Tuesday 4 December 2007

Today I wore..


Grey cashmere cardi (got covered in red paint!)
Great plains denim skirt (tried to flog it twice on ebay now i love it!)
Falke cashmere mix tights
Hadley Freeman can ease your fashion pain
To the last question first: because there is a school of thought, a limited but not without merit school, that thinks the only people who wear brightly coloured coats are batty art teachers who own several cats and have at least two dozen jars of jam in their larder with a sell-by-date of 1976. Lovely ladies but, when it comes to fashion, their main consideration is something with "a sense of fun",

Holy cow what did we art teachers do to deserve a stereotypical comment like this? Our main consideration is actually a sense of what is practical and comfortable, most clothes invariably end up with paint on them. We are up to our armpits in clay, plaster of paris and printing ink trying to develop the skill of future generations of fashion editors, graphic designers etc etc. Mrs Fashion thought we wore Toast which at least embraced the right sentiment if not the price. Most art teachers I know build a wardrobe around dark colours, grey, black, navy and brown. My coat is Black. What probably makes us stand out will be the pencil stuck in our hair and a rather over the top piece of jewellery. Most art teachers may have a menagerie of pets but not always cats, my colleague also has a dog a parrot and chickens and trust me any jam in our cupboards is eaten by the children because if we are good at one thing its breeding. So Ms Freeman next time you want to use a genre of teacher to take the piss out of, stick to history teachers they are always fair game are they not?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So true! I'm still laughing, you describe it to a T.

Anonymous said...

I am an art teacher and I think that statement comes from a jealous math teacher with no pictures on their walls. :)

Seriously- stereotypes~! I wear dark colors and sometimes more grungy clothes than my colleagues because we run a lab- a place that sometimes can have a gazillion messy dirty fingers and hands wanting your attention. ie. red paint all over your new shirt or cashmere sweater just to ask a question. It gets expensive to have clothing that cannot be easily washed.

I wish I could wear a long colorful necklace- but it would be dangerous teaching K-12 art wearing a long strand that could be pulled or dipped in paint trays. I have had a hand made necklace with beads that scattered all over the place after getting stuck in the print rollers almost choking me to death. The only thing I can get away with is colorful earrings and an apron made by my talented mother with large pockets and colorful stitching.

People have NO idea.