A WALL OF TEXT FOR YOU TO DIGEST...

I've been enjoying a self imposed magazine, television, well all mainstream media break for ooh, about the past three months. The only magazine I bought was A Magazine because it was curated by my risen again fashion rock and roll queen Martine Sitbon.

As someone who's been thoroughly obsessed with fashion magazines for most of their life it was a bit odd to realize that I found them all a bit boring. Oh, I still went through the motions for quite some time: Need a little escape from grim British reality? Grab a glossy. But it wasn't working anymore. I was reading so much stuff online anyway I felt like if there's anything really good, I'll see it because someone will post it somewhere and people will be talking about it.

I was really starting to think that magazines were perhaps not even relevant now; they take so long to produce an issue and you can just switch on your computer and see what's actually bubbling under and happening NOW this very second all over the world.

In the end I went out and bought UK Harper's Bazaar and French Vogue with Claudia Schiffer on the cover which - ughh worst.cover.ever - but anyway they had been out already for a few weeks and that was all that was left on the shelves.

I forgot to mention I had been avoiding central London as well, because well, I just find it really unpleasant at the moment. I think I need to go to an Ashram or something. So, my point being...that after months of "starvation" I went out and all the shops had all their winter stock in, all nice and merchandised, no dribby drabby sale rails...even Zara looked like paradise with this wonderful pewter/camel/coral/ colour palette display and then when I opened UK Harper's Bazaar it was like bam, bam, bam - just a big caffeine like shot of gorgeousness - that is how it was. I was completely cured of being jaded and I excused them for putting diamante on the cover as it was just the new art director trying to do something different in his first issue.

And oh my God THE FUNNIEST piece by Simon Doonan about ex-pat Brits living in New York. I can't find a link to it anywhere so I might even type it out and post it here because it's TOOO good. Or maybe it's only funny if you've lived abroad and experienced a sudden desperation for Cadbury's Creme eggs and bribed visitors to smuggle Marmite in their luggage even though you didn't like it before.

So the bloody point is that I highly recommend a little magazine/shopping holiday, if only because when you jump back in the effect is all the more potent, especially if you time it right just at the start of a new season. And I guess, though I now don't feel the need to buy every single magazine in existence, I do see the point of keeping an eye on it all. Blogs, zines, glossies, newspapers. It can all co-exist.