The Yard Sale

So on Saturday I stayed up until four in the morning eating cake batter, drinking Sainsbury's own house red which had a rather unusual hint of the white spirit about it, and watching zombie movies to stay awake.
This, it turns out, is a pretty good recipe for a hangover.
Luckily, it was all for a good cause - the very lovely Susie Bubble's Yard Sale. I turned up more than a little late - around midday - and feeling a bit fragile but with a wicker picnick basket full of cake and biscuits which seemed to go down well. Unfortunately I missed msot of the best clothes, but the presence of Ferry the Ferrett, some amazing chicken satay and meeting some of the UK's most interesting fashion bloggers was compensation enough. And it managed not to rain the entire time I was there, whcih was relief.
As ever, where there are fashion bloggers there are amazing outfits and also rather a lot of cameras so I'm sure this is just one of many picture posts, but never mind...

Susie's done a proper write up, which helps as I don't know who anyone was and she does.

Guest starring Belgian Waffle and David Mitchell

Tonight I went to see something called Tall Tales at The Good Ship in Kilburn. The Good Ship harbours all sorts of memories for me, some awesome and some a little more uncomfortable, but it's a decent enough venue for an hour of hilarious story telling.
The readers were all brilliant - I haven't laughed so much for such a sustained period for a long time - and I heartily recommend you attend the next one which is apparently some time in September.
I went, I saw, I didn't exactly conquer, but I did summon up the courage to talk to four real life people who I had never met before. One of them was the very lovely Belgian Waffle, sort of my blog idol, who was incredibly gracious and friendly - despite my irritating social awkwardness which was made even worse by lack of alcohol which I'm not supposed to be drinking much at the moment. Honestly, sometimes I am so awkward it's amazing I have any friends let alone a moderately good career as a journalist. We're supposed to talk to people, put them at ease and get them to tell us their stories, but I'm much better at this on the phone I think. Or in emails.
I am trying to get better.
I also spoke to David Mitchell. In fact I sat next to him for the entire evening and spoke about seven words to him, but still. Is there anything as intimidating as sitting next to someone who is funnier and more successful than you and not knowing if you should talk to them? I tend to end up feeling that I'm sort of in the film about myself and I'm an awful female version of Woody Allen. I'm fine if there's someone else with me, but my bravado evaporates when I'm on my own unless I'm already feeling pretty bullish about life.
The walk home was also slightly strange and oddly entertaining. Walking up Kilburn High Road I was aggressively chirpsed. I'm not sure many people know what a "chirps" is, but my little cousin once patiently explained that it is fairly common slang for when a man tries to chat you up and get your phone number in the street. Quite often in Kilburn said man will either be standing outside a chicken cottage or a kebab shop looking like he's used the cold left-over by-products of fast food manufacture as both hair pomade and moisturiser. Or like he'd like to carry a gun and use his gangsta name to impress the ladeez, but lacks the sense of commitment this would take and probably raps about living the 'street life' in the NW6 ghetto while working on the tills at Pound Land and attempting to flog homemade CDs to pretty girls outside Marks & Spencers or WHSmith instead - still a little misguided but a much better approach to life in my opinion.
I'm not a huge fan of being chirpsed at the best of times, but having someone who is both faintly swarthy and exceedingly greasy follow you, even if it's only for a minute, making increasingly foul mouthed attempts to chat you up is both absurdly funny and also quite uncomfortable. I it's essentially harmless and I am used to it, but sometimes you really just wish they'd keep their thoughts to themselves.
Then, walking down from Kilburn towards Queen's Park,  the transition from scummy to posh was perfectly marked by the dulcet tones of a jazz-lite cover of Procol Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale being played by one man and a piano in the expensive organic restaurant. I giggled the whole of the rest of the way home.

Jewellery ideas that are a bit silly but I like them anyway...

I have found myself with a few spare minutes this week and am not quite sure what I'm supposed to do with them. There's not enough of them at the right time to do anything worthwhile that won't see me a/ hungover b/ wracked with guilt about how much I've spent or c/ trying to get home from Chiswick, so instead I have been rediscovering some old past times. One of those is reading proper books, which I have been trying to squish in to the tiny free moments I've had over the past weeks fairly unsuccessfully.
Now I have a bit more time in the evenings I'm racing through some of my favourite novels again. The stories in Gullivers Travels may no longer seem at all unlikely after months and months spent reading the depressing or absurd stories that pass for news in the newspapers every day but they are a bit of a relief.
I'm also enjoying some time to rediscover all the blogs I used to look at. Here are two of the silliest/greatest things I have seen on the blogs this week;

Stiletto x Eric Kayser x Mauboussin via viacomit.net
Some bright spark at Stiletto magazine had the idea to put a 7 carat Mauboussin ring inside a loaf of bread by master baker Eric Kayser and then give it away. Nice idea but surely a major choking/tooth shattering hazard? However giving this away to some lucky customer is certainly a good way to get people to come to your new bread shop in its opening week. (This is happening in Paris by the way. But of course.)

Chewed by Tuesday (can't remeber how I stumnbled upon this one)
Chewed by Tuesday is frankly a brilliant idea for people like me who like weird things. Created by Melbourne-based designer Vivienne Gibson and inspired by Brooklyn (the place in NY, not something banal) and stationery, the first range features only two pieces - a solid silver bic penlip and a solid silver bic penlid with a chewed end. Becasue who doesn't chew the ends of their pen lids. Well, JFK doesn't, but then he is very precious about his pens and would rarely sink to the level of the humble bic biro. 

(pictures from http://www.chewedbytuesday.com/)

At $250 each plus postage they're more than a little bit out of my price range, but I want one, if not both, very badly indeed.

Quote of the week - courtesy of the Dior press office

So, it's couture week. Emotions are running high. Chanel reconfirms its greatness. Galliano proves once again that he is "wacky" and "eccentric" but still capable of creating beautiful covetable and wearable pieces. And someone has a hissy fit.

This year's hissy fit comes from Armani who is upset that Galliano (allegedly) moved the scheduling of the Dior show and messed with the timing of the Armani show. Quell horreur. As my friend over on Layers and Swathes has mentioned before, Armani is verging on becoming irrelevant now, even though this is only his first showing at Paris couture.

The point of bringing this up is to illustrate just how perfectly catty the French can be when it comes to, well, anything really, but especially all things fashion related. I really love them for this, although I wouldn't want to live or work full time in that kind of atmosphere - far too much pressure.

The Dior reps' response to Armani's whinging? "We think it's not elegant to comment."

The other thing that has been cheering me up today, and boy do I need some cheering, is the return of Osman Nosse's A Cat is a Cat, one of my favourite blogs of all time. I'm not going to explain what Nosse does, I'm going to show you instead. Here is his post from today;

I emailed him to ask if it would be ok to repost his work on my blog and got this response - "bloody hell I thought that email was from Anna Wintour and I was going to get 'got' for mocking YSL." (Note, this is funnier if you know my real name.)

Naked rambling

Not really truly naked. More like fully clothed but really liking nude coloured things. I've been catching up on my reading and there's a naturist feeling emerging from the blogs and that hallowed of high street trend setters Topshop which is making me a bit dreamy. A dangerous condition for a person in my kind of financial straits.

It's early still but 2010 is looking like it might be the year where I break with all my traditions - the year I stop hating wedges, leave London and embrace nudes and pastels. Well, the pastels might have their limitations as I'm not sure that looking like an early 90s M&S mannequin is really a great look whatever some designers might want us to think. And I'll not be leaving London permanently. And wedges on boots or shoes, but definitely not for sandals.

I'm trying to think of something profoundly interesting to talk about here, but I'm finding it hard to get back into the swing of the blogging thing. I do have a story about throwing up in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge with which I have been entertaining my friends, although it certainly didn't feel funny at the time. Especially when I thought I'd got a tiny bit of sick on my brand new reduced-from-£115-to-£22.50 black and white aztec knitted lambswool-angora-cashmere cardigan of smug snugness that I got from the back of the sale rack in Monsoon in Waterloo after a one hour round trip around some of London's most depressing tube stations trying to find a working passport photo machine.

Thankfully I had recovered by Sunday when we went for a huge family lunch at an Arabic restaurant on Edgware Road with my uncle, the twin cousins B&T (I campaigned for B&H or G&T when they were born but to no avail) and their older sister A who I used to babysit when I was 15 and love to pieces. We consumed a pathetically small amount of this rather large plate of meat, but in our defence we had already had a similar amount of humous, falafel, aubergine dip, yoghurt dip and tabouleh...

Afterwards Mum and I went for a walk through town. Ostensibly she was joining me to hunt for some winter boots to replace my only pair which were a 21st birthday present to my self and are, unsurprisingly, no longer in the prime of their lives.

We saw many, many, many things that inspired momentary lust and a few other things that inspired the kind of longing that in other writers would result in some great romantic novel in the vein of Wuthering Heights.

A pop into the St Christopher's Place branch of Whistles produced quite a few of the latter. Sadly, lack of money and visions of my mother saying the word overdraft prevented me from purchasing any of the lovely things and we ended up mainly shopping for things for Mum.

She did, however, introduce me to the rather incredible sale at Fenwicks on Bond Street, which, as LibertyLondonGirl has pointed out before, is like no other Fenwicks in the world and now forms the crucial third member of my holy department store trinity (the other two being Liberty and John Lewis). I bought an exceedingly virginal looking white lace lingerie set by Elle Macpherson for less than a the cost of a bra elsewhere, which pleased JFK.

I also tried on this incredible slip by Stella McCartney. Possibly the most incredible piece of inner wear I have ever laid eyes on, it fit in all the right places, was the perfect colour and made me feel a million dollars. Sadly, the two hundred and something pounds price tag meant it may as well have actually cost a million dollars. But it now haunts my dreams...

(Clara Whispering Chemise in Blush via net-a-porter - not the best picture of this lovely delicate whisp of prettyness but ypu get the idea)

Mum, who isn't exactly the most fashion conscious woman in the world, but does that wonderful I-could-be-an-art-teacher-from-Hampstead look that only suits certain women really quite well when she wants to, said - "When I first heard about Stella McCartney moving into fashion I thought she was just using her celebrity name. Who knew she would actually have talent." Quite.

straight men don't understand - part 1

(Yves Saint Laurent Autumn/Winter 2009 via style.com)

There are two types of women - those who dress for men and those who don't.

Well, actually that's a bit unfair. We all like to feel like we are attractive to men and that will affect the way we dress. But there is a dividing line, perfectly illustrated last night at the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen by the girls in too-tight super short body-con dresses with flippy hair and the girls in low cut sparkly things and skinny jeans and bleached blonde hair - a triumph of presentation over content.

These girls are really all about feeling good about themselves by dressing to attract men. I do not condemn this (much) but if it means that your skirt is so short that you have to keen tugging it down when you dance, perhaps you should have bought the next size up.

There are plenty of women who prefer a more subtle take on this and then there are those who dress for other women. For these creatures little is as satisfying as an honest complement on your outfit from another woman whose style you admire. And in fashion world this means wearing things that the majority straight men will never understand and often actively dislike.

Last night I wore one of these things - velvet, high waisted, vintage Mani peg legs that finish just on the ankle. JFK was unimpressed at dinner, but LMWAI and Miss Laura Trouble, who have a regular DJ slot at Hoxton Bar and Kitchen loved them.

(It might look like they're dancing and having a good time playing records, but they're actually just filled with excitement about my trousers.)

The trousers were a bit of a find - all those reconnaissance visits to Oxfam Gloucester Road finally paid off. They make me feel a bit Katherine Hepburn and, unlike most high waisted trousers or peg legs, don't make my bum look like it spreads over an area the size of the Sahara desert.

They're a bit difficult to photograph - black velvet is a bit of a light vacuum...

(Black velvety goodness)

I wore them paired with the perfect Margaret Howell Breton t shirt (an ebay bargain) and gold metal belt from the Topshop sale a couple of years ago plus my current favourite heels.

(More goodness)

We drank beer and tequila, the ultimate good time combo, but perhaps a little bit too much. Have spent most of today recovering. Ouff.

p.s. Watching The City. Perfect hangover viewing and cameos from Jane Aldridge of Sea of Shoes (who I slightly hate for being pretty and very young and in possession of an amazing wardrobe and getting to wear Chanel for the Crillon Ball. Seriously.) and Tommye Fitzpatrick of Fashionologie being shot for Elle. Lucky things.

Christmas wish list entry number 4 - knitted things by Yokoo

Etsy has done many good things for young niche designers, giving them a platform to sell their own wares and skipping the ridiculous struggle to find stockists, business partners and all that jazz. 
But Etsy is also overwhelmingly vast. It's just too much for me to filter through. So I am always grateful when other people flag up a great new Etsy find, be it affordable or otherwise. It allows me to feel smug about finding something new and unusual without having to do all the field work... lazy I know, but at least I'm honest about it.
One of my most recent Etsy finds is Yokoo, and yes, I know I'm very late to jump on this bandwagon because other bloggers have been banging on about her for aaaaaaaaaaaaages. Plus she's not just on Etsy, but also on Urban Outfitter's US site, not that that's much help to me.
But it wasn't till I saw a picture of TheShoeGirl's knitted chain scarf (she bought it after seeing in on Tavi's blog) that I actually went and found Yokoo's etsy shop. I'm a sucker for a big chunky knitted scarf, so it was pretty much love at first sight. Plus she also gives good interview.
Knitted things make great christmas gifts. I'd really quite like any of these;

Visit her shop here.