Category: Fashion
Greece 2016 Part 1
Laters, Kate x
Maria Black x
There’s something special about wearing simple jewellery in the summer months when everything becomes a little less pressured and a little more precious.
Maria Black Jewellery combines beautiful lines with artistry – she wants you to wear her pieces with individuality and freedom like a single cloud on a hot day.
Ideas to embrace.
Laters, Kate x
Save the day..
When writing a post for this Blog, sometimes it’s planned – more often than not, it’s spontaneous and every now and then it’s fate. This is a fate post – with a long list of things to do this morning, none of which I’ve managed to get done, I came to my keyboard late wondering what on earth I would write. Then I opened up Heather Clawson’s post of the day from Habitually Chic and need, love and fate all collided. Heather had posted pictures of a stunning house in Spetses from an article in Architects Digest which is telling as it was only last week we were on the island. What makes it more poignant is that today is my parents 49th wedding anniversary and they are still out there…and there is nothing my mother likes better than a good nose around a house – this is for you mum – Enjoy and happy anniversary!
Laters, Kate x
Sitting room storage..
Sometimes I dabble, sometimes I dream through half-closed eyes looking at the offending room, or in this case, corner of a room wondering what trick will create the magic. The present corner in question is in the sitting room which is less hipster chic more family mess with the tv balanced on an unloved old side table, multiple plugs, leads and consoles plus a most unattractive plastic box filled with…tat. So instead of chaos I think of clever storage and chic solutions…..and it’s vintage wall units all gently glowing with decades of love and charm that focus into view.
(You can spot the offending item next to the yellow chair in the lefthand corner)
TV’s are always problematic – large, black, ugly they dominate a room. I sorted it in our cellar cinema room (aka The Underworld) by darkening the walls and designing a specially made fireplace that sneakily both hid all the cables and opened up to reveal the dvd player, set boxes as they were needed…the front has a grill that drops down for easy access but also works closed as you can change channels etc through the mesh. It’s been a revelation.
The storage needs to be practical and beautiful so the current thought is to go for a Poul Cadovius style wall unit. The appeal is the simple design and it’s flexibility – the shelves/cabinets can be arranged in any order.
I’m thinking the cabinet with sliding doors, like the one above, could sit with it’s back cunningly removed over the plugs on the wall and hide all the leads and house the dvd/etc (I refuse to get rid of my dvds..one day they’ll be like vinyl. Promise.) And then, because it’s deeper, the TV could also sit on top…even be angled.
The rest of the shelves could be then arranged above.
I think it’s a solution. Can it be a reality?
Laters, Kate x
Stunning Storets x
This is a new label for me: Storets (based in the States, but they do free shipping, even internationally for any purchases over $75) Their USP sings a happy siren song: Interesting fashion with a feminine element that won’t break the bank.
Prices are roughly $60 – $150..but they look a million dollars – like straight off a red hot catwalk with the cats licking their paws to cool them down.
The only downside is – and this could be due to the season winding down – when I looked, the only sizes available were small. Maybe that’s how they keep their prices so low..
I can only hope they expand. In more ways than one.
Laters, Kate x
Dog Wool..
Can love ever be too much or am I just too westernised? I spotted an article on DogWool on the plane on the way back from Greece – apparently there’s a little place in Brittany between Abercerac’h and the Virgin Island lighthouse that will use a traditional spinning wheel, to spin your dogs unwanted hair into balls of wool ready to knit.
Which is nothing if not honest recycling: It’s something Eskimos have done for centuries using Husky hair as the perfect property against the cold. In northern Russia they knit socks of dog wool to prevent rheumatism…
But here? Now?? Maybe my worry is that we don’t live in an extreme cold environment where fingers drop off if they’re not covered appropriately and – lets be honest – this further blurs the line between dog and owner – we already know how many morph to look like each other and now, through this they can genuinely can be a human in dogs clothing.
And what happens when your dog dies??
If this is your thing, then by all means go for it – there’s certainly a high level of skill involved…personally, I’ve never met a dog I didn’t like…sadly I can’t say the same for knitwear..Molly, you’re safe.
Laters, Kate x
So Wright..
The news around the world isn’t great at the moment. Condensed down, the underlying message I’m hearing is that big things don’t work (Didn’t we learn anything from the Romans?). And yet the drive to continually make everything bigger and supposedly better runs deep, because if you don’t…you’re a failure; The economy has to grow, companies have to grow..countries, even religions all want to expand till they become these slow moving bloated beasts that eat up everything in their way, with no joined up thinking except feeding this thirst for size and dominance. It’s a big day for Greece today. I don’t know what the right answer is..I’m not sure there is one, except maybe they should never have joined the EU in the first place. But it seems to me that things are becoming more and more about power plays than people.
Thank God for the whimsy of fashion….and the joy that is Linda V. Wright, former model and fashion editor, born in Texas but oh-so far removed from a rodeo riding stetson toting stereotype.
Now living in Paris and running her own shop, Crimson Cashmere,
She’s a lesson in graceful, chic yet expressive dressing.
Like the world’s best perfumes, she’s layered in classics all with subtle, different flavours.
(All pics from pinterest)
You want to sit down with her at a striped bistro table in a busy Parisian street and ask, is this really all possible? Can life really be this easy? This sassy?
Laters, Kate x
Special Spetses x
This is where we’ve been, so this re-cycled post seems fitting..
My connection to the island of Spetses goes back two generations when my grandparents were first offered land there to build a holiday home away from the pollution of Athens. They’d travelled to Greece from the highlands of Scotland following the depression – the story goes that my Grandfather, Robert Mackenzie, a Classics Scholar, was offered a job sweeping the floor of the EMI factory. Something went wrong with one of the machines and he fixed it..and then rose quickly through the ranks to become managing Director of EMI in Greece at a very special time: it was the cheapest place in Europe to record and make records and consequently drew talent talent from across the board from the Beatles to Maria Callas. My father was born there, although he was sent back to boarding school in the Lake District at aged five..it used to take him two days of travel by plane with a pit stop in Rome to get home, all in a converted Lancaster Bomber.
In my grandparents time, this house was the inspiration for John Fowles’s book, The Magus – he taught English at the once famous school (now a conference centre) on the island, said to be the Greek equivalent of Eton, he would walk all over the island in the quiet of the winter months in search of solitude and ideas. The house was owned by an eccentric millionaire and was then (before the great fire: another story) hidden from view by layers of huge pine trees. As a child, I went there for tea with my Grandmother to be shown faberge eggs and ancient seals. I don’t remember it, but I do remember the millionaire ended up in jail for forging an ancient land deed..with a biro.
Just down the valley is the bay where my parent’s house is…virtually unchanged. This picture is taken from the balcony of my sister’s parents-in-law’s house….Greece lies deep within the family blood and it’s special to have a proper Greek family that has linked the time and generations together.
My sister’s In-law’s house is next door to Madame Pourri’s on the hill – she’ll be ninety this year and is still going strong with a swim every day…….she was evacuated on the same boat with my grandmother and my father as a small child when the Germans invaded in the Second World War…first to Egypt, then eventually to South Africa.
They spoilt us with a treat normally reserved for Easter…roast lamb..my absolute favourite!
Bella and Charlie are now the third generation to enjoy this special place and it’s unique atmosphere, where even walking on water is possible…
Spetses is famous for it’s pine tress, crystal clear waters and the coloured stones on the beaches: yellow, green, pink..each one a gem.
It’s very much an Athenian resort island with a siren call to all the big yachts of the Mediterranean and a play ground for the super rich….but always over seen by Laskarina Bouboulina…an incredible lady with seven children from Spetses who became an General of the Greek fleet and an Admiral of Russia and led the Greek navy in the battle of independence against the Turks….Greece will always be a land of beauty, mystery and contradictions where anything..absolutely anything is possible…
Leaving, as we arrived on a speed boat – we were all sad to go, but we had another adventure ahead of us..to the island of Lefkada…and we’ll be back….it’s only au revoir..
Laters, Kate x
Dolphins!!
This is a post from a while back..but I like the photos..
Laters, Kate x
Assemble x
Say what you like about the Turner Prize, but this year’s winners just make your heart sing: Assemble are a London-based collective who work across the fields of art, design and architecture to create projects in tandem with communities who use and inhabit them.
Their idea is to celebrate an areas value in terms of architecture and cultural heritage, but to also support public involvement with partnership, local training, employment opportunities, resourcefulness and a DIY spirit. Which is exactly what they did with Granby Four Streets, a group of terraced houses in Toxteth, Liverpool. Originally built around 1900 to house artisan workers, the houses have had a rocky life – it’s taken the local residents ten years of fighting to save them from demolition, but now they’ve cleaned them up, organised a thriving monthly market, created a community and looked to Assemble for a little extra help.
Welcome to the Granby Workshop, a new social enterprise that manufactures handmade products for homes to sell. Their first range of products are designed to refurbish houses – the sort of stuff that was ripped and stripped out of the original houses when they were boarded up by the council.
Like lights cast using brick and rubble waste from the site.
They say ‘Our products are all are manufactured using processes which embrace chance, so that each is unique, developing in the hands of the people that make them’.
The profits will then go to support a programme engaging young people aged 13 to 18 in creative, practical projects.
It’s starting now – you can see what’s in the shop and place pre-orders (I have) for their first edition products which will support the launch of the business and the ongoing rebuilding of the area. If ordered before Christmas, you’ll receive a beautiful print by the artist Marie Jacofey. Each print will depict the product you’ve ordered whilst you wait for yours to be made..great design, a first-edition-part-of-the-Turner-Prize, with heartfelt spirit and all in the best cause…it really has to be the perfect gift. I sigh.
Laters, Kate x
Maison Bentley Style 