Iceland is known for its unique landscape, midnight sun, aurora borealis, volcanos, thermal pools and so on. This, presumably, creates an inspiring atmosphere for young designers.

You can see and feel the nature in most of the creations from Iceland, both musical and design-wise.

Soo… I thought it might be nice to show you some of the Icelandic’s greatest fashion designers.

This photo illustrates work from a design team called Spaksmannsspjarir (”wiseman’s clothes”). They offer a wide range of clothes for women, in all shapes and sizes. You can go to their shop and choose a look and they will costume-make items for you if necessary.

I like.

Trixi will be getting a rather nice surprise present this week, I think.

I like the Skunkfunk brand, with a few independent stores dotted around the back-streets and cooler areas of Barcelona, away from the tourist-infested main thoroughfares, they’re a break from the norm (norm: Zara, Mango, Massimo Dutti, Zara again, Oysho etc)

Kicking-off in the Basque country (Northern Spain/Southern France) they’ve opened up in a plethora of locations as far away as Tokyo and San Francisco.

But boy do they LOVE green! And not a dark green, which I’d wear… but a lime green green - a green that’d be a little hard to get away with, unless you’re living in a place where the sun shines morning to night. I can’t see it being a success on Dame Street in Dublin on a pissy-wet October evening.

Still, I like their style, it’s brave and it’s young, and it’s keeping-it-small while resisting to be everywhere-at-once, which will be the downfall of fellow-Spanish start-up Desigual, who were once niche… but they got greedy.

My friend Trisha got herself a new bag. A pretty good deal she said. The bag is almost-well-made, from almost- leather, almost-Fendi. Almost but not quite.   

These simple details and that brilliant bag which was obviously a pretty good deal from the point of view of this months budget may however cost her much more than she thinks. Basically anything starting from 500 pounds to 3 years in jail. That’s due to a new law imposing enormous fines on both sellers and buyers of designer ‘imitations’.

If you don’t have it – don’t fake it,  seem to be the slogan of the forthcoming seasons.

From the hallowed pages of Future Music, this story:

“The silver Tenori-On looks like a small tablet PC with a 16×16 grid of white LEDs. The lights can be seen from both the front and the back of the unit, so an audience can take part in the visual fun as well. The Tenori-On is meant to be programmed both musically and visually. In fact, you can program the music, and then go back and program a customized visual sequence to complement what you’ve composed.”

So the thing can be played as if you were designing with your fingertips, or it can be played by just knowing what notes are where on the instrument, and it has built-in speakers. Rad, or what?!

I like the Burberry bag, and the shoes and… well, to tell the truth… everything in this window. Usually when I travel somewhere I have to come back home with a piece of clothing, I guess it’s just a girl thing. Clothes brings back memories of places I’ve visited and how much fun I had there.
I went to Padova in Italy last week. Since it was 9 p.m. when I finally got a chance to look around the downtown area I didn’t get the chance to buy any clothes but did pick up two bottles of wine… That’s something, at least.
Well, today I browsed the net for Burberry, and of course… I found the bag from that storefront and a pair of matching shoes. The price of the bag is 950 British pounds for those who can afford it…
Sigh… guess I will just have to look for a cheaper version.

Trés clever advert from trainerwear manufacturer Izumi. I love this kind of approach, take a WAY tenuous connection to your product, and use it to promote, really nice.

Wanna know three things I’d do differently?

1. “climbed into the wrong panel van” is wrong. a) it requires an American to understand it. b) “climbing into” gets away from the running, they needn’t have done so.

2. “Run like an animal” is weak, and brings us back to the norm of corporate taglines, the advert would have finished more strongly with “civic duty.”

3. No prominent logo, and Izumi’s brand recognition isn’t so strong that the little logo on the side of the muddy shoe covers it, nor does the little red version after “animal”. Never miss the opportunity to display your brand prominently.

I had the good fortune to be in Paris last weekend, and I visited the Pompidou Centre, which is a place I haven’t been to since early 1996.

It’s the most fabulously ugly building, both inside and out, but it contains the beating heart of what has become a very trendy area full of designer shops, little cafes and restaurants.

With free wi-fi inside the foyer, a too-cute-to-resist trinket and design shop, a coffee shop with commanding views of the entire place, and an art-oriented bookstore that you could spend HOURS in, the place was abuzz.

It’s not the easiest place in the world to navigate around, I found myself in the middle of a restaurant at one stage, and wasn’t sure if it was a modern art installation or a hallucination. No, I jest, but it IS a tough place to get around, and I left it feeling I’d missed a floor, or a display, because as big as it is I felt I’d only seen 2 or 3oo pieces, which seems a lot in print, but not when you’re actually there.

Still, a joy, a true joy. Here’s a nameless piece from a nameless corridor, in a nameless gallery, on just one of the many floors inside Pompidou Centre - visit next time you’re in Paris, I recommend.

There’s just something about this that charms me. The shoes are all handmade and unique and they even come with special wooden shoe trees to keep the shape of the shoe, made for each pair!!!

“The original John Lobb was a lame Cornish farmboy whose mastery of the Gentle Craft of last and awl brought him golden awards in the Great International Exhibitions of Victorian times.”

Oh wow… I just love these old looking things….*sigh*

Fall is my favourite fashion season.

If you are anything like me with autumn comes with fourth quarter work related stressors, the start of logs crackling in the fireplace, blanket cuddles, apple picking and the flu.  So my original weekend plans of picking apples at the orchard with my baby, will be modified slightly…

cocktails anyone?

Apple Brandy Hot Toddy

INGREDIENTS:
2 oz apple brandy
1 tsp sugar
hot apple cider
lemon wedge for garnish
cinnamon stick
2 whole cloves

PREPARATION:
Coat the bottom of an Irish coffee glass with honey.
Add apple brandy.
Fill with hot apple cider.
Stir well.
Garnish with the lemon, cinnamon stick and cloves
Get out your favorite blanket, put on some Marvin Gaye and add a loved one.

Enjoy your weekend!
 

Today’s daily award for keeping me occupied on the train goes to a girl in a blue Gucci coat. I spent the entire 6 minutes of my train journey to work this morning STARING with my mouth wide open. This time it had nothing to do with a mascara. It was all about the eyeliner.  Liquid eyeliner in particular.    

               
She  managed to draw perfect lines on both of her eyelids while the train was moving and shaking and …. doing all that trains do.

I can’t draw a straight line with an eyeliner  standing still on the ground without making myself look like a panda.

When you have many pairs of shoes, it’s very likely that you won’t wear some
of them very often. Still though, you want to take good care of them and prevent
them from being “injured” in your closet.

It’s a good idea to keep them in their boxes but then it can be difficult to find them again when you need
them without opening about 50 boxes before you find the right pair.

Plus, it can be frustrating to keep the boxes if you buy them in another country and you have to buy a new suitcase for all the new stuff you
bought because the boxes take up so much space in the one you have.

So, what to do??

I recommend this

They also have boot supporters, boxes for hats and other cool stuff. Nice!

Hilary Alexander of London’s Independent explains why Kane has been heralded the star of this week’s London Fashion Week.

“Kane, who graduated from Central Saint Martin’s fashion college in London just seven months ago — and had already been talent-spotted by Donatella Versace while still a student — both lived up to the expectations invested in him and survived the hype surrounding his second appearance on the LFW catwalk.”

More from Alexander, and more images, here.

I just SO dare you girls to wear this… first one to post a photo of themselves with this kit on gets a 100 bucks!

You know you made a good choice if you get stopped on the street by at least 3 strangers asking what perfume are you wearing.

I saw Lerche back in 2004, when he was a mere 22 years old, and was playing his way around Europe solo. I was taken by his poise, and his tunes. Standing in Whelan’s of Dublin, just a guitar between him and the audience, the first night of his tour… he was a study in confidence.

Attitude On-Stage number five goes to Sondre Lerche of Sweden.

Why is it that most women open their mouth when putting mascara on? 

Rebecca Traister over at Salon takes an interesting perspective on the fall from grace of Britney Spears, and her woeful performance at the MTV VMAs last week. Quote: “Spears has come to represent something — something important enough that it keeps rearing its head. As has been pointed out before, she embodies the disdain in which this culture holds its young women: the desire to sexualize and spoil them while young, and to degrade and punish them as they get older. Of course, she also represents a youthful feminine willingness — stupid or manipulated as it may be — to conform to the culture’s every humiliating expectation of her.”

“Spears’ performance was execrable. Dressed in an unflattering sparkly bikini, Spears stumbled, wobbled, looked disoriented and confused; she barely moved through much of the routine, stepping tentatively around the stage while the dancers around her flipped and twirled. She couldn’t remember the words to the song to which she was lip-syncing and eventually stopped trying to even pretend to recognize them.”

Read more from article, here. Video of the performance itself here (for now, though it may be pulled).

Lacroix is working with AVON *dies*