Wish me luck, I’m off to Stylist magazine for a day

More exciting news for team Style & Then Some this week (following our feature on the Telegraph website last week) – I won a competition as part of Stylist magazine’s Made by you issue and I get to go and write for their website for a day. To celebrate the magazine’s 100th edition, virtually everything in the magazine that comes out on Wednesday 2 November will be produced by readers and they held a bunch of competitions to find writers, stylists, illustrators and designers for the issue.

For the online writer competition I had to write a top ten list like the ones they feature on the Stylist website. I chose a top ten of the funniest fictional Twitter accounts, featuring sample tweets from people like @Queen_UK. I also added to the email a list of five reasons that I thought they should pick me, so maybe that helped me stand out from the crowd. But it was still a huge surprise when Stephanie Wood,  Assistant Editor (Online), called me on Friday morning to say I was one of the two winners along with a girl called Stacey, who tweeted me later that day. Luckily, I recently reduced my hours at work to four days a week and my boss was happy to let me swap my non working day to Wednesday (she’s really supportive about my ‘extra curricular activities’ and was really pleased that I won). So I’ve got the all clear for my day at Stylist HQ and I can’t wait!

Stephanie says that I’ll be helping to write news stories in the morning and compiling photo galleries and lists in the afternoon. I’m really looking forward to seeing how a magazine production team works on a day to day basis, and getting some online writing tips from the pros. I’m also hoping I don’t make any major office faux-pas or somehow cause the entire website to crash. You can find out if that does happen by going to www.stylist.co.uk on Wednesday, and don’t forget to check back here later in the week when I’ll blog about how I got on.

Read about the Stylist ‘Made by you’ 100th issue.

A vintage-inspired All Hallow’s Eve

God Bless those Americans.  They don’t do things by halves.  And seeing as All Hallow’s Eve a.k.a Halloween is my all time favourite holiday (OK, I know it isn’t an offical holiday, but I am talking to my local MP about getting that altered), it was with great delight that when I was in the USA in early September, I had the opportunity to get my frightening fix of Halloween goodies much earlier than anticipated. 

So I was over the (full) moon when I came across these amazing vintage-inspired Halloween postcards.  Reproduced from 1920′s prints, not only are they utterly adorable, but they’re a far cry from the tacky, plastic image of Halloween – something that has become all-too prevalent nowadays.

I even found the cutest little Halloween chocolates thanks to Godiva….

So it just goes to show Halloween can be a more classy affair if you want it to be.

Heads Will Roll – Her Curious Nature

Hair accessories always feel a bit regal and unnecessary and that’s precisely why they’re almost never out of fashion. Place that flower behind your ear or a headband neatly over a messy bun and it feels like the only finishing touch you need. And since you’re always aware of them, unlike other jewellery and accessories, they can give you a sense of purpose or power.

I discovered Her Curious Nature on the ground floor of Topshop Oxford Circus so I’m not claiming to have found a secret with this one but I thought I’d share it all the same. They’ve got some absolutely beautiful headpieces from boho, flower garlands to evening, velvety headbands and the prices seemed to be around £25 from the pieces that I saw. They also do bespoke and made to order pieces which I imagine will cost a little more.

Wearing hair accessories is a bit like putting on your Sunday best – listen to these words of wisdom from one of my favourite musicals, Hello Dolly and you’ll see what I mean.

Russian Doll Syndrome

I don’t really know when I got hooked. Apparently it was my third birthday. Each present neatly piled on top of the next, ready to be decimated by the onslaught of another birthday. For me, it wasn’t so much what was held within the package – I wouldn’t spare a thought for the latest tropical Barbie or new Eternal single. It was the act of opening that held me in thrall.

Fast-forward twenty years and my ‘Russian doll syndrome’ resurfaced again when I saw these beautiful ornaments on the Heal’s website. In classic white porcelain, the objects had the facades of renaissance palaces etched onto them and were beautiful in their own right.

Imagine my surprise, then, when looking at the specs I realised that they weren’t just ornamental: when disassembled, the structures unfolded into a component of a beautiful dinner service. Palaces turned into plates: towers into tumblers. It was the kind of stuff that would have had my younger-self going giddy over.

Seletti – the clever people behind the range – apparently used the Renaissance and modular storage as inspiration. For young house-hunters it also has the bonus of doubling up as decorative and functional. Either way, this is already on my Christmas list. Boyfriends, take note.

‘Even during times of austerity, one must never scrimp on the elderflower’ | Make your own Gin O’Clock cocktail

Enjoying my Gin O'Clock coctail at the book launch

It was basically the best goody bag ever: lucky girls that we are, Helen and I each got to take home a big bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin from the Queen (of Twitter)’s book launch last Monday. So we’ve no excuse not to have a go at the cocktail specially created for the occasion. Her Majesty has the instructions…

BOMBAY SAPPHIRE GIN O’CLOCK COCTAIL

You will need:

50ml Bombay Sapphire

15ml good quality elderflower cordial like Belvoir (a Bombay Sapphire cap is perfect for measuring this out)

100ml Fever-Tree Ginger Ale (not ginger beer, Camilla)

Glassware:

Crystal highball (ideally etched with a Royal Crest)

Garnish:

Silver Straw and two generously sized lemon wedges

Have you buter assemble these finest ingredients and ask him to pour a double measure of Bombay Sapphire and a good splash of elderflower cordial (even during times of austerity, one must never scrimp on the elderflower) into a tall, ice filled glass then top with fine ginger ale. Give it a good old stir and finish off with two generously sized lemon wedges gently squeezed into this sublime tipple. Works perfectly in a jug if you’ve a few hundred people over at the palace.

Gin O’Clock by The Queen (of Twitter) is available from 27 October 2011 from all good bookshops and to order from Amazon. RRP £12.99. Visit the Beetroot Bombay Cocktail?

Handmade music: Kirsty Almeida

I remember a while back when the ‘digital revolution’ was really starting to panic people. Everyone was talking about how musicians weren’t going to be able to make any money, and record companies were going to go bust. I must have been about ten, because I associate those debates with listening to my discman at school and wondering whether it was all just a bit melodramatic and over the top. They were right, in a way, but I was right, too. The music industry has changed dramatically, but it has survived. While CD sales have plummeted, and record labels have closed, some, like HMV have adapted. Wisely, they’ve realised that the big bread winner is now live music, and have started shifting their business plan towards ticket sales and organising events like the HMV Next Big Thing festival.

Kirsty Almeida, like pretty much all musicians of her generation, does not see the shift that has happened over the last few decades as a threat, but as a kind of liberation for artists, a tool to give them greater creative freedom; it is no longer entirely necessary to have industry backing in the traditional sense. This generation of young musicians are net-natives, using Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and Vimeo in an organic way to express themselves and build and strengthen fan bases around the world. Perhaps Kirsty is an extreme example of this artistic adaptability, having grown up travelling from place to place, including Venezuela, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Gibraltar, because of her father’s job.

I caught up with Kirsty yesterday when she was on her way to Glasgow to support her friends The Dead Man’s Waltz at their album launch. ‘I learnt a lot about story telling in songs from listening to country and western music,’ she explained. ‘I like to share with other musicians, and you can’t get that from anywhere else,’ she said, when I asked her about her own strong emphasis on live performance. This is something she has in common with a lot of other artists at the moment, and it is also something that music fans are increasingly craving. People might not be willing to pay so much to buy music anymore, but they are certainly willing to pay for a unique experience of seeing the artist live.

Kirsty’s voice is smooth and jazzy, but there’s also something very intimate and slightly vulnerable about it. She cites Aretha Franklin as an influence – in fact, her voice kind of reminds me of another one of Aretha’s fans, Rumer.

Having tried the more standard route, Kirsty decided to set up her own record label over the past year, and she paints and sews the beautiful album covers for her CDs herself. ‘I don’t necessarily think of myself as a musician,’ she said, explaining that she sees the process of making a website, writing some poetry or a short story and painting as all part of the creative, artistic process.

Kirsty’s single, If You Can’t Make Me Happy, is out on November 7th.

The Queen announces it’s officially Gin O’Clock

Did the photo fool you? That’s not actually the real Queen of England, it’s an imposter sent by the Queen of Twitter a.k.a @Queen_UK, the fictional monarch who has a predilection for gin.  The lookalike was on hand last Monday to deliver a speech to mark the launch of Gin O’Clock, the Twitter Queen’s debut book.  (Watch a video of the Queen’s speech below).

Easily one of the funniest fictional Twitter accounts, @Queen_UK has amassed more than 470,000 loyal subjects since she started tweeting  – about everything from life in Buckingham Palace (‘Queen fancy dress party in Royal household this evening. Charles has come as Freddie Mercury. Camilla has come as me.’) to international state affairs (‘One has banned Sarah Palin from running for President to save one’s American subjects from international embarrassment.’). Naturally, a book deal was sure to follow. Gin O’Clock is a diary of the events of 2011, delivered in the Queen’s typically dry tone. Obviously major occasions like the Royal Wedding and a visit from the Obama feature, but who knew the Queen was such a fan of the Brit Awards (‘Pencilled in Cee-Lo Green for the Royal Wedding’)? And she loves Eurovision so much she threw a themed party – ‘Beatrice and Eugenie came as Jedward, which was quite convincing, to be fair to them.’

Helen and I meet 'The Queen' at the Gin O'Clock launch

Gin features heavily in the diary (the contents of Her Maj’s handbag for the Royal Wedding are listed as ‘miniature gin, remote weapons button, reading glasses, iPhone, bag of peanuts) so it made sense that those gin geniuses Bombay Sapphire were enlisted for the book launch. They rustled up a special Gin O’Clock cocktail which Her Majesty heartily endorsed. ‘Any time is the perfect time for a Gin O’Clock cocktail,’ she said. ‘Goodness, it’s gone Gin O’Clock.

Gin O’Clock by The Queen (of Twitter) is available now from all good bookshops and to order from Amazon. RRP £12.99. Visit the Gin O’Clock Facebook page.

Eudon Choi – spotlight on the WGSN Global Fashion Award winner

One designer that we didn’t get chance to cover at September’s Fashion Week is Eudon Choi. The South Korean designer, whose label is stocked at boutiques like Browns Focus and Hervia Bazaar in Manchester, worked for All Saints and Twenty8Twelve before launching his own label in 2009. The nonchalance of those brands has stayed with his look, combined with his previous experience in menswear.

Choi has just won the Lycra Style Emerging Talent Award at the WGSN Global Fashion Awards 2011 but anyone keeping their eye on Vauxhall Fashion Scout’s schedule over the past few years will know that the Royal College of Art graduate was selected for ‘Ones to Watch’ in February 2010 and then progressed to Merit Award winner last September. Choi will now get consulting, marketing and technical support with his next AW 12 collection.

For SS12, Eudon Choi showed round frames on sixties sunglasses and long, loose pastel coloured separates. Playing to both feminine and masculine aesthetics, these were combined with graphic sports jackets, stripe motifs and the occasional jumpsuit. And it was all so wearable, we wouldn’t be surprised if we spotted a high street collaboration before long.

Eudon Choi at the WGSN Global Fashion Awards 2011

Stella Tennant and the Teapot Trust’s ultimate art cause

With our fingers firmly on the creative pulse here at Style & Then Some, it is never far from our minds that creativity is one of life’s most important emotional outlets.  We are taught from a very young age a variety of lessons through the art of drawing, painting, colouring in – even gluing ourselves to anyone and everything.  Yet many children who suffer from life-threatening illnesses are denied their fundamental right to creativity due to long stays in hospitals, and so forth.

So we are over the moon that the Teapot Trust, set up by John and Laura Young, who became aware how much art in hospitals meant to their daughter during her stays there, have enlisted the help of model extraordinaire Stella Tennant, to raise money for their cause.   Ms. Tennant, whose own children were at the school that John and Laura’s daughter attended, modelled this gorgeous pendant, designed by the Teapot Trust, commissioned by Lyon & Turnbull Auctioneers and made by Eric N Smith Jewellers Glasgow, will go on sale on November 30th.  The money raised will help the Teapot Trust provide art-as-therapy for children suffering from life-limiting illnesses at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children and will be branching out to the RHSC in Glasgow and Yorkhill as well.

The image of Stella above was captured in Paris by Peter Lindbergh and may also be auctioned off in the near future.  So with such a beautiful cause behind it, and such a gorgeous, guilt-free necklace up for grabs, why not get bidding on the 30th?

The Tea Pot Trust Charity Auction will take place at Lyon & Turnbull, 33 Broughton Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3RR, on Wednesday 30 November 2011. See www.teapot-trust.org for more info.

#TodayImWearing – at the Elle and H&M Fashion Network Event

Here’s what Helen and I wore to the Elle event at H&M last Thursday. Read Helen’s report from the evening here.

Helen: Retro t-shirt from Realitee; yellow leather bag, jeans, cardigan and shoes all from Topshop.

Katie: Gap dress from a charity shop; Zara cardigan; Tatty Devine cutlass pendant; black leather duffel bag, black suede ankle boots and check tights, all H&M.

And because I’ve just discovered Polyvore (the brilliant website that lets you put together awesomely professional-looking photo collages using the contents of online stores), here’s how you can get my look for several thousand pounds more than I paid for it.

#TodayImWearing by blondekatie featuring a leather shoulder bag

Pleated dress
$594 - farfetch.com

IRO grey cardigan
$495 - stylebop.com

Wolford sheer tight
$65 - joanshepp.com

Carvela black high heels
160 - johnlewis.com

Miss Selfridge leather shoulder bag
40 - missselfridge.com

Pendant
30 - tattydevine.com