Thursday 31 May 2007

Beavering away

Sarah went on a mad jewellery-making binge while I was in London at the weekend, she has made some wonderful stuff, so show us some love and click, click, click away...

This was my favourite item a couple of days ago, an upcycled necklace with vintage eagle charm and pearl-look beads...

However, like a fickle friend I have since transferred my affections to this fab Bambi-inspired necklace...

The Something Borrowed, Something Blue brooch also gets a place near the top of the list...


Anyway as this is an exercise in complicated French tax-return avoidance, I had better get back to it I guess...

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Lagerfeld Schmagerfeld

On the Eurostar back from London this weekend, I read a piece on Karl Lagerfeld, subtitled 'The Most Powerful Man in Fashion'. I have to say I beg to differ, seeing as has been churning out variations on the same stunningly boring monochrome theme for for the past few years, single-handedly turning the House of Chanel into something appraoching a parody of what Mademoiselle envisaged until even the famously fawning Paris fashion press has been heard to mutter that the latest Chanel collection is a bit 'bof', but that's by the bye. I was interested to see that he used to look like this:



He now looks like this:
having passed through this, on the way:


How did someone who started off more or less normal-looking end up resembling such a preening Queen? (To prove my point, we'll overlook the bathing suit, here he is with his friend YSL). He's alarming enough in print but I bet in the flesh he has the sort of face that would make small children start crying. And probably adult members of the fashion press, where they not duty-bound to write that everything he does is marvellous.

In his 18th century hotel particulier, he has rooms full of hundreds of suits, jeans and fingerless gloves in the same colours, yet chooses to wear essentially the same thing every day. He finds the time to 'design' nine collections a year for Chanel, five for Fendi and several for his own-name labels in a few hours every morning, dressed in a long white smock. His desire to stay current is such that when reading substantial paperbacks, he tears out each page as he finishes it, and regularly gets rid of art, belongings and friends. I fail to see how someone so far removed from reality, cocooned in money and power, can possibly have any idea of what women would want to wear, yet he does, along with his enourmous entourage of helpers. He does not however, set trends.

Alicia Drake, a Paris-based British fashion writer has written an expose of Lagerfeld and Saint Laurent's bittersweet relationship entitled The Beautiful Fall, which documents their domination of French fashion in the seventies, incurring the wrath of the great man, who attempted to sue her, before proclaiming her book "the dirtiest thing in the world". I think I might read it for just that reason.

Sunday 20 May 2007

Lacey cuteness

This just listed, an upcycled lace pendant:


I love it so much, it makes me sad that I'm going to have to refrain from wearing it. At least if someone else buys it I will have the comfort of knowing it is being paraded proudly in public.


Please put me out of my misery.

Wednesday 16 May 2007

Hooray for Bank Holidays!

I have that holiday feeling today. Four days of fun starts here, this is what we say to that:Vive la France for all the bank holidays. By the time you've come back from Christmas and got over Easter, you hit May and its three bank holidays. This year, two of them have fallen on Tuesdays and Thursdays so the office has been closed on the Monday and Friday leaving us with a single full working week for May. Frankly, with holiday season starting in three or four weeks, how about we just forget about the whole thing until September?

Don't take them away M Sarkozy.... Let us eat cake!

Tuesday 8 May 2007

Showtime

Today we have done the unfeasible and actually bagged ourselves a place on the Etsy Mother's Day showcase. Round of applause, let's hope we get lots of sales.


Ahh, look at us, right there in the middle with the Strawberry Shortcake and Peppermint Creams necklace... what a proud moment...

Wednesday 2 May 2007

Indian Dreaming...


In the middle of a glorious weekend in the UK - all sunny sun, rolling green hills and Pimms - we sneaked last-minute tickets for Dash Arts' exuberant Dream, at the RSC Swan Theatre. Performed in English, along with seven different Indian dialects including Malayalam, Hindi and Bengali, the production is a high-energy interpretation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Rounding off the RSC's year-long Complete Works festival, Dash Arts enthralled their audience with a text enriched rather than overshadowed by acrobatics, music and dance. The predominently middle-class, white audience were visibly entranced and despite not being fluent in Tamil or Sanskrit, no meaning was lost for those new to the play.

With a UK tour scheduled from September, this is theatre not to be missed. Really.

Find out more about tour dates and see what I mean with a video preview at dreamonstage.
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