Yardsale Venue: Mulholland Drive vintage store

Joanna of the Style Digger

Ryfka of Szafa Sztywniary

Kasia of Plenty of Hangers and Weronika of Raspberry and Red

£4 hat that refused to fit my 4km circumference head.

Sweater – Monnari, Dress – MNG, Shoes – River Island, Belt – JHYoo, Floral Bag – Courtesy of Catherine Membre

Easter Bunny Sale (Blogger Yard Sale) Krakow; 26th April 2011

When I was in highschool I routinely took an early train down to Krakow to spend the day rediscovering the Auschwitz concentration camp – I’d go every season, back then SS/AW referred to the two-and-a-half hour trainride South – I guess the Holocaust votary in me wanted to experience the camp in all possible weather conditions at the very least. So Krakow only really meant that one thing to me, and I don’t think I’d ever

given it a proper chance to flaunt its beauty as a city. So on Tuesday I woke up at a dead hour (dead to me at least, 7am is midnight for pete’s sake) (who’s pete?) and scrambled on a train to visit the Polish blogger’s Yard Sale. The ‘yard’ was three floors up in an empty vintage store called Mulholland Drive and Joanna, Kasia, Ryfka and Weronika’s undesireds were hanging around the store and quickly became someone else’s desireds. I myself picked up a few things at delicious prices of £2 and that general neighbourhood, including an oversized ‘fat kid’ sweater, summer dresses and some leopard action; and after a burger lunch with the girls promptly loaded my loot on an evening train and back home I was, like nothing happened.

Jacket – Monnari, Blouse – Make Lemonade Vintage, DIY Cropped jeans – Zara, Wedges – Velvet Angel via Shopbop, Bag – Vintage

Currently suppressing the urge to take the laptop into the bed and acquaint myself of the art of endurance, but I fear it’ll be like man in stripclub, with wife. I’d forgotten Fashion Week is five days of tightrope-walking, the dismount both pleasing and excruciating and the only applause is from the shoes, sarcastic…slow…claps. They know they’re too damn expensive to THROW IN A BURNING OIL TANK. I will now buy cheaper shoes that can shred my feet and then I’ll express wrath by setting fire to them. Yeah, that sounds like good logic.

Day one was a good start, the wind tasted like winter but there were sunny spells that just lit up the courtyard like an incubator and then the colourful birds started hatching. Don’t you love it how all throughout the year magazines report the latest trend yet during fashion week no one really wears trend? It might just be London, but I didn’t see a herd of sheep(skin jackets) nor a pack of camel(coats) entering the show tent. Best thing about LFW: Overdosing on coffee with the girls and bumming around the courtyard, high on one caffeine cocktail or another, making new friends and shooting* old ones.

*Lined up against a wall, or sometimes just while they talk… candid is best, really.

Thank you Joseph Piper for taking my outfit shots!

Jill and I are covering London Fashion Week for Next this season, check out the Next blog for more coverage!

Jacket – Monnari, Bag – Vintage, Shoes – Zara, Shorts – Topshop, Top – Lace body DIY, Bracelet – COS

Zachęta National Gallery of Art; Jan Lebenstein collection; Thank you Andrzej for the shots

What I love about the Polish is that they never like to beat around the bushes. Have I taken up a new gardening interest – no, not in a million years would I gain the ability to keep a plant alive for more than a week – I mean it in the way they seem to be able to nonchalantly spit out their most honest of opinions. Meet interesting specimen no.2: Andrzej (above in the dashing white jacket) is a freelance journalist who I’d first met last London Fashion Week standing in line behind me for one of the shows (previously did an interview with him here). We were walking in Old Town the other day and I was completely yanked off guard when he casually commented that my face is round. I know, dearest Asian readers especially, I had to stoop down to pick up my own jaw. Later I realized that he didn’t mean to jab at a complex, so I’m sorry for that slap and flying side kick; did you find that tooth?, but only to comment on how round faces are grossly underappreciated in the industry. To top it off he sent me a link of an article he wrote for Lula.pl last November about round faces, entitled ‘Pretty as a Doll’. Ah well, then I just had to forgive him.

Also, insert another priceless facial expression on finding out he’s about 10 years younger than I thought he was, my age-o-meter needs serious inspection these days it seems.

First photo by Gabriella
Shirt – Jackpot, Pants – Zara, Shoes – Monnari, Bag – Vintage, Necklace – Gmarket

On my last day in Kraków I had a chance to meet up with Gabriella from Street Fashion in Kraków, such a sweetheart. We drank lemonade at an atmospheric cafe on Bracka street. The cafe had seats outside that looked like school tables where customers would sit alongside eachother and watch the passerbys, kinda like first row fashion show seats, and I’m thinking that’s how Gabi chooses her streetstyle prey.

The Kraków trip was a breath of fresh air; my favourite was the fact that the modern youth culture was completely embedded in the historical bits of the city, so you’d easily find a nightclub in a Polish townhouse of the 1500’s. Café’s are marrrveloos as well, they have this natural vintage den-like atmosphere that you can’t possibly create out of scratch, oh how delicious.

You know this was coming: YOU NEED TO VISIT KRAKOW. Capitals and all.

Tee Lego by Paul Smith | Pants Zara | Shoes Monnari

We’re planning to go to Southern Turkey, Belek in a few days so I’ve been constantly shopping for beachwear. To tell the truth, this is the first time we’re going to on a proper beach holiday – we’re more of a city-touring folk, well at least my mother and I are, the smarter half of the family. Pffffff, lying on a piece of cloth wearing a few pieces of cloth by a mass of water, nonsense! No, we need to go into the city, the huddle buddle and the dirt that we’re meant to have vacated from, look at buildings (because we don’t have buildings where we come from), walk until our feet look like elbows, and all the while looking like idiots trying to blend in. Fact is, the ‘trying to blend in’ never works – three things that only tourists do: 1.Carry a map of the area in a different language, 2.FIGHT WITH YOUR TRAVEL COMPANION over that map, and 3. wear your camera across-body. Sometimes we will even consider eating in McDonalds or Burger King. Hey, it’s in the tourbook, try out the local food: FRENCH McPOISSON BURGER.

So my point is, I think my father and brother have a point when they stress for a holiday on the beachside, although I do fear my mother and I will go on a quest to find out when the hotel was built and can we please have a map of this area in Korean please. Do you also sell plaster models of the Mediterannean sea that I may purchase?

Anyone else who’s been to Belek and might have something for me to get excited about? Like, do the fish spring out from sea and sacrifice themselves on our dish? Something like that please.