Have you lost a girlfriend?

New label crush alert. Stolen Girlfriends Club – started in 2005, only on my radar in 2010.  (People, I am married to the computer already, I can’t catch everything…) Anyway, where to begin? The name is just inspired. I wanna be a stolen girlfriend, I wanna be part of that club. The look is insouciant, playful and seeeexxxxxyyyyy. And the pièce de résistance – two of the label owners are ex-pro surfers. PRO SURFERS – did you hear that? That just takes cool to a whole other level. The fashion line is just one of the tentacles of this creative super-collective; SGC incorporates musics, film, photography and events.

Seriously – tweed bicycle shorts – who would have thought it? I was racking my brains of how to do heritage this Winter without looking like Lady of the Manor, and BAM – Stolen Girlfriends Club give me tweed bicycle shorts. They also dabble in jewellery with a line called Heavy Metal, and by the Beard of Zeus, I simply must have that I love you to Death pendant. Intense – moi?

Check out the really sweet and dreamy video they shot for their Weapons of Mass Seduction Campaign. Beautiful and baffling. Don’t you just want in?

A mish mash of nothing much and everything in between

Don’t really know what to say.  Feeling an overwhelming sense of schadenfreude thinking about fashion at the moment. Vicious cycle of not having enough money, having some money, spending said money, feeling instantly guilty with the splurge, then empty, then lonely, then lusting after the next object to acquire/ squire. Affluenza much? Bloody good read if you haven’t gotten around to it. Oliver James charts our modern sickness. Prepare to feel self-loathing and fleeting enlightenment.

LMFAO: Too Bloody Right

So on another musical theme, LMFAO have that Miami song. Something about something about getting wasted in Miami or something.  Delightfully irritating. Never mind that though, the fashion people, the FASHION. Zebra print as far as the eye can see, sequins, boombox necklaces, an explosion of neon, outrageously stupid glasses.

Ring Around A’Rosie and other Such Nursery Rhymes

“Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes”

Neckin’ it to the Festival

what is no festival complete without? forget wellies, toilet roll and dutch gold. think wilfully obscure, whimsical, fanciful jewellery from tatty devine. the collection is twee, retro, naff and trendy. some of the pieces are so nostalgic – remember fancy-paper and sticker collecting? pierrot the clown stationary? hobby horses? plastic rings?

I- Geek

Technology. I remember when the height of technology in Irish society was having a video player. And that was so you could record Corrie if you happened to be out. These days, it’s all I-phones at dawn. Over the pub table it’s an App-Off – with everyone trying to out-do each other with sleep tracking applications and Eurovision prediction databases and magnetic compasses. I have recently become an I-widow my boyfriend has taken to his I-phone with abandon and I have been relegated well below his World Cup app.

waiting room designer

today i came across a new designer. not by scrawling through the pages of vogue, or by aimlessly watching two hours of fashiontv, or even by flicking through other blogs. today, i was

Why did the Zebra Cross the Road?

Sexiest Zebra Crossing I Ever Saw

While over in Spain I acquired myself a fabulous, Mr T-worthy, zebra-print necklace. It is gold plated, chain-linked, slightly iridescent and damn fine. I purchased it in Uterque; a boutique-concept chain of shops set up by Zara and Massimo Dutti. The idea is to provide quirky, affordable pieces mixed with high-end, classic accessories. The result is a bazaar of truly original delights, with some mumsy, wedding-appropriate fare in between. The real coup is that the store has only rolled out through Spain, Portugal, Greece and the United Arab Emirates, which means I’m in the first flushes of a blossoming romance with This-Little-Shop-I-Know. You know the one – tall, dark and handsome and only available when you go on holidays and doesn’t deliver to Ireland. Loyal only to you and offers up a smorgasbord of earthly goods every time you meet. Back in the day there was quite a variety of these exotic lotharios – H+M, Mango, Zara, American Apparel…the delights of the foreign shores. Now they’ve tarted themselves all over the globe and have become so cheap and available. I’m glad I found Uterque, but I sense our time together will be fleeting.

Vicodin Earrings – Hot or Not?

I believe it is a widely known fact that I am a jewellery enthusiast. I am also a recycling enthusiast. So imagine my delight when I came across these sodomised Barbie rings and necklaces. Every childhood fascination with decapitating Barbie has been realised in a unique, if slightly deranged, jewellery collection. Designer Margaux Lange has gone to town on the Mattel icon, leaving no discarded hand, melted face, amputated leg or lonely Ken left unturned.

angst-ridden jewellery. who’d a thunk it?

with the din of new years eve still ringing in my ears, there are a few things i am coming to terms with in my life. one is that i am a jewellery fetishist. no chain too dangly, no bracelet too jangly and no ring too sparkly…the proverbial magpie. and nothing too discreet. no siree not for me. if coco chanel said always take one item off before you leave the house, i say put at least 3 more on. and the bigger the better. i really embrace costume jewellery, so titled because of its place on the stage, and pat butcher is an idol. for example, i am wearing not one, but four necklaces today. how much jewellery is too much jewellery? when you lose the need for actual clothing, but not a diamond before that.

A sampling of my jewels

my other realisation is that i will never be a teenager again. some might think that a slow dawning, or at odds with my outwardly mature persona, but i really feel, somewhere deep down, time stopped for me at 17. not that it was a particularly great year or a particularly great period (not that it was particularly bad either) but for some reason my mental clock got trapped on the eve of my 17th birthday – i mean i still don’t know what to do when i grow up. i have the same amount of rage and angst and emotion; i’ve just learned to control it in a socially acceptable manner. i still sulk around my parents (they just don’t understand me) and i totally identify with all the cast of twilight.
but since i can’t stomp around scowling and composing verbose soliloquies about the injustice of life, i can channel my inner teenage goth and work some ostentatious jewellery at the same time. check out these bad boys: designer Pamela Love (New York jewellery designer) embraces a darkly macabre theme to her work. skulls, snakes, detailed beating hearts, crows, discarded teeth…the whole gamut of everything that is weird, eccentric and deviant. nothing says angst-ridden like a graphically detailed heart medallion, ventricles and all. so my new years resolution is to wear more jewellery that taps into my inner teenage demons.