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Givenchy Dreaming

During a perfectly innocent wander round the Selfridges shoe hall earlier today to check out the sale (nice things in every size but mine was the final verdict), I stumbled upon the most perfect pair of Givenchy shoes, times two.  Slip on trainers for everything but the hottest of summer days, floral printed black leather Birk-alikes for lazy days in the sun.  Now that I know that they exist, I'm not sure my life can be complete without them.  I will almost certainly be buying some clumpy-verging-on-orthopaedic sandals this summer though, and possibly attempting to paint flowers all over them... 

Buy here

Buy here

(As a side note, it's funny how the shoes I lust over have gone from being high and impractical to flat and sensible over the past few seasons.  I prefer to think it's due to changing fashions rather than my slow and inevitable transformation into my mother.  I am massively excited about the sheer variety available in flat shoes lately though- where once there were only ballet pumps and the odd brogue, there is now every variety of loafer, trainer, slipper, pool slide, creeper, etc, imagineable.  I feel spoilt for choice without ever having to contemplate being more than an inch off the ground.)

Coat of my Dreams

... and it's mine.  After starting my coat search in July, and buying and returning numerous contenders, I've finally found The One.  It's from Topshop Unique A/W '13, and I got it for half price in the sale online, the last one, in my size.  Clearly it's fate...

It's slouchy and oversized (and 100% mohair so it's officially the warmest thing I own), but not so long that it swamps me.  And the best bit is that it reminds me both of the Chloe Sevigny for Opening Ceremony teddy bear coat I lusted after earlier this year, and of this jumper from Dries van Noten A/W '09, which I've been obsessed with for literally years:

I love a happy ending.

Playtime

Yep, it's definitely that time of year again.  I'm ready for spring, and spring colours. And a cat sleep mask, of course, to aid in hibernating.

Photos from here and here

P.S. I love that Elle France both approves of my recent obsession with trainers worn with everything, and also manages to make skate shoes sexy. 

New Discoveries

One of the things I missed the most about living in a small city in the middle of nowhere in Greece was access to independent brands, as well as secondhand and vintage, a concept that is still very new there.  There was a small local craft movement, but none of the (very lovely) crafters made anything that was particularly my cup of tea, and I resigned myself to shopping on the high street.  So now that I'm back in London, I'm really pleased that most of my purchases have not come from Topshop/H&M/Zara, but from ebay, charity shops and indie designers I've come across both online and in person.  Today I stumbled entirely by accident on the Hackney Flea Market, a monthly market with stalls full of both handmade and vintage bits and bobs.  And for once, I actually bought a couple of things, and discovered some seriously talented people.  

Illustrator Sandra Dieckmann produces the most amazing animal prints, and I look forward to filling up the walls of my (future) flat with her work.  In the meantime, I consoled myself with this mirror, because clearly the image of a curled up red panda could make even fixing my smudged eyeliner on the bus a much more cheery experience:

I think In With the Old might just be one of my favourite shops, if their stall today was anything to go by.  They're based on Amwell Street in Islington, and stock 57 independent makers of everything from prints to jewellery to handmade children's clothing.  I really wanted some coasters made from vintage tiles, and one of Mike Hall's London Borough map prints, but as I'm writing this from amongst the clutter of someone else's attic, where I'm currently living, I made do with this initial necklace:

 

And finally, a brand I've actually been wanting to write about for a while, which I discovered whilst randomly trawling ebay, Amelia May.  I've been obsessed with rings lately, and their selection is possibly the best I've found, at any price point.  And, as a bonus, all designs are  available either as traditional rings, or in midi versions, and most of them come in brass or silver.  I bought the Crescent Moon Knuckle Ring Set, the Aztec Petal Ring, and the Cobalt Moon Glow Knuckle Ring, but I don't imagine I'll be stopping there...

Pink Crush

My obsession with the girliest of colours shows no signs of abating, despite the fact that I've yet to take the plunge and actually add it to my life anywhere apart from my nails.  

Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos in Miu Miu's Resort campaign (despite none of it being my usual style, I want every single thing they're wearing), the feather dress from Dries Van Noten A/W '13, a collection I clearly was too hasty to dismiss at the time, pink lips and black nails, sold-out pink Nike amazingness...

Nadja on a Bender

This editorial from the Spring/Summer issue of Scandinavia S/S/A/W is making me very impatient for spring.  I will definitely be buying a pair of pool slides.  Whether I'll be brave enough to actually wear them remains to be seen...

Outfits (again)

This past week I've mainly been trying to wear something something other than navy jumpers and my tiger-print skate shoes.  I've not entirely succeeded.

Clockwise from top left: dress- Topshop, boots- Beau Coops; jumper- Topshop, tshirt- Gap, shorts- Topshop Boutique, shoes- Kurt Geiger; top- Cos, skirt- Zara, trainers- Nike via ebay; jacket- Gap, top- Cos, trousers- Zara, shoes- Studio Pollini

My sky blue trainers are my aforementioned attempt at Scandinavian nonchalance.  I'm not particularly convinced I can carry them off, but they're so comfortable, I don't actually care and I have to force myself to not wear them with absolutely everything.  I think I may need another pair...  Also feeling quite smug that I've already got the perfect over-the-knee boots when all the magazines are bleating on about them being the shoe of the season.  Meanwhile mine are from 2010, the last time they had their moment in the sun- are fashion cycles moving that fast that three years is enough time for something to go from must-have to fashion pariah and back again?

Girl Crush of the Day

It seems fitting that after a day of trawling the shops and coming away empty-handed, and with the distinct feeling that nothing in the world could be quite what I'm looking for (aside from the entire contents of Liberty, as always), I should come across this photo of Rashida Jones by Garance Dore:

 

It's perfectly "me", at a time when I'm wondering what that even is.  And I can more or less re-create the entire look from my wardrobe.  Anklet, white court shoes, turned up jeans and lace over stripes- possibly everything I've obsessed over and/or worn to death all mixed together flawlessly.  Love.

Accessorize All Areas

Anyone who's been following my ramblings for a while will know I've got a mild obsession with & Other Stories- along with sister store Cos, it makes up my the exception to my general disillusionment with the high street, and I've made a fair few pilgrimages to Regent Street solely to paw at their handbags and contemplate their (just over my budget) outerwear.  So when I happened upon a feature on their website featuring Giulia and Giorgia Tordini , the Italian sisters on whom I've got a massive style crush,  in the winter collection, I went into fangirl overdrive and suddenly found myself wanting to subsist on a steady diet of red lipstick, elegantly spindly heels and piles of gold jewellery paired with simple black dresses.  It's the ultimate Scandi-meets-Mediterranean combination and I think it's the perfect antidote to my recent overdose on knitwear and ankle boots...

House of Hackney x Asos

It's been a while since I've been able to get excited about a designer/high street collaboration.  Isabel Marant for H&M left me cold (the high street has been overrun with IM copies for years now- the last thing I want to see is more of the same, even if it is officially sanctioned by Miss Marant herself), and Meadham Kirchhoff for Topshop was brilliantly bonkers, but ultimately, not for me.  So when I came upon House of Hackney's capsule collection for Asos, I couldn't help but add half of it to my wishlist and fervently hope Asos will continue offering 20% off everything next weekend, as they have in previous weeks.  I was expecting the collection to be a bit more floral-heavy, which is what I've come to associate with the brand, but tartan is probably a lot more "me", and it reminds me of both my beloved Dries van Noten S/S 13 collection, and the Stella McCartney coat I've been lusting after this season.  Now I just need to decide what to actually buy- I'm leaning towards the slip dress, which is, unfortunately for my bank balance, the most expensive piece in the collection...

November(ish) Outfits

If anyone actually reads this anymore (hi! *waves*) I can only offer apologies for vanishing off the face of the blogosphere. My new job generally leaves me exhausted and despite my best intentions for interesting blog posts, all I can actually share is a load of photos of me repeatedly wearing the same clothes (or ones which are so similar, they may as well be- I'm officially banned from buying anything with a white collar ever again!)  At least if the cost-per-wear of any given item in my wardrobe were calculated, it would be about 5p.  I'm not actually sure that's a good thing... 

clockwise from top left- dress- Cos, boots- Beau Coops; breton top- Sunspel, skirt- vintage, boots- Massimo Dutti; top- Asos, shorts- Whistles, shoes- Kurt Geiger; dress- Pop Boutique, shoes- & Other Stories; shirt- Asos, skirt- JW Anderson x Topshop, boots- vintage; coat- Primark, jeans- Masscob, boots- Massimo Dutti

clockwise from top left: jumper- Etoile by Isabel Marant, trousers- Topshop Boutique, shoes- Kurt Geiger; jumper- as before, shorts- Whistles, shoes as before; jumper- Topshop, shorts- Oysho, shoes as before; t-shirt- Gap, skirt- vintage, shoes- & Other Stories; top- Asos, skirt- vintage, boots- Massimo Dutti; top- Cos, jeans- Masscob, shoes- Kurt Geiger.

Not pictured- either of my two (!) new pairs of shoes, once of which is an honest-to-God pair of trainers.  I've been wearing them with little dresses and telling myself it's very Scandinavian of me, rather than 1980s commuter.  Photographic proof of my Scandi-coolness to come...

Nothing to Wear?

This post by Garance Dore sums up how I've been feeling about my wardrobe at the moment.  All of the things I've been excited about this season (chunky knits, angora jumpers, oversized coats, pvc midi-skirts) look absolutely awful on me.  Case in point the H&M coat of my dreams, a love affair which is very much one-sided:

This is me trying to make the coat look as flattering as possible

This is what it actually looked like.  In the perfect candy-floss pink to boot. *sob*

Now I love this coat.  I nearly hyperventilated when I first saw it, as it was exactly what I had wanted, but didn't think I'd find, and certainly not for under £100.  I first tried it on a few weeks back, after I had grabbed my size and raced to the nearest mirror, certain I'd be taking it home.  I was quickly disabused of that idea when I saw my reflection, wearing what appeared to be a giant's dressing gown, and I slunk home, coatless.  Since then, I've tried on every single coat I've even remotely liked in every shop possible, and not had any luck.  I then went and tried on the H&M coat, in both colours, three(!) more times.  You know, in case it miraculously decided to look good on me (third time was definitely not the charm).  I'll spare you the nearly identical stories involving angora and oversized jumpers, but suffice it to say, this is not my season, fashion-wise.  I'm not especially tall, a size 6-8, and I've got broad shoulders, upon which anything bulky hangs and creates the illusion of squat square-ness.  Oversized anything is not a look I should ever attempt.  So I've reverted to wearing the same things I always wear, and looking like I always look, despite actually being thoroughly sick of navy jumpers and black skirts.  So I'm left feeling as if I've got nothing to wear, simply because everything I wear is essentially a variation of the same thing, and it all blends into one after a while.  So my (admittedly quite shallow, but hey, this is a fashion blog, so whatevs) dilemma is do I stick to what suits me, and dress in a way that accents the positive, glosses over the negative, and would generally be approved by French fashion editors, or give in to my fashion victim cravings, buy lots of pink fluffy things and give up on anyone ever approving of what I wear?  Answers on a postcard please...

This Week...

Hampstead Heath, bus stop selfie, new Asos jumper, Ebay bag, new candle and charity shop owl, Fireworks over the river...

Splurge vs Steal?

Magazines have long sold us the idea of having the high street version of a designer look, for a fraction of the cost.  And I used to go along with it, always waiting for the low-end version of the high-end look I was coveting.  When I was about 18, one of my first purchases from Topshop was a faux-leather version of the Ostrich skin Prada bags that were everywhere that season (I'm massively dating myself here, it was somewhere round the turn of the millenium).  I couldn't get over the fact that you could have something that looked reasonably like the designer item it was inspired by, in the same season, for the princely sum of £18.  I was hugely proud of that bag, and it's probably still knocking around somewhere in my old bedroom in my parents' house.  As time passed though, and my obsession with fashion grew deeper, I realised that there was no real point to designer copies.  Anyone with any idea about fashion will soon clock that your high street bag is just that, and not actually designed by Miuccia herself.  So I've slowly lost interest in designer look-alikes.  I don't mind "inspired by" or in the general style of, but I don't think anything currently in my wardrobe could be considered a designer copy in any way.  The floods of designer fakes that have overrun ebay leave me cold (when you see copies of Topshop or Zara styles, it's clearly gone too far).  So I was as surprised as anyone by the item that made me re-think my stance on the issue.  

It's a bloody Bambi jumper.  From Primark.  It cost £10 and I absolutely love it.  In fact when I saw it, I ran over to it and had to stop myself squealing ohmygodgivenchybambiImusthaveit!  Because this look, from Givenchy's A/W 13 collection was possibly my favourite look of the season:

Now, I realise 99% of people who see me wearing my Primark almost-copy will just think I'm a grown woman in a Disney jumper and possibly just assume I'm a bit odd.  The other 1% though will know I'm wearing what I wish were a Givenchy jumper, but is actually just a cheap wannabe.  And I don't know if I'm ok with that.  If I were wearing the real deal, I would still be a grown woman in a Disney jumper, but I'd be smugly secure in the knowledge that it was approved by Riccardo Tisci, and every fashion editor and starlet in existence:

  

 So basically, I'd still be a fashion victim, but at least one who was wearing something by a hugely covetable designer.  Now I'm just a 30-something in a jumper with a cartoon deer on it.  To be honest, even if I had no idea of the inspiration behind the top, I'd probably still have worn it at home where no one but my boyfriend (who once owned slippers in the shape of big, fluffy dogs and therefore cannot judge) would see me.  But now, the fashion world has deemed it acceptable, so I've worn it in public.  And it's the first thing I've liked that I've really questioned- normally copies of the must-have of any season just bore me because they're overexposed before they even properly land in shops, but Bambi seems to be one look the high street has, for the most part, left alone.  I just don't know if I ought to have done the same...

So far in October...

& Other Stories brogues, pink nails and my first midi ring, Mozza and a promising find from Daunt Books, amazing autumnal ivy in Hampstead, new Lula and my much-anticipated perfect white nail varnish- Butter London's Cotton Buds, the walled garden and entrance to Fulham Palace, the old pier in Brighton.