Saturday, March 29, 2008

Panic Packing

Why is it that the one thing you need, you can never find? I can't find my silver sandals, which has put me into a strop, as I had planned my entire wardrobe around these shoes. We're off on holiday today to go and soak up some sun and get out of the rat race for a week. Back next Sunday, hopefully with a tan.

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

A lesson in shoes

Part one: How not to wear Gladiator Sandals, as demonstrated by Lindsay Lohan



I like gladiator sandals, I really do. But not like this. There are far too many pairs out there that have ankle straps, for which only the skinniest of ankles need apply. For girls not blessed with delicate bones, might I suggest lower straps or going all out with gladiator boots, a la D&G, Balenciaga and Givenchy, as seen below.




For the high street, Topshop's tan leather offerings, with their delicate intertwining straps, which won't be hitting the shelves for another few weeks but are a-mazing! Unfortunately, there are no images yet but take my word for it. As soon as they're out, I'm gonna have me a 300 moment.

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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Bad fashion makes me sad



At University, I was known as the Topshop Queen. I was forever hunting down obscure pieces from back of the rail collections and little entered my wardrobe that was not from the Arcadia company's biggest cash cow. So, like many others I was doubly excited last year when Kate Moss began creating her own collections for the high street chain.

Today sees the launch of the new Spring Summer range for Topshop, as boldly advertised on their website. Whereas last year's debut collection saw hordes of teenage (and not so teenage) fans fighting for space outside the store and queues into the concession, this year's has come around without the much hyped bang, just a wimpering leaflets-at-the-tills and Grazia spread for the campaign. Last year's initial lot flew off the shelves as eager young 'uns fought to have a piece of the collection in their wardrobe, hoping that a little bit of Ms Moss' starriness might rub off on them too. The autumn winter collection targetting the office party crowd in need of a dress also made somewhat of an impact although it was hard to ignore rail upon rail of the dresses in the January sales, in particular the Swarovski dress that Moss wore to Fashion Rocks and had copied for her Topshop collection at the supposedly bargain price of £250.

Unfortunately for Moss and Philip Green, this collection doesn't seem to have the same appeal as the first and rightly so. It all smacks a bit of been-there-done-that. Most of the pieces remind me very much of my teenage wardrobe in the 90s - lace front jeans and shorts, lurex striped dresses and - oh dear lord - pinstripe jeans; not a look to be repeated happily in fashion history. The only pieces I would consider (and that's about as far as it'll go in all honesty) are the fringed suede (supposedly machine washable) waistcoat, £50 (below), and the scarf print dress, £75 (left). And at the prices that Topshop are charging, consider is all I will do. I'm sorry but £28 for a double layer vest? £35 for a boho print scarf? I wasn't born yesterday or the day before that. I could just as easily pop to H&M or any other high street store and buy a similar scarf or top for under a tenner.


Recently, my counterparts and I have begun to lament the good old days when, in need of a dress for a Friday night party we could pop into Toppers and pick up something lovely for about £35 or £40 to rock out in. Those days are long gone, with most dresses starting at about £60 which makes me think either kids these days are getting far more pocket money than we ever did or they've simply moved on to Primark, the new don of disposable weekend party fashion.

Of course no doubt soon there will be packs of teenagers roaming oxford circus or a high street near you dressed head to toe in mode a la Moss and Phillip Green will be lying on a big pile of cash, smoking a cigar and patting himself on the back with this genius idea. It's just a shame that Topshop appears to be trying very hard to move away from its core customers of 14-30s looking for a relatively cheap fashion fix and driving them straight into the arms of other chains such as Primark and H&M, which go from strength to strength when it comes to fashion bargains.

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The aftermath

As predicted, today was somewhat of a tough day; I ended up doing a 14 hour day and that's not including the hour at each end of the day on public transport. I won't go into details but needless to say, it was one of the most painful days I've done in a long time. It far exceeds any of my recent grievances about my current placement by at least a mile.

I was slightly taken aback when at the end of the day it emerged that pretty much everyone else was having a car take them wherever they needed to go but I (the only person working on the shoot for free) was not. Thankfully, I managed to squeeze into another car heading for a post-shoot dinner that dropped me at a tube station, saving me walking through deepest darkest Hackney at 9pm but only just.


On a sad note, Anthony Minghella died today. I met him and his family several times when he worked with my mother many years ago. He was from what I remember a nice man and of course, a wonderful director. My thoughts are with his family during what is no doubt a very sad and very hard time.

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Monday, March 17, 2008

Shoots and shoes

So, today I got a call from an Editor of a magazine that I was meant to do work experience with earlier this year. At the time, it all went tits up and I ended up not doing the placement for various reasons. Anyway, she asked me to assist on a shoot tomorrow. I was happy to be asked as it's always good to meet people and said I'd do it if my current boss let me.

Current boss said yes as we're not vastly busy and so I called the Editor back and said I'd be happy to do it. She emails me the call sheet and all's well until I see the call time - 7:30am. I don't even get up on work days at 7:30am! I will have to use all of my will power to force myself out of bed at 5:45am (ouch!) tomorrow and remain chirpy as I repeatedly burn myself with a steamer. Oh boy.

Another one of life's lessons: never agree to a job until you know all of the terms and conditions.

On the plus side, I finally got my sandals today. Yeay! I have been traipsing to various Topshops trying to find them in the dusty pink and size 4 and at last I have succeeded. Hurrah!



Aren't they pretty? What made it doubly sweet was the fact that my gift voucher that was left over from my birthday meant that I paid the bargain price of £2. You really can't get much better than that.

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Friday, March 07, 2008

Delivery in style

It's Friday night so rather than mumble incoherently for a few paragraphs, I thought I'd share this instead. Walking past the Chanel store on Bond Street the other morning on my way to work, I spotted this outside:




Why make your deliveries in an ordinary white van with a tattooed driver when you can have a lovely Chanel van instead? The thing that really made it for me was the licence plate, NO 5.

Awesome.

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Thursday, March 06, 2008

What not to do in publishing

I am a pedant for the english language. I can't help it. Seeing punctuation and grammar being abused or words - especially the simple ones - misspelt through sheer laziness really winds me up. You can therefore probably imagine that I spend a lot of my online time in a state of frustration when I see text speak on myspace or facebooks. Really, there is no need. Even those too lazy to bother learning now have access to spellchecks on pretty much every computer so they really have no excuse left.

While I understand that the internet is no place to play Language Police, you would think that maybe, just maybe online magazines would be of a higher standard than your average 14 year old's myspace written in StIcKy CaPs. The knowledge that you are a legitimate publication would surely push you to check your vitals before you hit publish? Apparently not.

A new magazine, Flirt is now firmly at the top of my Most Wanted for Abuse of the English Language. Apart from attempting to be an even lower rent mens' mag than Nuts or Zoo (yes, it is possible), it has more appalling spelling, grammar and punctuation errors than a illiterate 10 year old's essay. I was pointed in it's direction after a topic on Digital Spy and could not quite believe the sloppy work. Note to it's editor: You are only highlighting your crappy content (Billi from Big Brother? Oh Dear) with your inability to string a sentence together coherently.

I know some of you out there will think me bitchy and decry me for slagging off what is essentially still a new magazine that is unsteady on it's feet and still looking for better content. Well, if a magazine starts out poorly, how will it keep its' readers and maybe gain some, adding better advertisers and start generating money if it's editor cannot even write properly? In short, it won't. Instead, it will die a slow and pitiful death, losing someone along the way a lot of money and another losing their dream.

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