quayside

A super old outfit from one-two months ago . I went out with my family to do the Beaulieu to Buckler's Hard walk on a random Sunday. The villages were both really quaint and kind of like stereotypical chocolate box cottage, war-time England ones. There were ponies/horses wandering around by themselves and small ice cream shops -similar to a place nearer where I live called called Burley. 

Grey jumper - Salvation Army £1

Grid polo neck jumper - eBay £10 ish

Wide pinstripe trousers - eBay - £10 ish

Superga shoes - eBay- £12

Pindippy bag

Random black socks & scrunchie

After a 4 mile walk we stopped at Steff's Kitchen for food - it was kind of like a deli. Had I been more hungry I'd have pushed the boat out for an actual sandwich but having just relinquished my 7 week prohibition of refined sugar at this point (lent) (i'm not religious) (it was a test of willpower) I opted for a scone.

Crop Top - Topshop £8

I also saw the back of my head in a security camera and realised quite how pressing a matter it was that I get my roots done, as well as get it cut, while I was there (I have since done so). Short hair is such a pain to upkeep.

i found something in a lightening storm

The London street inspired company Pippa Lynn were kind enough to send me over a sample skirt to review. There are two variations of the same outfit in this blog post because unfortunately the skirt sent was too big, so I wasn't able to wear it outdoors - if I had it would have fallen down but I used a hairclip to hold it up to photograph it in my lounge, and I had already taken the other photos a month ago with the same tops on.

"Pippa Lynn picks up on the street style spotted around their East London HQ. Big on biker details, bomber jackets and boxy crop tops, Pippa Lynn twists things up with a poppin’ colour palette and some cool-girl credentials."

The line is sold in Urban Outfitters and Asos. The material of this skirt is surprisingly thick and the zip really secure so it feels really sturdy. I also love the a-line shape and the fact that it's quite a bright but nonabrasive neon, so if it had have fit around the waist I'd definitely wear it out. Yellow generally seems to be quite underrated and I'm recently really getting into mustard/gold variations of it, so it matched the accumulating clothes I have in these colours perfectly.

The second lot of photos here were taken in April. My mum has Tuesdays off work now and i had a double free period the other week so she picked me up from school and we went to Boscombe/Pokesdown for lunch. It all felt very weird leaving and going back to school in the middle of the day and although I am allowed to leave, and the novelty of going to the shop at interval wore off in the first week of term, clothes shopping/eating in a cafe then sitting in like, Geography, for an hour, was strange. 

The last time I tried to take outfit photos there I chickened out but this time I conquered my fear despite the literal ogling from people on buses going past. There are a few cool shop fronts and although some of it is somewhat run down there's a kind of character in that.

White turtle neck - Charity shop - £2

Baroque crop top - eBay - £18

Skirt - eBay - £10

Shoes - Solovair £16

Roman coin necklace - Poole museum - £1.50

I've also been getting into wearing 10/15 denier tights recently - I relish in the ugliness of them and my sister calls them granny tights. They also ladder really easily which I don't really mind (until they're hanging off you and people begin to actually comment).

My hair still needed cutting at this point and I seem to be having to take outfit photos on days I feel ugly so do excuse the face.

Above In a junk/antiques shop called cobwebs where I bought a necklace.

- Hollie

17

I turned 17 this past Sunday despite the fact that I inhabit the body of a prepubescent 12 year old and I was lucky enough to have gotten an invite to a screening of Maleficent (due to being a blogger for this Disney Hub) in Leicester square that morning to I headed up to London with my mum and watched the film. Reviews/reactions were embargoed until today because it wasn't yet released so I left posting this until I was able to say how it was. I was genuinely shocked at how amazing I found it. Of course being Disney it was going to be good but!! i!! was!! not!! expecting!! how!! good!! it actually!!!! was

I got there early and left late so I inevitably missed seeing anyone famous that was there. v v v v v v stupid of me (im a shameless made in chelsea fan and lucy watson was there).

I then went to Brick Lane for the afternoon after getting cake in the cafe 'Look Mum No Hands'. I had banana bread there and it had unidentified nuts inside it. This was marginally distressing but the decor in the place was cool.

Jumpsuit - Clobber, vintage shop, £18

Shoes - Dr Martens, eBay, £20 ish

Mesh lurex top - Salvation Army, £2

Cutoff 10 denier tights for socks

Necklace - Salvation Army, £1

Earrings - Molly's den, £3

Green/grey jumper - Molly's den, £8

My complexion/face skin is uncontrollable. not in a good way

This was in All Star Lanes in Shoreditch. I watched Made in Chelsea briefly on Monday night and they were in there!! My food was good apart from the seeds that pillaged the inside of the burger which was very exotic for anyone nearly as fussy as me.

Anyway as of two days ago I started driving lessons and had my first shift at a new job last Saturday. I also decided to do a photography short course at the Arts University near where I live because I felt like a bit of a fraud using a manual film camera without the faintest idea what I was doing. I'm 3 out of 10 weeks in and it has been really useful so far. So despite exams finishing and not having school again until the 16th of June I've managed to somehow still have a lot to be doing with my time?????// 

- Hollie

Disney Maleficent Hub

Hello! Evidently, I haven't been posting. I've been quite busy with revision - my exams finished last Friday - but the main reason for my absence has been that I am one of the 'key ambassadors' of the official tumblr microsite for Disney's upcoming film release 'Maleficent'!! It has all been confidential until now but I've been working on stuff for it for maybe two months. I'll probably be producing 3 pieces of content a week there for about 6 weeks, in the styles of the two main characters of the film, Maleficent, played by Angelina Jolie, and Aurora, played by Elle Fanning. I'll crosslink some of the stuff I put there on here and I have about 3 other outfit posts (photos from the last couple of months) written and two others that I need to do within the next couple of days so I'll be back to at least weekly posting either way. 

My first two pieces are up here and here so do go over to the hub and have a look around - there's a few other bloggers doing similar stuff as well. The trailer for the film is below - although I'm sure you've seen it already as it seems to be everywhere! The scale of the production seems mammoth and I watch every film of Elle Fanning's/every Disney film anyway so it definitely looks worth seeing!

Below is a collage of high street/designer garments from one of my first pieces for the hub - based on feathers akin to those of Maleficent's wings in the film. I loved the Alexander Mcqueen collection as a whole anyway (as always) but the red in the (Alexander Mcqueen) leggings and top added here tie in with the same kind of red accent you get from Maleficent's lipstick.

 The layered, textured, red/black/monochrome theme of the moodboard also reminded me of one of my textiles products from this year - photos of which are below, mainly because they match colour-wise and make this post longer yet tenuously cohesive.

Text from a post I wrote back in April:

When I was brainstorming for my second and third textiles projects of the year back in March, I became obsessed by the idea of texture and juxtaposition (I basically took my somewhat dormant (following my black clothes only clothes detox) obsession with matched clothes to the nth degree). I looked for examples of clothes with this essence to help form a moodboard for the projects and  found Junya Watanabe/Wild and Lethal Trash on Tumblr once having scoured various late 90s/early 2000s fashion blogs. I also looked to Bjork.

 By coincidence, I also discovered the second skin video series by styleliku around the same time - I had seen snippets of it from their instagram posts for weeks before and had always been intrigued but always managed to forget to pursue it, until I saw Arabelle Sicardi's when she posted it on her blog. I watched all of them within 24 hours and found an obsession in Lindsey Degen. I hugely recommend watching all of the videos in the series though!

For my third project I looked more in detail at knitwear designers (still texture oriented) such as Clare Tough and Katie Jones. I attempted crocheting some samples for my folder and just about managed but I really want to learn properly how to knit.

Katie Jones

Clare Tough

I'm wearing my finished second project skirt (the other two turned out very ugly/unwearable) below.

Stripe polo neck - vintage, Clobber, £7

Mesh black tshirt - vintage, eBay, £16

Docs - vintage, eBay, £20 ish

15 denier tights

This was about a month ago and since here I've tried my best to work on not looking so disgusting/stiff/awkward!! I've also had my hair cut and my roots done.

Photos of the skirt in the textiles rooms at school (used for lack of a better space) which were just generic ones for my folder. But I happened to be wearing a co-ordinating red shirt that day so they kind of work as outfit pictures too.

- Hollie

slip and slide on subway grates

Hello! I have been so, so busy recently with coursework (i take 3 coursework heavy subjects) and I've had to start revising for my exams in May so I've been having to dedicate a lot of my time to that instead of to my blog. However, on Sunday, I went to London because I wanted to go to the Tate Modern for my art project - my exam project is called 'Coloured Glass' and the Structure and Clarity floor there at the moment seemed really relevant to it when I was looking for artists on the Tate website. I wanted to see the 3D/perspex/multi media stuff in real life too because it's kind of hard to visualize it from a flat photo. 

I dragged my mum out to Islington in the morning to go to the Camden Passage and to The Breakfast Club for lunch - I'd seen this video & thought it looked cool there. The weirdest thing happened when we were walking there though & I still can't process how coincidental it was - if you've read my blog for any amount of time you'll be aware how much it would freak me out but I was walking up this huge street and looked back after I'd passed someone because I'd been looking at the ground and liked their shoes/socks anyway turns out it was Jessie Cave??? (at first i was like hey?? that person dresses like jessie cave?? i swear she has that bag??) & When I realised it was her I was so, so, so confused because it was so unexpected?? Anyway I then embarrassingly approached her and told her I like her videos and feebly asked her to sign my bag (which again is weird because I was using a tote bag from her website with her drawings on i felt like a creep) before I scuttled off. It was probably really annoying for her and i'm cringing at myself!!!!!!! The rest of the day I felt sick hoping I didn't make her miss her bus.

I didn't buy anything the whole day except for postcards from the Tate - the only thing I saw that I liked in one of the shops in Islington was a green jacket with exposed seams and a circular zip, but it was £68. The weather was strangely good too but it meant I had to hold a rather conspicuous poncho all the time and regretted wearing so much black. 

This post is v annoyingly photo heavy & I need to venture outdoors to take outfit photos more but doing that makes me feel sick (I feel sick about a lot of things a lot of the time).

Poncho - eBay, vintage, £10

Bark sweater - COS from eBay £14

Skirt - H&M DIVIDED - £20

Shoes - Docs £28

Jeans - Topshop Leigh, £38

Pindippy tote bag (she sent this for free with the tshirt i bought which was cool and probably a mistake but I sold my kanken and now this is my school bag. i have nothing else.)

SUCH A TOURIST

This photo made me realise I needed to tone my hair (I did - hence the change in the photos in my house which I took on Monday).

My mum's food was a lot more aesthetically pleasing (eye roll) than mine.

I'm aiming to start posting every week (end) so will be here more often.

- Hollie

jawbreaker

I WROTE THIS IN SEPTEMBER and didn't post it because it's probably very boring also I had no idea that in America it was douchey to say 'film' instead of movie. I use them interchangeably in this post bcuz I didnt know that it was a thing. sorry if it makes you cringe.

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Sixth form has been quite OK so far and I'm not drowning in work as of yet. Prospects are quite exciting and I'm generally content. I'm glad, on the whole, that summer is over. I've been watching films and reading more often and I had a weekend where I watched near on 10 movies recently. There is too much stuff I want to consume within this world and I've decided to start chipping away at learning all the THINGS. The list I began with included An Education, Submarine, Fight Club, Now is Good, The Bling Ring, The Breakfast Club, The Great Gatsby, This is England and Toast. I realized whilst watching some of these that I had been so immersed in obsessing over american culture/design that I had forgotten that England can be cool too in a slightly drearier, mundane way. I mean sure your weather is great and your diners are ravishing but stately homes (which I've suddenly become beguiled by) and some of the subcultures that manifested here, the music and the remnants of the past you occasionally notice can be cool. Maybe possibly sometimes????????????

Concurrently, I visited a woman to go and chat to her about all of her vintage (and extensively designer) clothes. My Grandad (who is a builder) was doing up her house, I think adding a loft room, and somehow it was brought up that I like fashion/the past, so she invited me over after school one day. She worked in fashion in London in the 70s after going to art college in Bournemouth (where I live) and had a job as a playboy bunny when it was sort of a new thing. She showed me her original costumes and old photos and stuff. She had cabinets of antiques and 60s lucite handbags all of which she had brought back from trips to America during her time as an air hostess, suitcases brimming with collections of compact mirrors and wardrobes full of original Pucci dresses. Although I was indeed fascinated by the clothes/various token objects, what she told me about her life was even more interesting which is where this film/culture stuff starts to intersect. She spoke of when she saw David Bowie at the local O2 academy (a tiny venue) when she was a teenager, dressed in lurex leggings, a lurex leotard, huge platform shoes and a face of Ziggy Stardust/glitter make up, and how her and her art college friends used to gallivant around wearing strange clothes, about living on the Kings Rd when Vivienne Westwood was just starting up and how she worked for a few various fashion houses. On my way out I saw a frame on a table, which contained a note (on a napkin if I remember correctly) addressed to her, wishing her a happy birthday, from Freddie Mercury(!!!). (My mind was boggled when I left and there's a lot more I've not written here). It felt intrusive to take photos, so I don't have any, but everything there was beautiful and made me even more emphatically obsessed with the history and culture of England and London. (I can't wait to hopefully live in London when I'm older).

Back to films: An Education and Ginger & Rosa (another film i watched a few months ago and was really influenced by) are set in 1960s London. They kind of resonated with me because the environments and the school halls and the streets and alleys and landscapes and the sorts of lighting (eg no sun) were familiar, albeit exceedingly more aesthetically pleasing in these films than in real life. This is England is another depiction of a story set in England that felt authentic to me, despite not being a skinhead myself donning Fred Perry polo shirts, Dr Martens and Levis with braces. I do recognize that I would naturally relate to these films anyway though; they're all coming of age plots and so the characters are often my age/the subject matter is pertinent; it's not just the cultural similarities that draw me to them.

Furthermore, I've never lived in or visited America so some facets of their language and school/societal systems and architecture I see in their films (EG them not calling them films) are alien (but fascinating) and Hollywood movies most likely have higher budgets than these largely indie movies do on the whole too so maybe that's why some often feel more fictitious (which isn't a bad thing either - my favourite film is Fight Club).

You may notice I'm justifying myself because I don't want this to come off as bashing American movies - it's meant to be more more of an appreciation of something I've seldom noticed before - apart from perhaps in Harry Potter - in my yearning for American thrift shops and suburbs. I'm trying to compensate for coming across as some sort of contrived patriot/nationalist, too.

Beyond all of this pretentious stuff I think anyone would find it hard to watch these films and not yearn for auburn hair (ginger & rosa) or find them visually pleasing. Most if not all humans would enjoy them.

-Hollie