December Loves

1. Wearing: I’m currently feeling festive in daily combinations of sparkles, lace and snuggly knits. I’ve just added this Alice by Temperley lace dress (which after months of wanting, I finally nabbed on sale at MyWardrobe.com) to my wardrobe and have been wearing it with opaque tights and heels and tuxedo jackets until the return of summer means it is warm enough to wear it on it’s own.

2. Buying: I can’t get enough of Lulu Frost’s spectacular jewels at the moment, and have just added this necklace (in the white version) from her latest collection for J. Crew to my jewellery drawer.

3. On my wishlist: I simply adore my Charlotte Olympia Kitty heels, so much so that I’m contemplating a pair of the flats too. I can’t justify a second pair in black, but this burgundy velvet pair is too perfect for words and would add a dash of fun to everyday outfits.

4. Small pleasures: Things are hectic this week to say the least, so I’m so looking forward to a week of lie-ins and decadent laziness between Christmas and New Year. Whenever I put on a silk sleep mask (this version is so Holly Golightly-cute!), it means I’m serious about a looong sleep and not to be disturbed!

5. Sparkling: These tiny golden star earrings are festive, whimsical and fun, but cost less than a Christmas pudding. Yes please!

6. For my home: In lieu of a real Christmas tree, I’m burning Diptyque’s limited edition holiday spruce candle - which smells exactly like the real thing – each evening. It’s festivity in a (beautiful) jar!

7. Beauty note: Come December, only dark red or glittery nails will do (or, better yet, a combination of both of these). I’ve been wearing Deborah Lippmann‘s burgundy ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’ glitter polish constantly.

8. Play: Indulging in my favourite festive tradition and watching the English National Ballet’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum. Quite simply the loveliest way to spend a December evening!

9. Listening to: My Rat Pack Christmas album is on nightly rotation (apologies to all my neighbours); Frank, Dean and Sammy Davis are getting me in the festive mood…

10. Watching: This weekend we’re getting together with some friends for an all-day Christmas movie marathon (with a lunchtime trip to the outdoor ice rink thrown in for good measure). It’s all about The Holiday, A Muppet Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, Scrooged, Elf, Love Actually and Miracle on 34th Street.

I’d love to hear what you’re all enjoying this month! Happy December lovelies.

Love, Miss B xx

London Fashion Week: Day 4

To say Giles’ show was theatrical extravagance would be an understatement; a sea of crimson at Antonio Berardi.

As far as Fashion Week adventures go, this day is going to be pretty hard to top. It began with Peter Pilotto’s remarkable print dresses which took us on a journey through Indonesia, followed by Antonio Berardi’s devastatingly sexy ladies in red at the Queen Elizabeth Centre. Poor Christopher Kane, the wonder boy of the London fashion scene, gets so much expectation heaped upon him each season, that the pressure must be crippling. But once again he pulled it out of the bag with his twinkly show (think Cher Horowitz in Clueless meets Marcia Brady, doused in sparkles) which overlooked St Paul’s Cathedral.

After that, it was off to the Savoy for Erdem’s show which was so beautiful, I held my breath almost the entire time (these were exactly the kind of clothes I imagine one should wear to a garden party thrown by Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby), before Burberry’s typically understated show in Kensington Park (not really: Christopher Bailey had erected an monolithic glass marque right in the shade of the Albert Memorial, with a shower of gold confetti replacing last season’s snow storm finale). Next was Todd Lynn, whose usual storm-trooping women had been replaced by softer creatures in oil-slick blue silk dresses.

And just in case we hadn’t had quite enough sartorial extravagance for the day, there was Giles Deacon’s feathered tour-de-force in the sweeping Royal Courts of Justice, before Temperley’s glamazons again took over the sweeping atrium of the British Museum for the most dramatic of Fashion Week finales.

A sea of pink champagne awaits after the Burberry show; Christopher Kane’s sparkly finale; the Great Gatsby at Erdem; glamour, Temperley style, at the British Museum.

Love, Miss B xx

The Midnight Ball: Temperley Autumn/Winter ’11, London Fashion Week

Though London Fashion Week by now seems like a distant memory, some shows still happily haunt me at the most unexpected moments. But this is my measure of a good show – those that continue to happily linger in the mind, long after the lights and the whirlwind of Fashion Week have dimmed, are the ones that I know are either truly beautiful or truly wearable (or more pleasingly, both!). For me, Alice Temperley’s 10 year anniversary homecoming show (she had previously shown in New York for the past 6 years) was one of the magical moments of February’s Fashion Week.

The invitation called us to the British Museum late one night, hours after the tourists and schoolchildren had left the magnificent rooms of ancient treasures. Seeing the wonderful auditorium dimmed and bathed in such an eerie stillness before the show was a treat in itself (queue every child’s fantasy of being (willingly) trapped in a museum overnight). And despite extreme sleep-deprivation, Fashion Week exhaustion, and the grumpiness of having to wait nearly an hour for the delayed show to begin (much to the chagrin of the serious fashion editors), the entire audience couldn’t help but collectively smile when the first models walked out. For this was a show that conjured up fantasies of dancing at midnight balls in grand locales, of dashing to the opera on stormy wintery evenings, of dinner parties of wild proportions in English manor houses or 5th Avenue penthouses. And oh, how I long for that slick black tuxedo, those oyster silk chiffon dresses, and the incredible golden-heeled Charlotte Olympia booties which magically avoided even the most sequin-tastic dresses seeming too sacharine. I can only imagine that whoever is lucky enough to come to own one of these pieces will surely have the most wonderful times in them – for these are the sort of dresses which are just begging to be taken to a fantastical party.

Do you love this collection as much as I do? What would you wear to your fantasy midnight party?

Love, Miss B xx