TopShop's Hot Choc Shop, perfect for the nippy weather
A pretty cool bag I was given at the exhibitions
(I KNOW YOUR JEALOUS)
Parra paired up with footwer giants Nike to create these little beauties. The Nike Air Maxim 1 is all about the little details. They have illuminating red and blue stitching and speckles on a black background. The two-tone motif even spreads to the laces connecting the eyelets and body of the trainer. The icing on the cake are the customised tongue tags and insoles displaying Parra designs.
Point your peepers at this:
The tattooed walk among us. Once you start looking, start taking note, it seems more common to have a tattoo than not to. I have a client at my hair salon, that I see every 4 weeks. Each time he visits we update each other on our latest tattoos developments. Each time I bashfully reply no nothing new yet, but without fail he always has something to show me. I have three “patchwork” tattoos (single, isolated designs), whereas he has “flowing” tattoos (continuous tattoos that cover whole areas of your body). He has a beautiful mixture of graffiti stars, a colourful gypsy’s head, and a swallow; all symbolising something special to him. It makes me wonder, is there anyone who gets a tattoo, then doesn’t want another? Recently, I’m sat in my first lecture at my new university and the person across from me asks what my tattoo means, it’s my star sign Capricorn on the back of my forearm. He asks if I have more then he shows me his: two stars on either side of his collar bone. The girl next to us joins in; she has hindi writing on her hip. It seems everyone’s got a tattoo these days.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, Winston Churchill’s mum, had a tattoo, as did Winston Churchill. Apparently it was fashionable among the aristocracy in the late 19th centuries. A hundred years later they are fashionable again amongst the “modern aristocracy” – our rock singers, rappers, movie stars, models and fashion designers.
Most recently Gwenyth Paltrow had a letter “C” tattooed on her thigh. She got it done at Selfridges, which proves how mainstream tattoos have become. Now you don’t even need to head to a tattoo parlour: you can just pick it up down the shops.
Tattoos have always been around, but before they were rare, something a little different. So the fact that tattoos are no longer taboo a good thing or a problem? You get a tattoo to assert your individuality and to stamp your body permanently with a marker of something special.
I don’t think I had any self conscious explanation for my first tattoo at 17. I was bored in an English lesson at college and doodled some stars in my book, “this would look nice on my hip” and after college I went to the closest tattoo parlour blagged my reason for not having I.D. and there we have it. I’m marked for life with 17 little stars. Back then I just knew I wanted one, but didn’t really think about the whys. But that’s the thing about tattoos. If you want one, there’s not much point rationalising it, because the desire just stays stubbornly put, whatever somersaults your head does trying to justify it. After all in order to get one you have to override the powerful instinct of avoiding pain. And tattoos, no matter what anyone tells you, hurt like hell. When the needle first goes in you think “This hurts a lot, but I can bear it.” But then it doesn’t stop, like a scalpel slicing through your skin without a break. So why do it? Because you are witnessing something you’ve imagined in your head coming to life exactly as you’ve pictured it and that is pretty exciting and satisfying. Few people start getting a tattoo and stop before it’s finished.
So how long will this trend last and is it even a trend? Tattoos have always been around and they were popular, then unpopular. Will you regret your tattoos in the near future when they are no longer “in fashion” or do most people who’ve endured the pain of having ink etched into their skin love their works of art for life?
Maybe you’re a weekend girl; maybe you live and shop for the weekend. High-street chains and websites such as Asos.com, the sort with rapidly changing stock and young clientele, estimate that 40% of their customers shop weekly with a night out in mind. Now I’m sure most the ladies reading this can relate; you’re going out, you need to buy something new so you feel special and you definitely can’t wear the same thing twice!
For the weekend girl Saturday night is her catwalk, and the rest of the week (bar Sunday: rest and recovery) and about the anticipation. According to Selfridges Thursday nights and Saturdays are the busiest times for shops. This kind of shopper can spend all Saturday looking for the dress she needs for that night. These are young professionals working hard or in education and living for the weekend.
All Saints staff admit that, apart from London and Paris, most of their stores are catering to this sort of consumer, and they aren’t necessarily proud of them. “They can be a bit orange,” said one referring to the fact that fake tan is a standard adjunct to glamour now.
This isn’t about snobbery, though. Let’s be honest, for those of us who get a thrill from going out, we’re weekend girls at heart, even if we prefer to think of ourselves as more sophisticated, mature or adventurous in our shopping habits. By now I know that kneejerk shopping is a bad idea: you buy things that work specifically for one event but don’t necessarily blend into your wardrobe. Still it’s hard to fight the instinct to get on Asos and buy a joyful electric blue dress for the upcoming occasion- and oh how those purchases add up when you develop the habit.
But it’s exactly these purchases that are keeping fashion afloat. At River Island – which just filed a healthy company report, given the current retail horrors – Sarah Walters, the head of communications, estimates that that nearly half the customers shop at least once a week. “it’s very focused on going out, it’s about Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, festivals in the summer and parties at Christmas.” Above all she says her customer wants “to look sexy, show off her tan and her legs”.
Most the ladies we asked do American Apparel, Top Shop, Miss Selfridge, Zara and All Saints, but never designer, “It’s far too expensive because we never wear anything more than once or twice.”
Going out is a huge ritual for woman. The bonding begins with the shopping, then they all watch X Factor together whilst they get ready to go out. It's also about so much more than an outfit. Selfridges knows this and has homed in on consumers by setting up the ground floor fashion and beauty section in the London store. The hall forms the perfect setting for London’s divas and glamour pusses: hair irons, hair pieces, glitter tattoos, manis, pedis, make-overs, and style advisors can have you ready to walk the walk.
LY: Up on the new 3rd Central Floor space, the young designers have been grouped together to encourage this kind of shopper to have a field day. Thursday night is “small bag night”, customers throw their old clothes into the smallest yellow bag and leaves in her new purchases, this is a customer who comes out of work feeling ‘bleurgh’ and leaves feeling ‘aaah’
In January, Harvey Nichols will too be jumping on the band wagon, with a new 4th floor of young affordable women’s fashion, from All Saints to Alexander Wang
Supposedly the reason for all this technology is to make life easier, and no doubt most of the time it achieves this, but is it not turning us into a nation of viewers?
Over the last few days I’ve been bed bound, nothing serious don’t worry. But spending all day everyday at home I found myself living on Facebook. Once I’d opened everything in my inbox, replied to messages on my wall, all I was doing was perusing peoples’ profiles, spying on their lives. Social Networking websites are here to help us keep in contact with our friends and family, but could they in fact be doing the opposite and taking away or abilities to uphold relationships. You go out, you have a great time, you record your crazy antics with lots of photos on your digital camera, and you post them on facebook, not forgetting to tag all you friends. Now your whole friends list has just been notified about what you got up to last night, so what’s the point in having a conversation to catch up on what you’ve been doing. You meet a new person on facebook, even though you’re only supposed to accept requests from people you actually know, we all do it. But what have you got to talk about, what’s there to find out that you don’t already know by taking a quick look at their profile?
We now have the rise of Twitter. You don’t even have to check anyone’s profile. Your timeline is refreshed every couple of minutes with “I’m at the sickest rave with A and B”, “I just ate the most amazing dinner”, “This bus smells”. You tweet your every move with 100 or so people you don’t even know following your every move. Applications such as UberTwitter even disclose your location, down to the road and possible door numbers you are at using your Blackberry’s GPRS signal to locate where you’re tweeting from.
It’s not just social networking sites that have got us watching each other, what about YouTube? It seems we are developing an obsession with exposing ourselves and having everyone watch. We are a nation of show offs. Flaunting for the cameras and becoming internet celebrities.
Even the government is stepping up their tactics on how they can oversee everything we do. The average Londoner is caught on CCTV 300 times a day, on one of the nation’s 4.2million cameras. There are chips in our passports and even oyster card are tracking our every move. From the age of 11 to 18, your oyster card is registered to you, it knows your home address, it even knows what you look like. Now travel on London buses and trams are free for anyone holding this form of oyster card. So why when you tap on to a tram, but forget to tap out, do you receive a letter from Tfl reminding you to always tap in and out of stations? Travel is free, so there is no financial gain for the government, so what’s all the fuss about? Is it because from not tapping out they no longer have a record of where you are?
Big Brother is no longer just a program on channel 4, we are living it.
I feel paralysed Ive eaten so much and maybe a little drunk
