Objects of desire: Stine Goya

Printed dresses don't often appeal to me - they tend to shout too loudly. A bold printed dress can only be worn a handful of times because it's usually just too memorable. It's too much of a commitment being the girl in that dress. But every now and then you see something that just makes you melt a little bit inside. Browsing the internet I stumbled across this rather lovely example by Danish designer Stine Goya.

Stine Goya - Moonprint dress - £264 - ninaandlola.com

Look you can even tuck it into a pair of high waisted trouser (although this would only work if you were terribly skinny I fear). And now I want it very, very badly but given I had to bid a sad farewell to the beautiful scoop neck, perfectly soft, triple ply cashmere coat/cardigan at the Tse sample sale last night, there's no way I can afford this, especially in cost-per-wear terms. 

Ever the glutton for punishment of course I had to go and visit Stine Goya's site to see what else was on offer this season and found the perfect bag.

Thunder bag - Stine Goya - 2000 DKK (approx. £235) - stinegoya.com 

Sigh.

Sales wish list entry number 1 - the Mulberry bag

Today it is sunny, my phone bill is about to bounce from my regular bank account and my other bank have infomred me that they will be charging me £300 in overdraft charges this month.
I also have some new followers. Hello!
But let's get back to the serious business - the sales. We have already established fairly firmly, I think, that I will not be buying anything in the sales as I literally do not have the money. Not even a credit card of pretend money, which is probably a good thing. But then I don't get Christmas presents either and I still did a Christmas wish list, so what's to stop us from enjoying a bit of sales-related wishful thinking this month? Do let me know if you have your eye on something lovely, unless of course you're trying to keep it a secret in case it sells out before you lucky people with money can buy it yourselves.
First lets have a gander at Mulberry, still generally my favourite purveyor of bags despite their laptop-related sexism (no, I still haven't forgotten about that).

There are a few rather good things in the sale preview on Mulberry's rather unweildy website - mostly veering towards the less-girly, more utilitarian holdall as a lot of the prettier stuff they've marked down is touched with a tinge of the hideous or impractical.
First there's the Mabel holdall, reduced from £995 to £497. Then there's the putty smudged leopard print version of the Picadilly, basically a giant Bayswater, now £447, reduced from £895. Usually I hate prints on bags, but a grey-scale print on a bag this big and simple I will allow.

Both of these are still rather expensive, but this is a wish list and therefore doesn't have much to do with practicalities.
At the more affordable end of the spectrum there's the lovely Bayswater laptop holder, although this is still only available for 13" mac books so the less said about that the less angry I will be. The Ledbury, although a member of the Bayswater family, is a complete waste of time - it's tiny and frankly ridiculous.
But the one, and there can only be one, that makes the sales wish list is this;

A beautiful burnished antiqute gold Bayswater clutch, reduced to £385 from £550. It's a classic, will take a good battering in its stride and still look great and will go with pretty much everything, adding some relaxed structure to a slouchy outfit and adding a bit of edge to a more polished look. And it won't date, which is pretty important when it's still this expensive even with the mark down.

I also feel I should share with you the details of another event that I would love to be able to buy things at - the Elle MacPherson intimates and Stella McCartney lingerie sample sale. It starts today (16 June) and runs til tomorrow (17 June, obviously) and is at Bendon UK, Axtell House, 3rd Floor, 23-24 Warwick Street, W1B 5NQ. They're charging £2 to get in, which is pretty much all I have in my wallet right now. (If you're feeling generous I'm a 32d / size 10-12.)

In other news, I have now managed to draw on the sewing guides and pin together the pieces for my raw silk skirt. This took about two hours and was aided by a serious dose of 90's nostalgia with My So Called Life and Daria. Next, and most scary, stage - sewing it all together. I have a few misgivings about this, but will hopefully begin tonight. Stay tuned for the inevitable blood, sweat and swearing at the sewing machine.

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.

Almost back...

Some frankly weird things have been happening during my break from blogging...

Jimmy Choo announced a collaboration with Ugg, which when you actually think about it probably won't result in a product any more horrible than those already created by both companies.

V launched its curvy issue, including a shoot by he-of-the-fatty-hatred Karl Lagerfeld.

Many of my favourite blogs went suspiciously quiet.

Among the less surprising but more depressing events are Primark reporting a 19% profit increase; my birthday and the abject failure of my family to do anything about it; the delay in my pay which means I've been living off two weeks salary since December 4th and have done precisely zero sales shopping despite wanting many things like this and this and oh so many other things; Cristiano Ronaldo taking off his clothes to pose in tiny pants again.

Some good things have also happened - JFK bought me a lovely piece of Alex Monroe, making himself very poor and me rather happy. Three of my favourite people in the whole world were at my self-organised and quite subdued birthday drinks even though two of them are rarely even in London and one of those was actually supposed to be working that night. The birthday dinner that EDF trekked across a snowy London to cook for me which entirely made up for my family being rubbish. I found a vintage Pierre Balmain polka dot skirt suit for £15 in a charity shop and discovered truffle salami on the same day.

This evening I will be finishing off my Masters application, which I will be taking in person to the University via a two hour train journey tomorrow to meet the deadline. Cutting it fine I know. After that things should return to some semblance of normalcy around here... thank you for bearing with me and a special thank you to two of my favourite bloggers who commented on my absence. It's nice to be missed.

Inside the Prada party

So, last night I found myself in the Prada shop on Old Bond Street standing at the side and pretending to look very interested in the book they were launching  because I didn't know anyone and hadn't had enough champagne to talk to the scary people.
Of course, after a couple of glasses of champagne it transpired that some of the scary people were actually nice people who would talk to me like a human being even though I was ostensibly there representing an architecture newspaper (my day job) and not technically a fashion person.

However I was very pleased to be the one who recognised Christopher Kane before the very nice girl from Grazia did, even though she managed to identify a Jagger spawnling that I wouldn't have recognised in a million years.

People I saw/recognised that might mean something to you but I didn't speak to because the pan fried scallops on a bed of black rice seemed like a more sensible option;
- Bianca Jagger (the other Jagger spawn I didn't recognise was a daughter of Jade Jagger - surely too young to be partying already?)
- Various fashion editors and writers
- Christopher Kane
- The doyenne of west London vintage shops Virginia Bates
- Brett from Suede (what does he even do these days that means he gets invited to nice parties?)
- Tolula Adeyemi, model du jour and possesor of the amazing two and a half thousand pounds fur shorts - so expensive it needed words instead of numerals - plus some incredible legs...

People I spoke to;
- Amy Molyneaux and her date Alistair who claimed to also be a non-fashion person but, being a dj, was rather taken with the music selection provided by a girl in a deep blue velvet dress and perfect inky black bob behind the shiny black decks upstairs. Amy was nice even though she didn't have to be because I was patently not anyone of any importance at all, but quickly moved off to talk to someone who was.
- Joanna from Purple PR who was really lovely and friendly and normal.
- Jess from Vogue.com who was wearing an amazing shade of lipstick by Mac which I'm fairly sure was called Impassioned. Or something like that.
- Ashleigh from Grazia who was pretty awesome.

What we drank;
Champagne
Pear cocktails in short tumblers

What we ate;
Pan fried scallops on black rice in a small matt black bowl (black is still the new black)
Smoked Salmon arranged in elegant rounds on tiny squares of bread
Medium rare grilled beef with horseradish dip
Chicken on a stick. No really, it was a bit of chicken on a little bamboo stick.
Little edible chocolate bowls with chocolate and orange mousse
Large profiteroles with a crunchy caramel disc on the top

Here's some general pics;

So there you go. It was actually really fun. I had three glasses of champagne, which as anyone who knows me will attest, is far more than enough to make me tipsy.

Trundling off to the very unglamorous tube home, I passed by the window dresser for Dolce & Gabbana putting the finsihing touches to their Chirstmas displays for the New Bond Street store...

Suffice to say the entire tube journey home was spent thinking about those shoes, the second entry on this year's pointless Christmas wish list. Got home in a merry haze and ate a rather large amount of these before hitting the hay...

And so it begins with a Bittersweets NY ring

We don't celebrate Christmas in our family. You have absolutely no idea how much resentment this has bred among us children, even though the reason why we don't celebrate it is an exceedingly valid one (we are Jewish).
For me Christmas had become, until relatively recently, a time I dreaded. Stuck at home feeling lonely, watching the same movies that are always on, eating our traditional egg and chip lunch, while friends received many extravagant presents, covered their houses in glitter and gorged on yummy stuff. I'm sure it would be different without my other-side-of-the-fence rose-tinted glasses, but I was particularly envious of the decorating and the cranberry sauce.
Despite all this, every year I assemble a rather motley Christmas wish list of things I know I will not receive as a minor form of self flagellation.

Here is the first entry for this year;

Bittersweets NY Baby Vamp rings. In silver please.

The past few Christmases have actually been lovely. I have been spending the dreaded day in Yorkshire with my lovely friend B and her lovely family and it has all been log fires and foggy walks in the woods with the dogs, stockings for everyone, excellent food and drink and, most importantly, Very Good Times.
Very Good Times make Very Good Memories, which are more meaningful than extravagant presents. Unless those presents are Chanel.
This year B is doing something amazingly altruistic in Cambodia, and I am very sad to be missing out on the Yorkshire Christmas. But I will be on a beach in Goa having a massage. So it's not that bad...