Lotus Notes loves Kym Ellery

With a day to go before her SS10 collection shows at RAFW, I caught up with Kym Ellery - the effortlessly chic former Market Editor of Russh and designer behind her name-sake Australian label, E L L E R Y.

I would describe my personal style as relaxed and comfortable meets chic, and a bit boyish and tough.

I'm happiest when I'm having a mani/pedi with my lamb (stylist Ilona Hamer).

I couldn't live without my magazines, my record collection, my Delarenzo prescriptions range.

My friends call me Lamb, Ellery!, Toots, K-dog and K-bird.

Last thing I bought was an YSL ring and I'm saving for a Chanel 2.55 handbag.

If I was not a fashion designer I would be an interpretative dancer!

Describe yourself in three words...free-spirited, driven and specific (that's a nice way to say bossy).

My style icons are Carine Roitfeld, Erin Wasson and Lara Stone.

Which item belongs in every women's wardrobe? An amazing, well-cut jacket. And accessories are key!

Can you predict a trend that might be coming up in a couple of months? I'm actually really interested to see what people do over the next week! People are a lot more savvy now and Australian designers are more on par with trends from Milan, Paris and London.

We'd find you in Sydney...at my Redfern studio (I'm telling you, Redfern is the new Surry Hills), at gallerys, bookshops and in bed.

In five years I hope to be designing and showing in London, Milan or Paris!

Home comforts

Where is home? Is it a place on a map, or is it found in the treasures we've salvaged from our past?

For me, the answer to the bland question "Where's home?" has a confusing answer. My father lives in Melbourne and my mother lives in Auckland, but I didn't grow up in either of those houses so I wouldn't call them home. My childhood home was sold when my parents divorced, as was my grandparents home when they also split. Now I rent a flat in Sydney, but I have lived in New York, Auckland, Wellington and also Melbourne where I lived during my first few years of high school.



It's a modern problem, one unique to our generation where a person can have satellite homes, where families and houses continue their continental drift across countries and continents. So why can't we just pick a home and stick to it?

For some, even if they have bought a home in a big and lovely city; with deep roots firmly ground in friends, mortgages and careers, they still can't shake the feeling that elsewhere is home. "I'm going home for the weekend," they might say. Home home. Real home. Where parents or family live, the house where they grew up. Home is clearly more than geography but even if we return to our former home as an adult, its meaning remains mainly in memories rather than the physical foundation, the word "home" bearing a heavy weight of association.


For me, it means playing in a paddling pool on the driveway, getting stuck in newly laid cement in my gumboots while said house was being built, bunk-beds, silver beat, egg-cups, a sharp-edged glass table to circum-navigate when my head was the perfect height to bash right into it, a steep staircase great for slinkys to slink down and a magical rose garden that I was sure housed a family of royal fairies. But even those memories don't quite sum up the signifacnce of home home.

In it's place, things have become more important. It's what we choose to popuate our houses with that make them more comfortable, warm and perculiar to ourselves - a home.

With a new apartment in a new city, I'm about to embark on a home-ness makeover on our new Surry Hills flat. Though it's hard to travel with relics from one's childhood home, my boyfriend and I are hard at work scouring Sydney's vintage stores and tearing out magazine pictures for inspiration on filling our flat with what will become memento's from a new home, but a home nonetheless. Besides, multiplicity is rather modern, don't you think?

Art inspiring fashion, fashion inspiring art

1930's French Art Deco illustration

Marc Jacobs Spring 09

Edgar Degas’ “The Green Dress” ballerina Painting

Patrick Demarcelier editorial for Harper’s Bazaar,US

YTL Residence, Kuala Lumpur

Viktor & Rolf ballet slingbacks

Fashion Meltdown

Photos: KT Auleta

The fashion world seems to just keep on rocking despite an uncertain economy. These images from KT Auleta Photography give such an accurate (and to be honest, a little bit comical) depiction of what is happening in the world at the moment.

Despite all the headlines we're being bombarded with - World Financial Crisis, Mortgage Meltdown, Global Recession - and while the world is falling to bits around us, we either choose to ignore it with some twisted optimistic naivety (my philosphy - surely it WILL get better), or we accept it but decide not to bother with it. Out of sight out of mind, right?

Just like the World Vision ads, we're aware that the world is in the pooper, we're pretty sure it might even be crumbling, but we don't care enough to stop buying our Lover dresses, Prada hand bags and countless pairs of shoes.

Before I left New York I read countless articles informing me of just how terrible it is in Manhattan. Wall St bankers were becoming door-men to the very people they used to live next door to; a job vacancy for a bartender received 600 applications in the first hour it went up on craigslist; an interview for a sandwich maker in the West Village saw a line of applicants stretching five blocks, and at the open call for Topshop sales assistants 2,000 girls turned up. It really is pretty shitty out there and the worst is yet to hit Australia.

But regardless of designers facing the need to scale down their collections, the fashion world just keeps spinning money. Women are still buying $7,500 Balmain dresses - and probably going into debt because of it. I guess no matter how crappy the world becomes, at least we'll feel safe in the knowledge that we still look good...

Paris, je t'aime

Since my boyfriend and I arrived in Sydney, we've been spending a lot of time with a certain Parisian model who unfortunately flew back home yesterday. Being around her has made me pine for anything and everything French. Her accent, her effortless and casual chic way of dressing, her ramblings about France in French, her stories about her tiny apartment and her friends back home..it's all motivated me to take up French lessons again with a promise to visit her soon. I can read and write the très romantique language but I'm screwed if I actually have to have a conversation with someone.

I've never visited Paris, or France for that matter, but it's next on the list of places to work and live. Here are some lovely things that are motivating me to actually make it happen.

French Vogue April 09

Sophia Coppola

The new Chanel No. 5 ad

Mulberry Muse French Note Cards collection

Life