Rodarte ss '12

Artistic, dreamy, feminine. Another triumph for the Mulleavy sisters.

images from style.com

Preen ss '12

Clean, digital, floral. Absolutely stunning.

images from style.com

Rookie- A Teen Essential

That is no exaggeration by the way, this site is incredible and if you don't have it in your life you are missing out! It was only started on 1st September but already has tons of readers- probably helped largely because Tavi (of Style Rookie) is the editor and told all of her followers about it. I don't think I could ever explain or describe it as well as Tavi herself did, so I will just leave you with her 'editor's letter' from the site:

When I started thinking about the possibility of Rookie a year or so ago, it seemed like a good venue for pure aesthetic enjoyment and smart, fun writing. As my freshman year of high school progressed, I found myself needing something that could be more than that. I suppose that was a result of some experiences specific to me, and some more typical among females my age. But I don’t want to even think about what makes someone “just your average teenage girl,” or whether I fit that mold, or if that’s who will read Rookie. It seems that entire industries are based on answering these very questions. Who is the typical teenage girl? What does she want? (And, a lot of the time, How can we get her allowance?)
I don’t have the answers. Rookie is not your guide to Being a Teen. It is not a pamphlet on How to Be a Young Woman. (If it were, it would be published by American Girl and your aunt would’ve given it to you in the fifth grade.) It is, quite simply, a bunch of writing and art we like and believe in. While there’s always danger in generalizing a whole group of people, I do think some experiences are somewhat universal to being a teenager, specifically a female one. Rookie is a place to make the best of the beautiful pain and cringe-worthy awkwardness of being an adolescent girl. When it becomes harder to appreciate these things, we also have good plain fun and visual pleasure. When you’re sick of having to be happy all the time, we have lots of eye-rolling rants, too.
Infinite big fat thank-you’s to late-night superhero Anaheed Alani, life- and butt-saver Emily Condon, Cool Dad Ira Glass, fairy godmother Jane Pratt, my dad, our amazing site-building team, and all of our wonderful writers, photographers, illustrators, collagers, and thinkers. All of these rascals agreed to take part in this project before there was the slightest possibility of paying them in grownup cash and not candy and mix CDs. THIS IS AMAZING. Do you know how much human beings like money?? We’ve got a special bunch here! They have dug deep into their hearts and souls and Netflix Instant queues to provide the wonderful content for this site, so please, please respect what they have to say. If something rubs you the wrong way, tell us, but be levelheaded and thoughtful. Internet fighting is not only redundant, it makes other people too shy to share what they want.
On that note, do feel free to mosey on over to our You page, where you’ll find out where to submit your writing, brag about how great your friend is, ask questions about frizzy hair, and much more I won’t list here in case it overwhelms your brain.
We post three times a day: roughly when school ends, when dinner starts and when it’s really late and you should be writing a paper but are Facebook stalking instead. (Oh. It’s just me who does that? Cool.) (Also, LIAR.) Every month of this site will be a differently themed issue, and our theme for September is “Beginnings.” Firsts and starts and back-to-school, etc. And, of course, the beginning of Rookie.
From here, you write your own handbook.
Love,Tavi

p.s. even if you aren't a teenager, or even in education, it's still a fun site to read with such a variety of articles which will leave you feeling inspired and kind of fuzzy inside!

Peridot

Only last night I saw this photo on FashionSquad and fell in love. I mean seriously in love, even though I was disappointed with the Black Pearl nail polish I bought from Chanel. Less than 24 hours later and it's all miiine! And yes, it's gorgeous! Definitely my new favourite polish, any time I have when I don't have school or work (nail polish is banned for both- they don't know what they're missing) this will be on my nails.

Believe it or not this photo is actually photoshopped!! (I know, it looks incredibly realistic but I swear that's just because of my super developed skills). In real life it's almost as shiny as nail foils- so sparkly!

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