Leather ‘Ryder’ bag – JOSEPH

Dress – JOSEPH. Shoes – Celine.

‘Ryder’ Bowling Bag – JOSEPH

Hand-dyed Shibori workshop at MiH Jeans HQ + a chance to win a piece from the collection!

Endless ways to create patterns

Clothes-pegs create little white squares on the pattern

The dye appears green before oxidizing into the deep blue

Hand-dyed Shibori workshops at MiH Jeans HQ

We’ve all done this before – more commonly known as the tie-dye, even more commonly known as the shaming of a perfectly fine pair of jeans by way of a handful of rubber bands and household bleach. Let’s be honest, this was way before the time of Dr Internet, nobody knew how long you were meant to keep the jeans in the bucket for – all I remember was that mine always turned out looking as if I sat on a freshly-painted park bench, or took a very restless hobo-nap on one. Shibori on the other hand, is a fascinating alternative form of tie-dying, an ancient Japanese cloth-dyeing technique that mostly involves the colour indigo and techniques such as folding, stitching and twisting fabric, using bamboo sticks, ropes and marbles.

MiH Jeans recently hosted a couple Shibori workshops at their HQ in Hammersmith, led by LA artist Niki Livingston, and on attending one I fell in love with the set-up (“OMG, I dye”, to borrow words from Rachel Zoe) + art/science behind it all, I decided to team up with MiH Jeans to gift TWO lucky folk the chance to win a piece from the collection. Let me iterate, there are only 20 pieces available in each design and every single piece was hand-dyed by Niki herself, which took approximately about a bazillion hours (don’t quote me on this) given the complexity of the technique. Seriously exclusive. My personal favourite is the dotty Oversize shirt, reminds me of all the marbles I lost over the years…

#LetsGoIndigo

How to enter: Easy peasy – either Instagram an image of your indigo inspiration (think anything blue), tag @MiHJeans and include #letsgoindigo. Or enter via Pinterest by re-pinning your favourite image from our Let’s Go Indigo board. Check here for full terms & conditions.

Good luck!

Hotel Amour

‘Astralis’ exhibit at Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton

Børre Sæthre – Untitled (Arches of Solaris)

Jean-luc Favero – Stag-Transformed

Chloe Piene – Untitled (CB)

Dome-Vanity by Charley Case

Four Angels by Siobhan Hapaska

Damien Deroubaix – Astralis; Life; Death; South of Heaven; Time; Messaiah

Myriam Mechita

Art Oriente Objet – Not Yet

Rina Banerjee – A Mad Woman

Instagram @parkncube

Cape – LV. Jeans – MiH Jeans. Heels – Kurt Geiger. Bag – LV Sophia Coppola. Luggage – LV. Watch – Daniel Wellington. Rings – Monica Vinader.

Paris and I got along famously as we reunited under the blessing of Louis Vuitton for a 24-hour-long fling in the middle of February, which was in fact a mere 2 days before the beginning of London Fashion Week and naturally a perfect escape before the hurdle. We arrived late morning to celebrate LV’s latest artist collaboration that once again brings the street onto silk – this time with Andre B and his beloved Mr A character (who I’m sure Parisians will have seen spray-sketched in many crevices around the city), tagged in zingy pink on a massive, soft shawl (more pics of this later).We set up camp in Hotel Amour – owned also by Andre (alongside the Le Baron clubs for those still unfamiliar), counted the number of explicit photos that were hanging in each of our rooms (three in mine, enough to get this old lady excited) and waited for dinner with the man himself.

Speaking of escape, I had a couple hours to burn before dinner and decided it was good a time as any to visit the Espace Culturel atop the LV flagship store on Champs Élysées. I don’t always have good ideas, so this one gets a special mention, because it’s definitely a must-go when in Paris. The current exhibit, ‘Astralis’ (available until May 11), brings together twelve artists that explore concepts behind celestial, elusive, and otherworldly themes prompting visitors to temporarily escape from their minds/bodies. Even numpties like me will understand and appreciate the curation, which – I won’t lie – is occasionally chilling/creepy. But then again I find the lack of nutella in the pantry chilling/creepy, so.

Many thanks to LV for the short but sweet journey.

Floral jacket – ZARA, Shirt – Motel Rocks Wallflower shirt, Jeans – MiH Jeans, Shoes – Chloe Sevigny x Opening Ceremony, Bag – Cambridge Satchel Company via Mybag, Downvest – Uniqlo, Down jacket – UC of Benetton

I’ve just managed to extract myself from a corner where I’ve been ironing shirts for the past goodness-knows-how-long hours, the least I can say is that the sun was up when I started and now it’s fizzled away into matte charcoal – at least now with the low light the hubby won’t be able to spot the ‘SOS‘ I’ve written with blade-sharp creases under the arms until much later. My new mission is now to starve him so his shirts collection does not collectively equal a football stadium in fabric acre and we won’t have to spend our entire savings on electricity bills owed mostly to ironing. Yes, this has nothing to do with the outfit – I just had to ramble somewhere,  hopefully during his toilet break at work he will spot the SOS  while passing a mirror and in the same hour also read this post while sipping economist coffee. I love you! I promise!