Some clothes, well in truth, few, very few, live on in my memory long after I have consigned them to a charity shop and when they come to mind I wonder what was I thinking in that misguided moment when I placed them in the to-go-pile. One such item was my Inis Meáin Knitwear cardigan with a shawl collar which I bought in London when I lived there (that’s quite a while ago – the late eighties and early nineties), it was warm, cloud-soft and comforting to wear.
Category Archives: Shops/Shopping
♥ Island Shopping: Inis Meáin Knitwear
Filed under Designers, Fashion, Shops/Shopping, Style, Travel
♥ Irish Designers Create
Yesterday evening I went to see Irish Designers Create, a celebration of the work of seventeen of the brightest young creatives in the Irish design firmament, which is on at Dublin’s Brown Thomas department store. The celebration started at yesterday’s Fashion Night Out and will run until the 18th September. There I met….
Emma Manley: The charming and gifted Emma has creativity flowing in her veins and indelibly stamped in her DNA (her Mama is a talented designer/artist). Still just in her mid twenties she has packed an enormous amount into her life thus far. She is a fashion graduate who has experience of the industry in both New York and London (in London she worked at the house of Alexander McQueen). In 2010 she set up her own label, Manley. Emma uses a mix of luxury materials (leather, chiffon and wool) to fashion sophisticated, feminine garments which are given a tougher edge by unusual fabric combinations, they are sometimes dotted with studs and always sprinkled with the fairy dust of über coolness. The starting price of a dress from the Manley label is €220. Web address: http://www.emmamanley.com
Anne Mette O’Connor: Question. What do you get when your blend super niceness with creative talent, an extraordinary eye for detail and a phenomenal work ethic. The answer in Mette’s case is a thriving jewellery business called AMOC (from the initials of her full name). The beautiful piece that Mette is wearing (in the photograph above) is made from silver, charcoal diamonds and ribbon, given the amount of diamonds dangling from the wonder necklace I didn’t dare ask the price but in her shop Mette has beautiful hand crafted pieces from around €100 (I did a post on AMOC in May to read it click here). Web address: www.amoc.com
Heidi Higgins: On my way up to see the exhibition I spotted a dress I liked on a display mannequin, I assumed it was by one of the well know designer stocked by Brown Thomas so I stopped to ask the people working on the display about it, only to find myself talking to Heidi Higgins the designer of said dress. She is one of the seventeen designers chosen to take part in the Irish Designers Create celebration. Upstairs, Heidi a graduate of the National College of Art and Design, had a rail laden with simple chic timeless and stylish garments (mainly dresses) with an Audrey Hepburn-esque feel. The pure wool dresses some in bright jewel colours and some in neutrals were priced around the €300/350 mark. Web address: http://www.heidihiggins.com
Laragh McMonagle: My friend H who has a keen eye for all things beautiful told me, via a comment on the blog some months ago about the work of Blackrock based jewellery designer Laragh McMonagle. I didn’t get a chance to go to the exhibition that H recommended so last night was the first time I saw some of the dream like items from Laragh’s treasure trove. Laragh is mainly self-thought and as you can see from the picture above she uses pearls, silver and gemstones in a pretty unique way. Mea culpa I forgot to check out prices. Web address http://www.bylaragh.com
I didn’t get a chance to look properly at all the other designers work so it is good news that the exhibition continues on the third floor of Brown Thomas until 18th September.
♥ A Bear and a Spreadsheet
I have looked at my unnamed teddy bear (I never got around to christening him) a great deal more than usual this week; I suspect as a reaction to watching Brideshead Revisited (the movie) last weekend and seeing Sebastian Flyte with his bear Aloysius. Yes, I know it’s been out for an age but I am only just getting around to catching up with a raft of films I missed when they were first released.
Now on to something completed different but trust me there is a tenuous connection. It may be a sign of incipient insanity but from late 2009 I have kept a clothes spreadsheet, diligently entering the cost and details of everything I bought since then and daily updating the spread sheet on the basis of what I am wearing that day (clothes purchased pre the end of 2009 are not included as it would have been impossible to remember when I purchased them and their exact cost) to arrive at a cost per wear figure. It’s not time-consuming, it takes about 15 seconds to enter each new purchase and a similar amount of time daily to update the sheet. It ‘s extremely satisfying to see the cost per were reduce the more I wear something but also very sobering when I look at the per wear cost of items worn infrequently. I think that the only sane conclusion from studying the spreadsheet is that I have too many clothes; I have in mind as a project for next year to buy less and to properly sift through my closet and remove the bulk of rarely/never worn items.
Now back to the nameless teddy and the tenuous connection. I bought his blue-striped shirt in Camden Passage in Islington when I lived in London, if I were to work out the cost of the shirt per sq cm it could well be the most expensive separate I ever bought. However unnamed teddy has worn it every day (except for sporadic-shirt-washing-days) since 1990, so on a cost per wear basis it’s almost certainly my best buy. Sadly nothing on my clothes spreadsheet comes anywhere close.
Is there anyone else out there who keeps a cost per wear spreadsheet?
Filed under Musings, Shops/Shopping
♥ My Rules//Clothes Buying
It has taken me a couple of decades to formulate a loose set of rules through which I try to filter and regulate my clothes buying habits. I don’t mean to be prescriptive or to offer them as a universal panacea for closets stuffed with inappropriate, unsuitable or unworn clothes; they are just a personal set of guidelines that have helped me avoid mindless random purchases. I am sure you have your own clothes-buying rules; here are mine.
At the beginning of the year I make a list of gaps that need to be filled in my closet, if I am exceedingly honest when writing this list, it is minuscule.
I resist the temptation to buy on impulse. If I feel I am about to utter that oh so dangerous familiar phrase ‘I’ll take it’, I walk away, even if it is just to have a coffee, I find that space for reflection is often enough to dissuade me from purchasing. I can always go back in a few days to have another look if it’s something that has really caught my imagination.
I don’t buy a piece without being able to answer yes to the following questions: does the item suit me, suit my lifestyle and have I got at least three other items that I can pair it with?
The next question is; is it worth it? A very subjective judgment but I bear in mind that a blouse costing €15o could turn out to better value than a dress costing €100 depending on the amount of times it’s worn.
On the subject of an item’s worth, I never buy designer items at full prices, as I feel that they are mostly priced at a level that the market will bear and not at a level closer to their intrinsic worth. Most of my clothes are from the High Street with the odd high-end pieces that I acquired in the sales or at an outlet. .
I don’t buy items that don’t fit me. This may seem obvious but it has taken me more years than I care to remember to stop myself from buying, in the sales, things that would only fit if I lost a bit of weight, or that need to be taken in (taken up is ok) before I can wear them.
I buy mostly neutrals with the odd splash of colour, this may sound unremittingly boring but it least it means I have a selection of separates which I can mix and match.
That’s it but I have to confess that I occasionally bend the rules!
Filed under Fashion, Musings, Shops/Shopping, Style
♥ Bake my Cake
What do you do if you qualified as an architect in Dublin, just as the world economy wobbled spectacularly, the Irish property market imploded and construction in Dublin lurched to a shuddering halt? When Catherine De Groot completed her degree in 2008, she briefly worked in an architectural practice but when her hours were cut, she decided to supplement her income by transforming her childhood passion for baking into a business. For a while she beavered away at the cake making plus the architecture but the fledgling baking business was so successful that she decided to leave architecture and in November 2010 she found a suitable premises and opened Bake My Cake.
The shop is on Booterstown Avenue in South Dublin, it’s long, narrow and the white-painted walls are a perfect foil to the splashes of colour supplied by: the shelves of brightly-hued products, the painted logo created by a graphic designer friend, the colour blocked take away coffee cups and the pretty polka dot cake boxes. The gorgeous baking aroma transfixed me the moment I walked through the door, it comes from the heart of the business,an open plan kitchen, at the back of the shop, overlooking a small garden.
The business has three distinct parts. Firstly there’s the baking side; should you be looking for a bespoke cake for a special occasion (wedding, birthday, christening…) you can sit down and talk to The Bake My Cake team and they will come up with a design that matches your requirements. There is also a list of deserts, cupcakes and other treats available to order. Secondly, if you are a devoted home baker the shop is a place where you can source all manner of cake-centric things such as: fondant icing, cake tins, colouring, cutters, edible food writing pens, cake decoration and cup cake cases. The third part of the Bake my Cake business is the treats section at the front of the shop where there is a daily changing choice of goodies (cup cakes, brownies…) as well as ice cream and coffee for sale (take out only).
A special thank you to Neil, one of Catherine’s team for answering all my question.
Note; Bake My Cake, 45 Booterstown Avenue,Blackrock, Co. Dublin. Website: http://www.bakemycake.ie Phone: 00353 1 2784478. The shop is open, Monday – Friday: 8.00a.m. – 6.00p.m. and Saturday: 10.00a.m. – 4.00p.m.
Filed under Cake, Celebrations, Dublin, Food/Wine, Shops/Shopping
♥ Shopping my Closet
I have never fully understood the manic merry-go-round on which, what was ultra fashionable a mere six months ago becomes sooo last season and what was fashionable many decades ago becomes the dernier cri in desirable this season. I confess that I have a fondness for the policy espoused by one of my favourite shops Agnes B, of having a small permanent collection of popular timeless pieces, which acts as a backdrop to the myriad of different garments in each new collection.
Filed under Fashion, Musings, Shops/Shopping, Style
♥ Favourite Shops//Bow
If I were a tourist in a foreign city Bow is exactly the sort of shop I would like to stumble upon; Dublin is fortunate to have this unique addition to the city’s retail landscape. Bow is co-owned by three talented people, Ellis Boyle (creator of ethereally pretty clothes), Margaret O’Rourke (jewellery designer and founder of her own label MoMuse) and Wendy Crawford (finder of vintage treasures). The mix in the shop is thus clothes, jewellery and vintage items.
Filed under Designers, Dublin, Fashion, Shops/Shopping, Style
♥ Thread
Thread is a new free fashion magazine for Dublin that will be published quarterly. It’s the very clever idea of the owners of six independent Dublin boutiques (Bow, Costume, Dolls, Indigo & Cloth, Smock and uCCa) who banded together to showcase their stock (often original and sometimes quirky) and to shine a light on Dublin’s vibrant creative fashion scene.
Filed under Designers, Dublin, Fashion, Shops/Shopping, Style
♥ Favourite Shops//AMOC
I find that the shops I like the most are the hardest things to write about on the blog, as there is always the fear that my words and photographs will not do them full justice. AMOC Jewellery is a special favourite of mine. It is not your average jewellers selling a mass of homogenous manufactured items. Instead it is a veritable treasure trove of handcrafted jewels designed by Mette, AMOC’s talented owner. The prices are amazingly reasonable.
♥ Summer Tote
A couple of weeks ago when the weather started to get a little warmer I swooped over bags, as the one I was carrying around had a distinct wintry feel. I bought the camel tote, you see in the image above, earlier this year in the January sales at a respectable fifty percent discount.
Filed under Shops/Shopping
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 