Liberty is by far and away my favourite department store. Aeons ago when I lived in London, Liberty was a short bus ride from home and I took it so much for granted that I could pop in to browse when the mood took me. It was great deal larger back in the day when I lived close by but fortunately the essence of the store hasn’t suffered from its shrinking.
Category Archives: Travel
♥ Favourite Shops//Liberty
Filed under London, Shops/Shopping, Travel
♥ Chanel: 31 Rue Cambon
I find it difficult to explain the why and the wherefore of my fascination with Coco Chanel and the brand she created. When I mull over this fascination I sometimes wonder if Chanel is either simply a monumental marketing triumph or more complicatedly a form of Jungian archetype and part of our collective unconscious. That is not to detract from the magic the brand creates or to underestimate how much and how enduringly Coco Chanel, in her time, changed the way women dress. Gone were the restrictive clothes of previous periods and she introduced many style classics: the little black dress, striped Breton tops, long ropes of pearls…
Filed under Chanel, Paris, Shops/Shopping, Travel
♥ Built for Love
Kylemore Castle (now know as Kylemore Abbey) in Connemara owes its existence to Mitchell Henry scion of a wealthy Mancunian family. Mitchell fell in love with Connemara when he and his wife Margaret honeymooned there in 1849. When he inherited the family fortune he returned to the West of Ireland and purchased, as a romantic gift for Margaret, 15,000 acres in an idyllic situation beside two lakes and overlooked by a multitude of magnificent mountains. There he built a gothic fairy tale like castle made of granite and limestone; the castle was completed in 1867.
Filed under Travel
♥ Breakfast in London: The Parlour at Sketch
I think the decor at The Parlour at Sketch is best described as truly madly eclectic; it shouldn’t work but it does. There is an assortment of different styles of sofas and chairs, covered in a bewildering selection of clashing fabrics, dotted around the large high-ceilinged room. Tables are of different designs and heights. The interior is dim despite an array of unusual lights which include vast chandeliers dangling from the ceiling and a large light, made of fibreglass, in the shape of a moose’s head, mounted trophy style on the wall. There is more, much more but I feel The Parlour at Sketch is best seen rather than described.
Filed under London, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
♥ Day Trip
♥ Island Shopping: Inis Meáin Knitwear
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.
Filed under Designers, Fashion, Shops/Shopping, Style, Travel
♥ Coffee on an Island
The three Aran Islands are dotted across Galway Bay and beyond them, before the next stop America, is the tumultuous Atlantic Ocean. I visited the middle island Inis Meáin (population approx 200) yesterday, it’s said to be the least visited and the least commercial of the Aran Islands. (Inis Meáin is reached from the mainland by plane or foot-passenger only ferry).
Filed under Coffee, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
♥ Postcard from Connemara
A rugged and hauntingly beautiful place, at the westerly edge of Europe, shrouded in clichés and sometimes in mist, the wild, windswept and wonderful landscape that is Connemara.
Filed under Travel
♥ Souvenir
Souvenir is one of only a handful of words in the English language that I don’t have to look up to discover its origin, it comes of course from the French word ‘souvenir’ to remember.
I find that holidays or trips away are quickly forgotten once I return home and re-immerse myself into daily routine. Even so, I am not a great souvenir buyer, particularly of the kind found in emporiums dedicated to flogging a mass of tat to tourists. Occasionally I happen on something that speaks to me and that I know will evoke happy memories of a time spend in a distant or maybe not so distant but different place.
One such thing is the enamel tree that I bought on my recent visit to Bath. It’s by an artist called Janine Partington who lives close to Bath and I found it in a shop/gallery in the Upper Town. I have put it at eye level in front of some books on one of my bookcases so I can see it every time I pass by; come December I plan to move it and use it as part of the Christmas decorations. At £45 it was a tad more expensive than a stick of rock or an ‘I love Bath t-shirt’ but it is a handcrafted piece that will last a lifetime.
What are your favourite holiday souvenirs?
♥ More about Bath
As a teenager I was much addicted to reading the romantic novels of Georgette Heyer and in early adulthood I fell in love with Jane Austen’s works, so when I was in Bath last week it made perfect sense to make a beeline for the Assembly Rooms in the Upper Town. The rooms were at the heart of fashionable Bath society in bygone centuries; Georgette Heyer’s heroines, Jane Austen (when she lived in Bath) and characters in her Bath novels (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion) visited the rooms to dance, listen to music, play cards or drink tea.
The elegant rooms are on view to the public but as they are empty except for a few pieces of furniture and the splendid chandeliers, it was difficult to imagine what they were like back in the day when, candles flickered after dark, young women were chaperoned in public places and Beau Nash ruled society in Bath.
Bath’s Fashion Museum is housed in the lower ground floor of the Assembly Rooms and when I visited there were two special exhibitions on, the first Dressing the Stars (until 29th August) which showcases the work of British costume designers who have won Academy awards and the second The Enduring Romance of the Wedding Dress (until the end of the year) in celebration of this year’s Royal Wedding. While the exhibitions at the Fashion Museum in Bath may lack the lustre of the set pieces put on by major museums, I nonetheless spent a good two hours happily viewing them and the museum’s permanent collection. The permanent collection has clothes and accessories dating from the 17th century to the present day. (The pictures above show costumes from The Duchess and the dresses worn by the actresses who played the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in The King’s Speech)
The outfit I would most liked to have walked away in, came from the contemporary section of the permanent collection, it was a very wearable high-low mix of a vintage Chanel jacket worn with chinos and a white blouse from The Gap, accessorized with a Mulberry bag.
After my visit to the Assembly Rooms I strolled to the magnificent perfectly proportioned Royal Crescent where I stopped to have tea and homemade biscuits in the sunlit garden of the Royal Crescent hotel.
I am sad as I write this, as the television is on in the background and I am listening to news and discussion about the violence, rioting and looting in parts of England over the last three days. It’s very difficult to take in, in total contrast to the serene England I saw a week ago and a shocking reminder of the lurking darkness that can cast gloomy shadows around the heart of any civilized society.
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Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 