May 15th, 2008
Early Style icons - Claudia Kishi from the Babysitters Club
Yes. I used to read Babysitters Club books. Actually I didn’t just read them I DEVOURED them and I had them all lined up on my shelf in numerical order with the mysteries and super specials on a shelf of their own. I’ve long since donated them all to charity and I am having serious regrets. Why? Because Claudia Kishi, the Vice-president of the Babysitters Club is one seriously stylish senorita. Except that she is clearly Japanese not Spanish. Man she is SO AWESOME! She’s a Japanese-American artist who adores junk food and Nancy Drew books. She is also a terrible speller. Anne M Martin is a genius for creating Claudia, the flawed but funky mis-fit of the Kishi family. Sometimes I would just read the whole series skipping the narrative and reading the parts about Claudia’s outfits. My most recent hobby has been barrelling my way through Salvos stores, shoving aside old ladies, to get my trashy children’s novel fix and I have to say I have found some of the best outfits that Claudia has to offer. I could always imagine her outfits perfectly in my head but because I’m rubbish at drawing I had never seen any of her outfits. The television show and movie Claudia outfits were pretty lame. I got the feeling that the costume designers hadn’t even read the books. Then I had a brainwave (a rare occurrence) and I thought ‘Why not use Polyvore?’. I nearly cried. Seeing her outfits come to life before my eyes has fed a very serious childhood addiction. For those Babysitters fans out there you’re about to get very excited…
The Mystery at Claudia’s House - Mystery #6
“I see my body as a blank canvas, and I can put anything I want onto that canvas, depending on my mood. Does that make any sense? I was thinking this over, and checking today’s outfit (lace leggings, purple tie-dyed T-shirt dress, and purple high-tops) in the mirror, when I was snapped back to reality by Charlotte who was tugging on my sleeve.”
I added some arm socks and fruit earrings. Although you’ll notice that the earrings are different to each other - that’s a HUGE Claudia trait. And sometimes she is so quirky she wears ONE EARRING! The mind boggles at the coolness that is Claudia.
Babysitters on Board! - Super Special #1
“Then the three of us got dressed quickly, but silently. Well, I got dressed quickly. This was because while I’d been lying in my bunk the night before I’d planned exactly what I was going to wear. I put on my new blue-and-white bikini and over that, a pink sundress with spaghetti straps at the shoulders and big blue buttons down the front. Then I accessorized. I tied a pink and blue scarf around my waist, knotting it in the middle, added my snake bracelet and feather earrings, wound my hair up on top of my head, and finally put on these white sandals with long laces that you crisscross up your legs and tie in a bow.”
I love the fact that every piece of the outfit is described from head to toe. And Claudia always matches everything and rarely dresses in more than two colours. I think she’s on to something there…
Kristy’s Big Day - Book #6
“Claudia Kishi, our vice president and a junk addict, was prowling around her room, trying to remember where she’d hidden a large bag of M&Ms. She was wearing one of her usual outrageous outfits: a black leotard and skintight red pants under a white shirt that was so big it looked like a lab coat. Claudia’s a wonderful artist and she had decorated the shirt herself, covering it with designs painted in acrylic. She had pinned her long, black hair back at the sides with red clips”
I had to give her a butterfly ring and some Balenciagas. I get that she is thirteen and that she can’t afford designer footwear on four dollars an hour. I’m also aware that technically these shoes didn’t exist when the book was written but don’t you think that Claudia’s favourite designer would be Balenciaga? With a little Westwood mixed in?
I spent countless days dragging a very patient Mr Smaggle through every secondhand bookstore along the east coast and forced him to make me cups of tea while I carefully re-read the chronicles of my childhood. I marked every outfit page with a Post-it and started the laborious task of typing them into my computer. I was around half way through this when the working part of my brain went ‘Hey! You know that internet thing that you use sometimes? Maybe there’s some kind of Claudia website?’. Insert politically incorrect phrase meaning ‘person of limited intelligence’ here. I found a website called What Claudia Wore and it is incredible. It’s written by an American gal called Kim who loves Claudia but seems to have serious issues with the rest of the babysitting bunch. Especially Dawn. Her writing is hilarious and in her more recent entries she adds her own commentaries to the text exerpts. It’s golden and every Babysitter fan should read it…
Love Lady Smaggle
xxx
p.s It’s not over yet. There will be more Kishi-ness coming your way…
