Hi. I'm Lira Leirner. I'm a fashion designer, but I'm also a writer. The creative processes of fashion (Portmanteau alert: creative + creating= creatingve?) interest me as much as the moral and sociological implications of white collar crime. I am a deeply countryside and nature loving person but am also in need of living in a crazy city such as London. I am Brazilian, German, French, Swiss, English, Polish, Rumanian, Iranian on different levels, ranging from roots to affinity of living to official passport status. There's a little boy called Ciello that provides the male perspective within me to join the feminine expression. I am incredibly uptight about the rules of grammar yet love to play with language itself. My first languages are English, German, and Portuguese. I'm neither this nor that but I'm this and that. In fact, I'm just me.After a lot of brain racking as well as the one time complete #fail to come up with a blog name that really represented who I am in order to separate my fashion label from my writing, I followed a train of thought triggered by a conversation with Kristin Knox (the Clothes Whisperer). She pointed out that the name should express WHO I am, not WHAT I do, as this might always change. There were a few options that were partly too obvious or too downtrodden, for instance I didn't want to simply place a verb next to my name such as LiraLikes or LiraLoves or LiraWrites as that's been done by big bloggers before (aka AlexLoves -> an amazing fashion blog) and would feel like a copy. Furthermore, it denotes an act of DOING rather than BEING.
This, of course, kicked off a soul searching trip down "who am I" lane. Whichever way I went, there was always Ciello kicking my brains int much reminding of a "but" that I had not considered. Frustrated, I decided there was no connection that could possibly include my weird varied interests because I was a hybrid. A hybrid! Oh.... there it was. Quite clear and simple. With one problem - I didn't like the negative connotation of the word. Not as a selling point, anyway. Sure, when I'm complaining, that word comes in handy. But a name had to be more.However, I was quite happy I'd decided to go with the concept of non definition, merging and mix, as quite clearly that's the only thing which can incorporate all of the above and more. I went through my trusty Book of Synonyms that had been passed on to me by my poet and artist mother at the age of 13 when I was starting to write my own, firmly to be grasped in my hands and never let go, always part of the ever growing possessions filling the greater and greater numbers of boxes with every move. What I found there was perfect - the Portmanteau word.
Merging two words to become a new word sounded just like what the doctor ordered. My name Li the fire and beauty but also Aurora the rising sun, which was merged (or portmanteaued, if you will) and became Lira. Furthermore, it was a "foreign" word, and a word which describes a language related concept. The "transportable coat hanger" in French, implying a fashion related item as well as travel, I discovered that the word was coined by Lewis Carrol in Alice in Wonderland, a character with whom I share the view on the wonders of the world and especially the wonders of language. And of course, the portmanteau word is actually a portmanteau itself.I therefore present to you, without further ado, the new blog persona that is me: LL the Portmanteau and leave you with a warning: Expect a lot of words merging ahead. Such as smog (smoke and fog) or motel (motor and hotel) and of course, portmanteau itself (porter, to carry and manteau, cloak).
