Maus of Elliott

www.mausofelliott.com

2005-07-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

Business first: in the words of Billy the Kid, I made you a promise, Mr Tunstall. And I've kept that promise. I've finally "finished" the first stages of MausOfElliott.com. Je te presente the hottest retro-90s, non-flash, plain-speaking, salt-of-the-earth website in town. If websites had accents, this one would sound like it came from Lancashire. I wanted to make the website they don't make websites like anymore. The url ends in in "html", no "htm" here. Not for us the browser-crashing ten minute flash intro sequence, no tinkly whalesong playing in the background here. Yes, the sophistication of this site begins and ends with googled javascripts, and it's even hosted by Geocities, such is my respect for historical accuracy. It does use stylesheets, admittedly, a relatively dramatic departure from my old unnavigable websites, where every page had individually hand-typed list of links across the top. Thanks to Tom for helping me out with the CSS. From now on updates will be happening on the new site. At Jane's request, I've kept the wallpaper.

Anything Else

2005-07-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

MoE recommends...Interiors

The Lakeland site is one of the best I've seen. Order online.

Topaz: "rustic Mexican pine furniture". Sounds appalling, looks amazing. Costs a lot, unfortunately.

Laura Ashley: Try not to prejudge. Some of their household stuff is actually nice and there are sales on at the moment. Laura Ashley does sales properly.

The Pier

House Of Fraser: "aspirational products for stylish homes". Someone's got a superiority complex. Summer sale, however, although you won't find out much about it on their madly non-intuitive website that seems to be based on a blogspot template.

Angela Carter said "comedy is a tragedy that happens to other people," which is very much how I used to feel about interior design. That it was a tragedy that happens to other people. But, in small doses, it's not so bad. By which I mean, for example, my beautiful charcoal corner sofa, and not, say House Doctor's "just beautiful" juxtaposition of a round vase next to a candle and violently ugly wooden giraffe on a mantlepiece. According to House Doctor, the combination of the three shapes in a corner automatically jumpstarts Beauty, but I couldn't get past the fantasy that she had been trying to construct a surreallist sculpture of the 1939 World's Fair, with the giraffe standing for a kind of abstract Trylon and the candle representing the Perisphere. In fact, how much cooler would that have been? I'll begin work on one immediately.

Speaking of Dr Bizarro's wooden giraffe, who's been to The Pier recently? The Pier has a nice reassuringly prepositioned title, but that very preposition suggests something inappropriately precise. I mean, what pier exactly? Is it an ironic allusion to the capitalist game they must play, as if the attitude or ethic of this exotic homewares supplier somehow resembles that of pocket-money draining arcade machines? The place is stacked with thick coloured glass and things that might be for for food, or candles, or feeding candles...everything is latticed, "jewelled" or in jewel colours. There's a considerable amount of vaguely spiritual imagery going on, and a gigantic giraffes do make an appearance, I'm sure. Don't get me wrong, it's not all disgusting, but it works better apart than it does together. It's great at Christmas, for example, and superb for one-off presents, lights, and the odd simple piece. But as a whole, the eclectic clamouring shopfloor poses more questions than it answers, for example, which Indiana Jones villain's lair of illegally appropriated treasures have I just fallen into?

At some point in their lives everyone who is interested in these things realises they might have slightly overstepped a line, abandoned the ethical question, and dragged something innocent and natural over the sacred threshold into their own fragrantly carpetted home. What begins well as a kind of charmingly animated, bogroll-bound performing accessory, can too easily be turned into a dew-eyed hostage in the inevitable assaults that follow. You know no one understands that you didn't just buy that puppy to match your hat, and one day you will find yourself holding your child-substitute, all big trusting eyes, like a shield against accusations that you value style over substance or care more for colour co ordination than correct worming techniques.

When I was a student I bought two baby mice. "What will you do if they have babies?" by brother asked, "I don't know, take them outside and release them I guess," I quipped. "You would too, you're probably harsh enough," came the po-faced reply, as he spun on his cuban heel and marched out of my life forever. A little unfair, I think. Contrary to popular belief I don't think I am actually monstrous enough to wilfully advance the death of small innocent creatures, but I am nowhere near beyond involving the lives of any beast, not the cognizant innocent nor the idiotic, nor all the idiot savants that lurk between, to bring about what I would like to think of as a small victory in the war against unaesthetic combinations. What I'm trying to say is, I bought three goldfish today because there was space on top of the fridge that I couldn't work out how to fill...until I realised that it was just crying out for a large circular, slightly mobile feature. Our flat now contains three Interior Design Pets.

I felt a bit bad about it, then I thought of a line my hero and master of the meaningless maxim, Woody Allen, delivers in the eponymous film. Whenever Jerry (who in real life is Jason Biggs in American Pie) complains about the brash unpredictability of love and pies, the paranoid but witty old Jew character who in no way resembled Allen replies, "But y'know...It's just like anything else" and everyone in the cinema stands up and cheers. I'm bad because I'm using animals to solve an interior design problem. But it's just like anything else. Obviously not in the sense that I'm Christina Ricci and I'm cheating on Jason Biggs with my doctor. That was in the past. What I mean is I'm not alone. Everyone who cares about something will walk a fine ethical line to get it. Unless what they care about is in itself ethical, I guess, in which case they will probably position themselves on one or other side of the line. I think goldfish are the ultimate interior pets. They do very little, but look fabulous. And they wouldn't know an ethical line if you drew it on their brain with indelible marker. I imagine.

What Not To Wear

2005-07-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry if the screen went a bit wobbly there with the X Files post, I guess I'm justifying it to myself as an unconscious attempt at a diversion from the stresses of global terror and sudden hijacking of our obsession with Primark by the national press. Hopefully back on track now with this issue, but who knows? Blogging is a dangerous game, and the power goes to one's head. As one BBC website reader says, "Did it occur to any of these bloggers that no one really cares about your thoughts and opinions? The harsh truth is that not every thought that pops into someone's head is worth sharing." In principle, I agree. But the power has already gone to my head, and I can't help resenting the fact that their comment got printed on the website when my email about blogging being an unwelcome baroque flourish on the classical frieze of the literary tradition was ignored. Obviously I wasn't talking about this page, because I refuse to accept it is a blog.

What a day. I had already started that annual trauma, bracing myself for that emotional rollercoaster ride, that day of crying and laughing, of counting your cards and counting your wrinkles. But wasn't it unusually warm for November? And where were all my cards? What do you mean I don't usually get any? It slowly dawned on me that it was, in fact, not my birthday, despite Trinny and Suzannah coming back into my life with typically disturbing hands-on advice for "What Not To Wear On Holiday".

How do we feel about T&S? I think it's fashionable to say they have something of the anorexic transvestite and carthorse about them (Jo Brand of course)...but that's selling them short. They may be bullies. They may have less of Mama Natur about them than Ageing Gay Man. They are certainly sloanie-posh. They may be trying to dress every dumpy housewife in suburbia up like crass pastiches of themselves as the first phase of their plan for total world domination. I don't care. Whenever I'm watching them I can't suppress the Bad Thoughts, can't help but think, to hell with the consequences, I'm tired of living in rags and making my money sweeping chimneys. The adoption papers are in the post: here, Your Honour, are my new mum and dad.

But love them as I do, with their funny faces and Hollyoaks hair, Trinny's extraordinary jewellery and Suzie's pastel two-pieces, there were a few things in that episode that even as a doting newly-adopted daughter I cannot excuse. In Legally Blonde, Elle Woods uses the exquisite phrase, "As sure as I am that no one looks good in paisley." Believe what you like, but an unwise word never fell from Elle Woods's lip. In many ways she is the noble savage of Harvard Law School (now there's a piece of research I'd do for free). Anyway, paisley appeared twice in this episode, on the same poor woman. The large butch "triangle shaped" lady got two permutations on the same white jacket (long and short), which felt like cheating somehow, and save me from the unholy alliance of unflatteringly clingy dayglo turquoise tops with long skirts in the same colour. Although it did mean that when they brought out the sandals made from burnished-metal disks my eyes were already watering so much that I wasn't in any direct danger of being turned to stone. I tried to enjoy their efforts to straighten her hair and put her in a skirt, but could never quite shake the sense that there was something not only rather surprising, in our century, but also profoundly ethically questionable, about attempting to "feminise" a butch lesbian (even if she's not "out" yet, even to herself).

I can't help noticing the £2000 doesn't stretch to many outfits. How about a T&S in Primark? Overdue, I feel. On the plus side, and this is hard for me to say, the kaftan/jeans combo on Claire looked excellent and was slimming. But the kaftan already had a weird and unnecessary kind of embroidered medallion mess on the front, did she really need that necklace that repeated the shape almost exactly? Look at those picture and imagine my delight when, at one point, Suzie says "what's with the hair, Crystaltips?" Another surprising success, I felt, was that bloody Colleen skirt again, slightly taken up, for Marie, almost making up for the criminal use of paisley with the swimming costume in the other picture.

Back in the real world, where Trinny and Suzannah are not my parents (and Richard and Judy are) we're still trawling the shops looking for the perfect this and that. Jigsaw have some of the prettiest things I've seen, but only one of each. I wonder if there's one withered hermaphrodite chained to a cobwebby chaise longue in a cordonned off changing cubicle, just sewing, sewing. I'm slightly suspicious of their shopfloor with all the victoriana and beadwork, the museum-case arrangements and leather pews. I'm reminded of china dolls that want to talk to me and tea sets that come to life and all the other supernatural untrustworthiness I'd expect from an upmarket version of Oasis. But pretty they are, and I'd cross dayglo turquoise seas and acres of sequinned deserts, with burnished metal-effect suns beating relentlessly down on my Hollyoaks head if someone told me there was one glimpse of prettiness at the end of it all.

I want to believe

2005-07-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

Very belated post, I do apologise. It seems like the second I sit down to do this stuff I get some ridiculously large commission that I can't refuse. However, I finished the main one this morning, and maybe once the other one's done I can think about putting the M.o.E website up.

Meanwhile, my on/off relationship with Oasis is back on, after I discovered an excellent "army style" shirt dress in there this week. I think shirt dresses are one of the best ideas of recent times, making people like me with slightly boyish sense of casualwear, who nevertheless need to find a way of cooling their legs in the summer without resorting to pirate shorts, feel less like they're "wearing a dress" and more like they've been cast in the lead role of a cross-gender wartime production of A Christmas Carol. (Something that has always been a dream of mine, and I can't be the only one)...More girly girls might strike lucky in Gap, who have a great sale on summer dresses at the moment, in fact so much has been knocked off the price that they have started to cost almost what I'm prepared to pay for them. There's a very pretty, simple dress in there at the moment with a lined skirt making for that irresistably annoying 50's rock 'n roll swoosh. Despite the Hoxton hipsterness of 50s styling, I'm pretty much a postwar housewife these days and if I can dress the part without resorting to polkadots, I'll be as happy as a Sandra D.

Of course like all the most responsible columnists, I'm nothing but topical, and suppose I must mention the appalling events of last Thursday. How better to address it, I thought, than via an assessment of Scully's outfits through the first five series of the X Files. I hope it doesn't come across too negatively, I do like to think of Scully's style as a vital slice of the 90s, a constantly surprising visual time capsule, and a warning to us all about tapered trousers.

Scully had some serious problems with her hair style right until late in series 5. Here we see Gillian Anderson pretending to do something to an alien, in Series 1. I really have thought about this a lot, but the more I think about the more sure I am that her hairstyles were never quite in fashion. I was a teenager in 1994 and I had a symmetrical bob, but Scully's bob was never quite symmetrical, always kind of kicking out on one side and rolled under on the other, sometimes massive, sometimes less so, always slightly too long for her face. In this picture you can see the brief attempt at a fringe that only lasted for a few episodes, and that it seems she never quite got over losing, always spraying her hair into alarming shapes around the crown to try and compensate for the short-lived forehead bangs - something you get a sense of in this series 3 episode:

Hair aside, however, Scully's outfits underwent some much more subtle transformations over the years the show aired. The top photo I've put on this page clearly shows the "layering" she favoured during her "heavier" early days. Scully just wore too many clothes. It's no secret that shortish, broadish people don't need shoulderpads...but boy did no one tell her stylist. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that at some point in the early/mid nineties it was actually fashionable to wear clothes that were too big for you. In his ill-fitting suit season one days, even Mulder's surprisingly high arse couldn't save him.

My iBook's a bit broken at the moment, keeps saying "My mind is going, I can feel it, Dave" etc, and I don't want to tax it with screengrabs, so you'll have to trust me that Scully's worst clothing moment involved a gigantic green blazer with gold buttons. Finally, in the interests of objectivity and balance I must say that I've just stumbled across this ridiculous page which contradicts pretty much everything I've just said. Includes the line, "Hey, you know this is going to be an interesting Scullywear ep when she starts off with a tangerine blouse under the usual black skirt and jacket!"
Fish in a barrel, seriously.
Oh look, I found a picture of Scully's "Alan Partridge" moment...

Your pictures paint a word (thanks Flickr)

2005-07-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

Have you heard the raindrops drumming on the rooftops?

2005-06-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

Have you heard the raindrops dripping on the ground? Have you heard the raindrops splashing in the streams? And running to the rivers all around? You have to use your imagination a bit for the last one. But finally! I'm really enjoying the two things I've been waiting so long for, in my unbearably hot and cripplingly Primark-bereft universe: Rain and Sales. Today I noticed 50% Off sales in Oasis, Miss Selfridge, Debenhams (still doing those amazing cheapo make-up packs incidentally - why haven't you bought them all yet?), Warehouse, Top Shop, H&M, and, I don't know, wherever else you can think of.

If you're ever looking for high streets stores online, this is better than a kick in the face. If you can read the fonts.

Every holiday romance must come to an end, and that sequinned slag Oasis finally broke my heart today when I noticed that the shop has started giving style advice on its website - patronising, smacking of capitalistic self-interest, and further proof that Oasis, although catchy and popular, will never be as good as Blur. And now they're selling waistcoats. Cripes! It's like 1991 all over again! Except that actually the Oasis waistcoats are quite nice, smart and businessy, and much as I disdain of recycled "looks" a part of me will always thrill at the thought of the rat race restyled into millions of highflying Cissys. Cigarette-holders are too-goth but in every other respect the 1920s cross-dressing lesbian look must be the only novel vintage look left, and I'm sure you'll agree that if the world needs anything, it's more girls in monocles.

Jesus brings us the water of life, but St Michael brings us the glasses of shade. They really are doing some terrifically exciting sunglasses at the moment, around £10. (Although the real bargain is in New Look (naff website - gasp!) who've sensibly lost the stick-on jewelling/ pink-tinted glass of 2004 and are turning out nice ones for about £5.) Marks and Spencers might just be my surprise summer favourite, in fact, if only for their acknowledgement (unique on the high street) that sequins on vests look naff, and their generous provision of very pleasing alternatives: plain basic vests and frankly superior linen shirts. Per Una hasn't quite got it right yet, they're still trying (and perhaps that is the problem). Turn your back on the Per Unas and the Autograph and anything advertised by Claire Sweeney's baps, and instead look properly at the "basics" they barely even try to sell. If you can't imagine yourself wearing it, try it on. Unlike Top Shop, these things are made to fit. M&S has had a bad rap but M&S is clever, and when M&S isn't trying to be clever, it is cleverest of all. I think there's a lesson for all of us there.

Meltdown

2005-06-19T03:37:00.000-07:00

News

Maus Of Elliott is dispersing slightly. Until we get the new site running, I've created a M.o.E "Set" on my Flickr account, where I'll stick anything slightly relevant to what I talk about on here. It's shaping up to be quite a pretty gallery. Oh and you can catch me putting the ..."short" into "shorts" over on Tom's Flickr at the moment. Shorts and vest less than £10 altogether; perspex "crystal" hairband, 99p. All H&M, natch.

I've been reading round the style rags to try to come up with some useful treats for this "issue", and gee, guess what, braided hair is in. Again? Or still? YAWN! "The new way to chat up a woman is over a cup of tea and a sticky bun," squeals the Sunday Times STYLE insert, excitedly. The article turns out to be one man's "dating diary", as he recalls the details of four "cake dates" from his past in slightly autistic detail. And actually the article is entertaining, from a voyeuristic point of view obviously, but also for the hilarious experience of having your naif provincial expectations of sticky tea room stories ambushed almost immediately by some hard-nosed Sloane whose idea of a cake shop is "Broadwick Street in Soho", "a top-end Anglo Asian fusion poser's gaff" or "Maison Bertaux in Soho". Who lives like this? Who cares?

Forgive my rage, it's the weather. Which reminds me. I can't shake the belief that when the temperature outside the body is equal to or higher than the temperature inside it, human beings begin a Nazi-in-Raiders style meltdown. Admittedy I haven't been able to verify this, because I can't find anyone else who remotely seems to share the unbearable physical discomfort I always feel in "32 degrees in the shade". On the contrary: everywhere I look I'm surrounded by human spitroasts in halter-tops and ra-ra skirts. It's a whole new world and nothing makes sense...air-conditioned shops are empty except for a few wise mediterranean-looking students, people stuff ice-creams in their faces as if increasing their saturated fat levels will somehow cool their bodies, while the highlight of everyone's day is now drinking beer in the park because alcohol is, famously, a great rehydrater.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the summer. On days like today, when walking through town is like being dropped into a very realistic virtual reality game of Cambridge, actually located in a furnace on an alien spaceship where big alien hairdryers blow at your face in a crude simulation of wind, I just much, much prefer the spring. It doesn't really matter what you say about summer trends because in temperatures like this most people just go for what's comfortable, which is probably the same thing that was comfortable last year, and maybe the year before that. So here's some words: gypsy skirts (avoid); loose racer-back vest tops; fake "double layer" t shirts & vests (see M&S current window displays); ra-ra skirts; shorts with turn-ups; "boho" sandles; bright print dresses; skinny belts; shiny bags (Is this a joke, Gap?); sequin pumps (marvellous!). Summer is a bad time for fashion. No one wears any make up convincingly, all accessories look enormously affected (jewellery blings whether you want it to or not) and no hair style stays styled for long. So for god's sake, at least get some comfortable flipflops.

Peacock feathers will soon be everywhere. I like to think this has more to do with Camilla's wedding hat than anything else and is signalling a move toward a more comprehensive "Camilla look" moment in fashion; she always was the classier, better-looking successor to Diana.

Never Trust a Hippy

2005-06-12T13:08:00.000-07:00

The thing about fashion - the thing you have to remember about fashion is, it's all a big con. Everyone sort of knows, but at some undefinable point between 1920s ready-to-wear and 1950s "new look", the world unanimously entered into a rolling contract to pretend to ignore the essential deception for, potentially, evermore. What comes around goes around and comes back again in a very slightly different cut or fabric next year. Am I the only person fiercely suspicious of the "novelty" of most of this season's trends? Didn't we all get the "long loose skirt/chunky leather belt with tarnished metal rivets, sandals, cheesecloth blouse and centre parting" look out of our systems and flushed away forever, back in 1996?

I've been trying to work out a way around this unbearably boring boho. H&M, as usual, has been beavering away in the style labs, conscientiously testing out various workarounds for a good few seasons now. But shops like River Island sold their soul to the Secret Contract of Old Rope even before the last century was out. I know I'm unreasonably offended by "prints" in almost every permutation, and don't get me started on the ludicrously oversized bling/cowgirl belts... but I can't be alone in my daily despair at the mindless annual repetition of summer styles. Sienna Miller has a lot to answer for, but her "look", really, is just patched together from the safest summer pieces of the past two decades. I mean, honestly, I preferred rock chick to this floaty nonsense.

There are ways out of this trap. Firstly, you have to accept that, by its nature, all fashion is to some extent old rope. Just remember that some old ropes are considerably more beautiful than and rare than others. Secondly, novelty is good, but it's not everything - if some garment or accessory seems to be a marvellous new idea the chances are it will bomb (whatever happened to last season's "craze" - capes?). Third, remember that there is really nothing new under the sun, and the route to real novelty is via combination. Oh, by which I mean, mix smart/scruffy, new/old, borrowed/blue, not what Warehouse has done to the halter dress in, presumably, a bizarrely belated attempt to emulate Julia Roberts's Valentino moment.

Make Up

2005-05-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

"...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

2005-05-18T03:51:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-13T13:23:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-10T06:16:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

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.