Le Thème Nautique - Everything sounds more stylish in French.

Hello readers; I’m new to the world of Fashion Blogging, but I will occasionally be dropping in to broadcast a few of my ‘words of wisdom’, eg. telling you what I have recently been wearing or desperately seeking on the high street. Usually to no avail.

Whenever there is a hint of summer in the air, I am instantly inclined to dress up in bright primaries and navy and white stripes. I must admit, I don’t go for a full on sailor suit, but any little hints of anchors or reminders of the sea please me a lot. My current favourite bag is one I purchased about two years ago, and, in fact, when I had been drinking rum. This clearly had a positive effect on my shopping skills and its piratey associations lead me to want this nautical bag. The great thing about it is that you are not confined to wear only blue. I teamed it with a yellow cardigan, navy top and white shorts, which wasn’t too ‘hello sailor’ for comfort, but felt quite summery.

I no longer approve of the whole ‘drinking for the sake of it is fun’ business, but since that single intoxicated trip I have not been able to find anything quite as exciting. Recently, however, I did get a pair of earrings from Topshop, one anchor shaped and the other a blue heart, which fitted in pleasingly with the theme; and a pair of blue and white striped pumps, which are amazingly comfortable. Nautical is quite an easy look to wear, it doesn’t require any specific items, only the odd accessory, and it’s great on warm summer evenings (haha).

So my style icon for today…

AHOY!

The secret weapon

From my non-posting this week, you can probably tell that I am either a) feeling uninspired or b) a bit busy. Actually, I’m feeling a bit of both, but we shalln’t dwell on that.

I find that with clothes, you have to feel inspired because otherwise it just doesn’t work. At least that’s the case with me. I think that is why I’ve been having so much trouble with buying items lately - I just have no clue what I want to wear, no direction, no ideas. I’m going to blame the fact that I’m a teenager and no matter how much everyone else seems to think they have “found themselves”, it’s just not the case at 16. Of course, this sort of enlightenment helps when it comes to style. Some may think fashion to be frivolous, but in my opinion, it has the power to express you in so many ways.

My enthusiasm has unfortunately been going a bit downhill of late, but I find that one of the few ways to keep it up is to look at how other people are wearing it. Street style blogs, such as The Sartorialist or The Style Scout (there are of course many many others as well), flickr group Waredrobe Remix (which I really ought to get round and contribute to) and even posts on other blogs demonstrating personal style, are all brilliant places to find things like this. I think that fashion is what normal people make of it.

And that is what I love so much about it - there may be trends which probably will have passed by the time you have one sock on, but the ability to put your own spin on things means that anything is possible.

Hoops

The second trend related thing I’ve posted this week.Recently, I’ve been noticing an increase in the amount of people wearing hoop earrings. It seems that they are no longer being associated with chavs and people are actually wearing them. I’m not a big earring person really, though I will admit a few months ago I was contemplating wearing hoop earrings. I didn’t, simply because I could not bring myself to wear them (chav associations you see). Anyway, a little bit of predicting/noticing going on here… hoops may be on the rise.

All earring images from either Topshop or Accessorize

“Nu-rave” - why must it be spelt like that?

“Nu-rave” a craze that’s been going around the UK for a couple of months now (this is a long overdue post I think). I describe it as a craze because it can’t really be described as much else, it’s a mainstream craze, nothing more to it really. Glow-sticks, brightly coloured clothing and “nu-rave” music is basically what’s involved.

Typical “nu-rave” bands include the Klaxons and apparently the New Young Pony Club. I’m not a big fan of the Klaxons, but on the whole I don’t mind the music. Mostly because recently I have been listening to more ‘beaty’ things (electro I suppose - introduced to me by my good friend, who was introduced to it by the Mighty Boosh) and so “nu-rave” is kind of falling into the category (on wikipedia, it was classed as “a style of music fusing elements of electronic dance music and rock”)

Now I come to the ‘look’ of “nu-rave” folks. On the tv last weekend, I heard it described as “looking in the mirror and thinking, yep I look like an idiot”. I’m sure many people have bought straight into it - it’s not exactly hard with high street brands such as Topshop having a whole collection dedicated to the trend (’POP’, which I blogged about a while ago); Entire magazines such as POP also just on this one topic (I actually forked out the £5 for that issue and I didn’t particularly think it worth the money); tv programmes such as Skins featuring “nu-rave” people (made me laugh, especially the hoodie with the flouresant pink “TWAT” written on the back).

You’d think that I would completely hate it because I pretty much hate anything that is an obvious trend. Yet honestly, I’m a bit undecided about it. On the one hand, I’m not about to go and start dressing head-to-toe in “nu-rave” style clothing, because I have my style, yet elements of the style do appeal to me. I mean, I have some bright blue tights from a couple of years ago which I do love. People who claim to be “nu-rave” or “electro” and solely that do annoy me, because personally I like to have more than one interest and element influencing me, variety is the key. It’s tricky really, I don’t buy into mainstream trends simply because I know that 6 months down the line, it’ll be obsolete and kind of pointless and quite honestly I don’t really care about being classed as ‘cool’ or ‘trendy’ for those few months. It’s a strange concept really - how can someone love fashion, but not be willing to love trends. To a certain point, everyone, be they fashion followers or not, are influenced by trends and the catwalk, because the ideas are taken and turned into something more wearable for consumers to purchase at a shop. “Nu-rave” is something that’s around, but I think it’s something that ought to be taken with a pinch of salt. Fair enough if you’ve been into “nu-rave” before it became a mainstream phenomenon, but I just think that for those of us who haven’t, you kind of risk looking like a sheep really - you know, just getting swept up into the hype.

Neon days and neon nights

(photo from google)
Neon - a trend which I’ve been noticing for a while now! What can I say, I’m not surprised and I love it! Loads of clothes have been really dull recently, I love grey as much as the next person, but after a while it gets tedious. With dull weather, who needs a dull waredrobe as well?!

Topshop has a new line called POP - which has ‘neon’ clothing (inverted commas, because in my opinion it’s not bright enough).

(photos from topshop) Okay, so some of that I may not wear (partly because it’s really quite expensive and not nearly neon enough) but, it’s still quite nice. The other big high street brand, H&M also seem to have some decentish stuff in their spring/summer07 collection. Which is good because I have been really disappointed with h&m recently (and topshop come to think of it). Some being brightly coloured yay!

Sorry, seemed to go off the original neon topic there. Back to it: I personally quite like neon, probably because I have been liking this electro vibe (CSS, Ladytron, Robots in Disguise etc) recently, which my friends and many other ‘indie kids’ have also been experiencing I think. The only question remaining is, is neon suited to everyone? My answer is why not?!