Sales wish list entry number 5 - the Olivia Rubin dress

A good dress is a truly wonderful thing. I have a lot of dresses, but only around three them really classify as a good dress. A good dress is a rare jewel in the wardrobe - something you can put on with or without any other covering and know you look good without even looking in the mirror.
My Acne sack is one of those dresses. Short, black, low backed, sleeveless with small shoulder pads and cleverly cut to be super flattering, this dress and some red lipstick got me eyed up by Orlando Bloom. It's a bit dressy for day though. For that I have my mother's old 80's Joseph dress, which looks like it's actually from the 50's but is much less restrictive and more comfortable than an original 50's dress would be. I also have a nude pleated dress from H&M that fits the bill. All of these look good with heels and flats, cardigans and jackets, tights and bare legs, making them pretty much invaluable as far as I'm concerned.

Some designers know how to do good dresses, and some just think they know. Olivia Rubin actually does know, and she is really, really nice to boot.
You'll know her dresses if you read the weekly glossy magazines here in the UK, as they're often worn by those in the limelight who want to walk the line between accesible feminity and scary fashion.
But aside from generating a nice bit of publicity, most of those celebritys are doing those dresses a bit of a disservice really. They might wear them once or twice before relegating them to the back of the pile, but these are not dresses for relegation. They should be worn as often as physcially possible.

Rubin has marked down her current collection by 40% on her website, and the prices are actually quite reasonable for anyone who has been paid in the not too distant past (ie not me)...
I've been coveting the Matisse (above), reduced to £179.90 from £257, since I first saw it all those months ago now, so on to the wish list it goes.

Although, like the Acne, it's a bit too fancy for every day wear, to me it looks like the kind of dress you could wear for a dinner party, party party, cocktail party or for looking like a glamorous wastrel knocking back tequila with beer chasers with EDF at a certain soho bar... basically it's a good times good dress. As long as your good times don't involve red wine because that could be a disaster. Lots of black smudgy eye liner is the only other bit of styling that would be essential with the Matisse - otherwise hair up or down, heels or flats, fur coat or cagoul, it doesn't really matter. I think it'd even look ok with wellies.
Next month Rubin launches a new diffusion range of jersey t-shirts, oli rubi, including a loose fitting t with her trademark brickprint about which I am irrationally excited in a way that would disturb most of my family and friends.

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.