Jacket – Monnari, Blouse – Make Lemonade Vintage, DIY Cropped jeans – Zara, Wedges – Velvet Angel via Shopbop, Bag – Vintage

Currently suppressing the urge to take the laptop into the bed and acquaint myself of the art of endurance, but I fear it’ll be like man in stripclub, with wife. I’d forgotten Fashion Week is five days of tightrope-walking, the dismount both pleasing and excruciating and the only applause is from the shoes, sarcastic…slow…claps. They know they’re too damn expensive to THROW IN A BURNING OIL TANK. I will now buy cheaper shoes that can shred my feet and then I’ll express wrath by setting fire to them. Yeah, that sounds like good logic.

Day one was a good start, the wind tasted like winter but there were sunny spells that just lit up the courtyard like an incubator and then the colourful birds started hatching. Don’t you love it how all throughout the year magazines report the latest trend yet during fashion week no one really wears trend? It might just be London, but I didn’t see a herd of sheep(skin jackets) nor a pack of camel(coats) entering the show tent. Best thing about LFW: Overdosing on coffee with the girls and bumming around the courtyard, high on one caffeine cocktail or another, making new friends and shooting* old ones.

*Lined up against a wall, or sometimes just while they talk… candid is best, really.

Thank you Joseph Piper for taking my outfit shots!

Jill and I are covering London Fashion Week for Next this season, check out the Next blog for more coverage!

Jacket & Shoes – H&M, Knit Dress – Market in Vilnius, Jeans – Cut Zara, Striped top – Topshop, Necklace – Courtesy of Mimco

Short film by Mimco, featuring Emma Balfour

Mimco approached me with a proposal to send over a piece from their new collection for me to interpret into a photoshoot, video or a bellydance, as long as it illustrated the theme of the collection – a story from the fluttering pages of a Victorian-age débutante’s diary, an Unpredictable Revolution. Within a fortnight, a jelly-acetate necklace cluttered with slick hardware arrived with a heavy red book. The cynical graphic designer in me couldn’t help but chuckle at the cliché of finding the book dug out and containing an antique key and wax-sealed letter, but the package sure delivered the mood. The brief suggested a few different storyboards that could be elaborated on, and I figured this revolution can start from me so I did my own mish mash of themes: Noir – Castaway – Ritual – Nature – Overload – Kaleido – Reflective…

Thank you Ellen for helping me out with the photos!

Waistcoat – Uniqlo, Jeans – H! By Henry Holland, Shirt – Vintage, Shoes – Zara.

Pity. I was truly contemplating on starting an YOUR HAIR!!? era but the minute I sat in that chair and felt the interrogating glare of the woman in the mirror, I chickened out. Not even a need for a good cop/bad cop routine… actually this happens so regularly I’d chicken out at a traffic warden. (I don’t know how that translates in my allegory…) I love a trip to the hairdresser’s, the simple fact that drastic change only costs an hour in a chair, but annoyingly the length of my hair is just too endearing to part with. Beats me why I even come in the fist place. Thankfully Mr Lee (director/stylist) got the jist and performed a flurry of snips and shuffles as I counted each falling hair, and by the time I looked up a leaf of a fringe had descended on my forehead. Neat!

You must check out the Hurwendeki hair salon in Brick lane, the owner is super friendly (and knows when to stop cutting, evidently) and as you can see, the salon looks amazeballs.

Thank you again Kit for the photos of moi!

Top – Uniqlo, Pants – Zara, Bag – Vintage, Necklace – H&M, Watch – Casio, Bracelet – COS, Shoes – Bought in Tokyo 2008

Leather bag from Old Town market I fell in love with <3

It even surprises me how much I travel with my family. Apparently at my age I should be doing roadtrips with a horde of friends to the soundtrack of I’m not a girl not yet a woman, regularly taking turns to bully the one wearing the bumbag. Instead, I’m riding  into a golfcourse sunset horizon with my mother, father, brother and golfbag – note, that ¾ of the family can not play golf. The car journey is always the same – my brother and myself wedged in each corner of the back seat, with a mid-point fence made from tennis rackets, jolting awake to dramatic truck overtaking. In fact, my father seems to be rather taken from the thrill, we’d sit at the edge of our seats clutching at something solid, pleading for mercy while he takes over every vehicle in sight. Once he’s tired he switches on the 80s’s acoustic ballad hits and we’d roll over and simultaneously let out a moan – the lyrics are so cheesy that with a bag of Nachos we’d be a Taco Bell delivery car.

Well, Vilnius was beautiful, there were evident traces of a once-wealthy Lithuania that used to own half of Central Europe circa 1450’s. Next time I’m running away on a golf cart for a proper tour of the city, I believe finding a hotel 15km from the city was one of my father’s evil masterplan to teach me golf.

Jacket – Monnari, Bag – Vintage, Shoes – Zara, Shorts – Topshop, Top – Lace body DIY, Bracelet – COS

Zachęta National Gallery of Art; Jan Lebenstein collection; Thank you Andrzej for the shots

What I love about the Polish is that they never like to beat around the bushes. Have I taken up a new gardening interest – no, not in a million years would I gain the ability to keep a plant alive for more than a week – I mean it in the way they seem to be able to nonchalantly spit out their most honest of opinions. Meet interesting specimen no.2: Andrzej (above in the dashing white jacket) is a freelance journalist who I’d first met last London Fashion Week standing in line behind me for one of the shows (previously did an interview with him here). We were walking in Old Town the other day and I was completely yanked off guard when he casually commented that my face is round. I know, dearest Asian readers especially, I had to stoop down to pick up my own jaw. Later I realized that he didn’t mean to jab at a complex, so I’m sorry for that slap and flying side kick; did you find that tooth?, but only to comment on how round faces are grossly underappreciated in the industry. To top it off he sent me a link of an article he wrote for Lula.pl last November about round faces, entitled ‘Pretty as a Doll’. Ah well, then I just had to forgive him.

Also, insert another priceless facial expression on finding out he’s about 10 years younger than I thought he was, my age-o-meter needs serious inspection these days it seems.