Friday 23 April 2010

Where on Earth does one find a good bum bag?

Continuation of the festival theme here. I went to Reading and had a trusty bum bag from Pound World that served me very well throughout the festival but unfortunately didn't make out the other end.

I'm on the hunt for a noo 'un and haven't had a lot of luck so far. My first obvious port of call was Topshop but theirs aren't really that hot.



Comes in white too.

Watch this space. I shall report back with findings of interest.

Booties

So I'm on the hunt for festival gear for the summer. Everyone ideally would like to look like Kate Bosworth at Coachella:



But in general that doesn't happen for us normal folk. I did spy these Vivienne Westwood wellies on Coggles.com today though so if I did fancy turning up to Secret Garden or Latitude in £75 booties, I could. I reck they'd be a bit out of place though:


Thursday 22 April 2010

MGMT

I was uber excited to hear a while back about MGMT's new album Congratulations. It came out last week Wednesday I think and I've been listening to it on repeat on mipod ever since. Not bored yet.

Here's Flash Delirium:

Monday 19 April 2010

Catchachoo

Anyone up for a good ol' steeplechase? I'm not sure how busy this will get, but if you fancy some new Jimmy Choo trainers get involved with this competition. Click here for the Twitter updates or here if you're backward and still on Facebook.
Yum.

The North Circular



I enjoy Lily Cole, she's really beautiful, looks amazing pretty much all of the time, she's a model with big boobs and she does all this whilst still fitting in uni at King's College Cambridge. I'd say that's quite inspirational.

So why not launch a knitwear range hand made by all her favourite granny recruits in the UK? Why not indeed. Cue The North Circular. My mother is a knitting machine, I never really got into it to be honest but I slightly wish I had now esPECially after seeing that one of the beautiful Necklace Scarves goes for £148.

Friday 16 April 2010

Marjorie

Last weekend I trekked down to Forest Hill (which by the way is bloody miles away and definitely does not count as London if it includes a train to East Croyden and then anOTHer train to Forest Hill’s delightful station) and picked up and paid for a bike that I found on Gumtree. Here it is, I've decided to call it Marjorie.



I don’t think I got ripped off either which is always a lovely thing to behold. So I hadn’t really got a lot of London cycling experience under my allegorical belt apart from carrying said bike up steps at Forest Hill and transferring at East Croyden and getting to Victoria and cycling home from there. This morning however I decided to tackle the bridge and cycle to work. It was really lovely, cycled up the Embankment and over the bridge and then through Battersea Park.



Perhaps not as glamorous as this though. Wouldn’t say no to a Radley bike or those shoes.

Thursday 15 April 2010

MAGazines

I’m going through a bit of a dangerous phase for magazine subscriptions. I can never quite bring myself to subscribe to Vogue because I can buy it anyway and I’d rather do it that way than wait for Royal Mail and pocket money seems more wisely spent in small doses.
POP has just received nearly 24 of my best British Pounds for four issues over a year. Money well spent I think. These ones are a little harder to come by in Sainsbury’s so won’t be tempted to pre-empt Royal Mail in their delivery.



Next on my list is biannual AnOther Magazine. £25 for two is a bit steep I think though. It sounds amazing and I really want it but I’ve got to be a bit careful about spending loads of money. This is the link for subscription. This is the link for AnOther's site; I think this and Pop are in the same boat, maybe the same publishing house.



Then there’s also Volt for £8 an issue. I can’t seem to find it as a running subscription which is a bit irritating but here is the link to the per issue page. I can’t find out how often it runs either but I assume biannually.

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Sample Sales

A bit of info on some Sample Sales coming up in London:

Ted Baker Sample Sale, The Camden Centre, Bidborough Street. From 14th April to 15th April 2010.

The Luxury Bargain Sample Sale, W1, on the 19th April 2010. In order to find out where this one is, you have to register with Fashion Forward, they will then email you the address. There are limited free spaces available, so register quick!

Chelsea Treasure Sample Sale, SW3, Tuesday 20th April. Again, click here to register with Fashion Forward to receive further info.

Ghost Warehouse Sample Sale, The 20th Century Theatre, 291 Westbourne Grove, W11. From 5th to the 9th May 2010. Click here to go to the Ghost Website and see their range of beautiful soft colours and drapey fabrics.

Designer Sales UK, 85 Brick Lane, The Truman Brewery. From 22nd to the 25th of May. A huge range of designers including Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier and Gianni Versace all at up to 80% discount.

Friday 9 April 2010

Topshop Make Up

I'm unashamedly a Topshop fanatic. I find it surprising if I'm not wearing something from Topshop everyday. Today its my new crochet jumper, very summery, its the first time I've worn it and its already snagged on anything and everything.

But I am super excited about Topshop make-up though...these images are from the Topshop Blog.





It doesn't say when it launches but click here for the link to the newsletter to stay up to date.

Photo Shoot for Handpicked Collection

I got back at 10pm absolutely exhausted from a two day shoot for work. It's great fun, I really enjoy the styling and a nice break in the country is always lovely but I think a lot of people, before they experience it (me included) don't realise how massively exhausting it is. This was the third shoot I have been on for the Handpicked Collection catalogue in one year. The two before were much harder work and less successful. I think it really depends on the people you have with you because you live in such close quarters with each other so it’s vital that everyone gets on. This was the first shoot we've done on location outside of London. The last two were shot in the Creative Director's house. I get along well with her.

This time we went to a beautiful big house in Cambridgeshire so it meant that we all slept in the house, ate together, shot photographs for over 12 hours together, came up with ideas together and managed not to annoy one another during all of this. Quite a feat I think.

There are two main aspects to styling. First, is the obvious - setting the scene and showcasing the products in their most attractive light (basically making it look pretty). This in itself can be so draining. I'm not a wimp, I swear but constantly trying to visualise things, being very spatially aware for hours at a time and being creative with themes, concepts and finishing touches all whilst not getting frustrated when the photographer tells you to move tomatoes back and forth by a millimetre for twenty minutes really does take some endurance. It's exciting though, being in an environment where the main point of call is making products look as beautiful as possible. There is a certain amount of logic that is needed to balance it all out too.

The second part to it is the completely unglamorous side of raking leaves, heaving massive croquet sets across massive lawns, running in and out of the house fetching things, running up and down stairs, making cucumber sandwiches with stale bread, getting up at six in the morning to catch the light and working for twelve hour days. Worth it though.

Here are some signature blue shots from my Blackberry of the set up for the shoot. Unfortunately the photos aren't ready yet, but I'll put them up once they've published in the Summer Catalogue for Handpicked Collection.




This shot took us near on three hours to set up. Turned out very well though. This Handpicked's Creative Director Amanda and our Photographer Dan.



There is always endless adjusting and reshuffling to be done. So once the scene is set up and is looking nice, you'll take a shot, see how it looks on screen and then take out about two thirds of the products that are on the table and redo it all again and keep going until its perfect. Below is an image of Dan and Amanda in the middle of this operation.

Tuesday 6 April 2010

Mflow



SO I've just signed up with Mflow. Their much used slogan is 'like a cross between iTunes and Twitter'. Admittedly I haven't bought anything from it yet and I haven't sat down to figure out how it all works. At the moment you have to request to join and then they send you a code, mine arrived a couple of days after I requested it.

The idea, as far as I can work out, is that you buy music (for the same price as iTunes) then 'flow' it to your followers if you're cool enough to have any. Incidently, you can also follow other people. Mflow hasn't really taken off just yet, I'm sure it will in the near future though. They've jsut launched an app and I think they are planning on taking away the request step from joining but don't hold me to that. The Radio 1 DJ's are some of the big people of there and to put it in perspective, on Mflow Zane Lowe has 1000 something followers and on Twitter he has 55,000 something followers. Give it a couple of months.

The other good thing is that if you buy music on Mflow then you can transfer it to your iTunes so you don't have to buy it twice and you can have fun new music that you've discovered from your friends on your ipod. Good times.

Gosh, nearly forgot the best bit. If you get lots of followers and become a very popular person (albeit solely on the computer) and your followers buy the music you've flowed them then you get 20% of the money they spend on the song! Wowzers. So, assuming its a song that isn't really popular (because that's the point after all, to discover the undiscovered) then that's 20% of 79p. Nearly a whole 16p!! 15.8p according to my calculator. That's 15.8 red bootlaces or 15.8 flying saucers or 15.8 cola bottles or 15.8 sherbet straws...the possibilities are endless...

Friday 2 April 2010

Anropologie

YAY! it's the long weekend! I feel as though I'm on half term from school. I went out in Putney last night and was feeling a little delicate this morning, desperately needed to buy late birthday presents for my sisters so went for a mosey down King's Road. I was reasonably successful in buying things for them; Chanel Nail Varnish and fur gilet etc. I remembered after my trip to John Lewis/Peter Jones that the new Anthropologie shop might be open. They had big boards in front of it for aages. My very good friend was very irritated that they were opening in the UK because she's shopped there for years from America and now she thinks everyone will have her clothes. I'm sure she's right though because it really is the most incredible shop.

I spent a good hour in there this afternoon, I came out having only spent £20 but the interior of the shop is so so beautiful that I really had to go round taking photos of the place. Bad ones, as usual. I started off trying to be sneaky but then in the end I really didn't care and had my Blackberry in full view pointing at the ceiling in the middle of the check out queue. Here are the photos...



Huge range of things in there, clothes, books, jewellery, plates, glasses, bedding...



It's so inventive, really liked this clock painted straight onto the wall..





Gorgeous scene settings.



And the most incredible bits and pieces that someone has obviously put a great deal of time and effort into arranging...





And yeah, check out the bloomin garden!! It's unbelievable.





THE most beautiful styling. Stealing ideas for work, check.



It's huge space with lots of little rooms at the front too like this funny little room, all it had in it were lovely old books all round the wall with some cool lamps and then these bad boys-



Thing is, I don't really know what angle they are trying to take with it. Fair enough that I did spend a decent amount of time in there, more time in fact than I spent in John Lewis/Peter Jones, a massive department store, but I still came out only having spent £20. Which really isn't that much. Another point is that I writing about it now and will definitely be telling my friends so its all getting the word out there. I think they have slightly overwhelmed everyone and some things are a bit expensivo but then also there are some fairly priced products. I'm not mad mad mad about the clothes in there but its more about the shop itself. I'd love to know who came up with it. I suppose what they're trying to do is "create an experience" which they have succeeded at, but I'm just not sure if they've focussed too much on the experience than on the products which they are meant to be selling. Still great fun though. I'll be going back.