Things to Read #33

No round up last week, because I was finishing the final project for my MA (yep, I did one of those), the cover of which you can see here. It took a very long time and a lot of effort and a surprising amount of crying – but that is what happens when you choose to write a personal essays about your dead nan. I always knew that going to Central Saint Martins would be an experience – never more so than when your course director dies suddenly and you see Kanye West at her memorial. And now it’s almost over.

In this week’s Irish Times, I talk about Alexander McQueen’s enduring life and legacy, and a little bit about ’70s platforms. The Irish Times now has a soft paywall, so you may not be able to see it.

Genitalia is a catwalk statement now. The effort it takes not to pun about this is almost insurmountable.

The life of a model can be harsh and unfair. Not ‘just like the rest of us’ unfair, ‘indentured servitude’ unfair.

Experimentation and excess are still the watchwords of London Fashion Week.

Amy Odell is one smart lady when it comes to tech, and she has a huge picture of a cat on her office wall.

Kim Gordon has great taste in books. *pops memoir on to wishlist*

Welcome to the graveyard of good ideas.

Just when you think Kim Kardashian has no problems, you find out that she has psoriasis. Human after all Kim, human after all.

Visual inspiration for novelists-at-work – includes family photos and faces drawn on oranges.

Teenage Bedrooms on Screen is my new favourite Tumblr.

The London Review of Books has unlocked an unsettling Angela Carter story.

“This is part of a larger phenomenon – the tendency for Gen X-ers and those who came after them to be “spiritual but not religious”. Rather than converting to one set mythology, younger people tend to pull spiritual ideas and practices from any source that works.” I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of covens –symbolic and otherwise – this week, and I’m not the only one.