This is me arresting Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray. As you can see, we’re both revelling in our parts!

Kurious Orange – a walking, talking, dancing interpretation of Versailles Orangerie – as vivid and fresh as the globes of sweet citrus themselves.

Lia T’s done it again with her ghoulishly glamorous ensemble featuring a spider that’s latched onto her head for the night, a yellow-eyed vampirical kitty, a suitably OTT black chain necklace and her own metal manicure nails.

Electric colour meltdowns are likely to strike a chord with the savagely styled – those who love unbridled colour, hedonistic flamboyance and don’t mind taking style tips from high class hookers – poolside, that is, with  a chartreuse cocktail in  hand.  Vivid hues collide in a psychotropic meltdown of swaying palm trees, neon animal prints and the  lust-bound meanderings of the Greek key motif.

The look screams Euro-glam grecian princess partying hard amidst the luridly bronzed  crowds of a Mediterranean beach nightclub. Elsewhere, a Scandinavian geisha towering on fluoro pink high heels  sashays in a field of UV-lit cherry blossoms and Chinese fans – trashy rave culture meets oriental opulence and lashings of denialist credit card debt.

Daring cuts and  signature details such as gold military buttons find form in slinky metallic mini dresses, while grandly proportioned pieces such as floor-sweeping goddess gowns add a touch of regality to Versace’s legendary haute-trash aesthetic. Also loving the candy-coloured suits and shoes for men. It’s all very OTT in the best possible way – clothing to make Dionysus smile upon you.  Check out the animated fashion film by Champagne Valentine. Love the  neon crocodiles!

Models pictured: Sasha Pivovarova, Daphne Groeneveld, Lindsey Wixson, Abbey Lee Kershaw.

I found this gumball machine in the most banal of places: a suburban shopping centre near Paradise Hills gallery in Richmond.  I spun around and saw Barbie advertising Princess School and to be honest I related more to these dual signifiers than the ones on display at the art show (although I love the Hills’  sign, see below). When I uploaded the photo I noticed the post sign hanging there like a  stand-in for an exit sign, which made me realise that posting letters and parcels is the closest I’ve come lately to making a physical exit to another, more preferable reality. The sign’s red beacon of light has been subdued by technology so it is no brighter than a clown’s nose after the  show’s finished and the grease paint has been removed

And there, in the top left hand corner, you can see the faintest image of a raven-haired woman, and the composition of this blue-tinged image just so happens to  resemble the Shepherd Moons album cover by Enya. Some children of the 90s still scoff and laugh about the naffness of ‘Sail Away’, but that song was a life saver at a party I held at my place not so long ago. It was an Italo Disco party, and my guests and I were all bouncing around like so many hexagons that night. The saucepan on the stove was overflowing with a Witches of Brunswick brew, and my friend was skulking around in a sheer maxi dress through which her lingerie shone a euro trash path for us all to follow (there was a  glittery, no make that bedazzled, moon in the sky that night).

Not one but two amps died in the course of the night, and at 3 in the morning my friends and I found ourselves hunched together in a horse-shoe formation, leaning over a tinny little self-powered ipod speaker unit,  listening to Sail Away (Orinoco Flow) by Enya as if our boat had just capsized and this song was our inflatable life raft.  Of course some people groaned openly about said track selection, but others enjoyed the irony of it all, as you are wont to do on the wild side of midnight.

In the picture below I’m wearing my muskstick outfit –  flamingo pink jeans and Ken Done tshirt contributing to a look that is one part your favourite primary school teacher, one part My Little Pony-dipped backyard punk/80s neapolitan-flavoured meltdown.

She regales me with stories of a young boy she met in Croatia who recently wrote a novel set on a tragic set of events. She describes his book as ” a summer romance set on Hvar and in Malibu with sunsets and palmtrees as motifs binding the two locations”. We end the night by drifting away on  strawberry skies

Why is it that the best vintage shoes are nearly always size 6.5? Maybe 7 if you’re lucky.

Buy from Claire Inc. , who is in the lucrative business of selling cherry picked vintage Moschino pieces.  Enough to keep a lady out of trouble.

On Thursday night Thea Baumann’s new show Hologram Holiday will open as part of ‘My Own Private Neon Oasis’, a Museum of Brisbane contemporary art project that draws on the stories and tropical atmosphere of river-side Sunnybank for inspiration.

For Hologram Holiday, the divinely tempting invite reads as follows:

     Be pampered by this shimmering fantasy salon, and teleported to an elusive            neon mirage while having a beauty treatment conducted by the Hologram                Hostesses in iNails salon. Hologram Holiday features Augmented Reality                  enhanced manicures, dreamy exotica soundtrack, and hypersaturated in-flight      entertainment.

This is the first time in Australia that augmented reality has been devised as part of a couture concept. The augmented reality chips will be applied to viewers’ nails and to rings, allowing one to interact with live holographic animations before their very eyes. This is fashion at its most transformative and futuristic. If you are in Bris Vegas, I implore you, in the name of all things fantasy art, neon and sexy sci fi,  to check it out.

I was pretty rapt when I saw Tracy Quertier’s floral installation, a spring-time reverie which exploded in a festival of colour. Her arrangements were juxtaposed beautifully with a projection of  Dickensian smoke stacks looming in a blue-tinged void.

I also LOVED the Hotham Street Ladies’  pastel jelly mosaics, so perfect and glossy I thought they were plastic until I prodded one and its jellied shine *quivered*.  I am an over-grown infant when it comes to my love of pastels, so of course I wet my pants over this installation resembling a collection of My Little Pony-themed sex toys.   Gorgeous work.

The tequila’s well and truly kicking in, your skin has adopted the smell of corn as its own,  and you’re galloping off into the desert, wearing your  mexican blanket as a kaftan. There’s stars, millions of stars, and you think you see skeletons in the outer corner of your eyes, entreating you to dance with them. Suddenly Neneh Cherry’s calling out your name, asking you to dance to Buffalo Stance, just like in the good old days when digital daisies went flying through the MTV skies.

My favourite look is this dazzling mirage, this hitchhiking hoochie flagging down fun times on the fashion highway. And the soundtrack? Down In Mexico by The Coasters.

Wax, or The Discover of Television among the Bees, is a science fiction fantasy directed by David Blair.

Wax first screened online in 1993, making it the world’s first feature length film broadcast on the internet.

It is the story of Jacob Maker, weapons-guidance designer and bee-keeper. The bees drill a hole in Jacob’s cranium, inserting a television whose supernatural images control his mind. What results is a hallucinogenic reality for Jacob and viewer alike.  You can watch the hypermedia version of the film on waxweb

And so my love affair with eternally fresh mint continues. This season  serene sea green hues continue to unfetter both  menswear and womenswear  like a cool breeze over the fashion landscape.  Mint is pastel without being prissy, exuding optimism without being saccharine. It is a friend of the ethereal (which is why it is often used in science fiction) and of individual, do-as-you-please style.

Jessica Agutter as Jessica 6 in Logan's Run.

In Logan’s Run (1976), a dystopic sci-fi  set in a world where life ends at 30, mint green represents contradictory elements. It is  the colour of eternal youth and the technology of a crystalline netherworld, but it is also the colour of entrapment and doom. Mint green is used in this film like an energy force, from the neon green set design to Jessica 6′s Roman-style sateen sideless cape dress  and the glittery spangles of Holly  13′s high-collared mod dress.

Chloe Resort 2012

This silk pleated dress from Chloe Resort 2012 channels the tradition of floaty, sublime goddess dresses. It combines the disco freedom of the 70s with the classical appeal of grecian antiquity to hypnotic effect. This image strangely reminds me of those scenes in movies when the impossibly beautiful female steps out onto the street to hail a cab and the next thing we know she’s found dead in a ditch and it’s all downhill from there.

Fairytale in a mint green gown. Tim Walker is one of my favourite fashion photographers. Here Lily Cole ascends (or maybe she is descending – the photo’s seductive quality makes more sense if she is entering the space, not leaving it) a spiral staircase, her  dress trailing into the derelict grandeur of the surrounding room. Shot on location in Whadwan, Gujarat, India.

Batson's Printemps Bikini for their spring summer 11 'fall' showing at BWC

I don’t know much about what’s going on in this picture. All I know is that the model second from the left is wearing a  shimmery mint green high waisted bikini by Brisbane label Batson at the Brisbane Women’s Club fashion parade and she looks pretty happy because she’s getting paid to do it.

Zimmermann 'Halycon Days' spring summer 2012

“For (s)he on honeydew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise.” The ‘Idyllic Honeydew Crossing Panel dress’ is perfect for skating around in on those social occasions where the illusion of propriety may be called upon until the champagne kicks in.

Arnsdorf 'The Circle' spring summer 2012

This ensemble brings to mind eating pistachio gelati icecream cones on a hot  summer night.  I am also a huge fan of shorts worn with moderately high heels.I think my love of this look started when I saw Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver and I never quite  got over it. Silk green tank available from arnsdorf.

Acne spring summer 2012

I love this collection by Jonny Johansson so much I feel slightly ill when I look at this photo. But ill in a good way. We could talk about the shape of necklines and collars but I’d rather talk about the brilliance of this dashing mint green cable knit jumper. The look is 70s retro sporty and would, in my colour-addled mind, be best suited to a man who has an understanding of 70s scandinavian design and who appreciates the benefits of tucking one’s jumper into their trousers. This is a man who probably owns a record player made out of real teak!

Mugler menswear spring summer 2012

For Mugler’s Paris show men were presented as arcadian gods operating in a utopia where lime green brothel creepers are something you wear down to the local convenience store. This show represents some sort of Formichetti wet dream and what follows is a  futuristic skewering on the attendant archetypes. Formichetti attributed the significance of the acid green which featured throughout the show to technology. ”That green represented the blood of the digital era,” Formichetti said. “If this technology has a kind of color, for me it was a neon green.”

Mugler Resort 2012

For Mugler’s Resort 2012 show, Formichetti dipped into botany  for inspiration. The result is as sleek and silhouetted as  a body-con palm tree. Have you visited the Jardin des Plantes in Paris? This greenhouse is where the seeds of inspiration for this collection were apparently planted.  I love the leather pants, as shiny and green as running across wet grass while drinking champagne in the rain.

Walter Van Beirendonck spring summer 2012

Pastel suits, 50s boxy shapes,  boucle tweed suits, patchwork leather elbow-length gloves, models with bouffants and combs in their air and  giant topiary-tulle orbs – the latter which reminded me of a grandiose version of those toilet roll dolls you used to see in suburban bathrooms in the 1980s –  conspired to take over the world at Van Beirendonck’s Paris show. Absolutely awesome.

Still life with mint green wedge

And last but not least, some inspiration from my own life. This absurd ‘still life’ was taken at 2 in the afternoon in my friend’s backyard. My friends and I had been up all night, resulting in this rather random and starvation-driven picnic. Stars the sherbet green Melissa scarfun wedge, which is on permanent loan from a dear friend. There was plenty of champagne on offer that day. Lots of fizz and bubbles, salt and vinegar crisps and shoe flinging.

And that brings us to the end of our epic voyage through the wondrous world of mint green!