I'm a little bit in love with this bag from River Island. Is that wrong?!

Topshop sale purchase

This is the jacket I got in the Topshop.com sale. You can't really see from the pictures but it's blue, white, and thin red striped. What I like about it is how you can button the lapels in different ways and so get several different looks:




Top H&M, jeans ASOS narrowed by me

I fell in love with THE Topshop blue and red striped blazer when it appeared (you know, the one that was in all the magazines). I even bought it. But although I loved it and it fitted really well, I just couldn't wear it. I have quite a long torso so cropped jackets and long jackets look ok, but ones that hit right on the hip make me look out of proportion, particularly if I wear them with trousers. I tried the jacket with everything in my wardrobe but nothing looked right and I eventually, sadly, returned it. This one seems better, I think because I can wear it open (the original one didn't hang right open) and so not have the line across the hips which causes the proportion problem.

ION, I really need a haircut!

Product review - Max Factor Beyond Length mascara

Beyond Length mascara, called Vivid Impact in the US, is a two stage mascara. It has two sections, each with their own brush, one with black lengthening mascara, and one with a coloured topcoat. You apply the black first, wait for it to dry, and then brush the highlighting colour onto the ends of the lashes. In the UK it so far comes in three shades, blazing black which is pink, moonlit black which is silver, and tanned black which is coppery. I believe there are two more shades in the US?

Image courtesy of an ebay seller

I have the tanned black version. When I first applied the black coat, I was surprised how spindly my eyelashes still looked. I don't think this is a flaw in the product, I'm just so used to volume building mascaras rather than lengthening ones. The brush was pretty good and gave good separation. When I added the topcoat I was a little disappointed that it didn't show up more, but it was pretty close up. The second time I tried it, I used an eyeliner of a similar colour and the two worked well together. The mascara stayed on well considering it's not a waterproof one and came off easily with eyemakeup remover. Overall I would say it's a quality product but with only a subtle effect. And I personally would be wary of the pink version as I fear it would have an albino rabbit effect on fairskinned people like myself.

I am not paid to write reviews and did not receive any free samples, boo!

Which way did the 70's go?!

Flared jeans and tunic top Topshop

There are also wedges under there somewhere to make me look tall.

Wow, third post in a day!

Dress random brand from TKMax (why don't you ever see them anywhere else?!), cardigan Primark, sandals New Look last year or the year before, dragonfly brooch on cardigan Ebay, bracelet Topshop.
Also featured is the usual North East Coast wind :-)

Topshop sale!

Topshop.com have just started a mid-season sale, yay! As usual, quite a few things are already sold out in the smaller sizes (but such items are also often reduced a little more so a bonus for the more curvaceous). There's lots in the sale though and much is still available in the 8/10/12 sizes. Including these few on-trend pieces I have selected for your delectation:

And sadly no, I don't get paid for promoting Topshop, I'm just a big fan :-)

Thoughtful (warning, goes on for ages!)

bitsandbobbins has posted a thought-provoking post about why we wear what we wear. It's an interesting topic because people's reasons are really variable and wide-ranging. I think my main motivating factor is that I would like my sense of style to be admired by people whose sense of style I admire. The type of style I admire is creative, quirky, a little arty, a little trendy (but not sheep-like adherence to fashion), and most importantly, not boring. Sadly, I feel I usually fall short of these ideals myself (note tendency to repeat shortish skirt & tights combo). However, I also don't want to get stared at by the rest of the populace. It would also be nice if my other half liked what I looked like, but he's really not into clothes and sometimes refers to my ensembles as bizarre, so I really don't focus on his ideas (ultimately I think he would prefer I looked 'normal', which seems to mean bootcut jeans and a fleece top *yawn*).

Oddly, I seem to be mostly dressing for imaginary people because where I live is so not fashion central! Typical day wear consists of sportswear or light hipster jeans and a hooded top (with obligatory 3 inches of stomach in between) and nighttime wear of the smallest, tightest, sparkliest thing you can find. The nearest city does have students though, and emo kids, and many of them are cool-looking (but so young *sigh*). When I pick my outfits, I am thinking of all the stylish people in blogland, but then I go out in the real world and spend the day feeling self conscious. The day I wore mustard yellow tights is a good example, would have blended right in in blogworld, in real life I apparently looked like "a f***ing chicken"!

One constant in the responses to bitsandbobbins' post was that people dressed to disguise bits of their bodies that they dislike. I am always trying to minimize my wide-shoulders and not reveal my knobbly knees (ok with tights, baaaaad without). I have also banned myself from most jeans without a long top because my upper thighs have totally gone to pot recently. I like to accentuate my waist but get very annoyed with people who tell me I shouldn't wear loose-fitting things because I have to "show my teeny tiny waist". Well yes, sometimes, but a side-effect of showing my "teeny tiny waist" is often highlighting my NOT teeny tiny bottom and thighs!

Generally I am grateful that in western society we have such freedom of dress and that almost anything is accepted to some degree. Even chicken costumes :-)

Where'd the sun go?

This was an outfit born of necessity, the necessity of not getting wet.

Coat Primark, Jumper, skirt, & shoes H&M, tights Dorothy Perkins

I'm noticing a short skirt, coloured tights theme going on. Must try to branch out!

Here comes the sun?

This was my attempt to introduce a bit of summeryness despite it still being quite chilly and windy here in the North East.



Dress H&M, bag and tights Topshop, sandals New Look

In the picture you can also see the shutter release cable which is my new best friend! My, rather old, camera has the most infuriating timer ever. You have to select the timer from the menu, set it, and focus every time, which means lots of running back and forwards to get a shot I'm happy with. With my squeezy bulb and tube, I can do 20 shots in a minute or two and then pick the best one afterwards. From using this, I have learnt two things:

1) I can look good in photos. Generally I hate all photos, particularly those that I don't have control over, because I look bad in them, so this has been a revelation.

2) This is only true if I DO NOT SMILE! If I smile, I look like Cleetus the slack-jawed yokel at best, an escaped loony at worst!

Oh denim doo-be-do...

When I saw this picture of a Gap denim dress in Grazia (excuse picture quality, the one in the magazine was very dark and hard to get a good scan of), a little lightbulb over my head went ping.



My lightbulb told me that I had a long denim dress from about 10 years ago stored in the attic. 2 hours (including about 45 minutes to find the flippin' thing) and some cutting and sewing later, voila:



No outfit post for yesterday or today as I have mostly been gardening which involves wearing very old jeans and a green duffle coat I have had since I was 14, not pretty :-)

Shameless advertising

If anyone is interested, I'm re-selling a few of my unsuccessful Ebay purchases here. Including this rather nice jacket:



I always blur my face in Ebay pictures in case of scary stalkers!

Ooh look, light!

And this is what the dress from this post looks like in real life. I tried it with a belt but I didn't have one the right colour (both black and brown looked wrong) and it just went bunchy. Anyhow, I think it works as it is, although it's basically a tube, it's not a very wide tube and it's thin fabric so it drapes nicely over curves.


Dress Mina from ebay, wedge sandals New Look, tights no idea.

This is an outfit from a day or two ago, which I didn't get round to photographing at the time but which I then reused to style a blazer I'll be selling on ebay (this is me if anyone's interested).


Jacket & top H&M, skirt Topshop, tights BHS, boots Dorothy Perkins.

Adri does brights

Todays outfit, with scary-bright tights:


Jumper and skirt H&M, tights Topshop, shoes New Look.

I'm not sure the shoes go, but I couldn't resist the idea of coral-red toes. The skirt has beautiful pockets which I have tried to show here:





In other news, I have now bodged a 'tripod' by attaching the camera to a stepladder, so future pictures can be taken outside with actual daylight :-)

Excuse the terrible picture, the light was bad so they all came out blurry. This dress was one of the things I bought on my shopping trip. £10 in the sale, yay! Believing the 'hot iron' instruction on the label was a mistake though, the denim fabric was fine but they've used synthetic thread which melted all over my iron >:-[


Dress and tights H&M.

Ooh look, a bandwagon *leaps*

Today's outfit (except that at the last minute I switched to black jeans as I thought the grey made my thighs look fat!):


Jeans New Look, top & scarf H&M, blazer Ebay with badges & shiny buttons added by me.

Today I went shopping and bought pretty things. Pics in next post.

And this is what I look like

Today's outfit:

a>

This is all from H&M, but not intentionally.

A search for the impossible?

Since reading an article about the resurging tunic/smock trend in Look (I know, all the other bloggers are reading Vogue and Lula, I'm such a chav!), I have been looking for one. This has proved harder than I thought, probably because I had quite a long list of requirements. It had to be colourful and patterned but not loud, long sleeves (because it's still pretty cold in the UK, and because I wanted to wear it under my blazer and elbow length balloon sleeves, which were everywhere, are a nightmare under jackets), have a wide round neck or V neck, and be long enough to actually be a dress rather than what Mina and the like tend to try to convince you is a dress (I'm looking at you 30 inch long "Fairytale Fantasy dress as seen on Sienna Miller"). A search of the highstreet produced nothing, or nothing that I could afford, so I turned to Ebay. I have now bought this:



>

But I'm interested/worried about what it will really look like since the images all look quite different (presumably due to lighting). Wait and see I guess...

An expedition to the south

So I went to London yesterday. Which involved getting up at 6.30am to get to the station and do the 3 hour train journey in time for lunch. I met my friend from Australia (yay!), ate tuna salad (yummy, and without olives), went to Topshop (oh the colours), and New Look (disappointing for what is apparently a flagship store), and then flopped on a sofa in Vauxhall before the 3 hour journey back. People-watching in the bright lights big city would suggest that skinny jeans are not over, black is the new black, and you can wear anything in Topshop and no one, apart from us gawping out-of-towners, will bat an eyelid. Black boots, gold leggings/tights, tangerine coat, yellow hair in many-plaits construction, cool but mad.

I also saw this ruffled vest in Topshop:




Very Stella, non?