Eye Candy

A stack of fairisle is all that's needed to make my heart skip a beat. Or two.

That is all. Have a lovely (rest of the) weekend!

ps. Those pretty babies are stacked high at the Vintage Showroom in Covent Garden. Discovered via for me, for you

Topshop Unique

It's official - the first show of the season that has left me scheming on ways to make it all mine. Topshop Unique tends to be a little too much for me generally, but this collection, which screams of the wilderness and eccentric rusticity (with a lil' bit of military) is just right. I've mentioned my strange affectation for 'The Country' before, and with all the thick knits over diaphanous dresses, woodland creature prints and furry outerwear...sigh.

It's actually all the coats that have got me counting pennies. All that fur (a bit Opening Ceremony x Where the Wild Things Are collab, no?) and shearling (I'm still pining over my mother's real one) are now permanently inked in my mind. I cannot wait until September to consume unabashedly...

Well, clearly I can and will wait, and hopefully my consumption will be mild and reasonable but a girl can hyperbolize can't she?

saturday goodies

Woke up early this morning to a completely blue sky - a rare thing in February in London. Although feeling a bit under the weather, I was determined to shirk academic responsibility, ignore my sniffly nose and fuzzy head and go outside. So I went for a stroll to buy stamps, which led to a tube ride, which led to another stroll which lead to cupcakes. What can I say...it was a happy accident? Anyway, when in the convenience store to get stamps, I spied the new Lula (issue #10) which I didn't even know was out, as well as Apartmento issue #4. Those being quickly snapped up, my fuzzy head began to feel fuzzier and so I headed home. Now I lay in bed, a little worse for wear, prepared to nap. But when I awake, I'll have a Red Velvet cupcake and some good reading to keep me company as I battle what feels like the beginnings of the flu. Work will have to wait until tomorrow. Happy Saturday!

ps. The cupcakes are from Hummingbird bakery. They just opened a branch in Soho which is very good in terms of accessibility (no longer a 35 minute trip for cupcakes!) but very bad in terms of health. Today, we got Red Velvet (a classic) and Malt Chocolate, which has Maltesers on top, making it ten times more appealing since they are my absolute favorite. It's almost too good to be true... I want to savour this moment.

A snippet of nyfw: rag & bone

(click to enlarge, if you wish)

I haven't really been paying much attention to New York Fashion Week, mostly because I've attempted to ban myself from superfluous browsing of the internet while writing a hefty slew of papers. This morning, I was feeling a bit ill, and so spent a good part of the morning in bed, checking out New York Magazine and Style.com's coverage to see what's what.

While I enjoyed the ones I usually enjoy (Marc Jacobs, Peter Jensen, Karen Walker, Rachel Comey to name a few), I was particularly taken with rag & bone. They aren't a brand I am really familiar with nor generally interested in, but I was quite intrigued with their show. I'm not sure if it is the clothing themselves or rather the styling that won me over. I liked all the grays, olives, and fairisle knits, but what I really adored was all that layering. The only reason I don't mind winter is that I get to layer clothes upon clothes, which automatically gives me warm feelings of comfort and generally happy fuzziness.

The show was styled by Vanessa Reid, who also styled the Missoni aw09 show and an editorial I'd earmarked in the fall 2009 issue of POP - both were favorites last year precisely because of their layering wonderfulness. I only wish I could be as proficient at piling it on.

On Nails and Abby Lee

The post where I write slightly excessively about nails:

I am a bit funny when it comes to nail polish. I used to be an avid nail biter, and then after years of new years resolutions and ragged nails, I simply stopped. Now my nails can grow to a nice healthy length happily, and when they do so, I leave them bare. But whenever a nail or two chips, I cut them all down, and paint them. I have a thing about short nails -- at least my own -- where I can't stand them unless they are painted. I think its because I find that my fingers are bit short, and short nails make them look stumpier (for lack of a better word). So I have a ritual: grow nails, nails break, trim nails, paint nails, grow nails, etc. Rinse and repeat.

When I do paint them, I also almost solely paint them in dark colours: navy blue, burgundy, dark purple, slate blue, dark gray... these are all on constant rotation. But, last summer, when at the local CVS with my 12 year old sister, I picked up a bottle of Revlon's orangey-red 'Red Hot Tamale' and her little wide eyes lit up; she wanted me to buy it so she could try it. So I did. I tried it, but thought it a bit too orange [looks a bit less bright in my shitty webcam pic, that's lazyness folks]. But I'm giving it another go recently and now I kind of love it. Plus it makes me think of the surf colour palette of the new Abby Lee Kershaw editorial in the current Australian Vogue that has me all in a tizzy. Could an editorial breathe any more summer in it with her fantastic dip-dye hair and orange lips? I think not. See the rest here...

Throw on

(top: bona drag, middle: turned out, bottom: asos)

Dresses: truly, the simplest form of dressing . Throw on. Grab some shoes. Done. Course all sorts can be done to spruce up a dress, accessories, sweaters, etc., etc., but when you have the right dress, there is very little extra needed. I am currently enjoying the idea of the nightie-as-dress - not in a Courtney Love 90s slip sort of way - but rather in the Victorian nightgown sort of way. The dress at the top by Lonely Hearts reminds me of that sort of thing, and my mind began to fester more on the subject when I saw this New Zealand gal on turned out, who wears vintage nighties to the beach - quite the perfect cover up. Then I found this very Edwardian looking dress on ASOS, and I was convinced. The last one is a little too twee for me with the bow and all, but all this got me thinking....

I have a long nightie at the back of my closet - 'my granny nightie' as I lovingly think of it (and others besmirchingly call it), and...well, folks, granny I will have to be, because this summer, if I don't have the gumption to wear in the city, it'll certainly be my go-to beach companion.

It's Wednesday: Here's a tune by Twin Sister

Currently, I am sitting in a well-lit, rather overheated library, supposedly typing about legal and ethical intricacies of a morbid nature. And I am doing that... sort of...I swear. But as I sit, and I type, I also listen. I get distracted by the tiniest sounds in libraries: of a chair shifting, paper crinkling, someone's interminable cough. So headphones are a must, because for some reason, music never distracts. Anyway, currently on repeat is Twin Sister, another New York band with some dreaminess and shimmery-ness to them. I'm quite enjoying this song in particular and thought I'd share it... Course, I've never posted audio to blogger before, so if it doesn't work, there is also a link below.

Just press play!


Or if all else fails, click click click:
Ginger by Twin Sister

ps. The band also is a fan of sharing, and has their whole EP from last year available to download for free (!)And another EP is in the works for 'official' release very soon, so yay for that too.

Keep on Wading

(Allure 1998 scans thanks to ms. disneyrollergirl)

I don't know what is with me and my current yearning for rusticity and all things rural - perhaps it is because I associate the country with my house, where most woes fall by the wayside in favour of laziness and familial comfort. A little bit of idealization while absent? Perhaps. Whatever the reason, these shots by Tim Walker (from way back when) certainly fuel my longing to go play outside in the sunshine.

Star Bright

One of my favorite things about going home is being away from all the light pollution of the city, and being able to look up and actually see the stars. Sure it's not as dark as it could be, but there is only one street lamp on my cul-de-sac, and the only thing really blocking my view of the sky is all the surrounding trees.

That's why I'm in love with these Astrostar projectors. I want one so to replicate the night sky in my living room, and get a bit dizzy from the overwhelming amounts of twinkle.