Mr Bojangles

Just a quick post, following on from yesterday's.

Despite Sheniqua's claims that the fashion show would be a formal affair, I decided to wear my new black dress from the Topshop sale, the leather jacket of dreams and these crazy pompom shoes (again from Topshop);

I love these shoes - I very rarely wear them because they're so bloomin' special - look at the pompoms! Look at the heel! They even came with a little silky shoebag to keep them all protected and clean!

I also wore my new massive earrings (again from the Topshop sale - what's wrong with me?!), which are jangly to the max, but also exceptionally heavy. I did fear that my earlobes would become elongated during the course of the night, due to the sheer weight of the things. I suppose it all comes down to the question of would you be willing to risk developing freakishly long earlobes for the sake of some fabulous earrings? The answer is clearly yes, yes I would.

Pat Butcher eat your heart out

Seriously - SO heavy!

Anyway, the moral of this story is that when you go out wearing an outfit which consists of fabulous yet somewhat painful shoes and super jingly jangly earrings - manage your time carefully. Otherwise you end up having to leg it for the bus which results in majorly sore feet AND sore ears!

Let this be a lesson, kids - jangly earrings and running do not mix...

Sophisti-muh-cated

I just got back from seeing the UK touring production of Little Shop of Horrors - it was wonderful and has filled me with a desire to get back on a stage and sing to my little heart's content... sadly I'm not sure when I'm going to get the chance to do that, so for now I'll have to just stick to belting out showtunes in the comfort of my bedroom and looking at this photograph of Audrey II from time to time...

"Feed me Seymooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrr"

Anyway, that's not really the point of this post; what I really wanted to tell you about was what I did on Wednesday.

What did you do on Wednesday? Huh? HUH?!

Well kiddies, on Wednesday evening, I went to my very first fashion show! I know! Exciting right? Well, exciting for me because I've never been to one and (due to my friend being very well connected) we were treated as VIPs and I thought maybe this could be quite a good opportunity for me to meet some fashiony people and do some networking!

The show was for House of Suga's S/S 2010, they're a new brand from Liverpool, designed by four local girls. It was held in the Anglican Cathedral, which is a breath-takingly beautiful, massive old building with a huge aisle that served as a catwalk and stained glass windows all around. When we arrived we were treated to free wine and lovely, lovely canapes (I'll be honest, I pretty much gorged myself on smoked salmon blinis - the wonderful thing about fashion parties is that nobody actually eats the food; fortunately, my friend and I weren't interested in fitting in with the fashion crowd, and quite frankly, we were bloody hungry!).

It got even better when I realised that, being VIPs, we'd be sitting on the front row for the show itself and that we would be getting GOODIE BAGS!

I tried to be cool about the freebies, I really did. I figured that a seasoned fashion show go-er probably wouldn't nose dive into a goodie bag like a three year old faced with a pile of bubble wrap and cardboard boxes on Christmas Day. However, my friend (for the sake of anonymity, we'll call her Sheniqua) had told me that the goodie bags would be filled with gifts from Harrods, (God only knows why I believed her...) so I did get a bit over-excited.

Contents as follows - lots of those mini perfume samples they give you in John Lewis when you buy something from a makeup counter (including Viktor & Rolf's Flowerbomb, which I think smells a lot like Angel by Thierry Mugler...), some random fliers about local Liverpool beauticians etc, a magnetic backgammon set by Dunhill which was lovely but, well...why?! and some weird tasting chocolate buttons and chocolate Lambananas -

This is a chocolate Lambanana - modelled on the Super Lambanana, which is a stupid sculpture in Liverpool, that everyone, apart from me, loves. Basically, imagine the above, but bright yellow and about the size of a rhinoceros - it's shit.

So the goodie bags weren't exactly filled with the stuff of dreams, but a freebie's a freebie in my book, and those mini perfumes are really useful for when you're travelling and don't want to take a massive bottle of perfume with you. As I already said, I don't know why I believed Sheniqua's ramblings about Harrods - she had also told me that all the guests would be wearing floor length gowns and tuxedos - fortunately I'd had the foresight to check and found out that this really was not, in any possible way, the case. Basically, Sheniqua's mental.

You may, at this point, be wondering why I am rambling on about goodie bags and chocolate mutant sheep when this is a fashion blog and I was at a fashion show - what about the clothes?!

Well, I don't have a lot to say about the clothes because they weren't really to my tastes at all. Think Miss Sixty and River Island - very bright colours, lots of sequins and patterns - a mixture of clubwear and beachwear for the very daring or very attention seeking. I wasn't massively impressed, but at the same time, this was their first show, and they had also been faced with the major setback of some of their garments not being delivered to the venue, meaning that they had to drop several models and didn't get to show all of their designs.

However, if you're going to put on a fashion show in the Anglican Cathedral and make a big old song and dance about it, and have loads of press there, well, you should probably bring the goods to back it up and in my eyes, what it all came down to was that House of Suga seemed a bit out of their depth.

I just don't think they were ready for such a big event - some of the designs looked more like mock-ups than actual finished pieces and a lot of their models were awkward and had horrendous walks; I'm pretty sure that Miss Jay Alexander would have had a nervous breakdown. Hopefully, with a bit more time and experience, the House of Suga brand will grow into something notable and exciting; it's always nice to see something new come out of Liverpool, but for the moment, no number of smoked salmon canapes and mini perfumes could distract from the fact that they've got a long way to go yet.

What could have been...

So, while browsing through some of the entries on Foto Decadent (which is amazing and I don't know how I've only just come across it), I found these lovelies;

Tiiu Kiuk photographed by Camilla Åkrans

They reminded me of a much better version of these;

America's Next Top Model - Carmen Miranda Shoot

The more I look at the Top Model photos, the more I just think "meh". The only thing I like is Allison's face, and that's because I always like her and her giant eyes. I don't know, is it just because the Camilla Åkrans photos are SO gorgeous, that these pale in comparison? It just feels like there's something not quite right about them, I don't really get what they're going for. Actually, I don't think anyone really knew what they were trying to achieve on this shoot because Jay Manuel kept giving them all conflicting instructions, so bloody frustrating! Seriously though, I keep looking at that photo of Celia and thinking "who the hell styled her?!"

And don't even get me started on the Ciara shoot - a crazed fan wearing underwear, tangled in her mic wire?! What the crap was that?

Also, we're on Cycle 12 now and I think they were auditioning Cycle 13 recently - how many more "America's Next Top Models" do they need to find? It must be a bit of an anti-climax for the winner -

"Woohoo! You're America's next TOP model! You'll be huge! You'll be on the cover of Seventeen magazine! Just like the Jonas Brothers! You'll be the face of Covergirl! Oooh mascara! Hurray!

...Right, well that was fun, congratulations... ummm...cycle 12 girl, we're off to go and find America's NEXT next top model - ok bye!"

Anyway, I'd love to know people's thoughts on this - is it just me or are the Top Model shoots going downhill? Actually is Top Model generally just going downhill? Is anyone else sick of Nigel Barker being so snooty? And is anyone else frightened that Tyra's hair is getting so big that it's only a matter of time before a goodbye hug results in one of the girls suffocating in her weave?

This is just silly...

People who are this pretty shouldn't be allowed. Fact.



Source

Why's she dressed like a mint imperial?

Zut alors! I didn't realise how long it'd been since my last post - bad Little Curly Girl, this really will not do.

I don't have much of an excuse except that I went to London last week, came back and then was back down there again before I had time to really think about it.

It's now 1.20am and I need to rest my head, so I'm going to try and keep this short, but I've got much to speak of so let's just see how it goes, shall we?

First off, the Topshop sale started last week, and while I didn't manage to get hold of a cheap blazer (they had a few but sadly not in my size), I did buy a new dress and some jingly jangly earrings;

Not sure if you can really see from the photos (courtesy of topshop.com), but the bottom is all hitched up, kind of like a saloon girl or a lady pirate. You can never have too many black dresses, especially not ones that are as versatile as this and at £15 it pretty much would have been a criminal offence not to buy it. The earrings I bought aren't on the website, so I'll show them in another post - can't be bothered getting all snap-happy now. But rest assured they are jangly and brilliant.

All in all, I was impressed with the sale; if I'd had more money and the shop hadn't been so goddamn hot and hectic, I'd have probably tried on and spent more.

Now that was the Liverpool store. While killing some time on Monday afternoon in London, I took an eye-opening trip to the Oxford Street store.

Oh. Sweet. Kittens. I can't believe I've never been there before. It's just...so...BIG! They have two basements - you go down once, then you go down again! There was so much to look at! So many brands and concessions and vintage things and shoes and they have a Nails INC and an eyebrow threading studio and a place where you can get your hair blow dried! And they have toilets! AND a cafe! A cafe INSIDE Topshop! You could basically live there and maintain a perfectly groomed, stylish life. That is, until the security guards realised that the "Topshop hermit", which they had previously thought was just a myth conjured up by busy mothers trying to frighten their children into not wandering away from the changing rooms, was actually a real thing, living on bagels and dancing around the store at night wearing Sass & Bide jeans and Johnny Loves Rosie hair accessories.

But I digress. I didn't actually buy anything in the London Topshop, even though the sale was massive and I'm sure I could have found many wonderful things had I stayed longer, but I didn't really have time as I had to get across London to meet a certain Ealing-residing lady to go to a concert. Or 'gig' as the young folks say.

After a brief mishap which involved me firstly getting lost on Oxford Street trying to find the entrance to the tube and then getting trapped in rush hour traffic while underground, I finally met up with my lady friend and we made our way to the Soho Theatre to see the lovely Camille O'Sullivan.

Camille O'Sullivan is the sort of person who, if she was living in a 1940s cheesy American film, she would walk past a group of men and they'd stop and stare and then say "What a woman!" just like that.

Basically I'd like to be her. She's fabulous. I could go into great detail about how amazing the show was, but I was meant to be keeping this short and there's already quite a lot of stuff about her on the Internet, written by people who probably know much more about music than I do. But I do urge you to check her out if you haven't already because she is something special. Beautiful voice, beautiful character.

What I am going to talk about though, is her style. You can probably tell from the pictures above, that there's definitely an element of burlesque and old-style glamour there. But she wasn't quite as polished as some of those other ladies (Dita Von Teese et al), there was something a bit more shabby chic about her; pretty much everything she wore was a bit old or vintage, her shoes were worn down, her dress looked damaged and at one point she wore a kimono that had makeup stains on the back. Yet she looked stunning and I found that whole 'give a damn, I'm going to wear this coz I love it, not coz it's fashionable/new/clean' attitude so intriguing.

I very rarely shop for vintage clothing, partly because I never find anything that fits me and partly because I think it's difficult to find really good quality vintage; some of it just looks old and faded and scruffy and that's never really been my thing. But seeing how Camille could take all that worn out stuff and still look glamourous and sexy was just so interesting and it made me think of that kind of bohemian/gypsy/Moulin Rouge type thing, where it's more of a case of wearing whatever you could get your hands on and still looking damn cool. I searched for some photos of this sort of ragamuffin, gypsy, scavenger style, hoping that maybe I'd come across some fashion editorials that played with these ideas, but I couldn't find anything that went along with what I had in mind. This image from The Terrible Infants, a show I saw last summer in Edinburgh, is probably the closest thing to ragamuffin chic I could find;

Anyway, as I didn't manage to find any photo shoots which featured this kind of style, I'm thinking I might rope my sisters into doing one with me; my wardrobe is full of things that I think would work in this context, and I'll use this old nursery rhyme as inspiration;

Hark, hark, the dogs do bark

The beggars are coming to town.

Some in rags and some in jags

And one in a velvet gown

I'll keep you posted on my progress!

On the good ship lollipop...

I think this just about sums me up - tomorrow I'm going to a joint birthday party for three friends, so today I went into town to buy presents for said friends. I came back from town with two DVDs (for me), a brooch (for me), a pair of shoes (for me), a present (for one of the friends) and this postcard of Shirley Temple (for me). To be fair, I'm going halves on the presents with another friend, and it just worked out that she'd sorted the other two out first. But I think it's safe to say that I much prefer buying myself things than buying them for other people. This probably means I'm a bad person, but hey, at least I'm a bad person with lots of cool stuff.

Why Shirley Temple? It's kind of a combination of intrigue, because when I was little, everyone said I looked like her, and vague terror, because I've always found her a bit creepy. There's something about those chubby little arms and shiny, shiny ringlets that just doesn't feel right to me. Ever noticed how in every single Shirley Temple film there's a scene where she does a tap dance routine with an elderly black man? It doesn't matter what kind of film it is - I swear I saw one where her character was on her death bed but, by God, could they stop that plucky little girl from doing a tap dance with an elderly black man? Like Hell they could! She tap danced to her dying heart's content, yes indeedy.

Here's a photo of me as a deranged-looking child for comparison. Note - I may have had the ringlets and chubby arms but I NEVER tap danced.

Back to my purchases - I went back to the wonderful vintage jewellery shop where I bought my owl brooch... I don't actually think all of it is vintage because, well it looks too shiny and new, but regardless, it's still cool. Today I bought an adorable little ballerina -

The detail is lovely on this - she's got a flouncy skirt and is tying up her little ballet shoe! I shall name her Annabel.

I also bought a pair of interesting shoes from Urban Outfitters, they were on sale - £20 reduced from £35 (I pretty much only ever buy from the sale section of Urban Outfitters coz it's so bloody extortionate). I was looking for a pair of black flats and came across these little beauts -

I love that cutout detail! So nifty! They're not really the sort of thing I'd normally buy - I'm more of a ballet pumps kind of gal, but they're so unusual and VERY comfortable so I threw caution to the wind and just bought them. Madness.

"More canapes, guv'nor?"

Did I dream this or was there once a time when Fashion TV was really crappy and featured fashion shows that nobody had heard of and had weird soap operas about models being forced into escort services? I swear I didn't make that up, but lately it's as if it was all some kind of ridiculous hallucination because whenever I've been blankly flicking through the channels, I've stopped on Fashion TV and found something wonderful to watch.

Today they showed some stuff from Milan Fashion Week and featured the Frankie Morello show which was frikkin' AWESOME (any fashion show that ends with a cast of fake wedding guests dancing to Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire gets an A* in my book). I've not come across Morello before so had a little look at his stuff online (weirdly, he's not on style.com but is on elle.com )

Let's just take a moment to enjoy that skirt. It's just...how did they...I wish...oh I love it! I always find it really interesting when designers do crazy things like this with fabric and folding and origami-type shapes because, from what I've seen on Project Catwalk, it's very difficult to execute such a challenging aspect of tailoring, and to do it well.

(Note - Project Catwalk and America's Next Top Model tell me everything I need to know about what's really important in the fashion industry, ie if you can't make a simple baby doll dress...you suck as a designer. If you can't smile with your eyes while balancing a bejewelled cockroach on your face...you suck as a model..).

Therefore, I have come to the (very wise) decision that Frankie Morello is an excellent designer. Frankie, I look forward to seeing more of you!

There's been a lot of clever folding and origami-ing (coz that's a word) of fabrics on the catwalks recently, the latest offerings from Viktor & Rolf were insane;

I can't even fathom how they've put these things together. The coat! It's like an armadillo but if an armadillo decided to be a really, really cool coat. And look at those skirts! I love how they're so demure, in muted tones and heavy fabrics but are so weird and brilliant at the same time.

Here's a few more origami-type pieces;

Gianfranco Ferre Spring/Summer 09, Christian Dior Spring/Summer Couture 07, Gareth Pugh Spring/Summer 09 and Bruno Pieters Fall 09

While all this crazily constructed stuff is FABULOUS, it is a difficult style to actually translate into a real life outfit for when you're just going about you're daily business (unless you live in space or are a very stylish armadillo), so I reckon it's more a case of really thinking about the basics - pleats, geometric shapes, ruffles and folds. The most obvious answer is to focus on more tailored stuff - pleated trousers, shirts with ruffle details and interesting geometric accessories. Although if anyone wants to send me the Frankie Morello skirt, I'd definitely give it a try!

So today, while in a folding frame of mind, I decided to try out some origami. Not just any origami, though, fashion origami! While I knew it would be basically impossible for me to make anything that was actually wearable, I thought that maybe I could create some interesting decorative little trinkets out of pretty pictures.

Figuring it'd be best to start out with some basics, I found an "easy origami for kids" page on the internet, with step by step instructions and lots of pictures, armed myself with a magazine and a pair of scissors and got to it.

First, I made a "pleated box" out of the Louis Vuitton ad with Madonna in it -

It's supposed to be a bit more 3D than this, so that you can actually put stuff in it, but magazine pages are quite flimsy so it didn't really stand up properly. Even so, I was pleased with this as a first attempt and moved on to a basket made from a Dior ad -

Look at it! It's a proper basket!

...Except you can't pick it up by the handle because I couldn't quite figure out how to fold it so that it stayed attached...

I think it's safe to say that Frankie Morello and Viktor & Rolf won't be hiring me anytime soon...

I did however, do rather well with the origami animals - ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce -

The Easter Critters! In case, like my dad, you haven't got a clue what they are, it's a chick and a bunny, but you knew that, right?

...maybe I've found my calling in life...

(photos from elle.com and style.com)

A very good face.

It's night time and I'm sleepy but here are some photos of Kim Noorda from the Fall RTW shows. I'm a sucker for a girl with massive eyebrows.

Jean Paul Gaultier, Bottega Veneta and Roberto Cavalli

Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton, Jean Paul Gaultier, Moschino Cheap & Chic and Marc Jacobs

How bloomin' brilliant is that profile shot?!

She kind of looks like Alexa Chung...a little bit.