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.

Selfridges: New online shopping and brand identity

Surely, you could buy online. Surely. But no. It seemed the 21st century had slipped Selfridges by... if you wanted their stuff (and there's a lot of it...) you had to get down to Oxford St or the Bullring (or the one in Manchester, but I've never been there) and buy it in person. Or get a minion to do it I suppose.


I think originally, Selfridges didn't want to get into e-shopping because they though it would take away from their in-store experience. After all, they're pretty good at putting on experiential shopping and buying something online, they thought, would dull that experience. Also, there was a thought that luxury shoppers wouldn't want to buy online - if you're going to spend a couple of K on a handbag, you want to do it in person, you want to see it, feel it. Not so. While I was on placement at Open, we undertook some trend and consumer research for Selfridges, particularly into the habits of high-end luxury buyers, and actually, quite a lot of people do want to buy luxury goods online. Maybe they're not the type to splash the cash and show off, maybe they're just too damn busy to navigate selfridges on a busy saturday. In any case, there was a need. And it seems Selfridges listened.

The homepage is nice and clean, with good interactivity and not too much flash-usage.  All those boxes you can fling around with your mouse. I've spent a good while stacking them up neatly. Slightly calming, yet alarming.

The Selfridges blog is just starting up too, called Selfridges Says... (slightly familiar don't you think! I know I'm great, but no need to rip me off ;) haha.)

What I really like though is the identity of the branding. It comes across best in the emails they send out:

It's just really fun and quirky, I like the hand drawn illustrations and the fact that the product shots aren't just cut outs of flats, they are displayed like an exhibition, curated almost. That's a word we threw at Selfridges. Actually that's a word that's being thrown around a lot recently. It's a good 'un.

The Wish Rooms

This is brilliant. It's like Wish Lists 2.0. As you browse the site, you add things to the Wish rooms. Then you can hop on over and create outfits from what you've added, arranging them on the mannequins. You can then send to a friend (ah, sharing, way to go) or just rush and buy them cos you're so rich and NEED that Stella Mccartney jumpsuit. Sharing them is good as your friends get to see them on a mannequin, as an outfit, and can give you advice! I also think it would be good for fashion bloggers who don't like awkward outfit posts (like me...) - you can just stick the stuff on the perfectly formed mannequin and all is good.

I also love the Inspiration trend boards:

I do a lot of trend boards at work and these are so inspiration and amazing. Defo something to aspire to!


Nice one, Selfridges. You made us wait a long time... But I think it's worth it.

Glug Notworking & Noma Bar at The Book Club on 24th March

A few weeks ago I got myself down to The Book Club in Shoreditch, for a Glug Notworking event. I'd heard of these for a while now and finally got my act together and joined, because I need to meet more people in London (don't really know nobody *sniff*) and networking is fun. But mainly, there was alcohol and arty-types, and that's what I wanted. It was on March 24th, btw.

There was live screenprinting, free food(yay!), a couple of talks (including Noma Bar) and a live DJ after I think. In the end I went with my friend Tom off of my Immersion course, because I thought that would be better than going alone and not talking to anyone. I was right; it seemed that everyone there already knew everyone and it was a bit clique-y. That's the way I saw it anyway. Might have just been the Shoreditch effect. (Those crazy kids!)

Overall though, it was worth the £5, and I think if we'd have been more drunk/less shy, we would have talked to some hotties networked for the good of our careers. Maybe.

Having the chance to see a talk by Noma Bar was pretty good - I love his work. For those that aren't familiar with it, here you go:

He is the master of negative space, no doubt about it. What's genius about his work is that it looks deceptively simple; but you just know it takes him hours, days, to hone it to work properly as a visual trick.

He also has a couple of books out, which I will now shamelessly plug through Amazon:



I joined that amazon affiliates thing. Still not entirely sure how it works. It'd be better if it was amazon.co.uk as well - no-one wants to use dollars. Hmmm. Research needed.









All the images are taken from his portfolio site at Dutch Uncle - you can see more there.

The next Notworking event is on 28th April, and I'm definitely going - it's £7.50 and it's being held at Somerset House, during the Pick Me Up exhibition which I really want to see:

Here's some info about it. Need to get my act together and buy my ticket! Will do that in a sec. The line up is immense! Including Jonathon Barnbrook, who I met about a year ago at the Penguin Design Award ceremony. Really nice chap :)

Introducing mflow: It's going to be huge...

The music industry is changing. We know that. What with the digital economy bill being pushed through parliament last week (boo), and a general shift from buying physical music, to buying digital downloads, and now, with spotify, not even owning music anymore, things are moving pretty fast.

The latest music tool to hit t'internet is mflow - billed as 'spotify with twitter', it's a new way of sharing music (yep, sharing music, legally!) and discovering new music in return:

"We believe that music's better shared...

We don't want to be told what we 'might like' by a software program.
We don't want to stare at an empty search bar... "a whole world of music at my fingertips, and I can't think of anything to look for..."
We don't want to have to subscribe to anything.
We don't want adverts.
We just want a way for our mates to send us music they think rocks."

It's quite simple really - you download the software, register, then start following people (as you would in twitter) - they 'flow' songs that they like, and you get to listen to 1 full preview, then after that, (any) 30 seconds of the sog . You can flow songs that you like to your followers, write a little comment about why you like it, and so on. The great thing is that if any of your followers buys a track after you've flowed it to them, you get 20% of the price! Which is nice. The downloaded songs can be moved to your itunes folder and played on any mp3 player and ipod.

They haven't got the extensive library that itunes does yet - but they're getting there. And if you're going to buy a track off itunes - check if it's been flowed to you already, and you may as well buy it off mflow instead - then you give someone 20%! Sharing is caring, folks.

It works best if all your mates/network are on there; I'm always saying 'have you heard this song?' to people and they're like 'eh'... now you can just send it to them. It's great. If you're already someone who uses twitter a lot, then you've got the right frame of mind to use mflow - that desire to share something new and fresh that you've discovered with the world. It's my favourite part of it.

I think the only downfall is that you only get 1 full preview - sometimes you need to listen to a song a few more times than that. Spotify, while it has adverts, obviously lets you listen as many times as you like. I wouldn't mind mflow having adverts if I could have unlimited plays.

Unfortunately, I was lazy and never got round to downloading spotify... now you can only get it through invitation only! And you can only give invites out if you pay for it. Well gutting. So if any of you have an invite, wang one over my way, cos I am silly.

Mflow is currently in beta - which means you can only try it at the moment if you have an invite code. Luckily, I have three left! If you want to try out mflow, the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post get a code off me! Don't say I'm not generous.

When it comes out of beta then anyone will be able to download it I'd imagine. But by then everyone will know about it and you won't be one of the cool trendsetters. You have been warned.

If you already have mflow and want to follow me on there, search People for 'Rachillustrates' - then you can start receiving my awesome taste in music.

Check out mflow's blog.

New Work! Illustrations for Amelia's Magazine - 'Inside The Book Club'

Tres exciting news guys! I've loved Amelia's Magazine for ages, and even though it's not published anymore, the website lives on and also has a plethora of great articles up there.

I was asked to illustrate an article about The Book Club bar in Shoreditch - a really great place that I went to recently at the Glug Notworking event. Here are my illustrations: Higher res will be up on my website later.

I was supplied photos and told to put my stamp on them; I really enjoyed doing these and am so pleased with how they came out - I haven't done line drawings with collage for a lonnng time and they've ended up summing up the place well I think. It's really eclectic and so much creativity goes on in there, but it's also very grungy in feel - low ceilings, warehouse-y, exposed bricks, rooms leading onto others etc, so I wanted to get that across too. I also cheekily put my own artwork in the frames on the walls! Ha. I wish ;) It's a bar primarily, but it also holds club nights, life drawing classes, club nights with live DJs, it's got a table tennis table and pool tables, they serve food (gooood food), it's pretty damn awesome. I'd be in there all the time if I lived anywhere near Shoreditch. Maybe soon. It's on Leonard St, quite tucked away... I've had a hard time finding it tbh before. 

As Amica's article explains really well; there just isn't this kind of place very much in the UK. In New York, I feel right at home there because there are so many venues like this, that go from cafe in the day to nightclub at night, with a healthy dose of alternative culture thrown in. It's great. (And one of the many reasons why I want to move to NY, eventually) but The Book Club is pushing the boundaries over here and I love the concept so much.

Anyway, don't take my word for it, read the article by Amica Lane, then get yourselves down there!

Stylishly Sustainable: Urban Remade Shoes

I'm posting a lot about shoes recently. But then again, I love shoes.

Urban Remade are particularly great though. I discovered them through Fashion-Conscience, and I love the concept:

"The collection exclusively incorporates rare, vintage and ultra rare iconic retro textiles from the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's reclaimed from seats on London's Underground tube carriages and buses." Read more here.

Not only that, but the trim is 100% recycled or repurposed leather, the Sole is 33% recycled tyre rubber. All 100% salvaged UK waste. Awesome.

District Line - Such a bad print that it's good, so good. They don't make 'em like this anymore! £66.41

Central Line - I spend 1/3 of my commute (yes there are depressingly 3 parts) on the central line, so this is fitting. A lovely utilitarian print, it says 'I'm going to work, and the central line is generally reliable. At least you're not on the circle line!' £91.96

Another 1/3 of my journey is on the Victoria Line - where this print is from. Vintage! £66.41

They don't have any London Midland fabrics. The other 1/3 of my journey. Unsurprisingly. I'll help them tear a few strips out though.....

The Island Line - 'The line from Ryde St John's Road to Shanklin was originally built as part of the Isle of Wight Railway, which opened on 23 August 1864.' Apparently. Best found print though, check it out. Snazzy. £66.41.

So they're not cheap, but you know exactly where the materials have come from and who made them. And they are of course very rare and basically one of a kind.

Own a bit of British Transport history! Yeah! Go railway!

Ads I love: Wrigleys Extra 'Banish Smelly Followers'

Now. This isn't a clever viral marketing campaign, or guerilla gardening, or anything of that jazz. This is a plain, straight-up TV advert. And generally, most of them are bad. Not this one. It made me laugh and go 'aw' and feel fuzzy all at the same time. Possibly just a girly reaction, but my dad also immensely liked it too. And he complains about adverts more than I do.

Banish Smelly Follow..
Watch the ad...

Watch it. Why do I love it? Cute characters. Nothing gets me more than cute, slightly helpless characters. It's why I also love the Orange adverts.

And that it also works, at telling you what the product is (or reminding you of it) with none of that cliched icicles/arctic wind/cool fresh breath/breathing on a mirror stuff that most adverts of similar brands come up with it. It's just a visual representation of bad breath. In a cute way.

What's the song in it? If anyone knows, say so. It's nice.

I also love the bit at the end where the lil ickle onion gets stuck in the lift door. I hope he doesn't get squashted >.<

Alright, enough. I've made my point. It's fun and happy. The way ads should be!