All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go?

So today, I have managed a two hour bar shift at the theatre, and an epic queue in Borders, and not much else... Post-term lethargic FUG-time. Joys.

But to cheer me up was a dress I'd been sent by the lovely people at Covert Candy, a great site dedicated to both vintage shopping and swapping! It revolves around a "credit-based system" where if someone wants an item of clothing you no longer need, you can send it to them in return for credits you can then spend on someone else's lovely stuff! They also have a section of the site dedicated to a small, but well selected Vintage Emporium run by the site owners, and there, sitting in the Clearance section, was this adorable dress. It has such a cute print and perfect colours... It's definitely about to enter my day dress collection!

Ok, so it's not remotely wintery, but WHO CARES?!

My room is lacking in any accoutrements with which to dress up this little number, as I'm halfway through moving out, and have no high heels due to a bottom-of-the-foot injury a few weeks ago. Thus the outfit photos with bare feet or Converse!

This was my attempt to play with the length... Thoughts?

So, I should really be packing... Instead I was just distracted by boy, then started watching Angel, then started organising holiday theatre... Might leave Cam by 1am. Maybe. Oops!

Night guys! London tomorrow! Woop!

Xxxc

Secretary Chic

Gosh I'm bad at this lately... But I'm crossing fingers that I'm going to get my mojo back as I'm starting to get excited about styling again. I've had a good week and have made a select few purchases and started thinking dreamily about the return to the gilded spires of Cam.

Don't get me wrong; I adore London and my people in it, but working where I do has in some ways stifled my love of fashion even as I've been immersed in it. Odd eh!

Something about the worthless feeling that comes of interning. Not for me really.

The rest of the office have spent today organising an event, while I *miraculously* was not called upon to work said a-list extravaganza, and had an extremely fun and fashion-filled day despite non-work-involvement. Woop! More to come on today's adventures in a later post...

Firstly, however, I want to do some catching up!!!

Here is a photo shoot that T-B, his lovely assistant / girlfriend Becks and I did in his set pretty much the night before before I set off home for the summer... So mid-June time. Yikes! Haven't I been a bad blogger this summer!!!

Peeping, Laughing, Not Yet Sleeping...

Wearing: Face a Face glasses, vintage mustard blouse (bought from The Stylish Wanderer), ICB silk skirt, Kate Kuba navy suede shoes, ToyWatch, Vintage silk scarf (bought at Ark Vintage in Cambridge) and vintage navy suede belt.

I went to T-B and Becks' for (yummy scrummy) dinner tonight... Their new flat is AMAZING but it's wierd to think when I return to Cam in a fortnight's time, they'll still be in London. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! They're both grown-ups now!!! Or maybe not... Hehe.

Right. Off to sleep with me... Early rising tomorrow!!!

Xxxc

Weekend of Loveliness Series - #2

As I said a couple of days ago, I'm splitting the photos from Saturday into 3... This post is basically a bit of a love letter to London, so please stay with me on this one as I post some of my favourite places.

Every day in Cambridge, I miss London a little bit more. Don't get me wrong, this place is beautiful, but after three years of being surrounded by academia, and it permeating Everything you say and do, and being ground down by the constant deadlines and made ill by the lack of real routine but essays, I miss home like hell. I miss the variety; the constantly changing landscape; the feeling of being in a place where you can go anywhere and do anything at any time; the fact that it's so eclectic and eccentric and whatever you do, you're accepted for being the person you want to be, rarely judged, left to get on with your life; the joy of the fast pace and the discovery of something new... It's not the place for everyone, but it's the place for me.

I love things like this... This house is basically just one room thick. I think it's to accomodate the railway line, but it's slim sillhouette fascinates me. It's like one of those dollhouses that only had one room so you could display everything framed by pretty windows. I love it when old buildings are renovated and they leave up the facade but completely knock down the building behind... We get that a lot, especially in the City - like this building that is opposite my mother's office near the Royal Courts of Justice:

Don't let the grey put you off... This was taken ages ago, on my phone,  on a rather foggy day in central London - rather industrial, isn't it ;-D

This is one of the candy coloured houses from where we did Saturday's photoshoot... Walking down here always makes me feel like I've been transported to a little mediterranean fishing village, and each of the houses is a different vibrant pastel shade. It's pretty much directly of the King's Road, and if you get a chance to wander down here, it'll put a smile on your face! :-D 

This is the old Michelin (tyre company) building, that's now a Conran restaurant, Bibendum. I love this place as on the side it has tiles depicting classic cars from the early 20th century... An absolute gem of a building, made all the sweeter by the stained glass and the flower stall out front...

Just one street up from the photo two back... These painted shutters remind me of parts of Italy where the past seems omnipresent but corrupted. (In a good way - at least here - I think...) I can see colonialism + 90s Brighton + 80s Miami combining in one house's facade ;-D Got to love the attempts at Palm tree growing too. I think this road is opposite the KR starbucks (- the 2nd one you pass, if you're walking from Sloane Square tube).

I LOVE the windows of Joseph on Brompton Cross at the moment... This window display is on the opposite side of the road from Chanel, and I have to admit, it distracted me from my usual bag drooling ;-D How kwl is this!?!? Especially with the sky reflection too... The display is basically a cityscape on the heads of the mannequins. Freaky but uber-immense too! Especially considering the gorgeousness of the clothes too. I didn't get a chance to inspect the clothes as we had to move on to photoshoot-ness / getting the car, but I hope it's still there when I'm next around!

British town and street layouts are like none other I've encountered... Everything's just so squished. Siena is the only other place I've been where things are such a beautiful mishmash of old and new, but in London I guess it's all just a bit more grey. And I'm biased anyway ;-D

All the above photos are from the Chelsea area, but I promise that's not my only hangout... I'm also a big South Bank girl - find me in the summer, stretched out in the park by Gabriel's Wharf; eating the butternut squash and goats cheese salad in Riviera restaurant; hidden in the dark watching an old movie at the BFI or rummaging through the book market outside. And there are many more places besides, from the South Bank to Westminster, Euston-wards, Marylebone, Notting Hill, Carnaby Street and many more. We just didn't take photos of them this weekend!

Right. Back to dissertation gloom...

Xxxc

Playing the leopard

Ok, so I have a confession to make... I know I said there were no more photoshoots for a while, as T-B has gone home, but we maaaaay have done one the day before he went home that I haven't put up yet... What can I say? I'm sneaky like that ;-D

It was a  lovely warm day last weekend, and I had just got a leopard print top from ebay that I wanted to play with ASAP... I love the playfulness of it! The fact it has leopard faces hidden in the print and the material is so heavy and nubby, it seems lightyears away from anything remotely tacky or difficult to wear. Leopard and other animal prints have really got a resurgence going on at the moment, and while I'm quite far away from the femme fatale / rock chick that usually rocks it, I don't think I did tooooooooo badly ;-D

Prowling leopard, leaping cat

skipping along the riverside into the more 'townie' part of Cam.

See the print?

I am most likely Actually falling over in these pics... No balance.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Spin spin spin spin spin...

How cute is that cat!?!? He looked a bit like our college cat, but when he didn't decide to hang off my arm in a fit of schizophrenic action, we were disabused of any notion of similarity between this lovely and Captain Haddock!

Only in Cambridge... It's a please don't chain bikes to railings sign... Except not in English, but in Latin and Greek. This is the street where several of the college houses for fourth years are (we live in college for 3 years and if we stay for a 4th or more, then we get put in accomodation like these cute little houses... Or in the divinity schools across the (cobbled) street from college, which they're currently renovating for Grad accomodation. It's so pretty, but tumbledown inside...

So... What was I wearing? Vintage leopard print top off ebay, vintage skirt, Jocasi leather belt, vintage tooled leather bag, Jaeger brown court shoes, Vintage porcelain pendant, Toy Watch, very very old tiger eye bracelet...

I should really be in the library now... But I'm rather happy, sitting in my "work room" (i.e. my room mate's bedroom that I've converted into a study pour moi over the holidays while she's away... My own desk is too untidy ;-D) and still in my nightie and big comfy cardie, not quite bothered to do anything. Possibly something to do with having just finished watching the last episode of Swingtown (so so so sad it was cancelled) and now my brain is too lethargic to be productive ;-D Ooops! Holidays are baaaaaaaaaaaad for work ethics!

Right. Off to find food.

Xxxc

Lies.

Now, I know I commented somewhere that I wasn't going to blog until I'd got these essay deadlines out of the way...

But I may have told a fib. Not on purpose. I was FORCED by T-B to go out and "play pick-chas!"

So. There you have it. I have no will power. Please excuse the fact that my skirt is unironed! ;-D

I like swinging from trees. Trees make me happy.

In these I'm wearing: 

- Zara cardigan bought in Florence... (I do find it funny that I can never find stuff I like in British Zara, but take me there in Italy, and I come back with a suitcase STUFFED with Zara clothes!)

- Hermes skirt that I found in a charity shop... (From the cherubs / eyepopping primary colours / nautical print, it's got to be 80's) 

- Eley Kishimoto shoes, bought in a sample sale at BStore last year... (Some of my favourite shoes ever, and despite the humungous heel - so so so comfy!)

- Topshop tights, Primark bag, Toy Watch and Macrame flower necklace bought in Florence... again! (I wandered into a tiny little craft shop, where the lady made things on a board in front of you. When I went in, she was giving lessons to another woman and they were chattering away in Italian, made me sit down - by gesturing madly at the chair and patting the seat, and proceeded to carry on with the lesson. I sat there for about half an hour before deciding I needed to carry on with tourist-ing! There were loads of lovely things, but this one caught my eye...)

Please excuse the large numbers of photos... T-B takes too many that I like. :-D He's trying to 'improve' you see, as the camera's relatively new. Any views on the photography will be appreciated from his quarter, as I'm not letting him put any of the me photos up on facebook. Personally, I think he's amazing at taking photos of people. His vistas are ace, but some of these come top on my favourite pictures of me ever; and that's hard since I HATE photos of myself and get really antsy when the camera's out. This is another reason for doing this -someone else taking my blog photos - thing. It'll maybe help me get over my photo hangups... Cross fingers! ;-D 

Hmmmmmm. I should probably go do some work. I have a black tie alumni dinner tonight, that I've spent the last month organising... So no time to work post-6pm. And it's almost 2 now. Sigh.

Xxxc

I'm really awful.

I just ordered something from Rokit...

There's something about essays that makes me do something else... Like buying pretty accessories online.

It's a scarf that reminds me a great deal of the print from Marc Jacobs' Fall 09 stuff, and a studded bangle. Woop! I'll post when they arrive, but I suppose this gives me an excuse for some shameless MJ love. 

For me, this collection really was all about the colours... The shapes scream ladies of leisure, but the colours say otherwise... The use of velvets and silks is masterful, and I just love those pinstripe trousers (grey, blue and mustard - SIK!) and the 80s makeup!

Can I have some of those gold shoes please? Thank you very much. Oh and the grey cardie wouldn't go amiss either...

Teeheehee. Hopefully my scarf won't take forever! Cross fingers for me... Already got plans...

Xxxc

Trashy TV Talk

Now I do like a bit of TV related procrastination... 

I have just finished watching my Party Animals Season 1 box set (2007, BBC production). It stars the *new Dr Who* who is a sweet and floppy bunny-ish MP's researcher, alongside an excellent cast, a great script, and some clothes I wouldn't mind having myself! Only problem is that Matt Smith buggering off to play a time lord means no more... SOB! 

It really truly is an excellent series and anyone who gets a chance to watch it should... They're re-running it on BBC4 at the mo and one can find it on BBCIplayer and surfthechannel (for those of you outside the UK). 

My favourite bit is the cuteness of Andrew Buchan who plays the older brother... Fit As! And he was in Bones at the beginning of this latest season, so that just adds to his kudos points ;-D - I don't normally like the party boy type, but the character is just so well portrayed and scripted that you can't help yourself - especially as the series draws to a close. Oh and Andrew Buchan is from Stockport where my family is from, so that makes me happy too lol.

And the outfits of Kirsty (chintzy but smart, and she has a killer green top in the second to last episode... couldn't find any good photos tho. :-0) and Ashika (sex in a suit) are MINT!

Also, is anyone else looking forward to new Gossip Girl? I just found out (probably hugely belatedly) that they're doing a spin off series about Lily and Rufus in the '80s... How much fun isthat going to be?!?! Hehe. Saying that, I found out via a slightly catty article from NY magazine, so not sure about the girl who's going to play Lily... But we shall see!!!

I don't know why, but I just have images of her a la Pretty in Pink hehe.

Oh, and with the gossip about Blair / Nate coming thick and fast... I'm undecided... Which is the more sartorially satisfying pairing?

Xxxc (having a non-highbrow day...)