I love food and I love fashion. Of late, fashion has been offering food for thought. Or was it food, fodder for fashion?
We trump not very few places for the food we have on offer but what about our everyday sense of fashion? Most would lament that Malaysian street fashion has very little to offer, and close to zero chance of ever making it pass great street fashion hounds like Sartorialist or Pike/Pine or Street Peeper. Our friendly neighbours Bangkok and Jakarta make appearances sometimes, even pragmatic Singapore's street fashion gets a bit more attention than we do. I'm always first to join the chorus that we have absolutely no dress sense and take absolutely no pride in the way we choose to present ourselves to the world (I still am guilty of this non-criminal but still heinous crime, injurious to not a whole lot other than my own personal sense of self).
But having spent some time checking my surroundings out, I feel that some attention is warranted. Earlier this year, when Memo (the original After Giovanni founder) returned home for her annual food pilgrimage, we discussed the merit of being better dressed vis-a-vis our gregarious love for food, and two questions linger:
- Sure we may never get to play around with seasonal layers as seen on the streets elsewhere but certainly there's room for a climate-appropriate fashion uplift in Malaysia?
- The established street fashion sites mentioned above are great and I continue to visit them religiously but where are the average-looking street people, those who look like they actually consume food? Do they actually exist, or are they always extraordinarily gorgeous and super skinny? Let's face it, without getting into a post-feminist rant, skinny is a dominant fashion prerequisite. Can food and fashion ever cross paths in unison? Could we attempt to handle the bipolarity in a blog?
First the food...
Satellite chicken rice, Jalan Gasing - no introduction necessary. We ventured out of our unfortunate mall work location for lunch one day and the Boss brought us to this old joint, rickety and forlorn, next to the bigger, brighter, busier and spankier famous chicken rice outlet. We like our underdogs and to prove it, we order the works. My pick of breast meat was tender as thigh, the pork balls with coarser texture, but just as delightful.
Now, the fashion...
Once I started looking, I find striking out from the monotone of everyday working life and the business of merely existing, a dash of inspiration here and there in the way the average Malaysian (i.e. not the non-fashion model/celebutante variety) clothe themselves.
To start with, I simply looked around my workplace. Erna (left) does wraparound art - a skirt featuring the famous Hokusai painting, Behind the Great Wave at Kanagawa from Stanley Market, HK. Eevon (right) rocks Electric blue, Topshop top and Vincci patent flats. And both of them have very healthy appetites!
The most wearable, most ready-to-wear and most pedestrian items can be matched with a personality to add a little pizzazz to our quotidian landscape... really keen to capture more of it, alongside the more popular, super-sensationalized food that this country offers.
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