Tuesday, April 30, 2013

ALL THE SHIRTS...


New things are listed in the shop. You need shirts? I got shirts: All 100% cotton in white, stripes and checks. I gave myself a migraine from ironing these yesterday - that's dedication. 


{Clockwise from top left:
Sandro blouse, Marni raw edge blouse, Comptoir des Cotonniers check top, Marni cigarette pants, Steven Alan x Uniqlo shirt, Margaret Howell shirt.}

Sunday, April 28, 2013

APRIL IS...









Almost over. How did that happen?

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Saturday, April 13, 2013

IT'S SPRING!...


I'd been wanting to update the little shop with spring things, but winter just wouldn't budge. But at last it really is spring and I have spring things for you in the shop over here! 






{What I Loved.} (Edit: SOLD)

Thursday, April 11, 2013

LA BUVETTE...


I reviewed charming La Buvette de Camille for HiP Paris. Read it there or below:


As I very much enjoy drinking natural wines in London, I thought I would probably enjoy drinking them even more in France. So my thinking went when planning my trip to Paris last month. I can’t remember where I first heard about La Buvette, but it was on my list of natural wine places and also on my list of places that have been opened by ex-staff of Le Chateaubriand or Le Dauphin, where the owner of La Buvette, Camille Fourmont used to work.

That part of rue Saint-Maur is uninhabited enough at night that, as I stopped outside La Buvette to take a photo of the neon lit sign spelling out its name before going inside, my friend E coming up behind me and saying hello made me jump and let out a small shriek. It’s actually not that far from Parmentier metro, but it seems so when you’re walking up the street in the dark, not knowing where it’s going to be. E, who knows the area well (and shares a surname with the owner Camille Fourmont – but is no relation as far as we could all discern) said she thought Camille was forging interesting new territory by opening there.

Once inside, it was pleasantly refreshing to be in a wine related space that had clearly been put together by a cool girl, rather than a man. Not that it’s girly. It wasn’t dark and there were no ancient dusty bottles gathering mould as décor. Instead, the white tiled walls with shallow wooden shelves held bottles of mostly natural wines, with the prices clearly written on them (add €8 for corkage). There were vintage glass light fixtures, each one slightly different, and a pot containing a fresh arrangement of white flowers and eucalyptus.  The whole effect was light, unfussy and modern.


 The menu of small plates was written up on a mirror, with prices ranging from €3 - €6 for a plate of olives or fourme d’Ambert cheese, saucisse seche, haricots blancs, or ricotta with quince jam and hazelnut oil. We had most of the dishes that were available and I was still hungry afterwards, but this isn’t a restaurant, so it was probably my own fault for trying to make it into dinner. Due to licensing / lease restrictions it’s not allowed to be called a wine bar – it’s officially a wine shop where you can try the wine. The small space seats exactly fifteen and there’s also a zinc bar to lean on. It was full to capacity but not crowded on a cold Friday night in February.

We were interested in the already opened bottles by the bar and we let Camille guide us in our choices, which she did charmingly. This allowed us to try a glass of a few different wines each without committing to a bottle. I’m no wine critic so I’ll spare you my amateur musings, but every glass we tried was excellent, and seemed to complement the previous – whether by accident or design. Before we knew it, it was 10pm – La Buvette has an early closing time, making it perfect for an aperitif, less as the focal point of your night out. 

I enjoyed La Buvette for its thoughtful details: the glass light shades, the thirties plates, the simple fresh flowers, the light touch with which its been conceived, as much as for the wines. It was my favourite of all the wine bars I went to in Paris in the month of February –and I went to a lot. 

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

NEEDLES...


If you've never spent any time with me in real life, you might not know that I'm not a jeans girl, or a trainers girl for that matter. In fact, we can rule out any kind of sportswear. This leaves me in the pleasurable position of being able to bypass trends in these things. Nike Air Max? Um, ok - go for it other people! Not me. I've got one rotting pair of Converse which I drag out if I need to do something like go for a country walk if it's not a wellies kind of day.

Until about ten years ago, jeans suited me - and then about the time they got skinny, they got uncomfortable. I would occasionally buy a pair, actually quite a lot of pairs, only for them to sag and for their low waistbands to cut into me. My kidneys got cold because there was always that gap at the back when I sat down. I stopped wearing them.

I kept meaning to try some jeans on at Acne - oh for about five years. I kept putting it off because they all looked very skinny and I was never in the mood to subject myself to both discomfort and inevitable humiliation, when I couldn't get them on and had to go up and up in sizes until they fitted on the legs but there was a huge gap at the top - which is what inevitably happens when I try on jeans. But the other day I had half an hour to kill and was feeling gung ho. I had had this picture of Jessica de Ruiter by Garance Dore in my mind for a while:


Acne Needles: high waisted, narrow, not quite skinny, washed black, stretchy and as it turns out really, really comfortable. I tried on every style of jeans at Acne and I just kept coming back to these because they were so comfy and the colour is uniform all over, which is most important to me. And they make your legs look really long. Now I have jeans. I don't quite look exactly like Jessica here, what with looking nothing like her, but that's something to aim for and I'm pretty pleased to have joined modern society in the wearing of jeans. I have no idea really if high waisted or mid waisted or boyfriend or what is what I'm supposed to be wearing and don't really care. I wear these. So all this to say that I have finally *discovered* Acne jeans.

{Photo: Garance Dore}

Sunday, April 07, 2013

FILM ADVICE...


Hey girl, I need to ask you to go to the cinema and watch The Place Beyond the Pines. I know, it's a big ask but trust me. I would like to watch it at least three more times, and not just for the obvious reasons. Best film. Best film! A multi-layered, epic trilogy that avoids the Hollywood norm of everything having to be black and white, good or bad. It was so fantastic that it's made me go silly and I can't compose a sensible review of it. Here's one I liked and would have written if I could think straight.


I also need to ask you to not bother seeing that film where both Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones are psychiatrists and blah blah something about anti-depressants and share prices. I mean, had I known before watching it that it starred those two, I would have quickly realised it was going to be lame. But I just scanned the listings and critics seemed to love it. I wasted two hours and £10 - I don't want the same fate to befall you. Watching it did, however make me appreciate what Derek Cianfrance did with a $15 million budget in The Place Beyond the Pines, versus the $30 million budget of Side Effects. Twice the budget, less than half the film.