Mandy Coon another style icon to love

These images are from Elle.com

I love her clothes and covet all her dresses big time.
I am optimistic that I can at least replicate the final outfit since I now have two lovely pairs of harem pants

Something for the weekend

I feel like I have just been thrown down a mile long helter-sketer and spat out such was the head spinning speed at which this weekend went by.
I lost most of Saturday by having a lie in, by that I mean I actually made it past 9am, but the knock on effect of this is that although you feel rested you end up at 8pm where you should be at 5pm.
Daisy had left the previous day for her marathon road trip to Liverpool. I had arranged to pick her up from her prom the following night but was suprised to see The Worlds Most Expensive Prom Dress still swinging from it's hanger in her room. I phoned to check if she had forgotten it and it transpired she had decided to wear her cheer leading outfit! Which before you raise an artful eyebrow cost the same as her prom dress!! Yes I give you a cheer leading outfit that cost one hundred and fifty effing pounds. It was apparently custom made and came with silver spanx hence the astronomical cost of what was essential a gym slip and top. Daisy of course failed to leave me any information about where the prom was and convinced she was dancing the night away I did not phone her. I drove to the only hotel I knew at Brands Hatch, the only info I had was the place. WRONG there are two hotels and since I had no map we spent 40mins trying to locate each other. After dropping her friends off I crawled into bed at 2.20am exhausted. It transpired they had arrived at their prom at 11.30pm! ONE HOUR they had, £40 for one hour her friend changed into her £250 prom dress for ONE HOUR.
Small comfort but at least Daisy has a second prom tonight having deserted her poor beau for 4 hours she is going with him tonight thankfully in a club up town so it will be the night bus for her.
Sunday I had booked tickets for Women beware Women at the National Theatre, she was tired irritable and generally in a BAD MOOD, I loved the play I thought it very dark but very funny and brilliantly executed. She hated it and was V grumpy. I have not seen her since but will have to go home early and sew her into her dress since despite expensive alterations it still falls down!

Michael Van Der Ham

How lovely are these? From Michael Van Der Ham's autumn/winter collection

This is what I need to float around in this summer

images from elle.com

Ron Van Dongen

It is that time of year again when my photography students have to come up with an idea to peg a 3000 word essay on. I try not to guide with too heavy a hand but I have my weaknesses and maybe they creep through. This year appears to be coming up with a bumper crop of faves including

• Street Photography and the Privacy Laws,
• Using Toys to Create a Narrative (love that one)
• Voyeurism and Friends,
• The Relevance of Pinhole Photography in 21st Century, and then....
• Flowers...mmm not very radical is it? In the end I pinned her down to

• Studio Light V Natural Light, which is a start. So of course we have the usual suspects Mapplethorpe, Bourke White, Penn, then I remembered Van Dongen from years back and found these beautiful images on the Michael Hoppen Gallery website.

Sometimes it is the simplest things that give the most pleasure.

The heat is on

With temperatures outside on their way to 30 degrees and in my teaching room even hotter I pulled out my 'Cornish' bag. This gave me some cooler bottom halves but of course on beach holidays I always wear a Tankini top so there were no extra light tops, or rather none that covered the modesty of my 'bingo wings' which I am happy to parade on the beach but less keen to do so in town. Monday 10/10
LOVE this skirt and it is the first time I have worn it since being given it a couple of years ago from Mother who bought it on a whim in COS and then realised she couldn't wear any of her long tops with it as it has quite a structured waist line. Emin laughed and called it my weird tea-towl skirt, but daisy said it looked great and it is sooo cool. The top is one of 3 I have from Jigsaw, the down side is they are so sheer I have to wear them with a vest.
Tuesday 9/10
Really thought it was cooler, but by midday I was set to combust, I LOVE the trousers from ASOS, cooler than they look but the top from COS was too thick and by the time I went home I was baking!
Wednesday 10/10
LOVE the mix of colours, it is such a shame I have not collected more lighter skirts but truly this is the first summer we have had for 3 years. This skirt is very old from French Connection, no way would they do this style now. It is so big I grip the back with one of Kitty's hair ties! worn with..you guessed it a Jigsaw top. Again with the vest, I was checked by the vest police before I left the house. Some of you will spit your tea out at the appalling sexist nature of that remark but that is the nature of living with a Muslim and after 12 years I have learnt to accept it.
Thursday 3/10
Yes I love the shirt from Zara and the linen trousers too from Zara are great, but all bloody day I was irritated and finally it dawned on me that this shirt needs a more toned down colour on the lower half, so next time I will wear them with some very old linen combats in a very washed out brown.
Friday 7/10
Love the skirt from Primark via EBay hate that bloody stegosaurus GAP top, but it was loose and kept me cool.
I have been desperately trying to find some cooler tops but only seem to find bottoms, maybe I should slink back to Jigsaw and suck up the prices. Of course once found the rain will arrive as it always does once I break up!

Ages of innocence

Following on from my previous post I have finished scanning the box of slides and managed to put together some montages in chronological order. Age 4

I know this for a fact because that was when I started prep school and the photograph is obviously my first day. I HATED that school so much, as one of the youngest in a small prep school I was bullied beyond belief, I and another sweet thing called Penny had a dreadful time and what saved my sanity was the birth of my sister, the lack of money meant I went to a state school and thankfully never looked back. I have a life long hatred of private schools because of this.
Far left
This is my preferred style of dress at that age. I remember loving waisted dresses and peter pan collars.
Center
rocking that double breasted Harris tweed. On the larger image I can see my favourite raglan sleeves.
Near right
rocking that whole clash to match look.
Far right
Yeah, stripy t shirt.
All these photographs were from before my sisters arrived, what I notice is how happy I was as a child and how similar I look to Leyla, although thankfully her sub Saharan jaw is kicking in where poor D&K have my weak Anglo Saxon one.
Finally the hair, dear God Mother why, why, why with the short hair? I remember someone referred to me as 'lad' and from that moment on no scissors came near my hair until my late teens!
So as you can see the hair is growing, skirt lengths are rising and sadly my preferred waisted dresses have been replaced by the dreaded A-line.. But I kept the peter pan collar though. Still with the double breasted tweed but now my beach apparel is a home knit Guernsey, check out those brown pins!

Hair was still growing! here I am 11ish, the evidence is that final photograph, the one where I came third in the fancy bicycle competition I was still at primary school.
Top left, with my sisters, they were inseparable and frequently mistaken for twins so close are they in age. Top right is my favourite I am so glad I found this photograph it was taken when we had Japanese exchange students and Masako let me wear her kimono, she was the same height as me! but I was tall for my age.
Most of all when I look at that photograph I feel sadness that it was probably the last one before the dreadful teenage years and all the conflict that ensued. I probably still had a tenuous relationship with Mother but already I can see I am self-consciously not smiling. It was all downhill from there.

Three Degrees of Separation

Mother gave me a box of slides which because my scanner is just a genius I am able to scan and print. Many of the slides are mediocre some are just LOL and some pleasantly evoke memories from a long long time ago.

I try not to indulge in too much cod psychology on this blog but these images really struck a chord. I think the reason I don't get too upset about the lack of a relationship with my mother is because my relationship with Emin is so strong and I have become close to my youngest sister (thumb sucker!) The three degrees of separation are beautifully illustrated here.

• On the left is one of many images my father took of me as a child, he clearly loved snapping away I have Polaroids, film and slides all of us growing up. They seem to come to a halt when I hit my teens, which is when he first left, guess the shine of his new family finally tarnished. My mother at best could be described as brittle but in this first image she appears warmer than I remember.
• The central image and you can clearly see the damage is done, she has said that she does not remember holding me once my sisters were born. She was exhausted looking after 3 children and in the end tough love was the easiest love. I can clearly see I was still clinging on here, I recognise that body language from Leyla when I am with D&K but I make time to lie down with all of them because I know what it feels like to have love then be frozen out.
• The last image is taken whilst touring the Black Forest in Germany. I vividly remember that not being much fun, I ached to visit the castles and my tight fisted father refused, as he did my desire to buy a national costume. I vomited many times from car sickness, endured countless hideous farmhouse breakfast ( I was a cereal girl through and through)This image really sums up the isolation, you will not find another picture of my mother and I close together, damage done.