Tango brava – Pantone colours of the year

One of my favourite things,  the Pantone colours of the year. The nominated colour of 2012 was apparently Tangerine Tango, which makes sense to me as I have been wearing Mac’s Morange lipstick a lot recently and Essie Peach Daiquiri nail varnish, as well as a lot of orange clothing. It’s been having a moment.

The colour of 2013 will be Emerald. I am similarly pleased because I already have a Whistles dress in just that shade of cool green, insisted upon by A, who always knows best. I haven’t yet brought Morange and the Dylan dress together, but maybe it’s time.

Festive chromatographical wishes,

S

Fashion Week overload

I get a bit overwhelmed by all the pictures that flood the internet when fashion weeks are on and don’t have the mental space for every designer’s entire collection – I’ve got other things going on you know, like ironing my enourmous collection of striped t-shirts and daydreaming about being an opera singer. So I tend to focus in on one or two looks that I love and extrapolate them into an appreciation of the designer. From NYFW I’ve chosen this look by Peter Som. I didn’t know who he was until this moment and now I want to be dressed by him. There are arguably more exciting and certainly more colourful outfits in his show but this one is ace – I like the way it’s a t-shirt AND a dress and I could go for a thigh split for the first time since Liz Hurley retired her signature look.

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Asos preview – velvet!

I realise it is technically still summer but I am already thinking about the new school year – my mind turns to pencil cases and what is in my mind party season. Soon we will all start getting invites to house parties as everyone comes back from late summer holidays and wants to spend time in rooms together again.

I find Asos a bit Primarky for summer clothes because the sunny season is much more about showing skin in some sort of LA-esque fashion than anything more interesting. But autumn, and especially this autumn, is about glowing colours, layers and depth. I am especially keen to try out some velvet and probably the camel colours that are popping up everywhere (yay! I love the fabulous grandma look).

Asos’ preview of this month’s drop covers a lot of what I am looking for as the nights get longer: long witchy lace dresses and squishy velvet on the one hand; chic beige 70s style pieces on the other.

S

Nap post: flower trends

I’m a massive fan of flowers, to the extent that I mentioned to A yesterday that I once considered going on a flower-arranging course. As a keen floral observer, I’ve noticed a sudden trend for that ultimately old-fashioned flower, the hydrangea. Although I like to think that I believe in true beauty and enduring style, I clearly don’t because since time immemorial, the dried bunch of hydrangeas in my grandmother’s hall have been sweet but representative of the olden days.

Now, much as her dark wood furniture suddenly looks awesome again in the wake of Mad Men, I’ve noticed these flowers popping up everywhere and making sense – blogs have started to feature them and I saw a man with a huge bouquet of pure white ones last week. It could just be me but it seems like hydrangeas could be the next peonies.

Flowers and fashion go together – nothing could be more apropos for an industry like that than something beautiful, expensive and that fades away away in less than two weeks. This picture from Sydney Fashion Week shows that the vaguely 1970s pastel shades of the flowers might be making a comeback.

Etsy has several vintage hydrangea-print dresses on sale (AdelinesAttic, SpanoVintage), so it’s clear that in past decades, it’s been a common print, just like a rose-print is now.

A quick bit of research reveals that designers have been incorporating more or less abstract hydrangeas into their prints for the past few years, like this S/S 2010 “Hydrangea” dress by Phillip Lim, which bears little obvious connection to my grandma’s dried plants:

S

Advent Calendar: 9

It’s Christmas Day. Everything is jolly and festive. You are eating stocking chocolate. What should you be wearing?

Dilemma instantly solved by Cabbages and Roses.

Don’t fight the tweeness.

S

Frou frou and fabric and frills oh my

This frills trend is fabulous and I am so tremendously bored of everything I own I want to tear everything into rags, sell the rags and buy a sequinned zip-frill dress from Primark with the resulting £4. I will have to wear it every day because I’ll own no other clothes but as long as I retain some woollen tights and my duffle coat I won’t die of exposure.

 A better option for my party-season pennies might be this good look-alike of the Lanvin dress, above, from Asos., whose magazine I have started receiving in the post against my will but which I find strangely good reading. I do wonder how it is that Asos can get their magazine to me but Elle, which I actually want, has still failed to turn up.

I’m in the mood to look more glamorous than my duffle coat allows me to and as soon as I have clothes funds, I am going to go and buy a feel-good dress. I have been fantasising about something like the Oscar de la Renta dress Carrie wears in season 6 of Sex and the City. Hopefully you remember that big shiny box because this picture really doesn’t do the feeling justice. I would like my dress to come in big black shiny box too.

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Signposts

Courtesy: Fashionologie.

• The gorgeous Chanel Autumn collection was shown on a boardwalk along the beach at dusk. I’ve just booked two weeks off for surfing and to go to Helsinki in July and this makes me think of how I will feel at dusk by the sea and by the lake. And how I will look of course.
• Actually, whenever I leave London I end up woefully underdressing because I think the countryside people will hate me if I turn up in my usual clothes. This is a completely irrational fear that is the product of watching too many films about an unlikely friendship between a stuck-up city girl and a down-to-earth country boy, and every time I turn up anywhere I just feel dowdy and miserable.  Instead I would like to look like this:

 

Courtesy: The Cherry Blossom Girl.

• Is there any outfit you could wear anywhere, with anyone, and still feel right? At work; at the pub; to meet Karl Lagerfeld; to meet Barack Obama; to sit in the park; to meet your boyfriend’s parents. I remember reading years ago that Kate Moss decided to go on holiday and all she packed was a gold bikini. This may well work for Mossy. I suspect A has packed considerably more than this for her current holiday. The Times says the statement dress is the “ultimate all-occasion frock”. If it’s made of jersey, I can only agree, The Times.
• However, this perfect jersey dress is currently eluding me. In my mind it is maxi-length, navy blue and has long sleeves. In real life this garment would probably require quite a lot of engineering and that’s probably why it hasn’t been produced by Asos or Topshop. Comes on M&S! I want something in return for championing you earlier.
• Bits and pieces: Fashion on Film in 2009, including Coco Avant Chanel, a documentary about Anna Wintour called The September Issue and Bruno.

Courtesy: The Guardian.

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Irwin & Jordan & Me

I went out with some friends on Sunday night and received some feedback about my current style. Basically I was accused of dressing like a yummy mummy. Not very flattering but not entirely unreasonable when you are working on a relative basis comparing levels of glitz I sported a year ago  to those I sport now.

Me, a year ago. But with hairspray and living your dreams.

I think that it’s been a while since I lost my taste for brightly coloured bits of high street clothing bought on impulse and jumbled up together any old how. I’m much more into muted colours and keeping things casual. I can’t remember when it happened but at some point I started favouring jeans over dresses and now when I go to get dressed it’s jeans every time.

Everyone’s tastes change over time and I’ve always longed to be a person who has a “look” – a personality-expressing look that you commit to, like Margot Tenenbaum. I certainly don’t think I need to make myself put on something for anyone else’s benefit and I’ve always had quite a good feel for trends. Now I just reserve my limited dollars for things I really love and that reflect me.

I have faith in my taste and I’m drawn to what I’m drawn to – style is instinctive and emotional and if I need to buy endless navy blue items at the moment, who am I to argue with my heart?

My desire for endless grey t-shirts and navy could be soothed by these lovely dresses from Irwin & James, a new brand on my-wardrobe.com. I also really like the green version. Suddenly I have to stop and check myself (or rather my hair) whenever I reach for a colour. Does green go with blonde? Only one way to find out.

S

Glamour

As I mentioned before, I really liked the fashion spreads in this month’s Glamour, and here is how the styled the lovely Malene Birger dress (above). Other chiffon-y, angelic items came from Reiss and Stella McCartney (I thought these knickers were expensive until I saw the ones Natalia Vodianova wore in this month’s Vogue).

I also really liked this shoot revolving around casual items, with the youngest, glossiest-looking model imaginable. Glamour is always about smooth edges and clean styling but I like the look – I’ve always liked primary colours and boxing things up, and hated crinkled textures, raggedness and muddy colours. I’m not really a rock chick sort of person, as my devotion to chiffon makes clear.

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House of Fraser

I generally do not go in House of Fraser unless it is to seek out the Benefit counter, partly due to a brief but traumatic experience working there. I was vaguely aware it sold brands and I think I went into the one on Oxford Street looking for Elle McPherson lingerie a while ago but in the main I give very little thought to HoF.

But with some time on my hands yesterday before meeting friends I went and had a look around the one at Bank and Monument and it turned out to be awesome! It must be new because it is small but perfectly formed, with a sort of art deco vibe. I scooted round the beauty hall and will have to come back for some supplies that ran out while I was jobless, but the best bit was a really excellent clothes department, which basically comprised the obvious Coast and Oasis sections as well as designer bags from Chloe, Marc Jacobs, Anya Hindmarch and Mulberry, and then a D&G, See by Chloe, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Day Birger and Mikkelson section. Joy! Just my level, especially if they have a sale… Shoes came courtesy of Kurt Geiger and French Connection.

I now have a little shopping list of things that I shall enjoy buying in this mini-HoF, which was the perfect amount of busy, i.e. just enough people to distract the perfume ladies but not heaving.

• Benefit Coralista blusher
• Lancome Adaptive foundation
• Black bow sandals from KG
• Yellow ultra-padded wooden heels from French Connection (I need a manicure before I can enjoy wearing either of these new sets of shoes)
• And this perfect white summer dress from Day Birger, which fulfils all my frolicking in the pastures dreams. When you see it in real life, it is that perfect white cotton dress.

S

p.s. I have not been able to find a picture of the bow sandals so this is my MS Paint interpretation for you.