30 Oct 2010

Work Wear

Since starting my new job this week, I have been rethinking office work wear. I work for a luxury fashion retailer, so I have to look smart, but I would also like to incorporate a bit of stylishness into my work wear, and ultimately, a bit of 'me'. I don't wear trousers, and I generally don't wear black, so I have been searching high and low for inspiration of what to wear for work.



shirt dresses
lina di moda


plaid shirts, tucked into high waisted skirts
lea seydoux


starch white shirt tucked into a slinky black maxi skirt
first of august


cutesy pinafore dresses layered with cotton shirts
esme and the lane way


Midi A-line skirts (black leather, perhaps)
park and cube


tailored dresses and chunky cardigans
stockholm street style


mad men inspired dresses - nipped in waists, full skirts and buttoned up collars
dvn


pretty silk blouses with bows and a-line minis
clemence posey


neutral coloured silk shirt and smart skirt combos
the golden diamonds


smart fitted jumpers, full skirts and court shoes
vogue australia


peter pan collars peeking out underneath sweaters
caroline's mode


a high-waisted sheer polka dot midi-skirt with a plain black jumper
birds of a feather


classic parisian style -tailored skirt, smart shirt and beret
all the pretty birds


a smart skirt, with braces and a jumper
altamira


What do you wear for work?






24 Oct 2010

The best camera collection ever


Of all the camera collections I keep stumbling across, Hilda Grahnat's is the most enviable

23 Oct 2010

Things I like at the moment 2

via shimmer like gold
1. Red red hair, the colour of autumn leaves

Autumn seems like the perfect time of year to have copper coloured locks. The leaves on the trees are all rich hues of red and orange, and what could be better than matching your hair to these shade? I have a whole folder on my desktop devoted to images of girls with red hair. I could start up a whole blog about red heads! I am not a natural redhead, but I have been dyeing my hair ginger for three years now, and there's no way back for me.

2. Michelle Gow's blog
I discovered Michelle's blog through the '10 10' Project and have fallen for her vividly coloured film photographs. Snippets of her everyday life in South Africa are beautifully photographed and mixed up with inspiration as diverse as the True Blood opening credits, soft focus photographs of cats and dogs and Aerochrome pictures of soldiers.

katrin braga
3. Collections of cameras

Throughout the past year or so, I have steadily been building up my own camera collection. I now proudly own a Canon EOS 500 35mm, a Kodak Retinette 1B, a Kodak Brownie, a Polaroid Land Camera, a Diana, a Holga and my little compact Canon digital. I often find myself drooling over photographs I find on blogs of my favourite photographers camera collections, always adding to the list of cameras I wish to own. Currently top of the list are a Lomo LC-A, a Zenit and a Minolta.

gene clark
4. Faux fur trimmed coats

I have had a crush on these for a while now. Coats which fall mid-thigh to mid-calf in length, with a deliciously cosy faux fur collar (matching cuffs, optional). Not just because they fit perfectly with the current seventies aesthetic oozing through fashion at the moment, but because they are warm, practical and timelessly stylish. This coat has had me dreaming for a few weeks now. I picture myself walking through a snowy landscape (I am expecting a repeat of last winter's never ending snow falls), with warm woolly tights, lace up boots and a fur trimmed coat keeping me snug and warm against the elements.

5. Carven's autumn/winter collection
Carven seems to be a constant so far, presenting me with collections that would ease willingly into my wardrobe, fitting in like they had always been there but never the less exciting me endlessly with outfit possibilities. Peter pan collars, simple jumpers, leather skirts, 1940s inspired dresses, patterned blouses and neutral colour palettes all feature amongst my current favourite things in the fashion world.

6. Lina Scheynius's Vogue editorial
It's not often these days that I flick the back half of British Vogue and feel the urge to rip out the pages of the editorials and plaster them over my bedroom walls as inspiration. For the past few years, the magazine has been stuck in a rut of Patrick Demarchelier, Tim Walker and Nick Knight fashion stories. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, all three have produced some outstanding editorials. But routine is boring and change is good. And Lina Scheynius's first editorial for Vogue is a breath of fresh air in a place normally occupied by the stale, the expected, the norm. It is refreshing just to have film photography in a glossy magazine, but for the said photography to have been shot by my all-time favourite photographer? And for the model to be the effortlessly stunning Jessica Stam, her unbrushed hair casually tangled. And for the styling to be so spot-on, mismatched yet totally wearable. And the usual Scheynius attention to detail in her settings - quirky furniture, vases of fresh flowers, patterned scatter cushions, wonderful lighting from strategically placed lamps. Perfection.

Lillian Wilkie
7. Chandeliers
If you have been reading my blog for a while you will already know I have a deep love for chandeliers and ornate light fittings. Unfortunately, my home currently features bare bulbs hanging drably and faded unremarkable lampshades. If I was to come into money, the first items that I would purchase for our house would be beautiful lighting for every room. A mix of antique glass chandeliers and wall mounted fittings and traditional lamps with ornate stands sat in corners atop of coffee tables, record players and speakers.

8. Planning my dream kitchen
Next on my agenda after sorting out the lighting would be the kitchen. We have the foundations of a beautiful kitchen in our home. It has a beautiful terracotta tiled floor, an old drying rack above a huge old wooden farmhouse table and two large windows letting in a generous amount of light. But, alas, the cabinets are cheap and falling apart, the tiles have been painted bright blue and my beloved china currently lives on wobbly Ikea shelving. My ideal is white walls, in keeping with the rest of the house; beautiful wooden cabinets and shelves, with panelled glass doors; vases of fresh flowers along both window sills; an old French dresser displaying my tea cups and china; and of, course, wonderful antique lighting.

yvan rodric
9. Perfect winter street style

As mentioned in a previous post, most street style websites bore me nowadays. When I find an inspiring shot, I am increasing drawn to imitating the look in my own way. Yvan Rodric's photo diary is full of the usual hipsters, but there are some wonderful shots mixed through, such as this girl with the softest looking cardigan imaginable, styled simply with a patterned silk scarf flung effortlessly around her neck and a neat plait through her scraped back hair. It's effortless styling such as this which I most admire.

cherry blossom girl
10. Jeffrey Campbell Lita shoes

I am well aware that every blogger/fashionista/hipster under the sun now owns these shoes, but I can't help but love them. They are everything I love in a shoe: chunky heel, lace-up, the perfect bridge of masculinity/femininity and comfortable. They would go with every single item in my wardrobe - they would toughen up pretty dresses, lengthen my legs when worn with skirts and look perfect paired with the skinny jeans which have recently made a reappearance on my legs. They come in all the key colours for Autumn - taupe, red, mustard, khaki, brown - but if I was to purchase, I would have to make the black distressed my choice. They are sure to become a classic shoe and never go out of style.

Listening to on repeat:

Ballet Shoes






Backless leotards, sheer pleated ballerina skirts, ruby red ballet slippers and hair neat and severely parted, scraped back into buns. Hannah MacGibbon's homage to the ballet at Chloe was amongst my favourites of all the spring/summer shows.

Photographs. The Cherry Blossom Girl

20 Oct 2010

The 10 10 project











10 10 is a delightful project where 10 bloggers took 10 film photographs each on 10/10/10.

'No special occasion, no big event, just the essence of daily life captured through ten lenses. The 1010 project was devised as an antidote to everything in modern life always having to be bigger, better, louder and brighter than what’s been before. It’s an opportunity to slow down and appreciate the simple, everyday things that make life beautiful.'

The photographers:

Ebony Bizys from Tokyo
Michelle Gow from South Africa
Anabela Carneiro from Toronto
Victoria Hannan from London
Jacinta Moore from Melbourne
Hilda Grahnat from Malmo via Berlin
Brian Ferry from London
Pia-Jane Bijkerk from Amsterdam
Kate Miss from New York
Kris Atomic from Brighton

12 Oct 2010

That certain sense of style




There's a certain sense of style that some girls are just born with. We can buy as many shoes, read as many fashion magazines and copy the latest trends as much as we like, but that innate sense of style is only gifted to a certain few. I'm talking about those girls who can leave the house without a scrap of makeup, their hair touseled this way and that, wearing a simple check shirt and jeans with one hem rolled up haphazordly and still turn heads.
Celebrity wise, Clemence Posey and Lea Seydoux, and Stevie of Discotheque Confusion fame spring to mind. These are girls who don't need an hour to get ready. A change from day to night usually requires a smear of red lipstick and a pair of lace-up heeled boots pulled on their feet as they leave the house. Nothing that they wear looks too 'put together' and thought about. There's nothing flashy, nothing sparkly, nothing that craves your attention. But that plain cotton shirt, those woolly black tights, the vintage jumpers, the simple skirts, everyday blue jeans, the hair bands casually pulled over the wrists in the place of bracelets .... take another glance at this girl and she'll be the one in the room that you most want to be like.



Photographs: The Cobra Snake, Mina Volimaline, Milagr (flickr)

11 Oct 2010

Colour Combinations






Camel, bright blue, grey, khaki and black

Photographs via Jeanne's blog

Style Inspirations



















Inspiration for October dressing: Thick woolly jumpers, camel coloured coats, messy buns, plaid shirts, heeled lace-up boots, straight-leg jeans with turn-ups, chanel earrings, vintage brogues, red lips, grey jumpers, full eyebrows


Photographs: freja beha, dublin streets, natalie off duty, panache, sarah lauren, via daughter of the soho riots, viktor vauthier, way beyond fabric, lina di moda, le portillon, la min ya net, julia, jak and jil, unknown, unknown, concoction, clemence posey