The Uggly Truth

If you're from the UK, then no doubt you've been having to deal with snow recently (even if you're not from the UK you've probably had to deal with snow recently - it's everywhere!). Fortunately, Liverpool didn't have quite as much as some other parts of the country, but there was still enough of it to make life that bit more difficult. Now, there's something you should know about me before I go any further; I'm not a fan of snow. Actually, that's not true, I went to Lapland once and had a lovely time leaping about in the snow, but I was wearing the appropriate snow-gear; a massive snow suit, big heavy boots and these cool penguin mitten things (I looked AWESOME). But, here, in the UK, where I don't own snow clothes, then yes, I hate snow. When it's snowy/icy I spend all my time worrying about falling over (when I worked in Scotland last year, the snow was insane and I fell over four times. FOUR TIMES. It stops being funny, believe me). And being cold. Being cold makes me want to cry. Seriously, cry. If I had a choice, I'd just stay inside the whole time and wait for the snow to melt, but as I have one of those annoying things called a "job", that isn't really an option.

I'm sure it's been the same for a lot of you; the combination of slippy ice and bitterly cold weather has had quite a big effect on what I've been wearing. Mainly my approach is; wear any outfit I'd usually wear, but then pile a whole load of knitwear/coats/shawls/hats etc on top of it. Despite my addition of six thousand extra layers, I think I still look ok ("snuggly chic" I like to call it), but even if I didn't, I wouldn't really care, because my main concern is getting to work without dying of hypothermia (which is clearly a possibility). However, there may have been one part of my outfit that a lot of you would have been, quite frankly, disgusted by...

Oh God, I'm scared to say this.

All week long, I've been wearing...

Ugg boots

Argh! I feel like I've just confessed to some kind of dark, seedy fetish...

Ok, ok, I know, you're horrified and appalled (don't look at me! I'm too ashamed!). The thing is though, maybe I'm becoming an old woman, but (shock horror!) there are times when looking good isn't actually my main priority when I get dressed. This past week was one of those times; I still factored style somewhere into the equation, but keeping warm and not falling over were far more important to me.

You also have to understand, if you've never worn a pair of Uggs, that they are SO comfortable and SO warm. I know there are other options out there for warm winter shoes, hell I even did a whole post on shearling boots, but as I'm still waiting to get some of those for Christmas, Uggs are currently the only thing I own that are suitable for this kind of weather.

I understand that a lot of people hate them for a multitude of reasons; the uglyness of them, the fact that they're the footwear of choice for so many irritating people (WAGs, chavs, Katie Price) and also that they just won't seem to go away (overkill isn't the word). But I want to make it clear; I've never seen my Uggs as a fashion thing, they're simply a practical thing. I don't wear them all year round, in fact they've been in my cupboard probably since January, and I don't own hundreds of pairs of them in different styles/colours, I've just got the one pair.

Katie, Colleen and Kerry - does this mean I'm guilty by association???

Maybe it's because I'm not a big shoe person. Dresses, coats, jewellery makeup, yes please, but shoes just aren't high on my agenda. So wearing a pair of Uggs doesn't feel like that big of a fashion crime to me. Also, I genuinely don't think they look THAT horrible (I've got the short, grey ones like in the first picture); whenever I'm wearing them, they always remind me of a teddy bear's feet, and really, what could be bad about that? There are other versions of Uggs that I truly think are grotesque (have you ever seen the metallic ones? WTF?!) but I think mine are pretty minimal in the ugly stakes. This could be to do with the fact I'm from Liverpool, where seemingly every single person with feet owns at least one pair of Uggs - maybe I've just been conditioned into accepting them...?

I'm well aware that, once you start to sacrifice style for comfort when it comes to shoes, you're just a few steps away from throwing any sense of fashion out of the window and wearing those 'sensible' velcro sandal things you always see old people wearing on walking holidays. I'll make you a promise right here, right now; this Ugg situation is a one-off thing - I will NEVER wear velcro sandals for as long as I live.

Thoughts please, people - where do you stand when it comes to Uggs? What have you been wearing in the snowy weather? And are there ever occasions when you're happy to sacrifice your style for comfort? I need to know the answers!

[NB. This post has absolutely nothing to do with the comments Lily recently made on Twitter - I've been planning to talk about Uggs for a while now. And for the record, I think Lily is awesome.]

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!