Isabella Oliver 365

One of the thing I constantly bemoan about the fashion industry, as you all know, is the lack of clothing for women with lives in the real world. It's all very well me & a hundred other fashion editors writing about how marvellous Marni is for the quirky working woman, but it's not exactly realistic to spend £700 on a skirt.

But then neither do I want to wear Primark or Forever 21. What I want is to spend a reasonable amount on my clothes. Then I know they are ethical as possible, made from good fabrics, won't fall apart after one season and have some twist, so I don't look like everyone else.

And that's why Isabella Oliver 365 works so well. These are the pieces that may cost just a little more, but will be the mainstay of anyone's wardrobe. And I want the lot.

I've always liked Isabella Oliver's maternity clothing. Stylish, chic, definitive & worn by my best-dressed girlfriends. And, as it happens, they are based in London, just around the corner from my London flat. I discovered this when the lovely Baukjen de Swaan Arons, one of the joint founders, emailed me through the blog & we became friends.

I was beyond thrilled when she got in touch once I had stopped blogging last year to tell me she & her partner Vanessa Knox-Brien were in New York to show their new collection Isabella Oliver 365 and would I like to see it?

Would I heck?! I scrambled a town car after a long day at the coal face of fashion, slightly unsure as to what to expect from an Isabella Oliver non-maternity range. I needn't have worried: I loved it all.

I'm especially liking the Shirt Coat from the new Fall 09 collection in both pink & in black.($389, but there's 15% off all Fall pre-orders right now, so it's $330.)





I'm suspecting that this cape will be a best seller too come Fall($389, now $330 on pre-order):



For now tho, I'm loving these crepe de chine shorts which are just perfect for a hot & humid Manhattan summer ($145):



But the piece I really, really like is the Multiway Maxi Dress that caught my eye at their SS09 press show. Everything about it appeals: the fabric which is light enough to drape beautifully, but heavy enough to skim the body, the versatility of a piece that can be worn so many different ways, and which can easily take you from a lazy brunch to a black tie dinner and the very attractive price point ($325).



NB Someone asked in the comments about workwear of the pants/skirts variety and so I wanted to make clear: I have picked the pieces here from 365 (not maternity!) that I am thinking of buying (I never wear trousers & rarely skirts. Of course they make trousers, skirts etc. Go check it out at Isabella Oliver 365

Violet RIP

I didn’t really want to post this as I am trying very, very hard not to think about this, but you have all been so wonderful and your comments, emails & tweets have been so lovely in asking for updates that I felt I should say something.

Our darling whippet Violet was put to sleep yesterday morning after a three week battle following a car accident on the road outside our house.

She had a massive heart attack at the vet hospital two days ago which damaged her heart sufficiently that there really was no hope left for her continued survival.
Muv emailed me from home today :

“Violet wasn't going to get better and her heart was struggling. She was so pleased to see me and I cradled her in my arms and it was very peaceful. They buried Violet under one of the willow trees by the stream, and Molly put a posy of roses, pinks, Canterbury bells and alchemilla on the grave. Violet looked so peaceful and I couldn't believe that she had been so ill. I loved Violet so much - she was the sweetest, gentlest dog, and had three weeks of misery. A chain of events that could have all been avoided. It is an absolute tragedy.”

It’s been a bad year for my family with my parent’s ongoing divorce, and Violet was Muv’s salvation. I wish I could vault the Atlantic to give Muv an enormous hug right now. Our animals are so very important to our family.

I shall remember how she tried to crawl out of her vets bed, whilst attached to a drip to climb into Muv's and then my lap, and how she & Billy would jump on my head in the mornings to wake me and try to sneak down under the duvet when Muv wasn't looking, and how she woke me in the middle of the night last week trying to get on my bed to go under the duvet, even though her operation scar meant she couldn't leap up.

We will miss her very, very much. (Violet with Billy her son)

Inshriach House: The perfect Scottish getaway

In our twenties, various of us who had been at university together frequently barrelled up to the very, very north west of the Scottish Highlands to a beautiful coastal village called Scourie, where we would set up camp in the tiny stalking cottage which had been left to our partners in crime Nick & Susie by their father.



(Arkle seen from Scourie Beach)

There was lots of fly fishing (or, if you were me, lots of watching fly fishing, sitting disconsolate in a damp boat in the August drizzle, smoking pot to ward off the midges & watching the rain on the loch); mountain goat activity of the running up hills before breakfast kind (or, if you were me, cooking of gargantuan breakfasts), and long walks through the heather (or, if you were me, ceaseless whinging about the mud, the midges & the rain).



I was at my happiest when the others were playing at being mountain goats, & I was left to my own devices. I would cook huge meals for their return, and then curl up in a faded floral armchair in the sitting room next to the fire and the oak bookcase, working my way through old paperbacked Agatha Christie & Georgette Heyers, with the aid of a packet of Garibaldi biscuits and endless cups of tea. I do so love the great outdoors when I have to wipe the fug off a window to see it.

I spent Millenium New Year in Scourie with five of my closest friends, having stipulated I would only go if we dressed up properly. (My silver & green 50’s brocade & tulle number from Cornucopia cost £15 & was so poofy it had to have its own seat on the plane up to Inverness.) On the night we pulled layers of fleece & Gore Tex over our Black Tie and climbed a mountain to set off exhibition fireworks & drink Champagne at midnight, before rolling back down the mountain to the village cèilidh. (If you happen to have architects as friends, then you’ll know that this combination of outdoors & insanity is perfectly normal in their eyes.)

It was on the drive back down to England from one of these trips that we stopped off to pick up our friend Walter from his grandmother’s extraordinary - & enormous - Edwardian country house set in 200 glorious acres near the banks of the River Spey, in the Cairngorms National Park just outside Aviemore.



Untouched by the hand of post-modernism, Inshriach still has open fires, panelled rooms, lots of faded chintz, antlers aplenty, claw footed baths, and shooting prints in the loos. The house has always stuck in my memory as a wonderful escaping place, just as Scourie is, where you can fish, walk, stalk & mountain goat, or do as I do and curl up by the fire to read, so I was particularly pleased when Walter wrote to say that he & his mother Lucy had turned Inshriach into an extremely reasonably priceda fully functioning rental property for groups & location shoots. (It’s just been reviewed (well) by The Guardian.)



This summer, Walter had planned to run the bars, food & a stage at The Outsider Festival in Aviemore. After he had built most of the stage & bar, struck deals with brewers & distilleries, made friends with lots of musicians and invited lots of friends, The Outsider was cancelled. Not being one to give up, he decided to hold an alternative festival in the grounds at Inshriach, catering for a maximum of 400 people.

So, The Insider was born.



It promises to be a magical weekend, not least because it's the Summer Solstice. There’s a fabulous musical line-up including Lau, twice named 'Group of the Year' at the BBC Radio2 Folk Awards, burlesque performances and children’s workshops. There are yurts for rental for sleeping in, & the catering by Ord Ban restaurant is reason alone to turn up, with Walter promising local beef and venison, trout, scallops, curry, stews & cakes. As he says, ‘That's what happens when you organise a festival with a lot of foodies.’

There are still a few tickets left, so do go to www.insiderweekend.co.uk (All tickets are advance sales only.) There are a BARGAIN £40 each, a fraction of what festivals usually cost.

In addition to yurt rental, there's plenty of camping space, but if that's not your thing, then Suie Hotel in Kincraig (about 4 miles away) have offered 10% off their already very reasonable £35 a night rate for anyone who doesn't fancy camping.

Bruce Weber for Moncler

Hello there! If you are coming here from US Glamour in December 2011, this site moved home over two years ago! Please head to www.libertylondongirl.com, and specifically here to see the Bruce Weber Moncler story to which they linked.

It's not the models, stoopid. A guest post from my Deep Throat correspondent

You may remember that back in February, I ran a series of pieces about what it is really like to attend the Milan fashion collections. I had a huge response, including a spirited email riposte from an old colleague on the other side of the fence. This resulted in my running a series of posts from my Deep throat correspondent called Through The Looking Glass: The Horror of the Milan shows, on what it was really like to be at the shows as a fashion publicist.

This time my secret correspondent read both the editor of British Vogue, Alex Shulman's letter to the fashion industry pleading for larger samples so that they could use bigger (relatively) models and, today, Carol Midgely's column in The Times about "scraggy models and emaciated celebrities", and was fired up enough to email me about her experiences with slim models but even skinnier celebrities. Her email:

"In contrast to Alex Shulman's letter to the industry, I have very rarely experienced situations in which the samples are too small for the models (once or twice, mostly things with corsets) but have lost count of the number of times I have had to send a tailor to a celebrity's house to take in a sample I have lent them.

My theory about magazines making people thin is a bit more personal, and is along the lines of “If I have worked in this biz for 10+ years and have yet to lose any weight at all, it can’t be the fashion industry that is making young women thin, so it must be something else”.

Sample sizes got tiny about the same time celebrity magazines started to multiply like those weird mushrooms that grow under the trees that dogs like. Up to that point there just were not that many ‘red carpet’ opportunities that it was worth schlepping samples around for.

Now, almost immediately a sample walks off the runway it is on the back of a celebrity at some gala or other, and they are so teeny that the samples are shrinking. When you factor in the huge celebrity magazine market in Asia, and the even smaller size of celebrities in that region, tiny samples start to look inevitable. And when you look at the sales of celebrity magazines vs.the sales of Vogue, Bazaar etc, it is clear that a typical reader will be exposed to many more images of tiny celebrities than they will of tiny models and haute couture.

Given that it would be bad form for an editor-in-chief to take a whole other category of magazines to task for existing, Alex Shulman has probably focused on the nearest available target. Whilst it is admirable that she has such strong feelings, it puts the fashion houses in a very difficult position as the value of celebrity coverage, particularly to beauty sales, is so high there is little they can do to back away from lending to x-ray thin celebrities.

If I am right, once the public stops being interested in thinness, sample sizes will revert to their pre-Heat(magazine) dimensions."

LLG: I also wanted to add one of the basic truths about skinny models versus skinny celebs which doesn't seem to have been pointed out in the media so far, which relates to simple anatomy. Models are very tall, the majority over 5'10", (and much taller than the average lollipop-headed celeb) so it's physically impossible for most of them to get down beyond a size 2 because of the size of their skeleton, regardless of how much flesh is wasted off them....many female celebs, on the other hand, being generally somewhat vertically challenged, can feasibly get down to double zero, their skeletons being that much smaller in the first place.

Obie Accessories: How to make your hair the star of the show

Breaking into the fashion industry is almost impossible. It takes not just talent but guts, tenacity, exposure and a healthy dose of luck. This makes it extremely important for fashion editors to support new & upcoming designers, not just the advertiser brands, by writing, shooting and, hopefully, wearing their collections.

Of course I don't want to wear a lot of the collections I support, so it’s immensely satisfying when I do find something I really love AND that I want to order. And that was the case when I met Honor & Natasha, the charming girls behind new hair accessories label Obie Accessories.



Based in Los Angeles, their fledgling business is based around handmade bejeweled, feathered and flower adorned clips and bands. Sure, I see plenty of pieces like these, but what drew me to Obie was their attention to detail, (even the backs of the clips are jewelled),



and that I can see a gap in the market for what they do at their price point, which is less than say Tarina Tarantino’s. And, of course, there’s the Gossip Girl effect. Blair’s penchant for Brooklyn based Jennifer Behr’s hair bands has seen hair accessories take an enormous rise in popularity over the past couple of seasons.

We met at Honor’s home in Laurel Canyon, as she & Natasha were shooting the images for their first look book.




My magpie eye caught their blue crystal clips, and they sent me one in New York. It makes such a difference when postal orders arrive in pretty packages, and Obie go the extra mile, with a crystal securing the carton in which their clips are packed, and a little handwritten tag swinging from the handle.





Thank you girls: I shall look forward to wearing it.

Chauvinism is not dead

I got dressed up last night, & went out for supper last night with a group of girls. At the bar I bumped into a lovely & charming man I know, drinking with some people I had met on New York’s social circuit whilst out and about for my old job as fashion director on a fairly serious magazine. We chatted for a bit whilst we worked out our connections before I went to join my table for dinner.

After the meal, I went over to the bar to say goodnight, and two of my (very beautiful) girlfriends joined me on their way out. As we made light conversation, one of the (older) businessmen whom I had met before looked at all three of us standing in a row, and made a comment about the collection of breasts on show in front of him.

For a minute I thought I’d misheard, and asked him to repeat what he’d said. I stared at him in disbelief.

I was furious. We are three women in our thirties, all of us serious businesswomen, highly successful in our chosen fields (one manages a team of creatives, one is responsible for millions of dollars every day), and this was all this man could find to say to us.

I almost never wear low cut outfits, as I am generously endowed and a little embarrassed about it. But last night I thought, don’t be silly, you are who you are, wear that pretty DvF dress. Well, I was right. According to some men the sum of all that I am can be reduced to my breast size.

The romance of the handwriten letter

The longest lasting result of spending the first half of my teens unhappily locked up in a crap boarding school has been an obsession with receiving mail. Every morning the miserable boarders would rush from the refectory, still chewing cold carpet tile toast to congregate around the wooden alphabetical pigeonholes where our post was sorted. I can still remember the heady bliss of finding a letter or, better still, a brown paper parcel from home.

And today, even in the era of electronic communication, there’s still something enormously satisfying about getting proper mail in the post, especially with a handwritten address. Believing in both manners and giving what you enjoy, I send copious thank you letters on a collection of carefully hoarded picture postcards and on my own die stamped Smythson letterhead.

My friends are particularly wonderful on the letter sending front, maybe because many of them also went away to school, and I keep each letter that they send. Which is why I was devastated to discover that my memory box of mail, containing letters, personal invitations & photographs that have been sent to me here in Manhattan was partially destroyed by the employee-caused flood at Manhattan Mini Storage in Chelsea last week.

I’ve peeled apart all the letters, but many were written with a fountain pen and the ink has run beyond redemption. I’m going to have to iron flat all those that have dried and then glue back together the old Verdura box I use to store them. There’s no monetary value to the damage caused but since when has emotion been measurable in dollars? I do hope that incompetent employee feels the weight of his idiocy.

K Mart: who'd a thought it?

Once upon a time, I would burrow through the clothes section of any store, like a pig after truffles, certain in the knowledge that I could always find something to wear in the most low rent of shops. But, as I’ve got older, the desire to hoard mountains of clothing has rather left me, and I am happier with one really good piece rather than twenty cheapo bargains.

As I wandered down to the East Village yesterday to pick up some new bike locks, I was mulling over the lack of pieces that I actually want to wear in my wardrobe. So maybe it’s because clothes were on my mind that I glanced over at the clothing section in K Mart. I have shopped in there at least once a week for the past two years, yet I always sprint straight through to the bike lock or grocery section without even registering that they sell clothes.

That’s probably because this is what the clothing section looks like:

Let me point out that K Mart is not the US equivalent of Britain's Primark, where for almost pennies, the trend conscious budget dresser can pick up fashion forward pieces. It mainly sells clothes from the land that style forgot.

But yesterday I had seen a huge blow up poster of Jaclyn Smith in the store windows and was curious to see what on earth an ex Charlie’s Angel’s fashion collection at K Mart would look like.

And, you know what, it’s not that bad. So not that bad that I actually bought something. Granted it’s more of a stop gap piece, but it was pretty, inexpensive and useful,



I like the detailing,



and that it is made from silk, rather than synthetics, although I will grant that it’s more akin to lining material than anything else.

I just did a Wiki search for Jaclyn Smith and was gobsmacked to discover the following, "Woman's Wear Daily reported that the signature Jaclyn Smith line had the highest consumer awareness of any private label apparel brand in the country." Which is rather chastening for a fashion journalist to discover, and a welcome reminder that fashion doesn't just exist between the pages of Vogue et al.

I also rather liked this silk dress from K Mart’s main collection:



But I needed to be at least three cup sizes smaller in the chest region to have a hope in hell of fitting into my size. Still, it hung well, the stitching wasn’t wonky, and it had these great pleated shoulders. All for the grand total, I think of $34.99.AseaW1Q`WW

I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR!

I am stumped, stumped I tell you over what to wear right now. Quite apart from the unseasonal weather (it's 17C here and raining, as opposed to the normal hot & sunny June climate), all my clothes are out of date.

The summer I moved to New York, (2007) was the second year of floaty, tent like smocks and I wafted blissfully around Manhattan. Heels don’t work with smocks (wrong proportions), so I wore primary coloured ballerines & flat sandals everyday which suited me fine as I was dating a laid back guy in Brooklyn and walking everywhere.

Last summer I was busy being important, and breakfast, lunch and dinner-ing my way around the city. Smocks were pretty much dead in the water and, whilst they may have been get away-able with in the East Village, they certainly weren’t going to cut it in the fashion corridors of power, so I invested in armfuls of light silk summer frocks (bought on-line) and the kind of fashion forward vertiginous heels which aren’t a problem when you have fleets of Town Cars at your disposal.

But because I was either at a work dinner or at my desk until past 10pm most nights, and most summer weekends were spent in the office (I even missed my best friend’s wedding, curse you ex-editor-in-chief), I didn’t have the time or inclination to bother buying any casual summer clothes.

Which could be regarded as a mistake, seeing as I am now back on a writer’s salary, those lovely silk frocks are akin to crumpled & faded dishrags after a summer of dripping humidity and repeated dry cleaning and my everyday clothes are now three years out of date.

I want to go shopping, really I do. But there’s an added curve ball, quite apart from my lean bank account. My chest appears to have taken on a life of its own. My previous list of all the clothes I cannot wear owing to disproportional breast size has now grown to just about everything in the shops.

I am fresh out of ideas as to what to wear. Believe me, I've looked everywhere. And there's nothing that fits my shape out there. God only knows what normal women with big breasts do for on-trend dressing who don't have my professional's laser shopping eye.

Right now, I’m living in navy blue 5” leg shorts with a navy long sleeve crisp cotton top, sleeves pushed up, worn with red wedges, & some rolled up leg jeans (this shows my desperation – I NEVER wear jeans) which I wear out with silk blouses & very high heels, and well, that’s about it.

I have a date tonight and have absolutely no idea what to wear. I can hardly turn up to The Setai in short shorts & wedge sandals, and all my dresses from last year aren’t just knackered, they’re too light & waaaay too short for the current unseasonal (rainy) weather.

Bugger.

Great Used Bikes

Evil bastard sticky fingered immoral thieves have stolen my beloved bicycle from outside my apartment whilst I've been travelling. And I am FURIOUS. I'm now down $260 after replacing not just the bike, but the basket & locks too.

I’ve had to replace way too many bikes here in Manhattan. There was the one taken by the police when they (illegally) decided to remove every single bike chained to a lamppost in the East Village & the one taken when I was at a press appointment because I had forgotten to put both locks on*. I sold this flea market buy on after this incident (it was a cruiser with pedal brakes, which was asking for trouble with a malco like me riding it), but this is the first bike, I think, that has just disappeared for no good reason.

And I’m pissed off. It was the best bike I've had here: super well-constructed, with a brilliantly comfy saddle & lovely padded foam handlebars, but I didn’t have anywhere to leave it when I went away apart from the street, and so I took the gamble. And lost.

Anyway, the lovely John from Great Used Bikes delivered its bright blue replacement today.



It has Free Sprit emblazoned across the body, which makes me chuckle. I think this is the third bike I’ve had from John, and I can’t recommend his service enough. He delivers the bikes to your door on a Sunday, properly tuned up, which is more than you can say for the hot boneshakers sold on street corners and in the flea markets here. He attaches baskets, and an I Love NY bell and, if the bike doesn’t feel quite right, he will bring you a different one the next week to try out.

And if you have a disaster he can help too. When evil bastard putative bike thieves did this



to the first bike I bought from him, he brought an acetylene burner into town and removed the busted lock for me. And then brought a new wheel in for me the next weekend when he noticed that the original one had been buckled in the incident.

I can't recommend his service highly enough. Sure, you can buy a shiny new bike for maybe a little less in K Mart or elsewhere, but there's no service, or after-care, &, most importantly, something shiny & new will get stolen within seconds on Manhattan, so that's just a false economy in the long run. (My first bike from John lasted 10 months, and the second 13 months.)

*thus proving my theory that you don’t necessarily need expensive locks, just plenty of them as deterrents.

Back in Manhattan - and settling in

I’ve been back in New York for two days and three nights and have achieved the following:

Thursday: So shattered by Geneva trip & NY journey that beat jetlag & wake at eminently sensible 8.30am. Play on internets until 11am. Sleep until 2pm. Rearrange room. Shower. Faff. Plan to run errands. Fail to run errands.

Finally leave house at 7pm. Go to Soho House reception to pick up video camera. Only two blocks away from apt so just about within capabilities. Buy $17 of fruit & veg at local stall to kickstart regimen minceur. Return home. Do not return home as distracted by sign reading manicure/pedicure $20 two seconds from front door. Return home with orange toes and shell pink fingers. Attempt to watch CSI:NY on Hulu. Fall asleep at 10pm.

Friday: Wake at 0430hrs. Play on internets until 9am. Sleep until 2pm. Write blog. Rearrange room. Shower. Faff. Plan to run errands. Fail to run errands. Speak to sister on Skype and watch the dog hunting for me under sofa on webcam. Finally leave house at 4pm with large empty suitcase to collect essential supplies from Chelsea storage container (Heinz Baked Beans, wine, duvet, scented candles, Champagne, kitchen knives, unsuitable footwear, linen, cosmetics).

Upgrade to large container with shelving unit as fed up with shoe collection falling on head when door is opened. Spend many hours unpacking, sorting & transferring possessions to hand trucks and wheeling through labyrinthine corridors. At bottom of container discover results of recent catastrophic flood (caused by employee incompetence). Box of love letters & entire bag of winter clothes (furs, cashmere, leather gloves, cocktail dresses, woollen day dresses, silk lingerie, Wolfords) sopping. Think about weeping. Sort through wet clothes. Finally leave storage container facility in town car at 830pm with plastic sacks of wet clothes & four cases essential supplies.

Spend 30 minutes hauling plastic sacks & essential supplies up five flights of stairs. Work out that this is equivalent of 25 flights at 25kgs a time. Flatmate returns from LA. Offers to buy supper. Immediately ignore sacks of damp clothes, trowel on foundation in attempt to disguise communal jet lag and walk to dinner at Barbuto underneath Industria SuperStudio.

Lovely outside table, animated conversation & stellar people watching over Prosecco, gnocchi with asparagus & peas. Italian version of pot au chocolat (two spoons). Home. Drape damp clothes around apartment. Collapse at 1230am.

American Airlines aren't always merde

I continually whinge when I have to fly American, the Aeroflot of the 21st century. A dedicated Virgin traveller for years, I’ve grown used to on-demand TV & movies (ones I actually want to see), a sense of humour, & imaginative food to dull the Cattle Class experience. AA is not known for ticking any of these boxes.

They were the preferred carrier of the axis of evil last year, and this time I needed to fly LAX-LHR-JFK & AA was super cheap, so I suck it up when I have to. The flight from LAX to LHR was misery in a metal tube; my vegetarian meal had been forgotten, the films were crap, the cabin crew were surly strop artists and I had a woman whose BMI was middle-aged in the teeny tiny seat next to me.

Fast forward. AA’s Heathrow Terminal 3 check-in is unfortunately bang next to Virgin’s shiny new flagship area, which makes AA’s section look even more low rent than normal. The flashy AA check-in machines of JFK & LAX are nowhere to be seen. Instead the scruffy desks are stuffed around a corner and usually manned by cheerless automatons.

But none of this mattered yesterday. Running true to form, I had arrived late at my father’s house for my lift to the airport, and, after he cheerily dropped me off kerbside,
I skidded across the hall with my cart on two wheels convinced that AA’s usual dismal queues would make me miss my plane.

There was no one there. Some SMILING check-in people and no travellers. Not one.

Turned out there were maybe 50 passengers on the 747, so I had two seats for my junk, and a row of five seats across the aisle which I turned into nest central with armfuls of pillows & lovely soft fleecy blankets.

We were delayed on the apron for 1hr30 but I was glad of the rest after my Geneva dash, & curled up like a very happy dormouse in my mental geraniums, with ample chocolate supplies and free copies of the high class literature on offer (Hello!, InStyle).

Of course the movies on offer were at the wrong end of dire (New in Town, Confessions of a Shopaholic) but my supper expectations were confounded by a delicious supper (al dente pasta, fresh Italian bread, Le Vache qui Rit cheese, beurre d’Isigny). And when we arrived (early) at JFK, the arrival gate was maybe 150 yards from Immigration.

Where there was no line. Let me repeat: no line. Of course, AA can’t be held responsible for the global downturn in the economy & resulting lack of travellers but I was very happy not to have to wait behind 400 people (the hideous JFK norm).

And the upside was a very cheery, flirty Immigration guy who wasn’t having to deal with thousands of travel sore passengers, and who high fived me after inspecting my O-1 visa (it’s an Alien of, erm, Exceptional Ability visa which is useful for spuriously impressing purposes and therefore getting through Customs quickly).

It got better. My luggage was already waiting for me on the carousel. SuperShuttle arrived in ten mins not the estimated 25 and, for the very first time dropped me off first not last. (Am trying to be good and not blow $60 on cabs from the airport every time I fly.)

I don’t know what I did to deserve such a blissful journey home, but I am hoping it’s a good omen for the next two months here in NYC.

Look what lovely Cassandra gave me!

Last Friday I did yet another utterly ludicrous I'm-only-in-the-country-for no-time-at-all round trip mission to see my friend, well, I'll call her Cassandra, as many of you know her as this from her blog & Twitter feed.

I hauled my ass out of bed at 0630 and one bus, a tube and a train later arrived in the rain sodden cathedral town where her husband works.

We talked incessantly for three hours and at one point C nipped upstairs and reappeared waving this wondrous bag at me. "I bought it for you AGES ago in a vintage store. No arguments. It's SO you. And look, it was meant for you: it says Fifth Avenue on the label".

It's by Dorset Rex who made beautiful bags in the 1950's. In immaculate condition, it's made from black jacquard & lined in my favourite mid blue satin. I particularly love the jet clasp. The chain needs fixing, but that is the work of seconds.


I am a lucky girl to have such a wonderful friend.

Banbury - Luton - Geneva - Lausanne

I was in two minds as to whether I would actually get on the plane to Geneva on Monday morning. When I booked the flight a month or so ago from LA, an 0630hrs departure from Luton seemed do-able. After all my parents only live 45 mins away.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

A 24hr trip to Switzerland, arriving back the evening before I left again for Heathrow and Manhattan? I must have addled my brain in the California sunshine.

Because of course what that 0630hrs flight actually meant was me failing to sleep before midnight, being woken at 0200hrs by the cat kneading my thigh with its needle claws, and then whiplashing myself into consciousness at 0355hrs when the alarm clock went off under my pillow.

No one could accuse me of being a dilatory dresser: I was up and out the door in a flat five minutes, still excavating the sleep from my eyes as I put my foot down on the gas in my father’s MX5 and headed for the M1.

I was barely functioning on arrival at Geneva, so thank God for Swiss efficiency. The train terminal is right next to Arrivals, and a monkey could work the ticket machines. One aller simple ticket later and I’m sitting on the platform with my laptop and handbag (all I took were clean knickers & a swim suit, four packets of Xtra Strong Mints for Meriel – don’t ask, and my toothbrush) waiting for this rather nice train to arrive.

Some time later I get to Lausanne and Meriel & infant whisk me off to Café Glancy in the city centre for nourishment (highly necessary for anyone who refuses EasyJet’s overpriced refreshments trolley). My previous memories of Lausanne seem to be mainly of glove shops and staggeringly expensive bistros, so I’m glad to see that Café Glancy is a coffee shop restaurant in the laid back squishy sofa dudes playing on macs mode. It’s still expensive, but then everything is expensive in Switzerland.

I vacuum up a rather nice chanterelle & tomato risotto,

and M has a foie gras & Carpaccio salad – she claims that this is diet food.

Then as I am officially now on holiday I study this pudding menu. (Check the prices: basically ten Swiss Francs is just about ten dollars. OUCH.)

I’ve had recent complaints from readers who don’t speak French so let me (colloquially) translate the utter naming brilliance of two of the dishes:

La Bouchée: J’ai plus faim mais j’ai quand meme envie de sucré”
“I’m no longer hungry but I could do with a little sugary something “ (M has this: a tiny crème brulée)

Le Dessert: j’sais pas quoi choisir
I don’t know what to choose ( It’s actually a tasting plate)

I order Le Tout Chocolat, which looks like this (in the top left corner is M’s Bouchee),

And which is an exceptionally good warm dark chocolate cake with chocolate sauce, an ambrosial ice cream, which appears to just be a smooth frozen custard, and a wonderful creamy, dreamy cross between a chocolate mousse & a crème brulée.

After approx 30 secs the plate looks like this:

I think aliens stole my pudding.

Blimey! Liberty London Girl in French Vogue!

I was beyond thrilled to see a Tweet from lovely July Stars alerting me to LLG's inclusion at no3 in French Vogue's list of Twelve Twitters & bloggers to follow.

"Pointus, originaux et souvent très personnels, informatifs mais aussi amusants, intimes et décalés, voici 12 comptes Twitter à suivre, surtout lorsqu'on est accro de mode."

I'm included, along with The Sartorialist, Garance Doré, Dior, Colette, DvF, Maison Kitsune, Chanel Iman & Dita von Teese.

Here's what they said: "Très pointue et calée sur la mode, elle assiste à toutes les soirées, les défilés et les événements dignes d'être mentionnée. Le tout est commenté avec une assiduité qui permet d'être à la page à chaque instant. Une bible!"

Lausanne, Switzerland

I am so very, very behind with, well, everything. I have so many blog posts to put up, photos to edit, copy to file (one of my editors used Twitter to request some almost late copy yesterday. Impressive use of new technology there), and people to call. Let alone finishing the mountain of Ebaying my mother asked me to get through on her behalf. And I fly back home to New York tomorrow for the summer.

Fortunately, I flew to Geneva yesterday to spend 24hrs with Meriel & baby Lily, so it's impossible to address most of the things flashing on my to do list. But Meriel needs to shower, and I need to check my email, so Meriel came up with the following brilliant multi-tasking device. Here is gorgeous baby Lily:

And here is the scarf wrapped around my wrist which, as I write, shakes her dangling toys and keeps her amused.
Genius.

SWIDE / Liberty London Girl

On-line style magazine SWIDE ran an interview with me this week, and it's published here.

I was going to introduce this entry using the phrase, "The brilliant on-line style magazine Swide", but I guess I'm not exactly impartial. But, regardless of their fabulous taste in blogs, Swide, which is produced by Dolce & Gabbana, really IS a great read.

Girls night out in London: Guilty Pleasures

Last Saturday, I kissed the dog goodbye, threw my sequin party dress & high heels in the back of the car, took off the roof, and sped down the M1 to London for a sneaky night of flouro accessories, too much champagne, debauchery and dancing.

I can’t remember the last time I went dancing. Proper, get dressed up, wear high heels, drink vodka, dance like a fiend, love my lovely girlfriends dancing. So it’s a very, very good thing that my last minute trip back to London from Los Angeles coincided with a Guilty Pleasures night at Koko in Camden. I miss nights like these so much that I would happily get on a plane from LAX just for Guilty Pleasures.

That’s probably got something to do with GP having been my night out of choice since I saw GP’s DJ Sean Rowley rock the sleepy afternoon audience at the Big Chill festival in 2004 with a choice set of 70s & 80s classics that included Guns n Roses and Dolly Parton. His main criteria? Sing-along, dance-along tracks that the too cool for school crowd would never admit to knowing, let alone dancing to in public.

Miss P and I ended up having some ludicrous nights at GP’s regular night at the Carling in Islington where the atmosphere was one of glorious amateurism. Akin to a village hall bop, a GP night always celebrates English eccentricity with a tongue placed firmly in cheek. There are theme nights, dressing up, confessional booths, a slow dance room called the Erection Section and, on stage, entertainment from bewigged dance troupes in legwarmers with bosoms wobbling and portly male dancers in leotards and spats.

Eventually GP grew out of The Carling and moved to Koko, formerly the Camden Palace, a glorious old Victorian music hall in Camden, complete with rococo boxes, a real stage and rather too many flights of stairs for vertiginous heel wearers.

We were there at the opening, and again as often as we could make it. The last time I went was just before I moved to America and the next morning had to crawl out of bed to bicycle to BBC London in Marylebone to appear as the fashion expert guest on Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures radio show.

So, last Saturday, courtesy of the very nice people at Malmaison London in Charterhouse Square, Miss P, Clare, Tara & I gathered in one of their lovely big hotel rooms to get dressed, glue on our fake eyelashes, drink Tesco’s Cava (sooo classy) and eat delicious club sandwiches & fries from room service whilst watching Britain’s Got Talent on the flatscreen, before piling into a black cab to Camden. The night’s theme? Club Tropicana. Bloody brilliant.

(Tara looking very sultry). One of the rather nice things about being a grown up is getting VIP’d. The pulchritudinous publicist whisked us up and down stairs to a series of VIP private boxes with a bar and, hallelujah, a VIP loo. (I know I’m getting old when I get over-excited about not queuing for the loo.)

Within seconds we were wristbanded up,

getting stuck into the first round of vodka Red Bull & tequila chasers (my three friends had locked their infants under the stairs to come out to play and today’s drug of choice is caffeine), and dancing around our handbags to Wham!, Duran Duran and the rest.

(Tara & Clare - the publishable photo). Upon discovering that one of our wristbands gave us backstage access we were off through the serpentine corridors to the wings to watch some of the cabaret acts from the back of the stage. That's not all the back we saw:

I was blissfully happy to see long time GP regulars The Dreambears giving it up, fresh from their semi-final appearance on Britain’s Got Talent.(NB I do wish that straight America embraced camp like the Brits do). They were working it in these:


I didn’t go backstage to end up on the stage. But my Clare had other ideas. This is why we were to be found throwing shapes in front of 1500 people for the last couple of hours.

Fortunately it wasn't just us or the audience would have been justified in asking for a refund: it’s a Guilty Pleasures trademark to grab twenty or so people to come and dance on stage from the wings and from the audience in between acts. And it's not the punters who get down: the publicist, MC & DJ join in too. Here's Sean Rowley playing air guitar:

I would have stayed till the bitter end but I was in danger of developing shin splints from dancing in 5inch platform stiletto hooker shoes. I was also becoming aware that every time I reached for the stars, my black sequin mini dress was riding up to flash my knickers.

So the girls hopped it to their night buses (New Yorkers you have NO idea how lucky you are to live in a city where cabs roam the streets at all hours,) and I waited 25 minutes with throbbing feet in a mini cab office for a ruinously expensive car.

I have never been so glad to arrive at a hotel. I drew a bath full of super hot water & bubbles and had a final glass of Champagne, before wrapping myself in a fluffy towel and falling into bed. Oh the wonderful, comfy bed...mmmm, with your Egyptian cotton cool white sheets you were really spoiling me Malmaison.

My now obligatory photo in the rather chic Malmaison London bathroom - I feel I have to prove I was there now after that evil commentator accused me of making it all up!