The first step is admitting...

I have a problem. A problem with virtual thrifting that positively borders on the psychotic. I need your help and my logic is this: the more you buy, the less I will buy/cry over/spend my student loan on. And as such this is an act of pity not indulgence.

Below are my top 5 sources of sin (give or take a few). These eBay vintage stores are updated weekly (usually on a Sunday…no I don’t refresh the page obsessively waiting to ‘watch this item’) and brilliantly styled (Noirohio in particular) – daily sources of inspiration if you will.

1) Noirohio
The model’s ridiculously hot and I want her tattoos/fringe/mismatched hair and eyebrow combo.
…Oh yeah and the clothes are nice too (acid wash, body con and rompers in particular).



2) Funkin Junkie Vintage
A hella lot of nudes, pastels and floaty materials…perhaps too much…but this is totally compensated for by the model’s awesome Terradactyl tattoo.



3) Indie Cult Vintage
A cult I’d definitely join – very pricey (emphasis on the very) but there’s method behind the madness: this is grade-A vintage. From quality fabrics (silk, mink, snakeskin) to respected designers (Valentino, DVF, Dior) its laden with iconic investment pieces. Granted you wouldn’t shop here everyday, but it’s perfect for those one-off treats (the M&S of thrift).



4) American Archive
Pricey and riddled with ‘buy it nows’ but definitely worth it, particularly for its avant garde evening wear and chunky ethnic knits. I find the girl a tad smug, but who wouldn’t be with unlimited access to vintage and legs up to their armpits.
Ps: check out the hagrid-esque male model – a hunk of a man if I ever did see one.



5) Bustown Modern
American Archive’s ghetto younger sister – braver, bolder, bootyer (trust, there’s an emphasis on the hiney) and generally more bling. Sequins, neons, beading and lots of gold embellishment, as well as a few designers thrown in (NB: a Paco Rabanne maxi I would maim a child for).



Two others are worthy of a brief mention at the very least:
- Bobbinel – Classic, 1950/60s vintage dresses. L-A based, cheap as chips and gorgeous wrapping – what’s not to love? The second, Thriftwares, is coats coats coats.
- Nimble Dress Betrayals – Very classy indeed and ridiculously reasonably priced (NB: model had no head)
- http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/thriftwares__W0QQ_armrsZ1 - COATS COATS COATS. That is all.

And now for the dreaded word – postage. Not to worry though, all of these American stores charge between £8-12 for international shipping, and usually combine costs on multiple orders. Surely a good reason to indulge*?

*pity

x J

well hi there!

Thought it was time to introduce myself – Julia here, coming to you from the depths of a cluttered East London reception desk (a girl’s got to fund her eBay habit somehow). Being the other half of the Appraising Eye duo, i will be showering you with all that is weird, wonderful, fashionable and truly awful (in the good sense of course) gracing the streets of Oxford and London. Expect street style, club night snaps, DIY customization, vintage finds, EBAY (love of my life) and general day-to-day obsessions and goings on.

For now however I leave you with a series of pictures from a recent shoot I styled for ISIS magazine (http://isismag.wordpress.com/). Bondage-inspired and shot in an abandoned grain silo (courtesy of Rose’s love affair with Urban Explorer), it involved the majority of my favourite things: leather, studs, straps, gimp masks and naked male torsos (in that order)…enjoy!










Contributors: Fettered Pleasures (fetteredpleasures.com), Up From the Ashes (www.upfromtheashespa.com) and Anthony War (LCF graduate designer). Photography: Cayal Unger

J

Nicole Farhi

This is so late it’s almost pointless but nevertheless might as well do something with the pics so-
The next morning was the Nicole Farhi show, which was pretty much the most amazing point of my life. Just seeing the clothes that people were wearing, from the jewel coloured dyed furs to the black leather biker gloves of the lady sitting next to me. I rushed there after waking at six thirty, and it started to rain as I left Covent Garden station, so I was getting more and more flustered and bedraggled. Entering the Royal Opera House and hearing the PR girls whispering “Alexandra Shulman has just entered” made it all better. A lovely man directed me to my seat, and I ignored him and sat second row right next to the catwalk entrance. I recognised Hadley Freeman and Jess Cartner-Morley from the Guardian team, and the head buyer from Harrods, as well as the great Shulman herself. In general the audience was older, reflecting both the designers prestige and target client. The collection itself was predictably conservative. The pieces were all wearable and for the most part desirable, but uninspiring. There was the ubiquitous shiny black and black mesh seen just about everywhere for the past few seasons, with gold sparkles on black chiffon providing a flash of evening glamour. My favourite pieces were a black dress with a funnel neck in thick tweed-like material,
a black dress with something subtly weird going on in the arms, and a red dress with draping over one shoulder. My pet hates were the prints and the squares of gold beading. So the show ended and I rushed out too terrified to ask anyone to take a snap of their outfit, and I legged it onto the tube where everyone from the show glanced at one another.

LFW- Sunday

So, I invited my friend Rachel as Julia had to return to Oxford. Lacking an SLR I asked her to bring hers, but the battery ran out about 5 mins after we turned it on, and she had no memory card so the day was captured in shit videos on my phone.

I wore the Galliano playsuit the next day, with a shredded velvet jacket, dark purple lipstick, giant earrings and big clumpy brown heels. Sounds disgusting when I describe it but I got snapped by a couple of bloggers so it obv its my descriptive rather than styling skills that fail me. Which is fantastic for an English student at Oxford.

First off was Betty Jackson, which I liked, but not loved. Some of the clothes were fairly forgettable, but the proportions were great, and there were a lot of leather pieces which, along with flashes of muted gold silk, kept her collection in line with this seasons trends.
However it all felt a bit Whistles or Jigsaw, the accessories were cool and I liked the big chunky sleeveless tops and jackets, and the leather bras, but it wasn't exciting.












ly

I'm exhausted and I'm going to bed, need to stop blogging at one in the morning. Ridiculous times.

One last thing- its been sunny sunny sunny which has defeated my bad mood, how gorgeous is Port Meadows in the sun?




Lots more tomoza I promise
xxx

Back to the bright lights

Hello,
This is so ridiculously late there's almost no point. However as you probably know London Fashion Week happened a couple of weeks ago, and I was lucky enough to attend a few shows. So I'm going to paste a few bits and pieces for your enjoyment, and I'm going to start with a few impressions of my first day and hopefully I'll get some pictures of my lovely friend Julia who got me into most of the shows.

Thursday night got a bit messy, and we managed to miss the following on Friday, so gutted, foolish foolish girls- Paul Costelloe, Aminaka Wilmont, Caroline Charles, BodyAmr and bloody Bora Aksu and Charlie Le Mindu, two designers I lust over the most.

But onto Saturday-
www.irisvanherpen.com/irisvanherpen.html
We went to Iris Van Herpen first of all, which was in the Freemasons Hall courtesy of the wonderful minds behind Vauxhall Fashion Scout. This venue was showing the smaller designers, and at their best they lived up to into the old truism of London being about young, eccentric, experimental fashion. Iris Van Herpen was certainly no exception, front row was graced by the inestimable Pandemonium wearing this very outfit-



Sitting next to her was a girl-crush of mine Anna Trevelyan, who works for Dazed and Confused and is assistant to uber-stylist Nicola Formechetti, as well as some other Dazed folk. We ended up sitting at the next table along from them in Itsu after the show, it was an effort not to stare in awe, Anna was wearing a studded headband, maybe the Givenchy, or maybe just a take on it.




SO, the actual show, the make up was subtle but fantastic, the models had bleached out, pasty skin with a strange sheen to it. They looked ill or over cooked or something, I liked it.
The designer used thin, flat tapes of black and bronze to play with body form. It looked like stiff versions of the stuff you pulled out of tapes as a kid, or part of circuit. While the distortion of the body through cage-like structures has been around for a while, even reaching the high street in the form of Topshop's cage skirts, I think Van Herpen managed to avoid seeming imitative. There was a subtle referencing of Alexander McQueen S/S 09, both collections turned the models into half alien/half insectoid creatures. Her designs reminded me of moths and those terribly delicate little creatures that only live in the dark. My favourite look was the black dress that appears in the first pic on her website (pics to come soon I promise), as the model walked the front panels moved like wings.

Next show was Belle Sauvage, which was in Victoria House, the venue for On/Off- Blow PR's venture. Wasn't such a massive fan- the shoes were awesome, loved the exhibition and the venue, the crowd was the best dressed and the hottest I saw all week BUT I'm so bored of this digital printing thing. The construction was nice but despite the complexity of the designs it all looked a bit bottom floor of Topshop Oxford Circus, you know where they keep all the concession stands, and the colours didn't work in my (appraising) eyes.

We also got diverted into a shop and managed to miss a couple of shows, but I bought a vintage John Galliano playsuit that makes me joyous everytime I put it on, so worth it really.

My accounts of Sunday will soon follow, along with the crappy videos I made on my phone (lesson learned, always charge your camera).


So, end of the first blog, hope it was as good for you as it was for me, tell me what you think, but they say the first time is always painful so be gentle.