Say Brie!

In previous posts I've uttered about how much I love glancing over pictorals of grandparents and how influential it is to my attitudes and fashion attitudes. There's nothing love more than a Sunday morning going through boxes of physical photographs, working out who people are, where they may be now, and more, being in total admiration for how inspirationally beautiful and happy everyone in the photographs are. Along with watching Amelie recently, I've the thoughts in the my head of how adorably intimate the act of photoboothing is. Just you, the camera and the curtain. Being able to date photographs, observing the trends of the time, enjoying the simplicity and getting that fuzzy and warm gooey feeling. 

So many stories, so many great hair styles, so many great shaped lapels, so many great shaped spectacles. Fashion trends are all just layers and layers of years of ideas rehashed and layered again like a yummy Victoria sponge, a bleedin big one, which is exactely how I like them. Everything eventually comes and goes, even life comes and goes but the memories will always inspire the future generations. I off to get some 40's pin curls! 

Typing Pool - QUIET PLEASE

Neatly tucked away in the Elms Lester Gallery during London Fashion Week, Orla Kiely welcomed us to her demure and coquettish fantasy, filled to the brim with peach desk lamps, nonchalantly thrown together beehives & roll-necks for your new A/W uniform.

Pre-show, a silly amount of set images being posted on social networks started the gasps rolling before anyone had set retinas on a item of clothing. Our eyes were treat to heart-pounding nostalgia with typewriters, filing cabinets in shades of grey & terracotta, vintage crockery, bins and files. It was like something straight out the set of The Rise And Fall Of Reginald Perrin or the perfect climate for the cartoon darling, Rosemary the telephone operator from the charming Hong Kong Phooey series.

Being a stereotypical office working girl myself, I enjoy the playing around with the imagery of the typical 60's/70's office girl, bustling around in her court shoes and treating the colour mauve as a religion. My gran and my nana had such a heavy influence on my being and from forever fawning over photos of them during such periods and being an annoying brat of a child by unwelcomingly appearing from boudoirs head to toe in gran & nana hairnets, costume jewellery and tweed jackets, this era & setting encapsulates everything I want to be & respect. For a set to provoke such a steely intake of breath was a real key moment and made the collection even more giddily gripping.

So as the scuttling tones of typewriter keys frantically clicking and atmospheric waves of office sounds serenely blanketed the room, the first doe-eyed beauty sauntered through the "office".

Casually coiffed English roses flaunted milk bottle hoisery, roll necks in shades of olive and fawn tucked into egg yolk early seventies styled high waist skirts with dashes of refined peter pan collars as they answered telephones, skittishly gossiped and sipped tea (this all seems a little familiar).

The attention to detail and craftmanship came across so effortlessly and spun me into the dizzying heights of Margot Tenenbaum-ville. As much as I felt waves of contentment for the gushing appreciation swirling around the fashion world like raspberry ripple over the idiosyncratic charm of the collection, if I hear one more comparison to the cliche "Mad-Men inspired" view, so help me god. It has been documented that the collection was inspired by the heartbreakingly composed Wes Anderson creation, Margot Tenenbaum.

It's not often a collection makes me want to jump up and down like a bossy madam and shriek "I Want, I Want, I Want" - I Want A Golden Goose!, etc...

QUESTION AND ANSWER ROUND:
When does being adorably hung up on a certain designers work tipple the scales on becoming a sickening mess of a fangirl?
God time has withered me into such an annoying Orla Kiely fangirl

Folks around my office for long periods of time have had to put up with me grappling with hair grips on a morning at my desk after I nearly topple over with the weight off the beehive on my head, wearing white tights, tottering in t-bar court shoes and taupe swing coats and being the girl with the bat wing eye make-up sulking at the lack of tea-bags left. I've always wanted to be a secretary, use a typewriter, drink illegal amounts of tea, loiter around in white pointed shoes and get asked on average 6 times a day whether I knicked my handbag off my nana and now Orla Kiely HQ have panpiped and declared this a necessity, and therefore my duty to adhere to my love affair with working girl dress ups.

It's enough to make you whistle Dolly Parton's 9 till 5 and divine for the girls never wants to grow up.

If you have set your eyeballs on my pinterest of late you will have seen my current penchant for similar vibes. Vintage fairs, Beyond Retro, ebay, local charity shops and local vintage shops have left my bank account bruised and sad but left my wardrobe feeling like it's on prozac after filling it's hungry tummy with teal feather hats, cat eye spectacles, fur coats, pretty print dresses and white a-line tennis skirts after the aspirational Orla Kiely buffet.

Whether it was the contrast in textures, the romantised innocence, playful contrasting textures, the felted linear simplicity, brick red berrets or all of the above that you doth your cap to, it was personal and intimate victory feeling that Orla Kiely and her team had been able to analyse your mind as you slept and create a capsule wardrobe to make you remember how great contemporary fashion weeks can be. It was like the fashion equivalent of lime and soda, a real refreshment from the sometime overwhelming instagram images of models pulling purposefully unattractive faces and the edgy, unwearable in my case, street wear on show during fashion weeks (Rihanna for River Island, I'm awkwardly glancing at you.)


'ave a banana!

There are so many dreams beyond our nights and so much sunshine beyond our gray walls

March 2013 British Vogue and a delectable little piece caught my eye upon personal musings from some of my favourite ladies comments on my favourite era. Follow Emma Elwick Bates at @emmaelwickbates on twitter at my currenty Marianne Faithful-esqe beauty Suki Waterhouse at @sukiwaterhouse

Emma Elwick Bates -
"The long drive to school was powered by my father's Sixties playlist, with Francoise Hardy's world-weary ballads ridiculously appealing to a sullen teen. When I got my own wheels - a 1961 snowberry white Austin Healy "frog eye" sprite. I'd chug proudly drive to college in a vintage shearling car coat. I still have the coat, and many of my wardrobe rules resonate with the era. I like well-made classics, an abbreviated hemline and ultra-neat handbags. The decade provides my petite frame with excellent solutions - swing coats, graphic mini dresses or on a great two-piece skirt suit. For me, the mid sixties embodies that feeling of bon chic, bon genre, with doe eyed, lofty cheeked heroines able to steal a scene in the simplest of shift dresses. So my delight must have been audible as the escalators full of Louis Vuitton twins descended in cheery Sixties cuts and bow-adorned bouffants. The sultry sophistication of Miu Miu's denim duster coats and vinyl paletots transported me to a smoky left bank jazz bar. When a collection encapsulates that decade, I tend to invest - like last summer's shimmery brocade A-lines at Christopher Kane or Prada's winter '11 windowpane checks. This spring, it will be the Marc Jacob's mod tee and the Chanel vinyl A-line skirt. If I find the right Sixties nod, I am in paradise - just like Terry and Julie on a Friday night at Waterloo Station."

Suki Waterhouse -
"As the procession "Marc mods" glided down the catwalk in their smudgy felt-tip eyeliner for his S/S 13 show, I finally felt like one of the pack. I first succumbed to the wilder side of Sixties fashion in my early teens, watching old recordings of Tina Turners stage shows. I fell in love with those neat shift dresses she wore, designed to survive all-night dancing and still look just as sharp at sunrise. Today, if I zip into a bright yellow Moschino minidress at lunchtime, I feel set for the evening, too. Jane Fonda and Betty Catroux (one of Yves Saint Laurent's original inspirations) both showed me how not to let the glamour of an outfit interfere with a little fun, showing inches of leg or painting spidery lashes. For accessories, I opt for classic pieces that have a dapper edge, such as Jil Sander's white, round-toe boots, perfect for running around town on the back of my boyfriend's scooter. For every day, black patent A-line skirts are a real weakness, while my most treasured piece if a fluffy white bolero my great-grandmother gave me. It makes the simplest of minidresses look glamourous in a moment. I need a new jacket this spring, and I'm saving up for a Marc Jacobs leather princess coast to wear with a pair of white cropped gloves that complete the look, just like Nancy Kwan."

Hallelujah Ladies!