brb continued

Something amazing has happened. I am in New York City!

The fact I am in the Big Apple to work combined with the fact I have a dissertation that refuses to write itself means blog posts will be few and far between. I won't completely abandon the it but I can't promise that I will be posting as frequently. The good news is that NYC should provide me with at least a few good anecdotes to share with the world wide web.

See you in a New York minute...

brb

Something terrible has happened.

I went home for the weekend to celebrate my friends 21st birthday and upon returning to Manchester I realised I had left my laptop charger at home! Tragedy. I only have about 2 hours worth of battery left on my poor little laptop and one hour of that is going to be used watching Pretty Little Liars (guilty pleasure), therefore unless I am blogging from my phone you won't be hearing from me for a week.

Weep.

you said it sister

image courtesy of twelveofour

chanel a/w 12-13

In case I have not made this clear, Chanel is my kryptonite.

The French fashion house took a turn for the dark side for Autumn/Winter 2012-13 with Karl Lagerfeld delving into his darkest material yet. The set itself set the tone with the overbearing stalagmites and crystals as a complete antithesis of last seasons’ white and bright underwater extravaganza. As always the classic Coco elements were heavily featured but this time around the tweed skirt suits were loose fitting as opposed to cinched in and were layered over trousers for a masculine edge. More twists on the classics meant that looks were even more elaborate with feathers, appliqué and embellishments in jewel tones adorned to the extreme but with an unsurprisingly luxurious and understated effect. The styling was impeccable as always. The girls themselves were crystallised with glittering eyebrows which were offset by their slick ponytails and barely there make up. Each look was better than the one before with British Vogue’s fashion director Lucinda Chambers going as far to say, “it was one of my favourite Chanel shows for years”. The clothes were truly breathtaking. The baggy silhouette was given feminine touches with the aforementioned embellishments but also through Karl’s use of fabrics laced with glitter and unsuspecting pops of sheer and velvet. By Autumn/Winter standards this was also a relatively colourful collection, utilising beetle green and deepest amethyst in not only the clothes but the accessories as well. My most coveted accessory has to be the shoes; a cut out hybrid between pumps and booties with Perspex heels came in a variety of rich shades and have my name all over them, in particular the black leather and glittery black tweed pair with a clear heel which are so far my most coveted item for next season.

Karl Lagerfeld's very own brand of dark magic; beautiful and dangerous.

For more images go to Vogue.

over the rainbow

My head says "they are tacky", but my heart says "they are SO worth £2000 and would look so good on you".

 

I came across these Louboutin's way back when I was interning at Glamour when they were called in for a feautre on the new shoe trends. They blew my mind at first sight; the freaky way the gold crystals turned rainbow-coloured at the slightest movement and of course my propensity for anything gold, shiny or with a red sole meant that I fell in love with them instantly. But I was torn. How can something be so right yet SO wrong? Let's be real, they are a pretty tacky looking shoe that can probably only look stylish if worn by Kim Kardashian. They are so over the top and I haven't really been into wearing anything covered in Swarovski crystals since I was 15 and was desperate to own a crystal phone cover (and they aren't exactly wearable), yet I love them.

I guess in this case love must be blind...or at least colour blind.

marni for h&m

H&M has hopped from one Italian institution to another by enlisting Marni to create a new capsule collection following the commercial, although perhaps not creative, success of Versace last year. The Marni for H&M collection actually looks like something to be proud of, and something that many a fashionista will be coveting. I myself was taken back by the effortlessly cool dresses and tunics that the collection is offering up for the Spring Summer seasons and was even more shocked to see that, despite its low price point, the clothes and even the accessories don't look cheap (although the proof will be revealed in the changing rooms I'm sure). I am always surprised that designers of such high calibre still want to create lines for H&M considering the sacrifices they have to make in the quality of the clothing they produce; but then again I'm sure they are happy to make such sacrifices when they reap the rewards of the massive profits they make selling at a high street level and the profits they make from encouraging people to buy into the brand whilst generating an upsell from those who take their obsession further by actually going on to purchase Marni at full price. They are fully aware that us schmucks will seize at any oppertunity to buy into a designer brand so I am glad that H&M have finally produced a line that actually looks like it has some thought and style behind it, at least now the masses can buy into a product not only for the label but also for the creativity behind it. I was starting to get a bit sick of poorly designed and poorly realised collections being snapped up despite the fact that, in all honesty, they were pretty shit. It seems as though Marni have chosen not to sell themselves out by creating a half arsed collection and as a result I want nearly every item they have produced. Come 9am on March 8th I am sure that I will be sat in my lecture desperately tapping away on my laptop, not making notes like a good little student but being one of the thousands of desperate people that will crash the H&M website.