The Brits Are Coming

Our latest shoot. Brit-inspired (can you tell? :P). All clothes Beyond Retro, Topshop, and Major Tom Vintage. Images Robinson Barbosa, Model Tati @ Profile, Hair Tomoyuki, Make-up Laura James.

Parisian Moments

One day i'll move to Paris. One day.

ps: the picture of the scary woman up there is from the Rodarte gallery/shop inside Colette. It was possibly the second biggest highlight of the trip (after eating crepe with cider here). They were right: those Rodarte dresses are light as feathers!

Ethical Fashion

Yesterday I attended the Estethica press day, and I was pleasantly surprised. Although I was familiar with some of the designers exhibiting (Nin, from Goodone is a friend of mine, and a very talented one indeed!), I also met amazing people that I'm sure will change the face of ethical fashion sooner than we think.

Surely one of these people will be Elisalex Grunfeld de Castro, the lovely girl behind Nina Dolcetti shoes. I spotted the croc platforms she was wearing the minute I arrived, and couldn't take my eyes off them! They are all made to order in a small atelier in East London with re-used off-cut materials, and the ones I loved cost £150 (which are not bad at all for a designer item made especially for you).




Then I met Ada Zanditon, who I'm sure I've seen other bloggers talk about before - her graduate collection (first picture) was certainly impossible not to talk about! She set up her business after working with Gareth Pugh, and she has a great future ahead of her, I'm sure. Her dresses made of dyed linen in geometric patterns would be perfect for an avant-garde layered look .






And of course, my friend Nin, whose label Goodone is a pioneer and has paved the way for all the ethical fashion that's taking centre-stage in the industry now. I love her patchwork bodycon dresses, and particularly adore the leggings and this bodysuit.

Fly Away

Because I'm still in a romantic, Parisian mood, this is the inspiration of the day: the enchanting installations of English artist Su Blackwell. Imagine wearing a dress that slowly disintegrates to become a cloud of butterflies? NO, imagine walking around an explosion of butterflies ...IN LONDON? Now that's pure fairy tale.

Je suis de retour

I've disappeared, I know. It's just that I've been going through a sort of reconfiguration process, discarding some excess baggage - a spring-cleaning right in the middle of autumn.

Went to Paris on the weekend to celebrate the longest partnership of my life - almost a decade - and it was a great opportunity to switch off and look at things from a different perspective. Well, sort of.

But nothing like going offline for a while to feel truly connected with the world.

Fringes, Fringes, Fringes

Here's a better view of today's outfit - just an excuse really to show the new fringe trim. This whole fringe thing is a bit of a belated love-affair, sprung from THAT ss09 Jil Sander fringe themed show.

*Dress vintage, cameo cardie just seen Prada, denim jacket thrifted and customised, tights boots

It seems that fringes aren't going anywhere, judging by these looks from ss10 Dolce&Gabbana show. I'm SO glad they've returned to their super feminine, Latin-inspired ways.

Which brings me to this amazing H&M fringed cardigan. When I spotted it while assisting a stylist on a shopping trip a few weeks ago, I HAD to have it. The fringes are made of little satin ribbons tied in little hole of the cardigan. It's a simple, but GENIUS idea, and only £29.99. I love how it reminds me of a monkey-fur coat, although the boyfriend says it looks like a huge cheerleader pom-pom, haha.

*Cardigan H&M, tee All Saints (boyfriend's), tights Basso & Brooke, shoes Topshop.

Blogging on the go

Oh, how exciting. This is my first attempt at mobile posting, straight from my iPhone. I'm using the Blog Press Light application, that seems as easy as writing an email - except that typing on a touch screen keyboard while boarding the 149 bus is not the easiest thing in the world.

Anyway, today is sunny! It's a beautiful autumn day outside, and I decided to give my latest DIY project an outing: I've added a fringe trim to my loyal Topshop wedge booties. I'm quite fringe obsessed at the mo, so expect quite a few fringe-related posts soon.

The Longer Length + SHOWstudio

i swear i want to be more of a committed blogger, i do. it's not for lack of what to write about (well, sometimes it is... i don't want to simply give in to posts like "i want THIS, i'm gonna BUY THAT" - it bores me to death), it's just that sometimes *London* gets in the way of my blogging habit. I swear to god, as soon as they launch wi-fi on the public transport and keyboards for iPhones (haha), the life of every London blogger is going to improve massively.

anyway. I've been thinking about longer skirts and dresses that end below the knee for a while - it's a length I really want to wear, but have always feared because 1) i'm a bit on the dwarf side at 5"1', 2) it's a bit too, uhm, "womanly" for my taste. But for the past few weeks I've been feeling immediate boredom at the sight of a mini-skirt, so I decided to give it a go - specially since I've realized I have a couple of pieces in my own wardrobe that have never got an outing.

First, this Mango tartan full-flare skirt that I acquired in a trip to Mallorca years ago. I don't know why (well, I do: it's the tartan) but to me this skirt suddenly has a bit of an *Anglomania* vibe, which is obviously awesome.

Then yesterday I tried the *longer lenght" again with this Paul Smith dress at the SHOWstudio exhbition at Sommerset House, Fashion Revolution, something I've missed during LFW, but was glad it's on till december. Got there around 5:30pm and luckily, there was hardly any visitors, which made for an extra enjoyable trip. Nick Knight's baby is all about fashion as an interactive and artistic experience, and I was hooked from the moment I stepped into the "mirror room."


The rest of the exhibition follows the rule of interactivity and displays some of the best moments of the project, including those infamous *bride* video with Lee Mcqueen and the make-up one with Gareth Pugh (below), an in-house studio where real shoots happen, a giant statue of three *merged* female figures where you can draw virtually on it, and the results of Design_download project, where people around the world could make their own version of famous catwalk pieces by designers like Galliano, Watanabe, and Margiela (i LOVE this cut-out strips version of the Margiela pattern).

I say, even if you're NOT a fashion fan, this is unmissable - and a lot of fun!

Scrap Woman

It's impossible not to love the Rodarte sisters. They're so original and have so many interesting references (a collection based on a wounded woman in Death Valley? y-e-s), it takes my breath away every season. And looking through this pictures,you know what I think? That I certainly found another idea to put those scraps of fabric to use... :)

*images via Outsapop.

Basso and Brooke SS10

I knew already when the time for LFW arrived, I wouldn't have much more than a minute to breathe, let alone catch-up on everything else that was happening in town (all I know about the others came via style.com, twitter, and... London Lite :P). Unfortunately, the show was on the last day, late afternoon, which meant a whole weekend of casting, packing, unpacking, sewing, deciding, panicking, laughing, and everything else that involves a major catwalk show. It's a very intense process, but one that it's ridiculously fun as well. I mean, how can you NOT have fun touching and handling high-fashion - pieces of art in fabric form?

And the clothes, this time, were SEEEEEXY. I'm not gonna start babbling a review here, as a) plenty of people have done it already (Jeff Koons, Herb Ritts, etc etc), and b) I'm, of course, biased. But personally, I must say: the prints were deliciously sinuous and fluid, emphasised by lots of body-con dresses, cleavage, bustiers, body-skimming drapery - clothes for women dressing for men, not other women, as it has been so common these days (I mean, who are WE kidding, right girls? :). Not only the 90s influence was there (think George Michael super-model videos), but definitely there was a Latin, hot-blooded vibe to this collection - all good in my books. Who says women can't be avant-garde and sexy at the same time?

I was lucky to try a few of the pieces before the craziness started, and we had a bit of a laugh - everything had to be pinned and shortened, as of course, I'm tres petite :)

Of course, this is definitely not the way to appreciate the collection, so for a better idea of what I'm talking about, you can see the images of the show here, and I'll leave you with some really fresh and fun backstage images posted by Dazed Digital (the BF also shot some great ones - will post later).