SO LONG...

I've been really getting into wearing long dresses. Not of the floaty printed boho maxi variety, no - the long jersey solid colour variety. I compared many, many of these at different price points and I can say with some confidence that you should buy one from New Look and no one will ever be able to tell that you spent £15 rather than £150. And I don't require a special occasion to get out the Avalon dress, which I now refer to as my ballgown. The amount of fabric in the skirt is very pleasing, and gives everything you do a different quality - as if you're wearing a casual black wedding dress - going to the loo requires hoiking a load of fabric over your shoulder, going down steps the skirt must be attended to - it's fun! But really I would like this dress Daria's wearing in Dossier. I'd wear it every day in the kitchen, to the supermarket.

FEATHERS & FRINGE...

Someone commented that my camera being half broken would aid in capturing the 1920s vibe of the party, um ball actually, I went to last weekend. Not sure about that as these are my only usable pictures. You get the idea anyway. The event was organized by two of my cousins to raise money for their non profit company, Paper Vine, which works with a co-operative of women in Uganda. You can read all about the work they do here.

I SAY...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being invited to trundle along to The Chap Olympiad, held in Bedford Square Gardens - in the loveliest of the Bloomsbury squares. This event essentially celebrates Englishness. I will try and explain: Attendees might be wearing a tweed shooting outfit, full morning dress, or vintage lawn whites. They will almost certainly sport a monocle, a moustache, a pipe or all three. And oh so many hats: Homburgs, Panamas, Fedoras, Trilbies, Boaters, Bowlers, Top hats, I lost count.

Since my attendance was somewhat spontaneous I went in chapette mode (my influence was Coco Chanel wearing Boy Capel's clothes, but as we all know, if you have to explain your references, your outfit isn't doing it.) But with a little more preparation time; for the ladies, it's a chance to don your finest vintage tea dress, set your hair and put on matte red lipstick if ever there was one.

The events included: The Martini Knockout Relay (mixing a perfect dry martini without a butler), the Cucumber Sandwich Discus (one spectator was so busy taking a photo she got walloped in the eye by a china plate), my favourite event: Umbrella Jousting (on bicycles), the Pipeathlon and the Three Trousered Limbo. I'll let my photos do the talking... Umbrella jousting.

It was all conducted with a degree of gentlemanly decorum, with the occasional brolly in the spoke (the shields are re-inforced copies of the Daily Telegraph). Until...

Blood was spilled. Refreshments were on hand: jugs of Pimms, G&Ts, that sort of thing. BB, you would have loved it. A few more photos...

The BBC has more (and better) photos here. {photos: © me}

DIAL L FOR LOVE...

How did we ever live before you could wake up in the morning with a song stuck in your head and immediately watch the video on youtube? I really don't remember.

This morning my song was Word Up by Cameo. (That's quite a codpiece first thing in the a.m.)

I took my new shoes for a spin this morning and so far, so comfy. I'm always schlepping about on foot and after years of pounding the streets in summer wearing ballet flats or flimsy sandals with paper thin soles, I finally worked out why my feet and knees are so fucked up. So these shoes are actually quite sensible - supportive and all that. I'm trying to be restrained with the post moth-alyptic wardrobe rehabilitation programme (POMOWARPRO) and not just go out and buy a whole bunch of stuff I don't love. I hope to wear these all summer long - and you might as well look cute while you're schlepping, right?

I think the colour goes quite well with my deathly pallor. I'm so glad I didn't get black as I now realise they would have looked too *snazzy*. I never end up with black shoes, which doesn't seem to have harmed me too much.

Anyway, continuing on my morning walk I started feeling a little horse.
*I have been dying to use that phrase.*

This is Thomas. He's a very placid gelding and he's quite small, which is good, as I'm fairly terrified of big horses after an *incident* a few years ago. He grazes in this totally incongruous paddock near my house. Yes, a random paddock, in a very urban area of London.

He belongs to some guys who have stables, (STABLES!) in the mews that runs along the back of the gardens in my street (where the coach houses would have once been - now mostly garages.) You can walk along the mews and they all connect up without you ever having to go on the street. I only found out about the horses the other day when my neighbour took me to visit their BABY SHETLAND PONY.

And now I'm all excited because I could walk Billy, who is the size of a dog, (I keep calling him Dave for some reason) up the mews and into my garden, which currently looks like this:

I could have a baby Shetland pony grazing in my garden! I'd never have to mow again! As if all that wasn't nearly too much, on the way back up the mews, almost opposite my garage we came upon this woman in full beekeeping gear (my neighbour took the pic, I was too shy.)

It was quite surreal to see her standing there in a swarm of bees. I must get some honey from her.

*Uh -oh, I can feel a blogging roll coming on. I have so many things swirling around in my head it feels like they'll all tumble out at once so check back; as I'll probably be posting more often than usual and over the weekend...

I'VE BEEN...

...Wearing this silver feather brooch. It was my mum's, or possibly it was my granny's - anyway I dug it out and have been playing how many ways: on the neck of a thin white t-shirt, on the end of a long silver chain or two, as a hair accessory, possibly even as a ring, though it's the size of my finger - haven't worked that one out yet.

...Like everyone, falling in love.

...Catching the last day of the Andy Warhol exhibition Other Voices, Other Rooms. Even with a free ticket and the promise of Diana Vreeland footage I only managed to drag myself along to the Hayward Gallery at the last minute, where it was mobbed with queues of other lazy last minute people. I can see how the whole reality TV/blogging/myspace/facebook/etc thing is relevant to him and like, really, TERRIBLY IMPORTANT, but as one critic noted, "He may have been right about everybody being famous one day for 15 minutes, but what he did not factor into his equation was the amount of time needed by the rest of us to watch everybody being famous for 15 minutes." It was lovely to see and hear La Vreeland - red cigarette holder aloft for emphasis - in full voice; "Mahhvelous, yeeeesss" - the full, high quality version of the interview you can see here in really bad (almost unwatchable) quality. There was also some footage of Tina Chow and Sonia Rykiel that I noticed, but it was all so overwhelming (well, actually also underwhelming) I flitted from one video to the next, not really taking much in, and not really feeling drawn in because not much was happening of interest. Talking of drawn - in the bizarrely hung first room, where some of the exhibits were hung 25 feet high on the wall, I noticed a series of what I thought must be Andy Warhol's childhood figurative pencil drawings. Until I reached it and saw that they were from 1963. I don't want to be too rude, but it all suddenly made sense, the delving into so many other mediums that weren't reliant upon him being able to draw. So that begs the question: does it matter? To me, yes. And since we bloggers are in the business of recording and documenting the daily minutiae of our lives it made me want to tread more thoughtfully there as well.

...Being a bookworm. I'm going to do a reading list this year; I've almost finished Mrs Dalloway and A Room of One's Own (prompted by the discovery that not one of my English friends has read any Woolf, yet friends from other countries rave about her), re-read The House of Mirth, started Something Wholesale and The Bell Jar (one of those books I'd always avoided for being depressive, but now I can't believe I've lived so long without it.)

...Going on a sentimental journey. I visited the former houses of my grandparents on both sides (who are all no longer with us), due to an overwhelming desire to connect with my roots. It may have been triggered by the news that the house I grew up in (that my dad sold two years ago) has been extended on all sides, the big tree in the front garden cut down and garden paved over, and the whole house generally "Dallas-ified" - as tends to happen in the London suburb I escaped from. Why it should be upsetting when it has nothing to do with you anymore I don't know; people are pretty much entitled to do what they want with the homes they own. But I can't describe the relief when I saw my granny's lovely Arts & Crafts house still intact - not a UPVC window or out of proportion extension in sight.

SQUIGGLE/QUIBBLE...

I made good use of my Tate membership today (though I did miss my members' bar crew). Not knowing what was on I found not one, but two exhibitions to get excited about. First up, Cy Twombly - and forgive me for being a total cliche and saying that his Quattro Stagioni paintings are my favourite series of paintings ever to grace a wall.
I can see how some might look at his series of squiggles and pencil scrawls and wonder why they're so lauded. All I can say is that for me, the exact placement, colour and texture of those scrawls, daubs and squiggles sort of get me somewhere visceral with the rightness of those choices. Ferragosto, for instance, just looks like being in the fucking unbearable slowly rotting heat of Rome in August. To me it does anyway.

My petit quibble is that the Quattro Stagioni room in particular, where two versions (Otto Stagioni?) were, had really bad unnatural lighting. I did see a man carrying a reel of cables though, so maybe it was just broken. Room 9, containing the watery paintings from the early '80s in Gaeta also made me swoon.

I was hyper excited about the Street & Studio (An Urban History of Photography) exhibition. What was amazing was to see the very earliest ways that photographers documented life on the street. (You can't exactly take a snapshot of a passerby when you have a two minute exposure time or longer.) Listen to this, from Jacques Henri-Lartigue, about photographing ladies in the Bois de Boulogne when he was a teenager (around 1910):

"She approaches...I'm shy, trembling a little. Twenty meters...ten meters...eight...six...and click! The shutter of my big camera makes so much noise that the lady jumps almost as much as I do. It doesn't matter a bit......all that counts is the pleasure of having a new photo."

Anyone who has ever photographed a stranger in the street will know exactly what poor Jacques was going through - and he did all right in the end didn't he?!

When I got to Contemporary Street and Studio I and II I was perplexed not to see a single representation of street style photography or any mention of that new fangled Internet thing. Let's go with the most obvious suspect: Scott Schuman (who has a gallerist and has been included in other exhibitions). Not one photo. I really, really think that if Juergen Teller's Go-Sees are considered worthy, then at least one of the Sartorialist's shots could have been in. Jeff Wall, Martin Parr - we all know those names and we've all seen that work.

After you exit the exhibition, there on the wall it tells you about the competition for Street or Studio in collaboration with flickr and blurb books. It felt to me as if someone had pointed out the oversight at the last minute and they rectified it by getting them involved as an afterthought. I don't know, I may be completely wrong but it seems the curators really missed a trick there - I only hope that when the blurb book is done, they're planning a massive exhibition and that's why it was left out of this one.

I've entered a couple of photos to the competition - you can read about it here and enter here by adding your submission(s) to the flickr group. Hence the above photo taken by me in June 2006 in the days of my extremely regular (ahem) and prolific (ahem) series This Week In London We Are Mostly Wearing. I stopped taking photos of people in the street because, honestly, when I started doing it people would be really flattered and go, "Who me?" After the whole street style photography thing blew up (oh yes it did Tate Modern, where were you?) people I approached would work out fairly quickly that I was neither an American bloke called Scott nor a Swiss bloke called Yvan (being a British female holding a little point and shoot camera) and would sniffily demand, "Er, like, what's it for?" Ah, the terror. You have to be brave to photograph people.

Which leads me to one more thing in the exhibition! (If anyone's still with me.) I loved the photographs taken by Laurie Anderson in 1973, entitled Fully Automated Nikon. She decided to take photos of men who made sleazy comments to her in the street - almost as a way of exacting revenge on them. The photos are printed with captions underneath telling what they said and how they reacted when she asked to take their photo. She says something like, "I realised that taking someone's picture is a little like attacking them."

{photo taken by me June 2006}

CLICHÉ LIKE SUNDAY MORNING...

I am being kindly picked up to go and retrieve my car from its post fireworks display/drank a vat of mulled wine resting place. I am still snoozing when the doorbell rings. I brush my teeth and pull on the cosiest clothes I can find. We go outside. I am wearing: bedhead hair, a bobbly cashmere jumper, track pants, Ugg boots (to hand because they now serve as slippers), a pashmina (I swear this is true) and Rayban Wayfarers*. I am not clutching a Starbucks Venti takeout cup or a small dog but I still look like I've just left an L.A. yoga class that started in 2001.

I have no food in the house (as usual) and wonder if I can go to the supermarket looking like this; which I never do on a Sunday as this is when everyone else goes. My entire life in London is constructed (thanks to working from home) around doing things at a different time to everyone else. Work all Friday night, late night partying on a Wednesday, go to the supermarket hardly ever, but at no other time than a week day mid morning.

I decide to brave it, fearing this will be the time I bump into the ex I never bump into. But it turns out, every other chick in Sainsbury's is wearing a variation of my "outfit". We are all wandering round like Stepford Wives played by off duty Desperate Housewives, putting organic this and fairtrade that into our trolleys.

(*Except the Wayfarers should really be Aviators.)

DID I MISS SOMETHING?...

So this week in London every female under the age of 35 is apparently wearing, only and exclusively:

baggy short shorts over leggings/tights,
the flat '80s boots everyone's been wearing for three years,
a peacoat,
shaggy long hair.

What happened? Did I miss the time Kate Moss wore exactly this? Why is everyone dressed the same? Did everyone get caught out by those leggings that are really just footless tights so when you wear them with a short dress or skirt everyone else (who may or may not also be wearing them) gets an occasional eyeful of your knickers or lack thereof. Did the Britney Spears photos strike so much fear into the hearts of young women everywhere that they're just being really cautious and protective of that area now and double layering?

Am most perplexed. Please advise.

LONDONERS: WELL PLAYED...

I've noticed lately just how well, spiffy everyone looks in London at the moment. In spite of the fact that I've developed an irrational fear of asking well dressed folk if I can take their picture, there's just too damn many of them to capture each and every one.
I think there are a few reasons for this. The weather for one. After a warm September it's now damp, humid, a bit cold - the perfect conditions for us Brits whose wardrobes are filled with trans seasonal clothes for dank, moody seasons. (Ie: autumn, winter, spring and two thirds of summer.)
It could also be down to the fact that apparently the U.K has more credit card debt than the rest of Europe combined. Add to this a high street churning out directional fast fashion and it's not surprising everyone looks so tippety top. Although the people I'm noticing don't look like they've been kitted out at Primark. I do believe I have a keenly tuned eye for such things and the young man I saw on the tube wearing the most beautiful navy suit with the buttonholes picked out subtly in pale blue stitching did not get it at Zara.

English people are usually known for looking a bit dishevelled but - and again with the statistics (I've been watching too much London local news), if more than 50% of London schoolchildren don't speak English then I suppose all these people walking round in perfectly co-ordinated tweed, cashmere and sheepskin ensembles - not a bobbly jumper or scuffed shoe in sight, may not in fact be English. Actually when I walk down Jermyn Street or Savile Row all it reminds me of is "Lo Stile Inglese" that Italian men pull off so perfectly.
Whoever these sartorial sharp shooters are, I don't care. It's nice to walk around your own city and see style on a par with Paris or Florence - and I do mean style, not fashion. Maybe it's not so important in the scheme of things, but seeing others so well put together puts a much needed spring in my step too. And reminds me I need to get my shoes re heeled and my coat dry cleaned. Both things I would usually do before going to Paris but wouldn't worry too much about here. Raising the bar fellow Londoners, me likes it.

THIS WEEK IN LONDON WE ARE MOSTLY WEARING...

Black/white:


This was the easiest, fastest 'This week...'(I'm really starting to wish I'd come up with a more succinct title) shot I've ever taken. This girl looked great. She didn't bat an eyelid when I asked to take her picture. Pose, click, thank you! And all while she was still talking on the phone. I guess I wasn't the first person to ask! Bags seem to be getting bigger and bigger. Can we call it a trend or do we just need to carry around more stuff? I love her patent sandals and clutch bag against the big slouchy bag.



Notice both these girls are wearing leggings and looking pretty damn sophisticated don't you think? I know we're supposed to be all anti leggings now and say they're so over. But isn't that only because people want to be the first to say a trend is dead?
If it looks good, I say wear it.
She also had a super ginormous bag but she put it down for the photo.
She is standing in front of a piece at Tate Modern by Joseph Grigely called 167 white conversations. The artist is profoundly deaf and collected all the pieces of paper people had written phrases on when they got stuck in conversations over the years.
My mum was also deaf - I recognised this so well; little drawings of things and scrawled random phrases. I wish we'd thought to keep them as well.




Everybody is wearing white rimmed aviator sunglasses. I did ask the model to put the sunglasses on her eyes, not propped on her head like some kind of Chelsea yummy mummy, but she refused. Girls these days just can't take direction.

THIS WEEK IN LONDON WE ARE MOSTLY WEARING...

Trenchcoats. I had to resist the urge to put: Trenchcoats! As if it's something really exciting. Classic, yes. Chic, hopefully. But exciting?

Even I'm already bored. But since I am bound to report what we in London are actually wearing and since we have had 'The Most Rain Since 1733'; it is trenchcoats that we are mostly wearing. Well technically it's they who are wearing them, since I have never had one. Being a pernickity detail obsessive I never found the right one during the trench craze of about five years ago. They are either too heavy (A.P.C), the collar is too big or worse, pointy,(anywhere on the high street) or it's too long, engulfs me and is too bloody expensive (Burberry). If I were to purchase a trenchcoat it would have to be very narrowly cut, lightweight with curved lapels, not too many epaulettes and doo dads and have a belt I could wrap high around my waist. There would be a kicky back pleat and it would flare gently from waist to knee. Oh, and be petrol blue, not beige. (I saw a vintage Burberry one in this colour once but it was too big.) Are you listening God of fleamarket serendipity?
Anyhoo, everyone's wearing them at the moment, mostly due to the weather, although Topshop has done just about every colour and variation of a trench you can think of - cropped, deconstructed, drop waisted, fifties, pretty much everything except The Perfect Trench. And don't even get me started on Gap.

The trenchcoat has become, or maybe always was a democratic item of clothing. Like jeans or aviator sunglasses. But let's face it, there are many trench wearers aiming for Charlotte Gainsbourg who land closer to Inspector Clouseau.

And most are just aiming to keep dry. Which is fine too.

But after a while it all gets a bit...beige. Carine Roitfeld suggests belting your trench with a printed silk scarf which no doubt looks chic and inventive on her, but on mere mortals it could just look like they lost their belt.

So, I have waded through the sea of beige with my little camera to bring you:
Trenchcoats, more Gainsbourg than Clouseau...



Illustrating that on an early summer day you need both sunglasses and a raincoat at all times.



Ok, not strictly speaking a trenchcoat but she looked so cute! Look at her little patent round peep toe shoes as well...


Left bank on the south bank.

THIS WEEK IN LONDON WE ARE MOSTLY WEARING...

Suddenly it is autumn and suddenly everyone is wearing skinny drainpipe jeans, ballet pumps, waistcoats, tweed city shorts and cropped A line jackets. This is the uniform that Kate Moss has been wearing for ages, and thus we must all now wear it because she is the fashion oracle. I don’t think she intended to share the ‘rolled up tenner in the nostril’ look though.

A few weeks ago I looked at my beloved bootcut James jeans that I’ve been wearing almost daily since January, and they just seemed all wrong, hideously outdated in fact. So I dragged my arse and saddlebag thighs (literally) into autumn/winter. And you know what, I look ok. I’ll spare you a photograph.

I am still obsessed with the Vanesa Bruno dress. It apparently does not exist in London (were the buyers blind?) so I will try my luck when I get to Paris. The Vanessa Bruno store does not put things on hold. They do not have time to speak on the phone, they are very busy and can only tell you that they do have the dress you want but you cannot reserve it unless you pay for it over the phone even though you don’t know what size you are. And you cannot put two sizes on hold, oh no no. Non.
I am now also obsessed with finding the perfect knee high flat, round toed riding boot.

I am SO shallow. I like being shallow. I am a mindless consumer robot as the man who preaches with the megaphone at Oxford Circus would say. This is absolutely true as today I was so consumed by window shopping that I forgot to go to my yoga class.

I wonder what people will mostly be wearing in Paris? Small pooches? Facial expressions of disdain when confronted by my scruffy Englishness? Or should that be my English scruffiness? I’ll be sure to let you all know. All three of you.

I used to live in Florence and got used to the looks of pity I received when dashing to my class with non blow dried hair and no make up. I will try to make an effort in Paris. I may even iron a few things and look in the mirror before going out. But I draw the line at matching accessories, bouffant hair or jauntily tied Hermes scarves.