Summer Time and the living is easy...

Well a three day week, what's not to love?
I am as you can see really struggling with the lighting in these self portraits, I will crack it eventually,

The moniker comes courtesy of Jim Lambie, the shop I photographed a couple of weeks back was in fact a gallery owned by Damien Hurst who was hosting a pop up shop of his wife's designs with the shop dummy's wearing flower faces created by Jim Lambie..
Convoluted I know, but I love the idea of a big flowery head so I guess I will stick with it for this summer term.

Summer? Yes, already, although temperatures are slumping rapidly this week cut down by a bitter NE wind so the thermals are back underneath!

So what about Weymouth, well that's for another day as last night I packed for Berlin and will be winging my way tonight via a short stop over in Brussels. Emin's treat as he desperately needed to escape the extreme jingoism that has permeated everywhere, which has the effect of raising his very un-xenophobic blood pressure to the point where he shouts at the television, so we are best out of it.
I was so in the chill out zone when I came back to work I had forgotten my password to log on, it took me an hour of thinking before I finally found all my bloguettes and caught up with some reading.

I was going to have a little rant about a blog written by a fashion editor, but it seems petty and churlish since no one makes me read it so I deleted it.

I think I just miss the point of some blogs, but isn't irksome when someone sets them self up as an independent blogger only to then use it as a vehicle to bang on about their latest editorial in the magazine they work for? Worse, they start promoting various events they are at and the cherry on top of the cupcake was describing a designer as the 'prettiest new boy in town' I'm all for a bit of eye candy but to reduce the ability of someone who has clearly worked hard to get to the top of a design house tree down to a pretty face was just insulting. Oh, I guess I had a little rant then. Still she has a gazillion readers so who's laughing now?

It's refreshing therefore to catch up with this blog which really is a very intelligent viewpoint

I have found an ingenious way of avoiding those vile American Apparel Ad's on the Sartorialist's blog, you can down load a Sartorialist 'ap' and thus just see the photographs..bliss.

God am I really just a grumpy old bitch or what?

The view from here

OMG

OMG

OMG

Thank you Emin for giving me back my creative MOJO

I have a new toy and it's name is iPhone App Hipstomatic OMG just the MOST fun you can have EVER, Polaroid is back and I don't care what they say it IS just as much fun as the real thing. Cheaper and it saves the planet.



My favourite shot so far. Back soonish...

Modigliani

When I was in my teens I was able to convince a whole raft of people this was a portrait of me, sadly the likeness is no longer there but wait I have a new portrait.Right here!

Daisy chose this card for Mother to send for my birthday as she felt it looked "scarily" like me, and I have to say I see what she means. Oh, if only he had painted me though, I would love to own one of his paintings.

Happy Easter

How cute is this years card from The Leyla Monster?

Yes this pretty much nails it

Maura Sullivan

Really beautiful photographs, you can see more of her work here on her website

Fragments of beauty

There is for me no more beautiful place on earth than Cambridge, the history, the tradition, the architecture, all add up here to a place of considerable beauty. I do not ever feel the same about Oxford, despite the years my mother lived and worked there, I have never felt a connection like the one I feel for Cambridge, even their colour blue is nicer!

Like Oxford though the colleges face inwards and so to discover the beauty you have to walk through a dark doorway past the porters lodge into a world of cloistered beauty. Look up and you will be rewarded by intricate stone work, walk into the chapels and you will be rewarded by stunning stained glass, it is all there you just have to uncover it.

The view from here

Flowers from camdridge quads and meadows I wish you could smell the heavenly scent given off from these wallflowers as the sun shone down on them.

Boessert Schorn

Not a single stockist in this country....WHY?

I find this so often, is it that out high street is so clogged with generic crap that no one can stock more esoteric clothes like this?

I am getting to the point where I can have just so much COS and little else that it's becoming irritating. Yes I know just stop buying clothes, shop my wardrobe yadda, yadda, yadda. I hear it I just don't quite know how to adhere to it.

The view from here

Working hard.... Still working hard...

The life of an undergraduate is clearly very hard work!

This is the garden behind Sydney Sussex College, it is at first a seemingly unprepossessing building lacking the glamour of some of the other colleges such as Trinity and Christ's College. Do not be deceived, it is home to one of the most glorious gardens and it's best architectural detail can be seen behind the quad once you have passed the wonderful arched walk ways.

This place has significance too because it is where my father came to complete his PhD.

Rachel Comy

I have mentioned it before but whilst New York fashion week may lack the WOW factor of Paris or the WTF factor of London, what it does deliver are collections that can go from catwalk to rail and into our wardrobes with consummate ease. Rachel Comy is one designer who has the gift of designer what can be worn. Whilst most of her clothes would be beyond my price range there is defiantly inspiration here to shop my wardrobe.

This coat in particular tick a range of boxes and here's hoping COS can deliver something like this next autumn

It is always the unexpected that delights the most

A couple of weeks back I went down Cork street to look at a couple of exhibitions, I had a peek inside the Alan Christea and look what I found. Picasso never disappoints, seriously this man is the gift that just keeps on giving. Many of the most memorable exhibitions have been Picasso retrospectives and one of my all time favourites was the recent show at the Gagosian. This one although tiny was exquisitely formed as is the catalogue worth every penny of its £25 I could look at these for hours, everything about the brush stokes the mark making is so good, so I scanned them to share with you.

Sveta Dresher

These wonderful images come from this blog which in turn features clothing from Pip-Squeak Chapeau

I of course love all the clothes featured on the blog, and although they are unavailable over here in Blighty by plundering the back pages of the blog you can get some good ideas for layering neutral shades.

They are also available from my other blog love Le Vestiaire de Jeanne

Flower Power

"Testing, testing, one, two, three."

My last day at school and time to experiment, I have found a light place to take some photographs, the only problem seems to be the camera is leaning the wrong way making me look as though I am toppling over backwards so apart from that I am good to go for yet another bumpy ride of sartorial style roll on Flowering Friday!

Flowers are big news in London right now, we might all be wearing stripes but the shop windows are screaming flowers. This shop on Bond Street was a triumph of blooms and has given me my new moniker. Selfridges, the gift that just keeps on giving, there window displays are amazing and they are currently promoting guerrilla gardening. Which brought to mind a story I heard once about a bored commuter who once threw seeds out of a window onto the railway sidings and gained pleasure later as he saw how they grew. This may have been one of those apocryphal stories but I love the idea just the same. There is a thistle too called Mrs Willmott's ghost, and every where Mrs Willmott's went she left a little reminder to flower the following year. brilliant.

Finally this quirky little knitting shops sits in one of the prettiest streets in London, Camden Passage is a great place to while away an hour or two before shopping on Upper Street, it is one of the few places to still have vintage shops and a second hand market stalls.

From now on all posts are post dated, I am signing off for a well earned break, although not before I have to have two, yes two, fillings at the dentist tonight.