Gallery Magazine

Gallery Magazine snuk onto my Big Love X list t'other day with little announcement. Thought I should give it a shout.
Gallery is a free monthly Jersey based magazine, 'written by the islanders for the islanders' and all that. It's a brilliant read with some terribly witty contributors. I get my stepmother to send it to me each month.

As can be imagined, when living on an island nine miles by five, you tend to know quite a lot of people. Here are a couple of covers with my friends Hannah and Holly on looking beautiful...

Weekend in Jersey

These are some images from my weekend that I spent in Jersey. Various siblings and parents make appearances.

The Wanted

I predict these will be the next people to hit our radios everyday until we throw them out the window:



The Wanted. Unfortunately can't find any music on the Internet. The single comes out 5th July and apparently will hit the radio hard in the face in about a month. They played their first gig yesterday I think. But click here to go to their website where they've all had Twitter accounts created for them so the unsuspecting public can follow their every move. Cool.

Trendy Recession - Ugh.

Not a hugely original idea for a post but still trend reporting just the same. Style magazine yesterday had an interesting article about how the recession has changed people’s minds about mainstream fashion. I can’t remember the wording but it got me thinking. I don’t really like using the word recession and despise ‘Credit Crunch’ even more. Ew gross – far too much of a cliché. It’s like the word ‘trendy’, honestly gives me a shiver of revulsion. The worst one though and I can hardly bring myself to type it – Shabby-Chic. Gross gross gross.

Anyway that’s out the way now, back to the point that Style made yesterday. It is very true that many more people have started to hunt out bargains from all the nooks and crannies of streets from markets to charity shops and then the far flung corners of the web too with so many tiny boutique vintage shops that have discovered, perhaps not a thriving business, but definitely a stable income through their own sourcing and selling onto the customer.

People have always frowned upon Topshop and even more upon Primark and over the last eighteen months or two years, it has become essential that if wearing one piece from mainstream high street it needs to be carefully disguised. Whether hidden behind one-off pieces, your mum’s shell suit jacket from the 80’s, your botfriend's shirt or blazer, charity shop or vintage finds or just whole load of attitude, high street is always one step behind. The rule is that now, if you want to be chic then its all about juxtaposition. These two tie in well. For great one-off things, there's always Beyond Retro and LoveMissDaisy is perfect for lovely vintage things. I found them about a year ago and follow them on Twitter, so happy they were featured in Style yesterday. I really hope they do well out of it. theOutnet.com is fabulous. Still a bit beyond my budget but there are stunning discounts off designer gear. The website is celebrating it's first birthday in April, you can register to receive a link to sale where everything is going to £1 in celebration. Click here. I'm excited, as I've mentioned earlier about Lily Allen's new line of vintage clothing.

Moreover, it’s about a well thought out outfit that looks like your whole wardrobe is brimming with beautiful clothes so it takes you no time at all in the morning to pick out something beautiful. Well, that’s what I aspire to anyway. Its not going so hot right now though.

Hi! Sushi

SO I went out for dinner last night to Hi Sushi on Frith Street in Soho with a friend. Feeling that familiar end-of-the-month strapped for cash niggle as I am, I wanted to go somewhere cheap. My friend assured me that it was an all you can eat sushi buffet for under £15. Thought it sounded ok so off we popped. I met her outside and we were shown into a small room, brightly painted with lots of people shouting and waving chopsticks around the place. We went downstairs and were shown to our seats. Now I hate to start on a bad note, but this is honestly my only complaint that I have about the place. It's just that I like chairs, they're easy, comfy and are obviously so abundant because people find them such. So I wasn't much looking forward to sitting in a small space between wall and table which we were sharing with a whole load of people we didn't know. But sit I did and only made a tit of myself when getting up at the end of the meal.
As a general rule I enjoy sitting on the floor, its one of my favourite places in the world, and once I was down there, I had a great night.
So we ticked a whole load of random boxes and they brought us out the corresponding dishes. I love sushi and it was reeeally good sushi. The lovely staff brought out the first plate of food and I was thinking gosh, that is a lot of fish. So we dig into that with our wine and after a California Roll or two had been consumed, another platter was presented to us full of fried calamari, spring roll kind of things, tiger prawns and sweet potato. Yumski. Slightly overwhelmed by the amount of food sitting in front of me I whipped out the Blackbezza and snapped a pretty awful shot. I really must improve my photography if this is going to become a regular occurrence. Despite the hideous photo that you can barely see, I feel it still gives an idea of the gargantuan amount of food:

Amy does Fred

Just found these illustrations courtesy of Volt Magazine. It's the new line that Amy Winehouse has designed for Fred Perry due to hit us full in the face in October of this year. It all looks like its come straight from Amy's wardrobe, lots of figure hugging but angular shapes with hourglass shapes and nipped in waists. True of all of these bar the jumper dress. Can't really work out where that fits in. New Look meets golf caddie? Definitely love the double checked mania of the shirt and mini skirt. I'll have me one of those please.

Le Cool

I silently added Le Cool to my Big Love list the other day after having sworn that I would add nothing of significant value without giving it a little bit of an intro. Le Cool is a well written online magazine with lots of fun suggestions for things to do in London. I look forward to receiving the newsletter every Thursday, it gives some good suggestions and most of the time at least half of them really appeal to me.

Bad times though, most of the things happen in East or East Central. There are a few in West and then everyone loves a bit of V&A.
MMmmmust go and see the Quilt Exhibition at the V&A soon. Mental Note made.