Make Up

Sorry it's been a little while. The new Maus Of Elliott website is Under Construction, but in the meantime, have a link. Avon, if you can get over the American spellings, looks like it's going to be an excellently cheap one-stop-shop if you ever have a stroke and are the same except you've stopped enjoying the physical experience of browsing a glossy department store. Their sales look pretty good at the moment too: lipglosses for under $3 and stuff! That's the best deal I've seen since I got a fiver for my birthday and accidentally bought the whole of that discount chemist in the Merrion Centre in Leeds.

Other make up factoids I've been collecting for you. The best place for gorgeous fun-ness at the moment is easily Debenhams. They've done a couple of these 25% off for 24 hours sales at the moment, but they've got ace cheapo make-up all year round, so don't hang on for the sales. (Unless you want a Fiorelli bag of course...) They're doing make-up boxes for "eyes" and "lips" and I think a kind of "general", (a gay one?) with both in. These boxes are exactly what you've been wishing Santa would bring you since you were 5, and appear to me hilariously mispriced at £5 and £10. There's a £20 "manicure set" one, but even this seems to be great value, as it's the size of a wardrobe and contains the entire props complement off that scene in Fire in the Sky.

Don't be taken in by Boots and Superdrug trying to exploit your good summer mood with doorway deals. Walk straight past their "end cap" displays of horribly packaged Maybelline £11 mascaras (on sale?), ignoring their siren song and not looking back, and you'll find own-brand ones for under £3 that look more expensive and work better.

Nexterminate

"...maybe you could review Next, though I only know about their mens stuff. And the thing I know about their mens stuff is that almost everything they make has a big number on it somewhere (like 69 for instance), a bit like the baseball jacket of a highschool "jock"."

"I'm wearing a Next suit jacket now (yes, on a Sunday, and no, I'm not an estate agent) and you've scared me. Is there a number on it that everyone can see but me? Is that why they point and laugh? It truly is the Emperor's new math."

Firstly, NEXT! Sort out your sales! Who queues from 6am on the one day a year you have a sale? It's not fucking Glastonbury! Oh but it is, to the people of the Isle of Man, in 1994. I know: I was there.

Now this thing about the numbers is highly suspect. There certainly was a trend, and actually yes, it has dragged on a few years too many, for wearing "sporty" items with numbers on. For girls, this took the form of the (circa 2001) "cheerleader" fashions (evolving and converging with the frightful "Fame"/Geri Halliwell/legwarmers thing...and actually legwarmers are great, but that's another story for another time). For boys this sporty highschool yearbook thing mixed 1970s and 1980s and American sports. Any sensible polo shirt peddled to the masses by a popular high street store like Next isn't going to go too crazy with the vintage or the Animal House references, particularly when a few boxes ticked will be enough to help it masquerade as a fashion item.

Of course, fashion items from shops like Next are to fashion what costume jewelery is to...fashion. My point being: inauthenticity. Please. In fashion as in life avoid meaningless sloganeering and masquerading masquerades. It's clothes for people who care what other people think of them more than they care about clothes. Which is fine sometimes, (and, er, probably true of most people to some extent) but if you're going to wear something that nods gingerly towards a trend, and you've got to get over these hang-ups, do it with accessories, or colours - not with some dirty great numbers on your t shirt.

The suits are fine! The shoes are great! The bags and sunglasses are relatively out there, good range, good value. Oh yeah, nice office wear (who cares?)...And stripes are apparently still in, so all their household stuff should be good for a while yet. I'm not sure if matt silver-effect keyrings (and matching jewellery!) were ever in, but at least we won't be short of Christmas presents. And Christ, stop trying to make me buy sundresses that divide my bosoms into two defined triangles. But the crepey skirts with the wide low wastebands are kinda lush and kinda fresh, a novel mix of the wistful hippy thing and the Park Lane thing we were doing when we all wanted to be Charlotte from SATC a couple of years ago. The best thing about Next, though, is the range of socks.

The stuff about sports shirts is a bit out of date, of course, since these days all the cool kids are in rugby shirts (are we over cricket jumpers already?). Are we witnessing the first heartfelt highstreet lurch towards a nineties revival? Maybe. But the neon zig-zaggy 80's haven't died yet. Except in Next. Keep it up, Next! One day, all this will be beige.

Newsflash

Oh I do like these. A quick word before I bang on about Next.

I've never cared much for these 'blog things, as you probably know, and I think I'm going to give Maus Of Elliott its own, proper, website. Suggestions, questions, comments etc please.

Phone fashion Shoot #1

Leila wears: Mango top, sleeveless, black, from Mango (Covent Garden) last year. About £9? They hold their shape! And they come in white too!


Tom wears: T shirt from GAP. They're doing ones like this 2 for £18 at the moment.


Leila also wears: green cropped trousers from some frightful dive in Wood Green shopping city, and Lonsdale trainers.


Tom wears: lovely striped apron from Debenhams (about £12?)



(Didn't plan this or anything crazy, I just thought I'd do something different with today's phone photo harvest. Coming soon...NEXT!)

Bargain Bins

Coming up...Buying cheap rubbish: the where and the how. And other good intentions. Mark has specially requested a review of New Look. (Well done Mark! Didn't see that coming!) Any other requests?

I'll take that as a no then. I went into Kookai again today so obviously I'd rather be writing about that, but I've promised so must deliver.


New Look: You know how sometimes you see someone in town, or at a party, or wherever, and immediately find yourself thinking, if not actually saying, "I can really see what you've tried to do there" ?? That's how I feel about New Look. I can see what it's tried to do, with its slightly wonky mock-wrap cardis; its a-bit-too-garish swimwear; its sunglasses with glued-on sequins, oh god don't even get me started on the shoes.

See New Look is cheap, but it's not as cheap as it should be. Their sequined pumps look cheap but you won't get much change from £20. Don't let the almost completely random layout of the shop or the overwhelming sense you're in some kind of discount supermarket, fool you into a false sense that you're getting a good bargain. I do think this is the first low-price shop that's actually tried to offer high street trends and had some initial success: but it's just not cheap enough.

You should never, ever, go to New Look for something fashionable. It can't just be me that can spot a New Look boot cut pinstripe a mile off- or a cartoon t shirt, ghastly plastic sandal or impractically high heeled plasticky "fashion shoe". If you need a basic, "classic" (sorry) T Shirt, vest, or even checked short sleeved blouse, get it from here rather than the market. But really, if you're buying stuff for work, stuff that you don't want people to immediately recognise as New Look, stuff that you don't want to shrink or change colour when you least expect it, pay the extra fiver and cross the road to Top Shop.

Good: underwear; socks; accessories; "disposable" winter boots; winter coats; basics.

Bad: work clothes; colours; fitting; styling; rip-off denim styles; anything smart; fabrics; originality; clientelle.

Spring Accessories

Tom went on a research trip to Oxford today, and got home four hours later than usual so I obsessed over my week's outfits a bit and started ironing things. Four hours was, as it turned out, the exact length of time I spent trying to iron the pleats into my cotton trousers, before checking the label and realising they were supposed to be ironed inside out on three spot setting. So tonight I hate clothes and am all into accessories instead.


Surprising bag discovery of the week- Clarks shoe shop! (Pronounced "clerks") You didn't see that coming! They have a horrid little website made of flash, where the buttons don't take you to the things they say they do, and you'll only find the bags if you follow the correct random route through the links. (Stop acting your shoe size, Clarks). Oh the shoes are still dreadful, of course. But the bags! They cost like £12, and tick boxes for retro-floral and practical-chunky. And who else do you know is going to have one? Fuck's sake, this is Clarks! When was the last time you went into a Clarks? And what the hell was I doing in there? I wasn't even supposed to be here today.

Speaking of retro-floral (I was, a while ago), check out the flowers on the picnicware TopShop are now doing. Apparently. Nothing about it on their ghastly website either though. So who knows? Did it really happen? Am I on glue?

Anyone else think wedges are the most ugly trend since the poncho? With the second ugliest name? What happened to ludicriously impractical kitten heels? This time last year I trotted around merrily all season in kitten heeled plastic-flower embroidered flip-flops from Camden market; this year I've been pushed to the point of breakdown by the fashion police, bamboozling me into a world of pedial unsightliness, cackling as I disappear down a dark hole into some terrible heel-hating underworld. Why do you hate me so?

I'm getting very into things woven out of plastic packing strips these days. They've got loads of the stuff in Evolution but I'm damned if I'm googling that. Perhaps literally.

But I had some good news... I actually found some pretty wedges. There's a shop near the Grafton Centre, and you know I really should have bothered to remember the name, ("Mr Shoe"? sounds almost too made up not to be true) which has the biggest range and most original designs of wedge sandals you'll find on the high street. It's on Fitzroy Street, if you care, not strictly the high street. (For people not familiar with Cambridge, Fitzroy street has an Evolution, a market stall that sells fruit, and a Whittards on it, so is practically the Camden Town on Cambridge.) But the wedges! They do wooden based ones stained with coloured stripes that follow the curve of the shoe! They do curvy ones! Plastic ones! Hollow ones! Cork ones! Bling ones with buckles! Even... wedge-trainers. Believe.

Welcome

The amount of time it took me to think up the title of this blog is genuinely embarrassing. People who hate clothes and shopping but not me might want to look at my other blog, which I update occasionally with excerpts of weekly correspondence.

This is a blog I've been meaning to do for a very long time indeed. Perhaps it was partly embarrassment about revealing the whole, awful, superficial reality of my personality, perhaps it was my inability to think of a title that successfully punned on "maus". Whatever, I got here at last, although I'm still a bit shaky about the title. I am (and it feels like such a confession) one of those women whose palms get sweaty at the mere thought of a pair of elegant candy-striped wedge sandals; whose heart speeds up at the whisper of a Fiorucci sale; who can identify the rustle of Jigsaw pleats from 3 miles away and positively ID this season's Baby Gap colours on someone's child in the next town. In a pram.

For one reason or another I have been "going round the shops" a lot over the past few weeks. I've unconsciously retained quite a lot of what I've seen, and it seems high time I showed off some of this worthless information. I must stress that I'm not presenting any opinions as objective or correct, they're just mine. I don't have any special credentials for this either, just a special interest - an interest that might partially explain how I keep getting drawn back into "costume" scenarios of varying degrees of glamour. It might explain how, for example, I ended up training as a beauty counter girl in Selfridges, how I found myself modelling clothes in two fashion shoots for a magazine and one for a talent agency, how I winced under layers of eyelash glue, being made up in the costume van on the set of a 60s film, how I own a number of "recreational" wigs and at least 20 bottles of nail polish...

Or it might not. A few observations to kick off with, anyway.


The (Cambridge) High Street

H&M: comes into its own this time of year. Everyone's so relieved it's finally summer they stop noticing it's a complete jumble sale and the officewear is a bit nasty. All summer, they do proper pretty summer dresses which are much better value than the proper cute old-lady style coats we've been buying from them (and when I say "we" I don't mean me, obviously) every winter. Their short sleeved blouses and little towelling hotpant things are amazing, but the best thing about H&M is the accessories section. The rings and that are rubbish of course, but have you seen the cute, funky hair bands slides and clips?? The ones that cost almost NO PENCE! Truly, the biggest secret on the high street?

Kookai: The colours; the fabrics; the most beautiful trousers in town. Most of it's too expensive, but I'm jealousing all over this shop. Oh Kookai, where have you been all my life?

French Connection: Get over yourself.

Karen Millen: The silk top "made of ties" I bought from here for Five Earth Pounds in last summer's sale was such a hit I'm loath to say anything against the place. By high-street standards their prices are telephone numbers, but their sales are something else. Tailored, smart, stripey stuff. "Where did you get your lovely coloured coat from?" was what the KM shop assistant asked me, recently. "A charity shop", I replied.

Frank: Feels too hip for me somehow, although I do like a lot of the stuff. The staff were dancing around to Prince and constantly offering to "help" me. Frank is currently selling vest/girl Y-front combos as underwear/nightwear for £10. They are the happiest things in the world, soft with brown trim and little cartoon people hula dancing all over the place.

River Island: I like the accessories here, too. I suppose the clothes are alright if you're after something generic and in an "earth tone". It's mostly lost its edge this season, I think- in the winter RI sparkles with partywear. Good for jeans and nice shoes all year round.

Top Shop: You're not terrible, but you never quite keep your promise. Cropped trousers I can almost believe in, short dungarees might happen if you can snare some foreign tourists, but please, please, who on god's earth is wearing culottes?

Bay Trading Company: Less instantly identifiable than Top Shop and slightly less likely to fall apart at the seams in the middle of an important meal/dance/meeting/court case. I like your overpriced practical-yet-girlie crochet cardis and your mega-cheap shoe sales. Please lose this floaty "gypsy" nonsense, but oh, oh, I love your little skirts.

Accessorize: Never enough, never enough. The jewellery is in Monsoon, too, of course and never seems to change: I've been going back and back looking for the perfect thing and although I never found it I have managed to learn their stock off-by-heart and can value someone's accessories at a glance, not a complete waste of time then. The best thing this shop has done recently was their little white Easter Bunny toy with the embroidered flowers in its ears. Obviously I own one of these. Who actually wears dangly earrings nowadays? Not to mention strange garish jewel-encrusted mirror-stick things. The kids' stuff is pretty, I must admit, particularly the surprising water frisbees and things. For bangles and hair slides, though, this place is ten times the price and no times the better than BHS and Boots (respectively).

Oasis: Quite brave this season. The military shift dress has returned after 4 years almost missing, (like so many of this season's trends) and, perhaps following an experimental, yet illuminating phase with psychoactives during these wilderness years, has returned all drippy and hippyfied. I preferred it when it knew the meaning of discipline. Oasis is consistently best at shoes and purses and gorgeous little things, and this season is no exception. I think they're even doing little shimmering scarf things for the summer! Seriously! They encourage experimentation, and I have to admire that.