If you too, for a large part of 2007 and maybe even a slice of 2008, spent most of your waking hours lusting after a canvas tote bag, then come in for a cuddle. We did it, comrade, we started the efficiency revolution! A canvas tote bag wasn’t just a canvas tote bag – it was a political statement (I had one that said ‘Puppies not Politics’), an inflatable magic pocket, a bottomless Mary Poppins/Hermione’s handbag that had undergone an Undetectable Extension Charm. There were months when I exclusively carried a tote bag, keys and coins jangling under various half-eaten Pret sandwiches, amongst acrylic paint tubes I picked up at the Uni shop. As a ‘flaneur’, it was a must-have item, because the point of it was that it collected evidence of an entire day’s worth of curiosity (knick-knacks).

Fast forward a decade, bag trends have come and gone, all the shapes and sizes. I now mysteriously have enough canvas tote bags to make soup from, but it still stands that none of my bags have proved as practical. I mean, have you tried shoving an aubergine into an Olympia Le Tan book clutch? (Actually, don’t say that on a date.) Enter Smythson, whose pale blue featherweight notebooks I have time and time again poured my heart, ideas and indecipherable scribbles onto, with the new Kingly Tote. The new butter-soft leather bag is an embodiment of their delicate yet resilient stationery, which comes in black or the legendary Nile Blue of the brand’s shopping bags. Stop, drop and roll it up, stick a loaf of bread in there next to your gym clothes (microwave pizza for me), whip it out when the airline nags your about excess luggage weight. Viva la revolucion!

Top – Jaeha. Skirt – Celine

Coat – Joseph. Shoes – Yuul Yie

Coat – Emma Charles. Shoes – Yuul Yie

Dress – Exhibit. Trousers – Joseph. Tote – Smythson Kingly. Heels – Celine.

Top – Finery. Leather trousers – YearOne- (Similar)

Market smarts

Layer a bunch of anemones on top of a freshly baked bread loaf from Pavilion, and finish with a light sprinkling of change. Bacon butty optional.

Tablet – Lenovo Yoga. Envelope pouch – Smythson. Heels – Bally. Headphones – Bower Wilkins.

London Fashion Week SS15: A visual diary

Hyundai i20

Hunter SS15

Charlie May SS15 eyewear

Mary Katrantzou final walk

Max Factor Skin Illuminator Foundation & Colour Corrector Stick

Topshop Unique SS15

Topshop Unique SS15

Food on instagram because proper photos on DSLR? Ain’t nobody got time fo that.

Wearing: Top – COS. Trousers – Zara. Bag – Marni. Shoes – Tibi. Watch – Larsson & Jennings. Rings – Monica Vinader. Cross-Ring – Elizabeth & James (via REVOLVE)

What do they say – Give a woman a house, she’ll make a home? Well, give a woman a Hyundai i20 over Fashion Week, and she’ll make a Death Star on four wheels and one 22-year old driver very, very uncomfortable. This, like many things in life – including adding soy sauce to everything – I blame my mother. Growing up, mornings were a battle of which sibling can out-stupid the other one, starting with putting shoes on before trousers, smearing toothpaste all over our faces and pretending to shave… you get the gist. This led to my poor mother having to shovel us into the car every morning along with 2 x cereal bowls, school outfits, homework, toothbrushes… (at one point I believe there was a pillow fort in the car), and she’d drive with one hand while the other ‘conditioned the air’. Fast forward to SS15 LFW, I inhale a plastic container of scrambled eggs in the car while deciding on an outfit, and with each day a new pile of clothing spilling out the passenger door. At the end of Day One I attend a makeup session at the Apartment with Max Factor discovering the new Skin Luminizer Foundation, and from that point on I use the tinted passenger window to accomplish the ‘dewy look’ in the ensuing mornings, just how Caroline Barnes instructed. My 22-year old driver awkwardly avoids using the rear-view mirror (apparently a touch worse than drink-driving) during my changing room sessions, but we somehow manage to make a split-second eye-contact just when my head is halfway through a sweater. Thankfully this Death Star is all about efficiency (close that hatch…) as we slice through morning traffic, and I arrive at the first show of the day with a Aquafresh breath and lotion behind my ears.

Stay tuned for some of my favourite collections so far!

Huge thanks to Hyundai UK for, gee wow, a car with my logo on it (!), and allowing ‘5 more minutes, mum…’ to happen. Please forgive me for any coco puffs found between the seats.