The Collective

Looking to update your wardrobe stables? Let Miss Selfridge come to your aid with clean, sharp and modern basics to make any wardrobe feel whole with 'The Collection' featuring the essential such as the parka, shirt, coat, blouse, blazer, peplum, playsuit and much more. The hair, the make-up and styling all are making me very excited about being a sleek girl about town strutting between the rustling leaves adorned in my new luxury basics.

Enjoy the styling tips from Miss Selfridge and shop here.

Tonight Matthew...

Autumn Winter really is my favourite fashion season. Spring Summer collections always seen to disappoint somehow. Maybe I find the flimsy materials echo concepts that really lack any real substance; buy a floral tea dress or pastel skirt once and you’re pretty much got the next few years. The same could loosely be applied to Autumn Winter I know; military coats, heritage prints such as plaid, tweed and tartan appear every year but they always seem to have add had more creditable twists made, more varied in their existence and recreation.

When dressing I tend to dress in terms of characters rather than outfits and more times than not the resulting ensemble is a sartorial recreation of whatever song I had on repeat while getting ready. I find it difficult to describe my personal style except in song/band form. It is fun being the girl in the song and well summer songs aren’t my favourite either.

Tonight Matthew I am going to be Mudhoney with fleeting moments of Duran Duran.

Images via Blaubushka tumblr, weheartit, warehouse

Topshop AW12

Now begins a flurry of posts featuring the new season collections from your favourite high street stores. First up is Topshop.

Topshop offers up a selection of wool, leather and fur in the form lumberjack-inspired coats, hoods and classic thick-knit jumpers. These pieces afford you the opportunity to play mix and match between a wide range of trends allowing you to create your own sub collection concepts such as 'beatnik grunge', 'lumber lady', 'neo prairie' or whatever divine inspiration takes hold. I'm a firm believer of never styling within one trend and Topshop will be spoiling me for choice.

Hitting stores nationwide from late July.

The Wardrobe Edit

I find it very hard to concentrate on anything when I know my clothes have just been thrown into my wardrobe. It is as though instead on focusing on a task my mind has set about reorganising and mentally refolding my clothes. Even now as I type my peripheral vision is targeting in on the bundle of knitwear sitting on the top shelve of my wardrobe. If the eyes are the window to the soul then my wardrobe must be its brain. It seems that seven or so years of retail experience have left a huge need to have every item ‘shop hung’ or ‘shop folded’ away in a manner akin to how a brain sorts and compartmentalises each thought and memory.

Having been a fashion blogger for three years people often remark that I must have a lot of clothes. I don’t. I own a modest sized wooden wardrobe with matching four-drawer dressed and firmly believe that if I can’t fit something into this space than I don’t need it. I hate to hoard and twice yearly scour my collection of those pieces I will never wear again and donate to charity, making a little more room for new pieces. That said as I’m getting older and, dare I admit, broodier I’ve come to think about storing away items to pass on to any future daughter I may have.

So it’s time for one of my biannual clear outs. This is what I usually do approaching the transitional period between main seasons such as Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter. I’m currently moodboading my AW12/13 inspiration and slowly moving the summer pieces towards to back of my wardrobe. This is when I start to get brutal and get out the charity bin bag, a sheet of paper and a pencil. Bin those items that were ‘maybes’ from the last edit and still haven’t worn and with the paper and pencil I draw two circles. In one circle I list the new season pieces I lust and in the second I list those missing staples from my collection; the basics that need replacing or investing in. Then I hope to reach a sort of Venn diagram of compromise between what I want and what I need.

Then I go shopping with the list. Bad things happen when I forget the list. Credit cards get hurt. Bank balances die. I must stick to the list.