--EXPLANATIONS--

Hello again. It's been a very long time since I last posted, and I apologise that it's been without explanation. School this year has been a lot more intense as I prepare for university entrance and I've somehow fallen out of touch with the whole fashion/blogging arena which used to absorb me. Real life is a lot more interesting at the moment.

I'm leaving this blog up in case I ever want to come back to it, and because it's a nice testament to the days when life was a lot less stressful. If you're someone who's reading this from the future (weird thought), do take the time to look through. There are a lot of photos and thoughts on here which won't date. And thank you to all the people who did read this blog in its more active days-it was so nice to know that people read (and, even better, were interested in!) what I had to say.

As I picked and chose the blogs I liked best, I found that my favourites were the ones with good photography, fashion-orientated or otherwise, and those with good writing. I am now exploring good writing in slightly more literary areas (though I still return to the old favourites-look at the blogroll to the right of the page), while pursuing photography through Tumblr. I thought it would be good to post some more of my own stuff as an incentive to get the camera out a bit more often. If you're interested, do take a look at http://crystallinesunshine.tumblr.com/.

I think that's all from me. Thank you to everyone who's reading this-it was a nice ride. xo

--SPRING IS SPRINGING IN--

Today I was outside and it was sunny and warm and there were daffodils coming out along the river and it felt like spring was coming for the first time in a long time. This winter has gone on far too long; all I want to do is leave the house in jeans and a t-shirt and not have to worry about tactical-packing an umbrella and 5 extra layers. Sadly it's not quite the season yet for shorts and flip flops, but I reckon it's time to bust out the shorts-and-tights combo again.

(alltheprettybirds.blogspot.com; altamiranyc.blogspot.com; carolinesmode.com; elleuk.com)

--APOLOGIES--

First and foremost, apologies for my unexplained absence of almost a month. (How did that happen?!). Nothing life-threatening or life-changing has come my way; just a killer combination of school, French exchange, rowing, life in general which has served to disconnect me somewhat from the fashion world.

But I'm not sure that wasn't a good thing. Sometimes the way fashion is constantly moving ononon is a bit tiring, to be honest; I know it's the nature of the beast, but I'm just starting to enjoy winter and wearing my new boots, and suddenly they want us to start thinking about spring-and even next winter! Wait-what? I've still got couture to look at! And pre-fall! Gah!

So having a little break from the blogsphere has been quite nice, really. Now I feel like I can start looking at the A/W '11 collections at my own pace, without getting snippets and pre-formed opinions from other people's posts-and generally just reigniting my interest in fashion as and when I feel like it.

Just two more things to say, peeps:

1. Vogue UK was really quite good this month (see below)

2. Bloglovin has a sneaky method of deleting posts which I can't work out, but which is most mysterious. I've been absent for 3 weeks, and my number of unread posts has decreased. Strange eh?

Anything else I should know about? Some crazy new subversive trend? Evil eyes between Carine and Emmanuelle at NYFW? Let me know!

(portraitsofelegance.net)

--ZARA DOES IT AGAIN--

Dear Zara,

Why is your stuff so perfect? Please transfer your minimalist magic from your clothing to me and I will have to make an effort in life ever again. Cheers. Also, I need that leather skirt. And the black trousers. Aaand the brown coat. And theparkathejeanstheshortsthetshirtthedresses. See, only four things! I'm so undemanding.

(zara.com)

--COUTURE SPRING 2011: ELIE SAAB--

What can I say; words fail me.

Well, not really-how uncharacteristic would that be? But it has been a long, long time since a fashion show captured my imagination and gave me butterflies like this. (I just deleted a whole section because honestly my thoughts are not yet calm enough to make coherent sense. I'm not sure that sentence even made sense).

I'm sure everyone has seen the standard face-on style.com shots already (why do they not take photos from behind? Seeing a dress from the front only allows you to see half of its total worth; even the measly torso shots below add a wealth of extra detail and dimension to the already-amazing front-on view), but the ones below are rather mysterious with the black background and the enigmatic back view, so I thought they were worth a repost.

Apologies for this drivel-I wanted to write something while my reactions to this show were still fresh. I know I haven't posted much recently (I lost a follower-awkward...)-partly because of work, but I also don't think it's worth posting random photos for the sake of it, rather than because they're things I'm interested in and want to share. And then something like Elie Saab's genius comes along and reminds you all over again why we all love fashion.

(style.com)

--CLEMENCE POESY--

This is the first time in my life that I've blogged photos more than once (the Kai Z Feng ones from Vogue UK April 2010) but if anyone deserves it it's Clemence. I think you are either a Chloe Sevigny or a Clemence Poesy kind of person, and I fall firmly in the latter category. The word insousiance might have been invented for her-nobody is meant to have hair that looks so good tousled; it's just not fair. Yet she also looks amazing in a sexy secretary outfit. Gah, why do I not share her genes...yeah basics why am I not her full stop.

Happy weekend y'all!

(imagebam.com; knighttcat.com; thefashionspot.com; fashiongonerogue.com; styleexchange.wordpress.com; isuggestyoutryvichy.tumblr; thefashionspot.com)

--OCEANS--

I should apologise for my sporadic posting this past fortnight; my grandfather passed away recently, and yesterday was his funeral. While I wasn't especially close to him, any death affects the family to a certain extent and so I've had other things to think about than blogging. I doubt he even knew what the internet was, let alone blogging, but nevertheless I would like to briefly mention him here, for I loved him in the way everyone loves their grandparents, even if now after his death I feel there was so much more I should have asked him.

Philosophical musings are perhaps not what people read this here blog for; but of course there are certain events which make you stop and take stock now and again. For me, the sea is emblematic of such periods. Not only do I find water fascinating (not in a scientific way-in a 'whenever we went to a park I would always spend the whole time by the water features' way!) but to me its depth, mystery-we know more about space than we do about some parts of our oceans-and limitless possibilites are awe inspiring and comforting in their wildness. I take solace in the sea, even if it's just by looking at photos, and whenever I'm on the coast I can spend hours wandering around beaches, no matter what the conditions are.

I sometimes think that to have lived in a Pirates of the Caribbean era, when you never knew what you might find over the next horizon, must have been one of the most exciting times in human history. There's a scene in the second one when Tom Hollander's character (I wrote that because I couldn't bring myself to write 'Lord Cutler Beckett' while still retaining a shred of self-esteem...but then again I'm already talking about a pirate film sooo...) is having a mural of the world painted on his wall, and he remarks that the world is growing smaller and smaller; soon there will be no unknowns to explore. I have an almost constant nostalgia for sort of Lord of the Rings/Arthurian quests, and it saddens me that we live in a world where any remote place can be explored by Google Maps. Perhaps the ocean holds such an allure because it is one place yet unexplored; where anything we care to imagine might really happen.

(fashiontoast.com; hardtoexplain79.blogspot.com; unknown; photodiarist.typepad.com; ren-rox.com; sandmer.se; souvenirsofagirl.blogspot.com)

--TRAIN OF THOUGHT #2--

Whilst perusing various blogs in a spate of internet-induced procrastination, I came across the first photo below, taken by an enterprising blogger using a stool and photoshop. And thus my encyclopaedic (real word? You decide.) mind was off and away on a pleasant ramble...

First stop: this photo which was part of a campaign for flmbljmbl, the well-known clothes retailer...

...which looked like someone floating on the surface of a swimming pool...

...and again...

...which reminded me of Keira Knightley's death scene in Atonement where the tube station floods and she floats away into the darkness (Google would only yield a behind-the-scenes photo I'm afraid...on the upside, it's an amusingly extreme version of photobombing)...

...which looks like these spectacular underwater shots I found on Google aeons ago when I was searching for photos of mermaids. Caj...

...which looks like the rather enigmatic trailer for the new series of Skins! (There is a more conventional (it took me about 30 seconds to think of that word, for some reason) one up now...things aren't looking good. Come back series 1 cast!).

I think you'll agree that these photos prove I am a pretty cool person.

(thyaudaciousness.blogspot.com; fashiongonerogue.com; inafractionofasecond.blogspot.com; tobaccoandleather.blogspot.com; dailymail.co.uk; google.com; e4.com)

-WINTER GLOOM--

With the wind howling outside and the sky cast in a perpetual 5pm gloom, with Black Swan haunting my dreams (I can't wait to see it: ballet+thriller=literally my dream film), mysteriously ambiguous black-and-white photos seem very appropriate for the weekend ahead. Each of these photos seems to pose a question, to leave hanging in the air some vital untold part of their story to entrance and compel us. We can only imagine the answers-if indeed they exist.

(carlesrodrigo.es; chelseashirley.blogspot.com; coldam.com; seaofshoes.typepad.com; photodiarist.com; ren-rox.com; sandmer.se)