I SAY...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being invited to trundle along to The Chap Olympiad, held in Bedford Square Gardens - in the loveliest of the Bloomsbury squares. This event essentially celebrates Englishness. I will try and explain: Attendees might be wearing a tweed shooting outfit, full morning dress, or vintage lawn whites. They will almost certainly sport a monocle, a moustache, a pipe or all three. And oh so many hats: Homburgs, Panamas, Fedoras, Trilbies, Boaters, Bowlers, Top hats, I lost count.



Since my attendance was somewhat spontaneous I went in chapette mode (my influence was Coco Chanel wearing Boy Capel's clothes, but as we all know, if you have to explain your references, your outfit isn't doing it.) But with a little more preparation time; for the ladies, it's a chance to don your finest vintage tea dress, set your hair and put on matte red lipstick if ever there was one.



The events included: The Martini Knockout Relay (mixing a perfect dry martini without a butler), the Cucumber Sandwich Discus (one spectator was so busy taking a photo she got walloped in the eye by a china plate), my favourite event: Umbrella Jousting (on bicycles), the Pipeathlon and the Three Trousered Limbo.

I'll let my photos do the talking...

{click to enlarge}

Umbrella jousting.


It was all conducted with a degree of gentlemanly decorum, with the occasional brolly in the spoke (the shields are re-inforced copies of the Daily Telegraph). Until...

Blood was spilled.

Refreshments were on hand: jugs of Pimms, G&Ts, that sort of thing. BB, you would have loved it.

A few more photos...{click to enlarge.}




The BBC has more (and better) photos here.

{photos: me}

SUMMER HAIR...

Ah, the topknot. Something that looks and feels so right for this summer. If this was Grazia magazine I might even say it's a great way to instantly update your look, but then I'd have to put an exclamation mark at the end and start calling it the "fun bun" or the "toppy" or something. I've been wearing my hair in a topknot to sleep ever since it got long enough to somehow wrap itself round my neck while I'm sleeping if left loose. And now it gets knotted up in the daytime as well. So easy too - I've managed with just a single bobby pin today. It's perfect if you have a fringe, which also avoids straying into Edwardian laydee territory. In fact, I feel this topknot business is going to get more teased, looser and wider until it resembles just that.


A couple of my favourite recent topknots: The Darling Clementine girls and of course Caroline - who has the best hair anyway (would this be a good time to admit that I basically hair stalked her and took one of her flickr photos to the hairdressers so they'd cut my fringe right? I felt like a bit of a weirdo.)

{top photo: Clare Shilland, other don't know.}

MATERIAL GIRL...

You'd think I'd be all shopped out; but not having been clothes shopping for so long, then going for it like it was 2005 seems to have sparked my pre-recession fervour.

Now I'm coveting this jewellery. (via Lena)


I'm not buying it, just posting it here so I can admire it from time to time.

A FEW THINGS...

Vanessa Bruno pale mint blouse, APC Russian dress

Vanessa Bruno off white lace panel linen T shirt, Isabel Marant Etoile thin plaid shirt (nope - not sick of plaid)

I used to love coming to Paris and getting one thing from Vanessa Bruno each time. But when it started to become easily available in London (same thing happened with Isabel Marant), well, it became everyone's thing. Then there was the infamous "I make easy clothes for difficult girls" quote which I LOVE. Now I can just appreciate the ease of the clothes.

When I was hitting the Paris sales, I made a conscious effort to stick to casual things I can wear in London. Though I haven't had a real shopping spree like that for a very long time and it felt strange.

I also got a few other things in the APC sale and at APC Surplus: This linen jersey dress in charcoal, the sailor top version of this. At Merci, even at sale prices everything was incredibly expensive, although I loved the place. The only thing to do was get the ubiquitous Annick Goutal/Merci candle. The fragrance is Dans Les Foins and its dreamy perfume fills my flat even when it's not lit. (I just read a bio of Annick Goutal and was surprised to learn she had been a concert pianist and model before contracting breast cancer, marrying her childhood sweetheart (if I've got the sequence of events right) and starting her perfume empire fairly late in life.)

I was also overcome by temporary insanity and bought two really heavy Royal Boch plates at Merci, which I then had to lug all the way home to London. This culminated in a £25 ten minute taxi ride home from London Bridge when I just could.not.go.any.further carrying those and my two holdalls, which kind of cancelled out the sale price. Oh, and I got a sweet little vase and some ceramic letters as gifts at Le Petit Atelier de Paris.

I think I'm unpacked now...

SURPRISINGLY PLEASANT...

French breakfast radishes. Yummy dipped in melted butter and sea salt. (Maybe not for breakfast though.)

Carnations! The flower I've spent my life avoiding on garage forecourts.

{my photos}

TWO THINGS...

Two things the French do particularly well are eyewear and underwear. [O.K., also: floristry, shoes, cooking, interior design, bread products, hairdressing, swimming costumes, yoghurt, wine, bicycling in heels, scarves (obviously), small dogs, cafes, and beauty products.]

Let's just stick with two for a minute. Glasses: When I was looking for my first pair of prescription glasses I kept noticing aviator style ones in pictures online, but not in any opticians in London. The following is a verbatim conversation I had with my best friend and recently fired eyewear advisor:

Me: Hey, I really think that normal glasses with aviator style frames in black or tortoiseshell are going to be the glasses everyone wears next.
BFARFGA: What, you mean those massive pilot sunglasses that cover half your face with clear prescription lenses in? No one would wear that, you'd look totally ridiculous.

Fast forward to Paris and wherever I look anyone who's anyone is wearing clear lensed aviator glasses with black or tortoiseshell frames. The manager of the used book cafe at Merci has grey hair, red lipstick and quite heavy black aviator shaped frames and looks amazing. In fact I see many ordinary/respectable/older people wearing really quite kooky specs and carrying them off with aplomb; no doubt thanks to the well trained eye (Haa!) of their opticians. That night I watch Jaws in French and both Roy Scheider and that other bloke in it are wearing aviator spectacles. If that's not a sign I don't know what is. Even The Schwartz (the ultimate barometer) has clear lensed metal aviators. Sigh.

In lieu of getting another pair of prescription glasses when I've just spent a fortune on a pair I'm ambivalent about - and after working out that proper aviators get stuck on my sticky out cheekbones, I plump for a pair of Persol 0649 sunglasses. And in my search for a photo of them online I randomly find out that apparently Jay Z wears this style, as did Steve McQueen (edit: and Marcello Mastroianni! I had no idea.) The lenses are quite light - the woman in the opticians (in Paris) insisted I take the tortoiseshell ones with light lenses when I wanted the black ones with dark lenses. And she was absolutely right.

Underwear: I have a certain style of bra I prefer, that I usually buy in France (sorry if I just alienated my one male reader). For the past couple of years I've been relying on Comptoir des Cotoniers ones: slightly sheer cotton, thin straps, no underwire, but the construction and seaming makes it possible to wear them if you have, you know, boobs. (In England you can only get scratchy push up things or sporty bra-lets that offer no support.) Princesse Tam Tam does the right style but they've gone a bit over flouncy and off the boil recently. Enter Vanessa Bruno underwear, which I'd never really noticed they even did until it was right under my nose in big boxes marked down by 50%. I got one set in really pale pink/nude (which is actually veering into purely decorative bra-let territory) and one in pale pink/nude mesh with black tulle around the ribcage. Here, now I will show you my underwear:

My pictures don't do them justice, but I think we would both feel a little uncomfortable and perhaps slightly violated by a self portrait of me in them.

THINGS I WISH I'D BOUGHT IN LES SOLDES...

Chloe multistrap wedges - oh they had my size, oh they had all the colours. Oh, even half price they were more than 250 euros. Elegance is refusal, elegance is refusal (keep saying it).

Heimstone Bergerac dress. I am in love with the print. I also tried the Roxane at the store in rue du Cherche Midi but it was such a hot day my brain started to short fuse and I had to get out. I now notice the Bergerac is on sale for even less at Amelie Boutique. Hmm.

Later I'll post a few things I actually did buy.

p.s. A quick straw poll: do I have blog VPL? When you see the above 3 pictures do they appear on your screen as a line of 3, or is one below the others? Thanks!

PARIS DIANA...

I used my Diana camera for the first time in Paris. It was so easy to take out and about because it's so light. I didn't really believe that any of the photos would come out, so I tried not to use it for anything I'd be upset about not getting. I ended up with nine photos (should have been twelve - ahem, lens cap). Strangely the vignetting is much stronger on the scans. But I love the randomness of it, the feeling that the more you do it "wrong" the more interesting your pictures might be. Not that these pictures are very interesting, I'm just happy they came out at all and I'm encouraged to experiment further with the ol' Diana.

GETTING DRESSED...

I've been thinking about how inspired I get by just looking at people in Paris. Not just young people; almost everyone really has it together. It came to me that in Paris 85% of people are interesting to look at, it's important to them, they appreciate both style and craftsmanship. It makes for an inspiring whole if you're in a place where beauty is attended to and nurtured in everything. It's as if care has been taken to bring out the best of each individual and it's taken very seriously.

In London, this percentage is reversed, with a small core of people - in almost all cases young except for a few older eccentrics, who express themselves through how they look. So let's say there's a hardcore(?!) of about 5% who are really doing this and another 10% who are really just making an attempt to look nice. In general, in London it's perfectly acceptable to lurch around looking like a total pile of shite wearing holey cut off track pants with your flab hanging out and your gnarly yellow jagged toenails on display.

The irony isn't lost on me that I go to Paris, get all inspired and buy beautiful clothes (which in itself makes me happy) only to have absolutely no reason to wear them once I'm home. This week I've been trying to make more of an effort - it's so easy here to slip into slobdom because seriously, no one cares. And unfortunately when it comes to dressing up the contemporary English idea of what's attractive in a woman is Jordan, not Lou Doillon (above) anyway.

So at first I found this all rather depressing, as I gazed at my unworn lovelies from the Paris sales, unlikely to be appreciated by anyone but me, back in the country where to be interested in such things is considered silly and superficial. But then yesterday I got up and decided to go swimming so pulled on my swimming costume, gardening shorts, the day before's top and ancient fluoro pink havaina flip flops and set off for the pool. After my swim I thought it would probably be cleaner to shower at home so just rinsed off the chlorine a bit. Then I got a text from a friend about meeting in the park (it's really hot here). On the way I stopped off at a Waitrose in a fairly smart area and got some crayfish sandwiches and strawberries to have for lunch in the park. In addition to my slobby outfit I had crazy half dry, uncombed, still chlorinated hair. No one batted an eyelid. After a pleasant diversion in the park I went home, showered, put on a dress and heels and went out to a film screening where I felt totally overdressed.

But I suppose what I'm saying is that I couldn't have had the above day in Paris. I think they have it right though. Sure, there's a leeeetle bit of pressure, but not as much as in Italy where you get withering looks if you're not perfectly groomed to pop out to buy some bread. In London you have total freedom, it's true, and I know lots of people love that about London. But I think a little bit of pressure might not be a bad thing.

{photos: Lou Doillon by Mark Borthwick for Vanessa Bruno s/s 09}