This time we’ve been exploring the marketing and retail of whimsy, looking at handmade marketplaces, the gendered divisions of whimsicality (is that a word?) and authenticity. Claire’s beautiful and thought-provoking illustrations are below; you can view my dissection of handmade market places over on her blog. I’d love to hear what you think and if you’ve got any ideas for what Claire and I can tackle next: we’re thinking of doing a Christmas edition so what would you like to see?

For those of you who have no idea what this is…enjoy the pies.

Leopard print tee/ H&M via charity shop

Beige stretch skirt/ charity shop

Navy cardigan/ Zara at clothes swap

Belt/ possibly TK Maxx?

Black tights & DMS/ forever

Grumpy face/ morning

Leopard print tee/ as before

Grape purple pleated skirt/ charity shop

Belt/ Zara via charity shop

Boots/ Zalando (see this post for my review)

Leopard print has mutated into another ‘neutral’ background, alongside grey, brown, black, white, navy et al, after this cultural rollercoaster of being very sexy and also sometimes real (50s-60s), trashy (80s), mutton-dressed-as-lamb (Bette Lynch), a bit Donatella (love), and now into this strange no-mans-land of being a usable ‘neutral’. I used to own a leopard print A-line mini, leopard print tights, shoes, a pale leopard print faux fur coat, and a fabulous camel coat from Topshop with a leopard print collar accent, all of which have now faded out of my life for one reason or another. There’s something still quite fun and outrageous about wearing leopard print, however, despite this cultural/fashion neutrality that’s built up around it. It’s still pretty trashy and still treads this fine line between being super-fashion and super-tramp. It’s never going to be respectable, and when it gets turned inside out with different colours, textures and even glitter, that’s just pulling it further away from when we thought it really ever could be ‘neutral’.

Let’s face it, leopard print is always going to be used for underwear.

But that’s why leopard print is so fabulous: because you can choose to dress it up and work its trashy, animalistic history, or you can try and wrestle with the beast to make it more subdued and fashion-friendly. Snake skin print is the most on-trend animal print at the moment, but do you love leopard print or absolutely can’t stand it? And do you prefer yours trashy and proud, or sleek and sophisticated?

When I received my invite, I did have a little panic about what to wear. Any other awards ceremony and it might be tuxes all round, but with digital industries – which seem a little more relaxed about dress codes anyway – it was unlikely to be the case. So yes, it’s an awards ceremony, but no, it’s not necessarily an ‘awards ceremony’ in that way, so what to wear?

Eventually I decided to ignore all that and make a cocktail dress, because if you can’t wear an over the top cocktail dress to an awards ceremony, then where can you wear it? I could’ve bought a dress but I wanted to wear something unique, interesting, and I knew that this was the best way to get it.

This dress was probably one of the most complex patterns I’ve ever used before; it had that sort of technical wizardry that only craft geeks can understand, with inserts, ruching, elastic and panels in all sorts of strange places. The pattern, a 1980s ‘Style’ brand, cost me £3 from a vintage shop in Margate and was completely unused. I cut it at a 14 (according to the sizing of the pattern) and it fit like a dream.

I also made the dress shorter than the original (cutting the fabric out shorter to start with) and did everything properly: tacking, marking up, and it’s even fully lined. I like making clothes that are simple and based on maths – rectangles, circles, gathers and simple fastenings – so to go through the rigmarole of lining, etc. was a new but fruitful experience.

The dress fabric was a stretchy mix of probably polyester, cotton and viscose in a dark grey snakeprint, slightly shiny against a matte ground. The collar is gunmetal grey taffeta, and the lining just regular non-cling polyester grey lining fabric. Polyester isn’t a particularly nice material but it does have the added benefit of hanging well and withstanding wear/sitting down/dancing! The total fabric cost was £10 and came from B&M Fabrics at Leeds Markets, who are the best fabric retailer in Leeds: helpful, funny, and incredibly well-priced. I got my zip and thread from Leeds Markets too, at a couple of different haberdashers, at the grand total of £2.50 (approximately). The sleeves had tiny buttons as the fastenings but mine were purely decorative and so I used small black Czech glass beads instead.

All in all, the total cost of my unique, handmade cocktail dress was about £16.00. So maybe it cost me in hours – about 2 days in total – but the end result? Priceless.

The utterly wonderful Wendy (@wandapops) and I, getting on the Cosmos

A few Cosmos later, this is after doing a high kick. Ouch.

The rest of my outfit comprises of handbag borrowed from Wendy, grey suede boots from Gap (bought in a charity shop for £25) and jewellery I made. Bonza! It was a fantastic night and the experience of wearing a dress I’d made myself for such a big event was really wonderful.

In other news – I’m also going to the Digitally Leeds awards at the end of the month, which features the best and brightest Leeds talent. The groups, events and individuals up for nomination are all freaking awesome so should be a great evening, plus three things I’m involved with are up for awards; the company I work for, The Culture Vulture, and Beyond Guardian Leeds. Hooray!

Have a lovely Monday all.

PS The title will be explained nearer the end – first, photos!

Apparently this is Gossip Girl on the TV. I felt quite out of the loop.

Sushi is delicious, but difficult to eat when mid-manicure.

The talented Nails Inc. manicurists asked us to pick a ticket out at random from a hat, with each ticket having one of their new nail art/manicure styles on. Lucy (aka Miss Lucy Loves) got a super-bling ticket: crystal nail art. Below you can see the manicurist applying individual rhinestones to her nail. Dedication!

Bling.

Sabrina (aka Sabrina Suggests) got a crackle effect manicure, the bottom coat of which you can see below in a light metallic silver finish. Her nails were then coated with a black crackle coat – this has been very popular with a lot of nail art-fans recently.

Space age.

Another attendee (whose name I didn’t catch!) received the magnetic polish in dark purple. After a preliminary layer of the colour, another thicker coat is painted on and a strong magnet (embedded into the polish bottle top) held over the nail. Microscopic iron filings in the polish are then magnetised to create a shimmery, slightly holographic effect. Ah-mazing.

Cadbury’s purple?

Delicious cakes that I couldn’t fit in my gob, and Jen’s Gossip Girl nails.

Below shows Lucy’s nails at the bottom and Jen’s (aka A Little Bird Told Me) on the left. Her manicure was part of the Nails Inc. & Gossip Girl collaboration (the TV makes sense now, right?), with each style named after a particular character: this was ‘Blair’ and featured a dark green-black polish with holographic green glitter on top.

The more I look at this photo, the weirder it gets. Also, this photo is courtesy of Lucy!

On the right above and the larger photo below shows the manicure I received.

I also got the magnetic polish, but this time in a metallic grey colour. The painted the feature nail (ring finger on each hand) in incredibly thick 3D silver glitter that I absolutely loved. I think the trend of painting the feature nails different colours is quirky and means you get to experiment with more unusual techniques in a manageable way. The silver metallic and glitter looked great together and matched exactly to a dress I wore the following night – more of that later this week. The Nails Inc. manicurists seemed to be able to match our personalities and styles with the type of manicure we got; they accurately reflected our ways of dressing (I thought) while still being something a little different.

Getting a manicure done is a pleasant and beautifying experience, but not without some interesting questions behind it. The association of a woman who has the time, patience and money to get her nails painted by someone else is generally a negative one; the line runs that, after all, if you get a manicure and then it doesn’t get chipped away, you can’t really be doing that much work, can you? I find this association to have logical historical and cultural roots, and yet illogical. Like any other fashion or beauty-oriented pursuit, if you enjoy it then you find (or make) the time to pursue it. I don’t often have a manicure from someone else because I can’t afford it. But I make the time to paint my own nails and experiment with how they look because I enjoy the process of thinking creatively about a part of my body most people overlook – yet when they do notice this part of my body, their interest and joy in this small creative endeavour is fantastic. I wouldn’t like to step into the related argument of ‘your nails look good so you feel good’, because that’s a whole kettle of internal/external beauty debates that are very much incredibly personal. But the process of caring for and decorating my nails is in many ways a relaxing, creative procedure that has more to do with my interest in new, small ways of being creative than any external pressures I feel to look ladylike or ‘polished’.

What do you think when you see a women with exquisitely manicured nails: too much time on her hands or someone who treats herself to this enjoyable beauty process? And what about time-consuming nail art: again, is this a luxurious waste of time or a small way of experimenting with creative ideas? Is it more about if you pay someone to do it for you, or if you do it yourself – is there a difference in the result?

Have a lovely Monday, although that might be an oxymoron.

‘What luck!’ I thought, in a terribly posh English accent. Zalando kindly provided me with a voucher for their site and I plumped for some caramel-coloured, fur-lined, slightly-impractical-due-to-the-heel-but-who-cares Marco Tozzi boots.

I haven’t really done a product review before, and definitely not anything that I’ve bought online. But if I’m reading a product/website review, I want to know:

What’s the site like? Is it easy to use or a user-nightmare? Is it clear, or complicated?

What’s the delivery like? Cheap, expensive, or free? What delivery company is used?

How did the product arrive? Was it quick? What’s the product like - really?

Here’s my Proper Product Review (PPR).

Product:

As you can see from the photos, these boots are a fantastic colour with lots of great textures. I really like these boots, despite originally thinking they weren’t going to be ‘my style’. The outer textile gives the impression of a high quality leather and while at first I thought the vertical lines of fluffy fur were a bit ‘lone winter cowboy’, they’ve grown on me – especially in the contrast with the smartly sculpted lines of the bottom section of the boot. The interior is fully lined in the fluffy fur all the way into the toes, making them incredibly warm. A good, chunky heel – despite the height – makes them comfortable to wear and the construction is good. In the sale, these were £49.99, which I think is a good price for them. I’m a size 5/4 and they’re bang on too. Luvverly.

Website:

The Zalando site is clear, simple, and basically a monkey could work it (hi!). As well as standard options on price and colour selection, multiple sub-categories and ‘deep’ search options give you useful tools for whittling out all the unwanted stuff. I wanted boots to wear in colder weather, and there it was as a sub-category: ‘snow boots‘ (although not sure how practical these boots would be in snow. Rocking, but not necessarily incredibly practical. Just how I like it). They also give detailed product, er, details alongside shots of the product from every angle. For someone who is a little wary of online shopping, it’s great, as every conceivable question is covered.

Delivery:

With free shipping and returns, you can’t really go wrong. However, the company that Zalando uses to deliver in the UK is Yodel, who I (and many others) have had bad experiences with. Their delivery time is estimated at 3 – 5 working days; they were delivered within the deadline (5th day) in minimal packaging. The Yodel website was rubbish for tracking my parcel, but they did deliver within the estimate, and Zalando did dispatch swiftly.

All very well and good, but what did they look like on?

Navy blue tee/New Look

Beige stretch skirt/charity shop

Belt/charity shop

Fur coat/my grandmother’s

Italian silk mix scarf/made

Boots/Zalando

The boots were really warm to wear and I loved them with the fur coat; I also wore them a couple of days later with skinny indigo jeans and a teal tshirt for a more relaxed style. Overall, these are a practical and cute winter boot that was bought online and dispatched with very little fuss, and I know I’m going to be wearing them all through winter! Maybe I could be an online shopping convert after all…

What about you – are you happy to buy shoes online or is it your worst nightmare? Oh, and do you like the boots?

I’ve been really busy the past week and thought I was going to be let off this week, but it seems not. However, it’s all lots of fun and very much enjoyable, which is good! Last night I spoke about my work with The Culture Vulture as part of Write Publish Read at Leeds Library. The event was great and you can read a really good write up by John Baron over on Beyond Guardian Leeds. This event was part of Leeds Digital Festival which is also awesome and there’s loads of fun stuff going on, so check out the website. I have also been kindly invited to speak at Expo 2011 next week at Leeds University about careers after an arts degree so very much looking forward to that.

I’ve been inspired by some magical, beautiful colour photos of circus performers from the 1940s and 1950s that I was linked to on Twitter via @Copy_girl – incredible lush colours and dense layers of texture.

I imagine that everyone does this as payday finally rolls around, but I decided to get my Etsy on with a beautiful handmade moon brooch from Liz at The Crimson Moon. She sculpts the polymer clay face and beads all the way round with delicate seed beads and, in this case, freshwater pearls. Working with seed beads like this in my own jewellery (although no way as good as Liz!) means I can appreciate how tricky and time-consuming it is to make this sort of fabulous jewellery. Handmade FTW, every time!

Despite being  busy, I’m also trying to get back into jewellery making so have signed up for the Art Bead Scene Holiday Ornament Blog Hop – creating a beautiful Christmas ornament using art beads. I love Christmas, art beads and ornaments so this is a big win.

There’s been some great comments on both my post about the Bonfire Bash bloggers event and my Walk this Way review on Culture Vultures: as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subjects.

Ok, short one for today but I have been taking some outfit shots this week (gah) and will hopefully post these over the weekend. I’ve been very busy making a cocktail dress for Friday so photos of that will also be available soon…

Have a good Wednesday!

We tweeted some photos of the outfits before the event to see if people could guess which was which, and while a lot of people managed to guess the high street/markets correctly, we were also pleasantly surprised as lots of people liked both outfits, or – like Laura – would mix and match different items. It definitely helped to show that Leeds Markets is a place for fashion retail, and that you can get some cool items there.

A lot of people were suprised at how much the markets outfit cost, thinking that the clothes would be incredibly cheap. As I mention briefly in the video, however, all of the retailers in Leeds Markets are small, independent, mostly family-run businesses: they can’t afford to compete with national retailers like Primark in selling incredibly cheap clothing or ‘loss leaders’. Their prices are more likely to be hitting just below the H&M price point in order for them to make a profit and continue trading, and I would say that the quality of the items we purchased was very similar to H&M as well (so, good to some extent, but not of the top notch quality you might get in more expensive outlets).

Lauren (my team mate) in our disco-heritage-Highlander markets outfit

Me in the autumnal-coloured high street outfit from Lucy and Jen

What genuinely surprised me – and several others – about the fashion options in the market was that many of them were trend-led: block colours, metallic tops, big boxy bags, platform heels and the like. I don’t do a lot of trend-led shopping but for those who do, the market provides another way to tap into trends without looking like you just bought something from the high street. A lot of people guessed the high street outfit due to the mustard corduroy shorts (Primark) which does show that certain high street items will always be recognisable.

Charming

The outfit items on display

Attendees peg their name labels to their favourite items

Lovely and festive at Out of The Woods

Several people also managed to guess which outfit came from which team due to what they saw as the signature style of the individal team members. A couple of my friends said that the gold metallic top in the markets outfit gave away that I’d chosen it (damn!) while someone else pointed out that the floppy hat in the high street outfit was very ‘Jen‘! I was surprised that our styles came across so clearly as we all agreed that we had compromised our different personal styles within the teams to create something a little bit different. Intriguing.

Despite shopping in Leeds Market for food and other bits all the time, I’d never ventured in there to buy fashion clothing before the challenge (although I do buy fashion fabrics to make clothing!). The experience of the challenge has made me reconsider this and I would go back in to purchase fashion clothing from the market, not only because shopping for the outfit showed me the range of items in there, but because buying from the market would, in some small way, help to contribute to independent retailers rather than high street nationals. The high street outfit was cute, and I did enjoy modelling it, but the pieces I liked best were from the independent and vintage stores in Leeds (the purple blouse and striped jumper). Team High Street did really well in creating something unique from shops you can find in a lot of places – but it reassured me that I wasn’t missing out too much by not shopping for large items in high street retailers!

The challenge also made me consider my individual style and how I put things together, as well as the style of the other bloggers – especially my team mate Lauren. We dress very differently and yet I felt we worked well as a team, and the same can definitely be said for Lucy and Jen. After the event, Lucy said she was interested in knowing more about charity and vintage shopping, because her ‘fashion beat’ is the high street; in many ways, I’d like to learn more about how to shop the high street without a) stressing out about price points and b) looking like a carbon copy of everyone else.

So maybe our next project is already in the pipeline: a fashion school with a series of educational events on how to make the best of different fashion retail spaces? And maybe with some education about how to create our own fashion spaces through making, customising and swapping? And talking through the visual, aesthetic, ethical and even philosophical issues surrounding these spaces?

Well, let’s have a breather first…

Finally – thanks to Leanne Buchan, the most sparkling gal ever x

Remember my adventure in styling at Joy a few weeks back? On Friday it was the Leeds Joy store’s AW event, with acoustic music, some delicious food (asparagus in parma ham and deep-fried breaded halloumi with chunky tomato sauce: oh my!) and the newest items from their AW collection. A relaxed, fun event, it was well-attended and it was great to have a look at the latest garments to a background of acoustic guitar playing. Below are some photos of the event and a couple of my favourite pieces.

Giant cupcakes from Bespoke, Harrogate

Red and green with an orange twist on the mannequins

 Detail of Louche Crystal Lace Net Dress

Detail of Louche Jules Scallop Blouse

Louche Sibyl Jacquard Cardigan

Bright colours and fun textures on one of the rails

It was a really enjoyable event; perfectly relaxed, good food and no fussing about what to do or not do. The Leeds Joy team worked hard and it felt like the perfect start to a weekend – fun, no fuss and (of course) fashionable.

Hope you all had a fab weekend!

]]> http://themagicsquarefoundation.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/joy-aw-fashion-acoustic/feed/ 1 feat_joyevent eleanorsnare joy_2 joy_7 joy_11 joy_4 joy_10 joy_13 http://themagicsquarefoundation.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/fashion-challenge-the-bloggers-event/ http://themagicsquarefoundation.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/fashion-challenge-the-bloggers-event/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:41:23 +0000 eleanorsnare http://themagicsquarefoundation.wordpress.com/?p=2106 ]]> I’m really excited as this weekend will see our bloggers event for the fashion challenge we’ve been raving about these past few weeks. We’ve even got a fancy flyer!

We’ve got some fantastic bloggers attending but if you’re a fashion, style or beauty blogger in Leeds and you’d like to come, let us know! We’ve only got a limited number of spaces but we’ll try and pack as many in as possible…