Forte Village Resort, Sardinia; Part 2

Dress – Zara. Hat – Claire’s

Gordon Ramsey’s

White lace dress, Lace inset (blue/yellow) dress  – MGSM. Bag, floral dress (green & pink)- RED Valentino (all via Donne Concept Store at Forte Village).

The sound of rain and wind pelting against the windows on a drab Monday morning makes weaving together of this second part of my trip to Sardinia back in July a much, much easier task. Again, I don’t know what brand of hormone pills London’s been taking lately, but given its perpetual state of up, down and sometimes pickles + ice cream (i.e sun and hail within the same post code. WAHT IS DIS), I have to assume this time it’s actually three-months pregnant. Baby shower! Wait, no baby shower. Baby sun please. So do excuse me if I prefer resorting* to the ever-sunny European sibling to kick-start the week. Today I dream of Forte Village, the rustle of Oleander bushes in the mild morning breeze, bare-feet walk to breakfast, floating by way of seven sea-salt pools of the Thalassotherapy spa and rising higher with Gordon Ramsay’s exquisite dishes by the sea. Slumping back to earth completely, of course, with giddy midnight snacks on the terrace: pain au chocolats and toffee puddings stolen from breakfast. AH, would you look at this, the sun just came out here between the sheets of rain, looks like somebody’s jealous. Or craving toffee puddings. Oh heck, let it be the former.

* Resorting. Get it? get it? I am SOoohohoho funny.

A belated thank you to Forte Village Resort again for the stay. Part 1 here.

Cardigan – Massimo Dutti. Denim skirt – ASOS. Shoes – Nike x Liberty. Bag – Couronne. Top – Topshop (US). Watch – Sekonda. Necklace – Rue Gembon. Ring – Michelle Oh

This is one of those ‘where are you looking, my boobs are down here‘ tops that I own, I get very tactical with my clothes sometimes. That’s from growing up with braces and bony legs (where did that go), I guess; I had a ‘Please be my friend’ t-shirt at one point too and I’d wear it when I’d feel particularly desperate, or when all my Regina George tank-tops were in the wash. Anyhoo. This was shot just before the weather turned a corner to coldsville, in fact, it was this particular day when Kit and I huddled up under her tiny black umbrella outside the British Museum with jumbo icecreams from Baskin-Robbins. That’s what I love most about being an adult, the fact that you can choose be a kid anytime. Like yesterday I swam in the bathtub, or the day before when I wailed for half an hour in Sephora because I lost my mother near the YSL counter. But I do my own taxes, I swear.

Michelle Oh studio

Behind every giggle there’s a Michelle, we used to say, back in our Foundation Degree at CSM seven years ago. 19 year old kids, fresh out of highschool, fresh off the plane dressed in ‘uni clothes’ picked by our mothers while in diapers ready to poop crayolas for art school. Giggles were the soundtrack to our lunches on the curb near the burrito van, and none of us had yet ruled out becoming astronauts or firefighters when we grew up. I definitely was one of the few to forget that, stopped buying underwear at the Disney store, took myself too seriously during the next few years in BA, and declared Hello Kitty an arch enemy. (Not to be mistaken with the boy that snickers at penis jokes that still lives inside me) Michelle and I reconnected on our third year, which is when I first featured her work here, sophisticated yet full of character. She still had the giggle though, which was puzzling to me, and yet another three years later I visit her studio in 2013 it was still there. An hour into poking around her new studio on Mount Pleasant it hit me, DUH, that each of her pieces say exactly that: curiosity and innate playfulness. Her jewellery design aesthetic is inspired by ‘found’, everyday objects (corals, twigs…) that are cast into beautiful organic shapes. All come with a story, giggle-blessed of course, and can also be commissioned to suit your own story, style and budget. It probably didn’t help me going around the studio stupidly asking ‘is this where you cook rice for lunch‘ to a metal-treating machine to take us straight back to being the girls of 2006. Then we had a Daddy Donkey burrito for lunch on a curb for the sake of it all.

Also, always find myself jealous of how she gets to work with borderline psycho-dentist tools and Thor hammers while all I do is tweet dirty jokes from bed as a profession, like come on. The only time I get to play with tools is when a client requests the font to be changed to Comic Sans, which is when I use my own psycho dentist drilly stuff to say ‘aw hell no’ with… and it’s never often enough.

Brunch spot: Ozone

Green Sweater – COS. Jeans – James Jeans. Bag – Kurt Geiger. Leather knot bracelet – COS. Gold coral ring – Michelle Oh. Watch – Sekonda. Slingback heels – Zara. Tartan shirt – Motel Rocks. Bar necklace – Kirsten Goss Urban Edge.

While the first half of my twenties can be illustrated with cheap pleather shoes of varying glue smells and £4 Covent Garden jacket potatoes, the second half is decidedly turning out to be a compulsive, obsessive hunt for the best weekend brunch spots in town – as if life depended on pancakes. That and deleting emails like it’s a sport. Life does depend on pancakes, what am I talking about. There’s also the worshiping of coffee – as if I know what ‘good’ coffee is meant to taste like. Apparently the more it tastes like Chinese herbal medicine the better, where you cringe at the sip but nod ferociously like you know what it means… although, in my book, vending machine coffee is pretty agreeable too so I guess anything with caffeine is a winner. Ozone in Shoreditch has been our latest sweetheart spot for weekends, dedicated mainly to roasting and brewing sustainable, artisan coffee but also does a mean eggs benedict. Plus, the open kitchen also means brunch usually becomes more of a bLunch after a few ‘can I have whatever he’s making’. Despite the name that sounds like a 90’s underground club, and the exterior that doesn’t promise much of an interior, it’s definitely one of those Londoner’s secrets that hide in plain sight.

Option 1: 3 24k gold Bracelets by Bijouxbar by Vivien Frank +1 DIY Park & Cube friendship bracelet; Option 2: Peridot Twig Solitaire ring by Michelle Oh, Cocktail ring by Toosis, Silk scarf by Lucy Jay

Giveaways are a bit of a pet peeve but I like to hold one or two every year with a company/brand I really think my you might like, so meet Boticca! Otherwise I tell my doctor about it and he says I have to carry one of those syringes in my sock in case another “Do you want to hold a giveaway in your blog” email lands in my inbox and I die of anaphylactic shock. Or a purplep-ish rash… due to acute-annoyance. It’s not because I don’t want to chuck free stuff at you, I just feel like I’m asking for your souls to collect on a clipboard I’d rather be giving something nice while I’m at it. Plus, it kinda cheapens the blog and you know my blog is, like, soo expensive.