Hy-de Hi!

dress- ARK, tights- H&M, brogues- H&M, necklace- belonged to my great great aunt

All summer I've been meaning to go to London in order to take photos of the window displays down Bond Street for my art project, and last wednesday I finally went with my brother. For lunch we bought baguettes and sat in Hyde Park, and I *forced* him to help me take outfit photos! This dress is from a shop in Cambridge which I had never seen before, but it was amazing- similar to Topshop only slightly cheaper and a bit more interesting. The top is sheer but there is an underskirt to keep you relatively decent, which is important when you are walking down Bond Street surrounded by posh people and scary security guards who seem to have sensors for detecting 'commoners'!

I want to create a new header soon but I don't know what feel i'm going for on my blog yet, so who knows when that will happen. I do feel more inspired recently than I have done in a long time though, I have been reading through my reference books and some old Vogue Paris'. I also bought Issue 6 of LOVE magazine off Ebay for almost £15; I had Issue 4 already and though I didn't thoroughly read it when I bought it, both are actually very good.

Camping in Houses

I don't want to ramble on about how amazing my trip to Sweden was (although it was amazing!) so instead I'll just show you these photos. The basic facts are that it was a ten day Rotary sailing camp in Karlshamn, which is on the south coast of Sweden with lots of small islands (archipelago). There were sixteen people there including me, all aged between 16-19, and all from different countries- though there were two girls from Slovenia. These photos were all taking with my Minolta X-300 using film from Poundland.Listening to a talk about the history of KarlshamnAn old street in KarlshamnMe with Andrea (from Spain)From the left: Sara (from Italy), Britt (from Australia), Neža (from Slovenia), me, Andrea (from Spain)Britt cliff jumping!Neža on the dockBritt and Tereza (from Czech Republic)Swedish flags were everywhere!Me again!A street near the centre in KarlshamnTereza and Andrea after an unplanned 'swim'Stefana (Romania) and Robbin (Holland), so cute!The docks we sailed from each dayThe clubhouse- where we ate, learnt, and partied!On the train back to the airportBack in England

A Boy Girl Thing

Apologies for not posting for ages, I was in Sweden for that sailing camp I mentioned! It was so great, I may post some pictures soon. I have also bought several new things recently, some of which are in this post and some I will show you another time. In a few days i'm going away again with some friends to the seaside but only for two nights, so there should be a few more posts up within the next couple of weeks.

I'm sure the title for this post sounds a bit odd, but it's all I could think of to sum up this outfit! I have wanted this corset since I saw it on Amanda's blog some time ago, but when I had no luck finding it after looking in several H&M stores I gave up. Then a couple of weeks back I was buying jeans and saw this one in my size hanging in the changing rooms. Result! Even better was that it had been reduced from £25 to £3. I paired it with some baggy shorts to tone it down a bit, and also tied a jumper around my shoulders for some extra coverage! I don't know when I would wear this outfit but I really liked wearing it.

corset- H&M, shorts- Warehouse, jumper- Whistles, shoes- New Look

Despite owning three pairs of sunglasses I forgot to take any with me to Sweden, which I deeply regretted since the weather was pretty good! However this did make me want a new pair, in particular some cat eye shaped ones. The ones i'd found before just looked a bit too....weird, but these tortoishell ones ticked every box for me so I had to have them! You can also see my new necklace, a nod to the choker trend for a/w but not so dramatic. It's so simple and easy to wear with anything, I think I will get a lot of use out of it! I also painted my nails this morning but just took it off, possibly will paint them all red later.

sunglasses and necklace- both H&M, nail varnishes (from left)- Barry M, Barry M, freebie with Elle magazine

About Time!

In my last post I was complaining about not finding any nice clothes. The very next day I was in Topshop in Nottingham after an open day and found this dress!

dress- Topshop, belt- H&M, scarf- mum's/vintage, tights- unknown

Dusky/dull colours tend to suit me better than brights so even though it does look a bit autumnal I will wear this all year round. Also, because it's so simple I can dress it up or down for any occasion. Best of all it was only £32 minus 10% student discount, which for Topshop is pretty cheap! I made this collage with some of the things I would wear with this dress, if I had them (everything from Topshop). The boots are my favourite, but at £75 even with the student discount I won't be buying them any time soon. On an unrelated note my mum bought me this bag from the Next sale yesterday morning- I really like the colour! The photo doesn't really do it justice, it looks very orange here but in real life it's more of a 'tomato' colour. It only has a small magnet fastening so I'll probably use it mostly for the beach- it will be good to throw a towel and sunscreeen in on my sailing camp in Sweden.

Counting Down To Autumn

I haven't bought clothes for quite a while now, nothing that I've been really excited about anyway, and I think I've realised why. I was worried that I didn't like fashion as much any more (this would be a big problem since I've only looked at fashion courses at university!), but actually I think it's because I just don't like any of the spring/summer trends. Obviously bright colours are everywhere, and I do like how the clothes look but as soon as I try anything on it just looks awful! So I have concluded that i'll have to sit this season out in terms of trends, and instead i'm looking forward to autumn. Earlier I looked through Elle and Vogue's pull out guides to the new season and made a list of what I want to do/ wear.In case it's too hard to read:

A/W checklist

-burnt umber wrap dress- Topshop- like Bottega Veneta

--> too long? try it on

-knee length pencil skirt @ J.Saunders

--> burgundy with black leather waistband, Topshop

- buy/make choker- velvet ribbon? not too chunky

- sturdier shoes, maybe creepers? wedge sole- black

GROW FRINGE!! don't give up

- wear red lipstick more

-maybe buy cheap extensions, plait + make earrings?

- somehow find lots of cheap black sequins + beads to cluster over black socks

- thick eyebrows- use the pencil

--> will look better with no fringe! v. Swedish

-fur gilet- either wear or adapt + then wear!

--> could attach to the black leather arms?

-muted colours, jewel tones, black- forget brights!

Are there any trends that you're particularly looking forward to for autumn/winter, or any you'll be avoiding?

New lengths

Unfortunately it looks like I was very wrong when I said I would be posting lots in study leave! Basically what happened was I decided to watch the Harry Potter films again, and then I thought 'hey I haven't read the books for a while, why not?!'. So I have barely turned on my laptop in the last two weeks because I've been reading, which means that now I have finished all of the books i'm back and have loads to catch up on, both on blogspot and tumblr.

I took these photos weeks ago, at the same time as the orange skirt in the previous post, but I never got around to actually sorting them out and showing you. After one of my exams I had a couple of hours to kill in town before work, so I went to the charity shop for the first time probably in at least two months. I swear they have re-arranged the store every time I go in! I tried on a floor length denim dress which looked kind of like dungarees, as well as a slightly-shorter-but-still-long Laura Ashley burgundy velvet dress. I was so close to buying the velvet dress because it had a cute cut-out bit at the back and a big bow, and I thought I could wear it to the sixth form ball next year (yes okay it's a long way away but oh well!), but it was very heavy and I thought really, will I still like it next year or will I feel frumpy? So I left the shop with the denim dress instead.

dress- charity shop, shirt- H&M, bag- Mischa Barton, shoes- New Look, sunglasses- Urban Outfitters

The front is quite dull I admit, but I really like the low back and straps. Obviously I have to wear it over some sort of top (trust me, I tried without anything and it's very revealing), but I don't think this shirt is quite right. Maybe a simple white t-shirt would be better? I defintely need to experiment more before I find that perfect combination, but I do love this dress.

Self Made Skirt

When I first saw the s/s '11 collections way back I, along with many others, fell completely in love with the floor sweeping brightly coloured skirts at Jil Sander. Because the shapes were so simple and elegant I thought 'hey I could make something like that', but I didn't want to copy the design too closely because that's basically stealing right? Luckily for me I had recently bought a vintage skirt pattern from a charity shop which had several different length options, so I decided just to make a simple skirt but with the brightest fabric I could find. I went for orange because my favourite skirt from the Jil Sander collection was the orange one, and I think it suits me better than pink or red- since then there has been a bit of an orange explosion in high street clothes, and make up!t-shirt - H&M, skirt- made by me, sandals- Clarks

I started making this probably about three months ago but wasn't that dedicated to getting it done quickly, and got stuck on a couple of bits (the instructions for the waistband and hem weren't so clear). I went for the shortest skirt pattern so as not to look too similar to the Jil Sander skirt, but since i'm quite short it's still knee length. The pattern said it was for size 12 but i'm a 10 and it fits pretty well, if anything a little large- I generally ignore vintage sizes because people years ago had much smaller waists!

I do love this skirt but it's a bit bright so I probably won't be wearing it all that often, and it creases so badly which is annoying. If anyone wants a more specific 'tutorial' on how I made the skirt I'll gladly make one, but it was very simple as i'm sure you can see from the design!