Style Bubble

Changeling

>> Bright blue to grey in one swift day... was a bit weirded out by the fact that it went from such saturated colours to a dull palette in the space of 24 hours.  That's quite a silly thought seeing as I have lived in the UK for most of my life and should no better...

This Urban Collection vintage denim jacket is a piece that will be accompanying me on more jaunts to the English coastline as well as the EUR5 hat that I bought in Vienna after a bit of helpful haggling...

This Ann Sofie Back x Fred Perry dress will however be staying put in London...where shoulder pads, black and a surprisingly fitted waist and skirt combined with the polo dress material have given me a odd smart/casual hybrid...

Swashed Away

I've had the title of this post in mind for over a week and it's literally been searing itself into the wordplay section of my brain.  That clearly shows I need to get out more.  I've never had such a long delay between getting excited about something and posting about it.  Due to graduate fashion week madness though and odd schedules, I hadn't been able to photograph these pieces that I had picked up at the Swash sample sale last last Friday.  Pieces that have been making me beam everytime I look at them, especially when I spread them out all over my Swash x Habitat bedspread which I'm dangerously close to overwashing.  So starts the summer lovin' period with these prints that will probably again be overwashed by early September.  Sarah and Toshio's studio was so crammed with their beautifully printed pieces that I went into a frenzy in picking things up that range from their A/W 07 to S/S 09 collections.  I felt like I had to pour some fuel into this concept of a so-called summer wardrobe so my starting point was Swash with their stunning ink drawings of chains, insects, animals and all things Mother Nature... 

By pure coincidence, I'm also miraculously able to convey that whole summer thang, a rarity in the unpredictable weather of the UK.  This weekend, I escaped to the boyf's hometown Westgate upon Sea (I say Margate for ease of recognition...) and *gasp* took some pics outside of my Holloway balcony.  Cue pics where the background of the sea is far more enticing and distracting than the actual outfits in the foreground...

In total, a skirt, a sweater, some trackie bottoms and a pocketed dress... if Swash made some printed wedges, some sunnies and a tote, I'd be pretty much committing the cardinal fashion sin of wearing head-to-toe far too often this summer (which if this weekend is any indication, is FINALLY looking up for the UK...). 

Streetstyle Go Go Go!

>> I discovered two fairly new London streetstyle blogs this week through going to the student shows... Vanessa Jackman snapped my pleated Bruno Pieters jacket at the CSM BA show and Holly Falconer of People in London captured my vintage denim frayed jacket newly arrived from The Urban Collection.  Had a peek at their archives and it's all top notch quality streetstyle - i.e. good photos and an eye combined... the streetstyle blogs list is just gets longer and longer...

Avoiding the Rash

Can you see the sun?  Can you see it?  Plenty of it is flooding here and it's blinding both me and the boyf.  I'm also insisting that he is burning whilst he reckons he's um...'tanning'.  I have my doubts.  My issues with heat really does rage when it comes the jewellery.  At the best of times (i.e. winter...), I start rashing after 20 minutes of metal jewellery wearing.  At the current temperature, the rash flares up more rapidly and actually spreads to other areas where the jewellery isn't touching my skin (just call me Rash, newest and most useless member of X-Men...). 

So with necklaces like the beautiful woven yarn necklace by Daydream Nation, I'm in a bit of a pickle.  With their latest collaboration with Urban Outfitters, entitled 'Dreamers', which is an inexpensive version of their mainline jewellery, it's even more of a no-no, given that it's  made with more 'affordable' materials', cute as the woven/metal necklaces and bracelets are.  Therefore, I'll just have to stick them somewhere else in the sun and so in they tuck, in and around the Bordelle elastic corset...

Hah!  I like to see you try and make my skin pus now, you evil rash... 

To Graduates and Beyond

If you're up early enough, you might have already seen it.  If you're not, then you might see it later.  Or if you hate Metro and all that it stands for, you won't see it at all and you'll scorn me forever more.  I'm writing this post beforehand so I haven't seen it yet but in the Metro should be a double page spread with these pics all over it and a wee interview.  Pourquoi you ask?  For once, I can explain it and don't have to shrug "I dunno..." the way that Tim Bisley did on Spaced.

For this year's Graduate Fashion Week (June 7th - June 11th), I will be at the event throughout the entire time, blogging away at a designated stand.  Sadly it's not a plastic bulbous bubble which would have been HILAR.  I'll be seeing all the uni shows, thrusting a dictaphone in people's faces, taking a hideous amount of pictures and going a bit mental with the blogging given that I'd be sitting full time doing it.  Yes, some people still don't seem to realise I hold a separate full time job outside of blogging...

So I went and chose a few of my favourite pieces from a selection of graduates that will be at GFW and the lovely Philip Waterman shot me in them and had the hard task of getting me to move properly given I'm not great in front of foreign cameras.  I tried to choose a variety of pieces, representing what I think are superb pieces in their own right and what I would actually wear in reality... different facets of my style as it were.  I'm looking forward to meeting the students who made them and discovering the rest of their collections.

I'm getting myself involved in a few graduate-related projects at the moment and GFW is a key one just because it's nice to have the resources and time to talk up students outside of the bigger schools like Antwerp/CSM.  This will be a bit more invasive and if the students don't know what the hell this blog is or in fact what a blog is, I'll just invade my way in anyway.  If you're free to come down to Earls Court for a bit, a student/exhibitor or you're going down regardless, please do drop by and say 'Hi!'.  I promise I won't be distracted by IrfanView batch resizing too much...

Kasia Bishop (Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication) - I'm so glad the cut-outs at the back of this dress came out fairly sharp on camera because they are mind blowingly intricate in real life and I was actually shitting myself because I thought I'd break it when putting it on. 

Meera Stannard (University of Westminster) - I'm told this is actually a menswear ensemble.  Not that that's gonna stop me.  I loved the print that is a sort of scratchy paint print and the way that it contrasts with the lovely yellow mohair....

Iwona Pilch (Middlesex University) - The rest of this collection actually blows my mind and this dress I'm wearing isn't the best piece in my opinion but clues people into the covered wooden bead motif which runs through... had to breathe in a bit for the dress...

Lois Porte (University of the West of England, Bristol) - This inched its way into the ensemble of the day.  I had so much fun flinging this gigantic knit around the place to make it move.  It made zero sense when it was on the hanger but once on, the volume of it seemed to have a life of its own.  The matching silk printed leggings were a treat too...

Holly Russell (Manchester Metropolitan University) - I believe this piece has been photographed on Alice Dellal.  Sure she looks heaps better in it but it does weirdly look like my black hair is running into the shoulders where there are these flowing hair shoulder pads.  The make-up/hair woman had to keep brushing the shoulder pads down to keep it smooth...

The New and the Old Pleat

>> It's been a very pleat-themed, meshy (5 points to whoever chortles up the "Don't you mean MESSY, Susie?" comment first...) start to the week what with the Alpha 60 scarf antics and mesh dress stand-in.  These gloves that came into my possession courtesy of the wonderful Laura of Gloved Up combine the two.  They're a nude mesh opera-length fingerless glove, in true Gloved Up style and are adorned with white pleats that immediately made me want to play a game of matchy matchy with a VERY old Boudicca dress that has been run ragged on the top but the pleats still remain razor sharp and pristine white.  Of course given I have a habit of heavy petting grosgrain pleats, that could very well change.   And yes, I'm feeling all the suspender action going on... enough for me to dig out again, a very old H&M top that I bought when I was a wee bit too young to know what to do with the suspender clips... oh the naivety...

This New Puritan

The internal battle rages on as to whether multi-purpose garments are frightfully clever or just plain hellish.  Coats with detatchable sleeves that somehow connect with the waist to make a belt with a thousands of poppers to help you do so.  The American Apparel scarf dress video that puzzled my friend to no end when she questioned whether ANY of those 15 ways of wearing the damn thing looks good at all.  Shoes that double up as purses.  Is trying to do too much any good if it can't do the one thing it's supposed to do well?  I think I'll continue being skeptical until I'm smacked with a dress that unzips and suddenly turns into the door to Narnia.

This Alpha 60 pleated accordion scarf isn't meant to be multi-purpose per se but as dear Melbournian Kat of Style Lines discovered a while back, it is superb for creating a multitude of shapes without doing much to it given that it posesses a razor sharp accordian pleat in a light fabric that seems to have a life of its own.  You sort of prod at it and it snakes around in a different way, tempting me to give it some sort of a pet name.  Sharpie? 

Going back to the multi-purpose question though.  I guess, if you haven't paid a humongous sum for some wonder garment that purports to do a multitude of things, getting ONE good way of wearing it out of the damn thing isn't really the end of the world.  The scarf didn't come with an instruction booklet so I'm not exactly going to be waving my fist at them and reporting this to Watchdog.  That it does do a few things is a Brucie bonus.  I used a puritanical outfit consisting of a vintage dress dotted with flattened rosettes and a Margiela skirt for initial experimentation... not everything is a raging success but like I said, no Watchdog complaints necessary...

Wool in the Summer

Yookoo on Etsy's wooly accessories arrived with a delicious woody fresh kind of scent that I can't really explain what it is.  Now it's impermeated with a mix of Fantastic Man scent and Escentric Molecules because I've worn the cowl, chain and warmer so many times.  There might even be a bit of ciggy smoke squished in that scent (not mine, others...I strangely like passive smoking...).  Let's hope the smell that can only come from excessive heavy wearing will ease up as summer kicks in.  Except I'm still being given Yookoo wool options in the form of these Bubble Bobble and Elizabeth II pom pom headbands.  Now the uncanny nature of those titles already had me at the first click; I had two hamsters called Bubble and Bobble...my nickname is Susie Bubble yadda yadda...I have a fixation with biographies of Tudor royalty and peerage... blah blah blah...

But the key thing here are the pom poms which so remind me of how I failed miserably at making ones of my own (did NOT wrap the wool enough times around the cardboard rings made out of Kellogs packets...) when I was about 6.  It's like an upgraded stylised reference to the bobble hats of yesteryear that I hated at the time but actually wouldn't mind resurrecting now.  God what is that scent she injects them with.... oh well, stale cigs and beer here they come...especially around festival season...

(Vintage Pierre Balmain navy dress, Topshop Unique metallic pink dress wrapped around with belt, Giles crystal shoes)

(Carola Euler grey jersey oversized cardi, Peeps.Org hands tee, Topshop sheer tee, Richard Nicoll metallic trousers, YSL shoes)

Bloody Red

Like a dodgy theatre trick where red silk gushes out of fake wounds, I have a bit of a beast on my hands here.  Thanks to my luverly sister who works at .Cent Magazine and seems to be a bit more ballsy with freebies, she has an Aquascutum dress that is a never-got-to-production sample from the A/W 09-10 collection. Michael Herz, Aquascutum's head of design is going to be guest editor of .Cent's forthcoming issue hence why dear Lou got the dress.  Still, we're both sort of scratching our heads at it really.  The ruche of the fabric in itself poses a problem and is interesting at the same time but for me, it's the mean reds that I'm struggling me.

Yes, yes, red is all over the joint, bleeding over a lot of collections next season and attempting to pump its way into my wardrobe.  I'm trying to pump it elsewhere to be honest given that wearing this so-called er lucky colour has always made me feel uneasy.  With this particular dress, I'm feeling specifically like a giant red blood cell ready to flow out of a stigmata point.  Ok, I exaggerate.  The dress is actually more beauty than beast which is why I attempted to grapple with the colour using this precise piece.  And maybe, just maybe it's in fact a good thing feeling like a red blood cell... 

It will take a few more attempts of course but hey if the red is gonna try and gush in, I have a feeling that any dam I try to put up might not be worth the hassle... now to get over my fear of pairing red and black...

Tee Hee Hee

I guess the point here was to take awesome pictures with the Borders & Frontiers' tees that I received in a neat cardboard box on Friday with the intention to brainwash you all into clicking Buy on the right hand side.  Sadly, it's pissing with rain, windy and the camera which my boyf has procured is acting up a bit...

Oh, and I have a leg of lamb to contend with in the kitchen.  When red meat is involved, I want to devote my undivided attention to it to ensure, it's tender, juicy and pink/bloody... over-done lamb is an attrocity to meat eating...

So here I have some temp tee pics to illustrate the fact that I especially wanted the tee to be printed on grey as well as white to show some love for what is essentially my wardrobe staple colour.  That said it is unfortunate that the expressions on my face are literally saying "White = :( Grey = : )".  I love them both equally in actual fact...

In Size Unisex S, they have enough fabric to do some tying, tuckage or worn loose...

I promise these tees will get more attention....right now, garlic, rosemary and a bit leg of lamb are calling me...