The Womens Room

Christmas wish list: Rare Bird of Fashion

Iris Apfel has long been one of the Womens Room favourite Style Icons. We are fascinated by her eccentric style, amazing use of colour and complete refusal to conform and dress like an old lady (she's 88). 

An exhibition dedicated to her Style is currently on in Salem MA at the Peabody Essex Museum and runs until February 2010. They credit Iris with being the first women to turn jeans into a fashion item, when in the 1940's she hounded the owner of her local Army and Navy store, until he ordered her a pair of boy sized jeans. Until then, only lumberjacks and field hands had worn them, but she wore hers with a turban and hoop earrings! The exhibition lists the essential elements of style according to Iris Apfel:

• Never take yourself or and outfit too seriously
• Visit the animal kingdom
• Consider the clergy
• Travel widely
• Go high and low
• Don't fret about your age
• Don't be afraid to stop traffic

Eric Bowman's book Rare Bird of Fashion was published in 2007 and is a tribute to the personal style of Apfel over the last 40 years.  Bowman styled over 90 outfits on mannequins, using the colours, textures and patterns loved by Iris.
A true inspiration and a great present for a stylish friend or relative.

Shopping with experts: knitted dresses

 
Tommy Hilfiger Poppy knit  dress, 100% cashmere, £202

As soon as it starts to get colder, I want to wear knits. I stop with the crisp cotton shirts and the acetate lined dresses and want to swaddle in warm woolly comfort. A knitted dress is the ultimate in easy dressing, warm and stupidly simple to wear PLUS you get to wear thick tights. What's not to love?

Luckily for us, knitted dresses are having a moment, I have it on the coolest and best-connected of advice, oh yes. In the Guardian yesterday, fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley wrote about how cool jogging bottoms now are (stick with me) and explained that she had followed the advice of Fiona Collins, PR to the Tommy Hilfiger brand, who manages to make everything she wears look good. Well by fabulous coincidence as part of the day job I was meeting with the lovely Ms Collins that very morning. So I made a note of what she was wearing, and guess what? Yep, it was a knitted dress.

It was the one above in fact, which I checked out in the store after our meeting. It is a little more fitted than your average knitted dress and is made slightly edgier with the chunky zip details, Fiona had her zipped neckline worn undone and it looked sexy - as far as a knit dress can. It's also very snuggly being cashmere and has a pretty cuffed full sleeve.

We've also seen good ones in John Smedley and some very well priced ones in Uniqlo, Topshop and (of course) Cos, so keep a look out while they are hot, it's worth investing in a good one because they are timeless.

There is a problem with knitted dresses, they can be very stodgy if done wrong on our age group, so here are our tips

Wear them to the knee or shorter, any longer and you're in frumpsville.

Don't wear them tight, ever. If you want to add a bit of shape then wear a belt that sits on the hips, but a bit of gentle volume is really liberating.

Add colour. You will almost definately end up buying either black, navy or grey this year, so get a little interest in through coloured tights, big bold jewels or scarves (those lovely bright M&S cashmere jersey ones are good for adding shots of bold fuchsia and colbalt.

Buy wool or cashmere, nothing nastier than a soggy acrylic baggy bottom imprint. Natural fibres spring back into shape, acrylic doesn't.

Wear a petticoat underneath, everything will look sleeker.

Wear staggeringly high, jewel encrusted heels, preferably with a platform.......nah, only joking, does that sound like us? Knee high flat boots all the way, or you could wear ankle boots as this is a great year for them.

Knitted dresses have a tendency to pill, so buy one of John Lewis's magical fluff removers, I have one and it works like magic

We love: India's Posterous

Doesn't this picture make you want to drop everything and make a cake? India Knight is one of our favourite journos and we were thrilled to discover that she has started a blog called India's Posturous. This cake is on her new blog, India found it on the very clever Whatever blog, which was also featured on the Urban Outfitters blog, which goes to show just how quickly cooking a colourful cake at home for the kids can cause a global baking pandemic.

There's a lot of good stuff on India's Posturous and she's only just begun so we'll be putting her on our right hand column list of great blogs to follow. She also wrote a good article on women talking through blogs in this weekend's Sunday Times magazine (without once mentioning her own, which we thought was incredibly non-show-off-ish of her, we'd have had ours in the first para), where she lists a few more wordy blogs to follow.

Ms Knight states that blogs are a perfect medium for women who are at home with children, often feeling isolated due to their circumstance, to express themselves. There are some great writers emerging from the blogosphere who perfectly distill domestic dullness into something hilarious and entertaining. Life, particularly with children, is not pretty and is rarely as it is displayed in magazines. Blogs, with their personal, non edited, non advertising-influenced, non book deal compromised writing tell it as it is, and makes us screech with laughter. Our favourite of India's list has to be Belgian Waffle.

New New Yorker: Take a walk on the wild side

I’ve been meeting lots of aging New Yorkers recently and discovering a very cool and stylish maturing world here in the city of shows, to quote my darling Lou Reed, himself a sexagenerian. That sounds like I’ve met him doesn’t it? I haven’t.

Anyway, the elderly are cool in NYC. They are treated with respect in shops, cafes etc and many of them display an eccentricity I’m finding highly admirable. They are loud, feisty and demanding, cracking jokes and not taking any nonsense from surly sales assistants, bus drivers etc. Both sexes walk with pride even if it includes a stick or a stoop and all the ladies I see wear at least bright coloured lipstick, with many going all the way make-up wise.  Instead of the uniform blue rinses of the English provinces you find all kinds of wild hairstyles on the average over 65-er. Spikey Jonny Rotten crops and silver bobs abound – a look I’ll be going for one day God willing my hair clings on that long. A neighbour of mine has just had her long grey locks chopped into a very funky spiky short cut and died a great shade of aubergine. A retired teacher, she told me when I admired her new look “Thanks! I love it. I’d been wearing my hair in that long, straight style since Woodstock. I saw the movie and thought, I need to change my hair!!” 

Our neighbourhood is very Jewish and wigs abound among the more orthodox ladies. This is a licence for pure rock n roll indulgence on the part of many of them. I am always seeing 70 plus-ers with big luscious Bond Girl hair or Marie-Antoinette style pile-ups in vivid red or mahogany. New York ladies love a hat, particularly crochet berets, felt jobs with brims or big fur muff-lookers. No sad woolly pull-ons for them. All kinds of funky eyewear are groovy too, with designs from the 60s and 70s very popular. Funky layered jumpers, leggings and shawls over furry ankle boots or little waterproof bootees are now coming out thanks to the colder weather. Not to mention astrakahn and fake fur coats and lots of bright coloured tweed overcoats and capes from the first time they were fashionable.

The lesson for me is to hang on to all my clothes. I am going to stash them all in vacuum air-sucked out packing bags for eternity. If we end up staying here till old age I will look forward to dying my hair purple/white, getting out all my old gear and strutting about while the young gaze admiringly and hold open doors as I pass. 

Fashion and Technology: do they go together?

Last week we spent an evening with the insightful team from Dell and a group of other fashion bloggers. They wanted to get our opinion on the link between fashion and technology and also let us take a look at some of their new products. 

Almost all of us agreed that sticking a flower on something or making it pink is not only insulting to intelligent women, (especially older women) it often downright puts us off. Of course there is a market for this kind of product (pink is one of Dell's best sellers) we just don't think it appeals to all women. We're not pretending we really care about gigs, memory size or pentium processors, or actually even know what they are. We think if we buy from a well known brand, the actual technology is a given, but what differentiates the product is way it looks and the all round the customer experience. 

So, what are we looking for when we buy a computer, and how does fashion affect our decisions? Firstly would like an exciting shopping experience, similar to when we go shopping for clothes. We would like a pleasant environment, with knowledgeable, approachable staff and clearly defined shopping areas according to our needs. We would like to feel we are experiencing the brand. This is where Mac wins hands down every time. On entering a Mac store, you are instantly involved in the Mac experience. A pleasant good looking member of staff greets you and there are plenty of enthusiastic 'Mac geeks' dotted around the shop to talk you through your requirements. The store interior is aspirational without being intimidating and both interactive and inviting. The product manages to have mass unisex appeal without pandering to gender stereotypes. One feels one is buying into a lifestyle, much like you do when shopping for a good fashion brand. The Mac team say they want buying a brand new Mac to feel like its Christmas, which it does.

Compare that to entering a PC World, usually located in some dreary retail park, with unenthusiastic staff not affiliated to any brand and with often limited knowledge of individual products. Maybe technology retailers have had it too easy for too long, knowing their products more or less sell themselves, therefore the words visual merchandising and retail experience, don't seem to be front of mind. Perhaps technology retailers could take some tips from fashion retail, what about designated concession areas with staff assigned to a brand, or product merchandised according to end use? 

What about the look and feel of a computer, what do women our age really want? It's a difficult one, but we think technology choices tend reflect lifestyle and interior choices. If you are a creative type and have a minimal interior, chances are you'll go for a Mac, if you are a teenage girl maybe you'd go for a coloured laptop, or if you are anything like us you may have a Mac in one room and a few lap tops of different types dotted all over the house. 

Personally we would like a simple, pared down design, tasteful, yet functional and doesn't scream design or technology, It just says efficient and stylish. Does Ally Capellino do computers? 

Style Icon: Diane Keaton

Photo by Ruven Afanador for More

Although she's often given a hard time by the press about the way she looks (remember the fuss about her Charlie Chaplin outfit for the Oscars? Apparently it is Not Done not to conform to the whole glam frock on the red carpet look if you are a girl, whatever your age), we can't help but love Diane Keaton for her quirky style and refusal to follow the standard path. I totally lost my heart to her (and Woody Allen) in 1977 when Annie Hall came out and I wanted to dress, sound and look like her. I think I spent the next five years wearing men's shirts in some way or other almost every day of my life, sadly I couldn't afford the Ralph Lauren ones she wore in the film. Waistcoats, baggy trousers and hats came and went (not always that successfully) but the men's shirts became a staple. I remember nicking a really fabulous soft Viyella check one off my dad and wore it until it fell off me. 

Amazingly she is now 63 and still looks every bit the unique indivdual she played as Annie.Still wearing the androgynous look and pulling it off well, She's also one of the few older film stars who has given us a good role model to follow as she's aged, She's playing opposite Harrison Ford in her newest movie Morning Glory, out next year and she looked great in Something's Gotta Give with Jack Nicholson, where Hollywood actually acknowledged that people over 50 fell in love and had sex. Goodness knows how that ever got made.

We love: red shoes

Ever since we saw Dorothy in her ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz, we've been big fans of red shoes. We are wearing a lot of black at the moment and think red shoes are the perfect compliment to a black outfit. What could be more stunning, a LBD, thick black tights and bright red shoes. 

We are loving the M&S heart court shoes from the Limited Collection, a snip at £25. We imagine we could almost walk in the Brian Atwood heels (but not sure about the price). The Repetto flats would be just gorgeous with a pair of narrow black trousers, but we simply have to have the Repetto Mary Janes. They're just perfect, elegant, high but not too high and they even look comfortable! They're also available in black.

Follow the yellow brick road................

We love and adore: Anthropologie

Of course we loved absolutely everything about the new Anthropologie on Regent Street, in fact we loved it so much we would happily pack our bags and move in. Maybe thats the appeal, it's not just a shop full of clothes, its a lifestyle experience. Absolutely everything has been considered and as we are the kind of people who spend hours curating our mantelpiece, we more than appreciate the attention to detail. 

Credit has to go to the amazing visual merchandising team who flew in from the US to work on the store. Not only did they do a great job, making most of the props themselves, they also enlisted the help of the shop staff, all of whom talked with passion about how hard they worked to make the shop look so stunning. Hand made plastic chandeliers, a giant whale made out of discarded packaging, a fabric tree made from fabric scraps and a window display assembled from thousands of tea bags, were just a few of the features, the staff enthused about. Our favourite was the living wall which is watered every day with rainwater from the roof. When we walked into the shop, we were so overwhelmed by it, we forgot we were in a clothes shop.

The store design is eclectic yet homely, eccentric yet sleek and the changing rooms are quite simply the nicest we have ever been in (and you know we don't like changing rooms)

So what about the merchandise? Well we can guarantee you will not leave this shop without a purchase. There is something for every budget, from a tiny bar of soap to a giant pottery polar bear for £8000 (every home should have one) and unlike the US stores there is less clutter and therefore it's less overwhelming and easier to shop. The homeware and accessories are sourced from all over the world and are a combination of core products and unique one off finds. The feeling that you are entering the home of a fabulously eccentric world traveler with exquisite taste, is what makes the whole experience so enticing.

So what did we love? Well almost everything, but our favourites, were the gorgeous vintage style aprons (we would be temped to wear as a dress), the glitter and feather birds for Christmas (we can't wait to see the whole Christmas range) and the truly fabulous huge statement necklaces, which would make any simple outfit look stunning.

The clothing range is a combination of exclusive limited edition ranges and the well edited easy, to wear feminine fashion we have seen in the US. The team were keen to point out that in the future the store will offer specially designed ranges by British designers such as Eley Kishimoto.

The clothing is somewhat overwhelmed by the accessories and homeware, but that really doesn't seem to matter as we're sure it will gain momentum. We were disappointed there was no footwear range, as we had our eye on quite a few pair of shoes from the website.

With another shop due to open in the Kings road next March, we think the Brits are going to love Anthropologie just as much as the Americans. We now have a very long Christmas list!

Coming Later: Anthropologie UK

We are off to the opening of the new Anthropologie store in Regent Street today and can barely contain our excitement. One of our favourite shops in the world and thats no exaggeration, as we have visited a lot of shops, we just know we are going to love everything about it. To get yourself in the mood, take a look at the website. The best thing is, you can order online from almost everywhere in Europe. Is there such a thing as shopping Nirvana, we'll let you know later on today. 

Buy this: Wode by Boudicca

 
Graffiti can perfume that turns blue on impact and smells lovely, a perfect starter smell kit for teenagesons

Having three teenage sons around the house, smell is something I feel I know quite a lot about. I can tell the moment I open the front door if there's a freshly used sports kit in the hallway, or if there are more than two visiting male friends in the house (every boy smells different), if said boys have their trainers on their feet or off and how close we are to needing to change the towels in the boys' bathroom. I know that a largish group of teenage boys-when confined in a small bedroom to play hours of Playstation-creates a heady mix of pheromones and sweat that can be aromatically toxic; consequently, I use a lot of scented candles. No wonder the first thing my cleaning lady does when she comes into our house is to open the bedroom windows.

But I can put up with all of these smells and more, so long as none of the visiting teenagers or teenage sons are experimenting with wearing cheap perfume.

Picking your first smell is always tricky, my youth is peppered with memories of males wearing Old Spice (my dad), Blue Stratos (my first boyfriend) and Brute Original (seemingly everyone else). The seventies was not a good time for male scent, it was still considered a bit gay to talk about and it was called aftershave (more manly) rather than perfume. All the TV adds seemed to feature alpha males with dodgy hair and cheap suits, where scantily clad women swooned after sniffing the air. Chinese martial arts was another favourite theme, as if the right aftershave might enable you to slice through piles of planks with one hand. Cheap perfume is just horrid and I wanted to make sure teenagesons learned at a young age the importance of investing in a quality smell.

Which brings me to Wode, by Boudicca, brought to my attention by the lovely Pippa from Nom de Plume, an excellent independent fashion boutique in south London and one of only three stockists of the perfume in the UK. What catches your eye with Wode and what makes it fantastically appealling to teenage boys is that when you spray it from the bottle, it comes out of a graffiti paint-can container and is bright colbalt blue. Woad blue infact, the war paint colour Queen Boadicea used on her army's faces to scare the living daylights out of her enemies.

Magically, the colour fades completely, leaving just a musky, leathery amber perfume which is gorgeous and a sophisticated starter-smell for teenagesons (or teenagedaughters, it's a unisex smell). But it's the spray-paint ability that really gets them going, it looks particularly scary when sprayed down white shirts (the colour can be safely sprayed onto even the finest of silks and no trace is left) across the face or even on white walls.

For perfume geeks, Pippa informs us that the same 'nose' who invented the delicious Escentric Molecules, Geza Schoen also collaborated with the Boudicca team to create Wode. The Paint version is the one to buy teenagesons, but there is also Scent (this one doesn't turn blue) which Pippa says is a more grown up, slightly headier version. One to graduate to, perhaps, when the joy of spraying everything bright blue wears off.

It's not a cheap present, at £65 a can, but it is money well invested if it helps make 'em smell better. To purchase Wode, telephone Pippa at Nom De Plume on 0208 878 7077

To find out more on Wode see www.boudiccawode.com/

We love:Dominic Wilcox

One of Dominic Wilcox's lovely modern ink stamps   
On the eve of the fancy London art fair Frieze, the Women's Room would like to bring you our own top tip on an artist we love. His name is Dominic Wilcox and he is a combination of artist and product designer. You know how sometimes you see a great idea and think, 'oh that's clever, I wish I'd thought of that'? Well Dominic's work is that sort of thing. He has just finished a rather lovely installation for The London Design Festival called Field, where he made a window full of Terra Plana shoe laces look as if they were growing and the gold plated luxury skimming stones have hit right at the heart of Middleagedad, who fancies himself as a skimming stone god.

Check out Dominic's website for the many simple but clever ideas he has been working on, we think that the ink stamps with wonderfully modern disclaimers on (as above) are perfect Christmas presents, and the totally fascinating black leather orgasmatron washing machine is making us rethink domestic appliances (we also love the Losing Your Virginity Room specially commissioned project). We have no idea how much anything costs as young Dominic is a little shy of answering emails, but we suspect the little gifty ideas would not break the bank. Lovely stuff.

Dominic Wilcox

Dominic Wilcox's luxury gold plated skimming stones with leather carrying pouch.

We Love: Swishing

Ok, remember you heard it here first. Pop up is over, its all about swapping !!
Tuning into our make do and mend mentality, we have decided instead of going shopping, we are now going swishing.
Actually we have been attending clothes swap parties for some time now. They are a great way to get rid of your old stuff and pick up a few new bits, without a single penny changing hands. 
It's ethical shopping at its best and its actually really good fun. You can do it with a groups of friends or try it out this weekend at the Knitting and stitching show at Alexandra Palace. Mr and Mrs Bears organise make do and mend and swapping events in North and East London and are holding a Swishing Salon on Saturday at the show. The only rules are:

• Everything should be cleaned, labeled with a size guide and ready to swap
• Clothes should be dropped off between 10 am and 12 am.
• Bring up to five items to swap for the same number
• Swishing costs £5 and proceeds are donated the Bliss (special care baby charity) under 18's are free.
• If you don't have anything to swap, you can take part for £15 and select up to two items.

So why not give it a go and let us know how you get on!

If you don't fancy clothes swapping what about shop swapping (try saying that after a couple of drinks!)     
'Wish You Were Here' is a collaboration/swap between thirty independent small shops in the Lower east side, NYC and the Newburgh Quarter in London. 

Until November the 1st you can try out the edgy, fun fashion and lifestyle stores of down town Manhattan and experience a slice of life in the big Apple in central London. There will be a guerrilla street fashion show, a Lower East side Block party and a Halloween party to close the event.

We love the idea of swapping, anyone want a husband and two kids for a Mui Mui bag? 

Style Icon: Barbara Louis

We have mentioned Stylelikeu before, as we love the video footage of real people talking about their own individual style. From time to time they feature the most fabulous, older, slightly eccentric individuals who are an inspiration to us. 

We love Barbara Louis's high street style mixed with vintage YSL. Barbara worked with YSL on his knitwear collection from 1970 to 1981 and was friends with Coco Chanel, Kenzo, Bill Blass and Sonia Rykiel. She currently works at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and loves to shop at Zara and H & M. 

She has an amazing sense of style and bring a whole new meaning to the term, style on a budget.
Come on Zara or H & M, what what about using Barbara as the face of your brand?

We are reading: Bag

We seem to have so many friends writing books at the moment, we don't have much room left on our coffee table!!

This time our mates Sue and Susie have come up with the essential insight into the world of iconic bags. Over the last 10 years we have seen the handbag develop from merely an accessory into a collectable statement item, each with its own name. This stunning book documents the process from the first Hermes Kelly bag in the 1950's, through to the contemporary designers that are now copied the world over.

Bag is beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned photographs and provides a fascinating insight into the creative process behind the world of accessories.

Another one for the Christmas list.

We love:The Timberland Boot Company

 
It's been quite  week for new launches, what with +J and now we discover that one of our favourite looking stores in London, The Timberland Boot Company (up market stylish sister of the Timberland brand) has started to sell womens shoes. Joy! The store, which is in Fornier Street in Spitalfields, has always impressed us with its beautiful display and lovely interior (it used to be a banana warehouse and has been lovingly refurbished keeping all the original brickwork and carpentry, it has still got the old David Kira warehouse sign rather than a Timberland sign) but up until now only sold mens shoes, and pretty fab ones at that.

This week I went to check out the (small) new range for women and ended up buying a pair of the boots. I am, I know, a teeny bit obsessed with boots, having also championed the very comprehensive range offered by Kurt Geiger this season, but these are more Dickension in feel, more shabby chic and home spun ( the straps and buckles are oddly matched, they look as if they've been patched together and the leather is artfully but convincingly distressed in all the right places). They cost £225, which might seem a lot for mis-matched but trust me, they're gorgeous.

There are high heels and more boots in the range and the service was great too. All the store staff were curious to know what I thought of the new collection, if the shoes felt good on and how comfy they were to walk in, all my comments were noted down to feed back to the design team and you know how we're NEVER short of comments here at The Women's Room. So if you're partial to a cute boot or quirky shoe then take a look.

Timberland Boot Company is at 1 Fournier Street Spitalfields London E1

Timberland Boot Company

 

+J for Uniqlo: here's what we thought

 

So, we joined the very civilised queue at the Westfield store and had a good long rummage through the +J range for Uniqlo. Our verdict? It's fab. Oh! that all collaborations between brands /retailers/whoever were as good as this. The best thing about it is the stupendous quality of fabric and finish, the great fit (how has she done this?) and the attention to detail for such a good price. It's pared down classic perfection. Other retailers please take note.

While we're at it, since The Women's Room has now been to more of these mad designer collaboration days than we care to mention (Comme des Garcons and H&M, Kate Moss for Topshop, Celia Birtwell for Topshop, it goes on...) we thought we'd jot down a few tips, since not everyone at the sale this morning realised what they were letting themselves in for (the charming, older, polite crowd of Sander enthusiasts were a little taken aback at the pace of things -clearly novices).

Tip 1- Get there early and queue, not stupidly early that you need a sleeping bag and flasks of tea, but certainly well before the opening time, at Uniqlo this morning the first wave on enthusiasts were allowed in, but as soon as the store filled up, entry was regulated on a one in one out system until things calmed down. You don't want to be on the outside looking in.

Tip 2- Do not dither with your choice once you are in. Grab first and think afterwards, you can always put stuff back and you will be surprised how vicious even very close friends can become when there's only one size 12 left. (Although we were very impressed with how polite this morning's crew were, 'I think you had this first' , 'No really I think it was you', it's not normally this nice).

Tip 3- If you do not pick up your first choice quickly enough, do not panic, you will find that about ten minutes into the madness, people will start abandoning clothes left right and centre, so watch out for who might have what you want and stalk them. Really, this is perfectly acceptable behaviour. Crazy, obviously, but acceptable in these circumstances.

Tip 4- Don't worry about the changing rooms, there will be a huge queue, just make sure you wear clothes that allow for the wriggling on of additional styles in a desperate attempt to check fit. At +J women were seen stripped down to their knickers on the shop floor, without a care, in order to try on trousers without joining the snaking queue. The Women's Room started up our own little community upstairs in the Westfield store where we decamped outside the CLOSED changing rooms (not enough staff...yep, don't get us started) and cheerily worked through our selection.

Tip 5- Check the changing room for returns and remember there is probably more stuff out the back. Wait for the first wave of trying on to finish and raid the return rail. People also abandon stuff when they are queing up to pay as they tot up what it's all going to cost and panic, so prowl here too. Uniqlo staff were brilliant this morning, really helpful and friendly, this is MOST UNUSUAL (see our last post on H&M) and we applaud them greatly for it.

Tip 6- Rember, it's only clothes, keep calm and keep your sense of humour at all times.

A reminder: +J at Uniqlo

The Jil Sander/ Uniqlo collaboration goes on sale today, and The Women's Room will be battling the queues to bring you the news and Best Things To Buy information as soon as we can. We will be down in the Westfield store queue at 10.00am this morning should anyone care to join us and we will let you know later in the day what we bought, if anything and what we thought.

To check out the collection, or buy on line see +J here

New New Yorker: A just-moved to New York Brit dishes on life in the Big Apple

Today we introduce the first in our new series of letters from New York. 
One of our dearest friends (who just happens to be a writer) has recently 
moved to NYC and brings us an inside view of life in the big apple.

My Sex and the City 2 scare!

When I moved to NYC two months ago, I blocked the big things like children, family and homesickness from my head and focused on my appearance. It was a shallow, easy distraction I thought.  

Before moving I had imagined I might dabble in the world of cosmetic surgery as I’m 46, a bit saggy and aging fast. Instead, I’ve gone the other way. Why, I’m even growing my armpit hair! 
In a city of supermodels and super-slick women, I just don’t want to look like a sad copy. Also, I’ve rediscovered the New York of my youthful dreams. It’s all the first Fame movie, Lou Reed, flea markets and punk rock. I am SO not interested in the Upper East Side. In fact, going over there to my son’s school depresses me. All that is Super Bad about Western life is there, in one small coterie of streets and shops.

Instead, I prefer to take the subway downtown, or hang out with the eccentrics in the caffs on the Upper West Side where I live. My fashion choices revolve around the Tibet Bazaar and whatever is left over from my summer wardrobe with a jacket over the top. I’ve stopped wearing make-up altogether apart from the odd slash of ultra-red or purple lipstick, neither of which I have ever worn before in my life.  

The biggest scare out of my old NY beauty plan and into my new one, was the sight of the SATC 2 women filming a scene from the new movie. I stumbled across them outside Bergys (Bergdorf Goodman) two weeks ago and honestly! A sadder selection of examples of our sex you would be hard pushed to find. Half naked, embarrassingly over-made up with faces contorted from chemicals, needles and surgeons, I’ve never seen more pitiful creatures. Clinging to youth and beauty with their false fingernail ends, they reminded me of the rabbits of Watership Down.  

SJP is pretty enough but she is wizened. The rest are freakish. Cynthia looks evil, Kim looks desperate and Kristin has face-lift wrinkles and is a lost soul. These women personify all that is bad and desperate for women in our times. If you are a free-thinker you will shun SATC 2, you will find humour in something other than variations on the Cinderella theme and you will never, ever have plastic surgery.

More soon!

We hate: Silly Styling

And while we're at it Nicole, can you get your window dresser to straighten the stripes? Better still get them to take them off.

We've been ranting a bit here on TWR about daft, over-the-top-ness when trying a little bit too hard to look fashionable. There was all that silly vertiginous shoe wear at Fashion Week, the madness of shoulders so wide and upholstered that you struggle to get through doorways without standing sideways and now we have socks to deal with.

We spotted this unflattering calf length (not even knee length, you'll notice) sock styling in one of our favourite stores, Nicole Farhi. Ms Farhi is a bastion of good taste and refined elegance usually, her clothes are expensive but lovely and she is definitely 'one of us' in terms of her age. So what's with the crazy sock thing? Hands up anyone who considers this a good look.

Strangely, this comes to light on the morning when Charlotte, one of our Tokyo readers (yes, really, we have readers in Tokyo!) got in touch to ask what she should make of the strange habit Japanese women have of wearing everything with knee high socks, even women of our age. She found it most disconcerting, particularly since generally Japanese women are incredibly elegant and very well turned out. We can only assume it's a cultural thing.

We're all for a bit of eccentricity here at TWR but can you imagine putting on one of Nicole's silk digital print dresses (which cost upwards of £350), standing in front of the mirror and thinking "You know what? this dress really needs a pair of shunken calf length socks to complete the look". We don't think so.

We hate to moan but really, someone's got to say it. Nicole, get a grip, your clothes don't need crazy socks. Leave that to the Japanese.

Trend Alert: Jade is the new red!

As we have said before, colour is a great way to add interest to an otherwise dull outfit and something it's easy to get away with as we get older.  We have never been fans of high maintenance WAG nails, but we do think nicely shaped, not too long nails, are a great way to add colour to an outfit. 

The latest must have colour for nails is Jade green, first shown at the Chanel catwalk collection. It seems designer Karl Lagerfeld wanted a green tint which would resonate with the jade tones of the Chanel collection. He was shown ten different shades of green, before picking the Jade, as it matched a tweed suit from the collection!   

Its due in the shops in October, but there is already a waiting list. So we think we'll be buying the Barry M version from Top Shop.