Comme de Garcons for H&M - Before

Today my day is split into 2 distinct sections: before and after I view the Comme de Garcons for H&M collection. Unfortunately, unlike half the bloggersphere, I had to get up and come to work this morning rather than get up and wait in line for a chance to try on/buy some of the range. So while everyone else is battling it out on Oxford street, I’m sat here with fingers itching, waiting for 5.30 to come, and praying that there will be something left by then (and that the queues wont be as bad as they were in Tokyo!)
I’ve been admiring the collection from afar for months; I need the shirt with ruffled sleeves and the circus master-type jacket in particular. (see below!) But often these things are so much more disappointing in the flesh, so I’m trying not to get too excited (she says as she scours the web for more pictures-again!)

However, provided everything looks and feels as good tonight as I hope it will from my computer screen, these are the things I will be looking out for:

And here it is up close:

I need this jacket! I need it more than I think I can express in words right now! I think I also need this models platinum hair....

Oooh! Ruffly sleeves! Like jewellery attached to your clothes - I want to wear this under a little black dress for work and team it with (it's an urge I cant control) boots and legwarmers!

Comfy and practical - not cool but things I love anyway!! I can see me slouching to work in these on hangover days and still feeling lovely!

For more pictures and the prices of everything check out the H&M website (it goes without saying really, but just in cases!)

Obviously, in true fabfrocks fashion, my take on the whole thing will appear hours after everyone elses, and I know in the back of my head that all the 'good stuff' will be gone but still, I can't help being excited!

Roll on tonight!

Love Tor x

Pop to the shops and get me some T-Bags!

Hey all,

Now, firstly I should point out that I don't drink tea. Or coffee. Or hot chocolate. In fact all hot drinks make me feel icky, and feeling icky is not-my-thing! However when scrolling through the net-a-porter sale pages idling over what to spend some unexpected pennies on (for once, I haven't overspent this month!) I found these 4 dresses (all marked down to less than £80!) I could definitely imagine myself wearing from a company called T-Bags which I had never heard of before:

The net-a-porter blurb about the company told me this: "T bags launched in 2000 as a handbag line, but very quickly became better known for its gorgeous sequinned kurtas and kaftans, delicate jersey tops and pretty dresses - all of which are brilliantly versatile. As Su-Lyn Tay and Shadi Askari, designers of this L.A. based brand, say, "They look equally fabulous worn on the beach with flip flops or glammed up for the evening."

But I wanted more information, and more importantly more pictures! Although not particuarly "fashion forward" I really like the bold patterns (which i always find good for hiding a love handle or two!) and the thick jersey fabric they are reported to be made in is one of my favs: flattering and comfortable and seasonless (provided you have a cardigan!) What more do you need?

To google! (said in "to the batmobile" type batman voice!) What I discovered was this: the brand doesn't appear to have its own website (this shocks me in ways I cannot truly express!) I also discovered I am a fool for having not have heard of it before, as it is available not only on net a porter.com but also on asos.com, stylefinder.com, and an abundance of other websites I visit literally daily! As well as all that I also found exactly what I wanted: gorgeous dresses in gorgeous fabrics (all available on asos.com and priced around the £250 mark in the interest of fairness)

Enjoy:

Love Tor x

Wearing my coat? Thats soo last season!

Like everyone else, I read the sartorialist on a semi regular basis and admire the beauty, style and randomness of it all (where else would you find pictures of pigeons having sex?) But a quick skim through this weeks posts this afternoon drew my attention to something worrying that I have been doing all wrong. See, I get up in the morning, get dressed, and throwy coat on. I thought this was OK. But actually, what I should've been doing is getting up, getting dressed, and draping my coat daintily over my shoulders. It's so unlike me to make these errors!

Actually, all joking aside, I think this is a really good idea. I always resent putting together a really great outfit and then ruining it by putting a massive coat over all my hard work. But by the same token i'm not crazy enough to leave the coat at home and risk hyperthermia for the sake of fashion. Well, not today anyway! The draped coat solves all these problems, and yet i'd never thought of it before. I think this is a look that would work particularly well with glamourous jewels and glitter peeking through for the evening, and over jeans and layered tshirts in the daytime: add some ladylike power to such a scruffy look.

Anyway. These are my thoughts at 5.30 this gloomy afternoon. Hometime and nandos for me!

Have a good evening.

Tor x

Do me daily Christopher Bailey

Now i've never really been the biggest Henry Holland fan, what with my well publicised fear of wearing colour and the fact that the whole nu rave trend was one that definitely passed me by.

However, the child in my laughed out loud in the middle of the office (much to my managers bemusement) when I stumbled across these T shirts on the House of Holland website:

I know it's childish. I know I shouldn't find it funny. But it's like writing 55378008 (boobless to you and me) on your calculator and showing it to your friends really isn't it? You can't help but laugh! (Oh, maybe that's just me!)

I want to own them all and wear them whilst bumming around town at the weekend bringing smiles to faces as I bop along! However it's not the dirty teenage-boy friendly T shirts i'm lusting after today, but (bizaarely) these leggings:

At £80 there are more than slightly more than the £6 i usually spend on leggings from primark, but I love the idea of mixing something so brash and in your face with a demure little black dress and heels and then flinging on my leather biker jacket. Taking the outfit your mother would be proud to take you to dinner in and defacing it with youth and colour and rebellion.

And I have a cunning plan (sorry, watched some blackadder last night and it must've rubbed off!) I have a pair of white leggings which I bought from Dorothy Perkins for the bargain price of £3 in the sale: a misguided attempt to look youthful and summery whilst I was on holiday in Florida. Surely an experiment with some string and some fabric dye would have the same effect right? That way I can enjoy that "I made this myself" feeling whilst still having the consumer based products I so desire!

Look at me; I just want to be a rock chick from the right side of the tracks!

Love,

Tor xx

Lets go round again

Hey all,

As anyone who reads this blog on a semi-regular basis will know (because I bang on about it all the time no doubt!) I have a minor, ok major, obsession with sixties fashion. I've just finished my MA dissertation on the interplay between fashion and fiction in the 1960s, with specific focus on the works of Nell Dunn. If you think that is a mouthful, you should read the full title!

Nell Dunn reading and looking fashionable: this stuff practically writes itself!!

The basic initial premise is that, as in much literature throughout history, in Dunn's works fashion is preemptive of behaviour; the guy on the motorcycle will try to sleep with you, the girl in the shortest mini skirt will let him and so on. (obviously i'm summarising and simplifying, but you get the idea!) More interestingly, Dunn (who is, and presents herself as an "heiress from Chelsea") writes about the lives on working class women, who live for the here and now caring only for fast fun, appearance and looking good. They borrow there clothes or buy them on HP, with no intention of ever paying the full amount.

What with the credit crunch and all, it is easy to compare the working class women of Dunn's ficton with the lifestyle of the vast majority of todays fashion conscious woman. Looking good over all else: better to have the telltale red of a louboutin heel and a massive credit card debt than shop in topshop like everyone else, and have noone know you're "in vogue". Just as Dunn's women coo over 'genuine' Italian leather shoes for £5, so do we coo over the latest 'it' item in our glossy magazines and wonder what we'd have to sell or which credit card we'd need next to afford them (and i'm as much a victim of this as anyone else).

So maybe it's not just fashion trends that are cyclical (and the speed of these cycles are increasing dramatically) but our attitudes to fashion and the way we buy it.




And noone would argue that the trends aren't cyclical; looking at the pictures i've collated above, I can't see a single trend I haven't rocked; in fact i'm wearing white tights today (although as I chose the photos this could be clever editing of course!) I'm not going to go into the age old discussion that nothing is truly new or innovative any more, mostly because I dont think its true, and secondly because it's hard for certain trends not to look alike, inspiration not to be taken from icons, and perceptions of "uniqueness" are all relative anyway. Ever thought you had a unique style and you'd put together an amazing outfit then seen a girl on the tube wearing something identical? I rest my case!

So moving back to the concept of our buying habits being as cyclical as our style ones, what's is interesting to me now is that rather than moving forwards we seem to be moving back. The naughties representation of the over consumptive sixties with cheap fabrics in throwaway styles (replicated by the modern day primark) is now giving way not to the seventies (lux fabrics and free love, if you believe the hype) but the conservatism of the fifties; recycling fabrics, make do and mend, create your own. Why spend money on something you could do beautifully by yourself seems to be the new mantra.

At 24, i've spend my whole life engulfed in this overconsumptive public attitude of affluence and plenty. Now armed with a pile of old floral patterned childrens clothes (too small for Abbie, who thinks i'm a bear) and a needle and thread, i'm eager to see where winding back my sixties obsession a decade can take me.

Much love,

Tor