The Womens Room

We Love: Postcards from Battersea

Another shameless plug for one of our friends. We cant help it if we know so many fabulously creative and talented people! 

Sarah is a trend researcher, who researches and writes about textiles and materials. She has an amazing eye for colour, texture and pattern and spends most of her working life on the look out for inspirational textiles from around the world, and a lot of her private life on the hunt for quirky finds. Her blog, Postcards from Battersea, highlights the things she is inspired by and is a must if you are a fashion or textile designer, or just simply someone who loves beautiful things.

We love: Christoph Neimann

 

Christoph Neimann

We are big admirers of illustrators here at The Women's Room, we love Rob Ryan and hope everyone is loving our new picture of us by young artist Levanah Gates (in the top right corner of the blog) and just today we came across a gorgeous blog by illustrator, artist and author Christoph Neimann (thanks Jacqui for telling us about it! You might like to check out Jacqui's wonderful sticky tape blog, which is a master class in niche).

Christoph is an American, recently moved to Berlin and a dad of three small sons. He documents his activities with his boys (and other subjects) on his charming New York Times blog. We love the one about sleep, with acurate observations on what small children/mosquitos/noisey piping can do to a good night's sleep. We'd add age into that mix too.....The blog on his relationship with coffee is a joy to read, as is the one on New York made from Lego bricks.

The sleep illustration that caught my eye was the one about how, when Christoph finds himself going to bed before his wife on chilly nights, he warms her side of the bed first and moves over to the cold side when she gets in, because he loves her very much. Middleagedad moans nearly all the way through the winter months about how cold I am when I get into bed at night (poor circulation, my feet and hands are constantly freezing). I sent him a link to the blog and the illustration below and suggested he might like to adopted this selfless act to improve my night time temperature. So far, no comment.

Christoph's blog in the New York Times

Christoph's website (check out the sweet little pin man who taps his toes and dances when you hovver the mouse over him) 

Christoph Neimann
 
 

Come and meet us!

 

This image comes from the rather lovely mintdesignblog

The Women's Room has been invited to talk about blogging! Tonight! So if you are a loss for something to do and you are London based, come and say hello. We are part of a panel of bloggers and other experts who are going to talk about how blogs and social networking can be used in business. We're not sure we're really experts but we have lots of very strong opinions, as you all know, so discussion should be lively. I suspect we'll also be the oldest bloggers there......

The Prince of Wales Pub, Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town, NW5 3LT. 7.00 till 8.30pm

We love: Set Design Thinking

Set Design Thinking is a beautiful blog by Bella, a Bazillian art director, featuring stunning images of interesting interiors, set design, architecture and photography from around the world.

Gorgeous!

We Love: Juicy Tomatoes.com

After our popular post on The Red Hat society, Women's Room reader Jacqueline told us about a terrific website called Juicy Tomatoes.com, written (really well) by newspaper columnist, author and broadcaster Susan Swartz.  It is a website promoting life after 50 and covers similar ground to The Women's Room but with a US readership. Susan writes about Washington, the media's approach to women over 50 , un-retirement hair colour, dancing and global women. She also comes up with a new word to describe 50plus - Ripe. We like it.

Her articles are a great read, we particularly loved learning about The Blue Thong Society (a sort-of off shoot of the Red Hat Society only different) and her critique on how the attitude towards older men and women in the media is slowly changing and a great piece on friendships. If you can't be bothered to read, then you can listen to Susan's podcasts on the site, start with the great The Grey Wars: celebrate it or cover it up? which discusses the whole grey hair issue with a bunch of intelligent women, all with different views on what to do (and what to call) ageing hair.

American boomer women are fascinating to us here at The Women's Room as they seem slightly ahead of UK women on the whole issue of changing attitudes towards age. There are more of them, obviously and there are more of them on the web, partly due to broad band being widely available in the US earlier than Europe, so they really get blogs, social networking etc, particularly since their newspaper industry is collapsing around them, but that's another blog story. 

There are some good links to other blogs, particularly Great Old Broads For Wilderness, a bunch of wrinkled wild life and country supporters who could possibly claim to be the original 'greens' by the look of things.

It's nice to know we're not alone in our quest to change attitudes, we feel a global community coming on....

Juicy Tomatoes.com

We love: Cathy Horyn's Blog

Our fashion and retail readers in the industry may already know of the knowledgeable Ms Horyn of The New York Times. She is, in The Women's Room's opinion, one of the best fashion writers in the world (we'll give you our 'top five' on later posting) and we love her because she has been observing the fashion industry (particularly in the US but not exclusively) for decades now and consequently knows of what she speaks. We love her articles in the NYT but we love her blog On The Runway more, because it's seems to be where she puts down her thoughts and general observations in a less formal and more accessible way. It's more like 'fashion chat'.

The blog has a great following and the community discussions following one of her postings is hugely informed (we think there are a lot of industry insiders writing incognito, the standard is so high) and is well worth a read if you need to know the inside track on a new designer, issues on pricing, how the NY Topshop is doing or the state of US retail, which is what the last couple of posts have been about.

We also are feeling a little smug because of Ms Horyn's recent post on the difficulties of giving up shopping (apparently shoppers at the Barneys store in New York buy stuff one day and return the goods the next because they are finding it so difficult to give up the actual act of shopping) and general retail behaviour in this downturn. You may remember that we talked about this here at The Women's Room in early January with a series of posts that started with Don't spend, sew!  and Recession, what recession?

But our showing off aside, Ms Horyn tells an interesting tale on pricing in New York (the absurd pricing drops on designer styles make it sound worth a visit despite the poor exchange rate) and how influential celebrity spending is for New York boutiques. The States is a good 6 months ahead of us on recession behaviour, as they have been in it for longer, so if this is the case, should we all hold our purses tight till prices tumble? Discuss!

Fashion & Style at The New York Times

On The Runway  

We love: Copenhagen Cycle Chic blog

 

What is it about sport that makes people think they can forget what they are wearing? The marathon is coming up, and consequently the number of runners out along the Thames tow path has increased and the stuff they are wearing is bafflingly terrible. The young can get away with lycra leggings in white, but anyone over 40 can not. Skin tight jersey for men over 50? What are they thinking? Sport can have a corrupting influence on style.

Another area we get a little tired of defending from the sporting enthusiasts is cycling. The Women’s Room loves cycling, as readers’ will know, but we potter, we don’t speed through time trials or down mountain tracks so have no need for aerodynamic neon lycra or performance Goretex with pockets at the back. We like wearing proper clothes, but when we line up alongside the enthusiasts at traffic lights, we feel a little old-school and dislike the sneers of disdain aimed at us from sweaty youths flashing nylon-clad thighs and bottoms that leave nothing much to the imagination. Macho show-offs the lots of them.

We were pleased to read we are not alone on this annoyance, the Copenhagen Cycle Chic , a blog written by Nordic cyclists, suggests wearing Comme des Garcons and heels when cycling which we thoroughly approve of. The blog is a wonderful view on proper cycling, done by normal people. It also offers a great tour guide of Copenhagen with recommended coffee shops and restaurants. There’s a view on cycling in Holland and Sweden too as well as lots of ideas on what to wear while cycling and there’s no lycra anywhere.

Here’s an extract from the Copenhagen Cycling Chic’s manifesto, which we are officially adopting as our own from now on.

 

- I choose to cycle chic and, at every opportunity, I will choose Style over Speed.

- I will ride with grace, elegance and dignity.

- I will choose a bicycle that reflects my personality and style.

- I will, however, regard my bicycle as transport and as a mere supplement to my own personal style. Allowing my bike to upstage me is unacceptable.

- I will endeavour to ensure that the total value of my clothes always exceeds that of my bicycle.

- I will refrain from wearing and owning any form of 'cycle wear'. The only exception being a bicycle helmet.

 

 

 

we wrote about cycling here and  here

We Love: London and The Big Picture blog

 

St Pauls from the air by Jason Hawkes

 

The Women’s Room is proudly based in London, which even after nearly a quarter of a century of crowded tube travel, the congestion charge, complicated recycling rules, extortionate cappuccino prices, even higher house prices and dodgy air, we still love with a passion.

 

OK so we may occasionally day dream of owning a house in the country, but it soon passes and when we see photos like these from Jason Hawkes, we know why. Jason hangs out of helicopters with his Nikon camera and MacBook to take gorgeous shots of London from the air. He even manages to make the Westfield shopping centre look beautiful, which is a real achievement (5^th photo down on the link photos below). The Big Picture blog, run by the Boston Globe website, is full of awe inspiring photo essays from around the world and is uplifting viewing.

We’re slightly twiddling our thumbs during January, browsing the web rather than stores so as not to seem overtly consumerist during this tricky time - it still feels wrong to be encouraging too much shopping. Although, like the idea of moving to the country, we’re sure it’s just a phase, particularly if it keeps snowing.

 

The Big Picture

 

Westfield shopping centre roof by Jason Hawkes

We love: Middleagedad’s blog

 

Middleagedad is something of a wonder, not only is he a great husband and dad, but he also does a good line in quirky photos that he puts up on his blog. Being a London lad, he is a big fan of the city and wonders around looking for the beauty and humour in stuff that the rest of the world fails to see.

He is currently slightly obsessed with road markings, particularly ones that are less than perfect and may be suitable for making up stories about (the traffic cone gang from December 2008 made us laugh a lot). He does the blog entirely for his family and one or two mates and posts one photo a day, often taken on one of his fitness runs, and it’s building up to be a great daily diary to look back on. Being old we often forget what we did last week let alone what the day looked like back in November and it’s great to have a gentle reminder.

 

The Women’s Room, keen diarist in our youth, wonders if the photo blog format might be a fun hobby/diary to encourage our teenagers to get into, it’s easy, free and doesn’t involve writing, something children seem to be less keen to do today ( or is it just ours?). Uploading one photo a day should be easy for them and might prove fun. An idea to remember for the next rainy weekend.

Roglog.blogspot.com