I'm a little teapot short and stout

Today I ventured outdoors; it was great. It wasn't the Great Outdoors it was just down the street, but it was outdoors. And it was great. I walked the whole way to the pharmacy to buy a box of paracetamol and the fresh air made my head all woozy and made my feet feel like I was floating along. I decided that the break from the house was doing me good and I should stay out longer, so I went for coffee. (I had tea, I was too scared of the coffee making me crazy or faint or something as ridiculously unlikely).
I didn't have any reading material nor was I bothered to go and buy a newspaper because why bother when I love nothing more than people watching? So I sat there oh so contentedly looking around me, minding other people's business, and scribbling in my notebook unbeknownst to my coffee drinking subjects.
And this is what I wore. Topshop jeans, Abercrombie vest, a tshirt from H&M and an old cardigan from American Apparel that I overwore and got bored of so stitched some buttons onto to give a new lease of life

lounge around and about

Since writing my post yesterday I keep thinking about loafers; I think it's cabin fever setting in that I can't get them off my mind, not that I can keep my mind on much right now really... You see I had an operation on Monday to get my wisdom teeth out and I've been couch bound all day yesterday and all day today just lying there eating Petit Filous, nodding off to sleep, waking to take some tablets, watching some television, dozing off to sleep again, a constant cycle of nothingness. Ordinarily I'm a terrible patient in that I find it so hard to sit still but it's sort of nice having nothing to worry about except whether or not I have enough pillows / baby foods / loafers. Ha ha.. What's also funny is how both meanings of the word are rather fitting to my state of being right now - there's loafers A: the lovely leather shoes I'm lusting after, and loafer B: the lazy person I've become. Anyway I've got my sister to find the pair she had last year from Topshop because I plan on wearing them on my first day of recovery out of the house; after all this slipper time my feet won't know what hit them!

I also saw this pair on the Topshop website but I'm not sure whether I properly like them or not. I don't think I look enough like a greasy middle aged Italian yacht owner to get the wear out of them if I were to actually make a purchase. I can't decide.

On the up side I feel like I'm still on my holidays having lots of time to read. I won't say quality reading time because Harry Potter isn't exactly high end literature but it's, um, my version of light entertainment, yes, that's it, it's my chic lit.

more bread less butter

Take a spoonful of modern minimalism, add a dash of masculinity, and what have you but another delectable collection from Margaret Howell. Her designs are clean and classic yet ever so slightly over-sized, which I love because they're smart whilst looking comfortable without being sloppy.



Did you notice the shoes? Ladies? Wearing loafers?
Two years ago I went to London and a friend of a friend who is studying in LCF took us on a guided shopping tour of Brick Lane. He was wearing a battered old pair of loafers and a home made cape, and since that day I've been envious of boys who are light in their loafers for their being able to wear loafers so stylishly. Now it's our turn to do so should we please this autumn. I do like the librarian look of contrasting pretty dresses with sensible footwear but I see loafers a little above brogues in the shoe charts so I'd like to do them the honour they're due in true androgynous style. Cigarette pants, trousers tapered, cropped or rolled, all ankles out and a nice clean shirt. Dashing I say!

Forever Ford

Mister Ford how I love thee! Old fashioned but leading the times! Genius!

Last week saw Tom Ford's first women's show in six years at New York Fashion Week and despite the enormity of this there was one, yes only one, photographer permitted to use his camera. Why? Because Ford believes that fashion has become over exposed in recent years. Why? Partly due to advances in internet technology. If everything is instant then there's less excitement. The anticipation is eliminated; there's no wishing and waiting and wondering, it's just wham bam thank you maam. Instant gratification doensn't necessarily ensure a sense of satisfaction, or happiness at that. Imagine you've just written your letter to Santa and walked down the road to put it in the postbox. Arriving home again you open the back door to find your kitchen full of the things you just asked for. Wow! Amazing! You take everything out, you look at it, you play with it, you try it on, isn't it all so great!? Then you put it away and it's sort of all over and done with, largely forgotten about a week later...

I admire Ford for stepping aside from the current rush toward feeding live runway collections to be broadcast in real time online. I don't believe he is running the risk of becoming quickly out dated in this world of high speed communication because there's a romantic element to preserving the mysteries of beauty, and there's little more essential to the concept of fashion than the notion of beauty.

His collection will eventually be available to view online in December before appearing in shops from late January, a course emphasising the rememberance of the word worth when saying it will be worth the wait. Another possible message to take from his show was from the models he chose. Not size zero high fashion catwalk girls but a range of seductive women who emanate style, character and personality, by whom he was inspired and for whom each garment was individually tailored. Not just a pretty faced clothes horses walking up and down representing the transient nature of the industry of our time, but all rounded women asserting the glamour of time.

Ronda you say?

Should you ever find yourself at a loss for where to go in Spain then you should think about visiting Ronda.

Ronda; it's like Honda, but with an R.



We had a proper day of playing tourists as we drove there through the epic landscape of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and then in the old part of the town there are lots of historical spots in beside which you can take silly wish-you-were-here photographs. Also, you can pick the oranges straight from the trees in the street although they're a bit bitter. And Ernest Hemingway spent a lot of time there in the 1930s, which is as good a reason as any other to get excited about a place, non?

i'm a-pleasin' my sunshine

The best thing about being on holidays is not wearing a watch. You don't need to know the time you only need to know you have enough of it to do what you want, when you want; the day is yours for the taking and the laid back Spanish mentality is perfectly conducive for our daily wanton disregard of official time.


We went to Marbella for a wander around and roamed the streets with nothing more in mind than the probability of happening upon something interesting. We sat for hours in the middle of the Orange Square eating waffles, drinking beer, watching the world go by, then continued strolling on in no particular direction.


We came across a modern art gallery, or rather The Museum of Spanish Contemporary Engraving, where there was an exhibition entitled 'The Qatar Drawings' by Dutch artist Jan Hendrix. On a side note his work reminded me of the project my friend Una is working on at the moment based on the idea of brambles. You can see some of her drawings on her blog www.unamcmahon.wordpress.com

forget about your worries and your strife

Greetings from the south of Spain! I’ve disappeared to a house in the mountains because the middle of September is the new cool kid’s holiday season. I finished work on Friday evening and packed up my desk then the next on my list of things to do was pack up my suitcase. A daunting task at first, considering A. I'm such a "maybe what if I might need x, y or z" person who always carries too much in her handbag, B. I only had one Ryanair-sized carry on case and C. Being the only girl meant there wouldn't be anyone to borrow from should I have omitted some crucial item or other... But I sang out loud to myself like a little Baloo to remind myself that all I needed were the simple bare necessities, which, as it transpires consist of one towel, two bikinis, two dresses, one jumpsuit, one pair of shorts, three tank tops, four books, and a toothbrush. Easy peasy.

The good weather, the good food, and the good times last night lead us to a mighty strong desire for a delicious greasy fast food for brunch today. So we embarked on our adventure in search of a Burger King and when parking the car I spotted a Charity Shop at the top of the hill. The dustiest looking of places from the exterior, the inside was crammed full of stock and crowded with the dogs of the very friendly volunteer lady.

I bought this leather bag for fifty cents and could possibly have come out with much more had I not been in the most indecisive of moods and so easily distracted by the small doggies who just had to be rubbed and played with; but I'm not complaining I mean I did bag a bargain after all. Har har...

the whole Fair affair

Now then, a lovely photographic post because my goodness gracious me but I'm oh so exhausted from the day... Thank you so much to everybody for coming!

Kava Gorna

I'll tell you how it all began... Once upon a summertime three little girls and one little boy packed up their bags and flew to a land far far away. Known to some as New York City it was to become for them a place of hopes and dreams in the everyday. Together they lived in poverty between the walls of a derelict building in suburban Brooklyn, neighboured on the left by a piano man, and a doctor in exile on the right. If they slept it was four to a room whose floor was scarcely wider than the single mattress which lay upon it. But they were young and full of life and so spurred by the energies of the night and also the vodka, the cheap, cheap, vodka. They lived by one rule - to follow the party, wherever, whenever; although the good times had the habit of bringing them downtown to the Misshapes most weekends. It was here one night after the club closed and the crowds were beginning to dissipate that they found themselves in a limousine with their new friends Randy and Nikolay.
The two boys were models, existing on a hunter-gatherer diet of nuts, berries, and cheap, cheap vodka. And to find out what happened next I'm afraid you'll have to find my old diary and read it, because I only said I'd tell you how it all began...
However, my story isn't an irrelevant one, for I began this post with the subject intention as Kava Gorna and there I shall end, (sort of)as it was whilst googling Ms Gorna that I came across an article on designer Katie Gallagher. Katie graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design but now works and lives in Manhattan with her boyfriend Nikolay Saveliev...
Here they're photographed by Kava Gorma in a Chinatown fish market with Katie wearing a jacket and leggings both of her own creation. Her stuff is actually pretty damn amazing, look at her website here: http://www.katiegallagher.com/

Homeward bound

Being one of the multitude of office workers whose existence Monday to Friday is centred around their 37 hour week means I've become a living-for-the-weekend pleb. A pleb, yes indeed a common proletariat; a slave to Excel. How tragic it is that one can fall so fast so quickly, one day you're a happy out student the next you're nothing but a number on a payroll...
Come Saturday I feel free as bird, or maybe it's more like a rabbit let out of his hut, but anyway I went to get my weekly luncheon fix of beans and pulses seasoned with healthy amounts of hippy karma from the market, and the weather was lovely to me smiling sunshine down and rejoicing with me over my temporary liberation. Lovely lovely. On my way home I met my sister on her way home from work ha ha the sucker working her weekend job ha ha and she took a photo of me working the only thing I should be working - my white shirt, or if I dare be so bold as to say working the minimal look. Oh yeah...

Fairtrade the Irish way

I'm sure you'll know what I mean when I ask if you ever get an overwhelming feeling of uselessness when you think of all the problems in the world you'll never be able to fix or all the poor people you'll never be able to help? Sometimes it feels like a far cry from enough but the little choices you make everyday add up to playing a part in the overall scheme of things. From throwing your newspaper in the recycling bin or having a compost heap in your garden to making ethically conscious decisions in your purchases we're actually doing more than it might seem.

I'm ashamed to say that toward the end of my poor student days last May I went through a phase of buying €2.00 coffee from the Eurosaver menu in McDonalds. It was cheap, didn't taste so bad, and when I had six stickers collected I could get a cup for free. But after having not eaten there in around four years, bar once in an airport, I am now shocked and appalled at myself for the extreme atrocity I managed to commit in such a short period of time. From now on my caffeinated beverages will be of a Fairtrade nature or I shall simply have to make do without.


Luckily it's not that difficult to find Fair Trade food and drinks, but in terms of fashion it's much harder to locate a company whose clothes are ethically sound. Organic cottons are slowly becoming more widely available, with high street stores beginning to launch lines, such as H&M's Garden Collection, but the availability is still rather limited. Sustainable trade is essential in the long -term fight to bring third world countries out of their poverty and I think much more needs to be done to bring awareness to the fore.
EDUN is one perfect example of a fashion label conscious in what it does. Established in 2005 by Ali Hewson and Bono they have built a network of organic and locally sourced textile products, and they strive to encourage trade in Africa, build sustainable working communities and provide a working model of business for third world countries (from which we in the developed world can most definitely learn a thing or two).

Last week the do-gooders took part in Louis Vuitton's latest Core Values campaign which supports Al Gore's Climate Change campaign. Annie Leibovitz shot them wearing clothes from EDUN and carrying bags which were designed in a collaboration between the Hewson's and Vuitton, and which have hand crafted charms created in Kenya for the fairtrade jewellery label MADE attached to them. Apart from the carbon-footprinted-fact that they flew to Africa to take the photographs and that for some reason there is a private aeroplane in the background, the advertisment is fantastic because the Hewson's fee for the shoot as well as all proceeds from sales will be donated to Technoserve in Africa for the Conservation Cotton Initiative and to the Chernobyl Children International.

Now tell me that isn't worth a lifetime void of big macs?

fair play

By gorries but you wouldn't believe how many people read the local papers!

Last week I had the terrifying experience of my first ever telephone interview with a journalist and this week I had the equally as shocking experience of my first ever front page cover. Telling a person they will be featured "in the paper" leads them to think a short article highlighting the main points of what was discussed in the interview will be printed somewhere amongst the other news for the week- youth arrested here, vintage fair there, water shortage elsewhere, but it certainly doesn't prepare you for a page dedicated entirely to you half in picture and half in text. Well there it is anyway, my 15 minutes.


And as all publicity is good publicity let me take this time to advertise some more - if you haven't read my earlier post on the fair look here and you can also read a summarised version of the article here. It's on next Sunday so make a note in your diaries to come along for a look around ahra go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on...

the time of year

We have our years subdivided for us, broken into the likes of summertime or christmas time for example, but the good times are those unofficially recognised weeks in between. They're the best because they're all your own. Like right now the summer is nearly over but instead of the impending sense of sadness you expect you would feel, it's actually really exciting. There's the same sort of expectant feel to the place, as if a contageous anticipation has begun to spread, and hopes are on the up as they were when the summer began. There's the great back-to-school weather and old friends are coming back in to town for college, and although the nights are getting longer it doesn't feel as though the afternoons spent hanging out together outside are getting any shorter.

So while we're happily making lanes of memories down which we will one day be able to walk, I'm also loving how it's time to start knitting again. Last year I learnt how to knit with five needles at a time to make mittens, this year I want to learn to knit in the round to make better hats. In the mean time if anybody wants a scarf, let me know!