Thumbs down

Occasionally I come across a thing or two I dislike.

This winter it was that Panda Hat from River Island. In theory it's a cute idea. Girls like teddy bears and panda bears are like huge teddy bears, so why not use the way you dress to express who you are: cuddly girly little sweetie pie.Or, like Katy Perry at whom the finger of blame could be pointed for this trend epidemic, showing that the leather clad chic has a soft side underneath her tough exterior. But it has reached the stage that walking down the street you could be forgiven for thinking you had encountered some sort of animal rights activation rally where all participants were dressed en-masse in light of their protest.



I also mentioned in an earlier post my dislike at the thought of the return of sportswear as everydaywear. Just as everyone was finishing burying their memories of the phat man pants and ugg boots ensembles that raged for so long, the track suit comes out to haunt us. Well, not exactly the track suit but elements of it. Designers like Proenza Schouler, Elie Tahari and Yigal Azrouel are amongst the designers where the 'Game Theory' features most strongly in their spring collections


But now Topshop is onboard so it looks like there's going to be no escaping it. Topshop Unique is embracing the style of American 1970's West Coast sportswear and aside from harem-style jersey cotton track pants the collection offers sportswear inspired details such as elasticated straps, plastic toggles and rubberised zips.

mc-ice-queen

With the country still in a state of pandemonium because of the weather I thought it a perfect day for creating a hullabaloo of my own with Alexander McQueen's ss2010 collection.






The designs are creatively amazing, they look like glacial ice queens! Glacial here perhaps being a word the importance of which I am underestimating, as the extremes of weather we are experiencing are but a reminder of the serious issue of the melting ice caps and global warming that the world seems to be ignoring

Well yes on the runway this collection is breathtaking, however, despite being "Ready To Wear" somehow I don't think it would keep you very warm... which is why it's good news his MCQ lookbook is now out, it's cool (but not cold) yes I am bad at making lame jokes

a pirate party

Last week on our trip to Mayo we went walking through the woods and came to the river, the closest I've come to seeing heaven

There was a concrete ship in the middle of the river which has been stuck there for years and years; spooky but eerily majestic

Just imagine how much fun it would be to have a party on board! A fancy dress party where guests dressed like new romantic pirates ooh or even better if the girls wore Vivienne Westwood dresses from the 1996 collection Les Femmes ne Connaissent pas toute leur Coquetterie

fashun (har har)

Looking through my laptop I found a folder of pictures I saved from various blogs last year; here are a few of my favourite which shall act as my recycled inspiration for dressing:














I really like the top-heavy way of dressing, I do it quite a lot already with a big big cardigan or jumper and skinny jeans (NOT jeggings) or thick wooly tights. But I should look to wearing blazers

I also love the idea of dressing like a geeky boy, shirts buttoned up the whole way and many layers of cardigans ontop. Can girls wear dicky bows?

The idea of wearing tracksuit bottoms outside of the house terrifies me, I'm a big believer that sportswear should be worn solely for sports. However, I might have to become less abhorred at the idea as it's promising to become a bigger trend for springtime than I had hoped, prompted by the likes of Proenza Schouler's Spring 2010 RTW collection,

MEeeeee

And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see...

Neutral Milk Hotel lyrics, I'm singing them aloud to ring in the new year and the annual arrival of aspirations for a new and better self.

This year my official resolutions are to:
1. stop smoking cigarettes
2. read more; I used to be a big bookworm but to my dismay this has fallen to the wayside. I miss reading and I blame it on the increasing amount of time I seem to spend frivolously on the internet
3. live up the last days I have left as a student; the end of education is looming and I need to enjoy these relatively carefree days as much as I can

I like the prospect of returning to the realm of reading. Coming up to Christmas Dave and I spent some pretty lovely days in Bewleys on Grafton Street, sitting by the fire by the big windows upstairs we drank coffee and read newspapers. He one day had the idea of setting up a very small book club, ourselves being the two exclusive members, so now there's no excuse for it not to go ahead. I'm terribly excited.

Now if only I had a new bag in which to put all these books I'm going to buy...


An Olympia Le-Tan design perhaps? Le-Tan creates clutch bags in the shape of books. Genius. She embroiders them with the design from the cover of the first edition of the novel, the majority of the books being popular classics. She says her favourite (book and bag) is 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter'. My favourite of her bags is that of The Catcher in The Rye

And now I'm no longer an English undergraduate I can expand my literary horizons beyond prescribed reading lists. woot : D

twenty ten

lovely lovely

My sister was given a gold ASOS dress from a friend for christmas that she wanted to wear today, it being her birthday. She didn't have a pair of tights she liked to match so I volunteered to cycle into town to buy her a purple cable knit pair I had seen. In the time it took me to buy the tights and a few groceries a mild blizzard had picked up and my cycle home turned me into a veritable snowman. Abominable.

The kitchen was as cosy as you please, I love being locked up and warm looking out at the cold weather, it's like being inside a car when it's bucketing down torrential rain. My afternoon was accordingly lovely, I sewed colourful buttons onto an old cardigan, baked fairy cakes (or cupcakes as they are now so popularly dubbed)with pink butter cream icing and jelly tots on top, baked brownies mmm I know lots of people think their brownies are the best but these ones really are, please don't take my word for it try them out for yourself to try and prove me wrong: They're Nigella Lawson: http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/nigella-lawson/snow-flecked-brownies-recipe_p_1.html I took them out of the oven a few minutes early so they were the right degree of crunchy on the outside but still gooey on the inside, sprinkled with icing sugar and served with whipped cream Y U M

back west

driving home for christmas *la la la bus driver driving me home for christmas la la la... the joyous homecoming was neither as momentous nor as romantic as the songs had me thinking it would be. It feels on one hand like I've never left because everything is still so exactly the same as how it was, I came home late at night had some cereal and went to bed. Next morning everybody was pottering around absorbed in doing their own thing and that's been it, I stepped back into the stream of daily life, those already there remaining unaffected and indifferent. But on the other it feels like I've been gone an age and stepped back into a time warp, I've changed but little else has. And that hand hits me harder. It leaves a stronger sting of impact but this in itself is reassuring because at least it confirms in me that I know I'm only passing through now. The fear of returning to my old life would be getting stuck in a deep rut, which scares me to bits and is enough to drive me onwards. Hurrah. upwards.

I like being home because... There's food to nibble on when I'm in a picking mood, I can walk on the prom, the air is clean, i like the proximity of everywhere, i can cycle my bike again, i don't like being subjected to my mother's irritating house rules, or having to put up with her idiosyncrasys, but i like the unpretentiousness of the sales assistants in topshop, i like having friends with whom i can share in - jokes, i like having good friends on hand to be hungover with, i like having friends off whom i can borrow clothes, i like how it's easy to stand out as being relatively well - dressed, i don't like feeling inhibited by that same easily recognisableness and feeling somewhat restricted in what i wear because of it, i like overcoming that feeling because of the confidence i'm given by knowing i look good and have my best friend beside me looking the exact same.

One small thing that I take as a given in Dublin is ripped tights. They emanate the grunge look in an otherwise ordinary outfit. You look on trend without looking gothic or godforbid like you're trying too hard. But the Galway boys are whatever the word is for the complete opposite of ostentatious, with regard to fashion and I have had much slagging for wearing tights with holes in them. In my defense I have never deliberately set out to destroy fine hosiery, it just happens that probably nine out of ten pairs of tights I own have rips and ladders in them and I keep them all to wear doubled up. Two at a time guarantees that one will cover the holes in the other, but of late I've taken to colder legs and only taken from my drawer one pair at a time. Well I like it, and Alexander Wang liked it a whole lot last year in his fall 08 ready to wear collection: