Another 30 Days

Hopefully by now, you've had a good gander over at 30 Days of Flats and hopefully, you've enjoyed it. Following on from the positive response, I've decided to continue with the theme of 30 Days and make it a series. Today, I've started a new chapter, 30 Days of Sun in honour of the lovely weather so lo and behold, let me introduce you to my sunglasses collection:

Sunday, Monday and La Wintour

Whoops, I forgot to post my link yesterday, sorry. To make up for it, here is a photo of Anna Wintour that I took at today's Jaeger London show as I sat across the shag pile carpet runway from her:



Until I have time to write up my full round up of the week, head over to the Daily Express website for my daily photo blog of LFW:

For Sunday's post, click here

For today's post, click here

I do bands too.

So, remember a while ago, I mentioned that I was doing a test with a band? Well, I realised that I never posted the results and as I'm embarking on another test shoot this weekend, I thought it was about time to share the results of my previous efforts. Working with bands is a pretty different but equally fun ball game, as is men's fashion, something that I am still only an amateur explorer of. So, without further ado, I present to you Rochelle: The Test.









Photographer: Caroline Leeming
Makeup: Ruth Brophy
Hair: Lynda Darragh

This is just a small selection of the shots from the day, if for any reason you'd like to see some more or throw me some work, drop me a line. In the meantime, check out the people you've been ogling: Rochelle.

Hey, Fatty! - Whoops.

I realize that I haven’t blogged in quite some time, despite my assurances to you that I would blog every day during the hell that is the Hey Fatty diet. One of my many reasons is the fact two weeks ago, I fell off the wagon somewhat spectacularly at the New Look party. Having not eaten much, once I hit the champagne I was away to put it mildly. I was bold enough to go over to Peaches Geldof and Samanda and start up random conversations with all three and I’d like to issue an open apology for my drunkenness. I also accosted Swarovski Crystal Head man, (real name Phillip), who I have previously met during LFW. He didn’t recognize me but was kind enough to humour my requests for a photograph of his scalp, which was covered in lots of butterflies, as you’ll see from the photos below:


Phillip of Lazygramophone.com


Peaches Geldof, who was far too friendly or humouring my drunkenness. I can't decide.



BB's Samanda. Can you see the scared smile?

And now, back to business. I will fully admit that having lost 10 lbs, the joy went slightly to my head and I’ve not been as strict with myself in the last week. This morning on the tube, lacking a Metro, I decided to tally up everything that I’ve eaten in the last 9 days and the results are below. I’m yet to weigh myself but I have a feeling that my weight hasn’t shifted at all. Still, I luckily still have the better part of two weeks to whittle away those last few pounds before I’m forced to reveal my bikini body for the first time in a year. However, the progress can definitely be seen (and felt) from the fact that I can fit into a brand new pair of Topshop Baxter skinnies (waist 26) without having to lie down on the floor to do them up. Enough pratting on, let’s get to the food diary:

Wednesday 29th April

Lunch - EAT prawn salad, banana, water
Snack – none
Dinner – tuna handroll, salmon nigiri, salmon sashimi
Party – copious amounts of champagne and red wine

Thursday 30th April (this was the day that I was so hungover, the thought of any food other than fatty junk made me feel physically sick)

Breakfast – none
Snack – none
Lunch – none
Snack (at press day) – two Portuguese custard tarts, water
Dinner – sweet and sour chicken hong kong style, boiled rice, crispy seaweed, prawn crackers, half a can of coke

The half can of coke was probably the best tasting can of Coke that I’ve ever had. Having not drunk what was essentially my life blood and only form of caffeine for a week and a half, it was like manna from heaven.

Friday 1st May

Breakfast – banana
Snack – none
Lunch – Salmon salad with brown rice (M&S), five king prawns
Snack – none
Dinner (for the boyfriend’s birthday) – Steak, handful of fries, 3 glasses of red wine

Saturday 2nd May

Absolutely no clue. Must investigate.

Sunday 3rd May (Boyfriend’s Birthday BBQ day – no actual defined meals as such)

3 small hot dogs, 5 tbsp coleslaw, handful of carrot batons, handful of cherry tomatoes, 2 breadsticks, crisps. 4 Kopparbergs, fruit from the Pimms bowl.

Monday 4th (Bank Holiday)
Breakfast – none
Snack – none
Lunch/Dinner – (Yo Sushi) tuna handroll, edamame, salmon nigiri, chicken gyoza, chicken katsu, can of Coke
Snack – bag of Wiltshire ham crisps from M&S, ½ Bulmer’s pear

Tuesday 5th
Breakfast – banana
Snack – none
Lunch – prawn salad, banana
Snack – apple, Wiltshire ham crisps
Dinner – grilled tandoori chicken in wheat free pitta, 1 poppadom, 1 ½ glasses of lemonade, 1 Bulmers pear

Wednesday 6th
Breakfast – bacon sandwich, can of Coke
Snack – none
Lunch – Vital salad (lettuce, chicken, egg noodle, tomato, sweetcorn, peppers and chilli/ginger dressing)
Snack – Prawn crackers
Dinner – Halloumi, 8 smiley faces, corn on the cob
Thursday 7th
Breakfast – 3 mini fruit skewers
Snack – none
Lunch – Grilled chicken superfood salad (Leon)
Snack – half a cupcake, small bag Toffee popcorn
Dinner – half a large pizza (Dominos)

Friday 8th
Breakfast – banana
Snack – none
Lunch – 2 pieces seared tuna and coriander nigiri, 2 pieces seared salmon nigiri, 4 pieces salmon maki, 4 pieces tuna maki, packet of McCoys flame grilled steak crisps, coke.

Saturday 9th
Breakfast/lunch - 2 carrots, 2 tbsp low fat coleslaw, 1 tbsp tarmasalata, 1 wholemeal pitta, 4 slice halloumi cheese, grilled, 2 glasses of red wine
Evening out - 1 Kopparberg pear cider, 2 glasses of red wine, McDonalds cheese burger, handful of fries

Sunday 10th
Breakfast – worked through
Lunch – 2 carrots, 1 tbsp tarmasalata, 2 tbsp low fat coleslaw, 4 slices halloumi, grilled chorizo
Snack – none
Dinner – roast chicken breast (minus skin), green beans, salad with dressing, 3 toffee poppets, handful of Nandos crisps, toffee popcorn

Monday 11th
Breakfast – banana
Snacks – Sweet chilli sensation crisps
Lunch – 2 salmon nigiri, 2 tuna nigiri, 1 tuna roll (4 pieces), 1 salmon roll
Dinner – grilled chicken, cucumber and spring onion salad

Tuesday 12th
Breakfast – bacon sandwich and can of coke
Snack – none
Lunch - 2 salmon nigiri, 2 tuna nigiri, 1 tuna roll (4 pieces), 1 salmon roll
Snack – none
Dinner – chicken fajitas, 3 Kopparbergs, toffee popcorn

Wednesday 13th
Breakfast – fruit stick, orange juice
Snack – various canapés
Lunch - 2 salmon nigiri, 2 tuna nigiri, 1 tuna roll (4 pieces), 1 salmon roll
Snack/Dinner – various canapés, champagne

More stories of recent adventures tomorrow, I promise.

Colorize me

At long last, the story of last Thursday night, accompanied by photos from my iPhone. Let's read on, shall we? We hit the Ray-Ban Colorize launch party at Ultra Lounge at Selfridges and what a night it was - greeted at the doors with free-flowing mojitos and beer, we knew we were in for a good evening, short as it would be. This was further added to by the giant bowls of jelly beans dotted strategically around the room, yum.

The event itself was to launch the new Ray-Ban Colorize Kit(available exclusively at Selfridges) which allows you to customise your pair by drawing on the arms and frames. It was also a preview of an exhibition of Fender guitars that have been customised by 10 artists that will be auctioned in aide of Oxfam later in the year.



Apart from Jelly Bellies and free booze, they also had areas where you could try on different Wayfarers and get your polaroid taken, cool wall prints, plus Esser and DJ sets from Mystery Jets and Lou & Nova for music-slash-entertainment.



What they didn't tell you about was the small area tucked in a corner where you could go and test out the Colorize Kit on your own pair of Ray-Bans. Word began to spread through the crowd that this area existed and once it was out, people started flocking like bees to honey. Unfortunately, the free pairs ran out quickly, sending those trolling for freebies scrambling at a display unit that was purely for trying on (but not manned). Don't you know that in these hard times, fashionistas will fight for free sunnies? We witnessed one girl having a pair of aviators prised out of her hands after she'd already drawn on them. Ouch.

Ambling back into the room, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that Esser were actually pretty good. Often at these kind of thing, you get bands playing who are achingly cool but also painfully shit. We even had a little boogie.



I'm even debating checking them out again, which doesn't happen often. While we were bopping along, we noticed various highly recognisable faces in the crowd, including the following: Jo Wood, Alexa Chung, Nick Grimshaw and drumroll please, Amy Winehouse, fresh from the Caribbean. I know that you've probably skimmed through the above to get to the photos so I'll just get on with posting these:


Alexa Chung, who spent the evening being pretty low key and watching Esser.



Above: Amy Winehouse, sucking her thumb, after she had run around, leaping (literally) on Wood, Grimshaw and a variety of other people in the crowd. She did look far healthier in the flesh, with a slight tan and fuller figure but she is clearly as mad as a box of frogs.

Having casually stalked Wino, we got bored and decided to play with some sunnies at one of the trying-on points. My partner in crime took the following photo of me trying on aviators:



You got a Polaroid snapped (which you were encouraged to write something witty on) wearing a pair for their wall:



Opposite that wall, they had another featuring lots of photos of presumably famous people wearing Ray-Bans:



Having wandered around for a while, we had to leave to hit another meeting and thus missed a certain 'face' so desperate for some free Ray-Bans that she started clambering up to help herself to a fistful of sunnies at a five finger discount. One of the chandeliers, pre-mugging:



However, it was once we'd left (sans goodie bag-boo!) that things started to get very interesting indeed. Lurking by the loos, waiting for my friend, I couldn't help noticing a familiar beehive floating around the Cath Kidston section of the Lower Ground Floor, picking up pretty much everything like a floral-obsessed klepto. I'm not sure if the woman marching Amy Winehouse back to her minders in this photo is the staff member for CK, a random member of the public or one of her own team:



FYI: Amy is absolutely miniscule. I'm small myself but she's teeny tiny, even with the beehive. As we left Selfridges a short while later, the girls walking out of the door in front of us got a serious case of papping. I'm sure that there are several photos lurking on WENN of me looking slightly confused - if only I knew who it was.

Now, as lame as it is, I'm going to retire even though it's Friday night and I should - according to British tradition - be having the time of my life being sick in an alley somewhere. Next time - Quiksilver for Women's gig-slash-launch party and the bad things I did at the Burberry Sample Sale.

Silent scream

I'm sorry if I seem to have disappeared again. And I was doing so well, right? After the craziness of fashion week back-to-back with my boyfriend's sister's wedding with a side of crippling throat virus, I felt I owed it to myself to slow down for a few days. Unfortunately, that was not the case as it was back to the swing of things in the office plus a band shoot on Saturday. Once again, I found myself doing a long week and sleeping most of Sunday in order to be ready for Monday.

The good news is that I intend to kick back and relax this weekend so just the thought of that is reinvigorating me as I type and I'll no doubt be back and raring to go later this week, with tales and photos from the Rayban Colorize party last week - Amy Winehouse, Esser and the riot over free Raybans all to come.

The bad news is you'll have to wait til next time.

Testing, 1, 2, 3?

On Saturday, I'm meant to be doing a couple of test shots with a band that my boyfriend works with. So far, I have had little to no contact with them and subsequently, have no idea what direction the shoot will take, which is making me panic a little. Okay, a lot.

It has however reminded me that I never posted photos from my last test from sometime back in October/November so I figure in the absence of any other posts, you might like to see these. There was no real story, other than maybe black. It was very much a shoot for finding my feet and playing around to find out what I liked.

Et Voila!






Photographer: Caroline Leeming
Makeup: Ruth Brophy
Hair: Lynda Darragh
Model: Isobel at Nevs

My name is Adulescent and I am a shopaholic

Tonight after work I had the pleasure of being taken to the UK premiere of Confessions of a Shopaholic. Having been bombarded with the adverts for weeks on end, I must admit that I was particularly curious, especially as I loved the Shopaholic books when I read them. I found it interesting how they changed it so heavily as the books are set in London (with the exception of Shopaholic takes Manhatten) and Becky Bloomfield is painted as a pretty ordinary girl with a particularly bad credit card addiction.

I have to say that I enjoyed the film immensely. There were countless moments where I found myself laughing out loud while simultaneously horrified at the similar shopping patterns between the protagonist and myself. Of course, it's silly and girly and men will absolutely hate it but by god, if you're female and have ever even had the smallest rush from parting with your cash in exchange for something pretty, you will love this film. And Hugh Dancy is definitely a nice buffer between gags as the film's resident eye candy.

A lot of people and critics have commented on how very poignant it is that the film has come out when the economy is still in freefall and we are paying for all of the plastic bashing that we previously took for granted but it's the perfect light and frothy film with a deeper meaning about the dangers of debt that will hopefully strike even the tiniest of cords with the audience.

And finally, the fashion. Patricia Field of Sex & The City and Devil Wears Prada fame took the reigns of the costume department for another romp through high fashion via the wardrobe department. While I cannot fault her for her styling, I found that it was a little uninspired in that I could name pretty much 90% of the main characters' SS08 wardrobes. And the bridesmaid's dress just resembled Carrie's famous tutu from the opening credits just a little too much. But I will give her props where props are due, as pretty much all of the actors looked superb.

And now, a few photos from the red pink carpet:


heading in

fans lining the barriers

They even had a mini fashion show outside the cinema, featuring a model wearing a dress made up of shopping bags emblazoned with the film's typeface alongside a selection of beautiful SS09 fashion. LOVED it.

Oh and as a footnote, can I just say that Isla Fisher is absolutely miniscule and gorgeous in the flesh. She must use a step ladder to kiss Sacha Baron Cohen (of which there was sadly no sighting). Other celebs seen were Duncan from Blue, that girl who used to be in As If and Bianca Gascoigne who was mightily overdressed and backcombed to within an inch of her life.

Now, exhausted and happy, I'm going to bed to cuddle my 2.55 and dream of compulsive shopping.

Valentine's quickie

Good morning all and Happy Valentine's day. Just a quick note to say whether you're with someone or not, have a kick ass day. I am dragging the boyfriend into town in search of a YSL manifesto and a copy of Katie Grand's new baby, LOVE magazine. In the meantime, enjoy some random totally un-Valentine's day photos from my iphone.


Cheap store round the corner from my office that sells coats, scarves and so forth for very little money. They put up new signs every day and this one made me laugh.


Everyone's been raving about Selfridges London window displays with their white futuristic grecian theme (which are rightly beautiful) but I thought this one, on one of the side roads not on Oxford Street was much more fun. BUNNY ARMY!


Hanging on the phone to PRs for hours and chasing tickets for LFW can be soul destroying so I've been working on my rubber band ball while I listen to lots of crap on-hold muzak. I only started it yesterday lunch time but by the end of the day it was spanning more than 5cm. Next week is entirely devoted to chasing tickets so expect this thing to grow.

Right, time to get dressed, put on my comfiest shoes and get to manifesto chasing. Wish me luck!

T to the V, Thomas Vicary

On Friday night, I had the pleasure of heading over to Home House to the salon show of Thomas Vicary's AW09 collection, courtesy of the lovely Fluff PR. The salon show was a nice warm up to LFW, which is a mere two weeks away now (gulp) and generally far less stressful, what with the bonus of Tanqueray Gin cocktails and nibbles to put everyone in a good mood.

I spent the evening hanging out with Bianca from the blog Fashion Slant, who even featured my Bodhi bag in her own round up of the evening. Details of the collection that I loved - exposed zips, intricate pintucks, a deep ruby red featuring heavily and the shredded jacket which I loveloveLOVED. Lots of photos to ogle below:

The Crowd...



The Clothes...











And the man himself, Thomas Vicary...


Fashion Footnote:
I loved Tobi's (who interns for both me and Fluff) hair:



Inspired, I finally decided that it was time to shell out for a haircut. Photos tomorrow (hopefully).

Dirty Girl in pictures

As promised a few days ago, below are some photos of what precisely is wrong with our shower:



In case you're wondering why we had to tape the word 'NIE' across the front of it, the incident happened late at night and we couldn't warn our polish housekeeper, so we figured if we taped the word 'no' in polish, she'd get a rough idea not to use it.



As you can see from the photo above, the metal hinge has completed sheered off. There's still no word on when we'll be getting a new shower so in the meantime, I'm having to make use of the bath. I didn't really think I liked baths but for now, it's my only option if I want to be able to share enclosed spaces with others without force.

And now to post about something infinitely more interesting, Thomas Vicary.

Can't change your spots

As I mentioned on twitter, I really shouldn't have gone to Topshop. What started off as a tipsy wander around with the mantra that I wouldn't buy anything ended up in a serious bank account bashing. One of the things that I bought was this printed dress with a leopard on it.



As we all know, I'm more than partial to a little animal magic so I fell irrationally fell in love with this straight away. The print goes all the way round with a tail and all on the back and for £18, it's recession friendly too. Unlike the rest of my purchases but more on those another time.