisions are made when I don’t rush them.
Thank you for all of these recommendations! I'm looking forward to seeing Perfect Days, and I'll have to try to find a way to watch The Great British Sewing Bee -- it sounds amazing. I'm dying to read Patrick Grant's Less. I'm in the middle of so many books right now that it might take me a while before I get to it, but I'm excited.
I loved Perfect Days and Godzilla Minus One. The colors in the latter were so incredible to me.
The proportions and fit of your outfits are so perfect!