My Year with Bluestone: Fashionable Atmospherics

I don't know if this stylistic choice is particularly motivated, but it was hard not to be struck by David Jones's new ad for their autumn/winter collections: two women stride purposely toward one another in various sets of clothes. Bluestone features pretty heavily in the background (at .07 Jessica Gomes appears in front of a building that looks like a bluestone, and at .44 the two women run in their floaty blues and greys across a similar bluestone background). At least it looks like bluestone to me.



One of the things that strikes me here is the scale of this building. It's obviously large, to have such deep foundations and footings, but at this point (thanks to Joel for suggesting the screen shot), there is a beautiful mixture of night time, dark hair, pale skin, dark stone, dark blue dress, fluidity and movement against monumentality, with the human scale and the size and movement of body echoed with the lovely bike with basket and leather saddle.

I went looking on line and also found a clip from their runway show: fake bluestone arches, like a prison (Melbourne gaol), and fake bluestone for the runway. No cobblestones here: high heels need a stable surface to prevent falling over.



I found a write-up that suggested the show was evocative of New York street style. Maybe. Maybe it's just the preoccupations of the researcher with their own research, but this sure looks like penal bluestone to me.