Fur Coat, No Knickers

Incredible pictures of the awe-inspiring Lynn Yaeger’s amazing apartment. Read the whole feature here! I love how obsessed she is with eBay and collecting oddities. A real hero and so much more fun than a white, big-windowed, minimalistic swankster flat that you usually see on these things.

All pics from The Inside Source, where Lynn will now be a guest columnist. Please go read the full article too, it’s a great read!

Did you know Lancôme sell twenty Juicy Tubes a minute? And that this year Juicy Tubes are ten years old? If you do the maths (and boy did I), that makes something like 105,198,600 Juicy Tubes floating around the globe! And that’s just the ones that have been bought! And it doesn’t account for days when someone goes mental in the aisles of Debenhams and buys fifty in a minute, just for a laugh. To celebrate their big 1-o, Lancôme are introducing a limited edition range, designed by Japanese Artist Yayoi Kusama who you may know best as the woman who likes spots.

Excitingly, as well as a snazzy new look the new Juicy Tubes have an all new 100% natural formula, meaning they now have shea butter and honey to hydrate and all the colours and fragrance comes from natural components. Still, you probably don’t care about that. What matters is a) nice shades b) nice packaging and c) they’re still the usual price of a tenner. Available from 1st April exclusively at Debenhams. How comes Debenhams are getting all the best beauty launches these days? Nice work guys!

New in at Nasty Gal… You’ve got the gloves (you’ve got the gloves, right?), now get the legs to match. Buy ‘em here. One of the things I’m looking forward to most about my upcoming return to Sheffield is, as always, a trip to Rocky Horrors. Bet they’ll have something similar, more goth, cheaper.

I was just wondering what my favourite Etsy seller Aquanetta was up to… this apparently. Call me crazy, but I have a lot of time for these. Maybe this is the way for me to handle dabbling my toe back into the world of trousers? It’s basically a skirt, nobody but you know would know… The kind of Van Gogh print is all kinds of amazing. I dunno man, I’m behind it. These, white t-shirt, these Swedish Hasbeens. Sure, I’d be utterly repellent to the opposite sex but that’s sort of the look I go for anyway.

By the way, if you want your hand to look identical to my hand, today, right now, Aquanetta is selling the same bunch of rings that I’m wearing this second. I bought them last year and they still get more compliments than any other jewels I own.

Another week, another great exhibition… Aren’t we lucky to live in London? This week the Very Sanderson exhibition opened at the Fashion and Textiles Museum and I’m really excited to get down and see it ASAP. Along with the quilts, it’s probably a bit geeky if you’re not into textiles but I enjoy any opportunity to get down to the FTM and there are loads of good pubs round there too which always makes a trip worthwhile.

Sanderson is one of the oldest English design houses still going and its their 150th anniversary which is being celebrated at this exhibition. They’re the people responsible for some of the most iconic prints you’ll have seen — all those classic kitschy 50s Festival prints that you study in art school and drool over, triangles and circles and Miro-esque squiggles… lovely lovely. They were also the first people to create a range of mass produced coordinated wallpapers and curtains and created all sorts of revolutionary technical techniques to get excited about.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what the FTM have done with the collections as their exhibits are always so brilliantly curated. You can read more about the exhibition here and more about Sanderson here. Up there are some of my favourite wallpapers, showing designs from the 1800s up the 50s. Isn’t it weird/fantastic how any one of those would work just as well I’ve today?

Once upon a time, admitting to shopping at Hot Topic was basically the biggest sin you could commit amongst my punker than thou friends. If you bought your NOFX t-shirt there rather than Interpunk you were basically a soulless sell-out who didn’t care about music or the spirit of punk rock. A couple of things seem to have changed. First up, Hot Topic has a picture of Justin Bieber on the front page, which I don’t really get. Granted my knowledge of Bieber is small, but I thought he was a simpering boy band type? Has Hot Topic given up the punk game or is Bieber more hardcore than I thought? Anyway, on top of that I have also grown a pair so don’t really give a shit about shopping at Hot Topic if they have something decent that I want. Pretty sure it doesn’t matter where you get your kicks. [See also: Dorothy Perkins, Matalan, Yeomans]

That said, the reason for all this was to say that Gala got these Maison Michel-a-like bunny ears from HT and I like ‘em. They seem to look better in the flesh (well, photograph of a real person) as Gala demonstrates here. Buy a pair for the princely sum of $12 here. You can have them delivered in plain packaging if it makes you feel better.

Apologies for the lack of posting, I was on a work jolly to Ragdale Hall this weekend and took some time off either side because, well, what’s the point of doing sweet FA at a spa if you’re going to throw yourself back into the world of work straight away? Nada, that’s what. On a momentary work front, I cannot rave about Ragdale enough so if you’re looking for a spa within reach of London or just an all-round amazing spa TBH then you really can’t do better. Highlights included the staff who are just above and beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in this country, brilliant facilities and uhm, food. I know food isn’t top of the list for most people on spa but not everyone goes there for detox and health purposes… some people, like me, are pigs. I had a fantastic bloody steak for dinner and their local platter of pork pie and stilton was one of the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

While you’re in Melton Mowbray, I also suggest a trip to the Anne of Cleves which is an ancient building, given to (guess who?) Anne of Cleves by Henry VIII as part of their divorce settlement. They have a great range of ales (no really, this is what excites me these days) and we spent a happy (few) hour(s) there before our train. Perfect end to a healthy spa break… right?

Pic comes via tod.ragsdale on Flickr

Friday early evening disco, maybe. Sorry, meetings always get in the way of ACTUAL FUN.

Click!

I think we’ve had words about animals on clothing before (animals good; animals on clothing, hmm, bit twee but sometimes OK, it’s a hard one to call)? Still, these thermals from the Paul & Joe Sister A/W 2010 collection are pretty appealing. The print, which you probably can’t make out, is the same as the picture on the sweater. The entire range, from the colours to the 60s detailing and, obviously, the deer motif, screams Babycham to me, but apparently the collection is inspired by Bambi and Gossip Girl.

Really? Not the delicious sparkling perry? Are you sure?

PS I think I need a trip to the factory so I can be like my all-time hero above heroes, Pippa Brooks, and climb on the giant fawn.

A kindly reader (yo Marina!) sent me a link to an eBay store she thought I might like. I do! I’m as easy to read as a Martina Cole, I know. I know some people view sharing eBay sellers as akin to revealing your secret pub that’s always quiet, even on a Friday night, but still has a really good vibe and a wide selection of amazing ales (I’LL NEVER TELL) but…. where was I?… here goes. Thriftwares. Cheap, cheerful and good photography; the holy grail of eBay.

PS Pretty sure I dreamt about that leopard jumper once, it’s like Chloe Sev x OC but affordable.