Thing #10: George Cox/Robot brothel creepers, 2015

I wish I could say I was cool enough to have been wearing creepers all my life. Unfortunately I'm not. Like many people, I returned to the style a few years ago when thanks to Mrs Prada the crepe sole began inching its way back into fashion favour. I bought my first pair in about 25 years from Underground, who along with TUK are probably the best known and most easily available of the dedicated creeper brands. Being very classically minded, I went for the most basic style possible: a three eyelet lace up with a pointed toe in plain black leather.

Before I go any further, let me say that my mass-produced Underground creepers were very nice shoes. They were rugged and comfortable. They quickly became the indispensable workhorse on the shoe farm and I walked them into the ground. But by the time they became unwearable it was obvious that any replacement was going to have to be an upgrade. It was time to go back to the source for some English bench-made quality of the kind only to be found at George Cox.

Signature #1: Snowflake Tattoo 3.3.2015

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By the time you read this, the ink will be drying on my first ever tattoo, a decorative hexagonal design based on the crystalline shapes that form when water freezes. This snowflake motif was inspired by a weekend I spent in Warsaw with a dear friend of long standing (let's call her Celine) five years ago this month. I've chosen to put it on the inside of my right upper arm, where I can display or conceal it as the fancy takes me.

Attitudes to body art have changed significantly in the last ten years with more and more people going under the needle. It's no longer considered as vulgar to sport a fine line tattoo on the forearm as it was a decade ago and if not for these changing mores I'd be unlikely to consider wearing such visible ink myself. But perhaps the question is not why permanent skin embellishment is creeping back into favour, but why it should be considered improper in the first place.

Thing #8: 1970s Vintage Pea Coat, sourced 2008

I once spent several weeks during the run-up to Christmas stranded on the couch after a cycling accident. With nothing better to do than surf the Internet I did all my gift shopping online and bought a winter coat. I looked at many examples, new and vintage, from many different sources and I passed up a number of brand new mid-range coats to buy this one. I've not regretted it for a moment. They really don't make 'em like this anymore.

Buying vintage online can be a gamble when you can't be sure what you're looking at. Used garments rarely declare their quality in amateur photos taken by independent dealers. It's far harder to assess fit when all you have are a vendor's measurements. How can you tell how fabric feels from an image on a screen? All you can do is use your imagination and trust your experience. 

Thing #7: Ralph Rucci Pin Tuck Dress, completed 2015

Appropriated Edge has been woefully silent for a month or so, during which I've been learning some valuable lessons in the art of community engagement, an essential life skill for an aspiring blogger. Here on the Internet, we all have the potential to become part of a shared global conversation in which we are both content providers and audience members, an ideal which collapses when all that time you spent engaging with the community has kept you from updating your blog. 

So I've decided to begin again with the garment which in a roundabout way inspired me to start this enterprise in the first place, a project which I began as 2014 was drawing to a close. This is the Ralph Rucci pin tuck dress, a notoriously complicated piece of home couture which I would probably never have attempted without the inspiration of one particularly talented sewing blogger.