WOTTONCOOL

Colourful, I love you

I’m not sure about you, but when my age just tipped two digits (ie, 10), my classmates and I were obsessed with mouthing the word “colourful”, because it looked like you were saying “I love you”, and that was oh-so-taboo.

Over the weekend, colourful and I love you have become essentially one and the same to me. It seemed like colours that day were so tremendously yummy and vivid in what I ate and where I went. It was like the surroundings made up for my lack of colourful clothes, haha.

My boyfriend and I took a break from the usual shopping and eating around the places that we had to run errands at. Instead, we made an effort to trek to places we’ve been wanting to go. We felt so much like tourists

First we went to First Thai Food at 23 Purvis Street. It is run by real Thais, (don’t I make them sound like some rare commodity? Fact is, there are very few native Thais who run Thai restaurants in Singapore) and they make AWESOME and AUTHENTIC Thai food.

We ordered a green chicken curry and seafood tom yam soup. The tom yam soup was certainly altered to suit Singaporeans’ (and the many tourists in the area) tastebuds better. It wasn’t half as spicy as all the ones I tried in Bangkok. But it was good, sour, appetizing, with ultra fresh ingredients. Prawns! I lurve.

It is a shop house at the corner of the block and it is decorated with lots of artificial flowers, paintings and photographs of random people, famous people, Thais and their King. The walls are tiled with pale blue and pink squares. There must be a good hundred eye catching things in the shop, but somehow they didn’t come across as offbeat or anything.

The walls outside are a bright orange and yellow, and I couldn’t resist taking a picture! So here’s what I wore anyway. Stripes |||||||||||||||||||||||||||.

Yeap those neon flowers are part of the decor in the shop as well.

We ventured into Actually… a nice white-washed shop with very exciting wares to liven up its arty pallid interiors. I want a Freitag bag!

Next we went to the National Musuem of Singapore to view Christian Lacroix the Costumier.

Musuems always remind me of art student days. Sarah and I were just plain secondary school students taking art… but I always liked saying art student hahahah.

Looking at all these drawings made me feel like I should not exist, as with many other exhibitions have.

Now for the real thing. Since pictures paint a thousand words, allow me to inject a 6000 word essay about the exhibition.

You have to go for the one of the guided tours with the curator. She speaks beautifully and she gives the costumes life!

All the costumes were made for the stage – operas, plays and all kinds of lavish productions. It is amazing to hear how dedicated and meticulous Lacroix was about these costumes, from fringes to polka dotted lining, how the depth of colour deepens as the story progresses, how he fused modern day influences with that of Baroque…

Long draped dresses that resembled Greek columns splashed with neon paint.

I felt so wholesomely decadent walking around, listening, reading and observing. Ah.

“Couture dresses should be perfect at close range. Ready-to-wear should be concrete and practical. Fashion should be a matter of look, everyday life and current atmosphere.

On stage, there are only symbols, effects and illusions. Costumes must speak outright when actors, dancers or singers enter the stage.” – Christian Lacroix

We went for a neighbouring exhibition, Come-in: Interior Design as a Contemporary Art Medium in Germany. Pretty mind-boggling stuff!

Interior design to me is something that ought to be pretty idosyncratic and individualistic. It should recognize, or at least anticipate the presence of discrete, individual people.

For the interiors and furnishings of homes or maybe offices, there are many elements of discrete items – like chairs (as opposed to benches – collective), cutlery of different shapes, sizes and designs (YOUR favourite cup to drink from, for example), cubicles or rooms (not a vast space – though this can be easily challenged)..

But what happens when you take these seemingly discrete items, then join and disjoin them at the oddest of places? Kinda unwelcoming eh.

Random thoughts.

But what’s interior design to you?

Anyway. Interesting textures ahead!

We ended the day with home-made dinner! Spaghetti with pesto sauce and a homemade ginger-spring onion with olive oil sauce that is typically eaten with bak zham gai (literally translated as white chopped chicken? Actually, just boiled chicken).

It was t3h sm3x.

Happy weekend!

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