I'm starting a new section of the blog called "Dear Billie" (how creative am I?), which is where you can ask me a question and I might answer it publicly. I'm starting it off by asking myself a question and answering it, so that you get what it's all about if you haven't encountered this sort of column/post before. The beauty of it is that the readers don't have to know your true identity unless I sell it or anything.

Dear Billie,

I don't really know what to say so I'm just gonna say a lot.
I've always been ahead of the trends. Other people are copying me and that's the thing, they aren't giving me credit.
Like, I don't want to be rude or anything, but I was in to the Beatles before every other Tom, Dick or Harry. And they never tell their friends that they first heard about them from me. Also, I liked the Beatles before they got on to iTunes.
I have always been into vintage stuff and the sixties and I have always known who Adolf Hitler was and about Ralph Lauren.
Maybe people don't always know that I know things, like, is it because I have not been walking around in one of those t-shirts with the big polo symbol?

People don't appreciate what I appreciate. Seriously guys, you have a lot to thank Ralph Lauren for.
Sometimes I have a great idea and don't do it or I have a great idea and do it and get "dissed" by the public. And then five years later (seriously), everyone's doing it, even the popular people. 
Is it just me or...oh my god! I'm getting all chocking up over this. Oh my god! I just remembered how when I was little, kids copied the way I tied by shoelaces with bunny ears. And then they all denied it being first done by me.
Please tell me what's wrong. In the past twelve months alone, people have copied these things about me:

1. Wearing Doc Martens with a floral dress;
2. Taking photos with soft lighting. I was using Vaseline or thing cloth on the lens, but people are using this online programme...?;
3. Dip-dying. When I first did it, everyone thought it was called tie-dying;
4. Liking their mother's old clothes. Dude, and they all hated their mothers before!;
5. Reblogging on Tumblr. Seriously! I was the first to reblog!!!!!!!

And now people are calling things "Indie". But I feel they don't actually "get" Indie stuff. It's as though suddenly everything I liked has now got a label because it just so happens that my taste is "Indie". Only it wasn't called that back then, it was just me.

xoxo Your Only Fan, Australian teen, 2011

Dear You're only a fan so after I reply, don't reply.

Sometimes the world just isn't ready for things. Perhaps similar to your case, Mahayana Buddhists believe that during the Buddha's life, people were not ready for the deeper truths of the Mahayana Doctrine. Just remember, if you're ready but they aren't, it's okay. This is called wisdom. I think it's hard to be the right guy at the right time. But hey, look, it'll all come together. Jesus lead a difficult life but this was part of a bigger plan which we can now see. And we, the ones who nailed him to the cross, can now love and appreciate him.
I think there are several paths you can choose from for success.

1. Be assertive about your style. This will be positive if people already like you because you will become known and admired for your style and you will become famous. I don't think Plan One will really work if people don't already like you because they will not want to look like you and you will never be given credit. (I'm guessing people already like you if they follow your style);
2. You stop being Indie. I don't think people in Australia are into steampunk nor "popular music/culture", so that's always an option;
3. Do as my Year Eight Latin teacher told those who finished their work quickly and accurately, which is to sit back and feel/look smug.

Whatever. You go girl! Whatever you do, show the world your taste and creativity - don't confine it to your Moleskine Notebook! I think people on the Internet will get you, like they got Tavi Gevinson. Maybe you should get a blog like me.

Sincerely,

Billie

P.S. When I first described Indie style to mum, she was like what the hell, Doc Martens with a floral dress is a "classic look". ("What the hell" is the look I got off her face, not what she really thought/said).

P.S.S I think you should watch this episode of Lizzie McGuire where Gordo's retro style is ripped off by everyone at school 

Peace is the Way

Walking with Alfred Hassler, Thich Nhat Hanh and Sister Chan Khong Official Film Trailer from FairSoul-LIVE...ACT..BE on Vimeo.

From http://www.peaceisthewayfilms.com/ , you can find your way to the IndieGOGO campaign.

Penelope Tree

Penelope Tree was born into a rich, influential, dysfunctional British-American family in 1950. According to online sources, she was very intelligent and could get her way around New York when she was eight. Her first photo-shoot was at thirteen by Diane Arbus. In her early teens, she would go adventuring to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez concerts. When her family found out, she was sent to boarding school. At seventeen, she was "discovered" by Diana Vreeland at one of Truman Capote's Black and White Balls. Her family disapproved of a career in modelling, as they did four years before. But Penelope Tree had had it with her family life and dropped her plans to study English Literature at University and instead moved to London and into the photographer David Bailey's flat.

Penelope Tree is supposedly the Ultimate Sixties It Girl, the one who started Flower Power. She stood out from the other models at the time because she had her own personal style i.e. she was pretty Indie Indie. She was also apparently something like new York's representative to the Swinging Sixties (in London). Although she doesn't like to think of herself as an icon, I say that she is indeed an icon of the Sixties as she carried forward the whole "vintage dress-ups" look. I think that what made her such a fashion legend is that the way she dressed, did her makeup, carried herself and thought of herself were all one. For example, she felt like an "alien" (note: a negative thing) and did her make up to express herself as one. (And for a joke, guys, I tried to do my makeup like that in Year Eight. Fortunately I have no photographic records.) Ironically, I think the way Penelope Tree fully completed her "character" showed her as pretty classy, too. What an Indie character.

Penelope Tree and David Bailey
Unknown photographer
http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/2010/10/tree-squared-shaking-penelope-trees.html

At Truman Capote's Black and White Ball
Unknown photographer
http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/2010/10/tree-squared-shaking-penelope-trees.html

Unknown photographer
http://photos.lucywho.com/penelope-tree-photos-t285402.html

Unknown photographer
http://photos.lucywho.com/penelope-tree-photos-t285402.html

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So anyway, she was a very insecure and emotionally confused person at the time and had been suffering image issues for a number of years. She was very young and inexperienced but people took her as very mature. Then she had a scarring acne break-out, ending her career and the crumbling relationship with David Bailey. I read a story about her being caught with cocaine in a drug-bust. The police held her overnight, as they refused to accept that she was a famous model or of rich parents. Her reflection in an interview was that "In a way, I was stripped of my identity completely." So she travelled the world on the little money she had left and moves to Australia with her first husband.

Penelope Tree then spent many years of her life exploring spiritual paths. In the Eighties, she discovered Buddhism with the aid of the Dalai Lama. And she was released from continuation of the suffering of the past thirty or so years of her life. At a time when "people of the Sixties" were burning out, she was strengthened. An article written in 2008 says he was working in an organisation called Lotus Outreach International, founded by her Buddhist teacher, helping street-children in India. The organisation was also working in partnership with grass-roots women's projects helping give girls the opportunity to go to school. In Thailand and Cambodia, the focus was on sex-trafficking; doing things like teaching sex-trafficked girls new skills, educating communities about it and buying bicycles for girls to minimize the risk of being raped on the way to school.

An Indie in the Indiest sense of the word.

http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/2010/10/tree-squared-shaking-penelope-trees.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/03/celebrity.women