Under My Umbrella

The ultimate way to travel.

(google.com; flickr.com; google.com; polyvore.com)

Rainbow

Pop A/W 09

The Wizard of Oz

Avatar

Dazed and Confused, issue ?

(tfs.com; google.com; tobaccoandleather.blogspot.com)

Jewels...Almost

I've been wearing these non-stop all holiday.

The bracelet is from our old au pair in South Africa (it has rhino, lion, elephant and leopard head charms).

The necklace is from this really cool shop we found in Palma (Mallorca)-on the ground floor it's full of tubs of shells, coral, stones and hundreds of other natural home ornaments; then in the basement it's got three walls of trays two feet deep divided into little squares, and each of those little squares has different beads or necklace charms or rings or whatever. The walls are hung with bare chains or leather strings, and you can mix and match to create your own jewellery (they also have loads of ready-to-buy necklaces and bracelets too). It's awesome. Unfortunately I don't know its name, or how to get their either-we stumbled across it by chance.

The ring is from Accessorize and is sadly a little out of shape because it came with one of those sticky tags around the circle bit and I couldn't unpick it with my bitten nails, so I was pulling and tugging and then realised the perfect circle had been stretched into an oval instead...smooth eh...it still fits my fat fingers though!

Jack Wills Christmas Term Handbook by Eleanor Hardwick

So it happens that, for my sins, I receive the Jack Wills handbook (their posh name for catalogue) every term (their posh name for season)-they do really nice trackies, ok?!-more for the photos at the front for anything else. The christmas photos seemed to have a great new direction-instead of the whole preppy sloaney thing the styling was a bit punked up, but in a good way (although sadly the boys were not quite up to scratch...casting needs a bit more attention I feel or where am I going to get my wall candy from?). I only found out today that the photos are by Eleanor Hardwick, who I blogged about a while back. Since I last visited her sight she's got a few solo exhibitions under her belt and has shot a few ad campaigns for various fashion brands; a visit to her site is well worth the time. I hope her success will continue because I think she has such great potential to be a really interesting fashion photographer.

Actually the reason I originally decided to write about the photos was because the above reminded me so much of a Tim Walker shot. At first I got really excited and thought it was the same tree painted on the wall, but then...no. Still, I'm likin' the linkin' (did I really just write that? Evidently. Well who cares, IT'S CHRISTMAS. My excuse for everything).

(jackwills.co.uk; flickr.com)

A Late Happy Christmas

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Sorry for such a dearth of posting-the end of term was as hectic as it always is, plus I upped and left for skiing straight after leaving school...so without a laptop I was utterly unable to do anything home-related alone, especially blogging.

Had a wonderful time in Switzerland-the snow was so beautiful and luckily the resort wasn't too busy. I love the mountains. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I can safely say that whenever we leave I feel that little ache in my chest you get when you see a really beautiful editorial or listen to a piece of music that touches your mood exactly. Ok, forget pretentious, I sound barking mad. Ah, psh, it's all the turkey/chocolate/stilton playing tricks on my mind.

Anyway, today we still have presents left to open, a reluctant dog to walk and a veritable bounty of food to keep eating. But tomorrow the dreaded mocks revision must begin...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH...stressed, moi? Never...Anyway I will try to keep blogging during the holidays, building up posts for next year (how weird does that sound?! Also-2010...strange to be moving away from the whole 'two-thousand-and-' thing).

Enjoy the rest of your holidays!

Chloe Bello by David Bellemere

You know how people say something is 'achingly beautiful'. I never really got that until I saw these photos. I swear, I felt something inside of me go when I saw the last one. Stunningly beautiful.

Advent Four

Advent Three

Advent Two

(google.com; altamiranyc.blogspot.com)

Advent One

To get you (and me) in the christmas mood!

Rachel McAdams

I cannot express how much I love this woman.

Blake Lively-Eleanor Parker

Ever since I first saw this shoot with Blake Lively for American Vogue it's been nagging at my mind (and seeing as this was a spring cover-I think-that's a long time). The other day I finally realised who all the shots reminded me of: Eleanor Parker in The Sound of Music (one of THE most legend films of all time). Finding the answer to a really annoying, trivial question is possibly one of the most satisfying things in the world-like when you see an actor in a film who you recognise, but can't work out what other films they've been in. And then 5 hours later in bed you realise where you've seen them before, but you can't enlighten anyone else about your genius brainwave because they're all in bed. It is a mark of my incredible loser-ness that I often turn my light on and write a little note to myself so that I'll remember to brag about it to people the next morning...but anyway...Blake and Eleanor juxtapositioned here as a mark of my geniosity.

Hot Metal

I only bought Pop recently as I have been attempting in vain to stock up money for Christmas. FAIL. There are so many lovely editorials in the magazine, which will no doubt find their way on here eventually, but this morning I was having another flick through and was struck (again) by the strong sense of beauty and grace these photos convey, especially the second one. It's one of those photographs which tell a multitude of stories. Usually I disagree with the phrase 'a picture paints a thousand words', because although yes, one picture can convey an awful lot more than one word can, even a sentence or two read by a hundred people will evoke a hundred different interpretations, whereas with visual representations everyone has the same thing shoved down their throats. (You can see why my favourite subjects are ones which include long essay-writing, and why I dropped art as soon as I possibly could). But I find myself transfixed by said second photo-is she mourning? Contemplating? Slumped with defeat and yet radiating determination by the strong set of her neck? Or merely just striking an interesting pose which will best display her rather lovely jewellery collection? I guess we'll never know.

Pastel Pink

I took these in our front garden at the end of the holidays. I can almost feel the sun on my face when I look at them. Aaah, I miss summer!