Every morning for the past couple of weeks, a sliver of  crisp air has been seeping into the bedroom through the slits of our single-glazed windows and chilling the room down to a temperature in which a leftover casserole dish could safely sit in for about a week or so before being deemed inedible. Inside the duvet and out is the difference of Northern/Southern Hemispheres. This can only mean one thing: Autumn is here. And that we should probably replace the draught-prevention stickers for the windows… and we also e-mail the landlady to complain why the house is still balls-cold with the heating on. So three things.

The streets are laden with men and women of varying stages of confusion: those shuffling by in full Day After Tomorrow get-up in duffle coats and pickaxes, and then the skeptical few with a very cold-looking set of toes peeking out of yesterday’s ‘heatwave’ sandals. Alas, we are Londoners, it’s simply too impolite to the day’s general schedule to go back and change. So we charge on, trench foot galore. A general aroma (or shall I say ‘fume’) of Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL) wafts through the tube system, reminding us of the impending holiday that is distinctly not-of-British-tradition (i.e American), and the one vegetable we do not bother eating any other time of the year. A bit like how we consider turkey a dry, inferior chicken, every other time than Christmas.

Coat, Sweater, Bag, silver brogues – Coach AW15. Brogues – Hudson Shoes

Our garden has mysteriously given birth to a wagon-load of fat apples, most of which have been gnawed on by foxes or pecked out by magpies, but one day I looked out our bedroom window and thought it was a rather beautiful scene lying so closely to my highly sarcastic lifestyle, so we decided to shoot some of my favourite bits from the Coach AW15 out there.

Coat – H&M. Jeans – DIY slashed Supertrash. Loafers – Hudson. Bag – Couronne. Sweater – Topshop Cardigan worn backwards. Bar bracelet – Zara. Watch – Larsson & Jennings. Tiger bracelet – Kenzo. Rings – Monica Vinader.

I have but moments before the car arrives to take me and one embarrassingly large piece of luggage to Heathrow – Seoul, here I come, start heating up the food. I’m putting this up right before I run out because, if I know my mother correctly, she will compose a short but powerful message on Whatsapp reading something along the lines of those broken jeans in your blog better not be coming with you to Seoul and this time I can be all aw but I’m already in the car. No. Don’t worry ma, I’m fully anticipating to go up a dress size or even two on this trip, I’ve basically packed fifty variations of sweatpants. (엄마 청바지 꼬메지 말아쥬쎄요ㅠ) Plus, after road-testing the jeans in London and finding out getting a sore throat thanks to cold wind through the knee-holes is the very definition of irony, I’ve decided to leave it out of the packing.

On a side note, I know I’ve put this up on Facebook already but I’d really love to get some recommendations of places in Seoul – I’ve never lived there properly and the only places I know are basically the Big Ben equivalents so please do help this hipster out if you can.

Grüezi aus Zürich! (Gear up for the mother of all long posts!)

Make My Switzerland app, available on Android and iPhone

Can you believe how clear the water is?!

Viadukt, ze ‘hip’ corner, North-West Zurich

Frau Gerolds Garten and the Freitag tower

Züri Fäscht

Top – Amber Sakai. Shorts – Thierry Colson. Bag – JinYoo103684. Shoes – H by Hudson. Bar necklace – Kirsten Goss Urban Edge.

The first time I was in Zürich I was back in uni, on a layover home from London to Warsaw during the winter holidays – I arrived in the night, watched the first snow fall, and left at dawn. Hey, I was 21 and practically wearing a diaper, what did I know about efficiency? It’s the age when you turn a 2.5h flight into a 10h one (commonly known now as the Ryanair logic) and still call it an adventure. I locked my luggage at the airport and took a train into the city with just a DSLR, which turned out was missing the memory card. A good friend took me around town at midnight and the city was completely empty and quiet. It was so beautiful. Nothing was recorded, and in the morning I packed up the unused camera and took the first plane out.

Now, I have no idea who found out about that trip, because my second visit was precisely the opposite and fulfilling everything that was missing from the first. As a guest of the Swiss Tourism board, I was invited to the city of Zürich to test out the Make My Switzerland app ahead of its launch. It was July, we boarded a Swiss flight on a midsummer morning, blasting with air conditioning and oozing with general Swiss efficiency. It was the height of the Züri Fäscht, a festival that happens every three years, reportedly attracting 2 million visitors from around Europe (Zürich itself only has a population of 1.83 million, mind). My camera was appropriately equipped, as I’m sure you can see, with even a spare card and battery in my back pocket. Clifford Lilley, one of the ambassadors for the app and one firework of a character, took me around ze ‘hip’ areas of town (Viadukt/Frau Gerolds Garten) on rented bicycles, which also turns out to be the best way to travel within the city. Later I attempted to see the Old Town in daylight with my favourite style crusader, Jen and Fred, and ended up spending most of the afternoon repeatedly getting separated and looking for each other in the crowd. Eventually we gave up and resorted to one of their favourite past-times as locals: a dip in the canal, which is pretty much like swimming in a bottle of Evian (straight out of the fridge, brr!). If you’re anything like me and enjoy seeing cities with a bit of peace and quiet, visit Zürich any time of the year, except the three days during Zuri Fäscht. (Also ideal if you do plan on using the app) But if you’re looking to be a part of the greatest summer celebration, with the biggest fireworks and the most civilized (?) festival etiquette I’ve experienced in my life, then book your tickets now for 2016.

A big thank you to the Swiss Tourism Board for the hospitality!

Floral print-cami – Topshop. Sunglasses – Celine. Flower garland – Topshop

Hat + Dress – Topshop

Top – Topshop, Skirt – Kenzo. Clutch – Kurt Geiger

Look 1 (Crop-top): Linen crop-tee, Coulottes – Topshop. Rope belt – DIY. Bracelet – Saught.

Look 2 (Floral patchwork Dress):   Dress, straw boater hat – Topshop. Bag – Bottega Veneta. Heels – Zara.

Look 3 (Maxi-skirt):  Printed strappy-cami – Topshop. Basket-weave skirt, Tiger bracelet – c/o Kenzo. Clutch – Kurt Geiger. Loafers – Hudson. Leather bracelet – COS

The classic British Summer is here – hot, muggy, air-just-shy-of-armpit-consistency, one cloud away from November degrees. I’m not complaining though, at least not on Thursdays and Fridays. See, I’m trying out a new career path where I now professionally complain part-time and the rest of the week I focus on freelance weather forecasting, because apparently in this country you don’t need a particular degree to read the weather. Here’s the secret: a rusty slot machine at the BBC does the job for you – the reels groan a bit and a series of icons forecast the weather. Today I played with a few pieces from the new Topshop Reclaim to Wear collection, in which disregarded prints from the previous seasons got upcycled into airy, summery pieces. The slots pooped out a perfect weather for this: Fog – Cloud- Sun, 28 degrees, humidity 2,000%; there also may or may not have been a Tsunami looming but unsure as the icon for it is a Bucket of Water. They’ve been using the machine since the 70’s after every single barometer/thermometer in the country quit and left for Spain. I’ll leave for Spain sooner or later, I predict.

Thank you Charlie for helping with the shots!