Country casuals, blushing cheeks

Er, I'm a bit new to outfit posts, hence the blushy cheeks and slouchy demeanour although, quite frankly, that could just be the booze and mince pies. Anyhow, this is me. Wearing some clothes.



Santa has teased me for years about my dress obsession, so I wasn't surprised to get this navy spotty Topshop number in my stocking. It's a bit 90's in that I could probably fit Jordan Catalano under the voluminous skirt, but that is obviously no bad thing.

Necklaces from Topshop and Lady Luck swag bag.



Although I have a veritable plethora of man-shoes - high street patent, bright blue mesh, vintage lace-ups - none have the amazing aroma of my Dad's Loakes and Churches. I was jealous, frankly. A pre-Christmas wander into Cheltenham turned up these from Jones the Bootmakers. I'm not even sure we have this brand in London but my nose picked up the meaty scent of good leather from the street. Sturdy inch and a half heel, cute detail AND half price? Yes please.

All-time favourites

Stuck in the country where the cold creeps up on my parent's house like perfume, it's been a quiet and snowy Christmas. I've loafed around reading old mags I've stashed on previous visits, I've played board games, eaten lots and drank even more. And I've unwrapped some lovely gifts. These are my all-time favourite three presents ever:

For four or five happy years, I lived with one of my best ladyfriends, and two years ago she bought me this for my birthday. It's a 1950's wrought iron magazine rack covered in music notes. Clearly the subtext of her gift was 'Oh my GOD, PLEASE throw away some of these magazines.' It didn't work, and I still live atop a glossy mountain. The briefest corner is on the very right of the picture...



In the first World War, my great-grandmother Jessie did a runner after her husband died, leaving four small children on their own. My granddad was sent down the mines in Yorkshire and his sister Madge went to live with relatives in Watford. This was her Bakelite snake bracelet. I never knew her very well, except for a holiday in Switzerland when I was about ten and she had already started losing her marbles, but it's one of my favourite items of jewellery. I think it's meant to be one of those stylish 1930's upper-arm bracelets but my fat little arms mean it always ends up on my wrist.



This handbag's sweet, but it's not the watermelon itself that makes it special. This time last year, I mentioned on Twitter that I'd seen a cool bag and, as if by magic, it appeared in the post at work a few days later via my lovely friend Jen. I was having a rubbish week (well, rubbish month) and she put the biggest smile on my face. (please forgive the messiness of my desk, I'd love to pretend it's usually tidier than this, but it isn't)



What are your favourite presents of all time?

Lady Luck swag bag

Lady Luck are pretty famous. Creators of cute, kitsch jewellery, they pop up at every interesting craft fair or vintage sale, and I've loved their sweet little pieces for years. Yesterday this box was under the tree:



Santa had sent me one of their Swag Bags, and it opened up to reveal:



A Lady Luck printed tote bag; a cute set of Japanese greetings cards; a bright gold kitten brooch; a graphic shiny pink heart brooch; wooden kitten face necklace; scallop (wearing a hair bow) necklace; red broken heart necklace; pink glittery heart necklace; teeny tiny ice cream necklace; plastic charms necklace; and 20% discount card to your next order (think Santa ordered this some time ago, as mine expired in June...) . Here's a close-up:



There was so much stuff that I didn't find this little blighter for ages. It's an ice cream sundae brooch:



At £25 per box (each one is different), it's an incredible collection of gifts and perfect for anyone who loves cute jewellery.

Merry Christmas!

My favourite Christmas song. It's by lovely Low but I could only find this cover on YouTube. The original has lots more jingle jangle!



I'm off to eat, drink, and spend time with my favourite people. Hope you have a lovely Xmas, and see you in a few days...

Xmas wishes

The other night, my friend and I went to a Maybelline party at Bungalow 8. Not only were there drinks aplenty, but a pick'n'mix bar of slap so you could shovel as much mascara and lippie into your bag as you wished. It was good, and it was not the first party of the week.

All of which goes to show: I've been disgracefully spoilt this year. Work triplets to LA and Tokyo; lots of pretty things; and tons of fun times with my lovely friends. So you'd think that for Christmas I'd be grown up enough to realise my own luck and not want or desire anything. Oh well, perhaps next year. This is what is currently making me sigh - aside from Dream Bag and Dream Dress (Mulberry and Eley Kishimoto, respectively) which I think even Santa might think is a bit much.



I've tried on this Nicola de Main dress in Swanfield three times now. I'd probably wear it every day with polka dot tights and silly shoes, but it's the kind of thing the Santa with spending power (otherwise known as my mother) will think is a classic black dress.



Talking of both Swanfield and tights, these Yes Natalie tights from there wouldn't go amiss.



Some cute old Babycham glasses to add to my burgeoning glass collection.



A too-bright lurid pink lippy; any so long as it's almost blinding.



Lots of books (Tim Walker Pictures, Eleanor Catton's the Rehearsal, Zadie Smith's essays)



The Art Deco dressing table of my dreams. I know you're out there somewhere...

What do you want for Christmas?

Darling sequin cardie

No straps, chains, studs, mesh or patent.

Not leather or leather-look.

Not even black.

In fact, not really fashion forward at all.

Simply pretty and the kind of thing I can wear at my parent's house over the holidays. After all, they do live in the land of fleeces and Uggs (Gloucestershire).

Darling cream sequin cardigan, £55

Vogue's pantomime shoots

Fashion and Christmas have a lot in common. So often in modern life, we're encouraged to be mundane (keep your head down and survive the credit crunch was the title of a recent email I got) but at Christmas, we're allowed and encouraged to indulge our theatrical, decadent side. Just think of draping your house in fairy lights, stuffing down the last truffle even though it will make you sick, and shouting out 'he's behind you!' at pantomimes. So I love, love, love the spectacular high drama of this shoot from December US Vogue:



Inspired by Hansel and Gretel, Annie Liebovitz shot Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus (visually gorgeous; wobbly plot and characters) stars Lily Cole and Andrew Garfield. Oh, and a scene-stealing Lady Gaga as one of my favourite pantomime clichés, the Wicked Witch!



I tried to explain pantomime to an American friend once. It was not successful. 'So there's this really dressed up old woman, but it's really a man, and he's trying to fix up the prince, who is really a woman, with another woman....?'



Grace Coddington revealed that her original choice for the Wicked Witch was Susan Boyle. Wouldn't Gaga and Boyle make an amazing pair of Ugly Sisters?!



One of my all-time favourite shoots is Tim Walker's 2004 pantomime themed extravaganza for British Vogue. Eighty white rabbits, twenty ballerinas, 500 outfits, seventeen mirrored geese, 250 gold ostrich eggs, a room full of umbrellas: the essential ingredients needed to depict all the gorgeous excess and caricature of pantomime.







I'm suspecting my next favourite fairy tale extravaganza will be Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, out next March. Here's the full trailer:

My best of Bust Christmas Craftacular

A two-hundred strong queue of cute girls in identikit brogues, rimmed glasses and dresses standing in the freezing cold in Bethnal Green on a Saturday morning? It must be Craftacular time. Last year, their Christmas craft sale was in St Aloysius, a much smaller venue in Euston but the number of people who love this event keep making it bigger and better. This year, the year Twitter went crazy, there was a whole lot of Twitter love for the Craftacular. Basically it had everything you need to feel Christmassy; a whole lot of wine, quirky, crafty gifts, yule log and a Tatty Devine tombola tree. Here's a few of my favourite things:

Emma Brigitte's flattering sundresses...



...and, better still, her reworked vintage jumpers. This photo, off Emma's etsy, isn't the greatest but her jumpers were soft, jewel coloured wool (I always find old jumpers softer) with a lace bib inserted into the front. Made to wear with a bright bra peeping through.



What is it with Russian dolls in the last few years? It's like they are the new owls. Sweet cushions by Caroline Dulko. She also had the coolest business cards, a Lomo camera in card!



A stall I kept returning to was House of Ismay. A nice antidote to some of the more cutesy offerings, the stall smelt amazing: all that old leather. The online shop isn't open yet, but they had mounted vintage playing cards, road map brooches and gorgeous leather bound road atlases and tiny sewing sets converted into notebooks.



The much blogged about rudey biscuits by Belgian Waffling. Exactly the kind of thing I would buy for my grandmother if she would get the joke and not see it as another symptom of my evil, STILL unmarried, London-dwelling ways.



If orange didn't clash so terribly with my dark red hair, I would have bought a Knit and Destroy by Kandy Diamond fox scarf.



Also in scarf form: rulers, paintbrushes, cupcakes and snow leopards for a really reasonable £20. That's what you'd pay in Topshop for something pretty plain, and these beauties have plenty of detail. There's also a woolly plethora of knitted jewellery, iPod cases, and coasters.



Cup of Sea had playful, super-bright acrylic jewellery. I loved their bright orange crab necklace with tiny metal shells dangling underneath; as if the crabs had clawed some of the beach away with them. Wear the weather on your finger with their ring:



There's also this beautiful, sinister Kraken style mini knuckleduster ring:



Fabric Nation had a gorgeous, bunting bedecked stall full of colour. All pieces (purses, brooches, bunting, bags) are one-offs, made from old fabric, but I particularly liked a Sixties style cat cushion, with big pink innocent closed eyes.


Image: wemakelondon.blogspot.com

Were Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks named after the Los Campesinos song? No idea, but I really, really liked Sarah Keen's quirky, interesting montages. They were well priced too, and I'm absolutely cursing myself for not buying one in a really unusual frame!



So what did I buy? I was on a tight pre Christmas budget but went home with a very lovely necklace from I Dream in Clockwork. It's a chunky U.



I also bought another Gemma Correll print. I really love this illustrator: there's so much wit in her drawings. Gemma has a graphic diary on Flickr and it's SO funny. Did I speak to her at Craftacular? Er, no. Too weird. Sometimes love is just better with a bit of distance.



This isn't the one I bought, but it's exactly how I feel sometimes. Just substitute 'kitten' for 'pug'.

Any other Craftacular recommendations? It was so busy, I must have missed lots of stalls.

My kind of cage

Never mind Blahnik's heels for the Coppola film, these are such Marie Antoinette shoes.

Lovely Chloe's, definitely more my kind of cage heel.

Overrated/underrated: Field Music & Health

One of the reasons Field Music gave for breaking up was, just like my beloved Electrelane, that nobody seemed to go to their gigs. Well, that, and they wanted to make music that wasn't so 'Field Music.' I don't know why they were so keen to get away from their signature sound; firstly, because David's side project School of Language is just like Field Music's tunes, and secondly, because they've just reformed. Here's my favourite old School of Language track, sung a bit wonkily for 6 Music.



At Primavera Sound festival in 2008, you couldn't move for international hipsters sporting Health's you will all love each other t-shirt. So much press. But this song, and video, are great.

Winners & watches

So the winner of the Lucy Lockett Loves jewellery is Laura Collins!

Congrats Laura, drop me an email and I'll get them sent out. I hope you love them!

This time of year, it's all about shopping for other people. In my case, that means buying lovely big serious hardback tomes for my bookish family and avoiding all those frivolous things that I love, and that they mock me for loving. Past examples include a knackered handheld feather fan (oh so useful in North East London..) and a brass-topped pub table, found on the street. I was doing so well until I saw this piece by Hasam el Odeh.



A watch-bracelet that already tells you you're going to be late? Highly useful in the season of too much socialising.

Bust Christmas Craftacular 09

It's Craftacular time again!



Shop for great, quirky, unusual gifts for yourself or your favourite people; bop to ladyDJs and zinesters Pamflet; get crafty with grand duchesses of knitting, Prick Your Finger; and buy more copies of top pop-culture women's mag Bust. Frankly, with Borders going out of business, I'm going to need you to buy it so they keep importing it for me.

Be there or be square.

My favourite blogs #2

I'm off to the seaside to hang with My Bloody Valentine music nerds at ATP so only a quick one today. Also, lovely Carolyn at yesterday's shoot turned me into Shirley Temple with a head full of good girl curls and, as a girl who's never managed to hold onto a curl in her life, I'm too busy admiring my hair to write a full post.



Hello Mr Fox is just gorgeous; vintage trinkets and treasures displayed by a talented photographer. I want her flat (and dresses)! Sweet, inspirational and makes me want to head to Edinburgh. I spent the week before last trawling through several markets looking for dark brown leather trunks and everything I found was over a hundred pounds; she scored hers for a few quid.





India Knight's book The Shops came out when I was working at Penguin, and I took one home to give to my mum. I had a flick through on the way home, and unfortunately Mrs Drinkwater never did find out where to pick up the perfect macarons in Paris. Her oosterous is like an extension of this book; a series of things she likes. And what things! The book list alone is pretty delectable but look at this recent find, alphabet prints from Paul Thurby.



Right, me and my curls are off to the country...

A hiding place for those angry thoughts

For my long-suffering chums, housemates, gentleman friend and indeed anyone who has ever tried to talk to me while I'm whiling away the dark evenings glued to style.com and not the X Factor....



Ray Fenwick's notepad at Lazy Oaf. Pretty cute.

Little things...

Sarah started this blog by talking about Chambord.

I bought some today and it currently comes with a gorgeous Chambord coloured nail varnish in a shade called Chambord French Martini. What a refreshing change from the free gifts that normally come with alcoholic beverages...in my experience just a glass or a tin...

What more could a girl need?

Rob Ryan does Lomo

Rob Ryan Lomo camera for Urban Outfitters.

It's like a fondant fancy that can take photos.

I hope Santa reads blogs...