creative direction SHINI PARK photography assistance SIMON SCHMIDT in collaboration with ROGER & GALLET

Coat – Toni Maticevski

I am a negligent father-figure when it comes to my skin on this blog. I can finally admit that. Ten months ago I promised to take you on an adventure, teach you how to make fire, and finally tell you how I KO’d Eczema. I know that I came to you, time and time again, saying Heeeey buddy, something came up. The truth is, I didn’t really bust Eczema, we’re still scratching at eachother.

The problem is, that I don’t have a skincare ritual to speak of. It’s hard when your canvas changes every other week – sometimes it’s suspiciously glossy, moist skin, sometimes it’s like sandpaper. Have you ever applying foundation on sandpaper? It’s like applying Nutella on a section of the beach. No joke.

What helps for me is deep breaths*, sun, and water. And at the fear of sounding like a dirty hippie, I also like to curse like a sailor at a patch of dry skin when I think no one is watching. (If I hurt its feelings, maybe it’ll pack up and leave one day is my logic there) A good sweat regularly and layering skincare are best.

This brings us to my current beauty obsession, the new four-step ritual by Roger & Gallet: Le Soin Aura Mirabilis. Based on a natural remedy created 300 years ago by the French monks, called Aqua Mirabilis, frequented by Emperors and empresses of the time, the range boasts a formula comprised of 18 distilled plants.

Here are the four simple steps, just layer like you always would. And tell me I won some daddy brownie points, for the time being, at least.

**You’d be surprised at how ten deep breaths can change EVERYTHING. More on this later.

Dress – Toni Maticevski. Basket – Chloe

While this story is in collaboration with Roger & Gallet, all products have been personally tested and tried before the partnership for the sake of integrity. I still use the proudcts every day!

I had one pair of leather trousers as a teenager. Contraband, of course. (And as genuine leather as your mum’s cast-iron skillet.) A true tiger-mother presumably would never condone her spawn to be exposed to any a lifestyle that might hint at the need of 1) weather-proof garb for helmetless fast-driving, 2) electric guitar(s), and 3) 1978 John Travolta. Tell me about it, stud. The noise it made when I walked in those trousers was not dissimilar to a packet of crisps dipped into car wax, and let’s say it was permeable as, well, your mum’s cast-iron skillet.

The secret to this item of rebellion was however, not the prospect of future-killing, homework-undoing and tramp-a-making. It was simply a teenage ploy for attention, because the first thing my mother would say is: How the damn do you wash these trousers? And you’d revel at the image of your very mother dabbing at your cheap (plastic) leather with anti-bacterial wipes in the name of laundry. REBELLION.

Because let’s be honest, good leather is like performance arts. It plants balls in your hipster panties, and gives moves like Jagger. Good leather like Calvin Klein Jeans’ Rebel Edge capsule collection, in which walking sounds nothing like squeaky crisps, but a Toyota Prius. (That shit be silent, and buttery.) This rebellion is against your goody-two-shoes self – Eat dessert first, write your to-do list on a banana peel; stand on the left, walk on the right, get yelled at, yell back. See? Good leather is a keeper.

Calvin Klein Jeans Rebel Edge capsule, available at the Regent Street store and MyTheresa.com

Jacket – Calvin Klein Jeans Rebel Edge capsule. Trousers & hoodie – Calvin Klein Jeans. Boots – Acne Studios

All – Calvin Klein Jeans Rebel Edge capsule

Shirt – COS mens. Skirt – Topshop. Boots – Russell & Bromley ‘Outlander’. Sunnies – Blyszak

Puffer coat – WAVEN. Turtleneck – Uniqlo. Boots – Russell & Bromley.

I’ve always lived close to children. Well, doesn’t this sound wrong, let me start this sentence again.

London is littered with schools everywhere, and one cannot avoid living away from a school unless one owns a farm or lives inside a Sainsbury’s car park. In all of my seven apartments in the past ten years, our windows would immediately face onto nursery school playgrounds (which at any given time resemble a Ryanair plane-full of devil babies), ‘meet-me-by-the-bike-sheds’ bike sheds, and music rooms inhabited – every Mondays and Wednesdays – by not-very-musically-gifted sixth form kids. The noise was unbearable at first, but funnily after a while it became white noise that I needed in order to get about my day.

Now, hearing kids spilling out of the 336 bus, rumbling on about homework and Snapchat at 8:05AM is my cue for that first cup of coffee, and the school chime (in England there are no bells to be saved by apparently) is my green light for a cheeky mid-afternoon snack. This borrowed Back to School routine has never been more reassuring post-fashion month (DECADE, I swear). Here’s a digital spritz of L’Eau de Box of Crayons and some primary colours by way of Russell & Bromley Autumn picks to lure them kids into throwing a Haribo or two into our office windows.