Topshop majesty ballet pumps - don't buy em

Topshop is having a very good winter if what I saw when I popped in there to treat myself to my first new thing in ages was anything to go buy. One part of the shop was a veritable sea of covetable camel, cable-knit and shearling. Yum.
Sadly, my treat budget didn't stretch to any of that. What it did stretch to though was a pair of pretty tweedy ballet pumps, with a Chanel-esque black ribbon bow and diamante detail. Despite the name of this blog, I am rarely attracted to shiny things because on my budget most of the shiny things I can afford just look very cheap. I feel similarly about lace - if you can't afford the good stuff it's best avoided. But these seemed to be the exception. Look, aren't they pretty? And only £28.

Imagine them worn with turned up Max Mara black cropped trousers, a crisp white Aquascutum shirt and a chunky grey Cos jumper... and you will have a vision of what I was happily wearing to work on Friday. The shoes even managed to put a spring in my step, even if they were simultaneously rubbing most of the skin off the back of my right foot.

Sadly though this love affair was to be all to brief. The diamante studs started falling out around lunchtime. I spent half an hour in the hellish environs of the returns queue at Topshop's Oxford Circus branch on Sunday to swap them for another pair but the same thing happened before I even left the shop. So a refund was granted. 

I'm not casting any aspersions on Topshop, who accepted the fault and did not hesitate in giving me my money back, but the whole thing made me a little bit sad. If you can't treat yourself to the odd pair of shoes without them falling apart, what is the point of earning money?

Anyway, I'm back off the embellishments for a while again and I would suggest that if your happiness depends on your shoes, even only slightly, don't buy these ones. 

Things That Should Not Be Allowed

Bumbags and Kitten Heels are, if you believe everything you read, making a comeback this spring.
Can you think of anything more repulsive than wearing something called a bumbag? And kittens are for playing with and feeding and expensive trips to the hopefully handsome but usually dissapointingly female vet. They are not for shoes.
I have never really understood the appeal of kitten heels. They can hurt your feet just as much, if not more, than a stacked heel (although admittedly a spindly stilleto is always going to hurt more than a stumpy kitten. But you do have to be a bit of a sadist to do that to yourself in the first place and for that I admire your commitment).
Kitten heels have always, ALWAYS, made everyone look like they're on a school run. You just need a gillet and some boot cut jeans to finish the look. Even a 12 year old can pull off a convincing imitation of a middle class mum in kitten heels.
Also, they are rarely flatering, defeating the whole point of wearing a heel in the first place. They certainly do not make you feel tall, confident and cool.
I do own a single pair of shoes with heels that verge on being kitten-ish that have been lurking in my cupboard unworn for some time. I wore them on Monday. Don't ask why. They offer all the discomfort of heels with none of the benefits.
If you see me wearing Kitten heels one day, please do tap me on the shoulder and remind me of this post. I will be smiling on the outside, but inside I will be crying.

In other news - The inevitable 'We love the 90's' phase has hit fashion. But thus far the cool kids only seem to want to revisit the bad bits of the 90s. I'm all for the return of the slip dress but there is something very wrong going on when the teenagers hanging around outside Topshop begin to look like extras from Blossom; braces, a big floppy satin bow in the hair, pale washed denim and high-tops with ankle socks. Creepy.

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.

Christmas wish list entry number 6 - Topshop Parisian wedges

Ok, so technically this is more than one wish list entry, but Topshop has launched a collection that is so perfect I can hardly breathe from the lust. Some of the pieces from the Parisienne collection are starting to trickle through, hiding in the Jubilee collection pages on Topshop.co.uk...

First there's these Parisian wedges, which I could never wear as they'd make me about a gazillion foot tall. Plus at £130 they're not exactly cheap, but I want them anyway...

Then there's this rather lovely velvet boyfriend blazer, £70

Which would look super with this leather sequin mini, £75

Or this double layered bow skirt, £30

Plus this comfy Eiffel Tower embroidered T, £22, which I may actually buy anyway...

And this twist lock square holdall bag from the Highland collection, £35

Apologies for the Topshop overload, but during my trip to hell I had a surprisingly pleasant Topshop experience with an in-house Style Advisor called Alys that has prompted a new trawl of on the online highstreet's finest. Brent Cross may be hell, but Alys was an angel. Plus her aunt is a textiles designer for Yves Saint Laurent, or something along those lines.

Journey into hell (also known as Brent Cross)

I think that we have by now established that I am a big fan of shopping. I love the thrill of the chase, the finding of a bargain, the touch of something new and the spring in your step when you put on something that makes you feel fantastic for the first time.
But even I have my limits. Yesterday I spent most of the day recovering from a trip to Brent Cross, the epic-centre of everything evil in shopping. Somehow a group of architects, planners and retail folk all came together to create a place that saps every last inch of your will to live out of you while surrounded by lovely things that mock you by being out of stock or expensive and hundreds of incredibly badly dressed people who bump into you, make a lot of noise until your head hurts, or, in one extreme case, throw up on passers by (admittedly the thrower upper was about three). And the worst thing is that these incredibly badly dressed people can actually afford the things that you can't.  
This all in a grey faux-marble artificially lit environment that breeds a herd mentality of the kind that makes you queue for the supremely mediocre Wagmama's rather than just leaving as quickly as humanly possible with a bag of Waitrose's finest to scoff in the car on the way home feeling pleased with yourself for having escaped but supremely drained of all mental energy.
It's even worse at the weekends. Especially in the run up to Christmas.
Being a rare native north-west Londoner, I grew up with Brent Cross and have seen it evolve into its full Dante's-seventh-level-of-hell-like current incarnation. When we were young it was a good place to go and hang out after school because it was indoors and no-one would tell us off. Now it just gives me nightmares.
How could they do this to something as good as shopping?
I was forced to enter its horrid halls yesterday because my Mac suddenly froze and needed to be taken immediately for treatment at an Apple Store. But of course London Transport being the wonderful thing it is and me living on the Jubilee line, there is no tube to take me to the Apple shop in town at the weekends. So I girded my loins in the manner of Orpheus setting out to rescue Eurydice and drove through the pouring rain willingly into the underworld.
Look at how they've tried to decorate it for Christmas to make it seem almost cheery;

This is the best picture I could get of the nicest bit of Brent Cross. The roof in the central bit actually looks ok. Shame it only covers a small fraction of the shopping pit and none of the actual shops.

It's not even like the place would be useful if there was a zombie invasion (too many vulnerable access points). In fact, if anything, it's the place where the zombies are most likely to spawn.

Not everything about Brent Cross is bad. It does have both a Waitrose AND a John Lewis which means I can buy yummy cheese, Touche eclat, sewing supplies, Family Guy, Vogue and have a diverting rifle through Topshop all under one roof. But Sunday was horrific. 

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.