i can't keep one train of thought so i'll just do bullet points.

[cimorene]

• There is no flash player on this computer. It's getting really annoying.


• Last summer was just full of good movies, wasn't it? And this summer is full of nothing that I want to see except maybe Iron Man. I was looking forward to St Trinian's regardless of anticipated quality (schoolgirl uniforms!) but it won't be coming out here at all.


• [Star Trek: DS9] Garak: Poirot in Space! (WITH Bonus Badass Ex-Secret Service Action!) Discuss.


• Most exciting discovery, for me, in six months: a heretofore-unnoticed but really wonderful, nearly flawless Sherlock Holmes slash writer: Holmes/Watson fan fiction by Katie Forsythe


• I have an Ideal Dress, the one dress that has captured my imagination since I was a child and which I would unhestatingly order, if i could have Any! Dress! in! the! World! It's the green sequined dress Cyd Charisse shimmers around in seducing Gene Kelly in the "Broadway Melody" sequence of Singin' in the Rain and you can see a whole whopping great gallery of screencaps of it here.
  
  I always just assumed that everyone had an Ideal Dress and was unaccountably surprised that wax_jism didn't (I shouldn't have been because she doesn't really care about clothes, let alone dresses, except as she is occasionally inspired to want to imitate the dress of Mikey Way or whoever else she's desperately idolising/obsessing over).
  
  I think my mom's ideal dress was a crimson Renaissance-inspired partially-gauze scarf-skirted number she fell for at the age of about 22, and would have saved up for and worn to her wedding except that my fussy and dictatorial paternal grandmother said she "couldn't" come to the wedding if they waited long enough for Mom to afford it, so she canned the idea and made her own, a rose-printed silky white polyester shirt dress which as a child I always found horribly disappointing because it was so simple, but which I now admire for its classy understatedness. How about it - do [Poll #1183481]
  


• Remember the brown brocade vest? Well, Wax has lost sufficient weight that her huge boobs finally fit into it and the dashed thing still hasn't got the decency to fit right. It would need just as much tailoring as it would on me to fit her, several inches off the top slopes of the boobage and more than that below, and it would end up looking like a corset. With all the lining and stuff it's not worth the trouble, so we shall have to give it up, but it's very sad with the gorgeous Chinese medallions and the silky brocade. The only silver lining I can find is that it is not, in fact, made of ACTUAL silk, only a very convincing synthetic. Were the silk genuine I'm sure I couldn't bear to part with it ever, from the value of the fabric alone.


• I feel quite wistful and given to nostalgia lately. Missing people who have passed out of my life. A trifle lonely. I wonder if heartache is a silly metaphor which, when read about a lot, eventually causes you to imagine a physical sensation in the region of the heart, or whether on the contrary the chest really does get tight and sensitive-feeling, momentarily, in the grip of sadness, and 'heartache' was coined to describe the symptoms.


• Taking after one's parents so much is either a very good (at least it's predictable?) or a very bad thing (over-exposure in early years makes the symptoms particularly depressing when they appear).

Comments

[copracat]

Mmmm, Cyd Charisse.

My dresses are, in order of rising desire, this one on the cover of the Ladybird Cinderella, the blue one and the white and gold one inside the book.

That Cyd dress is you. I think it is the perfect ideal dress, but then I admire your style very much.

(I should add that I formed my own ideal dress imprint at a very, very young age.)

PS St Trinian's is very bad in an entirely perfect way and hit all my youthfully canalised tastes. I am yearning for some Miss Dickinson/Chelsea (canon support, I swear) and would happily die for Miss Maupassant/anything, anything at all.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've totally seen it, but it was a really icky filmed-from-the-screen thing and I wanted to watch it in the theatre, with popcorn! And I want to slash - dammit what are their names? - Gemma Arterton and Talulah Riley. Aha, Kelly and Anabelle.

I would love to see pictures of your other ideal dresses! I haven't seen that version of Cinderella before. Although, alas, I'm afraid ball gowns are less amenable to modification for actually wearing. I've been plotting making a sort of knit jersey parody of my Ideal Dress for more casual wearing, but you can't really do that with a ball gown. Although maybe you could make a sort of knee-length or tea-length version that would be sort of cocktail-dress-like.

[copracat]

Mmm Kelly/Anabelle also good.

Both my bridesmaid adventures gave me tight bodices and full skirts so I was pretty happy! The other dresses in the book are pretty much the same style but the blue one has the shimmery blue sheen of utter colour desire and the gold one has a silvery white net or lace over it. I suspect the illustrator didn't decide on one or the other but was making each dress more glamorous and princess-like than the last.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

My ideal dress is a Christian Dior haute couture number, hahaha. I saw it in an retrospective exhibition of his work when I was about 12 I think? I like haute couture but I was not, at the time, a fan of Dior much. Found it mostly a little too busy. The one I fell in love though was a very understated, all black, velvet (silk velvet presumably) number from the fifties with a curved hem and pleats in front starting at the low curved collar and giving it a shape not unlike a pregnancy dress. I still daydream about it sometimes!

I have formed many tentative lustful plans regarding other haute couture dresses since! But this one imprinted, and is the first and the most detailed to pop up when I am prompted on the matter.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

How sad if you don't actually have a picture of it anymore! You don't, do you?

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

I saw in for real on the dressform in the musem, but never had a picture of it, no. sadness!

ideal dress (link)

[devon.livejournal.com]

I posted some pics in my pretty dress gallery (http://pics.livejournal.com/devon/gallery/00017ha3?page=1) for you and others to peruse. These are only a handful of digital images that I've saved over the last 5 years. I have a much bigger folder of dresses, etc. that I've saved from paper magazines. It's a thing, I guess. I really love full skirts, ruffles, and flowers, as you will see.

My top 3 ideal dresses are:
1) Bjork's swan gown
2) the pink Dior gown with flowers, also shown in black which is way less interesting
3) Any beautiful sari

Re: ideal dress (link)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see! Interesting! You seem to have, like, a frothy tutu influence as in the swan dress, the peacock dress, and the Far Too Frothy, and then a statuesque draped, Grecian-type gown like the pink Dior and the flowered Gaultier. Both very nice! I've always liked tulle, too. I think the Gaultier flower gown is my favourite - all that ruching and sparkles and bright, bright colours.

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

when i was younger i had a huge list of ideal dresses, most of which came from books - ballet books, flower fairy books and Little Grey Rabbit's dress. mostly these were flouncy princess type dresses or the exact same dresses as flower fairies wore. (most notably the fairies i liked best and wanted to be like Poppy, Mallow and Willow.)

when i was a teenager my ideal dress was one i saw in a hippy shop that looked really out of place there. it was a dark blue velvet chinese style thing with long sleeves but the sleeves were mostly some kind of sheer fabric with velvety swirled designs on. that's a rubbish description but it was gorgeous. but alas there was only one of it and it was TINY (i think maybe european 32 or something) and i was not tiny.

i don't think i have an ideal dress anymore.