A farewell and a tribute to Valentino

Valentino Ready to Wear S/S 2012 watercolour by Frances Ives

I am sad to say that this is going to be my last post for Style & Then Some, for a little while at least. It has been a brilliant year and a half (and several trips to London Fashion Week) being a part of the team, but various different time pressures and commitments this year are demanding my attention, and it feels like time to move on. What better way to end than with a tribute to one of my favourite designers, Valentino?

Valentino Haute Couture S/S 2012 watercolour by Frances Ives

I fell in love with Valentino’s work last spring, when I first saw his Spring/Summer 2012 collections. The neat elegance of the Ready to Wear collection, the flattering feminine cuts and timeless styles – these things all struck me, but it was the Haute Couture collection that really captivated me. The dresses were intricately embroidered, and moved through the spectrum from sweet, simple and pretty, to shimmering, breathtaking beauties. They were truly fairytale gowns. Every last detail was perfect, right down to the plaited low buns twisted all about with bejewelled floral crowns. Call me old school, but I think this is what fashion is meant to be all about – celebrating the female form and making beautiful, well crafted clothing. Arty fraying edges and sack-like, ugly shapes won’t cut it for me, I’m afraid, no matter how much at odds that puts me with the rest of the fashionista crowd. (That reminds me of the time I was commissioned to write a review of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition at the ICA in London a few years ago. My first draft was sent back, and I was told politely that I had to change it to make it more positive. Apparently you’re not allowed to write a bad review of a modern art exhibition. We all have to stand around the oblong piece of steel and ohh and aahhh about how deep and meaningful it is, how clever the artist is.)

Valentino Haute Couture S/S 2012 watercolour by Frances Ives

Valentino’s Spring/Summer 2013 Haute Couture collection is more structured and grand than last year’s, but it is just as magnificent. Less dancing barefoot in a meadow, more pacing through your throne room. Something about the embroidery work, the piping and patterns reminds me of the Renaissance period. It is all the more suitable, then, that Frances Ives illustrated last year’s collection in soft watercolours, and Sophie Murray etched her vision of this year’s collection in fine pen.

I was overjoyed to read that Valentino has signed up for Greenpeace’s detox fashion challenge earlier this month. The idea behind the campaign is to get major fashion houses to change their policies on toxic water pollution and deforestation (an issue which is clearly a pressing one, if Susan Kim writing for the Huffington Post back in 2009 is to be believed) to combat the negative impact that the fashion industry has on the environment. According to Greenpeace, ‘Valentino topped the list of 15 fashion houses, while six brands came joint bottom on the ranking for failing to take any credible action on these environmental issues. The ranking, “Fashion Duel” rates Italian and French luxury brands based on a survey of three areas of the brands’ global supply chain: leather, pulp and paper and toxic water pollution.’ While Valentino committed to taking urgent and transparent action to eliminate the release of hazardous chemicals throughout their supply chain and products, and put in place concrete measures to avoid contamination of their supply chain from forest destruction, aiming to be ‘clean’ by 2020, brands like Louis Vuitton refused to sign up.

Valentino Haute Couture S/S 2013 by Sophie Murray

Valentino Haute Couture S/S 2013 by Sophie Murray

I feel like my mission as a writer (if it’s not too self important to have a ‘mission’) is to celebrate the work of skilled and talented craftsmen and women, to engage with contentious and important issues and promote the heroes and heroines of this world, the people who really make me proud to be a part of the human race. Writing is – or should be – all about empathy, it is a kind of diplomacy and mediation. In its purest form, it should be something that can raise awareness by presenting the facts, open up discussions that bring us all a little closer to understanding and engaging meaningfully with conflicting view points. I first wanted to be a journalist when I watched the film Blood Diamond, because I got a glimpse of the fact that writing should be about building a better society. Doing my first stint of work experience with a newspaper confirmed my love; I looked around me and thought, ‘This is the most interesting, passionate, funny, quick thinking, curious, bad tempered and good natured bunch of people I’ve ever been in a room with. If this is what journalists are like, I want to be one of them.’

Thank you to my beautiful illustrators for this post, Frances Ives and Sophie Murray. And thank you, Style & Then Some readers, it has been a pleasure. Look after yourselves, and see you around the bend.

You can catch me blogging here, pinning here, and tweeting here.

The thoughtful wardrobe | Trading For Development & Local Wisdom

Sometimes I day dream about setting up my own ethical fashion line, but having been involved with Trading For Development over the past year, a small ethical knitwear and jewellery brand based in Oxford, I have come to realise that doing so is no mean feat. I’ve been helping with the creation and launch of Trading For Development’s new website, Facebook and Pinterest pages, and have been hearing first hand how hard it is to coordinate a team of producers from all over the world on your own, even – and especially – when you have big orders from high street brands like Toast and Topshop. No wonder most fashion lines choose the easy route and prefer not to look too deeply into their supply chains. The middle man may make companies less ethical, but he sure does make things easier.

Based in Oxford, Trading for Development is a business that supplies ethically-minded designers with over 40 contacts to World Fair Trade Organisation certified producers around the world. The company also produces naturally dyed fibres, educates young designers about ethical fashion, and has its own line of knitwear and jewellery, too. Some of Trading For Development’s collections have been sold in the Topshop flagship store in Oxford Circus, London, and this Winter the cosy knitted slipper socks were sold in Toast.

The company motto is that the traditional skills of talented textiles workers around the world are worth protecting, and that having a different attitude to trade can have an incredibly positive effect on small communities, the environment, and our society at large. It may be in the fledgling stages, but Trading For Development’s founder Judith Condor Vidal is a force to be reckoned with, and she is bound to see that it goes far; her company won the 2006-2007 La Redoute Ethical Award, and Judith helped found the Ethical Fashion Forum in London as well as helping to make Oxford a Fairtrade city in 2004.

As Judith herself says, “Fair Trade isn’t perfect. We’re walking a new path, and this is a consumer revolution.” We have to try new ways of doing business, and constantly be working to improve them.

Another perspective on ethical fashion is offered by the creators of Local Wisdom, from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion. These guys are busy investigating what they call ‘the craft of use’, working on the principle that because around 30% of our wardrobes are unused, perhaps we need to learn enjoy fashion in alternative ways. Instead of focusing on the thrill of purchase, they would like to embed a mentality of caring for our clothes, buying vintage and second hand, and recycling old clothes, into our culture’s consciousness. This fashion research project is ongoing, and runs various workshops around the world to collect information about how you think about your wardrobe. To find out more, or to get info about how to be a part of the project, check out their website here.

For regular ethical fashion news and inspiration, ‘like’ Trading For Development on Facebook, or follow them on Pinterest.

How to get over a wedding blog addiction*

In the process of planning my wedding last year I got a teensy weensy bit (okay, very) addicted to wedding blogs. This culminated in my own wedding actually being featured on the beautiful wedding blog, Whimsical Wonderland Weddings, which has a nice neat and tidy end of a rom-com feel to it. (Except my life isn’t ending, it’s only just beginning, but let’s just call this next part the sequel.)

So, because I never shared any photos or words of wisdom with you as I promised I would, I will point you in the direction of the Whimsical Wonderland Weddings post for wisdom, and share this soppy wedding video for a dose of the lovey dovey cutesy stuff in the place of photos.

(What you may or may not be able to tell from the video is how bloody nervous I was when I was walking up the aisle, how dry my mouth was, how I was kind of awkwardly shy about looking at the man I was about to marry all of a sudden, and that funny awkward moment when I looked at my big sister and gave her my bouquet and I wanted to grab her and whisper ‘Help, tell me what to do, everyone is staring at me!’)

This piece from xojane basically sums up a lot of how being engaged feels some of the time (which isn’t a permanent state of bliss as many people expect, unfortunately). I think it’s probably one of the weirdest, most unsettled times of your life, and it’s very hard to feel like you’re really communicating everything properly to your friends and family. Probably because you’re doing a whole lot of processing and you’re about to do something pretty big and life changing. So people with engaged friends, remember: your friend is probably just as weirded out as you are, isn’t becoming a completely different person overnight, and is probably feeling very overwhelmed and needs your support. Engaged people, remember: just because you’re not lounging in a picturesque field having a picnic and staring adoringly at your loved one without a care in the world 100% of the time, doesn’t mean your relationship is doomed and you should break off the engagement. Being engaged is just like the rest of life, with its ups and downs, and a learning to cope with stress and tension in your engagement will help you learn how to weather the storms in your marriage.**

Some great wedding blogs to fuel my addiction and start yours:

Whimsical Wonderland Weddings

Postcards and Pretties

Ruffled

Wedding Chicks

Snippet and Ink

The Pretty Blog

The Sweetest Occasion

Green Wedding Shoes

Grey Likes Weddings

Flights of Fancy

Bloved

The Perfect Palette

Also, the lovely Janet Sahm of Verily magazine wrote this piece with some more suggestions for online wedding related reading. Enjoy!

Oh, how I love colour palettes. If only I had a computer that could generate them instantly for me every day as I get dressed, kind of like a modern version of Cher’s wardrobe computer in Clueless…

* I lied. This post isn’t about getting over a wedding blog addiction at all, it’s ENABLING my wedding blog addiction and encouraging you to develop one, too. Sorry.

** I do realise the apparent contradiction in my message here. Reading wedding blogs will make you form an idealised version of events in your mind and you will feel disappointed when the dream doesn’t match the reality, right? Wrong. Reading fairy tales does not mean that you can’t differentiate between reality and allegory, or that you automatically start thinking that every heroine’s hair has to shine like gold sparkling on a summer’s day (or something) all the time.

PS Shameless, I know, but I’m selling some of my wedding things on sellmywedding.com if you’re interested – recycling for the win!

Start 2013 on the right foot: Sophie’s ethical fashion round up

It’s only one month in, but boy oh boy does 2013 look like it’s going to be a great year for sustainable fashion.

Not only has H&M been working hard on their eco credentials with a range of organic cotton (they are one of the biggest buyers of organic cottons in the industry, in fact), they are also set to launch a new range of recycled clothing with Vanessa Paradis as the muse of the collection. To mark the launch, H&M will encourage shoppers to bring in a maximum of two bags of old clothes to hand in for recycling instore, in exchange for an H&M voucher. As any of you who have read Lucy Siegle’s fantastic book, ‘To Die For’, this is a massive step in the right direction. A retail giant reusing fabric and reducing the amount of clothes that end up in landfill? Well, Tesco did it in a collaboration with Orsola de Castro a few years ago, but actively promoting recycling and engaging customers in the activity is a new and incredibly refreshing take on the issue.

I recently made a free account with the new sustainable fashion website, Modavanti, who prove that you don’t have to look (or smell) slightly quirky to belong to the world of ethical fashion anymore. This is the place to come to discover top new stylish eco-brands.

My favourite ethical fashion find recently has to be the lovely brand, Sseko Designs, who make beautiful sandals that you can tie any way you want – you can even buy different ribbons for the sandals, so that you have several different pairs of shoes in one. The principle behind them is something like the one behind TOM’S:

“Sseko \say-ko\ Designs was created to help some of the brightest, most committed young women in Uganda continue their education. The Ugandan school system is designed with a nine month gap between secondary school and university. These nine months are intended to allow time for students to earn money for tuition before continuing on to university. However, in an impoverished and male dominated society, many of these young women struggle to find fair work during this time.

Sseko Designs hires recent secondary school graduates for this nine month period to live and work together, while earning money that will go directly towards their university education. These women will not make sandals forever. They will go on to be doctors, lawyers, politicians, writers and teachers that will bring change and unification to a country divided and ravished by a 22 year-long war.

Sseko Designs is a not-just-for-profit enterprise that recognizes the power of business and responsible consumerism to support sustainable economic development, which in turn affects a country’s educational, justice, and health care systems. The goal of Sseko Designs is two-fold: provide university tuition for these promising young women through a sustainable monthly income, while also contributing to the overall economic development of Uganda.”

(Except I think they’re way prettier than TOM’S. But shhh, don’t tell anyone!) I am also rather in love with their beautiful leather tote bags, and have put one on my wishlist for this year.

Oh, and according to the good people at Hidden Costs, it turns out that American Apparel are a lot more ethical than I thought they were – very good to know.

Finally, a little gem to leave you with – Measure Up have created a useful resource to compare the ethical rating of different high street companies, to help you make better consumer decisions, faster. Check it out!

Why Les Misérables is totally worth its weight in tissues

The old maxim that criticising something is easier than praising it is so true. For some reason, I found it incredibly easy to write a review of the awful Midnight in Paris, but when it comes to writing about Les Misérables I have complete and utter writer’s block. Even though I had never seen the stage production and wasn’t particularly excited about the fact that they were making a film version, as soon as I saw one shot of Tom Hooper’s gorgeously shot masterpiece I was hooked, playing the trailer over and over again. It had me welling up even before I reached the cinema.

So I thought I’d better come clean right away – this is not a dispassionate analysis of the film’s strengths and weaknesses, it’s a reflection on a piece of art that I love in a rather fiercely protective kind of way. When I hear people mocking Anne Hathaway’s facial expressions, I want to snap at them ‘How dare you ridicule a woman’s pain!’ When people say that they prefer the stage version, I (completely irrationally, because, as I said, I have never seen it on stage) leap to the film’s defence, saying ‘Well, you wouldn’t be able to get the same emotional intimacy, the closeups of the distraught faces, in the stage version.’

You’ll know the story by now – based on Victor Hugo’s 19th Century French novel, Les Misérables was made into a popular musical in the 1980s and has been a Broadway and West End hit ever since. Set during the last gasps of the 1830 French Revolution, the story depicts the struggles and passions of various characters against the backdrop of poverty and the growth of revolutionary sentiments. There are classic love triangles and stories of youthful idealism, and songs like ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ and ‘On My Own’ that have filtered into our modern consciousness and have become well-worn cliches, as has the famous illustration of the ragged haired waif, Cosette.

For me, Anne Hathaway’s performance was the real gem that lit up the whole film and completely melted my heart. She took a rather worn out and cheesy song and made it sound utterly fresh, as if she was the first person to ever sing it, while completely captivating audiences around the world in a four minute long close up of her face. Her voice was pure and sweet and laden with emotion, and she let it break but never lost control entirely. There are plenty of bad reviews of Russell Crowe’s performance, and I think it is because, while his singing voice was fine, it wasn’t expressive – in stark contrast with Anne, singing the song that she first heard her mother singing when she was eight years old, the song that inspired her to be an actress. She couldn’t have deserved her Golden Globe more.

If you don’t like musicals, you probably won’t like Les Mis, unless you want to watch it just for the pure joy of beautiful cinematography. But really, be warned – with only a handful of spoken words throughout the entire film, it’s pretty much what it says on the tin, so if you can’t take the genre seriously don’t blame the film. But oh! I pity you! If you let it, Les Mis will drag you through the struggle, filth and desperation to the sublime heroism, self sacrifice and love that crowns and ennobles our human existence.

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”

Twit-twoo! The Enduring Appeal of the ‘Woodland’ Trend

Fox print top by Zara

Owls, foxes, hedgehogs, even badgers… I’ve loved these cute woodland critters ever since I was little and had an Animals of Farthing Wood dairy and matching pencil case. I only recently woke up to this trend when my friend told me ‘Owls are so in right now.’ (She doesn’t usually talk like a character from Mean Girls, she was just very excited about owls.) There’s something reassuring about a trend that fits this easily, that makes you feel both stylish and also reconnects you with your inner geeky child.

This is a trend that has been a long time in the making. Jack Wills and Aubin & Wills made tiny pheasants and foxes in top hats their logos years ago, and the retro reindeer/snowflake/Fair Isle patterned seasonal jumper has been growing in popularity ever since… well, was it Seth Cohen who brought it back from its eighties exile in 2003-2004? Woodsy, outdoorsy musicians like Sufjan Stevens and First Aid Kit have certainly played their part in the trend’s growing popularity. This type of cosy knitwear is the real precursor to the woodland animals motif, a natural progression from plaid, tweed, and Hunter wellies.

Owl sweater by River Island

There’s irony in the fact that so many of these woodland creatures adorning our jumpers and patterning our dresses are endangered. But, as Naomi Attwood writes, there’s a certain element of ‘heritage or homegrown brands such as Burberry, Mulberry and Aubin and Wills, who pride themselves strongly on their British roots, glamorising and fetishising what might at one stage have been seen as fusty, out-dated, country style, rather than the stuff of the luxury catwalks’. It’s this very ‘home-grown’ and British quality to the trend that makes it – however inadvertently – the perfect vehicle for raising awareness about the protection of our native endangered wild animals.

I always find the period following Christmas the most depressing time of the year; Christmas decorations start to come down, but the nights seem just as long, dark, and cold as ever. Wrapping up in a sweater with a big red squirrel on the front might just be the kind of cheering up I need.

Sequined squirrel jumper by Monsoon

Love the woodland trend? Read Helen’s Style & Then Some post about the fox tail trend. (Yes, it is literally a trend for wearing furry foxtails. On your B-hind. Yes, that’s right, it started in Japan.)

Bare Faced: A Beauty Revolution

I never really make New Years’ resolutions; what’s the point of starting the New Year with pressure and expectations? I find it distressing enough embarking upon the first few dreary months of the year. But what if you made a resolution that doesn’t take any extra time or effort, makes you feel free, and promotes a healthier idea of female beauty in our personal lives and also in the media?

My resolution was entirely unpremeditated and spontaneous. I stumbled upon Darling Magazine‘s Beauty Revolution almost by accident, and as I read about how the women on the editorial team are starting 2013 make up free to try and change the face of beauty in the media, I was intrigued. The idea behind the campaign is similar, I suppose, to Dove’s Real Beauty campaign from a few years ago. It’s not suggesting, in any way, that make up is bad, or that women should feel bad for wearing it; on the contrary, their attitude is that make up is great and fun. It is only damaging when it gives women unrealistic expectations about what they should look like, and when we feel like we’re not beautiful without it. That’s the thing about the photographs that Adrienne Sandvos took of her friends without makeup – they are in black and white, yes. That’s cheating, you say? Well, not really. The point is to ease into this, to adjust your eyes to the sight of women in the media without elaborate eye make up and perfect lipsticked smiles. They look naked enough, even in black and white, and they look beautiful. The point of all of this is to make natural beauty desirable, after all.

I wanted to join in, somehow, and while I didn’t make a conscious decision not to wear make up throughout 2013, I made a decision to ditch the mascara and eyeliner and go bare faced as a general rule, saving make up for glamming up on special occasions. At first I felt naked. I looked in the mirror and my eyes looked tired. I guess I am pretty tired a lot of the time, and the beautiful thing about this resolution is that it breaks you out of your routine and forces you to actually look after yourself. If you can’t put concealer on the bags under your eyes, you’d better start getting more sleep.

As Tina Fey points out in Bossy Pants (my favourite Christmas present this year!), there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with makeup or even Photoshop. We all want to look and feel good; it’s empowering. But the flesh in photos should be left on, the pores in skin should still be visible, and we need variety more than anything else; variety in size, shape, skin tone, hair colour, you name it. It’s okay to shave our armpits and put mascara on our eyelashes, but we shouldn’t be disgusted by unshaven armpits and natural eyelashes – women shouldn’t have to do these things all the time if they don’t want to. There are ways of portraying beauty that allow it to be admired without making anyone feel insecure, jealous, self obsessed, or objectified. If we lived in a world where women were portrayed in the media as a bunch of interesting, real, beautiful, quirky, and diverse people, the rest of us would be more likely to feel like we are capable of amazing things, beautiful and noticed by others for who we are and what we think. I’d like to live in that kind of world.

Darling’s Beauty Revolution is a gentle reality check. Do you feel ready to try life without makeup? Even if you don’t feel ready to give up makeup altogether, maybe you could try swapping your foundation for some tinted moisturiser, or just cut back on the eye makeup without ditching it all? Try it, even if it’s just for a week – and see if you start to see yourself differently.

Sophie’s Favourite Things of 2012

Well, 2012, what a year! It’s time to light a fire and curl up on the sofa in front of the Christmas tree for some quality time with family and friends. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is thankful for a little holiday and Christmas cheer. Here are some of my favourite things of the past year…

1. Snail mail

Is it just me, or does everyone live in London? And as we get older, it’s getting harder and harder to stay in touch, no? At least, that is how I have felt over the past year as I moved from London to Oxford and stopped visiting the big smoke quite so much. Facebook messages, texts, emails, and even calls are great, but I’ve found that nothing beats some post, whether it’s a little note or a long, deep and meaningful letter. A refreshing revelation in this age of technology. I think it’s the physicality of it, the intimacy of the handwriting, the way a letter links you physically across the miles, that makes it so special. (I particularly love Kate Spade‘s gorgeous range of note cards, although getting into expensive stationary is a dangerous thing!)

2. New Girl

Okay, so this isn’t new for 2012, but this show starring Zoey Deschanel did take a while to grow on me. Zoey has really grown into the role now, though, and not only is her wardrobe inspiring, but her character also reminds us that being a feminist doesn’t mean that you can’t like ‘girly’ things, like baking and glitter and flowers. I used to cook a lot for an ex boyfriend, because he didn’t know how to, and I got quite a few comments about that from friends who assumed I was conforming to female stereotypes and bowing to the patriarchy, blah blah blah. A few years later, though, and he is a genius in the kitchen. He was watching and learning the whole time.

Anyway, in the words of Jessica Day: “I brake for birds. I rock a lot of polka dots. I have touched glitter in the last 24 hours. I spend my entire day talking to children. And I find it fundamentally strange that you’re not a dessert person. It freaks me out.  I’m sorry that I don’t talk like Murphy Brown. And I hate your pants suit. I wish it had ribbons on it or something just to make it slightly cuter but that doesn’t mean I’m not smart and tough and strong.”

3. Cycling

I’m going to have to learn to drive at some point, but one of the things I love about living in Oxford is that I can hop on a bike, see some beauty, breath some fresh air, and get myself where I need to be without damaging the environment. It reminds me of being a child and feeling incredibly grown up and empowered because I realised I could transport myself from A to B pretty damn fast all by myself.

4. Gilmore Girls

The boxset is out! Santa, if you’re reading this…

So if you’re not a fan, I know what you’re thinking. I thought it looked tacky and twee, too, I really did. It’s the title, and the Carol King theme song, and the odd fashion sense. But believe me, it is totally worth getting past this bad first impression – it’s smart, it’s funny with brilliant dialogue, it’s a lot more ‘real’ than any other TV show I know – there aren’t too many dramatic plot twists, the characters stay true to themselves and grow naturally, and have relatively normal wardrobes. It’s also really quite open minded in the true sense of the phrase. The evil Republican grandparents turn out to be human and loveable just like everyone else, and even the crazy, severe Seventh Day Adventist Mrs Kim is a well developed character with a soft side in the end.

5. Pinterest

I’m addicted, I readily admit it. But I don’t think that’s bad thing at all – I have made an amazing baked alaska and a delicious onion soup from recipes I found on Pinterest, and those brilliant caramel cookies… yes, I found that recipe on Pinterest, too. And I find that somehow having pins of all my favourite things – a virtual wardrobe – makes me less sad about not being able to afford lots of stuff in real life. Any other Pin-addicts out there will know what I mean. Pinterest is a real sign of the fact that social media is becoming more and more visually oriented.

6. Tina Fey

Not only is she the brains behind 30 Rock, she also wrote Mean Girls. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS?! What a comic genius. I just love everything about her. I think that’s a good note to end on, really.

Merry Christmas, all!

DIY Christmas gingerbread houses

Last year I made a Christmas pudding using Delia Smith’s recipe, and this year I have been having a lot of fun learning how to make gingerbread houses from my American friend. (I think gingerbread house making wins over Christmas pudding making any day, if only because you have the opportunity to consume ridiculous amounts of sweets and icing in the process.) She shared her family recipe with me, which made rock solid gingerbread which held together well and was easy to work with. We made the gingerbread pieces a few days before sticking them together and decorating them, so that the gingerbread would be 100% solid and ready for construction.

Gingerbread

6 oz lard
6 oz treacle
6 oz sugar
30 oz plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 tsp ginger

First of all, you’ll need to cut out your paper pattern for your house: this consists of two walls (rectangles, whatever size you choose), two end walls (squares with triangles/pointy bits at the top) – make sure these fit with the walls you cut, before the point starts – and two rectangles that form the roof (make these slightly wider than the walls, because they need a bit of overhang for  the eves).

Melt the lard in large saucepan.  Stir in the treacle and the sugar.  Remove from heat.  Stir dry ingredients into wet, mixing completely, using hands to work in.  The dough will be stiff and crumbly, so use it as soon as possible.

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Slightly grease the cookie sheets/baking parchment. Roll out half of the dough (cover the other half with a damp cloth) on cookie sheet to 1/8″ thickness. Lay out you paper pattern pieces on the dough for the front, back and sides, arranging them as close together as possible. Cut through the dough around all patterns, but do not remove excess dough – almost as if you’ve traced the outline of the house but not properly cut it out yet.  Bake for around 12 mins, and remove from the oven. Using the pattern pieces again, recut the lines with a good knife and pull away the excess dough. Work quickly, as the dough hardens as it cools. Leave these house pieces aside, preferably for a few days, to harden. It is best to put it all in an airtight container and keep it in the fridge.

Frosting

2 egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tarter
2 tsp water
3 cups powdered sugar

In large bowl, beat the first three ingredients until frothy.  Gradually add sugar and continue to beat until mixture is of spreading consistency.  You may need more sugar.  The icing should be firm enough to hold soft peaks.

Now glue the gingerbread house pieces together with the icing. You might need to hold the pieces together for a few minutes as the icing sets. (We propped some of it up with mugs.) Let it dry for a few hours before you decorate. This is the fun part… you can really go crazy, with as many different types of sweets as you can imagine. My friend was responsible for the left hand house, below, and her motto was: ‘You shouldn’t be able to see any gingerbread!’ My approach was a little more conservative, but my favourite touch was the marshmallow snowdrifts around the house. This is the ultimate Christmas baking project. Fact.

Haribo, smarties, matchmakers, chocolate buttons, and marshmallows were some of our favourite decorating sweets.

Get your sledge hammers out, ladies – we need to smash through that glass ceiling!

I don’t know, I guess I had kind of just assumed that the gender wage gap was a thing of the past, but learnstuff.com created this rather striking infographic, which hits home the fact that there still is something to make a noise about. So let’s keep making noise!

RECIPE: Double chocolate salted caramel cookies

There are chocolate cookies, and then there are Chocolate Cookies: and let me tell you, friends, this is the King of Chocolate Cookies. For some reason, salted caramel is all the rage at the moment – Starbucks is even selling a salted caramel latte this winter. But I’m not going to question it, it works so well. I came across the recipe on the blog, Cooking Classy, did a little translation from American cups to grams, and added some melted chocolate to make them extra rich. Less than 24 hours later and there isn’t a single one left, so I think that speaks for itself. Look out world, you’re getting batches of these babies for Christmas!

To make these little wonders you’ll need:

- 275g self-raising flour

- 95g cocoa powder

- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

- 190g salted butter

- 210g granulated demerara sugar

- 105g soft light brown sugar (or white caster sugar, either works)

- 2 eggs

- 1 and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract

- 150g dark chocolate melted with a tablespoon of butter

- coarse sea salt to sprinkle

- icing sugar to sprinkle

- several packets of caramels: I used Cadbury’s Caramel Dairy Milk bars broken up, but there wasn’t really a satisfying level of caramel to be had from this. The recipe recommends Kraft caramels (not easily bought in the UK) and failing this, Rolos. I might play around with putting little squares of toffee in to see if those melt nicely…

First, pre-heat the oven to 180 C, then sieve together the flour, cocoa, and baking powder. In a separate bowl, cream the butter, two types of sugar and eggs. Add the vanilla, then slowly work in the dry ingredients until fully combined. Now add the melted chocolate, and make the mixture into small balls of dough laid out on a tray lined with baking parchment. Squish your caramel into the middle of each ball, and sprinkle it with a little coarse salt. Then cover the caramel over with dough and roll into a ball again.

Sprinkle the balls with a little icing sugar, and bake for around 12 minutes in the preheated oven. The tops should have started to crack nicely, but don’t worry if they’re not completely firm to the touch; they’ll harden up once you take them out of the oven. Allow to cool, then sprinkle with more icing sugar.

YUM! Enjoy, friends! xxx

Get your Mo on: World peace and the cure for cancer

We’re speeding towards the end of November, which means that soon my man’s face will be prickle free again (hurrah!). It’s very sweet, actually; he got together a Movember team with my sisters’ boyfriends and various close male friends to represent the Caldecott family, raising money for men’s health awareness, prostate and testicular cancer research, inspired by my dad who has prostate cancer. (I wrote a piece for Verily magazine about it earlier this year.) A worthy cause, although I know one lady who paid her husband double what she was originally going to sponsor him just to shave his lip caterpillar off early. I’ve been tempted to do this myself, as I feel a little bit like this about moustaches:

If I have learnt anything over the past year or so, it is that it’s better to be safe than sorry, and men need to be encouraged to get checked out for cancer just as much as – if not more than – women. (This may be a huge generalisation, but in my experience women tend to be a bit quicker on the uptake about being health aware.) In America, men over a certain age are given yearly prostate cancer checks as a matter of course, but our experience in England was that prostate cancer wasn’t even on the radar for my dad. Instead of being bitter about the doctors’ negligence and short sightedness, it’s a lot healthier to channel that energy into campaigning for awareness and more research, which is where Movember comes in.

Men, if you need any encouragement with your moustaches at this stage – well, you’re almost there, but here’s a message from ‘tache god Ron Swanson to help you along the way:

The brilliant thing is, cancer research really does make a huge difference. Medical research is a world dominated by greedy pharmaceutical companies throwing cash at the things they think they can make money from, and many potential cures can fall by the wayside with the research unfinished because they won’t make anyone rich fast. I used to think that finding a cure for cancer was as far off as the dream of world peace, but thanks to charities and universities circumventing the corruption of the market and backing exciting new research without the motivation of making money, we’re closer to finding ways of curing cancer in all its stages every day. There’s a new treatment in the United States that I’m researching at the moment called Provenge, which takes your own cells, fiddles with them in a lab, and then injects them back into you, whereupon your own cells attack the cancer cells. It all sounds a hell of a lot like it has the potential to be a bad sci-fi/comic book film (Cancer Man, anyone?! I hate to think what his super powers would be…), but who knows, it might just be crazy enough to work. Genius is often sparked by thinking outside of the box, after all. Or so Pinterest tells me.

Here’s to all our brave loved ones who have battled (or are in the process of battling) cancer in all it’s forms. And here’s to our sweet and noble men-folk, looking like hobos for the month of November and raising money for this great cause. If you’d like to donate money to Team Stratford & Son-in-Law (that’s Team Caldecott), you can do so by clicking here. Thanks, and best wishes to you and yours!

Bespoke designs | The wonderful world of Tephi

I have always loved the idea of dressing the way that people did before the days of fast, disposable fashion; carefully choosing styles, colours, and cuts that suit you and getting a few key items of clothing hand made. Treasuring those clothes and mending them and passing them down through the generations.

It was only relatively recently that people shopped and dressed this way, after all. Not only was it better for the environment (less wasteful because people valued their clothes more and things were made to last), better for the economy and people (fewer sweatshops, greater emphasis placed on quality and skills, and appreciation for fine craftsmanship), and maybe even better for our wallets in the longterm (spending more, less frequently). You only need to read Lucy Siegle’s book To Die For to get a thirst for ethical fashion, and she makes a brilliant argument for a better way of doing things.

The wonderful London-based label, Tephi, still does things this way, and it’s wonderfully refreshing to encounter some good quality, beautiful slow fashion in the heart of our fashion forward capital. Her pieces are the perfect combination of pretty, modern, and yet classic; something about these dresses is timeless. (I suppose they call that Beauty.) You can make an appointment to go to her studio near Gloucester Road, get measured up, choose a style that you like, and can even ask her to combine different elements of several dresses that you like for something truly bespoke. Or you can buy her line ‘off the rail’ – either way, this is not your average shopping experience. Prices range from £290 – £590, somewhere between high street and designer. Totally worth it for a dress that’s made just for you, no?

The Tephi studio/shopping experience

I went to pick up my wedding dress (yes, she also makes wedding dresses) yesterday, and on that note, I’ll be saying goodbye to you for a few weeks – I’m off to get married! I’ll be back and posting again in November. Have fun, kids!

DIY luscious shiny locks: Your best Autumn/Winter accessory

I was watching an episode of the Gilmore Girls recently (standard) and got considerable hair envy for Rory’s beautiful shiny chestnut waves in Season Seven. For non Gilmore Girls fans, here’s what I’m talking about:

Ah, Rory Gilmore. Geeky beauty and big blue eyed journalist extraordinaire – you are my idol. Anyway, I felt inspired to try a ‘home remedy’ shiny hair mask that I had seen on, hem, Pinterest. (Also, something about the approach of winter makes me want to swish my hair in slow motion as I unravel a big cashmere scarf from around my neck, a la all the shampoo adverts that start cropping up regularly around this time of year.)

It’s simple, really: heat 3 parts of olive oil (I used x3 very generous tablespoons) with 1 part honey (I used x1 generous tablespoon) in a small saucepan. Stir well until blended, turn off the heat and allow to cool slightly, and when it’s cool enough to touch, rub it through your damp/towel dried hair. Now wrap it in a towel that you don’t mind getting messy or put it in a plastic cap or, my personal favourite, wrap it in cling film and pin it up. Keep it like that for 30 minutes at least, and then wash it out.

If you want to be a bit fancy, you can use Neal’s Yard Remedies Organic Beauty Oil instead of olive oil. It contains avocado oil, which is extra good fair hair. Like most home remedies/DIY beauty routines, this is sticky and unwieldy and somewhat difficult to slop onto your hair, and you have to use quite a lot of shampoo when you wash it out. But then again it’s a free and natural way of getting shiny hair, so who’s complaining?

Love your feet: can sensible ever be sexy?

Be still my heart: French Sole, the Queen of the ballet pump

Over the summer I bought a pair of plain nude ballet pumps from Primarni for £4. Neutral and just a little bit sweet, they seemed like the perfect solution to my footwear issues (I had winter boots, converse, and heels, but no in between, smart/casual shoes for work or my ‘I want to look pretty but don’t want to wear heels’ kind of moods). I wore them for about 4 weeks straight before they started to fall apart (to be expected, I suppose, given where I bought them), and, more importantly, my feet were absolutely wrecked. I had basically been walking around with nothing to protect or support my feet except the flimsiest of thin soles, after all. My flip flops were thicker and more supportive, for goodness’ sake. The subsequent limping and general dread of having to walk anywhere at all made me think I should really take more care of my feet. It’s the kind of thing that mothers and grannies and people who shop at Per Una always say and I never really used to pay much attention to, but it’s true: our feet are important, we’re going to need them for a long time. Be nice to them.

I’m not saying I’m going to abandon pretty ballet pumps and lovely heels, though. Oh no, I want to have it all. I am going to invest in some insoles to put in my flimsier shoes and support my arches a little better (Dr Scholls do some good ones). No one ever has to know. And there’s nothing wrong with wearing heels as long as I check that a) they actually fit properly and b) I can walk in them (and I mean in the shop when I try them on, as opposed to saying ‘I’ll practise at home.’). There is a spectrum of heel pain, and I plan to keep to the lower end. And bringing flats to change into once it all gets a bit much is a good idea, too. Thus far in my life I’ve been the equivalent of a binge drinker when it comes to heels; I never wear them, and then suddenly I wear them all night until my feet are covered in blisters and I have to spend the next morning trying to give myself a foot massage and involuntarily kicking myself because of the pain.

You know, I’ve avoided Clarks since my school shoe days when they measured your foot with the little box and tape measure, but somehow when I wasn’t looking they had a makeover and actually have some pretty good shoes. I bought some sensible but attractive black loafers for work and looking smart, and I have my eye on some gorgeous tan leather riding boot style knee high boots. Although part of me wonders if it’s a slippery slope from here to ‘mum boots’, and from there to Per Una. Ho hum.

On having little baps

(DISCLAIMER: I’m going to be talking about boobs a lot in this post. Yes, boobs.)

Last week Stevie Martin wrote a fantastic piece for the Vagenda about having big boobs. Read it now, it’s brilliant stuff and made me lol in the office (oops).

She’s right: the fashion industry, women’s magazines, and society at large all have massive problems with real women’s bodies. They just won’t let us be, and having tiny baps isn’t much better, either. Hold it, hold it, I know what you’re thinking, large breasted ladies – you’re hating me because you think I’m doing a Samantha Brick (obnoxious ‘waaa waaa waaa life is so hard when you’re really pretty and people give you free champagne all the time’ Daily Mail writer). Let me assure you, I’m not. As far as I see it, being pretty is an objective good (I have lots of beautiful friends, thank you very much Samantha, and no one hates them. Maybe you should try being nice? Just a thought…), having small boobs is not (in fact, in my mind having small boobs = not being pretty… but more on this in a minute).

Let me explain: when I was about 10 years old, I was a BBC Pride and Prejudice addict, and in my mind the ultimate model of perfect womanliness, of grown up femininity and essentially the epitome of everything I wanted to be was Lizzie Bennet, played by Jennifer Ehle. There’s that fab bit where she sings over her beautiful bosom at Mr Darcy and they hold sizzling eye contact for, well, ages. (Thinking about it now, I suppose it’s rather unrealistic that his gaze doesn’t flicker down once or twice, but then that’s just one of his many charms.) I waited and waited for my boob growth spurt to kick in. I bought the smallest bra I could find and prayed that I would one day fill it. All around me, my friends were blossoming into young women, and I had the dispiriting feeling that I was being hopelessly left behind, a lanky, awkward straggler who would never really be admitted into life as a real adult woman. I used to hate getting changed for PE at my all girls’ school when I was 15, anxiously concealing the fact that I wasn’t really concealing anything. When I was about 16, the school nurse asked if I had an eating problem. Yes, I thought, I’m eating as much as I can but it never seems to give me boobs.

I don’t mean to belittle the fact that there are many anorexic 16 year olds, or that the process of becoming an ample breasted lady is painful in more ways than one. I just want to explain my aversion to the words ‘skinny’ (having too much skin and nothing to fill it, being all skin and bones – is this supposed to be a word with nice connotations?!) and ‘boyish’ (but I don’t want to look like a boy! I want to look like a woman!). Why, when it is so obviously rude to call someone fat, is it okay for random strangers (in shops, in the swimming pool changing rooms) to comment on my weight? Would someone tell someone else that they should eat less out of the blue and get away with it? No! Well, why do they feel they can randomly tell me to eat more? I eat plenty, as a matter of fact. ‘You’re skinny as a stick’ is often bandied around as if it’s meant to be a massive compliment, when in fact there are few other things that manage to set off my insecurities as violently as that phrase. Who the hell wants to look like a stick? I spent most of my teen years worrying about precisely that, that my limbs were too stick-like, and wishing I could be more like Jennifer Ehle in an empire line dress; thanks very much, you just reminded me that I hate my body. What was that? Oh, you were trying to say something nice? That’s just fantastic.

Yes, I admit that because of fashion’s weird obsession with making women’s clothes that are, in fact, designed for young boys, it can be easier to find clothes and bras that fit in mainstream shops. That doesn’t mean they all look good, though. More often than not I’m squinting at myself in the mirror, rejecting things that make me look too shapeless. I once read someone describe a small breasted woman in the wrong bikini as having breasts that looked like two underfed sparrows flapping around St Paul’s cathedral; this idea haunts me in all the changing rooms. What a massive, messed up case of the grass is always greener. How sad that so many women want something that I see as being so incredibly undesirable. In fact, a recent report showed that half the residents of the UK have problems relating to negative body image.

You see, the problem is that women’s magazines and society in general is always commenting on women’s weight, whether it’s to point out that they are curvy (aka rather a normal woman, if such a thing exists) or too skinny (Oh no! We can see some bones! Anorexia alert!). Here’s a thought: women come in all shapes and sizes, and most of us have grown up wishing we were different in one way or another, so why doesn’t everyone just shut up and let us be ourselves? Our own, lovely, healthy selves, whatever that means for our own personal body shape. And actually sometimes we won’t look our best, but that’s okay too. Maybe we’re just having a bad hair day. Who cares? The point is, after all, that we just want you to look at who we really are, not just at what we look like.

What’s in a name? Feminism meets practicality…

Image by ComellMare

I was in the hospital with my dad the other day, and the nurse asked my mum and I to fill out next of kin forms. Mr Caldecott, Mrs Caldecott, and Miss Caldecott: a family unit, proudly bearing the same name. And then my mum cracked a joke about how I wouldn’t be Miss Caldecott for much longer, and I felt a sudden pang of grief. ‘No man would ever get me to change my name,’ the nurse retorted as she took the forms from us and walked away. It’s easy to say, and I have toyed with the idea of keeping my name before, but it hit me clearly in that moment: if mum hadn’t taken dad’s name, we wouldn’t be that neat little family unit with matching names. I treasure the fact that I have the same name as both of my parents, but someone has to be willing to give up their family name and take on a new one to form a new family identity.

Yes, there’s the option of double barrelling your name with your spouse’s, but if everyone did that it would get out of hand a couple of generations down the line. (Also, ‘Caldecott-Lippiatt’ is a ridiculous mouthful in itself – what would our children do when they got married and suddenly had a four name long surname?) In Spain there’s a tradition that women keep their maiden names, which seems like a perfect feminist solution at first glance. As Wikipedia explains:

‘In Spain and in most Spanish-speaking countries, the practice is for people to have two surnames. Usually, the first surname comes from the father and the second from the mother but it could be the other way round. A child’s first surname will usually be their father’s first surname whilst the child’s second surname will usually be the mother’s first surname. For example, if Señor Smith Adams and Señora Jones Roberts had a child named Paul, then his full name would be Paul Smith Jones.’

But in reality, this still means that the woman’s name dies out after a few generations.

It’s hard giving up a name that carries with it a large part of your identity; all the family history and the outward sign of relationships that have been unspeakably formative and important. But if someone doesn’t do it, you’ll either have a different name from your children and partner, or end up getting tied up in all sorts of complex knots trying to merge multiple names – and what you were trying to protect in the first place will get lost a few generations down the line, anyway.

The ability to give up a name isn’t an inherently female quality, though. We weren’t born or raised with less of an attachment to our name and family identity than men. I believe that someone in the relationship has to make that sacrifice, and to do so is a beautiful thing; marriage is all about both men and women giving themselves completely and becoming part of one another, after all. But I would like to see a situation develop where it isn’t automatically or always the woman who changes her name: we need a new generation of feminist men to start bucking the trend and taking on their wives’ names. It’s not that I think women should never change their names when they get married, but more that I think it should be a choice, freely made.

I’m going to change my legal name, but keep my family name for writing. It’s scary, but also rather exciting: having the same surname as each other will mark us out as a new family, a team. And, as my dad told me, I’ll still be a Caldecott. What’s in a name, after all?

What about you? Would you ever consider changing your name?

Swedish sounds: Making music by Lake Aspen

It’s hard to sense the shift in the seasons this year; rain has seemed like a permanent fixture all summer, making us appreciate the few scarce days of sunshine more than ever. We have had apple and blackberry crumble earlier than usual, and the autumn fruit’s bitter juice has flavoured many of my walks along the river banks recently.

Usually I cling on to the vestiges of summer until the first frosts come and even I can’t deny any longer that flip flops, sun dresses, and playsuits must be ditched for boots and woolies. But this year is different; this year I’m waiting impatiently for the autumn to begin. Changing leaves and shortening days means my wedding day is getting closer. I’d always thought of engagement as a romantic state to be in, teetering on the brink of a life-changing decision, a poignant farewell to a single life. In reality, though, I’ve discovered that once you’ve made up your mind about something, you generally just want to get on and do it. Engagement is a state of limbo, and I’m like a young child counting down the days till Christmas. I know the day itself will pass in a quick surreal blur, but it’s not the day I’m waiting for. I’m waiting for the rest of my life to begin; a very big adventure with a man I am crazy about by my side.

My little sister recently went camping by Lake Aspen in Sweden for a couple of weeks, and came back with some breathtakingly beautiful photographs and some equally gorgeous music. She and her friends took all of their instruments with them and recorded some mellow tracks by lantern-light in a deserted band stand in the forest. Listening to them, you can almost see the stars in the clear night sky. I’m trying to persuade them to release their Swedish lake-side music as an EP on iTunes, but in the meantime, here is one of my sister’s songs. It’s the soundtrack to my last few months before I plunge into the mysteries of marriage.

Grown up hair from Sidewalk Ready

I recently discovered the brilliant blog, Sidewalk Ready, and have been inspired by the wonderful Kayley Heeringa’s DIY tutorials to try and be a bit more adventurous with how I style my hair.

I’m going through a few important job interviews at the moment, and in my humble opinion no hair style says ‘hire me’ quite like the sophisticated chignon. It’s grown up, it’s creative, it’s the right mixture of fun and different and mature. It’s sensible without being boring. It’s a reliable and yet stylish kind of hair style, and Sidewalk Ready has loads of different video tutorials to show you how to do various different kinds yourself.

Perhaps I’m waxing a little too lyrical about chignons. But then, beautiful hair styles hold a special kind of fascination for me, as you’ll know if you read my post last year about stalking someone on the underground who had a beautiful crown of plaits. I think it’s because growing up with two sisters meant that I never had to learn to do my own hair nicely – sure, I did my sisters’ hair, but they also did mine, and as you all know, doing your own hair is very different from doing someone else’s. Having a slightly unusual, fancy hair style makes me feel like it’s a special occasion, and the discovery that every day can feel like a special occasion without needing to dress particularly smartly still excites me. Doing your hair nicely but dressing casually is like saying ‘Hi world, yes I am just naturally sophisticated, what about it?’

I even emailed Kayley to ask if she had any ideas for special half up-half down hairstyles that I could do for my wedding in October, and she emailed back to say that she’d do a post for that soon. Watch this space!

In other wedding related hair news, what do people think about tiaras? I always hated the idea (way too princess-y for my like), but my sister recently found a beautiful understated alternative one with gold leaves and pearls selling for cheaps on a second hand wedding website (I won’t tell you which just now because I don’t want someone else to buy it!). It reminds me a bit of the beautiful hair band by Twigs & Honey, above. My oh my they have the most delicate, pretty hair pieces I’ve ever seen. Sadly rather out of my budget, but still… a girl can dream.

So what do you think? To tiara, or not to tiara? It’s hard to say without seeing it, isn’t it, so maybe I’ll buy it and show you a photo so you can help me decide.

DIY: Knit a baby blanket

Is it just me, or does Pinterest make you think you have crafting super powers? My recent Pinterest addiction is definitely to thank – or to blame – for making me think I can knit.

Look, here’s a picture that shows you how to cast on (aka start):

Here’s something to show you how to keep going once you’ve started:

And then a handy video to show you how to cast off (aka finish):

It’s simple, right? Somehow all of this lead to my conclusion: I’M GOING TO KNIT A BABY BLANKET.

So the general concept is that you knit a lot of plain squares in different colours and then sew them together. I am making mine for a friend who is just about to have a baby and her husband is on his deployment with the US army in Afghanistan. The idea of making an American flag baby blanket only really came about because I started off knitting in blue, and wanted to be able to sew something over the holes/wonky bits… hence the stars. But it’s actually working out quite well. I’m working on the last four white squares, and then it will be finished. (The stars are little bits of lace that I sewed on.)

Here are some things I have learnt about knitting over the past few months:

1. Don’t do it when you’re drunk. (Husband-to-be leans over and says helpfully, ‘I think you just missed a stitch… or few.’)

2. It might be easy once you’ve got the hang of it, but it takes much longer than you think it will.

3. Bamboo needles are better than metal ones. (Metal ones are cold and slippery.)

4. No matter how trendy knitting has become (was Emma Bunton to blame? I forget…), it will never be sexy. You will always look like a granny as soon as you get those knitting needles out, but who cares, right? Grannies are awesome.

5. Knitting on trains is a good way to pass the time, unless the train is crowded in which case don’t. You’ll end up elbowing everyone.

So: happy crafting, fellow Pinteresters! For all my complaining about how I’m not a natural knitter, I think it’s pretty cool that Pinterest is inspiring people to try new things outside their normal comfort zones, and put some extra time and effort into the details of life. The little things matter, after all.

UPDATE: I finished! Finally! After sewing together the last row of white squares, I sewed a panel of starry fabric onto the knitting as backing, and finished off the edges with blanket stitch (again, something I learnt from Pinterest). Hurrah!