Beyond blue

Another week.. whoosh! Life seems to be speeding at, well, a very 'speedy' speed right now. Exams, wonderful weather and creative projects have been responsible for gobbling time.
I had a wonderful photography filled weekend though, including the creation of about 5 posts worth of photos to share,  bit by bit! (Both behind and in front of the camera.) Other exciting weekend activities included a riverside picnic, making brownies for fathers day and buying a book on the sixties designer 'Andre Courreges'. Every new book is a step towards one of my aims in life - to build up my own personal library full of classics (preferably penguin editions!), fashion, photography and art books.

First up, this is my newest purchase from Beyond Retro in Brick Lane, London. (I could write an ode to that shop.)  Luckily, the last time my mum and I visited this jewel of a place, there was a half price sale rail from which I managed to extract both this dress and an electric blue leather pencil skirt. (The beautiful little cream lace and muslin shift dress I also bought, sadly wasn't on sale, but seemed to have been subject to a low pricing error - lucky for me!) In the shop, this dress looked almost purple under the harsh lighting, so imagine my delight when I discovered in natural day light it was actually an even more attractive shade of bright blue!
I like the contrast between the vibrancy of the colour, and the quite demure shape of the dress. I always enjoy finding pieces with 'juxtapositions' in their design.

Here I styled it with a belt that was my paternal grandma's in the seventies, my favourite white shoes from New Look (they do surprisingly decent, and cheap, high heels) and a Laura Ashley hat from a charity shop. I bought it at the same time as the straw boater (featured in the bluebell wood - Lady sing the blues so well.) I have a feeling this too may have originally been a child's hat. I love the blue ribbon! Wearing it makes me feel as though I should belong in 'The Railway Children' or 'Mary Poppins'...
The brown box bag usually holds my vintage Kodak box camera (found at a flea market) and the bracelet was given to me by a friend.

My dad has been chief photographer again (after a brief interlude of my mum using the 'auto' setting) and this was a great sequence of photos. I'd been taking photos of my parents for a project, which involved recreating a Tim Walker-esque office on the side of a hill, complete with table, chairs, flowers and sheep! You'll get to see some follow up photos taken of me in the same set, resplendent in my 'photographer's outfit', sometime soon.
In the same field we found this amazing section of a tree trunk - the sheer scale of it was magnificent and perfect as a backdrop.

One of my summer resolutions is to really learn to make clothes properly. This quest shall be aided by the use of vintage patterns, retro fabric and probably copious amounts of chocolate. I can already use a sewing machine, but I am anxious to get to the stage where my sketches can be turned into real pieces. Any tips would be most welcome!

Oh, and a lovely little bit of news. Today I was featured as Girl of the Day on Teenvogue's Snapshot blog in my wool cape ensemble! This is fantastic, as I love Teenvogue and the standard of their beautiful editorials. You know that feeling when you look at certain outfits and think "I wish I'd styled that/ modelled that/ taken photos of that!" I only wish there was a British equivalent..

Beyond blue 2010-06-21T12:50:00-07:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: Unknown