Turning Leaf and Basso & Brooke launch at the Shop at Bluebird

Last Tuesday I was invited to the private launch of the new Turning Leaf/Basso & Brooke collaboration of limited edition designed Wine Bottles and Interior Homeware. You might remember a little while ago I wrote about the collaboration here, and so I was really glad to have the opportunity to see the collection for myself. It really is amazing:

Basso & Brooke are well known for their amazing prints and fashion designs, and seeing their eye-poppingly colourful style (with the Turning Leaf logo/illustration and colour palette cleverly intertwined) on throws, cushions, tables, lamps... pretty stunning. I would kill to have any one of those items in my house - certainly a statement piece if ever I saw one! They are all available to buy apparently (huzzah!) but I overheard a woman saying that prices were around £9000.... so....yeah, that's more than half my yearly salary. I don't think so. In my dreams!

And so the evening was rather in that vein for me unfortunately; everything was in my dreams and out of my price range! The Shop at Bluebird is beautiful and full of amazing designer clothes (all in size 6 from what I could see...) but not one single thing in there could I afford. Boohoo. Except perhaps some of the art books lovingly displayed on the tables. While I wandered through the room with my (free, yay) glass of Turning Leaf Pinot Noir staring longingly at the goods on display, I realised slowly that I was in the world of Prada, but wearing Primark. To be fair though, the evening wasn't really centered around actually buying anything (thank god), just admiring the collaboration and chatting with cool people. It was a shame because my friend got food poisoning and had to pull out, so I'm sure I would have stayed a bit longer if I wasn't there on my own, but I just felt a bit strange amongst it all. We would probably have stood there pretending to be dotcom millionaires and loved being in that kind of atmosphere, soaking up all the designer-goodness aura. But alas. I just wanted to stare at the pretty Basso & Brooke collection all night and if I did that, I'd have looked weird.

The beautiful people. If you look closely you can see ether Basso or Brooke (I don't know which is which... that's terrible of me, I do apologise) admiring their handiwork.

And here they are with their lovely wine bottles. Suffice to say, I did not take this picture. I did see them milling around but was way too scared to actually say anything. I would probably just have said 'omg, you're like, so amazing, eeee' and ran away so it's probably a good thing I didn't.

It was really lovely to be invited (thanks Turning Leaf!) and was great seeing the collaboration firsthand. You just can't imagine the level of detail in the artwork... stunning.

Basso & Brooke and Turning Leaf Interiors Collection available from 15th June at The Shop at Bluebird for June, July and August. They are running the Turning Leaf complimentary bar, every Thursday and Friday 5 - 7pm, from June 17th until 30th July (my birthday... maybe I'll go back!) at The Shop at Bluebird. Check it out if you're ever near Kings Road, it's worth a gander.

Harvey Nichols window in The Mailbox, Birmingham

On saturday I took the train back up to ye olde Midlands (as is customary for me) for a friend's birthday. It was at The Mailbox in Birmingham, which for those who have never been, is very nice. High end shops, with restaurants and bars. You are led there from New Street by abstract lines in the floor:

Which join from sporadically-placed lamposts. Honestly. It's pretty weird, but nice, you definititely don't get lost!

It's also very pretty, especially later on in the dark; this is the walkway up to The Mailbox. Pretty.

So when I came across the Harvey Nichols window, I loved it. They've got the safari theme going on, but to the extreme! I can't even begin to think about high their budget is; they look like bespoke mannequins to me. Behold:

Hundreds of small wooden blocks that make up the lunging panther-type thing. She doesn't look very worried.

The eye is made from coins! I think they're real. Nice touch. That crocodile is just breathtaking, a futuristic space-age safari.

I love the mannequin's silver hair and skin, and amazing eye makeup. The faces look so real.

They're just nonchalently hanging out with zebras, letting them eat strange paper rags, you know. As you do.

That elephant was insane. So huge, really nice. Strange cling-film-esque set up but it was kind of nice. A subtle nod to captivity? Perhaps.

Amazing. Really inspirational window.

Inspiration: Turning Leaf and Basso & Brooke

Wine. Everyone loves wine. Nice nice nice. I generally prefer the red variety, on a friday night to melt away the worries of the week. Or, as tonight, on a tuesday night because it was already open and I like to numb things. Wine labels are quite fascinating to me, as an illustrator/designer it's nice to look at the care (or not, in some cases) that are gone into their designs. Who hasn't bought a bottle of wine because the label was nice? (especially if it's half price, that's always good too.)

 So imagine my glee when I discovered that Basso & Brooke, those crazy fashion designers best known for their fearless prints, have teamed up with little known wine company Turning Leaf (well I'd never heard of them) to design these amazing bottles. The first image is from this spanish(?) site, the larger images were kindly emailed to me from Turning Leaf themselves after they saw this original post. Aren't the designs amazing? Here is bit more about the collaboration from Turning Leaf themselves:

- As well as curating a blog for Turning Leaf, where Basso & Brooke will open up their little black book of secrets, the designers will also be developing a range of bespoke, limited edition products with Turning Leaf. 

- Some limited edition products will be available to Turning Leaf customers and others via exclusive retail partners.

- The blog will reveal ‘what’s hot’ during the Spring/ Summer months and will be hosted on the Turning Leaf Wines website 

- Over the next six months Basso & Brooke will also be launching a series of Turning Leaf events, including an exclusive retail partnership and a pop up shop in April.

 - Basso & Brooke will be visiting the Turning Leaf vineyard in California's Sonoma Valley near San Francisco, following their London Fashion Week show on 23rd February

The pop up shop sounds amazing - more info from me on that soon....


Here is a good article from the FT about the collaboration - discussing their inspiration from Jeff Koon's collages, with this great bit - "Brooke presented Dennison with the flamboyant bottle and said, “It’s not particularly conservative.” Dennison inspected it. “And Turning Leaf has traditionally been a conservative brand,” he said.
“But you’ve got to be on people’s lips,” said Brooke. “You’ve got to think out of the box.” Dennison warmed to the idea. “This is going to catch their eyes,” he said. “Then catch their fantasy.”

I think that idea is great - Turning Leaf's motto is 'Taste the Colour' and you certainly get that feeling from the designs, which have snow leopards and volcanoes (how apt) intertwined, among other things. Wine is always seen as so serious - even when you drink it, you feel somehow more restrained, and sometimes wine is fun and you want something that isn't all Serif fonts and cream, heavy matte paper. You know?

As soon as I find more of the shots of the bottles, I'll post them. In the meantime, Basso & Brooke's website is here -beware, you can do nothing but click to open an email, but it's still pretty, and Turning Leaf's site. Here are some images of Basso & Brooke's amazing fashion design to get your juices flowing...

From http://vagarms.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/inspiration-basso-brooke/

From http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050706/biz.htm

From The Swelle Life

From Handbags & FagHags

Just beautiful examples of what can be created with digital printing techniques and genius handling of colour. Oh, to wear something like this... and have the legs for it... ah.

All images credited to where I found them, etc etc.

Company High Street Edit: Looks I love

You're getting a plethora of fashion posts, I must say. Lucky you.

I bought Company's first High Street Edit the other day, mainly because it's printed on lovely matte paper. Simple things eh? But seriously, the design layout of it is great and I really enjoyed reading it. There are loads of great looks and trends in there and I'm in danger of wanting it all. Here's one look that caught my eye:

I'm not a fan of khaki usually but it's out there a lot and these high waisted culottes are quirky. What I'm interested in is the layering of cycling shorts under more shorts. Hmmm, I thought, I like that. I finally ended by long hunt for lace cycling shorts with a find on missguided, and also by cutting up some lace tights I bought that were too long for my little legs.

So I've now taken to wearing them up skirts and shorts a lot. I don't own any culottes though; I have awful memories of some blue cord ones I had when I was about 8 and that is a horror that's hard to shake off.

Free stuff: Diet Coke & Nails Inc

I love free stuff. Especially when I have no money, such is now. You might say 'Yeah but you've got a swanky new job in London, you must have money' I say, oh no friend, not when nasty bank people decide to decrease your graduate overdraft! I have been given warning, I knew it would happen, but 'a year after graduating' seemed like so far away... now I know it's not. So very soon, a large proportion of my interest free overdraft is being ripped from under me like a proverbial carpet, and I haven't earned anywhere near enough what is needed to pay it back yet. Especially as I'm also trying to save money to move out of my parents house as the commute into London is literally destroying me. You know what? Students don't deserve student discount... I think graduates are more in need. I've never been so poor in my life! Graduate discount please.

So, I've basically imposed a minimum 3 month ban on shopping/spending. I've allowed myself the odd coffee (or in this case, diet coke) and the odd alcoholic beverage, but that's it. No clothes, no books, no CDs, no cinema (yeah, like that's going to happen, with Iron Man 2, Sex and the City 2 and Eclipse all here to tempt me) and basically, no fun. Boo.

So free stuff is what it's all about. I've been raping my boots points (I had so many.... waa) and grabbing every free newspaper and magazine in the street (Metro, ES and Stylist are now my staples), so I was tres happy when I saw this in the meal deal section:

I had a blood test* on thursday so was in Boots in dire need of sugary substance. I saw that they're giving away Nails Inc nail varnish when you buy 2 bottles of diet coke! So bargainous. Considering my medical need for diet coke, I figured this was very worth it. I realise that there's no sugar in diet coke but... it still seemed to work so sssh. I picked up the first one in from the left, as I'm all about pale shades these days and this is a great purple/grey colour, really interesting:

It matches perfectly with some tights I've got too, was very happy.

In fact, it's very much like that Chanel 'Greige' that everyone's been going crazy over - yes, that's grey and beige, folks! Here's the Chanel one:

So, I've now got a designer-ish nail colour for free. Ace.

I'd never bought Nails Inc before but I'd heard they were good: I've been wearing this since thursday, (it's now sunday) and it's held up really well, only chippage on two fingers:

And that's my fault from where I'd picked it. Ha, look at my weird bent fingers, I'm sure this angle exacerbates it, i'm not that strange. Nice colour though huh? I love it. Apparently it's worth £10.50, which I don't think I'd ever pay for a nail varnish, but if they last this well... And I'm sure these are going to fly off the shelves, there's great deep reds and purples too.

So now I have my latest beauty/consumption fix, for NUFFIN'. Hurrah! I'm sure I'll be posting/whining in future about my financial situation, so any other free stuff that I can "review/keep" would be amazing. You know, for research purposes. Of course. /shameless

*Pretty sure it's nothing to worry about. I'm not dying, just getting many many stomach pains. I am a complete nightmare with getting blood out of me; I have very deep veins (she had to stab me 3 times!) and I go totally weak, sick and dizzy as soon as any is taken out of me. I have no problem with the sight of blood at all, it's just this horrible aversion my body seems to have with letting any of it go. God help me if I ever meet a vampire, I wouldn't survive a sip!

New Work: Leith Festival Fundraiser Poster Designs

Never underestimate the power of Twitter. I would never have got involved with this if I hadn't seen the RT on my feed. Leith Festival (just outside of Edinburgh) needed a poster doing for their fundraiser, which sounds like it'll be great - Leith's Found Fashions:

'The Evening will showcase outfits designed by local designers and outfits created in association with local charity shops!

There will be Live music from Leith's Very own Obehi: www.obehimusic.com
www.facebook.com/obehionline

There will also be an opportunity for you to purchase the fashions on show and fashions that were not displayed on the catwalk!'

So I sent them a few rough drafts and they chose mine for the final designs! Nice.

I wanted to give the designs a real vintage feel, so used found imagery coupled with classic fonts (Gill Sans and Futura to name a few) and am really happy with the outcome. The first is a much more fun, kitsch tongue in cheek look & feel, with a cute curly typeface called 'Kushtie' which I love. The second is an old Vogue Pattern Design amended to include all the information and to show off the idea of Vintage Fashion.

It was a pleasure to be part of this and I hope they do well to promote the fundraiser. Click here for the facebook group which has details of the event. If you're anywhere near Leith (I am not... lol) then do go and take part!

What do you think?

I am of course available for future design and illustration commissions :)

Coveting: Missguided Clothing

I've stumbled on a bit of a gem here. Can't believe I'd never heard of Missguided before but they're clothes are my new favourite love. Think a mix of Motel and New Look, with a very tasty pricetag. The current collection is growing all the time, and they've got some great dresses and some really fashion-forward stuff. Par example:

Deepa Dress, £31.99

Black lace, ruffles and added beaded detailing; you can't really go wrong. It comes in cream and pink as well I think, but the black kind of gives it that gothic twist that I love. Could be a winner.

Hollie Peek-a-Boo Dress In Black & Cream, £27.99

I've got a similar top to this, but without the lace. Panelling and cutaways are big news but I think you need and amazing stomach for this one. Perhaps not. I love the monochrome slashes though, it's a good little find.

 

Heidi Floral Lace Bodycon Dress In Cream, £15.99

Lace and floral are really great friends. They love each other. My current wardrobe is pretty much lace and floral-based. And so this dress kinda ticks both boxes. And it's that lovely cream colour. I don't even have a floral bodycon dress so it's fiiiiine, I definitely need this. Yup.

Jess Contrast Cup Mesh Dress, £31.99

This is great for a subtle go at the Underwear/Outerwear trend, without actually showing any underwear. I love it.

Nadine Dress With Shaped Hemline In Peach, £22.99

Now this is amazing. I'm definitely buying this. The colour is great, perfect for the nude/pastel trend around right now, and the structured hem line is so Lady Gaga. But less mental. I've got an inkling it's going to be quite flattering on my generous thighs, with all the detailing taking away from any unsightly bumps etc. We will have to see! It's sold out in a size 12... size 10 might be too small. Eek.

Bonduca Printed Strapless Velvet Dress, £23.99

This is a little bit different, and not for everyone, but I love the print. Never been massively keen on velvet but this could be quite good. The bubble hem has me a bit worried though, they never look that good on me. I'd have to try it first. It's a great print though, they've only got a 14 in stock right now.

Luisiana Lace Cycling Shorts, £5.99

Can you actually believe it?! My search is over. Ages ago, I posted that I was coveting lace cycling shorts. This was before the high street had jumped on the trend yet so as usual, I was hanging around waiting for them to produce something affordable. And here we are! Tres happy. And can you believe, only £6. I am so there.

Annie Crop Jumper In Grey, £15.99

I really want this, it's the cutest ever. Crop jumpers are great, and this would look really cool with high waisted denim shorts I think. I just love the print! Aw. It's sold out though :(

 

Eunice Floral Blazer, £25.99

I heart blazers. I heart floral. You can see where this is going.

Carlene Nautical Dress In Cream, £23.99

The nautical stuff they've got is great too. I really like this dress.

With all this, I'm trying to find the perfect going out dress; it's a friends birthday this friday and I haven't had a proper night out in so long, my stock of dresses now all look very last year. Which is because they are. Haven't bought a new dress since December! I just need to figure out which sizes I should buy (I hate shopping online, I range from an 8 to a 14 on the high street, does my head in!) and then inevitably there will be some returns. I've gone for the structured peach dress and the Deepa Dress as well, in case the peach one is too small at a 10. I hope it's not :(

So go and check out Missguided anyway, and I'll post pics if the dresses look good.

Coveting: Topshop Makeup

I heard about Topshop Makeup a while back but it's getting quite a bit of press now, and some images have been released too. Initially I wasn't majorly excited but now I'm getting a lot more intrigued: firstly the packaging is quite cute:

Monochrome stripes and spots, quite nice. Now I'm assuming it's all cruelty-free, it would be disastrous not to be. I'm hoping the packaging is minimal like this; and that none of it comes in additional cardboard boxes: that really annoys me. Like when nail varnishes come in cardboard tubes. It's made of glass, it's ok, it doesn't need extra cardboard. Foundations and moisturisers do this too: it bugs the hell out of me. I bough L'oreal's new youth code moisturiser (which is great btw, really like it) but it's in a glass tub, and then with a cardboard box. So not needed.

The main thing that got my attention is that the makeup is seasonal; the first being aimed at the festival season. So lots of bright summery colours and crazy glitters to go raving in. Personally, when I go to festivals, I wear nowt but eyeliner. You can't really be doing with anything more than that when all you have to wash yourself for 4 days are babywipes. 4 days of built up mascara and foundation is pretty... gross. But then there are those who do the hotel/VIP thing and who treat festivals like a fashion show, and would go crazy over this stuff, and there are those who like me, wear the same denim shorts all weekend. What I'm more interested in is that this stuff will be great for colourful nights out. I love to experiment with eye makeup, at uni I always had people saying 'you're that girl with the mental eyeshadow/eyelashes' (usually while spilling drinks on me):

And so on. These were all taken on nights out/varying stages of drunkenness so not exactly model shots. Ha. But anyway, I like to do crazy eye stuff, and hopefully this topshop makeup will be good for that, as I can't always afford to buy Illamasqua and Barry M. As the images I'm about to scan from this week's Grazia will show, they've thought about this range in terms of what crazy looks you can pull off. But the main thing I'm excited for is the nailvarnishes, in particular this one:

 This shade is called The Big Easy, £5. It hasn't scanned brilliantly but I LOVE it. I'm suddenly reliving my 14 year old obsession with nail varnish these days and this is an amazing colour. If I just buy one thing from this Topshop Makeup range, this will be it. I just hope it's fairly long-lasting and doesn't chip after the first day: as so often happens with cheap nail varnish that clothes brands bring out. However we are assured that this will be far from tacky, cheap teeny-y stuff:

"Designed by Topshop designer, Lizzie Dawson, whose day job is whipping up to-die-for blouses and lingerie, the range plays on the experimental nature of the Topshop customer, who’ll think nothing of throwing hair up into a grungy bun and sticking a giant flower in it, wearing a belt as a headband, a scarf around a handbag, and so on.

Expect the unexpected, especially when it comes to colour. Shades like The Big Smoke – a putty-coloured nail polish, not dissimilar to Chanel’s sell-out Particuliere, and Thistle – a pretty purple kohl pencil, are inspired by fashion, not makeup trends. And whilst the makeup finish on all products is professional standard, there’s not a huge focus on foundations.  Skin Tint, a second-skin tinted moisturiser and Skin Glow, a face brightener (amazing under Skin Tint) are the only bases in the range. ‘We want girls to look real and their makeup to look lived-in,’ says makeup artist Hannah Murray." From this Grazia article.

I love that look with the feathers, I so want to try that. These pages are both scans from this week's Grazia btw, images belong to them.

The range hits stores in May: I foresee a big rush personally. I'm just going to hunt down that nail varnish. Mine mine mine.

What I wore today: sunshine saturday outfit post!

 

What's wrong with this picture?

It dawned on me today, while on a train into London checking twitter, that something was wrong with the sky - not that it was abnormally blue and cloud free for April in Britain (that alone was ace), but that there were no aeroplane trails. Once you noticed it, it was hard to not notice it. And it was quieter, when I was in the garden later, when this picture was taken, I couldn't hear any planes from Luton airport. Nuffin'. It was so nice. And it got me thinking - I know the airlines are going on about how many millions of £s they're losing because of this Volcano (don't ask me to spell or pronounce it, I'm good but not that good) - but how much CO2 are we saving? It's nice to think about it. I like the notion that Mother Nature could be spewing out her guts so that we stop polluting her... makes sense innit. There are lots of people that have been put out by this, and I can see that it would be so annoying if you were on a holiday or worse, business trip - even the F1 has suffered, many mechanics haven't been able to get out to Shanghai for this weekend. 

From an environmental perspective though, it's ace. And it's given me a crazy thought - we should have 4 fly-free days a year. The airlines would hate it, but just think - 4 days of no aeroplanes in the sky, no pollution, no noise... and you could easily plan your holiday if you knew exactly when those days were. Hmmm. I'll just ring the Big People In Charge of all the Aeroplanes.com and let them know.

So as I said, I went into London today for a fashion illustration workshop at Sketchbook Magazine's Pop Up Shop in Carnaby St. I'll blog about that separately, but it was really nice, and the sunshine made the busyness of Oxford Circus bearable. I've persuaded myself to do more outfit posts: I've been rocking some good outfits lately (if I do say so myself) and so I really should share them, being that I am a hybrid fashion/design/trend blogger person. I can't really define what I blog about. Cool stuff that you should know about. Hmmm.

 

Skirt: New Look, lace vest: Primark, bra: Urban Outfitters, cardigan: New Look.

Every year, nautical comes out, and I'm never massively excited. I don't know why, it's just one trend I'm never really a part of. However this year, it's got a military twist and I'm all about the military: this skirt from New Look is subtle; just navy with gold military style buttons: not an anchor in sight! I also got a white stripey tshirt to go with it - it's made me realise I don't have any navy or white shoes though. Which is weird.

Hope you've all had a lovely sunshine-y saturday, I spent a good hour or so reading Grazia on the hammock in the garden ^.^ good times.