Graphic

It's funny how quickly my fashion fads tend to cycle.  I don't really think it's a reflection of that whole fast fashion thing that gets bandied about, but more my own general fickleness.  With most things in life I have a relatively short attention span - try it out, like it, do it to the point I think it's 'done', quit - but with clothing the pace tends to move that bit faster.  Organising all my clothes to deal with this heat (and now humidity, joy...) I'm rediscovering all the pieces I was obsessing about this time last year.  In the run up to Christmas I was particularly into bags and clutches, but last summer it was all about the statement graphic t-shirt.  There's something very easy about a striking tee, you can just throw one on with fairly minimal accompaniments and still have a really distinctive look.  It's as close as men usually get to women's outfit-all-in-one: the dress.  Of course it's a problem if someone else has gone for the exact same t-shirt - you're going to look identical - so I'm glad I didn't end up picking the most popular of the Givenchy SS11 collection (and thank Moomin I didn't get one of the rottweiler prints, they're bloody everywhere!).    

Even though my tastes change rapidly, I know I'll always come back to them eventually, which is the main reason I almost never throw out or sell off my clothes the way I know a lot of other bloggers seem to.  Give it five years and I'll love it again.  And when I'm ancient I'll be able to auction off the Ford Collection at Christie's.  Take these ripped denim shorts as an example - I've had them for about seven years but this summer I can tell they're going to get a lot of use already.

Wearing: t-shirt by Givenchy, shorts by Gap. 

xxx

Duck

Dank

Raiding the summer clothing storage has opened up my wardrobe to all sorts of forgotten delights, including pieces I have basically never worn.  I got this black-on-black bowling shirt in a shopping flurry in Liberty last summer but I'm pretty sure I only got around to wearing it like twice before I consigned it to the depths of the closet.  I think it suits me so much more now that my hair is frighteningly short (eek, I can see scalp!).

The underground garage is such an wonderful place to escape the blinding sunshine and the heat reflected from the tarmac.  Skylights let you know it's still summer up above but down here it's dank and dingy.  We're not really sure where all the puddles of water are coming from - it seems like every pipe in the building must leak into here - but it keeps the atmosphere cool and suspiciously moist.  Like being delicately spritzed with (mouldy smelling) Evian.  Delightful. 

Groundbreaking

Oh crap, I've gone and done it now. After my anti-blogger-style musings I've totally just dressed H2T in 'blogger'. The graphic print, the aqua clutch – I'm one banging body (and the ultimate accessory, the designer boyfriend) away from Pelayo Diaz. When I realised what I was doing I figured “What the Hell, let's just throw in the gay porn tube socks while we're at it”. 

Then again, maybe this isn't just the Kate Loves Me style, as I saw Pull Teeth also got accused of copying. Perhaps we're all just channelling the same sartorial Zeitgeist. It's like the EU motto as I learnt it says, Einheit in der Vielfalt - unity in diversity.  I mean, if nobody were wearing the same things there would be no such thing as a 'fashion', right?

Luckily, nobody else on my street was dressed like this as I walked to Gail's to pick up my morning sourdough. Unluckily, nobody else on my street was dressed like this. Cue the staring. Haven't you seen a boy in florals before?

Cut the crap

A few things have happened recently that have made me re-evaluate what I think about blogs and blogging. Some of them personal, some of them observed from afar, some of it prompted by Fashion Editor At Large's post on “blogger style” (excuse me while I choke on my own vomit) and more importantly Jen's excellent post with the ensuing comment debate.

I am a blogger and I read blogs so I guess that makes me biased, but here we go... As far as I can see, digital is the future, but that doesn't necessarily mean bloggers, or at least the current crop, are. There is no reason for those already involved in print publishing not to move online (in fact surely most have, right?). As technology gets both highly sophisticated and ever more ubiquitous I just can't see how mainstream magazines will survive. I'm not talking about today, or next year, but maybe in the next five to ten years I think the way we consume information will be revolutionised (further than the burgeoning internet has already taken us). In many ways this should democratise information and artistic content. Anybody with a talent can write an article or create an image to post online. You don't need to go to university to study some vocational course or have the relevant work experience. Eventually the cream should rise to the top, one might hope.

At the heart of it, I think this is what frightened some print journalists at the beginning – that essentially all their hard work studying to do what they do has become unnecessary. If you are truly intelligent and creative (and that's a big IF, IMO), you can do things you haven't studied before. That's why physicists can go straight into banking with no knowledge of economics (a pseudo science at the best of times), and history or classics graduates often end up writing about, I don't know, gardening or travel. My friend quit her masters in human rights law to become a music journalist. In a meritocratic society (ha!) it's not about how hard you've worked to get there, it's about who can do the job better. That's the theory anyway...

But at the moment some of the loudest voices I hear bigging themselves and blogging up are just talking crap. Bloggers are not as all-powerful as they claim to be. For a start, many of them seem to inflate their readership massively (as can be seen quite obviously by combining their Alexa and Google page rankings with numbers of comments etc). They want brands to take them as seriously as an editor from a major print/digital magazine when their influence is patently smaller. Of course some blogs have viewing figures that dwarf the circulation of mid-size magazine but those guys usually aren't the ones making a song and dance about it. I love coming across new bloggers on my internet wanderings with thousands of followers and hundreds of comments, but whose sites I only happen upon by chance because they choose not to pimp themselves out on other social media platforms. This might sound a bit rich coming from me, a confessed Twitter addict, but I genuinely love meeting new people online who share my interests. Believe me, I don't meet that many of them in my day job! I'm not on Twitter to become a celebrity; if I were I wouldn't post so many damned photos of my dinner or drunk and embarrassing personal stories on there.

I find the idea that bloggers are sooo influential as well kind of hard to swallow when I speak to most of my non-fashion friends. These are people who still like to look nice and buy clothes but most of them are not the slightest bit interested in what a blogger is wearing. They don't even look at blogs. When you hang out with fashion industry people your whole opinion of what's in, who's a celebrity and what people do on a day-to-day basis becomes skewed. You really do lose touch with reality. Now I, for one, love living in a cuckoo fantasy world but when making business decisions I think it might be a bit smarter to look at what real-world people are doing and not your closest associates. And maybe listen a little bit less to what the loud-mouths are saying about themselves. There's a thought.

I think maybe my message has got garbled a bit in this spontaneous rant but basically my point is this: stop talking bullshit about yourselves.  

Tomorrow normal service will resume with photos of me staring at the camera with my 'Queen of Hearts' face, as one kind reader has dubbed it.  But I've been feeling quite disillusioned recently so you can probably expect another diatribe at some point in the future.  I might even talk about something other than fashion if you're really unlucky.

XXX

Duck

P.S. Thanks, Jen, for inspiring me to blog my mind.  

Black & White

Summer snip

Don't worry (or get excited?), I haven't opted for a summertime circumcision - I've always thought genital cosmetic surgery is more of a winter pastime - just had my locks shorn to keep it cool in the warm months week ahead.  I asked Zara at Taylor Taylor to cut me in a defined parting, or 'shed' as Mother likes to call it, for a preppier look.  Ivy League hair works ever so well when you're carrying a shearling handbag and dip-tipping your nails in Chanel polish.  It's quite voluminous at the moment (Zara likes her mousse) but I'm thinking of investing in some Brylcreem and smeeeaarring it flat onto my head.  I want to look like I've just been drafted into the Air Force.  

Talking about personal grooming, I'm pleased to announce the winner of my Zirh competition with Tesco Direct is Hugh!  Newly named toucan Penelope Myles congratulates you on your new skincare regimen.  

Fashion Fringe 2012

A couple of weeks ago I received an intriguing invitation to meet the finalists of this year's Fashion Fringe competition at a reception in Horseferry House, worldwide home of Burberry.  It was all a little odd because I didn't see the event listed in the usual places and I didn't hear any chatter on Twitter.  Turns out they didn't invite that many people so when I arrived yesterday evening, escorted from the lift by my personal security guard, I found only four or five familiar faces in the crowd of around forty (I'm not counting Colin McDowell and Hilary Alexander among my personal "friends" here...).  Still don't know quite why I made the hallowed list of invitees but who's going to say no to a champagne reception with one dashing Mr Christopher Bailey? Swoon much.

The three finalists, chosen from ten, were Finnish Teija Eilola, Chinese Haizhen Wang and London-born Vita Gottlieb.  I don't know that much about the designers other than what has been provided by Fashion Fringe but these three will get to show full collections as part of a runway competition during Fashion Week in September, after which one will be chosen to receive the prize of financial support, mentoring, a studio space at Somerset House and a catwalk show the following fashion week.  Teija doesn't seem to have a website up and running yet but I borrowed a few images from Haizhen and Vita's websites below.  While Vita's work isn't typically 'me', I can tell the judges will be impressed by her textile design (she has been producing interiors since graduating with her MA in Fine Art) and the complexity of her construction.  Haizhen's designs are definitely much more my own style - if I were a girl I'd love wear those dark and draped dresses.  Maybe he'll let me borrow one of the hats? 

Solar flare

"The sun has got his hat on, hip-hip-hip-hooray! The sun has got his hat on and he's coming out today..." 

God, I hated that song. I had a primary teacher (at Burnside - what's the world coming to when the head teacher has her own blog??) who used to force us to sing it every year and I always detested the childish lyrics.  Well, until I looked them up five minutes ago and discovered it's exceedingly appropriate nowadays.

Annnyywaayy London seems to be bathing in sunlight for the foreseeable future, i.e. until the weekend starts, the yobbos have changed into their t-shirt-flip-flop combos and it's time for Duck to get his bling on.  Thankfully I returned the ghastly Marni x HM shirt I bought online and used the money to buy bit of real Marni sparkle from Bicester Village.  I think I might be over these high/low collaborations, the fabric quality always lets them down and I do like being able to touch my own clothes without gagging.  I usually find the quality is lower than the store's own usual gear - I guess they have to spend more on printing, etc?  Let's do the math, as they say: 

Bicester 60% + special 10% discount + £50 gift voucher = HM prices

Some of the glass (plastic) spheres are filled with what looks like chunks of pyrite and the other metallic balls are so highly polished you can spy my own reflection in them.  I'm going to go stand in front of the gold building next door and dazzle the traffic until an ice-cream truck crashes and spills its delicious contents onto the road for me.  Or until I get stabbed by one of the Queen's Park gangs for, you know, wearing women's accessories in the street.  

xxx
Duck

Weekend in review: 'Name That Toucan'

We all know I'm an accessories fiend, hoovering up the ridiculous and the inappropriate in my ongoing quest to make myself look like the most fabulous bag lady in town.  I have necklaces with jewels, spikes and jingle bells, rings cast from gothic animal skulls and bags made of green fur, two-tone jelly and inside-out neoprene.  Even when I was a teenager I was obsessed with wearing a set of vintage rings I bought in a market in Moscow.  I used to think they had magical powers (to repel 'straight-acting' men, do doubt).  But what I didn't have, until this weekend, was a comedy umbrella head.  I did have a fabulous long umbrella I bought when I was studying in Munich but that was carried away by the naughty, drunken fairies the night of our last family gathering.  Either that or my taxi driver stole it, the bastard.

A Twitter poll suggested I go to James Smith and Sons to find a replacement and, with recommendations from the likes of Amro and Hugh, I could hardly refuse.  The company has been making brollies since 1830 and the gorgeous traditional store front on New Oxford Street hasn't changed for 140 years.  Sadly they have a no-photography policy so you'll just have to believe me when I say you need to visit this place.  Apart from the exquisite wooden décor - why don't they design shops/anything to last any more? - James Smith has an amazingly wide selection of umbrellas in all sorts of sizes and shapes...  I was tempted by the solid wood/cane options but all coming in over the £200 mark they were completely unrealistic.  Then I set eyes on this, my sweet, darling toucan.  The bird head is cast in resin while the rest of the handle is maple wood; the style is 'slim-rolled London' which means it's a little bit thinner and a little bit lighter, handy for hopping on and off a double decker.  The clincher: it came in nicely below my £100 upper cap.

The only issue remaining is what to call her?  I'm leaning towards Penelope but I could be swayed by a strong argument; I'm covering my ears to Anastasia's heinous suggestions.  

Obviously it would be impossible for me to walk that far along Oxford St without a quick pop into the British Museum.  I hoped to wander through the room on Viking period (Mother is studying Scandinavian history at university just now and I need to bone up for our 'debates') but unfortunately they were under renovation and I had to make do with Iron Age/Celtic Britain.  After satisfying my curiosity about insular art and the Celtic/Roman religious fusion I gave the gift shop a good seeing-to, liberating a book on The Origins of the British.  An application of modern genetics to track the history of the British populations through the ages, this is being added to my large pile of extracurricular reading material for when the going gets tough (next up The Virgin Suicides, The World According to Garp and A History of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland [I will beat her and her polymath ways]). 

What should have been

This is the outfit I was going to wear last night to see the Luke Waller painting exhibition at Cutler and Gross but, alas, I had to be realistic and stay inside to finish up some code debugging that had run away from me.  I'm being very strict with my targets now so if a task isn't complete, no fun times for Duck... (sorry Monica!)  It's twice the shame because I was desperate to wear the jacket I discovered at the Bicester Village Designers Collective.  I saw the James Long pink, bouclé-like tweed biker on the runway over a year ago and added it to my long AW lust list.  Like most things I have my eye on at fashion week they quickly slip from my memory over the 6-month period before the store shipments drop and somehow I never get around to tracking them down.  I said yesterday it was fate (even if my scientist mind doesn't believe in it) that I finally found this jacket again - the sole one on the first rail I saw as I entered the shop.  Within five minutes of the party starting I had it wrapped in tissue paper on the counter; it wasn't getting out of my sights this time around.  The wool is soft and cosy, it's lined continuously throughout in black satin and while the fit means it probably won't be a winter outer layer, it sits nice and snugly over a simple t-shirt for 'transitional' periods of British weather (otherwise known as 'summer').  There were some naysayers when I requested Twitter opinions from the dressing room but screw you guys, I love it.  It's as close to a Chanel as I'll ever get with my six-foot frame. 

Wearing: wool biker jacket by James Long, dégradé t-shirt by Helmut Lang, gold bunny necklace by Tina Lilienthal and jeans by Odyn Vovk.     

British Designers Collective: Menswear

It's not often Twitter spurs me to do anything other than shop or eat; rather it's much more likely to be distracting me from doing whatever it is I'm really meant to be doing.  I can close my browser and put my phone on silent but those nasty microblogs (have we stopped using that term yet?) still manage to track me down via DM emails or that Ubuntu Twitter programme I've tried to switch off a hundred times but still pops up now again to inform me my latest Instagram post was #MEGACHIC and #OUTOFCONTROL.  Anyway, today is probably the first time the Twits got me doing anything productive - i.e. writing this blog post.  Everybody is talking about the launch of the menswear British Designers Collective pop-up yesterday at Bicester Village, which I attended but forgot to blog...even though I had all my images edited by bedtime last night! 

The crowd of us taking the train up to Oxfordshire's not-so-secret shopping haven was a little bit different to the womenswear launch but I still recognised a few friendly faces in Disney Roller Girl and The Very Simon G.  Bistrotheque provided us with delicious hampers of sandwiches, bread and cheese, pâté and champagne (I promised myself I wouldn't drink at lunchtime but I may have slipped and fallen head-first into my plastic glass).  A little bit more vegetarian food might have been nice but beggars can't be choosers...  Being menswear, the designers selected for the store were obviously also slightly different.  There were staples such as E Tautz, Folk and Margaret Howell who I'm sure will sell well, but I was much more excited about bStore, James Long and Jonathan Saunders.  

I had also promised myself I wouldn't spend any money but that wish went out the window when I spotted a pink bouclé wool biker jacket, lined throughout with black satin, from James Long's AW 2011 collection.  I had seen it on the runway, loved it, and there was only one in the store, IN A FITTING SIZE.  Then James came up to me himself to tell me how fabulous I looked in it.  Fate.  If you're thinking of buying any pieces yourself I'd get up there pronto, I saw quite a lot of men clutching British Designers Collective bags on the way back to the train station... 

Sunshine, lollipops...

It's a good day to be alive! I woke up this morning to glorious sunshine streaming into my bedroom (really need to start closing those blinds properly, if only to save the neighbours' modesty), clearing back those rain clouds that have been blanketing our sceptred isle. I am fond of the winter but the monotonous downpours and dreich skies can get you down. Work is certainly ploughing ahead on the gold building next door, reflecting rather than blocking the sunlight into our courtyard. I can barely contain my excitement to see the finished product!

I also just had a highly productive Skype mit meinem Doktorvater (doesn't it sound so much cuter auf Deutsch?), meaning I should get lots of useful work done this afternoon. That said, I'm off for a quick trip to the menswear pop-up at Bicester Village this lunchtime, so I might be working quite late this evening again. While sunny, it's not exactly summer temperatures yet (high of 15°C in May?!) ergo I'll still be wearing my coat and scarf today. I found this old All Saints scarf in the back of one of my wardrobes and wondered why on Earth I ever stopped wearing it. It's long enough I can pretend I'm an extra in Harry Potter...

Styled by Snufkin

What with all the excitement of coding going well (yesterday I managed to get the analytic forces working and today the torques will be a success – I realise this probably means nothing to you...) I completely forgot about blogging this week. Sometimes I can only have one side of my brain firing at once, but then it gets worn out and I have to switch to something creative for a break. This morning I suddenly had that urge to get my camera out and then realised le flatmate is back in the homeland until the end of the week. Despite having had my tripod for over a year now, I've never actually attempted to use it outside; I'm pretty sure my Spanish neighbours think I've completely cracked up now. I think the results aren't too bad, although it's really hard to adjust the lighting when the camera screen is facing away from you... Clearly, I need to convince a sugar daddy to buy me my own studio.

This is the penultimate outfit post based around pieces I managed to track down in Antwerp. I couldn't go to Belgium and not come away with a bit of Ann Demeulemeester, and at around 140 Euros this wool and hemp jacket was a bargain. Add to that the size that fits me is SMALL and I was sold. The back and sleeves are closely knitted while the front has a double layer of fabric with large buttons and a Mao-style collar. The shaping round the back, the collar and the khaki colour (label says 'mud') lend it an overall Austro-Hungarian look. I like to think it's something that Snufkin/Snusmumriken might wear.

Win Win

Coming home for the weekend is all about admiring Dad's orchids, taking Grandma to the supermarket, arguing about the difference between porpoises and dolphins in the back of a taxi, and the luxury of sleeping in a bed with ironed sheets. Yesterday morning, on the train up, I finally made a major breakthrough with my research which should mean I get to move onto something more interesting and productive...like actually writing my papers/thesis. We celebrated with a trip to Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum to see Glasgow's old transport modes (although our family's own motorbike and side-car must currently be in their storage facility).  Our verdict on the museum: nice roof, poor organisation, the cars are so high up on the wall they can barely be seen and why exactly do museum panels now have to be worded for five-year-olds? Anyway, a glass of prosecco at The Urban and a pizza at our local finished the evening off nicely. Tonight we're going to experiment with a trip to The Bungo – none of us have been there yet despite it opening quite a while ago.

Today is also the day to announce the winners of my Scandinavian give-away. Everything was done very scientifically using an online random number generator to assign the winners of a crate of Rekorderlig cider each: Amy, Shini, Justyna, John and David. In addition, John has won the Rascals' gilet and David the Won Hundred sweatshirt! Moomin sends his congratulations to everybody. 

Burnt out

Last night I dragged myself away from the laptop and off to Aqua London for the UK launch of Scandinavian estore, Nelly, as my one evening away from work this week.  All this rain and coding, rain and coding has been really pissing me off so I decided to break out the S/S wardrobe and premier this Qasimi t-shirt I ordered after the show last June (yup, still need to do something about resizing the images on those old blog posts).  The lace-like panel on the front is actually laser-cut cotton which takes on a delicate, papery texture in the process.  You can still see the singed edges - it looks like someone has burnt the intricate pattern with a cigarette.  I didn't take my camera to the party but you can see some pretty stellar photobooth images below.  Apparently Jen (who is visiting from Zürich, yay!) and I are the only ones among us who really know how to work that digital lens...