Shoes – Malone Souliers. Bag – 3.1 Phillip Lim.

The trick to packing for a Staycation is not taking items of comfort, but picking bits that scare you most when packing for a regular holiday. Like colour, or patterns, or spiders. Whatever. Milk the fact that there is no 23kg allowance and the fact that your orange heels don’t need to match with at least five outfit variations. Here are some of my favourites from Avenue32.

Can we all agree that staycations are possibly the best thing since sliced bread? I mean, if all roads lead to Rome, you all know that all conversation topics lead to BEING A HERMIT, here in this establishment. We love the couch, we revere the remote, we worship the crisps. I also happen to love packing and think I may have mastered – for now – packing under duress (usually with the taxi outside). Four minutes TOPS and I’m out, and proud to have not lost a phone cable since 2013. Add this all together and it’s waking up in Notting Hill (at the Laslett – my new love – to be precise) and being pretty sure all my kidneys (and dignity) are intact, because I brought both the good champagne and the husband, from home. Yet, I can’t help but feel a tinge of excitement to see your lover (in this case London), from the other side of the bed.

The point of all this, of course, is to leave you at home, all 37-minutes-away-on-tube of it. Pack the part of the wardrobe you always longingly glance at but rarely reach into because you don’t know what the weather will be at your destination, or whether it’s versatile enough Tetris piece for your 23kg luggage limit. For me it’s colour, and while I typically only man up to pack one or, at most, two bright pieces, this time I went nuts with bits from Avenue32, who have just gone through site rehaul and the new-in’s are more scrumptious than ever. If I was going to wake up in a different post code, I figured I might as well have fun – might even adopt a gangsta walk while I’m here.

Guys, roleplay is SO underrated.

Dress – Jonathan Simkhai. Shoes – Malone Souliers.

I kid, but sometimes with all the various modes of transport I consider daily just to get from A to B within London it does feel like what a threesome might feel like: EXHAUSTING. (Or not? Tell me in the comments) (OMG PLEASE BE DESCRIPTIVE)

I don’t tend to write much about apps, not because I pride in some strict editorial integrity (heck I’ll write about adult diapers if it’s awesome), but this time I’ve quite genuinely stopped using all other taxi apps and moved onto Karhoo. So this post, effectively, is me saving myself from a week-or-so of embarrassing fan-nerding on Twitter, like I did when Deliveroo was on the rise. It’s everything you thought you need in a cab comparison app in one – pre-booking, real-time car tracking, post-trip rating, service levels, and choice from multiple cab companies – they even list taxi numbers in cities they haven’t yet launched in. Here’s three ways I use and abuse.

Top – POLO Ralph Lauren. Culottes – Zara. Suitcase – Globe Trotter. Bag – J&M Davidson.

Dress – Kalita. Heels – Gianvito Rossi. Belt. Stella McCartney

Dress – Razan Alazzouni. Blouse – Goat. Bag – Celine.

Having grown up in all the international schools Poland could throw at us, this fact I’m pretty certain of: mixed-race kids are sick of hearing other children ask ‘what are you?’ (‘a potato.’). And hence, I must offer my sincerest apologies – to my Albacore Tuna Sashimi with Jalapeno Pepper, at the newly opened Matsuhisa Paris – for asking WHAT ARE YOU AND WHY DO YOU TASTE LIKE A UNICORN. Because hot damn, guys – Peruvian and Japanese make a handsome blend.

Rewind to Paris a few Wednesdays ago, back in April. It would seem that we brought one small Samsonite on the Eurostar, as well as one order of soggy blanket of rainclouds that followed us from King’s Cross to perch at the edge of the Arc de Triomphe, which was but a stone’s throw away from the entrance of The Royal Monceau Raffles. As suspicions would have it – moments after check-in, the sky opened up over the 8^th arrondissement. Sleepily, we abandoned Paris and fell into the Philippe Starck rabbit hole, perusing the design and contemporary art, so nonchalantly hanging about and forming a sort a hypnotic, surreal landscape – a live-in gallery of sorts… then eventually retired into the comfort of our suite, and counted reflections on the panelled mirrors in the bathroom for the rest of the afternoon. Peering from our second-floor suite balcony as the rain soaked the red carpet outside, the sound of Japanese Taiko drums thundered through the hallways as guests arrived for the launch of Matsuhisa Paris.

Shoes – Ganor Dominic. Jeans – Filippa K. Bag – Cekline. Sweater – Zara.

Chef Nobu has a sort of sunny disposition about him always – perhaps a memento from his many years in Lima – he bounces in and asks everyone at our table where we are from. He has stories for each – for Janni, who lives in Monaco, his favourite restaurant in the French Mediterranean coastline; my background confuses him slightly but he ends up telling the romance around the opening of Nobu in Green Park – his first European venture. He has the unquestionable charisma of the Japanese brand, a somewhat unicorn dish himself, emphasized even more as he stands under under the Stéphane Calais – Un Jardin à la Française ceiling mural in Le Royal Monceau.

Park & Cube was a guest of Le Royal Monceau, Raffles Paris

Silk slip – Hesper Fox..

Glasses – Ray-Ban. Silk slip – Hesper Fox.

Top & Bottom – Rejina Pyo. Phone case – OtterBox. Necklace – Louis Vuitton.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away – far enough from a Starbucks (one equipped with a toilet) that warrants this rant a fairy-tale/hipster beginning – lived a girl whose name was Butter Fingers. She had the face of any ordinary girl, but possessed an extremely rare useless magical power, one that allowed her to drop everything – little or high in value – to the floor. Her fairy godmother had concluded that Darling, earth’s gravity must be a little stronger around you and had slid a card to a botox clinic before *poof*-ing off. The people in the village however, had banished her with pitchforks and selfie-sticks, to a leafy-yet-ironically-well-connected borough, after an incident at Oxford Circus station that sealed the fate, and name, of Butter Fingers.

It had been the height of rush hour, exactly five hours past the hour of noon at which the sun is at its highest – villagers retiring from a day’s work poured into the under-passage of Oxford Circus Station, all four entrances choked up to the brim. Butter Fingers had been on an excursion, one of her busier days – ending with an appointment making BLARRHGHER cupcakes and that of similar unimportance. She had shuffled along into the station with the throng, sharing in agitation with the day’s exhaustion, and joined the bottle-neck queue up to the ticket barriers. Just as she reached the double-gates and pulled out her magical oyster that grants entry, out spilled the entire contents of her bag. Keys, phones, wooden ladles, anti-bacterial gels… even the DIY cupcakes tumbled onto roadkill. Domestic/foreign coins rolled towards the escalators, and she’d lost in the Schrodinger’s cat query: Is the phone screen cracked, or intact? The station ground to a halt, and then, an uproar.

It was since that day, the villagers dubbed her Butter Fingers. Or Lube Collective, for those who remember the incident. Marinating in self-shame, she’d since thrown out all flap-less bags and stocked up on OtterBox Drop+ Protection cases, and lured a man to carry all peripherals, who she eventually married. She resorted to a life online, dedicated the rest of her life to a blog (the laptop nailed down to the desk), and lived happily ever after.

FIN.

Top – Rejina Pyo Trousers – COS.

creative direction SHINI PARK editorial assistance SIMON SCHMIDT in collaboration with OTTERBOX