Haven't posted for ages. I blame a weekend in Exeter and a snowstorm. Plus the minute (HAH) factor that my heating broke and it's difficult to type while wearing gloves. And shivering.
Anyway, have escaped to a relative's house and am happily applying for jobs and catching up on emails while everyone else is braving the cold. Jealousy-inducing fact for you: I'm currently wearing a quilt. Yay.
Snow makes everything pretty. It's even prettier when you're sitting inside.
This is the phrase that saluted me from the automatically generated email that hailed my sign-up to Asos’ new venture, Asos Marketplace. It’s a development that allows fledgling fashion traders and designers (along with the more established) an opportunity to have their wares sold under the Asos brand, thus giving them a hell of a lot more attention from consumers and a far wider automatic audience than they’d have gotten alone.
You have to apply to Asos for a boutique, and if selected you will be able to customise this boutique to your brand’s preferences. Your boutique will be neatly shelved in one of four sections; multi-brand, independent labels, vintage, and emerging designer. There’s also a blog and a friendly community style ethos, similar to the Asos Life section which can be found on the main site. It feeds off that current buzz surrounding fashion blogging and the aforementioned ‘democracy’ of the consumer posting their opinions online and garnering interest in said comments.
The boutique section is only a section of Asos Marketplace, your average ebay-style bedroom vendor is also welcome to sell their old clothing on a slightly separate section of the site. There’s one catch though – you must photograph your clothes on real-life folk in street-style photoshoots. Their motto for this? ‘If it’s worth selling, it’s worth styling’. Fair enough, I suppose, but it does promote that mentality that you are selling a look or a style rather than a specific item. Ebayers buy into this mentality, which is why so many second-rate clothes are sold for increased prices under the false ‘vintage’ label that many sellers have ascertained will substantially hike up their profits.
To try to put it succinctly, I love second-hand and vintage but hate ebay; it's far too fickle for my liking and the sellers are mostly hawkers selling non-vintage items at vintage prices. I think a lot of people have fallen out of love with ebay since its inception but have yet to find a site that has been able to compete with the monopolic (this adjective derives from ‘monopoly’ and yes I did make it up) giant, partly due to their inability to research effectively and partly because ebay is massive and has the resources to keep up expensive advertising campaigns that enable it to price other competitors out of the market. (Oh, so that's what monopolic means). Asos, being one of the biggest success stories of the dot.com revolution clearly has the manpower to combat ebay, along with fashion credentials that means in the ‘pre-loved’ (I didn’t make that one up, that’s actually what people have euphemistically started labelling second-hand objects) clothing industry, it is able to win the war against ebay, and not just the battle.
(Read the Asos Manifesto for all the details, from Asos' point of view.)
Anyway, enough whining, I’m as fooled by the ‘all fur coat, no knickers’ mentality as much as the rest of the fashion pack. I’ve scoured the site for my favourite items, and this is them:
Not really. The post looked crap without a picture so thought I'd put a random hipstamatic up.
While I'm on a music related post....my mother's boyfriend informed me yesterday that he once went to a party at Bonnie Tyler's house. No way? Yes way.
As previously mentioned, Lanvin ♥ H&M is going on sale in the USA tomorrow and in the UK on Tuesday. Unfortunately for me the nearest H&M store selling the collection is Birmingham, which sucks for my wardrobe but is brilliant for my bank account. I'm just going to have to lust over the items online and watch this promotional video for what might be the 23rd time.
I love it, it's like a Parisian film noir version of The Shining. With an improved costume department. And an incongruous abundance of sunglasses.
Which I would really like to own.
Even though it's winter.
And people who wear sunglasses in winter are kooks.
Well, maybe we can all make an exception for these sunglasses.
Also, please will somebody get me this dress?
Yes I could get it myself online but I can't be bothered to go through the rigmarole of a crashing server and erratically clicking refresh, REFRESH, REFRESH.
Plus I've lost my cash card again....
Cue gratuitous picture of Lanvin ♥ H&M dresses as a distraction from my general crapness with possessions : )
I was going to post about how excited I am about the Lanvin ♥ H&M collection which hits the shops on Saturday. Or Lahnvahhhhhn according to Elle Magazine's Joe Zee (you might recognise him from that stellar reality TV show The City).
But then my mother came home from a day out at a Swansea hotel for some posh event (yeah I know, posh + Swansea is about as oxymoronic as Cheryl Cole + talented singer) and told me that she had just been in the same room as Bonnie Tyler. Cue me shrieking (once) and then wondering what in the name of shoulder pads is Bonnie Tyler doing in Swansea?
Well, apparently she’s from there and she lives there. Everything makes sense to me now. I’ve always had a soft spot for Bonnie but had refrained from admitting this too much because I’d already filled up my guilty pleasure quota with other some other naff Welsh legends. This Welshness was important because then I could kid myself that listening to Tom Jones was part of my cultural heritage and was actually very necessary if I wanted to stay true to my roots.
But now everything has changed and I can embrace Bonnie Tyler on a daily basis, something I used to have to limit only to when drunk (Bonnie is the best when you're drunk). This new found expression of love isn't just because she’s Welsh, but because earlier on today she apparently walked into that aforementioned hotel bar in Swansea and declared:
‘It’s like being in Sex And The City in here, isn’t iiiiiit?’
Which is as about as brilliant as this song:
The misspelt lyrics and general crapness of this video adds to the classic naffness that is Bonnie Tyler. Plus Sony won't let me embed the official video. If anyone wants to join me in stalking Bonnie in Swansea, let me know. xoxo fellow Bonnie fans.
Stewart Lee eloquently explaining what I didn't even realise I had been thinking. I especially agree with him on the pressure in society to conform to capitalist principles - currently feeling this a lot. Especially the onus to GET A JOB! ANY JOB! NOW!
