English seaside weekend par excellence

So, my hen weekend was the perfect English summer seaside weekend. Beautiful weather, sunburn and laughs with some of my favourite girls. It started with fish and chips on the beach.

It also featured the funfair on the pier, beach picnics and an early-morning run along the promenade.

Plenty of shopping along the way, including some beautiful turquoise sandals with gold trim, from Yoma in North Laines, and some Space Invaders at 3am on Sunday morning.

Champagne-fuelled pottery painting at the Painting Pottery Cafe, with the theme of... me....

It ended with fresh prawns, cockles, whelks, mussals, a couple of oysters and a pickled herring for good measure, on the front. And a sunburnt back.

When can I come back? A vintage weekend.

Parisian packaging

I love a shop which knows how to wrap its customers' purchases, I have even been known to pretend the item I am buying was a gift, just to have it wrapped up. L'oeuf Paris, in trendy South Pigalle (...SoPi?) surpassed itself for fabulous wrapping this weekend. Not only did I get a free sweetie to decorate my purchase, but it was heat-sealed into a plastic box.

Looking at the size of the ring I had bought (tiny gold rope, made into a bow! diamanté!) I am not sure whether such efforts are sublime or ridiculous.

Fabulous, in any case.

Weddings?! Easy...

...get the rings sized and engraved, tonight... not tonight, tomorrow... wedding shoes, nothing in Paris, let's try to UK next week - next week is my hen party - I don't have a hairdresser, where will I stay? We do have a little train to take us all up the hill though, and we do have some beautiful reception stationary on its way... and I have to sort out the secret surprise for the special people.. and order the flowers... but we do have a menu - although kids and vegetarians need to be negotiated, this is France after all, who said it would be easy...

Brunch belly and vintage bags

...after a belated birthday brunch, I can no longer ingest anything. At all. Busy digesting on the sofa and enjoying my birthday flowers.

A winding walk back through the sunny afternoon in Montmartre and we can across a brocante, where I picked up this chain mail handbag. It's in very good condition, with just one or two links missing around the hinge. No label, but so beautiful and heavy, for my collection, mits off.

One day, when we have some space, I shall have all my vintage handbags together, in a room just for me...

First produced in the late nineteenth century, chain mail bags were a major trend in the twenties, inspired by the medieval revival, and were often paired with the floaty silks and chiffons of the flapper era. Whiting and Davis is the name to look out for on the clasp, an American company which produced trend-defining models into the fifties, when chain mail bags enjoyed a revival. The company still produces mesh bag collections today, including a reproduction of the classic flapper bag.

Coming later this evening to pink milk vintage is this pillar-box red faux leather envelope clutch. I love the gold trim, very maje...

ps, a treasury of my lazy Sunday with etsy's new Treasury East feature

49EUR bottles of coke

Karl Lagerfeld's latest money-spinner, heavily pushed at Galeries
Lafayette...

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