To the seat with the clearest view

Well, I'm on a big Oscar Wilde thing again and am trying to make a whole fad on my flist of re-reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. I re-read it; a few others of you darlings have been doing so or expressed an interest in doing so, so I may as well try to make a whole trend here. I feel so cool. I also haven't done one of those "Looks inspired by..." things in a long time, so here are looks inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray.

( Do I really need to do a whole plot summary of Oscar Wilde's classic and beautiful 1890 novel? I don't think so... )

Oh, Life on Mars. Full disclosure: I started watching this show because of its awesome early seventies soundtrack and use of one of my favourite Bowie songs for the title (see also my username). I stayed, however, because it is an awesome show with a really unusual and cool premise, strong characters, interesting plots and challenging questions about how the administration of law and justice have changed. Tonight, I have just finished inhaling the last season of its spin off, Ashes to Ashes, and so I wanted to do a post about this series.

Life on Mars follows the adventures of Sam Tyler, a very decent and 'evolved' 2007 cop from Manchester who gets into a car accident during an investigation and wakes up in 1973. He walks into his new life on the 1970s Manchester police force unsure if he's insane, traveling in time or hallucinating all this in some sort of coma or dying dream. The show explores Sam's overarching discovery of what's happening to himself as well as a stand alone plot or case in each episode; the spin off, Ashes to Ashes, follows a similar premise but with a different protagonist (and a somewhat disappointing tail end in my view, but oh well).

( Without further ado, outfits inspired by Life on Mars )

'K, I can't believe I did a fashion post for Life on Mars, and may yet do an Ashes to Ashes one. (Also, note how my last two such posts, about two huge obsessions of mine, are both set in the 70s and totally titled after Bowie songs...).

1) So, instead of marathoning TV shows, my new obsession seems to be marathoning the Dan Savage archives. This is actually a kind of bad obsession as it's getting awfully time consuming - but so interesting, and he's just so funny and flippant...

2) I haven't done one of those "outfits inspired by" posts in a while, so, in keeping with my last post here, I'm paying tribute to Velvet Goldmine with some Polyvore creations.

( Apparently I couldn't shut up about this movie so, um, fashion inspired by Velvet Goldmine plus commentary on the film (and even footnotes!) because converting people to this fandom is totally one of my life's ambitions )